Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT O Brother, Where Art Thou?
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 10.27.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Lots of scenes this week, which is typical, but things actually happened in most of them, which is less so. In Africa, Ando convinces Hiro to go back in time, but Hiro's a total prick about the idea, so NeoIsaac gives him some drugs or something instead for a spirit walk. That happened in two scenes that bookended the episode, though, so we won't know what Hiro sees for a while.
Mohinder apparently still wants to help Maya, so he spider-kidnaps her and takes her to Pinehearst, where Papa Petrelli steals her power. Maya is still pissed at Mohinder for the cocoon thing, though, so Papa Petrelli shows him their version of the formula and asks him for aid in perfecting it. Mohinder suspects a hidden agenda, but still agrees to help so he can retain his abilities without turning into a spider or whatever. He apologizes to Maya before she leaves to make amends for everything she's done, hopefully permanently off-screen. Meanwhile, Nathan and Tracy are hanging out in the weboratory waiting for help when Bennet and Meredith show up, and Meredith's casual dismissal of Nathan's apparent new squeeze is hilarious.
Elle shows up to the Bennet house asking for Claire's help, as her powers are out of control and she's in constant agony. She tells Claire she got recruited for Pinehearst, but she was wary of their pitch, so she was looking to see if Bennet could provide some answers. Claire, however, thinks Pinehearst might be able to help, so she and Elle head off together. On the plane, however, Elle's power freaks out, and it looks like they're going down until Claire has the bright idea to act as a human lightning rod. If you're a straight guy and totally desperate, it might have seemed somewhat Sapphic.
Papa Petrelli tells Daphne to kill Matt, and when Maury voices opposition to the idea, Papa Petrelli breaks his neck. Daphne shows up to Matt's and points a gun at him, but she can't go through with it, and he then learns via his power about his dad's death. Knox then shows up and kills the both of them -- only what he saw was an illusion created by Matt. Matt then has the idea to approach The Company for help against Pinehearst. The twist, however, is that this was all part of Daphne's plan to make Matt trust her without having to kill him. She must really think Matt's a horrible psychic if she expects to keep her duplicity from him, but we already knew she was pretty smart.
In their dream state, Mama Petrelli tells Sylar to help Peter, and also that he's more powerful than even he realizes. Her words penetrate, as Sylar awakens and escapes the prison Peter put him in last week. At Pinehearst, Papa Petrelli tells Peter he's working for the greater good, but Peter informs him he's going to make him pay for everything he's done. Papa Petrelli reacts by turning Peter over to Mohinder as a test subject, but Sylar turns up in time to save his brother. Mohinder, enraged, attacks and subdues Sylar, but Peter manages to escape. Papa Petrelli tells Sylar that Mama Petrelli is using him, and that she, having seen a vision of what Sylar would become, tried to murder him as an infant. Peter returns to try to rescue Sylar, but Sylar responds by TKing him out a window down to the street, and while that was poor repayment for one of Peter's nobler instincts it was still pretty hilarious. Peter survives the fall, though, while Elle, hearing that Papa Petrelli can steal powers, rushes inside to try to relieve the pain. Claire calls Nathan, and after she gets Peter to safety, he figures out that Sylar was putting on an act and used his power to slow Peter's fall, ensuring that he'd survive, presumably as a way of making their dad trust him. Nathan and Tracy then show up, and when Nathan hears that their dad is alive, he goes charging over to Pinehearst with Tracy in tow. So there's a lot going on at Pinehearst, but we'll have to wait to find out how it all plays out.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We start "Somewhere in Africa," the vagueness of which is probably a safety measure against this particular region getting a lot of mail complaining about it hosting boring storylines. Ando is pointing out disturbing paintings of the villains and saying Hiro needs to go back in time to figure out how to defeat them, but Hiro's whining about how he'll only make things worse. He's probably right, and yet I still want to hit him on the head with a shovel. Ando points out that Hiro saw the end of the world in the future, so perhaps "making things worse" is really off the table. I suppose you could argue that a world enslaved is worse than no world at all, but I'm surprised someone doesn't point out that last week, NeoIsaac told Hiro that he relies on his powers too much. NeoIsaac: "Evil forces gather. The dark sun rises. Soon, it will be too late. Will you choose your own path, or will you have it chosen for you?" Forgive me for answering a question with a question, but what the hell are you talking about? Hiro swivels his head like a bespectacled praying mantis to regard another painting...
...which depicts the scene we fade to next, as Mohinder "menacingly" tells Tracy and Nathan that they've ruined everything. He leans forward, but Tracy tells him not to approach, and frosts up her hands to show she means business. Despite the fact that Nathan was acting like a concussion victim at the end of last week's episode, he seems fine, as he asks what happened in the weboratory. Mohinder says he's trying to remove Maya's abilities, and since their abilities are synthetic, they were ideal test subjects, and by the way, would it be cool if he took just one more sample? Nathan gruffly says no, so Mohinder jumps the length of the lab over to Maya's cocoon, easily rips it open (remember how strong that stuff is), puts her over his shoulder, and jumps straight up through the skylight and out of sight. Nathan's like, "Honey, I know that was hot, but I can do the same thing. Any time. You just let me know." The camera pans down past a table...
...to Peter, who's lying unconscious. We go into his head, and see him getting dressed up in his apartment when there's a knock on the door. It's Nathan, who tells him their dad had a heart attack that morning and died. Creepy visual shifting and dissonant music plays, so it's not clear if this is an accurate memory or what, but after a couple quick shots of Papa Petrelli hooked up to those breathing tubes, we see the funeral, where Mama Petrelli tells Peter that Papa Petrelli was "deeply flawed in ways you will never know." Well, there's another prediction she got wrong. We see a photo of Papa Petrelli next to an urn containing "his" ashes, and if that means some hospital or crematorium worker just happened to go missing recently, I don't want to know about it. Shot of Papa Petrelli lying in the bed with his eyes open and evil, then of Peter seeing him last week for the first time, bed, evil eyes, Nathan saying "Dad's dead" for the twenty-eighth time in as many seconds, Papa Petrelli stealing Peter's powers...