Heroes: You Can’t ALWAYS Save the World

This week on Heroes, Noah pulled Matt back into action. Ando, Hiro and Mohinder literally busted out of a psychiatric facility. Peter betrayed a new friend, and Samuel finally got his big wish. So much Heroes…so little time. Let’s dive right in!

“You know some days, maybe you just can’t just save the whole world; some days your better off just getting your own house in order…Go home. Hug your little girl.” – Matt
Where has Lauren and her high-tech gadgets been hiding? Only with her help does Noah finds his only lead, one of Samuel’s old friends Vanessa Wheeler. (Seriously, Lady has some high-level surveillance access?) Played by the lovely Kate Vernon, a BSG alum, Vanessa also happens to be Samuel’s first love who he dreams of bringing to the carnival. He professes that his plans are for the entire family, yet it seems that all he wants is to prove to this woman that he’s important.

Next, the disappearing Matt finally shows his face, and he’s quite different from the cop we last saw struggling with a psycho in his brain. Now,  he’s the quintessential stay-at-home dad, making breakfast and kissing wifey before sending her off to work. His peaceful abode is shattered when Noah stealthily emerges from his kitchen. Matt still holds a grudge against Noah for the whole Nathan-Sylar swap gone bad. Plus, he’s happy in his boring life. Noah makes a good point, however, when he suggests Matt help in order to ensure his son’s safety.

The two track down Vanessa, where Matt uses a little mind control to convince her that they are people she can trust. She confides that she’s worried about Samuel. All she has are sweet stories of their childhood, but recently since his brother’s death, Samuel has been acting crazy, spouting off about them being together once she sees how powerful he is.

Noah and Matt decide to use Vanessa as complicit bait and lure Samuel into a trap, but the nefarious one is two steps ahead of them. He sneaks past Matt as Eli sneaks up on Noah, and the two get away with Vanessa. Matt and Noah tail them as quickly as possible because they luckily planted a tracker on her. But by the time they reached the little red dot on their laptop (that they magically always have now!), the carnival is gone, leaving only litter behind. Frustrated, Matt questions how they’ll ever get further since the erratic-acting Noah has burned so many bridges.

Back at Chef Parkman‘s, Matt chops up carrots for a ratatouille, while Noah screams about Matt’s responsibility and not being a coward and that he’s one of the good guys. But Matt’s priorities are in order. Family first, and he suggest Noah think about the same.

“Just tell the truth, for once in your life, Mom. Please.” – Peter
Lydia does what she does best, watch from the fringe of the scene and leer like a stalker. Her daughter Amanda wonders why Lydia wants to stir the pot, but Mom is convinced that Samuel isn’t the leader the carnival needs. She seems at a loss of what to do until Amanda gives her an idea. She says her mother should call them. (I really hope that Lydia could have come up with such a simple plan without the help of a 14-year old.) In New York, Peter awakens with a start, grabbing his arm where a spinning, and seemingly painful, compass tattoo has appeared.

The Pied Piper begins to play, and it becomes clear that Emma is attempting a little target practice by trying to lure Peter to her. Once at her apartment, there’s little time for simple pleasantries like, “Wow! That power is awesome. Do it again!“ He notices the compass on her cello is akin to the marking that appeared on his arm, and he asks her how she got it. She tells  him about Samuel and the story about homeless Ira. Peter shows her a picture of the man he met as William, and she confirms that he’s Samuel. She says he didn’t want anything from her and shows Peter the compass he gave her. Peter recounts the Noah stabbing ordeal, over a very similar compass, and warns her to stay away.

Then, Angela appears, acting spooked by the sight of his new friend, and Emma takes the awkward moment as her cue to exit. Peter wants to know why his mom has chased away the only girl he’s had a crush on since he lost the last one by messing with the space-time continuum, and Angela confesses that Emma is going to help kill thousands of people somehow with her cello. But it’s not enough information for Peter, and he absorbs her clairvoyance power in lieu of further investigation.

In his own vision, he sees a distressed Emma at the carnival playing her cello. It’s totally blurry and psychedelic, but what’s clear is some garbled screams and Sylar offering to help her. Of course, Peter could never imagine letting Sylar near his pretty Emma or Emma’s melodic music to be allowed to annihilate a bunch of people. Instead, he heads right over to  her apartment and smashes the instrument. He futilely tries to explain what he was doing, but all she can think about are the shattered piece of wood on the ground. Evidently, Peter didn’t think that his actions may be exactly what pushes her to follow the compass and run to Samuel in the first place. But we can’t all think so clearly.

“Perfect. One who can’t walk and one who can’t talk.” – Mohinder
I would recap the Hiro-Ando-Mohinder story at length if it had any pertinence to the main storyline at all, but I’ve rambled enough and their plot doesn’t lead us with anything that will be useful going forward. Hiro and Ando find Suresh and break him out.  It starts with Hiro speaking in riddles, and by the end of the episode, Ando uses his electrical abilities to give Hiro’s brain a shock and cure him. (Why couldn’t this happen in a doctor’s office with some electrode pads? Don’t know.) In the beginning, Mohinder is loopy in a padded cell. At the close, Hiro and Ando have miraculously, and also inevitably, broken him out. I guess the fun is supposed to be in the journey, but it felt like a waste of time. I did enjoy seeing Mohinder go Hulk on the orderlies and Ando use his powers to short circuit a locked door. But Hiro still doesn’t have Charlie, and wasn’t that the reason Mohinder was drugged and left there in the first place?

WRAP IT UP
Ultimately, Noah shows up at Claire’s and apologizes for everything he’s done. He wants to rebuild bridges, not burn them, but Claire has plans, and Dad isn’t high on the priority list anymore. Though he has done wrong, it’s clear that he has changed because the old Noah would have waited in the wings and then stolen the compass from right under his daughter’s nose.

Matt sits down at the perfect dinner table he always wanted with his wife and son, but he feels like a coward. He’s disappointed he didn’t do more after he unleashed a serial killer from his brain, and he’s let so many people in the world down. She wants him to let things be; he looks after his family and that’s where he belongs. But from that last guilty look, I’m certain Matt’s not going to be staying at home much longer.

And Samuel and Noah are both with the women who have their heart. At least Lauren is willingly sleeping over. Wonder what her bedhead will look like? And now that three more Heroes are out to get Samuel, how much longer does he really have? Find out next week!

Season 4, Episodes 15: Close to You (originally aired January 11, 2010)

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Photographs courtesy of NBC and Chris Haston