Eris Quod Sum

This allegedly means, "You will be what I am." It's supposed to be from a quote from Horace, an ancient Greek poet. If that's true then you, too, will be so frustrated with this show that it takes a force of will akin to the effort necessary to swallow whole eggplants without opening your mouth to actually watch and discuss each episode.

It has taken me over a week to muster the energy I need to actually write about this episode. Really, it wasn't good. Really. We start the episode with Peter yelling at his father about how he is going to destroy the world. Even in the future he saw, Peter saw an explosion in one little suburb. Sure, it's terrible, but it's not the end of the world. Arthur keeps telling him that Peter doesn't understand what he's doing and Peter keeps saying that he doesn't care. This is a completely unacceptable writing technique and it is laced throughout this series. Peter doesn't want to hear the plan. Daphne doesn't want to hear Parkman's vision of the future. Mohinder doesn't want to hear about the future Peter saw. Hiro doesn't want to hear about travelling to the past. These are all supposed to be smart people. None of them should force such unreasonable deniability about topics like these! They have all seen things and done things that are unbelievable. They really can't accept that Peter says a terrible future is coming? That Parkman says in the future he and Daphne are married? Get some clues, people. Nothing in the world happens to anyone except you. Accept that things happen that you might need to know about.

Can't anyone at Pinehearst say anything more threatening to Daphne than, "we'll put you back where we found you?" We've heard this every week since she came on the show and if it is something other than Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration (which it must be because really turning her into the police for a superhero crime they won't believe isn't much of a threat) then there hasn't been any mention of what it is. If it's important, USE IT. Don't hide it. Don't try to keep us watching so maybe in the last episode we'll FINALLY find out that she had to escape from an abusive father or a rabid parakeet or cholera. And if it is not important, then just say it already and remove the question. There's no reason for this to be going on so long. If there were real mysteries that we need time to discover, that's fine, but this is just a blatant holdout and I'm sure it isn't going to pay off.

Sylar, Peter, Arthur, Mohinder

So Jordan Collier Arthur Petrelli has both halves of the formula now, and he needs Mohinderspider to do some more research to make the formula work. Isn't this the same formula that gave powers to Niki, Tracy, and Nathan, at the very least? We didn't hear anything about it not working. And why did Artie have to go through such lengths to get this formula? He worked for Primatech with Angela and Goldfinger and Parkman's dad and Shaft and Sulu and all the other people that Adam killed. Couldn't he have made a photocopy before the rest of the gang had the ingenious video game quest plan of separating it into so many (two!) pieces and scattering it throughout the world (Germany and Japan, maybe only Axis powers were allowed)?

Anyway, now he has both halves of the formula. Naturally, Mohinder points out that it is different than his own formula, which haves some unintended side effects like turning the patient into a spider and an abducter. I suppose I can see a little bit of smarts behind Artie's plan. If Mohinder injects people and they get new abilities, then Artie could just suck them out and get more abilities themselves, and then Mohinder can inject them again and Artie can get more powers.

But why did Artie's eyes turn black only after he sucked out Maya's ability? Shouldn't his Peter ability have already turned his eyes black when he walked in the room? Anyway, now that Maya no longer has her plague mascara ability, I really, really hope we never have to see her again. She was so useless. I was really hoping she'd slap Mohinder in the face and his cheek would come off, leaving scales underneath so he can't just put on a shirt and pretend to be normal anymore. And now that Parkman Sr. is dead and Maya is gone, at least there are two less useless people taking up screen time. Next, I beg you, make it Niki 2.

Claire, Elle

I really almost turned the show off during this bit every time they were together on the screen. This was awful. Useless and awful. Claire really should have had some massive frizzy static hair going on, and she was wincing quite a bit when she was helping Elle discharge. Apparently she feels something after all.

And really, they let Elle on a plane when she is sparkling like that? She is discharging static electricity and arcing bolts of lightning out of her body. She made it through a metal detector and causeway and an airline terminal and nobody thought that was a little weird?

Anyway, she should know Arthur Petrelli. Her dad, Goldfinger, was his partner at Primatech, after all. They should be buddies now. At least she might hear some good stories about her late dad. Did Daphne give her a card, though? We've seen everyone else that Daphne tried to recruit. Why skip Elle? She isn't on the African's walls in his paintings, so I'm guessing she doesn't become a villain. Or at least she doesn't become a villain with any bearing on anything.

Claire told her that whatever is happening to Elle is what's happening to her. Did she forget that only a couple of weeks ago Sylar made her like this by playing with her brain? That is what made her unable to feel pain, and that is what is making her emo, moody, and reckless. Does she think that Sylar took part of Elle's brain? They didn't talk about him at all. What's happening to Elle is not what is happening to Claire.

Basically, they just solidify the theory that on Heroes, every woman cries and wants to get rid of her power and every man wants to affect the entire world and get more power. Except for Angela Petrelli, maybe, who now is some sort of powerful woman pulling the strings in things we viewers can't possibly understand.

I still want to know why she was arrested for shoplifting "again" in the first episode. It must be part of her convoluted plan of world domination. Clearly I am not smart enough to have the shoplifting part of it figured out.

I was excited that Claire might get to meet her grandfather. But instead she got to rescue Peter again. Which brings us to...

Peter, Nathan, Meredith, Niki 2

Nathan doesn't believe that his father is still alive. He saw Peter come back to life after a pizza slice-sized wedge of glass was yanked out of his skull. He, himself, was completely healed by magic blood. Linderman the healer was a friend of Arthur's, and with all of these super powers he has to be convinced that it's possible that his father is still alive? Give me a break.

But now that Nathan has Niki 2 and Meredith together, now he was two blondes eyeing him up and down, one with fire and one with ice. Was this whole Niki 2 thing a setup to get a hot blonde and a cold blonde competing over Nathan? Again, I say, give me a break.

Peter is very insistent that Nathan not go see Arthur at Pinehearst because, he says, Arthur could kill every one of them. If Peter is convinced that the future
he saw will come true, then he knows that nothing happens to Nathan and Tracy. He saw them in the future! He knows they are ok! If he is now worried about them, clearly he knows that he can change the future, so he can calm down a little, not be so reckless and frantic, and actually come up with a plan or strategy to how he is going to save the world stop his dad from giving people powers.


Parkman, Daphne

I still want to know what happened to Molly. Mohinder has been in his lab and abducting neighbors. Parkman was at Nathan's press conference and then warped to Africa. Where was Molly over these past few weeks? Couldn't she just use her ability to figure out where Matt is and call someone to give him a plane ticket or something?

Odi quia absurdum est

All in all, this episode was useless and insulting to my intellect. I almost couldn't get through the first 6 minutes. It took effort to get to the eclipse shot and call Tim Kring names. And then it took a week for me to finally care enough to actually write anything about it.

What happened in this episode?
Elle goes to Pinehearst.
Peter meets up with Claire, Nathan, and Niki 2.
Sylar flops like flacid celery to Arthur's side. You know, Gabriel, "gullible" isn't in the dictionary.
Hiro's eyes go white because he's seeing the future.

That's pretty much it. It took an hour to tell that story? That's the entire episode in four lines. If we are still going with the Latin here, then Flocci non facio. I really just don't give a damn anymore. My favorite part of watching a Heroes episode now is watching the first 6 minutes of My Own Worst Enemy. And the Cingular commercials. "Why does he get all the new minutes?"

Ugh.