Heroes Rundown Chapter 13: "Dual"

"On the sixth day, God created man in his own image. Now it's up to us to figure it all out." Thus begins (in an opening narration by Sylar instead of Mohinder, which I think is a nice change of pace) the final episode in this Heroes volume, "Villains." As has been the case in many of the chapters of this volume, the episode explores what makes people good or evil, heroes or villains, etc. etc. etc.

Sylar plays a little psychological murder game with the foursome he's locked inside Primatech (Claire, Meredith, Angela, HRG), trying to make them kill each other. Meanwhile, Ando, Daphne and Parkman work to bring Hiro back to present-day and Nathan and Peter have differing opinions on what to do with the formula. For more on this episode, read more.

Nathan comes upon Peter gazing upon their father's dead body. He tells Peter that he's going to finish what their father started, even though Peter thinks no good can come from it. Peter punches Nathan out and heads down to the lab.

At Primatech, Sylar traps HRG, Meredith, Claire and Angela in the building and talks to them over the PA system: "You did this to me. And before the night is over, I'm gonna prove to you, one by one, that you're all monsters. Exactly like me.".

Meanwhile, present-day Hiro, who is stuck in the 16-years-ago-past, recaps some things for us while gripping the pole and chatting to a pigeon. "I lost the formula. I failed my father. I lost my destiny."

Mohinder's infection has spread to his lungs and he hopes the formula will cure him. Peter, Flint and Knox burst into the lab, all of them planning to destroy the formula. Flint explains that with the formula, they're not so special anymore. Knox goes to keep an eye on Nathan so he won't interfere with the lab destruction.

Daphne speeds through the lab, stealing the one dose of the formula that Mohinder was holding. She gives it to Ando who injects himself even though Parkman (quite logically, really) wonders what if Ando doesn't get the exact power he wants?

Hiro climbs his way back up to the apartment where he talks with his child self and asks the younger Hiro to find a piece of paper of his father's with numbers and figures on it.

Claire would like to give the tempermental Sylar "a good spanking." Wouldn't we all, Claire? Wouldn't we all.

Sylar tells Claire that he'll let her, HRG and Meredith walk out alive if Claire will murder Angela. Otherwise, Claire is endangering HRG's life. She promises Sylar that if he hurts HRG she'll hunt him down and kill him.

Ando tries to teleport, repeating that he's the master of time and space. Parkman tells him to scrunch his eyes gently because he doesn't want to go back to the Stone Age (ha!). Rather than time travel, however, Ando got the power of supercharging other peoples' powers. They figure out that supercharging Daphne's speedstering causes her to travel through time.

HRG tells the Level Five guys that whoever brings him Sylar will be granted freedom, though he tells Meredith that they're actually bait for Sylar. Puppet master guy, Doyle, tries to control Sylar, but that doesn't work out so well for him. Sylar injects Meredith with adrenaline and then Meredith can't control her fire. Sylar shuts HRG in a room with her and has left him a gun with one bullet in it. Claire ultimately works with Meredith and HRG to shatter the glass and free them from the cell.

Nathan tells Knox that everyone always roots for Peter but in the end he always winds up losing. He starts a fight with Knox which Tracy ends by freezing and then shattering Knox. Tracy thinks that as a politician, Nathan can't recover from a disaster like this one, PR-wise. She says they can start over, but Nathan ends up firing her.

Older Hiro finds the formula just as Kaito walks in, notices the open safe and grabs his sword, calling Hiro a thief. Hiro finally holds up the formula, saying that if he destroys it then it can't be used. He tears it in half before disappearing. In that moment, Daphne and Ando bring Hiro back to the present. Daphne and Hiro then go to Pinehearst where Hiro punches Tracy in the face and grabs the formula.

Speaking of the formula, Flint and Peter are still trying to destroy the lab. They tip over a giant tub of the stuff, some of which reaches the knocked-out Mohinder and his scalies go away. Flint goes to set the place on fire, but Nathan hits him with a metal thing, then hits Peter with it — repeatedly. Flint sets the room ablaze anyway, but then Peter injects himself with the formula and crashes with Nathan through the window and flies them away to safety. Nathan wants to know why Peter saved him and Peter says it's because Nathan's his brother and he loves him.

Angela says Sylar's a hero because he killed Arthur, but Sylar's not having any of her nonsense. He says she's not her mother and she confirms this. She says she wanted him to work for the Company. She saw that he was "flawed, weak, malleable. Someone I could manipulate because that's what I do, because you're right. I'm a monster, too." She says she knows who his real parents are. He starts to force her to tell him but just then Claire gets him in the back of his skull, and he goes down. Claire goes back to the cell to save her mother, but HRG and Meredith tell her to run. As they do, Meredith unleashes her fire and Primatech is set aflame.

Tracy picks up Mohinder in her car.

"Each one of us is capable of both the dark and the light, of good and evil, of either, of all. And destiny while marching ever in our direction can be rerouted by the choices we make. . . by the love we hold on to and the promises we keep."

We get a glimpse of "Fugitives," which picks up three weeks later. Nathan is in D.C. explaining that he wants to round up all these special people and put them someplace where they won't be a danger to anyone. As he leaves the car, he thanks the President.

"Villains" is over! Heroes returns Feb. 2.

Heroes Rundown Chapter 12: "Our Father"

Here we are, Heroes watchers, the second to last episode before the finale of this volume, "Villains." This week, Hiro and Claire have traveled 16 years back in time, and they interact with their parents and their past selves. Meanwhile, the cruel side of Sylar is back in full force, and Nathan sees firsthand what is being planned for the future at Pinehearst.


Hiro and Claire watch as 16-years-ago-Kaito gives HRG the baby Claire to raise as his own. This is, as Kaito says, "Not a request." It's kind of cute seeing Hiro and Claire together. Hiro's mother is dying and she wants to make arrangements for the catalyst. Hiro watches his mother cure a sick dove and says with awe, "My mommy is a healer."

Bad Sylar is totally back. He tells Arthur he's not going to help him anymore and then sets Elle's body on fire. Poor Elle! She and Sylar were my favorite couple on TV for a minute back there.

Nathan tells his father he's taking over Pinehearst. "You wouldn't have gone to all this trouble to make me if you didn't need me." Tracy walks Nathan down to an area where they're keeping soldiers, and explains Arthur's (and her) plan: "We'd like to call it 'intelligent design.' . . . When we perfect the formula, we get to choose who gets what power, and we've chosen the best."

Claire goes to see her mom of 16 years ago on the first day of having adopted baby Claire. It must be weird to hold yourself as a baby. And change your own baby self's diaper. Later, HRG comes home and he knows Claire is lying about who she is. Claire tells HRG that this baby Claire is going to need him to protect her, and that the Company will want to do something to her but he shouldn't let them because his little "Claire Bear" is "fine just the way she is." Awww. . .

Mean ol' Sylar takes the power of a woman who can tell when people are lying — on her birthday. That's just sad.

Nathan chats with one of the soldiers, wanting him to be sure he knows what he's getting into with this program. The soldier believes that if he were more than human, he could be a better Marine, he might have been able to have saved his fellow soldiers in Iraq.

Sad! Kaito doesn't think Hiro is responsible enough for the catalyst. He tells his wife that Hiro "will never amount to anything" (harsh!), which Hiro (er, both versions) overhears. The present-day Hiro (who thinks he's 10 years old) tells his dying mother of 16 years ago that he's her son. His healer mother helps Hiro regain his memories. He tells her what he's been up to (saving the world — twice!) and she assures him that she always thought he was meant for greatness. Hiro convinces her that he should get the catalyst, "the light." He says he is strong enough to protect it. So she gives him the light, after which Hiro murmurs, "You showed me what it means to be a hero."

Funny line from Ando after having sped to New York with Daphne: "I like teleporting more. Less windy." Ando, Parkman and Daphne track down Isaac Mendez's sketches for a final issue of 9th Wonder from the bike messenger in New York.

Angela has asked Peter to kill Arthur, so Peter and the Haitian go to find him. On the way, Peter and the Haitian have a heart to heart and the Haitian offers to kill Arthur, but Peter says it's his responsibility.

Arthur shows up in the 16 years ago where Claire and Hiro are talking. He steals Hiro's abilities and the catalyst, too. Then he sends Claire back up to present day with a message: "Tell Angela it's over. I won." Hiro is now stuck 16 years in the past — with no powers. So, Ando decides he should get the teleporting power so he can go back in time and save Hiro. He just needs the formula . . .

Arthur infuses the formula with the catalyst and Mohinder injects the concoction into a Marine.

Peter and the Haitian reach Pinehearst and Peter holds his father at gunpoint, but Arthur doesn't think Peter can bring himself to kill him. Just as Peter shoots the gun, Sylar appears and stops the bullet from reaching Arthur so he can ask him if he's really his son. Arthur insists he is, but Sylar can tell Arthur is lying and he makes the bullet go into Arthur's head.

The Marine reacts to the formula which has given him enhanced strength. He "feels good."

Next week's episode, "Duel," marks the last chapter in this volume of Heroes.

Heroes Rundown Chapter Seven: "Eris Quod Sum"

This week's episode of Heroes has so many daddy issues you'd think it's Lost. We've got the Petrelli family head honcho, Arthur, along with a sad story about Matt Parkman's dad Maury. Mohinder tries to avenge his father's death and Claire and Nathan are reunited (though as Claire points out, dads aren't always as they seem).

There's much more to this week's story than just dads, though, so to discuss, read more.


Hiro doesn't want to go back in time, but Usutu warns him, "Evil forces gather. The dark sun rises. Soon it will be too late. You choose your own path or you have it chosen for you."

Mohinder grabs Maya from her slime cocoon and brings her to Pinehearst where he meets Arthur Petrelli.
Mohinder: "Everyone thinks you're dead . . . What could possibly drive a father to put his children through such grief?"
Arthur: "Have you met their mother?" Har-har. Arthur takes Maya's ability away, to her great relief. Mohinder tells Arthur, "I need to find a way to reverse the changes and retain my abilities." So, Arthur brings him to the room with all the sciencey formula stuff.

Elle shows up at the Bennet house, looking for help from HRG because she keeps overloading. Claire tells her of her own problem: Not being able to feel pain at all anymore (to which Elle responds, "You can't feel pain. I wish I had your problems, cheerleader."). So the two of them set off together for Pinehearst, but on the plane ride there, Elle becomes upset (maybe because Claire is such a smug little brat) and starts electrically freaking out, causing the plane to falter and the pilot to remind everyone to turn off all electrical equipment. Claire: "I think he's talking about you." Ha! Claire then takes some of Elle's electricity until she calms down. Once at Pinehearst, Elle runs inside while Claire helps Peter get away from there.

Peter tells his father he's seen the future and it looks bleak, and Arthur insists that Peter can help to not make that a reality. Peter says he's going to make Arthur pay for all the things he's done.

Angela and Sylar are still trapped at Primatech when Sylar sees Angela in his mind saying, "Gabriel, you don't know the half of what you're capable of. Show them. Show them why you're my favorite. Make Mommy proud." So, Sylar just decides to break free and tells Angela he'll save Peter.

Arthur and Maury Parkman confront Daphne about not recruiting Matt. Arthur tells Daphne to kill Parkman, Maury gets emotional, so Arthur snaps his neck. Daphne goes to Parkman's house with a gun. He tells her they get married and start a family together. "We're gonna love each other." Daphne drops the gun, and Parkman finds out about his father being killed.
Arthur brings Peter to Mohinder but just as Mohinder is about to inject Peter, Sylar appears and breaks Peter free because "That's what brothers do, Peter, they look out for each other." Aww. The moment of brotherly love is somewhat dampened when Mohinder starts smashing Sylar's head into the ground. How quickly I'd forgotten about the monster Sylar was when he killed Mohinder's father.

HRG and Meredith (holding out a palmful of fire for no reason) show up at Mohinder's place, where Tracy and Nathan are. HRG tells Tracy and Nathan that they have to be tested at the company. Meredith and Tracy size each other up. Meredith says she'd watch out for that one. Tracy: "We're not together."

When Knox comes by to make sure Daphne killed Parkman, Parkman gets into Knox's head and makes him think he killed Parkman and Daphne. Sending his fist through Parkman's body is pretty freaking gross. But not as gross as Claire's brain scene with Sylar in the premiere. Parkman tells Daphne they should go to Primatech.

Maya and Mohinder, blah blah, Maya's leaving, blah. "I need to make amends. And so do you."

Arthur tells a floating Sylar that Angela is using him. Angela saw Sylar's future when he was a child and she tried to kill him (so says Arthur). When Peter shows up, Arthur tells him, "The world you saw doesn't exist. We won't let it." Sylar then tosses Peter through the window, but slows his fall enough that Peter doesn't die. Arthur tells Sylar they'll just have to take their fight to the enemy.

Sad! Daphne appears to still be working for Arthur, deceiving Parkman into thinking she's on his side. Arthur: "Screw this up and I'll put you right back where I found you." I'm now fully curious about where Arthur "found" her.

Peter tells Nathan about their dad and Nathan sets off to find him. Tracy says she can help open doors at Pinehearst, but Nathan says he doesn't need help opening doors. "I plan on kicking them down." As Arthur said, revenge is in the Petrelli blood.

Finally, Usutu tells Hiro about spirit walks, feeds him the dung paste, and Hiro gets all white-eyed.

Heroes Rundown Chapter Six: "Dying of the Light" (2)

Here is another bloggg......... Cant stop writing these days... LOL... ENJOY



This week's Heroes starts with Mohinder going on about how "in every journey, the traveler must ask, 'what's the right path taken?'" We get more of the same ol' themes of heroes vs. villains, choosing good over evil, etc. etc. My favorite part of this episode is when Parkman verbally high-fives his turtle.

If you know what I'm talking about and want to chat about it, read more.

It really was impossible to believe Hiro could have actually killed Ando, and here we find out what really happened: Hiro stops time, goes to a magic shop to grab a collapsing knife and fake blood, returns in time to explain the whole thing to Ando, and the two fake Ando's murder for Daphne and Knox. Hiro tells Daphne he's a villain like her. Daphne tells Hiro to find the "precog," Usutu.

Claire wants to find Meredith, and Sandra Bennet insists on coming with. "Your father always said, one of us, one of them. I'm the one of us." Eric Doyle's ability truly upsets me. The whole circus theme paired with the loss of free will . . . it makes me nauseous. Meredith says she'll never love him and he insists she will.

Adam Monroe is brought to Arthur Petrelli who clutches Adam, takes his power, and kills him. And now, Arthur is up and at 'em.

Parkman, carrying the caged turtle at the airport, asks the turtle to give him a sign. When he sees Daphne he says, "High-five, Turtle." Daphne tells Parkman a bit about Pinehearst, he in turn explains that they are soulmates.

Nathan and Tracy go to see Mohinder and Tracy shows him her icy power. Mohinder injects them both, talking about how he followed his father's research for years but never got anywhere until he thought for himself. Nathan and Tracy pass out. Later, strapped to a table, Tracy tries to earn Mohinder's trust: "I know what you're thinking. You didn't mean for this to happen. You try to fix it but everything you do just makes it worse." Mohinder responds to this and takes her hand, like a fool, and she freezes his arm. She frees herself and Nathan but then Mohinder throws a table at them.


Daphne goes to Sylar's cell and tells him that the man she works for likes Sylar the way he is. Aww. She gives him the Pinehearst card and hightails it. I can't decide whether of not to trust this new trying-to-be-different Sylar. His change of heart seems awfully abrupt this season. Clearly, Peter is having similar suspicions.

Ando and Hiro get to Africa and Hiro goes into Usutu's home, asking for "Mr. African Isaac." Usutu knocks Hiro on the head with a shovel. More than once. So, Hiro decides to do things "the old-fashioned way": hide and wait for him to come back. Usutu finally talks to Hiro and shows him a painting with "the villains you seek" and the Pinehearst helix symbol, and he tells Hiro he can take him to them. There is also a painting of Peter hugging his father.



Stupid Claire! Ugh. Even Sandra Bennet knows that they need a plan and can't go barging into Doyle's puppet lair. But Claire doesn't even listen, and then she and both her moms are under the control of the creepy puppet guy. I do, however, like that Doyle calls Claire "Barbie." He tries to make Claire kill Meredith but there's no bullet loaded in the gun. Ultimately, he gets the gun in Sandra's hand and she pulls the trigger on Claire, who obviously regenerates and knocks out puppet guy. HRG shows up and praises Claire's actions as "impressive." She just looks at him and walks away. HRG then turns to Meredith and says he could use her help.

Daphne goes to Mohinder, tells him that her company is already doing what he's trying to do: give people abilities. She says they need his help. "To do what?" She shrugs. "Save the world?" She comes upon Tracy, Nathan and all the nasty slime webs.

Sylar instructs Peter to look inside Angela's head to find out what's going on, and it kinda seems like Angela punches him with her eyeball, which I think is one of the more entertaining aspects of this episode. Peter draws the Pinehearst symbol. Then Peter beats the snot out of Sylar. "All this power? I'm the most special." He puts Sylar in a coma. He comes upon his father who coaxes Peter into an embrace — and then robs him of all his powers. Not so special now, eh Peter?

Aww, Daphne and Peter want to save each other from Pinehearst. Parkman insists he can protect her, but Daphne says simply, "No. you can't."

Heroes Rundown Chapter Six: "Dying of the Light"

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Say what you want, but I think this episode continued the good streak established last week. It looks like, after a shaky start, the Heroes train is finally back on the track. All it took was some patience. That's a good sign for the rest of the season. Now if it could just get some of those lost viewers back. I hope NBC is factoring in downloads, DVR playbacks and streaming views online into their decisions regarding this show as I know it performs extremely well there.

Okay, I knew there was no way Hiro would really kill Ando like that, but it was cool seeing how he pulled off that trick. Maybe all the naysayers who say Hiro is stupid this year will rethink their stance. He proved himself pretty damned clever with this little maneuver and now he's officially "on staff" at Pinehearst. And even though Matt is back in the US, now Hiro will be heading to Africa to see Parkman's precog friend. That's good, because I like this new addition to the cast.

I like that Daphne is morally conflicted about what she's doing. And I'm even appreciating the layers of complexity added to Sylar's character and how he wants to stop being the monster that we'd all grown to know and love. It's just Peter being basically the same thing that I'm not so thrilled about. Actually, they almost seem to be reversing roles which is even more terrible.

I understand that the theme of this early part of the season appears to be our established characters questioning ... well pretty much everything about themselves. Parkman, however, seems particularly naive and earnest in his pursuit of Daphne. Actually, between Parkman, Peter and Suresh I guess I'm still not thrilled with a lot of the character direction here.

Credit where credit is due, the puppet master's theater is genuinely creepy, as are the extents of his powers. It's too bad Claire and her mom had absolutely no idea what they were getting into. I have to imagine this is a character that we'll see more of. You just know Pinehearst would love to get their hands on him.

Secret Identities

Thank god Matt put that turtle in a cart. Otherwise he'd have never made it back to America.

I actually kind of like the character of Claire's mother, even though she was kind of arbitrarily thrown into the series this season.

So there is a way to kill Adam. Does that mean Arthur now has his ability? Maybe stealing abilities runs in the family, it's just the method by which it is done that varies.

Time travel vs. precog = hilarious results.

During the gun game, even Claire showed a spark of intelligence, convincing her mom to "kill" her. Since puppet master has no idea about her abilities. See, they're not all stupid this year.

Still annoyed with what's going on with Suresh, and now he's got Nathan and Tracy. Hell, blow up the loft and just get rid of all of them. I can live without any of them at this point.

That's some seriously bad news at the end there with Arthur Petrelli stealing Peter's power. What he may not have realized, though, is that he's also taken the hunger Peter got from Sylar. If Peter was struggling to hold it in, how will Arthur handle it?