This episode starts where the last one ended, with Peter Petrelli in the subway car talking to a future Hiro. One thing I noticed about this episode that I don't think I noticed before is how infantalized the Japanese men were in the present compared to how Hiro from the future is presented. Sure, you could say it is the difference between being hopeful with being battle-scarred, but none of the other characters is portrayed like this, not even Peter (who is arguably one of the most hopeful characters starting off). This is especially well observed in the interaction between Niki and Ando when he shows up to her house (super creeper move BTW). She talks to him like he's a child who doesn't understand the difference between right and wrong not some internet stalker who used her OF info to track her down. Granted, she's just had a hell of a morning and come home to find the FBI or US Marshalls in her home (I don't think who they are is ever clarified, but they're looking for her fugitive husband DL). I guess that might (emphasis on might) make her see Ando's act of creepery as somewhat innocent in comparison.
Okay, back to the subway car. Future Hiro tells Peter that he needs to find Issac so he can save the cheerleader, and by doing so save the world. Peter tries to tell all this to Mohinder once time resumes again, but Mohinder is not in a listening mood and he's all out of fucks to give. He tells Peter he sounds crazy. Peter does go back to Issac (alone) and Issac tells him that he can't even finish the painting to find out what is going to happen to the cheerleader because he's out of drugs. That's when Peter realizes that he's able to paint the future when he's around Issac. He gets the paints and gets to work. When he finishes, it's obvious that the cheerleader has become a victim of Sylar because the top of her head has been removed and she's lying in a puddle of blood. The phone rings and that's when Peter first talks to Hiro.
Before that, however, Hiro has his own journey. The thugs from the casino dump Ando and Hiro in the middle of a dessert with their suitcases. Ando blames Hiro for not stopping time to get them out of the mess, even though he's the one who was deliberately antagonizing the men and even told them that Hiro had power. Of course they were going to knock Hiro out first. Hiro sees it as karma for cheating at gambling, so he's unbothered by this turn of events. Ando and Hiro fight and Ando goes off (obviously intent on seeing Niki since he tells Hiro "that's what you think" when Hiro says he doesn't even have any friends in the US). Ando just rubs me the wrong way from the very get go. I don't think he's a good friend to Hiro and besides translating to help Hiro get by during his trip, Ando doesn't really serve a function to the story at all. (Well, Hiro also needs someone else to drive because he doesn't know how.)
After parting with Ando, Hiro witnesses Nathan Petrelli touch down outside the diner he and Ando found before Ando ran off to do his own thing. Hiro tells Nathan that he saw him and that he has been to the future. Nathan asks if he saw whether or not he won the election and Hiro remembers the newspaper headline and tells him that it was a landslide. Nathan was only flying because Claire's father tried to kidnap him. When he got a call in the midst of the attempted abduction, Nathan saw a window and ran off. He tried to climb a fence, but the two men caught up with him. Before they could grab him again, Nathan took off like a rocket into the sky. Nathan gives Hiro a ride back to Vegas where Hiro realizes he can't drive the car he's rented, and he's stuck there until Ando returns.
For her part Niki wakes up in Nathan's bed with no memory of the night before. Linderman's right hand woman tells her the debt is paid and she should go home to her son. Niki tries to argue that she left, she didn't go through with it, but the woman shows her the tape. When Niki returns home, she finds out that DL was spotted a couple blocks away and there are LE officers at her friend's house waiting to talk with her. She tells them that her husband has been following her and "doing things" although she doesn't elaborate which tells me that she still believes that she's not the one who killed those men or set up the car despite the lapses in memory one of which included her having a whole encounter with Nathan which was caught on tape. The feds see someone approaching the back door of the house so they draw their weapons and the door opens to -- Ando. Yes. That's right. A man who has only ever interacted with Niki on her OF account came to her back door and tried to come into her house without being invited and acts like he thinks all that was okay.
Niki talks to her very condescendingly, which I mentioned earlier, and tells him that the person she is online isn't real. I felt like the whole scene was very offputting. First, what he did in hunting her name down and coming to her home was stalker behavior and should have landed him in jail. For their part, the feds did offer to arrest him for trespassing, but Niki said to let him go. Second, he faces no consequences other than disappointment and eating crow which both he and Hiro must do to make up. I really hate that. Online, Ando even calls Niki a bitch for demanding that he honor the terms of their contract and pay if he wants more time. He's a grade A level creep and I don't think playing it off for laughs is a good look.
We revisit Matt's story with his wife on the phone worried sick about him. She then ends the call when she realizes he's in the house on the couch. She asks him where he's been and he says he must have drunk too much and passed out on the couch. Turns out he's been gone for a whole day. After a small argument, Matt decides to use his power to romance his wife by giving her everything her heart desires. He orders takeout from her favorite places, has her dress up and wears a suit himself, and puts on a song that has been stuck in her head all week. She then accuses him of having an affair because this is so uncharacteristic of him. He says he just wants to give her what she deserves, then she comes on to him. The two have sex and it's obviously the best it's ever been when they finish. His wife is out of breath. He reads her mind that she wants coffee flavored ice cream, so he goes out to buy it. However, he runs into a guy who plans on robbing the store. He manages to talk him down and gets him to relinquish his weapon, but the moment he touches it the whole store starts thinking that he's brandishing it with the aim of doing harm himself. He tries to tell them all that it's okay, that he's a cop, but they continue to be afraid and the cacophony of internal voices overwhelms him. He looks like he's about to pass out as the scene cuts away.
Claire tells her mother that she lost control of the car but admits to her father what happened to her on the night of the bonfire. She tells him that she crashed the car on purpose to hurt Brody who would have raped her if she had not hit her head. This results in her dad paying Brody a little visit. Brody tries to deny what he did, but the father isn't buying it. He tells Brody that he should kill him, but he's going to give him a second chance. He then instructs his partner to hollow him out and "take everything". Claire goes to visit Brody (who is still laid up) and tells him that what he did to her was wrong, but what she did to him was also wrong. Brody responds by asking who she is and why she keeps calling him Brody indicating that he truly doesn't remember anything, not even his own name.
I thought this was a good episode. Not the best one, obviously. I hated the infantilization of the Japanese characters (especially Ando who should have suffered real consequences for what he did and not been treated like a twelve-year-old who did something similar). I still think Nathan is a dickwad, but what Linderman did to him is not okay and neither is the attempted kidnapping. Anyway, 7/10 for this episode. Catch you next time. Sorry my post was a little late this week.
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