Heroes 4x03 "Ink"
Claire's College Days:
So, after last week things are a little awkward for Claire because oh, yeah, Gretchen saw her jump-push-fall thing. Anyway, Gretchen proves herself to be a)persistent, b)smart and c)devious as a very devious thing, because she knows she saw something hinky and she's not giving up till she finds out what's going on.
Anyway, many glares, a lot of awkwardness and a trip to an Indian restaurant later, things are looking... a lot better, actually. It helps that Claire actually grew a spine and told Noah (poor, currentlywell-meaning Noah) to back off and let her solve her own problems, I think. So now, Claire and Gretchen are BFFs, and roomies. Well, we'll see how long that lasts...
(Something about Gretchen still worries me...)
Oh... anyone else notice that at the end, when Noah and Claire were on the phone, he didn't call her 'Clairebear' when he said goodbye?
This Week On Matt Parkman's Difficult Life:
Uh, so, Matt has his very own, snarky, manipulative Head!Sylar. He also has a Cylon for a partner, and the sadly mistaken belief that his telepathy is something he can quit, like alcohol or tobacco or drugs.
In fact, he's taken this so far that he's actually going to AA meetings, and has a 30-day "sobriety" chip. Frankly, I find that whole idea (that he can 'quit') distasteful, because it's not an addiction, it's part of who he is. He doesn't need therapy to help him quit, he needs therapy to get him to realise that denial is not just a river in Egypt. (That said, he's still one of my favourite characters...)
ANYWAY. So Matt and his totally-not-a-Cylon-at-all partner are busting into some drug dealer's place to arrest him. Fair enough. Except that Head!Sylar is... going out of his awesomely manipulative way to make Matt screw up, basically. It's not particularly nice (but this is Sylar after all), but the suspense and subsequent reveal were fantastic to watch. Long story short, Head!Sylar uses Matt's ability to make him 'see' evidence that Random Drug Dealer had kidnapped and killed a little girl... a ransom note, a toy rabbit, and ultimately a little girl's body... and then made those things disappear just when he called his partner over. By which point the drug dealer was sort of... dead.
The point of all this, now, is basically to manipulate Matt into using his powers. Which he does... to make his partner think that Nothing Happened, and that Matt totally didn't just Lose It and accidentally kill a suspect. And I can see how this is very tough for Matt, because (bless him) he really is trying to live a semblance of a normal life here... but it's just so much more interesting with Head!Sylar around. Er.
Peter Petrelli: Wannabe Superman:
Um, so Peter's still doing his hero thing, saving as many people as he can... and then Random Messenger Dude shows up and...
wait, WTF, someone is SUING Peter? For SAVING THEIR LIFE?
Peter is... understandably a bit pissed about that, and heads off to the hospital to find the guy suing him, one 'William Hooper'. To do that, he needs to get Hooper's medical records... which is how he meets Emma.
Now, at first Emma seems pretty normal. She doesn't say anything to Pete, but she's wearing headphones so he figures that she's listening to music. Right up to the point where he sees that the headphones aren't connected to anything. He makes some semisnarky comments about the 'music' she's listening to, figuring that she's just ignoring him... then a coffee mug gets knocked off her desk, and our new friend Emma sees a inkblot-like flash of colour as it smashes. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Because you see, Emma is deaf. She wears the headphones so that she doesn't have to deal with hearing-people pitying her. And, it seems, she can now see sounds as colour... as she discovers when she sees a man playing the cello in a park. Her doctor thinks it's synaesthesia... but I'm not convinced. I mean, if this was House, sure... but this is Heroes, so it's totally her ability. Kind of a random one, though.
Samuel's Carnival of Awesome:
And last, but not least, we come to Samuel. His scenes this ep left me with the distinct impression that compasses (or maybe a specific compass) are going to be important. I also gained the impression that Samuel shouldn't wear suits... he wore one for most of this episode and it just felt wrong. Like it wasn't really him, if that makes sense.
ANYWAY. It turns out that 'William Hooper', the guy suing Peter... is Samuel, who's paying a visit to New York to recruit Peter as 'the replacement for Joseph' (which sounds rather ominous).
There was one part of their conversation which struck me as rather ironic: Samuel asked Peter "have you ever lost a brother?"... to which Peter said "no", but then, we know about Sylathan, and how yes, actually, Peter has. Oh, and Peter now has a spinning compass tattoo on his arm...
Also, Samuel tried to visit the house where he and his brother grew up (their dad was butler there), and got turned away by some posh woman. He then went and made a really big sinkhole, so evidently pissing off this guy is not a good idea.
Things I Learnt From Heroes This Week:
1. Noah Bennet knows a lot more than I thought about Indian food (and I love him for it).
2. I should really stop shipping people with their own Head!people.
3. I'm not entirely sure if I ship Matt/Head!Sylar or if I want a spinoff where they fight crime together.
4. ...I also, based on virtually no evidence whatsoever, ship Peter/Emma. (In my head, Peter is learning sign-language already...)