Heroes: The Time Traveler’s Almost Girlfriend

This week in “Once Upon a Time in Texas,” Hiro worked hard to save Charlie, and we learned a tiny bit more about Samuel’s nefarious plans. I was wondering how they were going to tackle a story we’ve seen before. As Hiro said, boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl dies. Boy goes back in time to save her, over and over again. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I thought they need to change up Hiro’s storyline, but boy, did I get something totally unexpected.

Heroes doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to dealing with the past. (Though, I loved how they poked fun at that when Hiro said, “Who cares about the sword. Forget the sword.”) However, I can vouch that while tonight was utterly baffling, when I took a step back and really thought about it, things made sense. Sure, there were some questions raised, but they’re so minute that I can suspend belief for the fact that this is TV we’re talking about. Ergo, time-traveling on Heroes MADE SENSE! Someone in the writers’ room needs to bust out a gold star. Now, onto the story…

I’ve got my own butterflies that need crushing. – Samuel
Samuel isn’t a very happy camper. He seems to have found a ton of people who can help him achieve what he wants (to save his brother), but the ball isn’t in motion yet. With Lydia’s help, he finds a way to get to Hiro by realizing that a pivotal moment in time is about to change. It’s a two-part plan. First, he learns that Hiro is in love, the type of love that makes you do craaaaazy things. Second, many other people’s paths are connected to this one moment in time, and Hiro is unaware of that.

Samuel uses his friend Arnold, who’s pretty much at death’s door, to send him back in time. He arrives three years earlier at the Burnt Toast Diner, and it’s pre- “Save the Cheerleader. Save the World.” There, he explains to Hiro that things won’t be as easy as it was when he rectified Ando and Kimiko’s Great Slushie Debacle. Both Noah and Sylar are there, and one wrong step could cause disaster. What if Claire is never rescued? What if she’s never attacked by Sylar in the first place? Thankfully, Samuel, the “Butterfly Man,” appears to guide Hiro on this quest and help him dot his “I”s and cross his “T”s.

You told me I could right the wrongs of my life by stepping on the right butterflies. This is the biggest. It’s Mothra. – Hiro
I’m a Sylar lover through and through so to get the opportunity to see the old scalp ‘em and leave ‘em baddie was amazing. I forgot how downright creepy he was, and gosh, the deadpan way that he says some things just kills me. (Not an invitation, mister!) Before Sylar can get to Charlie, Hiro freezes time and puts him in the luggage compartment of a bus. However, inside he notices that he is not in the birthday picture with Charlie as he should be and realizes that if she never died that he didn’t go back in time to save her and fall in love. Future Hiro tells Past Hiro to go do this and the picture is fixed.

This leads to a happy reunion between Charlie and Hiro until she begins spouting eerie, Wikipedia facts. Her brain aneurism is rupturing, and strangely, the only person with the power to help (i.e., the power to see how things work and fix them) is the man who came to kill her. When Hiro re-finds Sylar, he’s already escaped the compartment and wants to know what Hiro did to him. Hiro shows off his sweet power and convinces Sylar that instead of killing them both, if he saves Charlie, Hiro will tell him about his future. (I’m not fully sold on this.) But Sylar agrees, and with Charlie cured, Hiro tells Sylar the truth.

“Yes, I will tell you how you die. You die alone. I’m sorry.” – Hiro

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” – Sylar

“It means that you will collect a lot of powers. You will kill many people. You will become strong. The strongest of them all. But in the end, it won’t make any difference. We all gather to stop you. You’re alone. No one will mourn your death. No one will shed a tear. No one. I wish I could change fate, but you must go on your path.” – Hiro

And he does leave for the pep rally where we know that Sylar goes on to attempt to kill Claire. And, it seems like everything has worked out. That is until Charlie realizes the gravity of what Hiro’s done. It has to be a lot to take in for a person to all of a sudden realize that their in the middle of some crazy soap opera, à la Passions. She’s mad a Hiro for using time travel so that she can cheat death. He tells her it’s because he loves her, but she is not happy Hiro let some serial killer walk away like it was nothing. Later on, she apologizes for being rude and not acknowledging how much he sacrificed and thanks him for saving her life. Oh, and she tells him that she loves him. Totally adorable!

It’s too bad Samuel is still hanging around to ruin everything. He grabs Charlie and hides her somewhere in time with Arnold’s help. He brings Hiro with him to the carnival where he explains what Arnold used his last breath to do and that Arnold was exactly like him, dead because of a time-travel-induced brain tumor. Hiro has no time to ask questions though because he wants to know why the “Butterfly Man” would do this. Flash to Samuel’s past where we see a dead Mohinder.

The course of true love never did run smooth. – Noah quoting A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I want to say that way too much time was spent on this storyline, and it felt like a huge throw away. Three years ago, Lauren Gilmore, played by Elisabeth Röhm (Law & Order, Angel), is a co-worker of Noah’s who used to meet with him twice a week at the Burnt Toast Diner for bad pancakes and some chitchat. There’s a spark between them, and she’s more than overt in expressing that she wants to take things to the next level, but Noah loves his family and doesn’t want to jeopardize it. It’s hard, for me, to really believe that the company man we know would be flirting with some chick when his daughter is about to get murdered. She kisses him anyway but apologizes for it. Then, she lets the Haitian wipe her memory to allow for them to still work together and be professional.

The writers, clearly, thought the viewers needed some sort of connection to the past that we could understand so everything could be put in context. (We also got an Isaac and Eden scene.) There’s Claire in her cheerleading outfit! There’s Noah with all his secrets. Now, everyone can understand where in the storyline this is and how much things have changed. Also, the fact that they threw in some character, who we know NEVER existed up until the point that the writers decided to plop her into the storyline, really bugs me.

WRAP IT UP
While I love Jayma Mays, this won’t go down as my favorite episode in history, and it was a step back in terms of all the solid storyline development that has been going on thus far. My thoughts are that Samuel accidentally killed Mohinder who was the key to helping cure Joseph’s sickness. I also think that Lauren is going to come back into Noah’s life somehow, and we needed setup before this random character just appeared out of nowhere. But just because the setup makes sense doesn’t mean I approve.

So were you as confused as I was at first? Did you enjoy this almost fully Hiro-centric episode? Should he be killed off so that time-travel is never revisited on this show? Share your thoughts.

Season 4, Episodes 8: Once Upon a Time in Texas (originally aired November 2, 2009)

Mondays at 9/8C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC and IMDbPro