HEROES
Season 2
Volume Two: Generations
Chapter Ten: “Truths and Consequences”
Written by Jesse Alexander
Directed by Adam Kane
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

They may as well have called this one “A Tale of Two Dunces.”

Dunce #1: Wonder Twin Maya, who is pretty much wrapped around Sylar’s grubby little finger.
Sylar undermines the bond between the Wonder Twins, getting Maya to think that Alejandro hates her for killing his cheating bride, and getting her to admit that she really did want to see the white-clad floozy dead.
He even takes a calculated risk to convince Maya that she can control her power without resorting to Alejandro, which he does by getting her riled up, then as he’s wheezing to death, pleads with Maya to help him. She does of course, getting herself to calm down and keeping the scheming Sylar alive.
When Maya gets back to the motel room though, Alejandro’s been a busy little bee and gone on the Internet and fished out the story of Sylar being wanted by the authorities for murdering his mother.
Tearily, Maya confronts Sylar, and he admits to the killing, saying his mother attacked him when she learned about his powers, and an “accident” happened. Well, Maya relates, and she falls right into Sylar’s open arms.
She then tells Alejandro to hit the road, which he does, at first.
But he returns to face Sylar, only to get stabbed and dead.
And Maya, oblivious to Alejandro’s grisly fate, succumbs to the mounting emotions she feels for Sylar. (Eewwww.)
We see the pair again a little later, but for now…

Dunce #2: Peter, who is pretty much wrapped around Kensei/Adam’s grubby (and indestructible) little finger.
Peter tries to get back to the future, and lands in the very moment he and Caitlin are taken in by the containment suit people, but all he returns to the present with is one of those damned evacuation flyers.
When Peter tells K/A about the Shanti Virus—which just so happens will get released the following day!—K/A shows Peter a picture of the earlier generation, and points to the Woman Formerly Known As The Mystery Woman in the Photo Who Looks Like Joanna Cassidy, a.k.a. Victoria Pratt.
K/A says this woman is responsible for the Shanti Virus and she would know where samples of the virus are being kept. So Peter thinks, if I can’t get to the future to save Caitlin, I can try and stop the virus from getting released, thus taking away the danger that threatens Caitlin a year from now.
So K/A and Peter track down VP, who’s pretty shotgun happy, and when she sees that Peter’s working with K/A, she shoots both of them. But of course, both of them can regenerate. D’oh!
To be fair, VP is just about to blow K/A’s head off (no coming back from that!), when Peter knocks her out.
When she comes to, Peter and K/A try and wheedle the information out of her, Peter claiming they want to destroy the virus, VP saying K/A wants to release it, in fact, already tried to 30 years ago.
Dunce #2 will have none of this poppycock, and resorts to reading VP’s mind, and he finds out that the virus strain 138 (the one lethal enough to decimate humanity as we know it) is being kept in the Primatech facility in Odessa, Texas!
K/A unties VP, knowing full well she’ll go for her shotgun, giving him justification to shoot her, just as she’s about to fill Dunce #2 with some buckshot.
K/A and Peter get on down to Odessa, and sashay into Primatech like they own the damned place (despite Bob’s claim of superior security), but who should they meet but…
A little later for that. In the meantime…

The very sick Niki (though she claims she can’t get anyone else sick) goes to New Orleans and has a reunion with Micah, just in time to have Damon (Carlon Jeffrey) steal off with Micah’s backpack, a backpack containing a bunch of Micah’s expensive 9th Wonders issues, and the medal D.L. was awarded for bravery.
Micah smacks Damon a couple of times and wants to go off to get the medal back, but Niki will have none of this costumed gallivanting around.
Monica though, will have some of this costumed gallivanting around.
Taking a cue from St. Joan’s costume, Monica sneaks Micah out of the house to go off and retrieve the backpack.
The Double M make a nice team, but Monica insists Micah stay outside, out of harm’s way. Monica does some Yamikazi, and grabs the backpack, but the hoods arrive. Monica does a Spider-Man, but the dang St. Joan issue falls, and the hoods draw their guns.
We last see Monica being pushed into the hoods’ van, and Micah hightails it outta there.

And in Costa Verde, Mrs. B points a gun at Bob. (Go, Mrs. B!)
Bob’s making a condolence call, with what are supposed to be Mr. B’s ashes in an urn. (We know better, of course.)
The Bennets are distraught, and Bob is apologetic. Bob says they’re free to go and live a normal life now, but Claire rightly points out that her father is dead. There no longer is any “normal.”
Outside, Bob instructs Elle to keep an eye on Claire, so he can learn to trust her again, as Bob’s laying all the blame for the snafu on her. (She may be sociopathic, but Bob’s an a$$hole.)
Even as the Bennets are busy packing for their move, Claire is hurting, and is even willing to resort to having the Haitian delete her memories of Mr. B, so the pain can go away. West, of course, will have none of that kind of talk.
Later, at the impromptu service where Claire scatters her father’s “ashes” into the sea, we have the first time Hayden Panetierre has let me down in a big way in Heroes. There’s just something about the scene and the lines and the performance that rings hollow. And it’s not because I know Mr. B’s not really dead. The scene just doesn’t feel genuine.
Claire then says her goodbyes to West when she sees Elle in a nearby car. (Elle, by the way, is slurping a Slusho!)
Claire confronts Anti-Claire, while everyone else (including Mr. Muggles) watches. The face off ends with Claire smashing her fist into the car window, threatening to go public with her abilities, ‘cause when she does that, it’s Elle and the Company that are gonna be running for cover.

Meanwhile, Mo is there as Mr. B returns to the land of the living. Mo explains that Mr. B’s back because of Claire’s blood, and that now, he’s pretty sure the blood can help to find a cure for Niki.
Mo leaves Mr. B in restraints as he goes off to his lab.
After some off-screen lab work, Mo comes up with a vaccine. Yahoo!
He calls Niki to tell her he’s got the cure, but then someone else calls him: Sylar!
Calling him from: Mo’s apartment! To be precise, Molly’s bedside! (Where the hell is Parkman?!)
Sylar wants Mo back there ASAP, while Dunce #1 grins like the idiot that she is, waiting for the good Doctor Suresh to inject her power away.

And in another meanwhile, Hiro tracks down K/A and discovers his alias of Adam Monroe. Ando finds the record on K/A’s imprisonment, and Hiro ‘ports to that day, the day K/A tried to release the virus.
We see a young Papa Sulu and a young VP, and though VP disgustedly walks away from this madness, Papa S will have none of this “Let’s destroy the virus, for Heaven’s sake” blather, and instead, decides to store strain 138 in Odessa, Texas.
Which is where Hiro goes, just in time to freeze time and confront… Peter!
Hiro says, Outta my way, Dunce #2, that man killed my father.
Peter says, No way, geek.
We wrap the Volume’s penultimate episode as Hiro charges, sword drawn, while Peter charges up an electric ball…

So on the one hand, it’s great to have Adam Kane back in the director’s chair, but this episode feels like it’s moving just a tad too fast for it’s own good.
Yes, we are headed towards the volume’s finale, but still…
Not only are we made to bid adieu to poor Alejandro, but we’re given the genre treat of having Joanna Cassidy as a guest star, only to have her bite the dust as well.
Now, it’s one thing to do that and still have a character that actually registers as a real person, with a sense of history (as with Elya Baskin’s Ivan in Chapter Six). But in this case, a combination of Jesse Alexander’s script and Cassidy’s performance results in a bland character coming on-screen for a few minutes, then shuffling off to Buffalo before we have a chance to get to know her.
Given what’s present in this chapter, the actress playing Victoria Pratt could very well have been any other actress and it really wouldn’t have mattered.
It just feels like a bit of nasty stunt casting, to get a genre name in there so the geekboys (myself included) will get all pumped up for the episode, just to have it all be an annoying anti-climax.

Having said that though, this is, admittedly, a better episode than some of the season’s earliest. And they are labouring under the WGA strike and the less-than-stellar ratings and the fans’ less-than-enthusiastic comments about this sophomore season.
So fine, I’ll go easy, but I do wish some people would quit taking the stupid pills and look really closely at the people they think are their friends…
(I did get a kick out of the Slusho! bit, though.)

(All behind the scene images courtesy of gregbeeman.blogspot.com, except image #5, courtesy of superherohype.com.)

HEROES
Season 2
Volume Two: “Generations”
Chapter Eight: “Four Months Ago…”
Written by: Tim Kring
Directed by: Greg Beeman
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Okay, for an episode designed to answer most of the questions that have piled up since the season kicked off, this one still feels a tad scattershot—and this, with only two scenes of the Wonder Twins, an obligatory intro for Monica and Nana, and no Claire, Mo, Hiro, or Parkman—but hey, I’ll take it if only to get it out of the way, so we can forge on to the end of this volume.

And, in keeping with the spirit of getting things out of the way, we first see the Wonder Twins at Alejandro’s wedding, as he gets married to a girl who’s only too willing to cheat on him on their wedding night.
Already unhappy and suspicious of Alejandro’s blushing (yet skanky) bride, Maya catches her getting hot and heavy with someone other than Alejandro, thus triggering the first disastrous outburst of her power: everyone at the reception dies, except for Alejandro. Maya then runs away, saying she killed them all.
When next we see Maya, she’s become a nun, and Alejandro’s found her after months of being on the run. Everyone thinks she’s poisoned the wedding guests, and Alejandro’s actually turning her over to the policia, when her power kicks in. Alejandro does the “calmate” thing, and he realizes that, as Maya asserts, this is about the both of them, so, off the Wonder Twins run.

From the smallest portion of the episode, to the largest: Peter, and how he ended up amnesiac, in Ireland.
Kirby Plaza: Nathan zooms up into the night sky with a Peter-about-to-go-nuclear. Nathan’s already getting bad burns, and Peter—after a quick explanation as to why he suddenly can’t fly—makes his brother drop him, just before he explodes, blasting Nathan even further.
Before Toasty Nathan can go splat though, Peter (who can now, conveniently enough, fly) catches him and brings him to hospital. Guess who’s there: Bob, and Elle, who zaps Peter unconscious.
When Peter regains consciousness, Bob tells Peter he’s a friend of the elder Petrellis, and that he’s here to help Peter: 30 years ago, they discontinued work on a vaccine to eradicate powers. Now though, they’ve started the research up again, and Bob offers Peter the chance to live life without fear of harming anyone he loves ever again.
Peter bites.
After getting a haircut from the sociopathic Elle (who likes to get kinky with some jolts of electricity), Peter’s kept in a cell, given regular doses of a cocktail designed to suppress powers. One guess as to who’s the occupant of the adjacent cell.
Ding! Adam/Kensei! And wouldn’t you know it, but they’re actually able to communicate with each other! (Given how dangerous Adam is, shouldn’t he have been in solitary confinement? That’s bad enough, but to actually put anyone in the cell next to his! Gross criminal negligence. And they didn’t have the cells wired with surveillance equipment?! Man, I thought Bob was smart…)
So Adam gets to chit-chat with Peter, eventually winning him over and convincing him that Bob’s a baddie. And what seals the deal is when Peter makes a request to see his family, and Bob flat out refuses. To sweeten the get-away plan, Adam says he can cure Nathan’s burns with a small amount of his blood.
So Peter goes off his meds, and five days later, uses D.L.’s phasing ability to walk into Adam’s cell, then to walk on outta there with Adam.

Meanwhile, Monster Face Nathan’s confined to hospital, where Granny P is his constant companion.
Then, in a great scene (perhaps the best of the episode), Heidi—who’s now walking, thank you very much, the late Mr. Linderman—visits, and has an exchange with Granny P in the hall.
Nathan’s told her everything, about the powers, about the plan to let New York go ka-blooey, everything, so Granny P does spin control, and feeds her the same lies she told Peter, about the mental illness that runs in the Petrelli family, and that, quite obviously, Nathan’s got it too.
That scene between Cristine Rose and Rena Sofer blows everything else in this episode away. Granny P’s like this alluring black widow, spinning her web, hypnotic as she gets Heidi to tow the line. There’s such simple, yet awful menace in the way she touches Heidi’s arm…

After the breakout, Peter and Adam pay Nathan a visit, and Adam injects a syringe of his blood into Nathan’s IV. Immediately, Nathan’s burns begin to heal.
But the escapees have to book.
Adam has just given Peter the plane ticket to Montreal, when Elle and the Haitian catch up to them.
Elle zaps Peter in the back, setting his shirt on fire. Elle gives chase to Adam, while the Haitian goes after Peter.
Peter shrugs off the flaming shirt, and runs into a whole bunch of shipping containers. The Haitian corners Peter in one, easily overpowering him, since the Haitian nullifies any powered individuals in his vicinity. And since Granny P helped him once, now the Haitian does his best to return that favour: it’s his attempt to give Peter a new life, by taking away the memories of his old one, and leaving him shirtless, handcuffed, and amnesiac in an otherwise empty shipping container. (Oh, and he places his necklace around Peter’s neck.)
I guess he mush have a lot of faith in Peter, ‘cause, who’s to say that, shirtless, handcuffed, and amnesiac, he wouldn’t have starved to death in that shipping container?
And, since we don’t see any more of Adam, we can only assume he managed to get away from Elle. Or, gasp! The sociopath let him get away.
Also, whether or not Elle is Bob’s daughter is still up in the air.

In another Kirby Plaza aftermath scene, D.L. is saved from the gunshot wound of Season 1’s climax.
Concerned about their lack of medical insurance (Michael Moore, where are you now?), Niki is surprised to learn all the bills have been paid, by… Michael Moore?
No.
Bob.
Bob, who claims to be cleaning up the mess left by Linderman, and who offers Niki the chance to voluntarily enter a facility while she undergoes chemical suppression of her powers. At this point, Bob makes an interesting comment regarding how some people react to the reality of these powers: those unable to cope with the mental strain end up creating other personalities, as with Niki.
Niki’s hesitant to leave her family, but Bob warns the meds have some side effects. So Niki’s a lot logy, and when she can’t even smile at Micah’s 11th birthday—what’s the design on Micah’s cake? The 9th Wonders St. Joan cover!—she stops taking her meds.
And just when she’s about to start a new job at a car dealership, another personality pops up: Gina, who takes over and high-tails it to L.A.
Meanwhile, D.L. takes a job to make Micah proud: fire fighter! (Which was, I guess, preferable to D.L. over Micah’s birthday wish: for his family to be the Fantastic Four Minus One.)
There’s a minor tease at this point, as the audience is made to think, oh, is this how D.L. dies? In the line of duty?
But no.
D.L. tracks “Gina” down, and finds her in a club, where he takes her away from some scuzzy lowlife clubster, who shoots D.L. down in cold blood.
At the wake, we have the New Orleans crew making their brief appearance, where Nana offers Niki her help.
Bob also shows up, and exchanges a Meaningful Glance with Niki.

Okay, let’s see. Other than a few present day scenes: Nathan arriving at the pub in Ireland, the now-virused Niki being released back into society, and Peter and Adam in Montreal (which bookends the chapter, so that ostensibly, the entire episode is Peter using his power to heal the broken synapses so he can remember the past four months; of course, how he is also “remembering” things concerning the Wonder Twins and Niki is beyond me), that’s pretty much the episode.
So, while it does address some questions, it also quite obtrusively, ends up being a narrative bump, off-setting the momentum that Chapter Seven managed to build, as we’re made to sit through an hour of catch-up.
Yes, I absolutely loved the hospital scene between Granny P and Heidi, and yeah, Elle sure is one sick puppy, but the entire scenario of how Adam got to Peter and flipped him (and how Peter ended up in that shipping container) got way too incredulous for me.

But, like I said, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the story as we rush on up to the last three chapters of the volume, and that alternate ending we’ve all been hearing about; see Afterthoughts (22).

(Behind the scene images courtesy of gregbeeman.blogspot.com; TV Guide Heroes cover art [3 of 4] by Michael Turner, courtesy of tvguide.com.)