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.

–

Carjacked Mohinder!

Why is Noah Bennet working with Nathan Petrelli? The Claire factor?

Matt the Prophet? And wow, that was fast. What was all the guff about everyone having only one power? Usutu has more than one powerl apparently, and no so does Matt.

Ando-cycle! Is a chick magnet! Hiro is trying to be Alfred to Ando’s Batman!

oohl Claire shows some agency! And Dad has a lot of explaining to do!

And ha! Peter can absorb people’s powers again.

Meredith’s adrenaline blast on Monday reminded me that I never did post a good discussion of the whole “Mohinder isolates the magic enzyme” issue from back at the beginning of the season.

Peggy discusses adrenaline, and Mohinder’s magic enzyme in her Biology in Science Fiction blog — her blog also includes a Holiday Gift Guide (fiction and fact ) that includes some excellent books! (I was delighted and surprised to see “The Science of Heroes” on her list.  Since biology is one of my weak points, I’ll be interested in seeing what she thinks of the book.)

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!

So the eclipse is the deadline, and Claire is the catalyst.

Note to Dad: bonus points for teaching your daughter self defense. You waited until she was how old before starting? After she’s started dating, after people have attempted to rape her, shot her (multiple times), and stalked her through her high school? This is lousy forward planning. Also, during at crisis is not the time to motivate with mind-games.

Mohinder’s ability is to make his clothes turn to goo!

Mohinder is going Kafka-esque. His scales have gone away? I missed that part. Maybe he was becoming gecko-like? But geckos don’t use goo to stick to walls, and Mohinder is looking pretty gooey right now. Hey! Mohinder’s ability is to make his clothes turn to goo!

Welcome to Haiti, Nathan and Peter. Presumably in Haiti, the character has more of a name than, “The Haitian.”

Samedi is The Haitian’s brother. His skin is impenetrable, huh?

Okay, 10-year-old Hiro is silly, but he has a point when he’s talking to Matt: it’s not the size of your power that’s important: it’s what you do with it.

Okay, Mrs. Bennet, this is the second time I’d suggest you kick Mr. Bennet to the curb.

Okay, let’s talk eclipses. A full solar eclipse is when the moon is directly between the sun and the earth. The moon doesn’t shadow the entire daylight side of the Earth, so some places see a complete eclipse, some a partial eclipse, and some no eclipse at all.

An eclipse has two effects. First, obviously, the light changes. But for people and critters who are used to artificial lights, there’s some question of how much difference that makes. Second, the two biggest gravity wells near our planet are lined up on the same side of the planet, which means that we see bigger tides as their gravity pulls water (and solid ground, to a lesser extent) towards it. Most of the ocean’s tides are dictated by the moon (it’s much much smaller than the sun, but it is a whole lot closer, and the force of gravity falls as the square of distance), so an eclipse doesn’t create catastrophic tides, but it is a noticeable effect. Neither of these have anything to do with superpowers, though.

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?

…the second coming of hubris and misplaced guilt, maybe. Although the show makers get points for quoting Yeats in the voice-over.

Future results are not always indicative of present performance, Hiro!

Advice to the characters:

Mohinder, darling, this is why we have peer review. To keep passionate researchers from going bugf— nuts. Also, you have lousy research protocols.

Hiro, have you learned nothing in the past two seasons? Future results are not always indicative of present performance.

Mama Petrelli, I’m glad we finally (finally!) get to know that your power is dreaming the future. But you have that terrible supervillian tendency to tell the good guys (and passing sociopaths like Elle) too much! However, I am glad that you have more lines in this episode than you did the entire first two seasons put together. I sincerely hope that your fierce bitchiness is a sign of a hero pushed into a corner, but given the show’s handling of women thus far… I am worried for your character. Especially if you turn out to literally be the mother of most of our heroes and villains.

HRG, not only is it stupid to refuse Claire’s help, but it is particularly bad parenting to suggest that your high-school superpowered daughter needs her biological mother to super-babysit her. (Also, if I were your wife, I’d be kicking your absent ass to the curb about now.)

Tracy: Ooh, interesting power! Although how you turn the reporter to water when you freeze him is sort of problematic. True, our bodies are mostly made of water, but what about all those inpurities like, say, hemoglobin? One wonders if Tracy’s ability to turn all sorts of interesting molecules to H2O is similar to the power that Bob had (say goodbye, Bob!) to turn all sorts of interesting molecules to Au?

Ooh!  If you don’t mind some spoilers,  take a gander at what Tim Kring said at Comic-Con.

Mohinder isolates a superpower in the lab

CinemaSpy mentions some Season 3 character points

The most interesting to me is the idea that Mohinder isolates some substance that allows a character’s superpower to be transferred to a non-superpowered person via an injectable elixer.

The CinemaSpy site also includes a video clip from Comic-Con.