Hiro and Ando
After last week’s episode ending with Hiro teleporting back to Japan after witnessing a nuclear explosion in New York, it came as no surprise that this episode saw him set out to try and prevent it from happening. The first step was convincing his sidekick (because every good hero needs one of those) Ando.
I did briefly wonder if Heroes was going to treat time as being fixed, i.e. there’s no way to alter the future. But I rejected that notion as I realised it wouldn’t make a good story.
After all, how many people will watch a show which they know will end with New York being destroyed? I suppose Osama Bin Laden might, but he certainly isn’t part of Heroes’ target audience.
Clearly they had to go the route that the future can be changed, and this was shown in Ando’s accompanying Hiro to America. Last time Ando told the New York police that he hadn’t seen Hiro in five weeks, but that clearly isn’t the case now.
So this means that the future can be changed and that the nuclear explosion can be stopped. I guess I could say “will be stopped”, as unless they pull a monumental twist on us, it’s all going to work out OK in terms of New York surviving.
And so Hiro and Ando have arrived in America and are now heading off to Las Vegas in their Product Placement (a.k.a. Nissan Versa). Considering that Niki and Micah are the only characters in Las Vegas at the moment, there’s a pretty good chance that they’ll wind up meeting.
Niki and Micah
Speaking of Niki, we didn’t learn anything new in terms of her powers this episode. What we did learn is that her husband (and Micah’s father) is a wanted criminal who escaped from prison.
He also may have a connection with the body that Niki found in the same place that her mirror-self chose to bury the bodies. There’s no way that that was just a coincidence – there’s something more going on there.
Following an argument with her mother-in-law (basically “You son’s no angel, and you have no right to tell me how to bring up my son.”), Niki was stopped by a policeman who told her that Mr Linderman wants to see her. Linderman is the same guy who sent the men that Niki (presumably) killed and buried, so that part of the story’s not over yet.
Mohinder and Eden
Mohinder continued his investigation into his father’s work. Eden found a notebook which was somehow concealed inside Chandra’s laptop, and in it were a key and Sylar’s address.
The two of them naturally went looking for Sylar. Not the cleverest of ideas, given that we know that Sylar’s a serial killer, but considering that this is only the third episode, it’s highly unlikely that anything bad was going happen to the two of them.
What they did find was a map, similar to Chandra’s but more detailed, with pictures (including that of Nathan). They also found the words “Forgive me, I have sinned” scrawled across the walls, which suggests that Sylar is at least one card short of a full deck.
To their credit, Mohinder and Eden did call the police, but by the time the police got there, the apartment had been cleaned out. The obvious suspect there was Sylar, but in order for him to do so he would almost have had to have been in two places at once.
Matt
How do we know he would have to have been in two places at once? Well, someone believed to him was spotted in the FBI headquarters Los Angeles.
He was trying to grab the girl rescued by Matt in the previous episode, but his attempts were once again thwarted by Matt, who was there as a result of being arrested after revealing his knowledge of Sylar’s name. He managed to convince the agent of his ability to read thoughts, and it looks like he’s got a job with the FBI for now.
I don’t know how well it will go down with his wife though. They’ve been having trouble, and he missed their counselling session as a result of being arrested.
He didn’t really handle the conversation with her very well. An “I was arrested by the FBI, that’s why I didn’t turn up” would have cleared things up.
Of course, that wouldn’t have led to his final scene where he collapsed in a bar after trying to read the thoughts of another patron.
Nathan, Peter, Isaac and Simone
Simone, having grown tired of Isaac’s heroin habit has dumped him. It doesn’t look like he’s going to quit any time soon though, particularly not after one of his drawings is that of Peter and Simone kissing.
This happened after Peter had given up his job of looking after Simone’s father, as he feels he’s destined for greater things. These greater things don’t appear to include the ability to fly, as his attempts at doing so didn’t meet with any success. Rather, they met with the ground.
It’s clearly Nathan who has the ability to fly, but he doesn’t appear to have anything to do with that, as he’s more interested in his campaign. And as part of that campaign, he’s announced that Peter’s leap off the building was in fact a suicide attempt rather that an attempt to fly.
As you can expect, Peter didn’t take this very well and the two of them came to blows. It looks as though Nathan’s being built up as the unlikeable character who has a change of heart just at the right time.
Claire
There was one part of this storyline that I didn’t like, and that was the rape scene. I guess it’s a personal thing, but I don’t like rape (or attempted rape) scenes in general.
Obviously, they had to find a way for Claire to “die”, but I would have preferred it if they’d found another way. If it were absolutely necessary in the development of the character of Claire or the quarterback, then I might not be so ill-disposed towards it, but as it stands it was my least favourite moment of the series so far.
OK, that’s off my chest. That’s a completely different situation from Claire, who has to put things back on, or perhaps even in, her chest.
Obviously, this means that Claire won’t be able to keep her ability secret for too much longer. It’s not yet known how many people know that she died, but I would think something like that can’t have been kept too much of a secret.
Final thoughts
The ending wasn’t quite as good as the last episode’s, but it was still up there with the best. If I wasn’t already hooked, then the sight of Claire lying on the autopsy table awake but with her chest cut open would have definitely done it for me (maybe I’m just weird like that).
It’s good to see that we’re starting to see more connections between the characters. Chandra Suresh’s book is an example of that, as it probably means Peter will go looking for Chandra and find Mohinder. We’re also seeing characters being moved into place e.g. Hiro and Ando heading out to Las Vegas.
I know the disconnectedness (I didn’t think that was a word, but Word’s not flagging it as misspelled) was something that resulted in some people got getting into the show. Hopefully they are now, as we’re beginning to reap the rewards of sticking with it.