Heroes Season 2: Episode 4

“The Kindness of Strangers”

It may surprise you to hear that the first thing I said upon completing this episode was “I didn’t hate that.” But, well, I didn’t hate this. You know, it almost harkened back to glory days of old on Heroes, when things were intriguing and didn’t suck.

Plus, finally, Heroes has black people. Not just black people, mind, but Black People About Whom George Bush Doesn’t Care. Righteous.

Spoilers! I’ve got to pick up the pace, people!

Lair of the Manipubitch

Bennet tells Claire not to date people. She’s invited to join the cheerleading squad, but decides against it. She tells West that she can’t see him anymore, but he tells her that they should go on one last date. They fly up to the Hollywood sign, and Claire is convinced that West is the way to go. She explains to Bennet that she picked up cheerleading again, and that she loves it so much. He melts his anger to tell her that she can cheerlead as long as she doesn’t have a boyfriend.
I yawn, and long to punch West in the face, but I don’t mind too much. Then The Haitian says to Bennet “let’s go to Odessa, Ukraine”, and I thank someone that I won’t have to see his stupid family anymore.

Twins of Love and Destiny

Maya and Alejandro find Sylar collapsed on the road. They reveal their interest in Dr. Suresh, and Sylar begins to tick. When Derek, the stoner with the Nissan Rogueâ„¢, realises that the twins are wanted for murder (seriously that poster looks nothing like them!), he wants to call the police. Sylar has a different call in mind: the call of Derek’s death! Sylar is like the master of the blunt object.
Funny thing is, even after seeing the twins’ power, Sylar still seems to want it.

New Orleans!

Micah is awoken by his Thug Cousin (as far as I know, he doesn’t have a name yet), and it seems like he’s being bullied. Micah’s cousin Michelle works at a fast food place, and is the breadwinner of the family since Grandma Uhura can’t get a job and her mother died in Katrina. Seriously, we get a “Maybe God is punishing me” and a Katrina montage.
Anyway, Michelle sees a tomato being cut into a rose on TV, and replicates that unconsciously at work! Her manager tells her that because she’s anchored to her family, she can’t progress to a higher level of employment.
Then Micah uses his technopathic powers to put on Pay Per View Wrestling, and secretly wishes he was an empath. Michelle sees a swing kick and conveniently the fast food place gets robbed that very evening and she kicks the heck out of the robber! Who gets away. Everyone always gets away on this show.

Incurably Stupidman and Captain Flybeard

Mama Petrelli confesses to the murder of Mr. Nakamura and thinks Parkman to “let it be”. Nathan Petrelli won’t be hearing any of this, so he teams up with Parkman to exonerate his mother and find the true villain! They track down the full photo from whence the target images were extracted, and they see a bunch of dead people, Ned Ryerson (his name is Bob, but he’s forever Ned Ryerson to me). Also included in the photo is (conspicuously not Bennet) … Papa Parkman, who left Parkman when he was thirteen! Parkman asks Molly to track down the people in the photo, but just looking at Papa Parkman sends her into paroxysms of fear, for he is the stalker of dreams and killer of photo people!
Parkman, forever wise, pushes Molly into tracking Papa Parkman … who somehow catches her. Her body remains, but all Matt can hear is Jeff Goldblum’s her distant thought: “Help me!”

It’s simply wonderful that we’ve got precious Katrina montages to make us feel sad, and that we’ve got a good, God fearing, heroine, yet just giving a person a power isn’t enough: they have to be incorporated into the larger story.
“I have a Southern sort of accent,” Michelle no doubt protests, “doesn’t that make me interesting enough?”
I’ll concede that I like Michelle more than West, who has a clear role in Heroes overall, but that’s not saying much because West is a smiley faced idiot dick. I know it’s too much to expect this to mean something straight up, but I don’t see any obvious paths for this to take into relevance. Especially seeing as Michelle is a tomatopath (theory). My friend Casper suggests that she has the same power as Charlie (whom you may recall as the girl with whom Hiro fell in love … and who ruined his power for the second half of the series), but I suggest that being able to remember everything is not the same as being able to do something after having seen it. Just because I remember how something works doesn’t mean I can execute that plan.

I hate West and Claire, and won’t waste my words on them suffice it to say that Claire is being very stupid and has lost all points that she ever might have had. But honestly I can’t remember the last time I liked a lot of these characters, so take what I say with some sort of grain. Bennet is the only person she can trust! Why is she an idiot to the maxtreme?

The rest of the episode was pretty vanilla. It’s like they were acting to continue the story in an interesting way, so I won’t complain on that front. Does anyone on this show not have Daddy issues and a conspicuous lack of mother? (Yes, Claire has a mother, but Sandra Bennet is useless; remember what I said about undoing characters?)

Well, waited so long I’ve got another episode lined up. Will get back to you.