HiroHiro teleports into the Burnt Toast Diner six months in the past, where no one notices his sudden appearance. He tells Charlie that he’s come from the future and is there to save her life, and as I pointed out last week, she seems to be very calm about this.
Hiro notices that it’s raining outside, and realises that he got it wrong when he tried to jump back into the past. He finds out that he’s arrived six months earlier than he intended, and not wanting to risk another jump, decides to stay in the past.
During those six months, he gets a job at the diner. This means that the staff should have recognised him when he and Ando came into the diner. Charlie may have figured out what was going on when she saw the two of them, but the lack of reaction from the others seems a bit strange.
He continually tells Charlie that he’s from the future and he’s here to save her, but she just brushes it off. In fact, her reaction is kind of like the reaction you’d have if a kid tells you he’s really Spider-Man.
Hiro does try to prove that he’s telling the truth, but his power is not really the most visual, and she dismisses it as some kind of magic trick. Although you’d think she would have asked a few more questions, as the things he did (like making a bunch of origami cranes appear out of nowhere) go beyond standard sleight of hand tricks.
In his continuing attempt to save Charlie’s life, Hiro buys two plane tickets to Japan, and she agrees to go with him. However,when he invites her to go with him to a Japanese film as a preparation for the trip, she tells him that she’s dying.
She has a blood clot in her brain, which means that she could die at any time. She tells Hiro that she doesn’t usually let people get close, but he’s made her feel more alive than she could have imagine, and that she loves him (that last part in Japanese). The two of them are about to kiss…
…and Hiro finds himself back in Japan in the present day. He tries to teleport back to Charlie, but is unable to do so.
He eventually makes his way back to the diner and Ando. He tells Ando that he took the bus there, but unless they’ve implemented a new trans-Pacific bus service, there must be a little more to it than that.
More importantly, he tells Ando that he tried to save Charlie but failed. He places an origami crane on the shrine that has been set up in the diner, and says that he loved her.
While the whole Hiro/Charlie story is a tragic one, part of me was glad that he couldn’t save her. That’s the part of me that hates the paradoxes that can be created by time travel.
So far we’ve seen that the images painted by Isaac couldn’t be changed, and that Hiro couldn’t change the past. So it looks as though that in the world of Heroes, time cannot be altered, to my great relief.
The only question that remains is whether the future that Hiro travelled to can be changed. From what we’ve seen so far, my money’s on it being unalterable.
Matt and EdenWhile patrolling the streets of Los Angeles at night, Matt pulls over a car driven by a young woman. He walks over to the car, and we find out that it’s Eden.
She tells him that she stole the car, and when he also sees a bottle in the passenger seat, he asks her to step out of the car. She says that what he really wants to do is go back to his car and eat some doughnuts.
There’s an effect added to her voice, which indicates that she’s doing something special here (like using her suspected power of persuasion). After Matt has left, she tries to drive away, but the Haitian is standing in her way. He takes Eden to see HRG, and she discovers that her power is unable to work on him (presumably as a result of the Haitian also being present, although I don’t know if she knows that he’s the one neutralising it).
The next time we see Matt, he’s sitting in his car eating a doughnut. The officer he hit in an earlier episode (i.e. the officer that he will hit in the future) pulls up next to him and reminds him about the detective test, which is in an hour’s time.
Of course, we already know that he fails it, and we find out why a bit later when he’s talking to Janice. Matt is dyslexic, and so although he knows all the answers, he can’t actually answer the test, and letting everyone know that he is dyslexic wouldn’t be a good career move.
Now my knowledge of dyslexia isn’t that extensive, but I was under the impression that it could be overcome, and that there was no longer such a stigma associated with it. In any case, if Matt is dyslexic, how did he handle things like writing out tickets?
Janice tries to console Matt, and she says in her head that he’s her hero. He’s not looking at her at this point, and although he hears it, he doesn’t realise that she didn’t say it out loud.
ClaireSix months ago, Claire and Jackie were still friends. Jackie tells Claire that there’s now an opening amongst the cheerleaders, and that she has a uniform for Claire (I guess it must be one size fits all).
Claire isn’t quite as enthusiastic as Jackie would like, and so Jackie threatens to give the uniform to someone else. The two of them get into a tug of war, and Claire ends up cutting her hand on a glass door. Mrs Bennet takes Claire off to hospital, and after they leave, HRG receives a phone call from Chandra Suresh asking about Claire.
Later on, HRG comes across Claire practising her moves, and during the conversation asks how her hand is. She unwraps the bandages to find that her injury has healed.
In fact, her hand is completely unmarked, and there’s no sign that there was ever any injury at all. HRG doesn’t say anything, but it’s probably at this point that he realises what Claire’s ability is.
Peter and NathanPeter holds a party, and I think it was to celebrate his qualifying as a nurse, although it’s not that clear. At the party, Nathan tells him that the DA wants Nathan to prosecute Linderman, who is one of their father’s biggest clients.
While Nathan is driving back from the party with his wife Heidi, a car starts following him. It starts getting closer, and eventually starts hitting their car.
Nathan suddenly finds himself in mid-air. His car is a convertible, so that explains how he was able to fly out of it, although it doesn’t explain why he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt.
Of course, this means that no one’s in control of the car, and it crashes, explaining why Heidi is currently in a wheelchair. It also explains why Nathan is opposed to the idea of him flying, as he would see it as being directly responsible for his wife’s injuries.
Peter arrives at the hospital and mentions to Nathan that he dreamt about the accident. We’ve had mention of Peter’s dreams before, and this is interesting from the point of view that we’ve only seen people exhibit one power previously, and yet Peter seems to now have some precognitive ability along with his borrowing of powers.
So either it’s possible to have more than one power, or in fact Peter’s power is actually something different, and the two are just different manifestations of the same power, even though I can’t think of how they could be connected. I guess there’s also the possibility that Peter lives next door to someone who can see things in their dreams and he’s tapping into that power while he’s asleep.
Nathan tells Peter that Linderman was behind it and asks him to give a deposition against their father. Peter agrees, but on the scheduled day of the deposition, Nathan tells him that there isn’t going to be one as their father has died of a heart attack.
I’m not quite sure why that would mean that the deposition would be called off. It could be that Nathan had decided to run for congress, and that as he needs Linderman’s money, it wouldn’t be a good idea to prosecute him, and he’s just using the death of his father as an excuse to pull out of the case.
NikiNiki attends an AA meeting and says that she has now been sober for a year. Her father Hal is also at the meeting, not because he’s an alcoholic, but because he wants to become part of Niki’s life again. Niki says that she’s not so sure if she wants that.
Later, she visits a cemetery. The specific grave she visits is that of a Jessica Sanders who was born in 1976 and died in 1987. DL arrives and mentions that Jessica was Niki’s sister.
Given that Jessica is the name of Niki’s mirror personality, and that Niki probably is around 30, it’s a pretty safe assumption to make that Jessica was Niki’s twin sister. It hasn’t been stated yet, but I’d be very surprised if this isn’t the case.
DL convinces Niki to try and mend things with her father, and she invites him to meet DL and Micah. Hal gives Micah a laptop, and also hints that he could help with paying for private school tuition for Micah.
He’s not so happy when he discovers that Micah has taken the laptop apart and leaves, but not before handing Niki a cheque. She asks him what he did that was so bad, and he seems surprised that she doesn’t remember.
Someone who does remember is Jessica, and as Hal leaves, she takes over. She turns up at Hal’s hotel room and attacks him, saying that he killed her (Jessica), even though it was ruled as an accident.
No further details are given, other than that he drank a lot. She leaves him lying on the hotel blood, bloody and with the cheque stuff in his mouth, and she tells him to go away and never come back.
Chandra, Sylar and HRGChandra visits a watchmaker by the name of Gabriel Gray, although it’s pretty clear (at least it was to me) that this is Sylar before he developed a liking for slicing people’s heads open. Chandra tells Gabriel that he could be part of a new development in human evolution.
Gabriel allows Chandra to subject him to a number of tests, but they’re unable to determine what his power is. After one such test, Gabriel leaves Chandra’s apartment in anger, taking with him the details of someone whom Chandra suspects to be telekinetic (able to move things with his mind, the power that we’ve seen Sylar exhibit).
As Gabriel leaves, HRG arrives, as a result of the phone call from Chandra. Chandra shows HRG his map and explains that he doesn’t know how Claire’s genetic abnormality will affect her (this is before HRG has seen how Claire’s injury healed). Chandra also mentions that he had a daughter, Shanti, who died as a result of a genetic abnormality and that was what led him to this line of research.
Some time after leaving Chandra’s apartment, HRG tells Eden that he has a job for her. She is to make sure that Claire’s name is removed from Chandra’s list.
Meanwhile, Gabriel has made contact with the telekinetic, and introduces himself as Sylar, which is name on the watch he has been working on. The telekinetic isn’t happy with his new-found powers, and wants to get rid of them.
Sylar suddenly says that it’s so clear how it fits together, and that it’s in the brain. He picks up a rock and hits the telekinetic on the head with it.
So it seems that Sylar is able to examine people’s brains and copy their powers. This explains why he been slicing their heads open.
Sylar returns to Chandra and demonstrates his telekinesis. He tells Chandra that there are people out there waiting to be told that they’re important, and that the two of them will find those people together.
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Go Gold!