Visible Ink
...or "Why It's Not a Good Idea To Trust People Who Pretend To Sue You, Have Dinner With Claire-bear's Dad, Or Listen To The Serial Killer Hanging Out In Your Brain."
PETER: Continues to be the most decent storyline of the lot. Considering how fast he's filling up his "ME SAVING PEOPLE!" wall o' hubris with more newspaper articles, it's pretty clear that his job is the only thing in his life right now. (I liked the little touch of him being up and getting ready for work long before his alarm went off.) Thanks to his penchant for spilling his life to strangers who may or may not wish him grievous bodily harm, we find out that there was actually a reason he switched from being a hospice nurse to a paramedic in volume 4: he wants to save lives instead of just watching them end or ending them with his own epic fail.
Unfortunately for him, his delusions of secretly being paramedic Spiderman are also shot down. Turns out people are suspicious of him always being first on the accident scenes, he's making his ambulance buddy feel like nothing but a chauffeur, and he's being sued (well, not really) for being careless. Kudos for that, show. It's nice when extras aren't stupid, and people actually notice things.
Speaking of noticing things, Peter meets carny leader Samuel, and fails to notice that he's well on his way to being manipulated again by a villain(ish) person looking to take advantage of his power. Though despite my icon choice, it's nowhere near Epic Fail Guy territory. Peter's done some abysmally, catastrophically, apocalyptically stupid things in his time, and most of them were far, far dumber than falling for what was a fairly plausible bit of manipulation on Samuel's part. No matter how much Peter pretends to be satisfied with his life as a brooding loner, there's still that instinct to make a connection with another person. Which brings us to this week's new character...
EMMA: Gets her own section, because it's been a while since I've liked a new character right off the bat. Obligatory "Great, another girl Peter will stupidly fall for and get killed" predictions aside, she's a nice throwback to the days when the show was actually about ordinary people with extraordinary abilities. Emma is a deaf woman who works at Peter's hospital as a file clerk, and hides behind a fake pair of earphones, because she'd rather be alone than deal with people's pity. She also happens to be developing the ability to "see" sound as glowy bursts of colour. And apparently, the ability to have a remixed Yasunori Mitsuda soundtrack following her around. Both of which are extremely pretty and nicely presented. Even if her storyline ends up sucking and writing her off as another pointless, poorly developed love interest whose life Peter will fuck up by proximity, at least we'll be getting some nice music and light shows out of it.
I love those power discovery scenes when a character finally realises what they can do, and they have that one moment of joy and wonder before the angst and complications set in. Emma's is definitely one of the most beautiful they've done. When she picks up the cello and lets the colours guide her as she plays? I smiled. There's also a lot of nice details in her scenes, like the transition between her playing the cello and then being unable to hear the applause from the bystanders. Points for little details, show. Now just try not to waste a perfectly interesting new character on a dead-end romance plotline. AGAIN.
CLAIRE, GRETCHEN, AND HRG: Not a lot to say about this part. Still not thrilling me, went on for about twice as long and twice as many scenes as it needed to, still expecting Gretchen to turn out to be evil or something, but I guess it's nice to see Claire have a lesbian love interest friend. She hasn't had a friend since Zach, I think. Just a string of terrible boyfriends-slash-stalkers.
So Sandra told HRG about Claire's roomate? They're separated, but I guess they're still on speaking terms about the important stuff.
SYLAR AND MATT: Because things like "subtlety" and "plot twists" are for pussies, this episode hammers home that Sylar is indeed lurking around Matt's brain. Neither of them are particularly happy about this arrangement, and Sylar is determined to get his own body back from, um...himself? Nathan? Fake!Nathan? Who's, uh...technically him? Hell, I don't know. It'd make much more sense if he really was just a figment of Matt's imagination, that's all I'm saying.
Anyway, Matt goes on a stakeout to bust a drug dealer, and decides that imaginary!Sylar will just STFU and go away if he ignores him long enough. Sylar begs to differ, and decides to make the most of his time being John Malkovich Matt Parkman. Mostly by making sure Matt doesn't die while he's still hitching a ride in his brain, conjuring up some fluffy red herrings pink bunnies, and giving a snarky running commentary of all the reasons Matt fails at life. Also, turning Matt's power against him to fuck with his mind until he loses it and beats a dude to a bloody pulp.
Mommy/daddy issue stopovers aside, Sylar's storylines seem to bounce between the extremes of either jacked-up god mode or sitting around being powerless and manipulative-by-necessity. We already passed a similar plot pit stop back in season 2, so I feel like I should hate this storyline, but... I don't. Yet. Maybe because it's actually interesting this time around? Matt and Sylar playing off each other amuses me. They have this hilarious mutual disdain, and watching them get under each other's skin is more interesting than the Sylar-vs-fake!Nathan stuff I was expecting. Hell, I'm way more interested in Sylar when he's Casper the Bitchy Ghost than I was when he was Pedobear invincible at the end of last season. Plus it livens up Matt's family drama and personal issues to have Sylar hanging around getting some lulz at his expense.
Now, if Matt would just put up an actual challenge for Sylar at some point, we'd really be in business. (Come on, Matt, MAN UP. At this rate, imaginary!Usutu will have to come and rough imaginary!Sylar up for you.)
Also, in case you'd forgotten since last week, SUPERPOWERS = DRUGS. AND TOTALLY NOT AN ARBITRARY PLOT DEVICE TO STOP MATT FROM TRYING TO USE HIS POWER TO SMACK IMAGINARY!SYLAR UPSIDE THE HEAD.
CARNIES: Less interesting this time around. Tattoo Girl just seems to hang around waiting to be inked up like a hotter, more naked Isaac with a skin canvas. Knife Guy was absent from this one, but Samuel takes it upon himself to go in search of an empath, ie. Peter, for yet-unknown reasons. There was also some backstory on Samuel and his pre-circus family and recently dead brother, but I kind of glazed over during that scene, so... I dunno. We'll see where things are going, I guess.
Also, Samuel has the power to manipulate earth and metals. If you don't get what that has to do with tattoo ink, check Wikipedia or catch up on your Mythbusters episodes. I'd guess Samuel has his own special blend that's heavy on the iron oxide.
RANDOM STUFF:
- I was surprised Aaron Coleite wrote this episode. He's written some good ones in the past. This ep definitely had some great moments, but I kept getting distracted by lines that would have given the scenes so much more impact if they'd been left out. (Gretchen's "Yeah, made it up..." about her bulimia, Sylar flat-out saying that he used Matt's power against him, a lot of Samuel's monologue at the beginning, etc.) Seriously, guys. You don't always need to write in an awkward line of dialogue to state the obvious, when a meaningful look or smirk or awkward silence can do the trick. Give the actors and the audience some credit.