Last week’s episode of Heroes brought us to Coyote Sands, where we learned why Angela started the company. I was so very ready for the writers to peel back a few more layers of the conspiracy this week, but it appears the realized that there were only two episodes left this eason so they had better wrap this thing up if they know what’s good for them.

When I was a kid, my friends and I used to dream about how cool it would be to have a superpower. Would you rather have the fly or be invisible and other profound questions of that sort. What we never talked about were the consequences. We never thought there was any downside to being all powerful.

And that all brings us to Sylar.

Our boy Gabriel has been collecting powers for a long time now. He’s killed so many people and taken over so man powers, I wonder if he needs help keeping track of them all. (Got too many super powers? There’s an app for that!). He’s been getting high on powers for so long, you knew that he was going to have a bad trip sooner or later, and sooner happened this week.

Sylar’s latest power is the ability to morph into any person that he touches. When he first got the power, he could barely contain himself.  It was almost as if he was getting a little bored with just scalping people and thought that destroying people psychologically would be a little more entertaining. For the first few days, everything was coming together as he planned. Sylar almost got HRG to kill his own wife, and he didn’t even have to try that hard. Imagine if he actually put some effort into some of this? He would be absolutely unstoppable. But nothing worth having ever comes that easily now, does it?

The bad trip started with this shapeshifter power. As Sylar started to use it, he started to lose control. He would go to sleep as Sylar and then wake up as somebody else. That somebody was Agent Talb, who Sylar has to continually impersonate in order to continue his life, a life that incidentally had him picking extra molars out of his life when he woke up.

It’s sort of funny that we are still talking about agents, because it seems as if they really aren’t interested in doing their jobs anymore. Wasn’t it just a few months ago where the Heroes were worried about picking their noses lest somebody from Building 26 would find them? I guess they realized that even if they were caught, somebody would spring them out eventually, unless they happened to die in custody, which would suck. But really, that has only happened once so far, so there is no reason to worry.

NOBODY seem scared of the agents. Take Matt Parkman. He used to be in law enforcement, has seen exactly how ruthless the agents can be with people that he cares about, so you would think when he decides to take his son back to Los Angeles to be with Janice, he wouldn’t announce it on the phone. Why doesn’t he just send a text message to Danko so he can meet him there. Better yet, why doesn’t he carpool with the agents to his house in Los Angeles? That would at least save him the gas mileage.

As you may expect, Janice was more than happy to hear her baby was coming back. I thought it was a little too easy, in fact. I was sure that she had ratted out Matt to Danko in return for leaving her baby alone, but the dramatic zoom out/pan/star wipe that I was waiting for never materialized. Oh well.

Matt was only worried about bringing Matt Jr. back because he still needed to stop Danko, but Hiro and Ando said that it was the perfect chance to get back together with his wife. And wouldn’t that be great news for everybody! I can’t wait until the “Have you seen anybody else” conversation comes up. Parkman will be so smooth when he says “Oh, there was the one person I dreamed about living our entire lives together and I was devoted to her, but she died because I couldn’t rescue her from these people that will be chasing us for, well, forever, but let’s not worry about that. It’s time for some makeup sex!”

But if Matt is going to get back together with his wife, that really only leaves Hiro and Ando to take on everybody at Building 26. If this were the middle of the season, I would be extremely worried for their safety; Hiro is not really a logistical or tactical genius. But this is the second of the last episode, which means it is time for plucky Hiro to prove all of his doubters wrong. He is going to come up with a plan on the fly, experience some hijinx and in the end, he will save the day. Matt wisely realizes that they may get shot and decides he is not going to help them. In Los Angeles, he has the possibility of makeup sex. In DC, he is looking at the possibility of torture and death. As long as your wife looks better than Rosie O’Donnell, that is a pretty easy choice.

So Matt makes it back home, and I am still thinking that Janice set him up, but I guess I was wrong. Janice really card about the father of her child and there was no ambush. OK, that’s not entirely true. There was an ambush, but Janice didn’t set it up. They agents must have tapped the phones because they were on their way to Janice. At first Matt says that he will distract the agents while Janice leaves for his mother’s cabin, but he decides that he wants to be a part of his son’s life and hers.

Like I said before, it really couldn’t have been a very hard decision for Matt. As far as we know, Janice is the last person who actually had sex with Matt. Yes, Daphne and Matt had a kid, but that hadn’t happened yet. Anyway, the agents rush in, but Matt is able to convince them that the house is empty. But Matt knows that his job isn’t finished. If he ever wants to have a life without running all the time, he is going to have to do something about the people chasing them. He will face the Danko and whatever else and meet Janice when everything is safe.

Dream Interpretation 101 tells us that dreaming of losing your teeth can signify insecurity or a time of transition. And we know Sylar has always been insecure about his identity. He always felt like parts of his history was missing, even after finding his father (both of them) earlier this season. It’s times like these where you wish that you weren’t such a mindless killing machine. It’s so much easier to get comfort from your family if you didn’t have the habit of killing the people closest to you.

The only person Sylar can lean on these days is Danko, and you can’t trust that guy to water your plants.  Sylar shows up in his office, and Danko is pissed. Part of the reason he let Sylar take the shapeshifter’s power was so he could claim that he killed Sylar. Unfortunately, it’s sort of hard to go around bragging that you killed the most dangerous man on the planet when he is showing up on surveillance cameras on K street.

Danko reminds Sylar that for all intents and purposes, Sylar is dead, and he must stay dead if the “relationship” is going to work. The relationship is still new, but I think all of us knew this wasn’t going to work; we’re just waiting for Sylar to get pissed off and kill Danko. At this point, it’s only a matter of time, because Sylar looked like he didn’t want to play by the rules anymore. He returns to his Agent Talb form, but scratches “I AM SYLAR” into his arm. It heals of course, but it looks like he is in need of some sort of release, and that means bad news for his next victim.

That next victim? Clint Howard! I have always thought there was a Clint Howard corollary to the Ted McGinley rule of jumping the shark. I guess he works if you are looking for a guy who is funny looking in a general sort of way. You know, in case Steve Buscemi isn’t around to help you out. Clint Howard is always looking sort of pathetic and you really didn’t want to dispatch him so quickly, but you knew he wasn’t going to last long, especially when Sylar showed up at his door.

After playing cute with Clint and taking his power (the ability to smash things with the snap of a finger), Sylar decides he doesn’t like the life of anonymity any more, and uses Clint’s blood to write “SYLAR” on the wall of his apartment. You can just imagine how happy Danko was when the rest of the team arrived on the scene.

Back at the office, Danko tries one more time to get through to Sylar; he has to play dead or else. Sylar says that is all well and good, but his problems are getting worse. First it was the extra teeth, but now one of his eyes stayed blue and he couldn’t fix it. Danko then surprised us all by showing a little compassion towards Sylar. Well, I am not sure how much compassion counts when you are basically helping a serial killer, but you get the point. His words of advice? If he is going through an identity crisis, he needs to find an anchor. If he ever feels like he is lost, he needs something to hold onto to remind of who he is.

For Danko, it’s a stopwatch from his father. For Sylar, well, his parents didn’t give him anything because his father abandoned him and he killed his mother. Then again, his mother may be dead, but she also didn’t abandon him, which means he may actually have some good memories about her. Sylar orders the evidence from her murder in search of something that may trigger a good memory. Soon, he is having a lot of flashbacks of his mom. All of her little trinket like the snow globe are really great anchors. It’s so real, it’s almost as if she were there in the room with him, which was kind of true.

Sylar was having a little back and forth with his mom and while I thought it was just flashbacks or memories, I realized if it were a flashback, Heroes would have used their patented black and white except for the blood flashback filter. Instead, it was obvious that somebody on the production team is a fan of the Lord of the Rings, because they decided to rip off that scene where Andy Serkis plays Gollum and Smeagol having a conversation with each other. I thought Return of the King was more overrated than a Duke Basketball recruit, so this scene was really painful for me. Luckily, Danko interrupted it with a knock on the door. They’ve found REBEL and Agent Talb’s assistance would be greatly appreciated.

It’s really too bad Danko was going to all this trouble to bring in REBEL, because it is only a matter of time before his house of cards comes falling down o him. Hiro and Ando have a master plan to take care of them once and for all. Well, Actually it’s Hiro’s plan as always, but Ando is going to be a good part of it. Hiro is setting the trap and Ando is the bait!

Poor Ando. He has his own powers now, but people still treat him like he is the sidekick. Ando is NOT a sidekick; he’s the Crimson Arc! And the Crimson Arc doesn’t let the enemy capture him so he can be rescued. No, the Crimson Arc should be doing the rescuing!

Of course this is all a moot point anyway. As soon as Hiro decides that he wants to stop time, Andohas no choice but to follow along. The agents storm the loft, Hiro stops time, but Ando isn’t frozen. For some reason, the person touching Hiro gets to move around freely just like Hiro does. It seems sort of strange to me that they would just mention this, but I guess it makes sense. Hiro touches people and can teleport with them, so it’s not such a huge stretch to say that the same thing would happen in this case. Besides, I don’t have the time to watch every episode Hiro ever used his power to see if they are breaking canon here.

Ando is really stoked with this development. Now he can be part of the plan instead of just a cog, but what about Hiro? There is no question that Hiro has a lot of love for Ando, but whenever he would freeze time, it was a chance for him to be alone. But imagine the possibilities. If Ando wasn’t frozen, he could help Hiro do some of the heavy lifting that always seems necessary when Hiro stops time. But as helpful as all of that seems, Hiro is just not interested. He has always been one to go with his instincts, and his instincts tell him that Ando needs to be the bait.

Hiro lets Ando go on an on about fighting crime like Batman and touches him to unfreeze him in mid-sentence. Ando is surprised when he snaps out of it and is shot by the shock-gun shells. Hiro freezes time again and dons the gear of one of the agents. There is another problem that I have with this Building 26 agency. If any agency is hiring agents the  same size as Hiro kick some ass and take some names, they are obviously not that picky.

On the ride back to Building 26, Hiro decides it is time to wake up Ando. He freezes time once again, this time while touching Ando, then tells him what happened. Ando is really pissed. Even though the bullets aren’t lethal, they still hurt. Hiro turns off the drug that stops everybody’s powers and tells Ando that the plan is on. Ando doesn’t necessarily agree with Hiro, but at this point, does he really have a choice?

The decision to wake up Ando turned out to be a good one.  Hiro’s plan didn’t seem that awful until one of the other agents wondered why one of his colleagues suddenly started wearing glasses. Although Hiro gives him what he thought was a believable enough explanation, Ando noticed that the agent was ready to stun Hiro. Crimson Arc springs into action, taking out a couple of the agents before they were able to do anything. The agent driving the truck was about to call in when Hiro stopped time. Look at that! A little teamwork. Unfortunately, they won’t be sneaking in without getting noticed. But there is still time for a Plan B.

Hopefully Plan B will be enough time to save Micah. After Sylar killed Clint Howard, he found enough evidence to hep Danko track REBEL down to some warehouse. This time, they weren’t going to take any chances with Micah getting away. Since Micah’s power comes from being able to manipulate electronic devices, Danko decided to cut the power to the whole building a few of the surrounding blocks just in case.

Without his ability Micah appeared to be a sitting duck, but for some reason, Sylar had pity on him. Sylar still wants to kill as many people as possible, but I do think he is regretting becoming Danko’s right hand man. Sylar makes his way up to Micah’s hideout ahead of the agents. You would think that Michah would be scared, but he is still young enough to believe that people can change. He saw his mother and Tracy do great things even when everybody else doubted that they had the ability to think of anybody other than themselves. Micah still believes that Sylar is special and that he save all of the Heroes.

Sylar isn’t sure about saving all the Heroes, but he is ready to at least save Micah now. Sylar takes on Micah’s appearance and lets the agents chase him while the real Micah is able to sneak out in the back. The agents shoot Sylar-Micah and nobody thinks it’s odd that Agent Talb is missing. You would think that at least Danko would catch on that Micah “escaped”. When was the last time Agent Talb let somebody sneak through his grasp?

Micah really felt that Sylar could help; so much so that he decided to hide out at Sylar’s apartment after escaping Danko. Sylar is briefly able to relate to Micah until Micah starts talking about Sylar being able to change. All of this “you’re special” and “you can do whatever you want” talk is starting to remind him of his mother, so Sylar kicks Micah out before he decides to change his mind about saving him.

There was one thing Micah said that did inspire Sylar. Micah said that Sylar could change into somebody that could make a difference. I thought Micah was talking about Sylar changing his ways and helping the cause, but Sylar thought about becoming an even more powerful man, not by absorbing more powers, but impersonating arguably the most powerful man on the planet: Nathan Petrelli.

OK, Nathan Petrelli is not the most powerful man on the planet, but if Nathan Petrelli the Senator were to have a press conference and demand an audience with the president, that could probably happen. In that meeting, Sylar would shake hands with the president, which would be enough contact for Sylar to take on his appearance. I figure I don’t have to explain how the rest of the plan would go.

The first step to taking on Nathan Petrelli’s appearance is to get some DNA, so Sylar makes his way to Petrelli’s senate office. In the meantime, he gets another visit from his mother. Well, it’s a visit from himself, but you know what I mean. Sylar explains to his mother (himself) that he is not special, because a special person would not kill the only woman who ever loved him (how soon we forget about Elle…who I think sort of loved him and he definitely killed). Viriginia (Sylar) seems unfazed that her son (which is really her) killed her. She even decides that she is going to forgive him for killing her. It’s all very comforting I guess, but Sylar is basically forgiving himself for killing his own mother. Why should that make him feel better?

Sylar’s little reunion is cut short when Nathan Petrelli gets into the office. We always make fun of 24 for having improbably timelines, but I think that Heroes is worse. They are constantly going back and forth from DC in what seems like minutes, and they constantly get from one side of the country to another in just one episode. It wouldn’t be that strange except that it should be really hard for any of these people to take planes. Of course Nathan can fly on his own so it doesn’t really prove my point, but whatever, it still pisses me off.

At this point, I am not so sure that Nathan and Sylar are on different sides, but Nathan has no idea what has happened the last few hours, so he has no idea what Sylar’s intentions for the president are. Nathan made it a point to leave Peter, HRG, Angela and Claire back in Coyote Sands, so this wasn’t going to be much of a fight. It looked like Sylar was going to finish him off pretty quickly except Danko got there first. He incapacitated Nathan and called the rest of the team to pick up Nathan.

Wow, it seemed like so many things were going right in this episode, but let’s wrap things up. Micah is almost captured. Nathan is captured. Agents make it to Coyote Sands and pick up Mohinder, although it seems like they missed Angela, Claire and Noah. We think Matt and his family got out, but we aren’t sure, and even Hiro and Ando’s master plan was on the rocks. They finally realized that they could be a team, but when they were outside of Building 26 ready to strike, nothing happened. Hiro looked to be in pain and his nose started bleeding.

Is there anybody who could stop Sylar?

How about Emile Danko?

Danko knew he was losing control of Sylar and decided to do something about it. He threw a knife into the back of Sylar’ head, instantly putting him down. But then Sylar got up again. That is definitely not going to be good for business. If a knife in the back of the head doesn’t kill him, I wonder what will? Are they going to chop him up into pieces and bury the parts all over the world like something out of a Joss Whedon episode? I don’t know what is going to stop him, but I hope HRG is the one with his hand on the trigger.

I thought the episode was OK. I thought Coyote Sands would answer a lot of questions, but they seem to have given up after only one episode. I think it looks like the final episode is going to be good, but it looks like they once again rushed through things at the end. It will be interesting to see what they are going to do about Sylar and if this is really, truly, the end of the road for him.

What did you think of the episode?

Mokers | 04.27.09 | Filed in Heroes,Recaps,Uncategorized