Thoughts on last week:
Peter, that was a truly unfortunate time to freeze up…

Also, how does Nathan know that Claire got onboard the plane?
–
Hiro, Matt, and Mohinder, like hobbits hiding from the Black (Ops) Rider. Hobbits in orange coveralls.

Matt’s powers are pretty cool. But when did it change from drawing the future to telling him to go one way or another?

Noah Bennet can call in multiple missle strikes? Do you have any idea how much those cost?

Ah, okay, it wasn’t Mr. Bennet. It was scary Homeland Security guy. And I find it very hard to believe that Nathan didn’t expect the situation to spin out of his control.

–

Daphne and Ando!

So how does Daphne get across oceans?
–

Sylar. Yet another reason not to go back to New Jersey.

–

Go Claire! Stop allowing yourself to be the excuse of the men.

Does Killer-Hunterguy have a name, or is he just the evil plot device?

Wait, wait, now Claire goes along with what Noah Bennet says?

“You can trust me, Tracey,” just doesn’t sound very convincing from the man who’s indirect body count must be into the dozens over the last 24 hours.

–

Luke is microwave boy. Also being recruited to be Sylar’s sidekick.

–

So: Daphne, Hiro, Ando, and Matt are, apparently out of the picture? Ah. An illusion? Or just something Nathan told whoever he was on the phone with?

Peter is going all guerrilla captain, with his posse.

–

I can’t wait!

Huh. Sylar gets to do the introductory voice-over.

Ooh, Peter! Good one!

Yay! After all the foreshadowing,

I’m glad we’ve finally gotten to the scene.

Although I’m not crazy about the horror-flick setup. (Then again, I hate horror movies.)

Oh Hiro! Woobie.

Knox and Peter, huh? Strange bedfellows.

<blockquote class=”right”>”Back in a Flash!” says Daphne before she runs off — very very quickly.</blockquote>

Yay Hiro, you saved yourself! And then you save yourself again!

Go Claire!

Huh. If you really want to trash a lab, trash the computers and the big equipment. Reagents can be replaced.

Huh. So a horse-shot full of adrenaline will make someone with powers loose control of them? Well, okay.  What else will adrenaline do?

“Everybody always roots for Peter, but he always ends up losing.” Oh really, Nathan?

Hiro, come on! We’re not going to have any superpowerless characters left., if HRG remains unpowered. Although figuring out Ando’s new superpower is a bit of fun.

Okay HRG, good plan with the glass! Bulletproof glass is usually glass layered with polymers (like polycarbonate). And the glass and polymer don’t expand at the same rate, which means that heating it causes internal stress.

Oh! Ando is a repeater! An amplifier.

Yes, yes, yes! “If you can travel faster than the speed of light, you can theoretically travel back in time” Thank you Matt!

Oh Daphne, you get all the best lines in this episode!

That doesn’t seem very Nathan-like. Although power appears to have corrupted him quite thoroughly.

Although Peter getting his powers back rocks!

Ooh, the hints for the next volume (“Fugitives”) look good! (Also look a lot like some X-Men story lines.  “God Loves, Man Kills” anyone?)

Sylar and Elle, huh? Without powers but still thuggish enough to take what they want… sort of the new Bonnie and Clyde?

Noah Bennet as vigilante isn’t powerless. An ass, but not powerless. How long until Elle and Sylar get guns and this turns into a Western?

“All the wisdom of the world can be found in a comic book store!

The relationship between the eclipse and the the powers is may be, says Mohinder, “Gravity, electron density, maybe just a coincidence.” Okay, gravity yes. Electron density? What the heck does that have to do with anything? Next, he’ll be reversing the polarity of the neutron flow…

Okay, Daphne has a miserable horrible disease, and her powers improved her quality of life more than most of the others. But a disease is not a moral judgment, Daphne.

Oh, Hiro! The Hiro and Ando show has yet to get old. Best day ever!

Oh Peter! How satisfying is it that Peter finally saves Nathan? Been a long time coming.

Sylar: this is not the plan you agreed to. Also, why were you carrying Elle on her good side, rather than on the side of her hurt leg?

Oh dear… I wonder what the body count will be on this episode?

Wait, wait wait, Claire not healing means that her entire immune system fails?

Claire heals, even afer she was more dead than less. With lots of witnesses.

Yay! Re-powered Nathan and The Haitian (oh, this is killing me, not having a name for him! Even though they threw the “names have power” line in) come back for Peter.

Okay, why is the Haitian willing to attack his brother Samedi now, but not before?

Being a hero gives people hope. Go comic book store gurus!

Huh. Nathan makes the argument, basically, that everyone should have a gun power, rather than only a few who could use it as a weapon against the less-powerful. Which… hm. Okay, an understandable position. This was not a concern of his before now? He has been jerked around by the powerful before, although maybe not shackled… He never articulated it that way when he was the one whose family had money, and privilege, and a variety of super- as well as (for want of a better word) secular powers.

Nathan, the bonus points you got for acknowledging that Peter done good? You just lost them again by abandoning him in a different country!

Sigh. Sylar, on the other hand… While I can see him going evil again, I could wish for some more character development to lead up to it. Besides the familiar Noah Bennet mind-games. And I really would have enjoyed Sylar and Elle doing a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style rampage.

Hm. When Hiro decides to move people, he doesn’t waste time, does he?

Still… props for letting so many of our characters interact, and in ways that make sense!

Ha! Last week I called that stunt with Hiro and Ando exactly right.

Go Sandra! I wonder if there’s a support group for parents of superheroes? Something like PFLAG?

Eric has some pretty twisted ideas of love. Not to mention dating.

Oh Adam. I imagine that’s pretty hard to recover from. Papa Petrelli is a life-leach. Explaining that might be challenging.

Meanwhile, Matt continues to talk to the turtle. (Actually it’s a tortoise. Although Matt may not know the difference.) And talking to Daphne. Daphne, who zips in and out of sight in a crowded public space without apparently exciting any interest from the people around her. Huh.

Nathan and Tracy visit Mohinder. And I have to wonder if Zimmerman also experimented on himself.

An injection “tags unusual DNA”? That’s an excitingly vague promise, Mohinder. Ah, okay, it’s actually the latest appearance of DARTH MOHINDER.

Daphne zips in and out of Level 5 without tripping security alarms?

Sylar is having a crisis of conscious, Peter is being a brat — stuck in demanding unreasonable accommodations and rapidly heading for a meltdown.

Oh Hiro, still the comic relief. Even as you make bad decisions. And incur multiple headwounds.

Eric is plenty creepy, but not very interesting, from a powers POV. Is there a point to this other than horror story put-the-women-in-danger? Okay, being a sadist with powers makes a villain. And wow, Claire recovered much faster than previously!

Daphne, you still got Darth Mohinder in touch with Papa Petrelli.

Superpower cage fight! Advantage Darth Peter.

Uh… freezing doesn’t automatically make things weaker. More brittle maybe, but not necesarily weaker.

I like Usutu. Except for how he’s being used as the Magic Negro.

Papa Petrelli knew that Peter was coming? Ah, he’s not life leech, he’s a power leech.

Okay I have problems with the premise, the binary choices of angel or monster, hero or villain.

Ooh, Meredith dissing Sandra Bennet for not being superpowered? Not the point, lady! People are people.

Hiro lacks some subtlety, but he does have some hot moves.

Ooh, Linderman talking to Daphne… but other people don’t see him. I think he’s using a version of Claude-vision. (No, no, he’s an illusion. Ah, welcome back, Nightmare Man!)

Mohinder = Shelob. Y/N? Discuss

Wow, Mohinder is really upping the bodycount of this season. And what is that… did he
cocoon the neighbor? Like a spider, pantrying meat for later?

Ooh Vortex-Man! How in the world would that work? (And who is Pinehearst?) Vortex-man apparently can create quite a sucking vacuum. Hm. Opening a wormhole into space? The amount of energy required would be phenomenal. And why couldn’t some of Sylar’s powers couldn’t mess with Vortex-Man.

Cantina scene! Specials for hire! I wonder if Wolverine is in the corner. Adam set that up rather nicely.

Of course Zimmerman worked for the Company. Synthetic abilities explains a lot. Gene therapy, without oversight or patient consent.

Oh Maya. Have you ever had a boyfriend who wasn’t a murderous superpowered wacko?

“A world of dangerous people” — is what we have always lived in.

Wow, this is like “The Revenger’s Tragedy.” Everyone is either a user or used, and usually both.

Aw, adieu Vortex-man! I hope the other end of the vortex put him someplace nice. Throwing oneself into a Cuisinart of one’s own making to avoid being used as a murder weapon is undoubtedly heroic. Phyrric, but heroic.

Wow, Daphne and Knox don’t even have to try particularly hard to manipulate Hiro.

Hm. That doesn’t seem at all like Hiro. Although… he can stop time, change swords, add a stage-blood pack inside Ando’s shirt, and tell Ando to fall down “dead”… alas, I fear Hiro may not be smart enough to do that. More his style: maybe he thinks he can come back “later” and get Ando to the hospital before he bleeds to death?

Puppet-master guy has Meredith, oh noes! How is his puppeteering different from Sylar’s telekinesis, though? Or Eden’s mind control?

Ah, Mama Petrelli is fighting Papa Petrelli! It’s all a particularly ugly domestic dispute!

Zimmerman tells Tracy that there were three identical triplets. DNA manipulation. If there were three, then one, ideally, would be the control. Zimmerman is an odd blend of forthcoming and utterly useless. “We had no right” sure sounds … if not ethical, at least honest, but what’s that about “they made us forget”? Shades of The Haitian?

Matt Parkman has an aural breakthough thanks to our (Jung-reading) (but as yet unnamed) black character. What, are they going to call him, “The African” — sort of like “the Haitian”? While we’re at it, can we get a character just called, “The European”? Edited to add: Okay, according to the blog, his name is Usutu and they’re in Botswana. Was his name mentioned and I just missed it? When?

Peter and Future!Peter see people flying. So in the future, a formula to give people abilities, and Future!Peter thinks that people choosing to have abilities is what will destroy the world? That leap of logic seems… a little farfetched. Going with it, for now.

Future!Claire and Future!Haitian cooperate to shoot Future!Peter together so he can’t recover. But… doesn’t he recover once the Haitian leaves the room? Ah, one of those bullets is in the back of Future!Peter’s head, okay.

So badass Future!Claire and Future!Daphne and Future!Knox are off to track down Peter-from-our-time… why, exactly?

—

Hiro in Level 2, and Ando finally gives him what for.

—

Nathan shows some gumption in the face of ghost!Linderman. Okay, so what are the possible explanations for Linderman?

He could be a hallucination of Nathan’s, the proverbial devil on his shoulder. Nathan gets that himself, when he talks about brain damage from the shooting.

Linderman could also have discovered a variant of Claude’s power: he’s invisible (and silent) to everyone except Nathan. One wonders what would happen when the Haitian were nearby?

Other than that? I’m coming up empty.
—

Mohinder has lost it. And what gets Maya a backbone now, when she didn’t have one before? Must be the spoiled milk.

Mohinder’s rash, aggression, transformation.

Seeing the bug skittering over the recorder seems particularly Kafka-esque. Ooh! Kafka? Metamorphosis?
—

Domestic Sylar is terrifying is a deeply waffle-icious way.

And now Peter is being The Bad Guy. Driven on by o’erweening pride…the hunger to know more, to have more… very MacBethian.

I appreciate the watch-mending metaphor for figuring out how things work. But I have some basic problems with it.

——

Matt and Daphne are raising Molly? “It’s time for you to slow down”? That’s a nasty thing to say to someone whose power is speed.

And okay, the images of a cracked planet are dramatic, but… yeah, not so much. The earth is pretty big, and pretty solid, and we can destroy all live on the surface without making much of a dent on the solidity of the earth.

–

You know, freezing the phone really shouldn’t stop it from working… make the components more brittle, true. But phones are tested to fairly cold temperatures.

Oh Tracy. Oh Nathan.

Yeah, saw that one coming.

Talk about the most awkward first date ever.

—

Wow. Mama Petrelli barely even has to try to manipulate Hiro.

Oh hey! Hiro and Ando do a turn as the Winchester Brothers.
Except instead of salting and burning, they’re exhuming… so it’s not so much Sam and Dean as Mulder and Scully, maybe?