Daphne

Daphne, I really don't get you. Clearly, you have a sense of right and wrong. After all, you told Mohinder that he's just as bad as all the rest of them. You told Parkman that he wouldn't fit in because he's a good guy, not a bad guy. And I understand that your circumstances force you to bend your morality, for instance, stealing things for money and because Pinehearst has something to hold over you.

As we read in Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, Mister P's doctor makes you go on jobs because you stole the Mona Lisa. Are you seriously still afraid of this? The Mona Lisa is still in the Louvre, a fake to be sure, but still it's there. You're more afraid of the authorities that they'll inform for your superhuman heist that nobody will believe than you are of the actual group you're working for any your imaginary friend?

But about Parkman... I can't believe that you seriously don't believe a guy with an ability who just got off a plane from Africa with no passport and a caged turtle who tells you that he saw you in the future! After everything that you've seen, all the people you work with and you try to recruit for the organization you hate, you tell Parkman that's being "a little stalky" because he has seen you with him in the future? Come on!

You know Parkman is a good guy, you know seeing the future is possible because you just sent Hiro to Africa to find a precog! "My goodness," you might think. "Parkman came from Africa with a vision of the future. Pikachu is going to Africa to get someone who has visions of the future. Maybe he's telling the truth." But you didn't think that, poor girl, and now we have to wait to see how you and Parkman get together to fulfill his vision of Possible Future #8. At least we know that sometime in the next few years you get grownup hair.

At least you got to punch Hiro in the face. I am jealous of both you and the African for how you've smacked Pikachu in the noggin. Seriously, I couldn't imagine wanting to bitchslap the cool, dark, terrorist Hiro we met from Possible Future #1. This whiney, pathetic Hiro, though... Really, you could have done more than just a pop to the face and nobody would have minded.

Now that you've stolen both halves of the mutant formula for Pinehearst, they can give abilities to whoever they please, maybe so that Mister Petrelli can suck them out for himself. You can take care of yourself, I know. But these are bad people you're hanging around with, and even though you're in it for the money, I know you're really not one of them. Go find Parkman, have some babies, learn to wax a turtle, and maybe punch Hiro a couple more times, for me.

Episode 6: Dying of the Light - Nikki 2, Nathan, Mohinder, Claire, Meredith

When a hair sticks in the back of your throat, it's hard to appreciate whether your meal is really any good. All you want to do is reach into the back of your mouth with a fork and scrape it out. Since that's impolite and could make you gag at the table, usually you'll try guzzling water to try to flood it out, but it never works. That hair in the back of your throat just taints the rest of your dinner.

The hair in the back of my throat was three of our heroines made immobile and crying around a fun game of Spin the Revolver. I don't understand the Puppet Master's power. Sometimes he can control their faces. Sometimes he can't. They can talk unless he pinches his fingers together and makes them shut their mouths. Sometimes he uses the opposite hand to move someone, like Meredith nearly sticking a wine glass into her neck with her right hand while he used his left. And sometimes he uses the same hand as the puppet, like when Claire is pointing the gun at her mom. Maybe it doesn't matter, but if it really doesn't, why does he have to move his own body at all? A little consistency, people. It's like finding a french fry stuck in the container with your onion rings. Seriously, is it that hard to keep it all straight?

I am curious why Meredith wasn't locked up in Level 5. Clearly, she knew other superpeople and she has a dangerous ability. Is she really any less dangerous than the guy who accidentally sucked a neighbor up into a vortex? I imagine Meredith accidentally hurt or burned someone during her life.

I think I figured out why Claire dyes her hair in the future. She looked mad when Puppet Master said to her, "What I want, Barbie, is not to be interrupted." When she dyes her hair the bad guys will have to call her Teresa instead of Barbie.

When Claire finally subdues Puppet Master, she quips, "Show's over." I can't believe we didn't get a comic book colorful taunt. Not even, "Show's over, freak." Come on, Claire, to be a mutant hunter you need to spit the contempt right off your lips.

We've seen now that Mohinder has crossed a line. He is abducting all kinds of people now, including some super people. Why doesn't Maya just cry black mascara again and wipe them all out? When she's webbed up does her power not work? Maybe that is a win for her, then. If Nikki 2 loses her power when she's webbed up, that's exactly what she came to the freaky loft laboratory for, anyway.

So what does Mohinder want with all of these people? They can't all have super powers, otherwise victim number whatever would have been a more successful drug dealer. Anyway, Nathan, just pick up Nikki 2 and fly her out the door!

Daphne tried to recruit Mohinder with a "save the world" kind of promise. Are any of the other superpowered refuse of society she talks to responsive to saving the world? And since they are recruiting people not known to have powers, why hasn't Claire's mom received an invitation? She would be the next logical choice. We are running out of characters who haven't picked sides yet.

When she tries to recruit Sylar, it seemed pretty easy to get in to and back out of Level 5. After Parkman, Ted, and Mister Bennett escaped, and then Sylar and all of those villains escaped, wouldn't they step security up a little bit? Maybe keep the Haitian around the building a little longer to prevent things like this? If security is that bad, I'm surprised more bad guys (well they don't really have to be bad guys, just anyone they feel like rounding up like Vortex guy) haven't gotten out.

Daphne tried to recruit Sylar and Sylar refused. Now evil Sylar is becoming Boy Band Sylar, and Boy Band Peter has become Mega Sibling Envy Peter. He had Nathan taking his spotlight his whole life, and now he has another brother he needs to compete with. "I'm the most special," he grunted in the middle of the fight. "You're too weak to stop me." Why would Sylar be too weak to stop Peter when Peter is the one who was just woken from a drug-induced coma? Sylar should have been able to rip him a new one.

What did we learn on this side of the story? That Sylar cares for Mrs. Petrelli because she accepts him. Peter doesn't like when people pay attention to anyone except himself. Claire can take down a bad guy but still makes some rookie mistakes. And finally, that it's better to make sure your food doesn't have hair in it before you start eating it. Once you take a bite, it's too late. But every week, you tell yourself next week, that'll be your last bite. For real this time. Let's see how we feel about Episode 7.

Episode 6: Dying of the Light - Artie, Peter, Hiro, Pinehearst, Daphne

I admit that this episode wasn't quite as bad as the last five have been. Instead of some sort of festering boils or sexual abuse, this episode felt more like visiting a restaurant I used to absolutely love, but I haven't been to it in years. I order what was my favorite dish and find it disappointing. It's frozen instead of fresh, and there's a sprinkling of curly black hairs in it. The best that can happen if you send it back is that they might get all of the hairs out, if you are lucky. Even if you get it back with no hairs, it still isn't what you remember.

I haven't come to a conclusion on Pinehearst's recruitment program. They have some bad guys, they recruit goody goody Pikachu-Hiro, they want to recruit Parkman, and they want to recruit Mohinder. Clearly they aren't just going for bad guys. What would Petrelli and Daddy Parkman do with Matt? They all know he has a strong conscience and would need to be strongly manipulated to go along with any nefarious plots and I would hope that his ability would clue him in that he is being manipulated like that. Why would Pinehearst want him?

Still, it is sweet that Parkman took his turtle home with him. I hope he didn't have any problems removing wildlife from Africa on an airplane. I wonder if he can read animal minds. Maybe he can find out what Speedy really wants now that he is in America. Maybe Speedy is really a wereturtle and will cause much mayhem at the next full moon.

The Hiro kills Ando scene changed a bit this week from last. Hiro warped to a Japanese shop where he stole a fake sword and some fake blood so he could fake-kill Ando. "But you are a thief," Hiro tells Daphne. Sorry, Hiro, so are you. At least she didn't steal something in a price tag, taking a few yen out of a poor shopkeeper's pocket during these troubled, troubled times.

I find it hard to believe that Ando wasn't scared laying on the ground pretending to be dead after Hiro stabbed him. Knox should have been able to pick up on his fear of discovery like an ex-smoker smells someone lighting up in a No Smoking area.

We finally saw someone who was in more than one episode get killed! Sorry, Adam, I can't really say I'll miss you. There are more than enough other characters who have been wronged to keep your one dimension of depth alive, even though you are a pile of dust! Now, though, it seems extra pointless for Hiro to have rescued Adam. What did Hiro think that Adam could do to help him? And did Hiro really, honestly think that he wouldn't try to escape? So, did Artie know that Hiro would get Adam out of the ground and plan accordingly or was it just a stroke of luck that they happened upon him?

Rather than the whole useless Adam subplot, I think it would have been cool to see some sort of villainy going on with those villains they have and Pinehearst. They could have put together some cunning superpower-enhanced break-in to steal some of Adam's or Claire's blood that is sitting around to give to Artie and make him healthy again. After all, since he absorbed Peter's powers he regenerates now anyway, so as far as I can see we really didn't need this Adam nonsense at all.

While we are discussing Hiro, his performance trying to capture the African dude was just embarassing. Ando convinced him to use his power to go back in time. But he was in the face with a shovel, TWICE! Hiro, YOU CAN STOP TIME! When a shovel is flying at your face, that is a good time to use your ability! TWICE! According the precog, Hiro relied "too much on [his] ability" instead of "using [his] head." He didn't really do either of those.

Daphne is the recruiter for Pinehearst because they have some sort of dirt on her. They will stop doing what they are doing for her, if she stops doing what she is doing for them. Even when Parkman tries to get her to stop, she is still afraid enough of the threat that she ignores her own misgivings. I want to know why Linderman appears to her.

Linderman appearing to Nathan makes sense. Nathan and Linderman had a connection, a relationship. Linderman means things to Nathan, whether he likes them or not, that are reflected in his own position, family, and personality. Does Linderman mean something to Daphne? She still doesn't really seem like she knows who he is. Why does she have to take orders from a brain figment, and why would the brain figment have to be him?

That brings us to Pinehearst. They misspelled "research" as "reasearch" on their business cards, which read as follows:
www.pinehearstreasearch.com
Pinehearst Company
26877 Century Drive
Fort Lee, NJ 07024
877.309.7463

This is a real number with a recording of Pinehearst information. From the main menu, you can select general information, public relations, and human resources. Not a lot of info, but I give them credit for not having a 555 number.

Dad Artie, son Peter, and son Sylar all have power-affecting abilities. Sylar scoops them out of your brain. Peter copies them by being around you. Artie sucks them out of you by touching you. Artie sucked Peter's abilities. I am assuming that means that he took the Sylar brain eating ability, too. Will he be able to control the hunger? Will he even acknowledge having it?

I don't see any loose ends being tied up in this episode. No questions were answered and no revelations were made. We saw Artie's power of sucking powers away from others, but we did know that Artie was the mastermind. Adam died, but there was no point to him being there anyway. This half of the storyline boils down to two developments: Artie is healthy and he stole Peter's powers.

Now, as for the other half of this episode, with Mohinder, Nathan, Nikki 2, Claire, Meredith, and Claire's mom... Waiter, I think there are pubes in my maki. We'll see if there is any hair when he brings it back out.

Episode 5: Angels and Monsters

This episode felt like a jagged broken toe nail you'd get from slamming your big toe into a door jamb in the middle of the night. The next morning, your toe doesn't really hurt anymore but the broken toe nail is tender, annoying, and it snags on the inside of your sock every time you take a step. While it didn't suck quite as much as the latest In The Future episode, I can't point to a single scene in Angels and Monsters that was really any good.

At least Peter has done something I fully support. He tried to kill his mom. She put him into a medically induced coma. I recall that they did this to Sylar when they first caught him. I'll have to look up how he got out of that, but you'd think that after a couple of years they'd have come up with a better way of keeping him in check.

When they reach Regretful Vortex Dude on the teacup ride or whatever he was sitting in, Sylar should have been able to hear Noah, Claire, and Vortex dude. He has super hearing! But he just stood there looking like he was trying to read their lips and figure out what was going on. Maybe Sylar didn't get all of his powers back, but so far he hasn't been unable to do anything else he's needed to do..


If what you say is correct, Mrs. Petrelli, and you truly did wish to stop the experiment and you can see the future wouldn't you have destroyed the formula instead of splitting it in to two halves? Splitting a terrible item into pieces and distributing them into the world is a textbook recipe for a questing hero or villain. How else could you have possibly thought it would turn out?

Momma, maybe your sons wouldn't be quite so unpredictable if you would tell them anything about themselves or the world they live in. This is what happens when you keep secrets within secrets within secrets.

Mohinder, where is your web coming from? And in the first season, weren't you working on a power formula in the future for President Nathan? If you couldn't get it working for four years, how did you suddenly get it now? Your scientific situation hasn't changed that much from one possible future to another. There is no "blurring the line" between hero and villain here. He went from naive and stubborn denial to eye-opening discovery used to heal a little psychic girl, to arrogant, overconfident, neighbor- and stranger-abducting alien queen spiderfly.

I can only hope that one of the people he webs up as a captive has a son teaching somewhere in the world who will come to New York to find his father's killer, only to discover that there is a world of genetic mutations out there that give people super powers. Then he'll confront his father's killer, nearly get killed himself, befriend some other superpeople who aren't out to kill him quite yet, travel around the country to find other superpeople, and then get a super power himself so that he can get someone else's father and... Something about this sounds eerily familiar. Maybe I saw it in an I Love Lucy rerun.

Pinehearst... If the not-so-late Mr. Petrelli is forming a superperson army to fight his former Company, where his wife still works, at least that tells me I am not the only person who truly can't stand her. It's kind of like an underground 4400 Center where they make you kill your friends to rise in the ranks.

Of course, Hiro wouldn't kill Ando. Even though he's been a whiny little twat about a future Ando potentially killing him, about Ando following him around and chasing women and money when they went to Vegas, about one of those possible future futures where Ando is killed, he would just as soon rattle off a little speech about how heroes would never kill the ones they love than actually hurt his bosom buddy. No matter how much I hope he actually kills him, we know he won't. Some sort of super trickery is going on here. No early-season episode can ever change anything so drastic.

Now Nathan has asked everyone he knows for truth and straight answers and nobody has complied. Every one of the little plots we've seen that the Company and Mrs. Petrelli come up with have ended in complete failure, wrecked by people whose super powers have only just sprouted up! Aside from maybe Connor MacLeod Adam, who used to work with Momma anyway, there haven't been any age-old rivals. It's just a bunch of kids running around, foiling plots set in motion by many old-school super people with money, connections, influence and what I presume should be a level of mastery of their abilities that this younger generation doesn't have. I don't see how after all of this failure she can still be quite so full of herself and her head full of secrets.

Claire said she can't feel anything, so why is she crying? I have to check exactly what she said earlier. I didn't think she just couldn't feel pain, I thought she had no feeling whatsoever and made some comment about some lack of emotion.

Of all of the escapees from Level 5 (we needed a name like Level 5 because The Company isn't imposing compared to Pinehearst, is it? Sounds like an organization from La Femme Nikita versus a conglomerate that manages shopping malls.), the Puppet Master may be the only one who really seems like a villain. Still, I didn't see any burns on his face. I wonder if he can control their powers like he is controlling their movements. Anyway, he's done something a little bit evil, abducting Claire's birthmother and forcing her to eat spaghetti. Still, it doesn't look like he had trouble making up for lost time with all of the puppets hanging around his place.

From the previews we can see that The Puppet Master captures Claire and mom. And we only have a couple more days to wait until we see what he makes them eat! I hope it's beef stew and cupcakes.

Money and our stories

I'm willing to give the show a break on Season 2. With the writers' strike, every show was cut short and the story had to be accelerated. But even in the first few episodes of the show's return, we could see mediocrity setting in.

Our excitable time traveller, Hiro, was knocked back into feudal Japan for some reason. Of course, the myseterious symbol we've seen throughout the first season appears nearly 400 years ago on the banner of Hiro's childhood hero, Takezo Kensei. There are no red herrings on American TV, so of course Kensei throws Hiro into a whirlwind of confusion by being neither Japanese nor actually heroic, and having a special power of his own: regeneration.

Just like Claire the cheerleader, we have another character who can't die. Maybe there is a whole underground subculture of immortal people, fighting amongst each other for a special prize and the only way they can kill one another is decapitation. Then again, that could be another show. Barring Peter's ability to mimic others' abilities and Sylar's ability to steal them, Kensei/Adam was our first repeated power.

Introducing any new character into a show with an already full cast means that we need to be shown how the new guy fits in to the lives of many of the people we know. Adam used to work with Nathan's, Peter's, and Hiro's parents, who actually run the Company that Claire's stepfather works for. And in what I can only imagine was supposed to be a big twist, he was revealed as Hiro's father's killer. Again, there are no red herrings in a series like this. Since he was introduced and is age-proof and has a connection to Hiro, there was simply no other answer in the question of the killer's identity.

The story of season 2 really begins when Peter, rather than Hiro, makes a trip through time to see another bleak future. This time instead of New York being destroyed in a fiery nuclear blast, New York has been evacuated because of the Shanti virus, named after Dr. Mohinder's late sister who Mohinder was presumably conceived to provide antibodies to heal.

Peter started off the season with a bout of amnesia, as many heroes often do, and hooks up with a saucey Irish lass who he later abandons in the future after he travels back in time to stop the release of the virus. What happened to her? Even the writers are afraid to discuss it. After many episodes it doesn't seem to bother Peter that he left this poor girl in a severed time line, so presumably it shouldn't bother us.

Of course, in the scope of the entire world, everything has to happen to the dozen or so people we get to see on television, so the virus was being held in a facility run by the Company. Naturally Momma Petrelli is involved in keeping this secret and all of her old mutant buddies are being knocked off one by one by Connor MacLeod Adam the Immortal. Adam and Peter became friends while Peter had amnesia, but that's not important right now.

Nathan is running around again because Peter convinced Adam the Immortal to donate blood to his nuked brother, so now we know that immortal blood has healing powers. This is used to heal Claire's father later on. Just like travelling to the past to change the future, once you find a formula that works you keep using it.

Two central American characters were introduced for some reason: a brother and sister pair that do nothing but run and cry. She can kill people and he can stop her. They bump in to a powerless Sylar on their way to America. They are looking for Mohinder, and sure enough, so is Sylar. Why did Sylar lose his abilities? And how did he suddenly get them back after a few episodes? I couldn't tell you. The story must go on.

Hiro is disillusioned. Peter gets in touch with his darker side. The virus is stopped. Nathan decides to come out in front of the whole world that he can fly. Some more inconsequential characters and plotlines are started, and after a lot more crying and trying to get rid of her ability, Nikki finally dies in a fire! I, for one, felt cheated and angry when season 3 started up and there she was again. How does anybody actually die on this show?

They stop the virus in the nick of time, thus changing another timeline. Nathan is shot at his press conference that nobody knows why he is having in the first place. The shooter is very mysterious.

It turns out that it's Peter, come back from ANOTHER future to change the past! Here we go again. Now we have two seasons in the can and another on the way, and all three tell the same story. My disappointment begins here.

Heroes Season 3: Villains

I used to think that Heroes was great television. There were multiple story lines involving slightly geeky topics like eclipses, genetic mutations, super powers, and teen angst. If you could see past the typical network caliber beautiful people, you could see that there was a story to be told and perhaps get to care about these characters on their respective journeys of self-discovery.

We learned about time travel. We discovered the Heroes' powers as they did, figured out with them where they fit in a world that didn't know about their abilities. We found out there was a clandestine Company tagging people with abilities and got to know the bad ass in the horn rimmed glasses and his bald-headed friend.

Some of our Heroes took joy in their abilities. Hiro Nakamura could change time and space, stopping time and teleporting! The first time he teleported himself from Tokyo to Japan he shouted for joy. "やった!" "I DID IT!"

Some were afraid of them. Nikki/Jessica Sanders with the prominent front teeth was terrified of her split personality, super-human strength, and her propensity for crying.

Some completely denied them. Nathan the political candidate could fly but decided to hide his gift because... because... well, for some reason important to him.

Their mission was simple: Save the world! Future bad-ass, sword-wielding, no-glasses, good-English super ninja Hiro came back in time to alter the past to avoid a terrible future of mutant camps and Nikki the stripper. Future Hiro taught us that the future can be manipulated, the timeline changed and terrible disasters could be wiped from the future's history. Hiro was being a hero and we were hopeful.

Season 1 was good even after humanizing and demystifying some of our favorite characters. The kick ass company man in the horn rimmed glasses turned out to be the dad of the cheerleader who would bend and break the rules to keep her safe from the other genetically different people in the world who would cause her harm.

But they saved the world. The villain was mostly defeated and the good guy lost control of his power and Nathan took to the skies after all to whisk Peter away so he could explode safely in the air. Little did we know what would happen to our superpowered friends in the coming years...