Heroes: A Clear and Present Danger

Heroes, oh how I missed thee.  Even after last year’s abysmal arc, I can’t hide my excitement over Fugitives.  With Fuller back in the script, I am willing to wipe the slate clean and start anew.  This episode is titled “A Clear and Present Danger,” and let me say that it speaks for itself.  This season the writers have promised to bring us back to the depths of the characters we love, and if that means putting them in danger and making me feel that fear, misunderstanding and loss, well then I’m game.

When we catch up with our heroes, it’s three months later.  Peter is a paramedic, saving lives in any way he can.  Matt and Daphne have shacked up, but Matt would rather live normal, powerless lives while Daphne likes being done with work at 10:30am and needs a little more pizzazz.  Hiro is still powerless so Ando has no powers to play with.  Tracy has added another political notch to her belt when we find her dating a governor, and Claire is leaning towards college tours with some pushes from her grandmother, Angela.

But the biggest change of all goes to Nathan, who’s gone from Junior Senator Petrelli to Head of the Homeland Security Committee Petrelli.  How quickly Nathan’s change came about at the end of the last arc had me doubting, but Adrian Pasdar definitely convinced and scared me a little.  He’s gotten the President’s ear and has been flying around the country promoting his agenda for a safer America with allusions to issues the American government has tackled for the last eight years.  When does the government have too much power?

We quickly find out just what Nathan’s agenda involves.  A team of quick, strong, gun-toting men wearing black spandex with matching face masks drop in on Tracy.  For now, we’ll refer to them as the SWAT Ninjas.  They’re lead by a man called “The Hunter,” played by Zeljko Ivanek (Damages).  It’s clear they have the scoop on the Heroes they’re attempting to capture, so Tracy can barely put up a fight before she’s dosed with something that’s clearly meant to put you to sleep as fast as possible.

In Tokyo, Hiro has gotten him and Ando a lair along with their own spandex costumes. (Somehow I can’t see them being as stealthy.) He overcompensates for his lack of powers by creating his own headquarters with super computers and a password only he knows.  For Ando, he got a supercycle for the supercharger which makes Ando happy, but it was quickly dashed when Hiro injected Ando with a GPS tracker. (A bit left field.) Luckily motorcycles make easy exits.  Hiro’s nabbed just as he tracks Ando down to a strip club and calls him.  Ando hears his kidnapping via Blackberry and speeds away to rescue his friend.  Back at the lair, he fights to figure out the password so he can follow Hiro’s tracker, and there’s a cute moment when Ando realizes it’s his name.

Sylar’s on a mission to find his father.  He’s survived the Primatech blaze and has found a man named Martin Gray.  Martin turns out to be his uncle, who cared for him when his father abandoned him. (Creepy thing is Martin’s a clockmaker and Samson, Sylar’s father, is a taxidermist.  I see a pattern.) When he arrives at the taxidermist’s home, he walks right into a trap set by the SWAT Ninjas.  They try to take him down like he’s the Abominable Snowman, dosing him seven times as much, but even that’s not enough.  He repels everything and everyone, electrocutes them and then he mind-scalpingly tortures one of the guys for info.  Could Martin play a larger part than expected?

As said earlier, Daphne and Matt aren’t seeing eye to eye, but just when Matt’s got Daphne convinced of normalcy, he starts seeing Usutu.  When Matt finally talks to Usutu,  he tells him he has to accept his calling to become a prophet. (I don’t get it.  Can the pre-cog power be passed along?) We know what Matt really wants, and it’s clear he’s not going to get it, but more on that in a bit.

Claire doesn’t believe Noah or Angela that Sylar’s dead or that something’s not going on.  She overhears Nathan telling his mother that Claire has to stay away from Peter and Parkman until they can tag them.  Without another word, she jets off to warn the two.  She reaches Peter via cell who (stupidly!) goes straight to the lion’s den and catches a ride from the only cabbie for superheroes in New York.  With one hero warned, Claire rushes over to Matt’s apartment where she rouses him from his pre-cog drawing quest.  They realize that they are, at that moment, living out the pictures he’s drawn.  The last one happens to be their capture seconds later.

Mohinder and Peter lament over the fact that all the heroes are under the radar except for Peter’s brother.  Mohinder sides with Nathan’s belief that people with uncontrolled powers are extremely dangerous, but Peter doesn’t much like where things could lead if the government intervened like segregation and internment camps.  He and Nathan aren’t exactly on speaking terms.  As Peter leaves, Mohinder’s taken at gunpoint by “The Hunter.”  He almost escapes, and we think he will when Noah pulls up and tells him to get in.  Too bad he was actually on the SWAT Ninjas’ side. (Mohinder should have known.  You never know where Papa Bennett lies.)

Back at Casa de Petrelli, Peter runs into Nathan.  Peter believes he’s turning his back on his own kind, and Nathan feels he’s doing what’s necessary.  You could almost see the electric tension between the two.  Peter leaves but Nathan beats him to his apartment.  He wants his brother’s acceptance, but we know he really wants to give Peter the chance to choose the side where he doesn’t have to get kidnapped.  Peter’s not going away without a fight.  Who would have thought that Nathan could one-up his back stabbing after leaving Peter to get home from Haiti?  But he does!  Nathan asks for one last hug, and (surprise, surprise!) the man behind this injection once again is Noah.

With all of our Heroes captured, it makes me sad to see them all shackled up and carted off like death row inmates.  “The Hunter” brings Claire to Nathan and he orders her release.  Even while drugged, she manages to spit out that she hates him, that he’ll never get away with it and that she’s not afraid of him.  He makes it clear to her that he can easily change his mind about protecting her before sending her home.  Fortunately, Claire learned some new moves last year, and she escapes from the car just in time to sneak onto the plane that they’ve loaded the prisoners onto.

She frees Peter first, and they begin to work on everyone else.  She heads to the cockpit and (shocker, shocker!) finds her father in one of the pilot seats. (At least he’s not hard up for work after Primatech burnt to the ground.) Unfortunately in the cabin, Peter doesn’t realize he’s taken on Tracy’s powers when he frees her, and doesn’t quite grasp the idea that by touching the plane, he’ll freeze it and, of course, create a huge hole that will attempt to suck everyone out and take the plane down at the same time.  To be continued….

I thought about spending time on discussing how much better this week’s episode was than most in the Villains arc, but this week’s recap was so long because the episode had a lot of setup, and I’m supposed to be giving Heroes a fresh start, right?  So until next week!

Season 3, Episode 14: A Clear and Present Danger (originally aired February 2, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Where’s the One Armed Man? by Paul Secrest.

For more on Heroes, click here.

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Photographs courtesy of NBC