Episode Report Card Wing Chun: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Ballad Of Charlie And Hiro
By Wing Chun | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.12.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Matt -- on suspension after punching his wife's boyfriend -- is brought in to the FBI to interrogate Ted. He's told he only gets an hour before DHS takes over on the assumption that Ted is radioactive because he's a terrorist who's been messing around with bomb materials. Matt discovers that Ted's experience of turning super -- drunk, Haitian guy, passed out for a few days, wake up with big headache and weird powers -- is very like Matt's own; also, they both now have neck tattoos that look like two hash marks. Unfortunately, Matt doesn't get the FBI the info it wants in time, but although Ted gets hauled off, in the time it takes Matt to go home and have an awkward conversation with his wife about her infidelity (upshot: they're going to try to make a go of it anyway), Ted starts a fire in the vehicle he's being transported in and takes off to avoid being Gitmoed. Mohinder, back in India, sends off his father's remains and makes to go back to work. We meet Mira, spparently a lost love, who discredited his father's research and is now in some big fancy job at a private genetic research company. She tells Mohinder she can get him in, as long as he doesn't make with the crazy talk about Chandra's research. Mohinder then discovers (or at least this is how it appears to me) that his power is to figure shit out in semi-waking dreams, with the assistance of a kid with a soccer ball who may or may not be Boy Mohinder; at any rate, his dreams lead him to take a key he found in Chandra's stuff and use it to open a locked desk drawer, in the back of which he finds a file full of sleep studies and a photo of the soccer kid. It's kind of awesome that the guy with the boring exposition disease turns out to be Nap Man. In Texas, we see Bennet go in to his office -- a paper company/shady front -- where Eden has been helping Isaac through heroin withdrawal. Bennet tells Isaac he believes that Isaac really can paint the future, and tells him that the cheerleader Isaac's been painting is Claire. Her Homecoming Dance is the next day, and Bennet fears that she's going to be killed there unless Isaac paints what is to happen so that Bennet can prevent it. Isaac tries, but can't get his precog powers working without heroin, so Bennet gets him some and tells Eden to give it to him. She gets pissed; Bennet darkly hints that he got her off junk so she owes him, and a now super-pissed Eden does indeed get Isaac to shoot up again, possibly by whispering something super-persuasive into his ear that we don't hear. Anyway, the heroin does get Isaac all cloudy-eyed and painting again. Bennet also tells Isaac that there are a bunch of special people around the world that Bennet has been trying to protect from (without using his name) Sylar, who's been killing supers. Finally: in Midland, Texas, we meet Charlie, a diner waitress who's recently noticed that she has an extraordinarily awesome memory. She waits on Ando and Hiro, the latter of whom cutely develops a giant crush on her. Also studying her carefully? Sylar, who waits for her to go to the back and then cuts the top of her head off, killing her. Hiro tells Ando that she was killed the same way he saw Isaac killed in the future, so he says he's going to go back in time and prevent her death. He promises to be back five seconds later, but Ando tells him Hiro doesn't know how to control his powers well enough to try that shit yet...and Ando turns out to be right, and is left loitering around the diner waiting for Hiro. At least we know that Hiro has been successful in going backward, because we see a snapshot on the diner bulletin board of Hiro a while back at Charlie's birthday party. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Shut up, Mohinder. Fine: the earth is large, but not so large that you can hide from shit forever. On a beach in India, mourners watch as Mohinder dumps his father's ashes into the ocean (well, he does -- and rightly so, because ocean breezes can be really powerful and fan cremains around in unfortunate ways; if it taught us nothing else, The Big Lebowski at least taught us that), and then waves a burning stick of incense around. A woman approaches -- Mohinder's mother, obviously -- and tells him that his father's moved on to the next life. Sendhil Ramamurthy does his best to weep, but can summon only the dry cries in an effort so poor as to be practically Van Der Beekian.
Isaac wakes up to his face being daubed with a damp washcloth. Of course it's held by Eden, who is perched on the edge of his bed, telling him she thought she'd clean him up a little. The room, as we pull out...well, I've never been in rehab (no matter what you've read on The Smoking Gun, thank you very much), but the room certainly looks typical of the nicer rehab facilities I've seen on other TV shows and in, like, Postcards From The Edge (a movie which, if you haven't seen it, you should; it'll give you a real endolphin rush): the bed is narrow, with an institutional-looking fake-wood headboard and matching nightstand beside it; there's a tall plant in the corner; a placid, soothing landscape hangs over the bed; and the only light comes from a pair of table lamps with mellow cream-coloured shades. Isaac looks disoriented and makes slow, fidgety movements as Eden tells him he's had "a rough couple of days," but is now doing great and will be "completely clean in no time." As Eden starts smearing shaving cream on his cheek, Isaac groggily asks her whether she's sure he'll still be able to paint. "After I teach you, yes," says Eden cryptically. She's going to teach him art? I foresee some tampons in some teacups. "The drugs were just a facilitator," Eden explains. "That mural on the floor? We're not gonna let that happen." "You seem pretty sure," Isaac tells her, taking her hand. I don't know how he can have any confidence in her teaching skills if she doesn't at least know that "murals" are seldom on floors, hello, take a Latin class. Eden says she is sure. But how? "Because I went through the same thing myself," she exposits, busting out a straight razor and gingerly shaving Isaac's cheek. What the hell kind of whack rehab facility allows straight razors? When I was at Hazelden, they...