Oct 20, 2009 11:00 PM
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San Francisco, 8:32 PM
Tue Feb 9
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If Heroes doesn't deliver lesbians, it delivers a roiling mass of carnies who throw knives and wear petticoats to dig ditches. That's what happened last night anyway, when we met the flannel-wearing, chest-hair-revealing cub version of Sylar. Spoilers ahead!
Not only did we get amazing scenes like this one above, where Sylar learns all about the rough, caveman-style lives of carnies fighting over lady meat, but we also got slo-mo Rainbow Brite action AND a mutant of the week. Can you believe how much value Tim Kring packed into every second of the episode called "Tabula Rasa"?
Samuel welcomes Sylar into the carnival by giving him an endless supply of flannel shirts, which Sylar wears unbuttoned to his navel so we can enjoy his swoosh of black chest hair. We've seen so many faces of Sylar: Glasses-wearing, slicked-hair watch geek; early Sylar with a baseball cap; mid-stage Sylar in Latin American mode; good Sylar with cardigans making hot heterosexual moves on electric Elle; sweaty Nylar; Head Sylar (AKA Mylar); and now we've got this carnie version who looks like he walked out of "cub corner" in an issue of Bear Magazine. Let's call him Cub Sylar, shall we? It will make things so much simpler.
So what are the special characteristics of Cub Sylar? He appears to be closer to the good Sylar model, minus the cardigans and electric Elle. He remembers more of Nathan's past than his own, until an intervention from a helpful carnie with the power of "I wear dreadlocks and make you see your memories in the Hall of Mirrors." Cue the clip reel, projected onto a bunch of mirrors showing closeups of hot babes getting their skulls Sylarized and Cub Sylar clutching his head and saying NO NO OMG THAT ISN'T ME NO NO PLEASE GIVE ME A CARDIGAN! So Cub Sylar wants to be good, though his mean powers keep tricking him and jumping out and hurting people.
Samuel wants Classic Evil Sylar back, while Edgar the knife boy wants Sylar to stop hitting on Hot Tattoo. (And given that this is Cub Sylar, shouldn't he be hitting on Edgar anyway?)
Meanwhile, Hiro is dying in Peter and Rainbow Emma's hospital and it's totally sad. Luckily, though, Hiro stops time while little kids are clapping and Rainbow is able to walk through the ultra-slo-mo colors and swirl them with her hands and smile and say for like the forty-millionth time how beeeyoooteeful it all is. Even though most of the scenes with her are about how she wants to turn off her power, which Hiro tells her she should't do - though he might be less enthusiastic if she admitted to him (or anyone) that her rainbow briteness has the power to shred concrete.
So Rainbow Emma is feeling all brite, but Peter is sad due to the dying. So he teleports to HRG's bathroom in a scene that was so painfully sitcommy that I had an auditory hallucination that there was a laugh track. "Oops I teleported to the bathroom!" HAHAAHAHAHAA oh that Peter! HRG conveniently remembers that one time he "bagged and tagged" a kid with healing powers named Jeremy. So it's off to see Jeremy so Peter can steal his powers and heal Hiro. But when they arrive at Jeremy's, it turns out that King Jeremy the Wicked rules his world and mom and dad are dead along with every plant in Jeremy's front yard. How did healer boy become a reference to a Pearl Jam song that is older than he is? Let's find out in a quick mutant-of-the-week subsubsubplot, because we don't have enough crap going on in this freakin episode already.
Apparently healers can become killers when they "control life force" or some crap like that. Ta da! And now HRG has done something nice because he teaches the kid to heal again after the kid shoots Peter. Also, he shows the kid how to make it look like his parents were killed by carbon monoxide instead of Jeremy's lameass life force power.
But doh! Just as Peter returns to the hospital in full healer mode, Hiro teleports back three years to a better time on this show - back when he was dating Charlie the hot waitress who died. His last mission will be to save Charlie! And now nobody can go get him because Peter is stuck with stupid life force powers that kill people half the time anyway.
Are things any better over at the carnival? Not really. Samuel tricks Cub Sylar into helping to murder the cop who was after him. And Hot Tattoo keeps mackin on Sylar, making Edgar throw knives randomly at things. Samuel keeps muttering to Edgar that when Classic Sylar finally returns they will completely control him mwhaahaah. Also, Samuel welcomes Cub Sylar into "the family" by dressing him in white linen and holding his head under water. Huh? So is the carnival a version of the Mafia, Magneto's army, or Baptist Camp? So confused.
In summary, here were ten major minuses in this episode:
1. No lesbians.
2. Cub chest hair and flannel invoked without any Bears or Bear-related lovin.
3. No dirt powers used at any point.
4. Dearth of murderous socialites.
5. I still haven't watched last night's House.
6. Lame mutant of the week made more lame due to Pearl Jam reference.
7. The phrase "boys will be boys" was used outside the context of a gay porn movie.
8. Rainbow Brite + small children = WTF o_O
9. House of Mirrors terrifies Sylar with a clip episode
10. Baptism
On the plus side, somebody is going to be killed soon.
Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.
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