Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Suck It, Peter!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.20.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So we get a total takeback on the Hiro killing Ando thing, as it turns out Hiro manipulated time to grab a trick sword and some fake blood and to warn Ando to play along with the charade. This gets Hiro in with the so-called Villains, and Daphne gives him an assignment -- capture NeoIsaac. NeoIsaac, however, with his ability to see the future, is able to bonk Hiro on the head with a shovel, which is hilarious because the last thing Hiro sees before that is a painting of it happening, and the only thing better than that is that it happens again five minutes later. NeoIsaac finally allows Hiro and Ando to find him, and after telling Hiro he relies too much on his powers, he offers to go with Hiro to the Villains if that's what he wants, but suggests he choose his own path. That would be great advice if it weren't Hiro we're dealing with here.
Claire and Sandra try to rescue Meredith from creepy, creepy puppeteer Eric Doyle, who thinks he can make Meredith love him "again," and considering he almost makes her cut open her own carotid artery, he is not kidding around. Sandra and Claire get themselves captured, and he forces the three of them to play a horrific game of Russian roulette. Luckily, Claire's the one who gets shot, and when Doyle starts to gloat, unaware of her regenerative ability, she knocks him out. Bennet turns up to retrieve him, and then asks Meredith for some help, which hopefully means she's joining The Company because she rules and I want her to stick around.
Tracy and Nathan go to see Mohinder in hopes of getting Tracy's ability taken away, but Mohinder is only interested the fact they have synthetic abilities without spider-related side effects, and he incapacitates them for some nefarious purpose. Daphne then shows up to recruit Mohinder, but discovers what he's got going on in the back room and expresses her distaste before superzipping the hell out of there. Tracy tricks Mohinder into letting her partially freeze him, because he's as dumb as Maya, but she and Nathan don't succeed in getting out, which would be a total cliffhanger if I cared one bit about Spider-Mohinder and his weboratory.
Daphne's bummed that Hiro seems to have committed murder, and tells Fake Linderman she wants out of Pinehearst, but he threatens her with unspecified consequences and implies they have something on her, so she goes through with meeting up with Matt, who tells her about them being married in the future. He gives her enough detail to convince her he's telling the truth, which of course freaks her out, but she still swings by The Company and gives Sylar a sales pitch before busting Flint out. As the episode goes on, she gets more and more disillusioned with what Pinehearst is doing, but despite that and the fact that Matt tells her being with Pinehearst gets her killed in the future, she refuses to leave them.
Knox brings Adam to see Papa Petrelli, who unceremoniously and literally sucks the life out of him, healing himself but turning Adam into dust before our eyes, and I will miss David Anders terribly but that was still a pretty dramatic twist. Sylar, meanwhile, wants to be good, although letting Peter loose on the world wouldn't have been the way I would have demonstrated that. Sylar brings Peter to Mama Petrelli, who still seems to be in a waking coma, and asks Peter to look inside her head and find out what's wrong. Peter pulls the Pinehearst logo from her mind, and Sylar recognizes it from the card Daphne gave him. Peter wants to go charging over there, but Sylar is worried about his lack of control, and before you know it, Peter is beating the crap out of his brother and putting him in the coma he was in to start the episode. Well, at least he can't say Sylar didn't have a point. Peter busts into Pinehearst, only to have his father steal all his powers, because that's apparently how he rolls. And while Papa Petrelli seems to be evil incarnate, I still think the world should breathe a sigh of relief.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Before I start, I just want to say that this past Saturday, my friend saw a prominent member of the cast volunteering his or her time to make phone calls on behalf of a particular Presidential candidate. (I, on the other hand, went on Sunday. Life can be so cruel.) For privacy's sake I won't say who it was, but if by some miniscule chance you're reading, I just want to say this: Thanks! You're awesome!
So, two episodes in a row that didn't make me want to kill myself! Seriously, it almost feels like the story is starting to come together. Let's see how it holds up on second viewing...
...as we start with a chyron superimposed onto the foot of Papa Petrelli's bed. We continue with that dreaded combination of Mohinder VO (I'm not bothering with them anymore unless they actually add something -- I took way too long to learn to do that with Augustus Hill as it is) and montage, as we cut to Peter, still in the "medically-induced coma," Mama Petrelli, eyes open, in a coma of more nefarious origins, Matt, arriving back in the States (with the turtle!), Tracy and Nathan clasping hands in the back of his car, Sylar meditating in his cell, and Mohinder in his lab looking at the cocooned Maya. We then get a replay of the final Hiro scene from last week, although after Knox tells him to kill Ando, Daphne gives her blessing to the test, adding, "He'll never do it," which we didn't see from her last week, if memory serves. And speaking of which, here Hiro freezes time, looks around for a moment, and then gets An Idea and pops out of there. I suppose Daphne needs already to be moving to break out of the time freeze, but it would be funny if he popped back to find her there with an expectant look on her face. Not half as funny as what's going to happen with NeoIsaac, though, so let's move on...
...to Hiro arriving in a costume shop and grabbing a collapsible sword and some fake blood...
...and then popping back to the bar, two hours earlier, to talk to Ando, whose eyes go hilariously wide when Hiro appears before him. Hiro takes all of five seconds to stick the fake blood in Ando's shirt, tell him he's going to fake stab him, and assure him it will all make (fake) sense soon enough. Hiro pops out of there before I even get to hear what "I've heard that one before" sounds like in Japanese.
Hiro gets back and unfreezes time, and the rest of the scene plays out as it did last week. Knox tells Hiro he's in, and then instructs Daphne to deal with him, as he's taking Adam to see "the boss." Daphne waits until Knox is gone to berate Hiro for apparently actually killing Ando, and says he's supposed to be a good guy. Believe me, honey, he'll do more for the light if he thinks he's on darkness's team. Hiro says now he's a villain, like she is, to which she takes umbrage, saying she just works for money and no one gets hurt. Sounds like she's advocating for legalized prostitution, but I think the world she lives in has bigger fish to fry at the moment. Hiro snaps that Ando was useless to him (he's actually faking this pretty well here) and demands that Daphne take him to her boss, but she tells him that's not the way it works -- he gets an assignment, just like everyone else. She hands him a folder, and he opens it to find a picture of NeoIsaac, whom Daphne describes as a "precog" -- he can see the future, and whatever he paints comes true. Hiro gets a goofy smile on his face and asks, "Like Mistah Eesock?" Daphne gives the appropriate response: "Whatever." She says that her boss can't have someone like that out there, as said boss himself told Mama Petrelli, so Hiro needs to find him and bring him in -- alive. She adds that it's not easy to catch his kind, and Hiro's dumb enough to have to ask why, so Daphne duhs, "They see you coming." My answer would have been, "Think about it for a second," but from the way Daphne superzips out of there I can tell she's in a hurry. When she's gone, Ando takes a huge breath, saying he thought she'd never leave, and Hiro helps him to his feet: "Now you know how it feels to be killed by your best friend." At least they can laugh about it now. Ando wonders how they're going to catch the precog, but Hiro tells him he can freeze time and space, and the guy is no match for him. Keep talking, dude -- it only makes the bits with the shovel that much more satisfying. Ando declares his intention to change his clothes, and Hiro rolls his eyes before popping them both out of there.