Heroes Volume Five, Chapter Three: Ink

Okay, look: Seeing how Mohinder’s going to be MIA for another, oh, eight episodes or so, I’m not going to waste our time whining about his absence. Here’s the thing, though: I know the producers and writers have made a big fuss about how this season is all about smaller, more personal stories involving fewer characters at a time, and Mohinder just drew the short (really short -- downright microscopic) straw for these introductory episodes. Seriously, though, the back half of this season better be Mohinder-heavy, with virtually no Claire, to make things right with me. It seems like we’re getting double-doses of Claire, at the expense of Mohinder, and that’s just plain wrong.

Speaking of Claire… She’s busy avoiding Gretchen, who is chock full of questions about how Claire jumped out of a window and didn’t, like, die. When Gretchen does finally corner her, she asks Claire, “What are you, a vampire, an alien?”, which comes uncomfortably close to West’s uber-irritating “Are you a robot or an alien?” babble in Volume Two. Is Gretchen this volume’s West? Discuss. Bennet, who seems pretty hale and hearty considering he got gutted by Edgar toward the end of last episode, shows up at Claire’s dorm and offers to take her to lunch. He fails to pick up on Claire’s unsubtle hints and invites Gretchen to join them.

They go to an Indian restaurant, where Gretchen and Claire act like little snots about the food. Gretchen taunts Claire in front of Bennet by making barely-veiled allusions to Claire’s healing ability. Remember when West taunted Claire in front of their biology class by making barely-veiled allusions to Claire’s healing ability? Gor blimey, Gretchen really is West! Here’s something to ponder: Back in Volume Two, when I still had a naïve and childishly endearing faith in Heroes, I was convinced West was deliberately being written as creepy and off-putting, because he would later be revealed as a villain. Nope -- he was supposed to be a genuine romantic interest for Claire, albeit an extraordinarily poorly-scripted one. So, creepy old Gretchen: Is she going to turn out to be evil, or are the writers aiming for “offbeat and charmingly quirky” and completely botching it?

Bennet does not seem to find Gretchen especially charming. Score one for Bennet. When Gretchen heads off to the ladies’ room, Bennet bawls Claire out for letting Gretchen find out about her ability. He goes to call the Haitian to have Gretchen’s noodle wiped, but Claire threatens to never speak to him again if he does. Promises, promises.

Back at the dorm, Gretchen apologizes for being creepy and confesses that girls in junior high called her Retchin’ Gretchen because she was bulimic. Claire decides it’s the time for deep personal revelations and tells Gretchen the truth about her powers. Bennet calls and interrupts their foray into girl-bonding and self-mutilation to apologize. He launches once again into his patented “I just want to protect you” thing, and Claire does her “You can’t protect me forever” thing, and I swear they just lifted this scene verbatim from another script. Possibly from multiple scripts -- I think we’ve seen this about eighty times by now. Lather, rinse, repeat. Claire asks Gretchen to be her roommate. Gretchen is thrilled.

Matt and his partner, Simon the Cylon (whose name, apparently, is “Mike”, but once a Cylon, always a Cylon), stake out a drug dealer’s house. Matt holds up a thirty-day sobriety chip and tells Simon the Cylon that he’s broken his sobriety. The psychic manifestation of Sylar shows up to mock Matt some more, which is kind of fun. He mutters about how much it blows that he’s stuck in Matt’s mind (“I mean, have you seen yourself eat a burrito?” Aw, Sylar. Cruel and funny!). Matt and Simon the Cylon get a warrant and burst into the dealer’s home. In a suspiciously generous move, Sylar warns Matt about the gun-happy drug dealer hiding in the closet. While Simon the Cylon searches the garage, Sylar goads Matt to use his abilities to find out where the drugs are hidden, but Matt remains stalwart and refuses. Sylar leads Matt to a stuffed animal and a ransom note -- the dealer has kidnapped a little girl. Matt uses his powers to read the dealer’s mind, and finds the girl hidden under the stairs, dead.

Matt beats the hell out of the dealer and quite possibly kills him. Simon the Cylon returns and is horrified by Matt’s actions. When Matt urges him to check under the stairs, there’s nothing there. No dead girl, no stuffed rabbit, no ransom note. Just Sylar, who was using Matt’s powers to have some fun. Matt gives Simon the Cylon his sobriety chip, then uses his Jedi Mind-Tricks™ to convince him everything’s hunky-dory. Sylar tells him he’s proud of him. Their next order of business: Finding Sylar’s body.

At the Sullivan Brothers carnival, Samuel gets dressed up in a suit, while Lydia ties his necktie in a provocative manner. Samuel mentions that they need to get the compass back. Wait -- if Samuel doesn’t have it, who has the compass? Didn’t Edgar knife Bennet toward the end of last episode and make off with it? Did I totally misunderstand that? What am I missing here? Samuel sucks a bunch of tattoo ink from a jar into his skin. Yeah, the carnival folks are definitely a lot of fun.

(There’s a commercial for some sort of Sprint-sponsored miniseries thingamajig featuring Lydia and Edgar. I like Lydia and Edgar, but not enough to research it further.)

Peter gets served with a subpoena: One of the people he rescued is suing him. Peter goes to the records office at the hospital to get a copy of the accident report, failing to realize that the pretty young woman manning the desk, Emma, is deaf. When she knocks over a coffee cup, she sees the noise made when it smashes against the floor as a burst of colorful lights. Later, a doctor tells Emma she’s experiencing synethesia, in which one sense is perceived as another.

Peter tracks down the man suing him, William Hooper, who turns out to be Samuel. Samuel claims Peter rescued him from a crashed bus, but dislocated his arm in the process. Thus the lawsuit. Peter doesn’t remember saving him, but Peter’s long-suffering paramedic buddy Hesam confirms Samuel was indeed on the bus. Hesam also mentions that people are claiming Peter has been causing all the recent accidents to get all the glory that comes with saving lives, which…yeah, that doesn’t make much sense, actually. Causing bus crashes? Trapping pregnant women in overturned cars? Really? Does this seem at all likely and/or physically possible?

Peter examines a newspaper photo of the bus accident and sees that Samuel was indeed on the bus. He meets Samuel in a park and apologizes for doubting his story. He offers to make amends. Samuel asks him, “Have you ever lost a brother?” Peter, curiously, answers “No,” which isn't quite right, actually. Yeah, Peter doesn't know about Nathan's most recent death, seeing as his mother and Bennet and Matt all conspired to hide that information from everyone, but didn't he see an alternate future version of himself gunning down Nathan during the press conference, right before trapping the real Peter in the body of Weevil from Veronica Mars? Man, somewhere along the way, this show got really convoluted and wonky. Peter and Samuel shake hands, and Samuel tells him he’s dropping the lawsuit. Meanwhile, in the same park, Emma sits on a nearby park bench, watching a group of musicians. She sees the music made by a cello as colorful lights. When the cellist conveniently leaves behind his instrument, she picks it up and makes rainbows of light with music. It’s a Skittles commercial! She plays the cello for eight hours or so -- I don’t know, it’s just a really long scene -- then stops when she notices people staring at her, Peter among them. She runs off.

(Wow, there needs to be an awesome payoff to Emma’s plotline, because the setup is deadly dull.)

Samuel approaches a mansion where a gala party is taking place. He tells the lady of the house that he grew up there -- his father was the butler and his mother was the maid. He asks to take a look around the carriage house, but the woman shuns him. Later, Peter and Hesam are called to the scene of a terrible accident: Three people died in a sinkhole that sucked the entire mansion into the earth. While Samuel watches from the shadows, Peter looks down at his own forearm. A moving tattoo of a compass has mysteriously appeared on his arm.