In "The Five Stages," he can't. Which is just one of its many, many problems as an episode. Unfortunately it was also an episode where we finally get to take a good, long look at the carnival and it's so painfully pasteurized that you'll want to inject your eyes with heroin just to feel normal. So what's brewing among the carnies, anyway? Well, now that Hot Tattoo has told swordy Edgar that Samuel killed his brother, and Edgar escaped with help from Hiro, Samuel needs a new right-hand man. He picks a guy who has about a zillion right hands because he's a "multiplier," which means he can make a ton of copies of himself. In addition, this adds further evidence to the idea that every single power on Heroes was ripped off from X-Men. Honestly, they can't pay somebody to come up with a few cool, interesting powers that we haven't seen before?

Anyway Samuel is playing around with MultiBoy now, and asks him to deliver a message to HRG and the other Primatech emeriti. He also starts lecturing everybody within earshot about how awful the world is, and speculating about whether "we are the last generation on Earth." This lecture eventually merges spongily with a mishmash of Magneto-isms about how the mutants should live proudly out in the open (or at least in the scrubby fields of Southern Ohio) and have a homeland (in Southern Ohio). I think we all know what this mega-quake-causing dude is leading up to. MAKE US YOUR CARNIE RULERS OR WE'LL SHOVE THESE TECTONIC PLATES UP YOUR ASS.

Meanwhile, inexplicably, Hot Tattoo is still sucking up to Samuel even though she's said she knows what he did. I guess that's because her Sprint-sponsored daughter wants to stay in the carnival.

Then, in the only interesting subsubsubplot of the episode, Lauren comes over to HRG's place and he thinks he's on a date. When he confesses that he got married "before the sexual revolution," so he has no idea how to act, Lauren suddenly gets all weird and says, "Who said anything about sex?" Excuse me, missy, but I have a lot to say about you having sex with HRG because you guys are the only interesting couple on the show and you've been totally flirting with him. But OK, fine, I guess it's non-sexual flirting. I can accept that. But NO! I can't accept it because then when HRG gets a call and has to go to work, Lauren gets all up in his face and whiny about how he's canceling their date. WTF??? Are we on a date or not? And if we ARE on a date, then don't get all mean about how HRG used the word "sexual revolution." Is her mutant power killing anybody who has sex with her? Because if it's not, then she needs to be a little bit nicer when her DATE uses a phrase that contains the word sex. What is my point here? Don't fuck with my ship.

But in the meantime, on the date that might not be a date, Lauren isn't afraid to use all her CIA powers to help HRG use a phone to locate Claire and the carnival on Google maps. Did you know that SPRINT CAN USE TEH GOOG? Thankfully, Heroes has told you. Also, again with the bad product placement - why would you want to buy a phone that allows off-duty CIA agents to track you recreationally on Google? Isn't that bad somehow? My point ultimately is that Lauren and HRG are sublimating all that ambiguous sexual stuff into engaging in an extremely illegal game of stalk-the-Claire.

But that's just nothing compared to how Sylar and Peter are sublimating THEIR sexual tension. Oh my goodness. We join our buxom boys right after Mama Petrelli tells Peter that he hasn't entered the fifth stage of grief - you know, the one where you realize that your dead brother has been reconstituted as a mindfrak inside the head of a serial-killing mutant. So Peter, always the overachiever, decides to leapfrog right to the seventh stage of grief, where you take the powers of Rene the Haitian so that you can turn off Sylar's powers, beat the crap out of him, breathe heavily into his face while you lie on top of him dripping sweat and other bodily fluids, and tell him to give himself "body and soul" to your brother Nathan. Oh yeah, that stage of grief. We've all been there.

The fight scene between the newly-enhottened Peter and the always-smokin Sylar is probably the greatest moment in homoeroticism since I watched that Billy Herrington video. The fact is that Sylar has gone from being an extraneous character who should have died at the end of season 1, to being a cocktease for every person who wishes he would just have a giant gay mutant moment with Peter and then go around using his powers to turn every other hot guy on the show gay. Maybe they could bring back Invisible Man Christopher Eccleston for a Very Special Sylar Mutant Gay Episode. Seriously, how are we supposed to watch this "we are using wrestling as an excuse to give you some softcore homotastic moments" and not feel frustrated?

I'll tell you how: First of all, the lameness; Second of all, the drooly, dorky look on Peter's face when the homogasm is over (see video). Let's begin by investigating the aforementioned lameness. Why would Peter be so stupid as to believe that Nathan is really inside Sylar, or that even if he WERE, that Sylar isn't faking letting him out so that Peter will get all shmoopy with him? More to the point: WHY DOES PETER BELIEVE THAT SYLAR HAS BECOME NATHAN AGAIN? We don't know. The double lameness is that Peter doesn't kill Sylar when he has a chance, especially given that he should know Sylar is in there AND given that he never really liked Nathan anyway. Seriously, what is this, the millionth time that somebody had a chance to kill Sylar and didn't?

And as for the tragic edge-of-the-roof goodbye suicide moment, whoa. Peter does NOT look good from that angle. And of course as soon as Sylar falls out of range of Rene's powers, he reSylarizes and looks mega-hot while Peter is still in crumple-face mode. I am going to have to take back everything I said about Peter rehottening, because that scene just drained all the sex out of every relationship on this show, and I think we can probably blame it for making Lauren not want to jump HRG's bones right away.

As if all this wasn't awful enough, Claire decides to stay at the carnival for a while after watching some meathead non-mutant beat up on Samuel - which is all part of Samuel's plan to make himself appear sensitive even though he's a dirt-loving protofascist. Turns out the meathead even has a good reason for punching Sammy, since the carnival's business model is using mutant powers to rip people off. I love the idea that Claire thinks the carnival is where "we can all be ourselves" - which means cheating and lying to regular folk for cash. During the carnival scenes, which Gretchen correctly identifies as a "bad Fellini movie," I kept wishing the Jim Rose Sideshow would come in and beat the shit out of everybody. Especially when Hot Tattoo gives Claire a "reading," and a tattoo of Claire shows up on her back over the words "indestructible girl."

Claire laughs and says, "So I'm going to have a circus act?" And Hot Tattoo is all, "no, that isn't your future - it's your desire." WTF kind of power is "I show you your desire represented as a circus freak act"? And also, that doesn't explain what she showed Samuel at the beginning of the season - people who were clearly in his future, not his "desire." Unless he "desires" Hiro and Sylar (which could be kind of awesome, once I wash that image of Peter's face out of my neocortex).

There is even a fuckwitty scene of Claire integrating into the carnie life by telling a bunch of carnie kids a story about a very special frog who wanted to be special. But then the thing that really clinches her wish to join up is running into the puppetmaster guy who mind-raped her and her mother and tried to murder them. But now he's better because he's a carnie who cheats people out of small amounts of cash? Why would she want to join a group where people use their powers to mess with unwitting tourists and her former mind-rapist is hanging out having a blast?

Could it be that she's persuaded by Samuel's dumb speech about how families are about love, which is why the carnies need to recruit as many mutants as possible to come live in their "a homeland." Are the mutants supposed to be Jews now? Wandering in Southern Ohio until they find their homeland? Seriously? Wow, I have just discovered that my mutant power is an ability to slap my palm into my face 40 thousand times per second.

Tune in next year when nobody has sex and Sylar remains completely irrelevant unless he has some gay and/or "questioning" mutant experiences. Seriously - Zach Quinto needs hot mutant boy action that doesn't end in scrunchyface tears.

For some reason, everything related to Claire is great this season. Her lesbotic leanings brought in a cool new character, Gretchen, along with the chance that we might actually see some homo action on this rather straightlaced series. Her father, HRG, has left the mutant oppression business and is trying to find himself, along with his long-lost special agent partner/proto-lover Lauren (another great character). Meanwhile, Claire's mom has found a boyfriend who loves dogs as much as she does. And lucky for us, all these plot developments make for a beautifully awkward Thanksgiving dinner at HRG's apartment.

What I thought was genuinely fun about this scene, excerpted for you above, is the way it seamlessly combined an ordinary moment of family meltdown with HRG's evil agent past and Claire's mutant powers. This is Heroes at its best, speculating about how extraordinary people continue to lead rather ordinary lives. Even better is when Gretchen finally shows up, flirting ensues, and the two girls secretly decide to roadtrip out to Samuel's carnival with a compass that Claire stole from HRG. Lesbotic road trip with carnie action, here we come!

And then there was the Petrelli family dinner, which began with scary Mama P having her servants bring a bunch of prepared food to Peter's apartment where Nylar (AKA Body Sylar, Head Sylar, and Head Nathan) are brooding broodingly about being all screwed up by Mama. All the emo ends quickly when Sylar returns in an insanely cheesy burst of lightning and eats an entire pumpkin pie (but leaves the crust! WTF?). So now Sylar is back, but Nathan is still somehow able to fight him. In fact, by the end of the episode Nathan has emerged again to take over Body Sylar. The whole thing was a perfect scenario for a family controlled by scary Mama, whose sons are just pawns in a game so complicated we've completely lost track of it.

The episode was capped off by a lovely moment with the carnie family, where scary Samuel toasts everybody menacingly and Sprint sponsored a subplot where Hot Tattoo's hot daughter is in danger of becoming Samuel's little plaything. While everybody prepares turkey with their mutant stove powers, Hiro and Hot Tattoo sneak off into the past and witness (bum bum bum!) Samuel murdering his brother! It turns out his brother had given HRG that compass so he could find Samuel and reel him in.

Before Samuel shoots a rock into his brother's neck, he also reveals that Samuel's power could move mountains and cities and "kill millions," which gets our boy pretty excited. "I knew I was missing out on something!" he cries. Yeah, putting on eyeliner and black nailpolish all day is nothing compared to making whole cities do the pogo. So now Hot Tattoo and Hiro know the truth about Samuel's brother, and Hot Tattoo told Edgar too. But Edgar isn't really that smart, especially when he's not wearing his Sith gear. So he jumps up at the T-day table and accuses Samuel of doing the dirty deed, and then Samuel counter-accuses him of doing it.

You've gotta love a carnie Thanksgiving where the guys argue over who killed their brother. Meanwhile everybody else is all "this is aaaaawkward" and tries to pretend the mutant stuffing is super tasty. When Samuel tries to hurl rocks into Edgar, Hiro stops time and rescues the speedy knife-thrower. Then he puts the smackdown on Samuel and is like, "You need me. I'm not going to do anything for you until you tell me where Charlie is." I like Hiro with a backbone. But then one of the carnies does a brain-mangle on Hiro that is supposed to make him easier to control but instead causes him to disappear. Samuel's plans are just not going well! That's just what happens when you get the carnies together for family dinner - fratricide, time-hopping, dirt-hurling, and mind-scrambling. It's a fine American tradition.

What I like about Heroes is that the writers are never afraid to give us some gratuitous semi-nudity. And where Claire is concerned, this nudity has to have lesbotic overtones. In the case of "Brother's Keeper," overtones were helpfully supplied by Tracy. Our favorite political slut freezy girl starts having ice power panic attacks and she races over to HRG's place to get help. But she finds only Claire, doing her laundry. Of course Claire decides to best cure is to stick Tracy in a warm bath and make her some tea. Which sort of backfires, as you can see in the clip we've shared with you here.

Even though Tracy snaps off Claire's frozen foot, the two ladies wind up in a sodden pile of girl-bonding, drinking tea together and talking about how "it's hard out there for girls like us." Could it be . . . LESBOTIC DOUBLE-MEANING? I choose to believe that it is. I don't care what you Heroes-hating naysayers think. Heroes has a lot of deep meanings, and that's why it's such an important show for people who believe in social progress and girls taking baths together.

Anyway, after all the wetness and ice and stuff, Claire tells Tracy that maybe "her body is telling her" to go become a carnie. And we all know how smart it is to listen to your body. That's why the episode ends with Tracy meeting up with Samuel so she can join his carnies.

I never thought I'd be grateful to see Suresh back in the picture, but I was. Even though he seems to have inexplicably lost his Jeff Goldblum powers. Samuel the megacarnie with dirt powers apparently killed Suresh nine weeks ago, but now he's kidnapped waitress Charlie so he can force Hiro to go back in time and grab a movie from Suresh before the whole murder thing. Turns out Suresh found an old movie of his father's from when he was working in that mutant concentration camp run by the US government. And the movie reveals - ta dum! - that Samuel was actually born in the concentration camp, and that his powers go beyond dirt. Apparently there is a measurable amount of energy generated by "powers," and Samuel can harness that energy to give himself mega-dirt powers. Maybe that means he can do things like move the Earth out of orbit or something? I have no idea. But if this show suddenly turns into Space 1999 with Earth instead of the Moon, let's just say I told you so.

So anyway nine weeks ago stupid Suresh leaves his hot girlfriend back in Chennai to go hunting for Samuel - WHY? - and discovers that Samuel's older brother has been hiding these mega-dirt powers from little bro all his life. Probably because all Samuel does is wear glittery black denim vests and eyeliner. Obviously, he's just too glam for mega-dirt. Unfortunately, Samuel overhears his brother telling Suresh all this, and promptly goes after Suresh to get the old movie showing how he caused a giant earthquake when he was born among all the mutants whose powers he harnessed.

Suresh has burned the film, so Samuel does the old Magneto-with-rocks thing and kills Suresh - except luckily Hiro has traveled back in time and put a bullet-proof vest on Suresh! Which he technically shouldn't need because he has spider superpowers, right? Wait, did he lose his powers? I can't even remember anymore, but I'm sure you'll tell me smugly in the comments and then add something about how I always get details about the show wrong.

Here's one thing I don't have wrong: Samuel stopped wearing the sparkly vest after his brother "died accidentally" (probably from a dirt-related injury!). Why did they have to take that vest away from him?

Probably for the same reason that I have to tell you now about what happened to Head Sylar, Head Parkman, Body Parkman, and Body Sylar. And that reason is that I did something bad back when I used to eat people in the Middle Ages and I'm still atoning for it by becoming a detective in Toronto. And writing Heroes recaps.

So let me try to sum up the Sylar/Parkman, Head/Body thing in a sentence, just for fun. Peter and Body Sylar heal dying Body Parkman/Head Parkman/Head Sylar, then Head Sylar touches Body Sylar and lands back in his own head. I am glossing over a long scene which is supposed to be full of tension but is really not. The upshot is that everybody is back in their own damn body, though Body Sylar has a Head Sylar because he's still got Nathan occupying most of his body or something.

Throughout this whole ordeal I kept wishing that Head Parkman would wear a sexy red dress like Head Six did in Battlestar. It would make everything so much easier to deal with.

Also, THERE WAS ACTUALLY A GOOD LINE IN THIS EPISODE. At one point when Fake Nathan is whining about how weird it is to be in Body Sylar with a Head Sylar rattling around too, he says to Peter, "Nathan is just some random thoughts in a mass murderer's head." Yes, that is a great sentence.

Plus we really have no idea what is up with the whole Nathan thing, but since Adrian Pasdar got fired from Heroes I'm assuming that Nathan isn't long for this plotline.

My favorite moment after the whole Head/Body resolution for Parkman was when he called his ex-wife and baby mommy, and was like, "Hey remember how I had this guy in my head who was making me act insane? Well now he's gone so I can come home honey!"

Basically there are still a bunch of things that remain unresolved. When will Body Sylar give in to Head Sylar? Is Head Sylar actually inside Peter, because a Sparkly Thing passed between Body Sylar and Peter? What will Tracy be doing for Samuel? When will Hiro ever see Charlie again, and why did Hiro stick Suresh into a mental hospital for safekeeping? When will Sprint realize that advertising their phones in a series of webisodes about how Samuel abuses teenage girls might not be a good way to get people to buy their crappy product?

Tune in next week when Sprint phones bring all the mutants together to become a giant, homicidal megaentity with geotagging powers.

Last night we caught up with two lame subsubplots (Head Parkman and Rainbow Brite) as well as the greatest subsubplot that never was (Claire's Lesbian Quest).

So let's dispense with the whole Head Parkman/Head Sylar/Nobody Actually Gets Any Head deal. Reach back into your memories, and you'll recall that this whole narrative ordeal began when Parkman erased Sylar's identity from Sylar's body. He made Sylar Body think it was Nathan, but unfortunately the unintended consequence was that Parkman grew a Head Sylar who made him see things and tormented him with endless quips when Parkman was trying to have sex with his wife and stuff like that.

There was a whole long thing where Parkman thought he could banish Head Sylar by getting totally drunk, but then when he passed out Sylar took over completely. So now Parkman is actually Sylar with a Head Parkman. Which gets really confusing, especially when we keep seeing Sylar in the same suit that Parkman is wearing. In the scene above, you can see that Head Parkman is trying to put the bitchslap on Body Sylar, which I think might be the only moment in the entire show when Parkman has gotten even a tiny bit toppy. But then Body Sylar kills the dude who is trying to help them fix their car, and threatens to kill more if Parkman won't tell him how he got to be Head Sylar in the first place.

At some point during this whole mess, Body Sylar informs Head Parkman, "The world is my hostage." This is the kind of brilliant line that keeps all of us coming back week after week to laugh in this show's face.

Finally Head Parkman caves and tells Body Sylar everything while they're in the diner where Charlie used to work. But then Head Parkman manages to distract Body Sylar into writing "I have a gun and am going to kill everybody in here" on his napkin, then throwing it at the waitress before they leave the diner. Instantly, the cops arrive and shoot them after Parkman is all "Yeah I'm willing to die." OK let's think about this realistically, people. A guy is at your diner, and you see that he's written "I have a gun and will kill" AFTER HE LEAVES. So the guy is GONE. Do you call the cops, or just say "Wow what a weirdo." Also, if you do call the cops, do they really come out based on a napkin threat that some dude THREW AWAY?

Anyway, my point is that Body Parkman, Body Sylar, Head Parkman, AND Head Sylar have all been shot a whole bunch of times. Will they live????

I will leave it to you to puzzle out the answer to that one, because we need to think hard about Emma AKA Rainbow Brite and Peter. So our pal Emma's special wall-smashing rainbow music power has gone back to being just rainbowy. We learn snoringly that the reason why she left medical school is that her nephew drowned because she couldn't hear him while she was babysitting.

Meanwhile, Peter's glances across the room have inspired her to start doing emergency medical procedures on people and playing the piano all the time at work. Doesn't she have a job doing paperwork? Isn't the hospital sort of weirded out that their med school dropout administrator is sewing people up and opening up holes in their lungs or whatever? Apparently not - I guess the hospital is so short-staffed that they just figure it's better for admins to do medical procedures.

It's all OK, though, because Emma has now decided to go back to medical school. And you know, all she has to do is decide that and she's magically back in medical school! That's how med school works.

While Emma finesses her readmission to med school, Peter is using his healing power to save lives right and left. But healing powers drain his energy and give him headaches! So there's a PRICE TO PAY. If this show is going to keep reheating its old cliches, I'm just going to order the Tahitian pancakes. WTF are Tahitian pancakes anyway?

Which brings me to the one point of light in my otherwise dreary TV existence. Claire's lesbian subsubplot. Which ended in the lamest possible way this week. OK, I take that back. It could have been worse: Gretchen could have died, or Claire could have said, "I really love you but can't have sex so even though I want to be your lovemuncher I am going to pull a Twilight on your ass." Instead, we're supposed to believe that the formerly brave and intrepid Gretchen has decided to drop out of college and go home just because of one teeny attack from the invisible girl. Seriously? She's been total Scary Google Chick with Brave Lesbo Feelings up to now, but when the going gets weird she's weirded out? I call shenanigans.

Then we get even more character motivation shoehorned into this munged subsubplot when Samuel pays Claire a visit and reveals that HRG shot Becky the invisible girl's dad and that Becky is damaged as a result. She wants revenge on HRG, which is why she's killing Claire's friends, which sort of kind of makes sense if you do a brain squint. But of course he's playing a DEEP GAME, and in fact even though he pretends to be all concerned about Becky and eventually shoots her with a taser to stop her, he's actually manipulating Claire.

Also, he gives that same speech he's been giving every episode about how family accepts you for who you are and his family is the carnies and they need to stay hidden. Oh and also, just to fill in more plotholes (perhaps one of his dirt powers is the ability to fill plot holes?) it turns out that Danko killed Samuel's brother and one of the main reasons why the carnies need to move all over the place is that they are fleeing HRG. So, instant history between all our characters! Just add some disappearing lesbians, and you've got the lamest ending to the best subsubplot on Heroes this season.

"Once Upon a Time In Texas" was about the most important item on Hiro's "things to fix before I die" agenda. And that item was Charlie, the cute waitress whose life he tried to save from Sylar three years ago by traveling back in time 6 months. This time, Hiro traveled back three years to the moment when Sylar ate her brains, in another attempt to save her life. Then Hiro has the great idea to freeze time and pack Sylar away in the baggage bin on a Greyhound bus outside the diner where Charlie works.

Up until that moment, things had been going so well! Hiro was acting like a grownup (more or less) and HRG of the past was having a heretofore unknown office romance with a fellow agent. I liked the HRG retcon, where he has a budding romance with a competent, tough woman who is his equal and with whom he can talk about anything - unlike his family, whose minds he wipes on a regular basis.

But then Hiro once again used his powers in a way that once again reminded me why this show makes me regularly leave weird sweaty marks on my TV screen where I bang my inflamed head against it. (See clip.) First of all, he can stop time. SO WHY NOT JUST FREAKIN RIP SYLAR'S HEAD OFF WHILE HE IS FROZEN?! Second, if Hiro is going to inexplicably avoid the face-rippage, why not contain Sylar in a way that makes sense? How will a little duct tape and a bus stop Sylar from eating Charlie's brains? This is Hiro of the future - he knows how deadly Sylar can be. And yet this is his big solution? The thing he's done despite knowing it will push him closer to death than he already is? I am completely mystified, people.

Not surprisingly, Sylar escapes from Hiro's lameass trap, so then Hiro saves Charlie's life a new way. First, he sends his 3-year-old self back in time 6 months, so that he can fall in love with Charlie and not alter the paranormal romance timeline. (When you fuck with paranormal romance narratives, things really get ugly.) Then he convinces Sylar to fix the aneurism in Charlie's brain by promising to reveal lots of neat things about the future. Why Sylar falls for this is as mysterious as why Hiro continually does not freeze time and kill Sylar.

So Charlie is saved and Hiro says something like, "In the future you will be powerful but all of us will band together and destroy you and nobody will shed a tear." Oh boo freakin hoo. You think Sylar cares if anybody sheds a tear for him?

Then Charlie gets all whiny about how Hiro should have let her die, which is lame. It just feels really forced, like OK we get that she doesn't like that he cuts deals with serial killing madmen, but why would she whine about "why did you save my life when other people die?" He SAVED HER LIFE. That is an unqualified good thing, no matter how random fate is and blah blah blah. So there's a lot of narrative flailing that eventually leads to Hiro and Charlie making up (duh). But then! Evil carnival Samuel sticks Charlie into some nethertime region using the last juice from his dying time travel carnie pal.

Big reveal: Samuel has been trying to use Hiro all along, but has until now inexplicably not made any direct effort to control Hiro except through passive-aggressive mumblings about "changing the past." How was Hiro even supposed to know Samuel wanted anything from him, anyway? And why does he need to imprison Charlie? Anyway, the point is that Hiro gets all worked up and non-kidlike again, which is such a huge relief that you don't even mind when HRG's potential office fling gets her mind wiped so she'll forget about her crush on HRG. It's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind plus some episode of The Hulk show from the 70s.

Will Hiro help Samuel change the past (which has something to do with a glimpse we get of a dead Suresh) in order to rescue Charlie from the nethertime? Unfortunately we won't find out next week, because it's back to Head Sylar - or Head Matt . . . or something.

Also the episode had the greatest title ever: "Strange Attractors."

Before we could get to Claire's lesbian subsubsubplot, which is actually getting genuinely good because it's showing us a smart, competent side of Claire we never saw before, we had to endure the crappy King Jeremy the Wicked subsubsubplot. Remember that last week, HRG went out to find a healer kid named Jeremy he'd once "bagged and tagged." But it turned out that Jeremy had grown a flippy power, where his touch could heal or kill. And he'd accidentally killed his parents.

This little Jeremy detour was inserted into the story so HRG could try unsuccessfully to assuage his guilt for ruining so many mutants' lives. Turns out Jeremy is an unpopular kid in town, and that the cops want to hold him because he's so different and writes about death and other emo things in his journal. HRG argues with these close-minded cops who are in fact correct that Jeremy murdered his parents. Then he calls icy Tracy, who pretends to be Jeremy's aunt and pulls political strings to get him released (how her NYC connections would help in a rural Southern town is never explained). But then boo hoo! Jeremy feels so bad about being a murderer that he decides to do the old murder-hands on somebody who is mean to him as he's leaving jail.

So Jeremy is put back in jail, HRG feels guilty some more, and Tracy storms off in a huff. But not before Samuel the dirt power man can appear and whisk Tracy to the carnival (thus adding "carnival whisking" to his improbable dirt powers list). He tells her that she should bring Jeremy to the carnival, which is "home" and will allow him to be with "family." Tracy scoffs at the idea that being a carnie is a good fate for King Jeremy the Wicked, but takes a compass from Samuel anyway. Boy does she feel bad about turning down Samuel the carnie whisker when she comes back and finds out that two of the corrupt cops have chained Jeremy to the back of a truck and dragged him through town until his face is a road-eaten skull. It seems like Jeremy basically wanted to die, since he has a chance to kill the guys who are about to turn him into red asphalt but doesn't do it.

HRG has another emo notch in his glasses now that he's learned Some People Can't Be Saved Even When You Pull Strings.

In one of those Sprint-sponsored minisubsubsubplots about Hot Tattoo at the carnival, we also learn that the carnival can be easily found when you mail people geotagged photographs of the carnival from your cell phone. Carnies, beware. The geotags will give you away every time! So don't geotag. Thank you for this sponsored message.

But let's catch up with psychic Matt and his Head Sylar, shall we? There is an essentially flawless scene of utterly mad cheesiness where Sylar takes over Matt's body and humps wifey (see above). Then he munches an apple and talks about forbidden fruit. Insane with jealousy that Head Sylar is making it with his lady, Matt spills the beans to wifey and says he has somebody trapped in his head and she has to take their kid and leave. While wifey is gone, Matt discovers that guzzling alcohol makes Head Sylar weak, then disappear.

We get this long, goofily disturbing scene where Matt is muttering "make those voices go away" while swigging shots of tequila. As bad as that was, at least he wasn't seeing rainbows, right? But THEN the real switcheroo happens, because (as Sylar says proudly to Matt) "while you blacked out, I slipped right in." So the whole drunk thing was a ruse to totally take over Matt's body! Now Sylar has a Head Matt. And wifey thinks Matt is all better but it's really Sylar who is controlling him.

There is also some really bad quippery thrown in where Sylar says stuff to Matt like, "Why don't you accept your power?" Is this really the issue, here? Let's just stick with "I hate you because you sucked me out of my own brain and I want my body back." Isn't that enough of a conflict? Do the writers have to add in this bogus, X-Men ripoff conflict of "I embrace my powers but you don't"?

Luckily, Claire is starting to rock my world, and I'm not being entirely sarcastic when I say that. First of all, the show isn't taking the easy way out with her budding lesbo relationship. She doesn't reject girl-lovin roomie Gretchen out of hand - carefully saying she "doesn't know" what to do. And then there's a scene where she goes seriously lesbotastic with Gretchen in their dark dorm beds. That's right - she asks Gretchen to PROCESS FEELINGS with her. Nothing is hotter than lesbian relationship processing. Unfortunately, the psycho sorority girls bust into their room just as the processing is getting really carnal. They're being kidnapped for "hell week," forced to look for "treasures" in a creepy slaughterhouse while wearing skimpy pajamas.

Of course it's all part of the invisible sorority girl's scheme to kill Gretchen and isolate Claire just the way "Uncle Samuel" wants. And that's where things get cool, because Claire is anti-useless and figures out that a mutant is stalking them and trying to kill Gretchen. And she ALSO figures out that she "needs" Gretchen after she admits to being a virgin.

That's right, if this were Battlestar Galactica that revelation would have been followed by a Quiznos commercial where a voice would intone, "IT HAS BEEN REVEALED - CLAIRE IS A VIRGIN." And then somebody would take a giant bite of a really drippy sandwich with lots of curly sprouts on it.

After all that, I figured Heroes would do the usual TV thing and kill of Gretchen. Just as Claire is all "yes I want you to munch my sprout sandwich," invisible girl would gouge her lungs out with a meathook or something. But no! She tries to do it, but Claire gets invisigirl with a hook first! You know what this means, right? Claire is going to lose her virginity to a girl!!!! Despite the drunken Matt and the "sliding in" Sylar stuff, this Claire-the-competent-bisexual subsubsubplot made this one of the best episodes of Heroes all season. And not just because of the scene where Claire and Gretchen are stuffed in the trunk of a car after the sorority "kidnapping" and almost kiss. It's because I like seeing Claire be an action hero instead of a whiny kid or daddy's "Claire Bear."

There was even a cool dirt power moment that made sense. Samuel visits Jeremy's home town and converts the courthouse and jail to dust in revenge for the whole red asphalt thing.

So, to sum up, here were the plusses in this episode:

1. Emo kid eliminated
2. Head Sylar slides into a blacked-out Matt
3. Lesbian processing
4. Dirt powers that made sense almost erased the badness of "carnival whisking" power
5. Lesbian bonding
6. Invisible sorority meathook fights
7. I got to take Tuesday off which is why I didn't have to post this recap until today
8. Geotagging can reveal the location of mutant carnivals which is why Sprint phones suck
9. HRG asks Tracy if they can have closety mutant sex and she says no because it would be better if they could just be themselves openly
10. I totally made #9 up sort of

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.

In this episode, called "Hysterical Blindness," Nylar finally turns back into Sylar (except without his memory) after getting captured by the cops and interrogated by a nice doctor who wants to help him until she figures out that he's some guy named Gabriel who murdered his mom. There are lots of scenes of Sylar's face in closeup looking sweaty and greasy and confused. And - let's face it - kind of hot. But only because it reminds you of when he was Spock, who was genuinely hot. For like twenty quillionth time, Sylar rediscovers his powers after getting whumped upside the brain and forgetting that he's super evil boy. And then he breaks a bunch of shit and gets away, partly with the help of the nice doctor.

Why does the nice doctor help him? Maybe because he turns those brown spocky peepers on her and says, "I didn't kill anybody!" Which is sort of true, since he's forgotten killing them. So Sylar runs off into the woods.

Long before that, however, we got to see what breakfast is like at the Carnival. A lady lays her superhot hands on a waffle iron and makes blueberry mutant waffles, which Samuel says are his favorite. Then Samuel sits down at the table, munches on some seriously ugly, wrinkled sausages, and tells his carnies that by nightfall "the table will be full." He's going to get another mutant to join them. Everybody looks nervous except for the old people and kids, who are focused on the sausages.

Then we see the inexplicable dirt power scene, where Samuel goes up into the hills and starts sniffing dirt and talking to Hot Tattoo about how he has "a feeling" (a dirt feeling?) that they will get a new mutant pal. As you can see in the clip below, she's sort of pissed about that. But he keeps digging around in the dirt and insisting everything will sprout or something.

Maybe you geniuses can explain to me WTF is going on here. He has prophetic dirt powers? And what the hell is he doing with all those holes in the dirt? Plus, we still don't really understand his whole tattoo power with Hot Tattoo. Why does dirt power equal total mega power?

The WTF feelings about bizarre and/or stupid powers will only grow larger when you contemplate the rainbow bright subsubsubplot, which metastasized into a scene that I won't inflict on your vulnerable eyes. So Peter saves Emma the synaesthesia chick when she almost walks into a truck, and then he sucks up her power. Suddenly instead of running really fast he's seeing special effects from Xanadu jumping out of anything that makes a loud noise. (Please, please, please give us an episode where Peter and Emma go rollerskating together and see colors zooming out of their skates as an Olivia Newton John song plays in the background kthxbai!)

Anyway so Peter is hanging out in the hospital where Emma has had an annoying encounter with her mom, played by Nurse Ratchet (yes she really is). And he sees Emma sitting in on a music lesson with a bunch of little kids, whose songs are creating bee-yoo-tee-fulz rainbowzes all floaty woaty scrotumy in the air. They make a rainbow love connection, and spend almost five minutes of my valuable freaking time playing piano together and watching the stupid floaty rainbow crap.

There are hints that this rainbow crap may prove useful - or at least destructive. Emma goes home and starts playing her cello, making rainbows appear everywhere. But then some the rainbows stick to the wall and make it crack! Does she have destructo-synaesthesia? It's actually more common than you might think.

But let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?. This episode is the beginning of lesbianism on Heroes - not just one kiss, but an entire LESBIAN ARC, okay? Last night was only the beginning. And what a great beginning it was - already with the creepy Googling, sorority house speed dating, and invisible sorority sisters committing murder! Srsly OMG.

Here's how it all goes down (except for a few things that I may have embellished). Claire and proto-lovemuncher Gretchen are sipping chocolate milk together in the dorm dining hall and Claire is smiling in this totally horny way so Gretchen says something like, "What kinds of girl love are you thinking about, smiley?" And Claire says, "I'm just so happy to be a normal, happy college co-ed lesbian on the prowl." Just then another hottie sits down with them and says, "Hey girls, want to rush my totally sexed up sorority?" Then she gives Claire this smokey, meaningful look and says, "Your MOM was a member of our sorority you know." Seriously, she totally goes to the MILF place like right off the bat. I was surprised too, but not in a bad way.

So Claire begs Gretchen to come along with her to the sorority speed date night (see clip above) and they put on their sexy purple outfits and check out their future special friends. Later, they even go to a sorority party where Claire bonds with other hot cheerleaders about how cheerleading was awesome except for the uniforms - if they could only have cheered naked in a sorority she would have been into it. But then! Gretchen gets jealous and throws a giant spiked flagpole at Claire! And later Claire finds out Gretchen has been wearing her frilly sweaters and Googling on her. Whoa - Googling! They haven't even had oral sex yet and already with the kinky internet stuff. Heroes is really getting edgy this season!

But then things go from kinky to uber-mega-turbo-norkular. Claire is pissed off about the sweaters and Googling and she finally confronts Gretchen about how she's semi-stalking Claire and talking about her on dates with other sorority girls. And Gretchen finally comes clean and says (and I'm actually not making this part up), "I'm not stalking you. I have a crush. I'm crushing on you." And then she plants a big giant kiss on Claire's lips and it was actually a really cute scene. Until the sorority sisters bust into their room and say, "Welcome to the sorority!" They passed the pledge test and now they really are lesbian sorority sisters.

That's around when we discover that Rachel, the hottie who invited Claire into the sorority, is the Invisible Girl. Though I miss Christopher Eccleston the invisible man, Rachel is pretty awesome - especially when she shows up at the Carnival and calls Samuel "uncle." Then in a series of flashbacks we see that Rachel has been making a ton of evil mischief to drive Claire insane and make her want to hang out with the dirt-powered carnies. She threw the flagpole at Claire; she snuck into the girls' dorm room and booted up Gretchen's computer so that Claire would see the Googlage; and she even (gasp) tossed Claire's ex-roomie out the window! I'm really excited about the whole evil lesbotic sorority subsubsubplot, people. Things are looking up.

They're even looking up for Sylar, who ran deep into the woods and then discovered - lo! - a Carnival looming out of nowhere. This is the first time that we've gotten the impression that the entire Carnival has some kind of mutant power of moving around and hiding. Samuel comes out to greet Sylar and welcome him to the Carnival, and they're both smiling and looking carnie-tastic. Of course when the cops chasing Sylar come looking for him, the Carnival is nowhere to be seen.

Whoa, haunted Carnival! That's pretty cool, right? Wait, no. Not as cool as lesbians. And not as cool as the news today that one of the original male mutants will be dying in an upcoming episode! Please let it be Hiro, Sylar, Nathan, Peter, Suresh, and Matt! Well, OK, we can leave one of them alive. But only one. And it would be good if he were a lesbian sorority girl.

My very favorite subsubsubplot last night was all about icy Tracy, the former shiny-evil assistant to the governor who discovered her water powers and decided to kill everyone. But then after a nice talk with HRG, she decided instead of killing everybody she just wanted her old job back, where all she had to do was drink wine and wear cute dresses. The episode opens with her not just taking a bath, but BEING the bath. And then she slides into some professional slutwear and sashays to some random party where the governor instantly gives her her old job back.

But the problem is she doesn't just want to be assistant hottie anymore. She wants to set policies and help people and change things! Sadly, the governor just wants to keep Tracy around for her policy ideas on how to allocate oral sex efficiently to him and various lobbyists. Even though she spent most of her adult life doing this kind of thing, then became a cold, hard killer, for some reason the governor's sex-based expectations make her TOTALLY SAD OMG. She runs the to bathroom (see clip) and is so sad that even her hands get all weepy with water and weird spooky haunted house music plays in the background. It's HARD to be Tracy, OK?

Seriously, that was a touching scene and exemplified how hard it is to go from being a craven political mercenary who wants to create a mind-controlled superarmy, to being a nice lady who just wants to help people who can't help themselves. Unfortunately, it also means Tracy wouldn't be humping anybody in this episode. Even though it would have been awesome to see her and HRG get together.

Speaking of which, HRG was completely great in this episode as the aimless newly-divorced dad reconnecting with daughter Claire and trying to figure out what's next in his life. There are a few funny, sweet scenes where Claire gives HRG advice on interviewing for jobs, and tries to help him realize that he can have a life after working as a trained killer. Of course, we know he's already going back to his Company Man persona because he's gotten interested in the Carnie Mutant Compass. So there is more killing in store.

And the carnies know it too. Samuel does one of his tattoo injections into the back of Hot Tattoo (after a little Sprint-sponsored break) and she shows him HRG's face and warns that HRG isn't out of the picture after all. Note: Tattoo HRG looks sort of like Isaac Asimov.

Another stunning revelation in this episode was that Hiro can actually do comedy without being infantilized in a completely hideous way. There's a goofy subsubsubplot where Hiro is trying to go back in time to right past wrongs, and he decides the one he really needs to focus on is this salaryman at his sister's company who is about to commit suicide because he was fired for drunkenly xeroxing his butt at an office party. (No we never get to see this party take place, sadly.)

Hiro keeps jumping back in time over and over – despite the fact that each jump brings him closer to death – and preventing the salaryman from copying his crack. But each time he returns to the present the guy has still mimeographed his meat at a different party. And he still jumps. Finally, after forty-odd jumps and much smudging with toner, Hiro delivers a heartfelt speech to the salaryman about how if you keep xeroxing your butt in timeline after timeline maybe you hate your job and should go do something else. Words of wisdom! At last, the guy is happy and doesn't commit suicide.

So just remember, if you've got the urge to do the naked boogie with your copy machine, maybe it's time to consider a career in mutant killing like HRG. Or a career in diagnosing the African dictator version of Darth Vader like House. Oops, wrong show. House was verging on crap last night, by the way. Except the part where House broke into his neighbor's condo, drugged him, tied him up, and forced him to stick his arm stump into a box. That was awesome.

Anyway it all ends well (for Hiro, not Darth Dictator) because he finally confesses to his sister that he's dying and she cries and still wants him to give her away at her impending wedding to Ando even though he might be dead by then. I'm glad Ando is getting married, though. He also has a cute new floppy haircut.

There was even a good subsubsubplot involving Nathan (AKA Nylar). He's been feeling all weird ever since he realized that he actually has no memories of being Nathan and instead has random memories of being Sylar, which is who he really is anyway. So Mama P decides to further his imperfect brainwashing by bringing him a box of old toys and clothes from when he was a kid. When he touches them, Sylar's power of "object memory" (AKA Deadzone power) will make it seem like Nathan is "remembering" them. Yeah, it didn't make any sense to me either.

Anyway what could go wrong? Nylar feels up a hat and "remembers" the day he got drunk with some rich chick named Kelly who fell into the pool and broke her skull and died. Mom swooped in and covered it up, making it seem that Kelly had run away to London. Why did she do it when the death was clearly an accident? Because it looked bad or something. Doesn't make sense to Nylar either, so he decides to tell Kelly's mom that her long-lost daughter is actually dead, and that in fact he was there when she died two decades ago and his mom covered it up. More alarmingly, Nylar has this weird stubble and extremely bad khaki windbreaker on throughout the episode. I think it's supposed to look "evil preppie" but it looks more like "golfer on crack."

Anyway, so what's totally awesome is that Kelly's mom is like, "You are crazy" to Nylar, and then takes Mama P out to lunch and is all, "Nathan is weird" and Mama P says, "Yeah he is I'm so sorry he bothered you." But meanwhile Kelly's mom hired a guy to drug and murder Nylar! So as she's having this society lunch with Mama P she is murdering her son. I LOVE this lady. Please make her a regular character.

Of course you know what happens, right? You can't kill Nylar, and when he reaches his hand out of the grave the face that follows is Sylar's. So there goes Nylar, and all Mama P's dreams of having wittle Nathan back. Score one for Kelly's mom! This show needs more seriously murderous bitch society women in it.

Guess what's coming next week? You SAW it in the preview! LESBIAN KISS BETWEEN CLAIRE AND GRETCHEN! See I am totally right that they were heading down lezzie lane. Let's hope that it's more than a snooze-worthy kiss. Also, dare I say I'd like a little more Peter and Samuel action? Yes, I dare. Tune in next week when basically all I'll be doing is obsessing over lesbian Claire.

In case you were wondering, last night's episode was sponsored by Sprint. I have never seen such a tacky product placement ever, so I put it right there at the top of the post.

Now back to the non-Sprint parts of the show. Remember how Matt got a Head Sylar last week? Guess what happened this week? Sylar played with Matt's head! I know - you did NOT see that one coming. So Sylar really wants to impress upon Matt that he's annoyed about the whole losing control of his own body thing, and isn't content just to make Matt scream randomly at the air during group therapy. Now he wants to really get Matt in trouble, which means making Matt fall off the Not Using Your Powers wagon.

Who made that a freakin wagon, anyway? Ever since Willow had to swear off using her witchy powers on Buffy, there's been this dumb idea in pop culture that "using your powers" is like getting drunk. I can see the whole vampirism = alcoholism idea since it actually involves drinking and harming people. But Matt's mind reading = alcoholism? Really stretching it here, people. Especially since using his powers would actually in almost every case be a good thing. And when he doesn't use his powers, he's a gigantic loser.

So Sylar decides to use Matt's powers against him, by making him hallucinate. This ends very badly when Matt goes to investigate a potential drug dealer, and imagines that he sees the dead body of a little girl under the drug dealer's stairs. He promptly beats the shit out of drug guy, which his partner thinks will ruin his career. (Which suggests that it would have been OK to beat the shit out of the guy if he'd actually killed a girl, but it's not OK if he's just dealing drugs? I've learned so much about the law from Heroes.) And in order to make things right, and save his lameass career and fakeass marriage, Matt brainwashes his partner to think that drug guy attacked him - even though he was tied to a chair - and they had to beat him up. So Sylar wins.

Also, in the winning department, Samuel shows us the full extent of his dirt-controlling powers. First of all, you need to understand a Scientific Fact. Tattoos are MADE OF DIRT. That's why Samuel is always injecting people with dirt and creating tattoos on their bodies so he can control them. Or something. Anyway, we see Samuel going out into the world to recruit Peter to replace his dead brother - and he sucks a bunch of tattoo ink into his hand for safe keeping. It was actually a cool scene, despite how incredibly cheesy it sounds.

There's a whole confusing subplot where Samuel pretends to be a guy who is suing Peter for rescuing him negligently (see how Heroes teaches about law yet again?). And he does this just so he can get into Peter's orbit and try to make Peter his special circus pal. Why didn't he just approach Peter some other way, like I dunno calling him up and saying, "Hey I have brother issues - you have brother issues. We're both mutants. Let's have coffee." I mean, it's not like Peter hasn't done stupider things than go out to coffee with a fellow mutant who has Daddy issues - or brother issues. Whatever.

Eventually Samuel and Peter bond, and Samuel (still pretending to be lawsuit guy) explains how sad he is about his brother and Peter is like, "Wow let me offer some empty platitudes about grief while giving you my soulful brown eye look." Actually, I'll admit it: Peter has gotten really hot this season and I'm liking the soulful looks as well as his pecs under the paramedic shirt. Am I just having a case of misdirected horniness, or is Peter getting hotter this season? These are the kinds of deep, important questions that Heroes forces you to ponder every single week.

Then possibly-hot-we're-not-sure Peter encourages Samuel to go visit his and his brother's boyhood home, which is somewhere in New York. Apparently Samuel grew up the forgotten Irish Accent borough of New York, in a gigantic mansion where his father was the butler and his mother was the maid. When he arrives at the mansion, the evil rich people who live there are having a dinner party and won't let him come in and look at the carriage house where he grew up in an alternate timeline featuring people who live in carriage houses and have Irish accents in New York.

So GUESS WHAT HAPPENS? I'm not even gonna tell you until the end of this post, because I haven't told you about the lesbians or Rainbow Brite yet.

OK first Rainbow Brite. Emma's some new mutant who will be in a couple of episodes and has a possible power or maybe just synaesthesia. She's deaf but she can SEE SOUND IN COLOR. Which leads to a scene totally unrelated to the rest of the episode where Emma sees a guy playing cello, and then she plays cello, and is like, "Wow, rainbows, OMG." See, mutant powers can be nice.

Which brings me to our weekly dose of lesbianism. First of all, Gretchen totally knows Claire's secret and there's this great moment where she asks, "Seriously what are you? A vampire, an alien, some kind of freakish government experiment?" But then that conversation is interrupted when HRG shows up and takes the girls out for Indian food. After Claire and Gretchen make a lot of inexplicable and seriously unfunny jokes about how Indian food is "the yellow stuff" and "the red stuff," they go back to their dorm room and put on teeny white t-shirts and light candles and talk about getting drunk. They look soulfully into each other's eyes, and by the way they are wearing seriously teeny t-shirts.

And then Gretchen is all, "Can I see it?" And you're like, "Hell yes take it off," but all she means is can she see Claire's power. Claire says this flirty "OK" and hands Gretchen some scissors. "I've never done this before," Gretchen says, and you're like, "No way you are a total lesbian you do this all the time," but what she really means is that she's never stabbed anybody in the hand with scissors. Which is good.

So she does the stabby and holds Claire's hand and there's all this warm liquid oozing out of Claire's gash (hey I didn't write this, OK? it was in the episode). And now they've bonded over lesbotic things like blood and secret gashes and secret powers and thinking Indian food is weird. They are totally about to go lesbian!!! But not yet, because it's time to go back to the Samuel/Peter plot, which sadly involves no teeny t-shirts or special sharing.

Peter is called to an accident scene where a sinkhole has just opened up under a house and swallowed everybody. Guess what house it is? The rich people's house where they wouldn't let Samuel visit his alternate history Irish New York carriage house. Samuel is watching the action from the shadows, when suddenly Peter feels a weird thing in his arm. He has a new tattoo! It's a spinning compass. Samuel must have injected it when he shook Peter's hand (OK so there was some hand-holding)!

A couple of things occurred to me during this episode, aside from my "Peter is getting hotter" revelation. I'm starting to wonder if Samuel might be really, really old - which would explain both the accent and the "I grew up in a carriage house" thing. Maybe part of his power is that he lives for hundreds of years? It's possible. I'm also wondering if possibly Gretchen is evil, or at least a mutant, and that she actually knows HRG. He invited her to lunch so quickly when he saw her with Claire - could she be the bodyguard that he's secretly put in place to keep Claire safe? The bodyguard who accidentally falls in love with her charge? I hope this all ends with Gretchen keeping Claire from being hurt while Claire plays Guitar Hero in front of their admiring dorm.

Tune in text week for more stabby Sylar/Nathan action!

Spoilers ahead!

So basically there are two things you need to know in order to watch Heroes this season.

1. Everybody wants redemption, which might mean a lot of different things, including KILLING.

2. Lesbians are hot.

Heroes wouldn't want to confuse you by dealing with both of these themes at the same time, so neither will I. The episode opens with a new cast of characters, this seasons' sort-of bad guys, a group of carnival mutants led by a dude named Samuel desperately trying to channel Heath Ledger's Joker. He even does that tongue sticky-outy-slurpy thing in one scene.

Samuel's main sidekicks are a superfast knife zoomer named Edgar (basically Speedy but with knives too) and a hot chick with tattoos whom we'll just call Hot Tattoo. She is not a lesbian, so her hotness is allowed to be part of the redemption plot. It turns out that Samuel's power is tattoos. He squirts tattoo ink onto Hot Tattoo's back to get information about people. (Yes, that leads to some amazingly great tattoo head shots appearing on her back, including tattoo versions of Claire, Peter, Sylar, and Hiro.) Then he uses a tattoo to strangle Edgar in fine Vader style. Later we see a tattoo of a compass on his body whirling. But he also has the power to move dirt around. So maybe he's a multi-powered guy who just likes ink.

Anyway, Samuel's brother just died and now he and his pals are after two things, seemingly. One, a mystical compass. Two, a time-traveler to replace the dying time traveler who hangs out the carnival with them. So Samuel strangles Edgar until he goes all swordy on people and gets the compass. Then he starts to recruit Hiro by traveling back in time with him to a moment in Hiro and Ando's pasts - and showing Hiro that if he could only prevent a slushy from falling on Ando's childhood girlfriend, Ando would be dating Hiro's sister in the present. Which is why there is actually a scene where Hiro is covered in really fake looking blue slushy and watching Ando make out with his sister.

There is also a great scene where Hiro uses his powers to rescue a cat named something like Mr. Muffin, only in Japanese.

But here's the problem. Samuel seems kind of evil, and Hiro is dying. Plus carnivals are bad, and they don't contain lesbians.

Speaking of lesbians, Claire might be a lesbian! Seriously, if you didn't get enough of watching Claire's boobies while she pretended to be drunk with those frat guys in Mexico last season, you're going to get more boobie action. But this time, it's girl-on-girl.

Claire arrives at college and discovers her roommate is an obsessive overachiever with a poster depicting her "life trajectory" on the wall. Hounded constantly by Trajectory Girl, Claire is searching for anyone to rescue her from an endless hell of listening to SAT scores and Facebook references. That's when she meets dark-haired Gretchen, who was almost a cheerleader but made too many Google references and so became one of those "Emily the Strange" cutsey-goth types who knows way too much about murder and forensics. She recognizes Claire as the chick from Texas with a decapitation problem, and then immediately sucks her into some bizarre reverse-Veronica Mars plot that involves investigating the fortuitous murder of Trajectory Girl, who has somehow jumped out of their dorm room window after beating their entire dorm at Guitar Hero.

All you really need to know is that there has been no lesbotic action yet. But Gretchen has figured out that Claire is a mutant and wants to help her solve the murder of Trajectory Girl, which police think is suicide but really isn't. And later this season, Gretchen will do it with Claire. Then she'll probably turn out to be evil because she knows words like "forensics" and is a lesbian.

Once we get away from the whole lesbian carnivalesque thing, the episode actually gets much better and much worse. Peter is trying to deal with his problems by being a superheroic paramedic, which is actually among the cooler subplots we've seen in a while. HRG is also on the coolness track, trying to deal with being alone now that his wife has dumped him (and is already hooked up with another dude) and Claire is at college. He winds up forming a pretty interesting relationship with Tracy, back from the shattered-ice dead and looking for revenge. HRG and Tracy figure out that the carnival mutants are after this weird compass after they walk in on Edgar the Knife slicing and dicing Danko's belly to find a key.

Instead, HRG reaches into Danko's sliced-up belly and gets the key, then the compass, and promptly loses it to the carnival guys again. But not before we get the sneaking suspicion that the compass' power is that it only works when a mutant touches it. So it's a mutant-finding compass.

I like Tracy and HRG as a team. I like Peter as the super paramedic.

And then there's the whole Sylar subplot. You knew it had to happen: We now have Head Sylar. When Parkman forced Sylar to turn into Nathan, apparently a big chunk of Sylar got trapped in Parkman's head. Now Parkman is barking at his Head Sylar when he isn't freaking out about the water delivery guy being nice to his wife. Nathan is starting to realize he's got Sylar in him too. Angela is having tense conversations about all of this with HRG, and Parkman is giving us the bloobly eye and being a failure as usual.

Tune in next week, when Head Sylar has a lesbian experience at the carnival while Hiro spills slushy everywhere. Sounds like the perfect internet porn scenario to me.

Last night's epidose, "An Invisible Thread," was aptly named. There was indeed an invisible thread bringing together all the plot lines in this episode, as well as invisible motivations for all the characters and an invisible justification for the climactic final scene when Sylar is "defeated" but only invisibly.

Though there were some cool moments in this episode - pretty much any scene with HRG comes to mind - mostly it was disappointingly simple for Hiro and Ando to take down mutant holding facility Building 26. And it was far too easy for the Petrelli Bros to take down Sylar. Meanwhile Suresh's voiceovers were even more treacly and vapid than ever before, which I guess makes sense in a season finale, where you always want to do everything but amped up to 11. There is literally a voiceover moment at the end where Suresh says, "Without these, can I be me? Can you be you?" And the referent for the "these" is completely lost, so you're just left feeling like somebody is having a lame LSD trip and has invited your sober ass along to babysit them while they talk about tasting colors and being you.

So we began last night's episode with pretty much the same damn pickle we've had at the beginning of every episode. The Hunter's Building 26 shock troops are rounding up the mutants for like the 400 millionth time, Nathan can't reach President Worf to stop him, and Sylar is a roving evil force who kills people for reasons that vacillate between working for The Hunter and dealing with PTSD from his sad wittle childhood.

Seriously, at this point I really want to know: What the fuck is Sylar's deal? In the first season he was a watch geek who wants to be something special and hates his whiny mom. So he discovers his powers, kills his mom, and starts eating mutants while wearing indie rock t-shirts. His quest is to become "special," and he's hunting Suresh because Suresh has a list of all the mutants that Sylar wants to eat. OK, makes sense: He's your basic serial killer whose appetite is for mutants. And he has to be stopped before he can steal Claire's superpower of undeath.

As far as I'm concerned, the Sylar plot should have ended there. Once the serial killer is captured, you can turn him to good or give him a new set of creepy desires or something. But don't just let him remain a glorified serial killer. But that's exactly what happened. In season two, Sylar has hooked up with super-death dealer Maya and his motivations get even more murky. Mostly he just wants to kill everybody again. Seriously, give the guy a cause celebre, and let him do something other than grinning creepily as he makes hand motions.

And then came the light at the end of the Sylar tunnel in season 3, or so we all thought. First of all, he gets involved with The Company and Mama Petrelli becomes his new fixation. He hooks up with electrical Elle, and suddenly turns back into a good nerdy guy. This was exactly the kind of thing the show needed to do with him. Turn him into something else, give him more depth, make him fascinating again. I think some of the best Heroes episodes since season 1 were during the Sylar-goes-good arc, when he's bonding with Elle and goes on to secretly help the Petrelli Bros by pretending to help Papa Petrelli. The guy had resolved his issues, figured out that he didn't want to give into his desire to eat brains, and had even learned how to absorb people's powers without killing them.

Then came season 3, book two (AKA post-writers strike). And so began the long, dark path of "what the hell." Instead of continuing with Sylar along his new trajectory, giving him depth by having him struggle with his dark side, he went right back to being the same boring, aimless serial killer guy from season 2. He could have sided with the mutants in the War Against The Evil Government, and been a truly interesting character. Instead, he becomes the same rogue who lives only to eat mutant brains and try to work out his mommy and daddy and step mommy and step daddy issues. Who the hell cares that he had a nasty childhood? So did Elle! So did the Petrelli Bros! And their mother! So did practically everybody on this damn show! You can't tell me that it's character development when we learn more about Sylar's sad childhood being sold by his psycho, mother-murdering dad to a nice suburban couple. Hello!!! We already knew his parents were psycho!!!

So here we are, as season 3, book 2 concludes, with an extremely boring, uncomplicated bad guy who has now suddenly grown a new motive. He wants to be president. Why? No reason. Just because. OK, great - so he's a serial killer who gained the power to shape-shift and now he's going to be president in order to - what? Kill more mutants? Does he have a grand scheme? Does he have an army of minions? Any sort of mastermindy moment? No, no, no.

Maybe that's why, in the end, it's so easy for the Petrelli Bros to take Sylar down. There is literally a scene where they run into Nathan's office, slam the door, and we hear "biff bang boom!" and see some light shoot out from under the door, and then it's over. Sure Nathan is dead, but Peter has stolen Sylar's power of shape shifting, and is able to take Sylar down by pretending to be President Worf. (Oh Michael Dorn, how I wish you'd actually been in this season - it would have brought a touch of class to this mess.) When Sylar-as-Nathan shakes Worf's hand, Peter-as-Worf stabs him in the neck with a tranq. So even though Sylar's been able to use his shape-shiftiness to MOVE THE SPOT IN HIS BRAIN that is his one vulnerability (hence Hunter being unable to kill him with a knife to the head), he can't I dunno move the tranq out of his blood?

Anyway, with Nathan dead, the Petrellis, HRG, and Parkman come up with the STUPIDEST PLAN EVER. One that will reinstate Sylar as the boring bad guy yet again next season (and WHY is there a next season?). They decide - get this - that the most LOGICAL thing to do is to use Parkman's brainwashing powers to turn Sylar into Nathan permanently. That way, they have access to political power via Nathan, and they can cover up the fact that a major politician was killed by a mutant and avoid further crackdowns. Plus, as Mama P argues totally incoherently, she wants her son back. But even if Sylar absorbs Nathan's memories, he won't be her son! He'll be a brainwashed serial killer with boring motivations playing her son really badly! Plus, when did Parkman's powers become so strong that he could literally brainwash one person into being another person? Why didn't he just do this before? Couldn't he have brainwashed the Hunter into being Holly Hobby or something?

So as you can see from this clip, it was super easy to turn Sylar into Nathan. And there was so little money in the effects budget that we didn't have to see yet another one of those awful CGI bumpy-face morphs. Sylar just turns over, and poof he's Nathan! He even hugs his mom at a bonfire where all the mutants burn Sylar's fake body. So only HRG, Parkman, and Mama P know about the Nathan/Sylar merger. And as Nathan hugs mom, she and HRG plan with him a way to restart The Company together to protect mutantkind. WHAT? Are you serious? How could these seasoned mutant-wranglers ever think this would work? Did it work to wipe Sylar's brain in South America? Did it work to make him thing Mama P was his real mommy? More importantly: Do we even care at this point now that our credulity has been stretched so thin that you could fold it over ten times and make a croissant out of it?

I'll tell you one thing we really don't care about: Hiro and Ando taking down Building 26 by freezing time, putting all the agents in the drug-induced coma room, and shooting Hunter full of tranqs. So all the mutants get away, and Hiro is getting brain explodey when he stops time. Boo hoo.

The episode ends with the beginning of Volume Whatever, called Redemption. As you might guess, Nathan/Sylar is already having glitches, staring moodily at clocks and getting hungry for brains and useless plot developments. Meanwhile (yay!) Tracy is back and now she has the power to turn into water and drown people. She's slowly picking off all the former Building 26 guys.

What will happen in the thrilling season 4, book 200 billion? Wait, let me guess: Sylar will become a brain-eating serial killer again, whose motivations have something to do with wanting power for no reason and being obsessed with flashbacks that we've already seen! There will be a Nathan/Sylar struggle for control of the Nathan/Sylar entity! Hiro will have to deal with his headaches! Ando will have a baby! Claire will start shaving her head and get married and do a reality show about having mutant babies who have the special powers of turning into fishnet stockings and pasties and gluing themselves to Claire's naked body!

And of course, Suresh will keep voiceovering, "Can I be me? Can you be you? I'm OK - you're OK!"

OK look, if you liked Monday's episode then riddle me this: Why would Nathan swoop in and rescue Claire, then take her to Mexico, only to earn money for their hotel room by challenging some frat boys to a shot-drinking contest? Obviously the writers realize that we're dying for an excuse to drink during Heroes, but creating an actual drinking game in the show is not the way. Seriously, THIS is Nathan's way of showing he can be as cool as Claire's (good) adoptive dad HRG? Telling her that he earned money in the army by drinking lots of shots, and then passing out?

Luckily it turns out that one of Claire's many "tissue regenerating" powers allows her to stay completely sober while drinking over 22 shots because - as she explains later - her liver is regenerating. What? Honestly I would rather watch her liver regenerate like 1000 times over if it meant I could skip her whole pep talk with Nathan where she whines that he's "supposed to be Superman" and therefore he should go to Washington and make everything better. And then he drunkenly admits that he sucks and has been a lame father.

Actually, why can't he sober up and go to Washington and make everything better? He's been running the whole mutant roundup thing, and all he has to do is work more on shutting it down. Nobody will believe the psycho Hunter about Nathan flying anyway. Have I missed some subtle political point here that explains why Nathan is no longer a powerful politician and instead is some dude in a hot suit and even hotter sunglasses drinking shots with frat boys in Mexico?

Try not to think about that, Newitz - just focus on the Sylar. Oops, I'm talking to myself. Heroes does that to me after a while, especially when I'm watching Sylar eat his own brain! Yes, that was a truly awesome development and certainly worth slogging through the confusing Jesus stuff (more on that in a minute). Here's what happened. After some lollygagging, the Hunter finally decides to hook up with Sylar and go mutant hunting together. HRG has given Hunter a pep talk about how you can "use" the mutants and Sylar keeps leaving the Hunter all kinds of dead people as presents and finally Hunter caves and makes out with Spock. I mean, Sylar! I mean, crap! They don't really even make out!

But what they do is team up to hunt a shapeshifter at a club where the shifter is using his powers to mack on chicks while wearing the Hunter's pasty face. Then the shifter takes Sylar's face so he's a lot hotter. Then the real Sylar and the real Hunter trick the shifter into leaving the club and the Hunter shoots him - but leaves him alive for Sylar to eat. So there's literally a Sylar-on-Sylar brain eating scene! You should see the sexy looks that Sylar shoots over to the Hunter when he finds out what a pal his mutant-killing buddy is. Now they are truly a team, and Sylar can morph into anything as long as he sort of groans and makes faces.

As the new boyfriends drive away, Hunter says, "If we succeed, you'll be the only one." And Sylar does his Spock eyebrow and is like, "Yeah and we can have tons of sex." I mean, he says something like "Yeah totally that's the plan." Anyway, now it seems like Sylar's raison d'etre might be to eat every mutant in the world, with Hunter's help. But it's hard to say because Sylar is pretty sneaky and never really has sex with anybody except Electric Elle and that was last season.

Now for Jesus. If you thought Nathan's whining about how he never was a good father to Claire was bad, wait 'til you get a load of Mama Petrelli's "you must hate me" guilt trip. Yup, she even lays it on Peter in a church where she goes to calm down and get some sleep so she can start using her prophesy powers. Remember, Peter rescued her from Hunter's guys and they're on the run. So after she yammers at Peter for minutes on end about how she was a bad mom and even God can't forgive her, Peter is like, "I don't totally hate you, please just drink some tea and go to sleep." Poor Peter - he may have superpowers, but nobody can withstand the Total Guilt Momslaught.

That's probably why Peter goes and lights a bunch of candles and stares up at a painted Jesus thingie and talks for way too long about how Jesus should be helping him out and where is Jesus. Hello, you are in a scientific universe full of mutants, Peter! This is not a Jesus-based story. Jesus is busy on other shows that have angels and devils and crap like that. Anyway Peter doesn't know this, and so he prays for a really long time and then he and Mama hide in a confessional while HRG and the shock troops search the church for them. Mama confesses that she had to become an evil manipulator to save the world and she's guilting so hard that HRG finds them - but pretends he hasn't. You can tell from Peter's face that he thinks Jesus has intervened.

And maybe he has! At the end of the episode, Mama Petrelli finally falls asleep and has a vision of an angel or maybe just a stained glass window. Either way, she says they have to get the Petrelli family together again and go to visit her mysterious sister. I hope it's a Twisted Sister. Because I really want somebody to have the superpower of yelling WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT every time the plot veers away from Sylar or Rebel.

I kept asking myself what exactly it was that got exposed in this episode. Matt's freakishly orange tan? Claire's desire to kiss while being asphyxiated by an amphibious dude who eats sandwiches in her closet? The Bush presidency's evil plan to expand the Patriot Act (because apparently Bush is president in the Heroesverse)? No, it wasn't any of that. It was actually my brain catching wind after this mommy trauma scene with Sylar made my skull explode.

I mean, c'mon people: How much mommy trauma can one special little geek boy have? Fer chrissake, in the first season, Sylar killed his step-mommy, the snow globe-collecting ripoff of the mom from Carrie who always undermined her little boy's steps towards freedom. Then in the next season there was his endless revenge on Mama Petrelli, who pretended to be Mommy Sylar and kept stroking his hair and doing that weird dry-mouth voice on him. And now he's FINALLY going to meet his real daddy, with his pouty new boyfriend in tow, and he at last unburies his traumatic memory of what daddy did to him. What is it? More goddamn mommy trauma! Turns out daddy Sylar sold little Sylar to a nice couple in a diner, then murdered mommy Sylar with the old "slash across the forehead" trick. Only cylons have more family dysfunction than this.

Unfortunately, Sylar's pouty mommy face set to the Fleetwood Mac soundtrack was the best part of this episode. Well, that and the part where he squashed boyfriend's face into the wall for saying that all parents suck. Because MOMMIES DON'T SUCK, OK?

Even Claire's mommy didn't suck. After she discovers that Claire is hiding a superpowered water-breathing boy in her closet to protect him from HRG, but not to have sex with him, she decides to help. Using a superpower she learned when she was a teenager trying to sneak into Def Leppard concerts, she helps water boy create a fake ID and gives him a new hoodie so he'll fool "facial recognition technology." Ooohh, good plan!

The other part of mommy Claire's plan seems to involve going to the movies while Claire and water boy run away from the Hunter's guys who are spying on them (but not very well). There is a vague and inexplicable chase scene, which culminates in Claire and water boy making out underwater where he can breathe but she has to drown. So it was like waterotic asphyxiation, which is actually pretty awesome when I put it that way.

Everything else in the episode was a blur of Nathan arguing with The Hunter over whether the Government is really behind the Secret Patriot Act Thing they are doing with the mutants. Following a tip from Rebel, Matt and Peter break into the government building where HRG, Nathan, and Hunter hang out watching Windows GUIs in order to stop mutant terrorism. Supposedly our guys are looking for Speedy Daphne, but they get sidetracked when they discover some footage on one of the computers that shows all the mutants being rounded up and dressed in orange.

Peter downloads the footage onto a handy USB drive he just happens to have lying around, and then zooms off, leaving Matt attempting to mind-control everybody into submission. Turns out that Matt has a weakness we didn't know about, though: When he's mind-controlling, he's vulnerable to loud noises (huh?). So Hunter just uses flashy lights and loud noises to stop the mind control, drug Matt up, and cover him with bombs before dumping him in front of the Washington Monument. He wants to be sure that everybody thinks the mutants are terrorists, so he's engineered this whole scene with Matt and the bombs.

A scene that Matt has already painted with his new psychic comic book painty powers! Dum dum dum! Will Washington, D.C. burn to the ground? Will Matt burn up?

It's hard to say for sure, but we do know that Mama Petrelli has seen the future and the "game is about to change." At least, that's what she tells Nathan before whispering ickily in his ear. Are she and Peter playing Nathan, trying to get him out of the picture so the government will have one less anti-mutant toady? Or is Nathan about to go back to the good side now that he has that cute new haircut? Maybe it won't matter, because Peter has released the video of the orange prisoners to the media, who act all disapproving about warrantless arrests. Once again, this proves Heroes is out of step because he doesn't put it on YouTube and people who aren't bloggers pay attention to it.

I couldn't focus on that for too long, though, because in the most boring plot twist imaginable, the puppet master guy who tortured Claire and her mom shows up at Claire's house and steals her microwave popcorn. Then he shows her a message he got on his cell phone from "rebel," saying that Claire will save him. Will Claire save him, even though he still calls her Barbie?

All I want is for Sylar to get his snotty boyfriend back so they can have scintillating conversations about how parents suck and the world is all pain. Honestly, somebody needs to write some slash fiction about those two right now. And then I need to beg that person to write the next episode of Heroes. Help me, fanfic community, you are my only hope.

Is it just me, or is there something weirdly charming about the way that Heroes seems to be trying its hardest to be contemporary and relevant for people who haven't left the house or had any communication with the outside world for about five years? It's not just the show's increasingly 24-esque approach to the internal machinations of governmental policy, but the fact that Claire seems to just have discovered text messaging. The episode opens with her messaging "Rebel," the mysterious maybe-good guy who's been sending her fight the power messages like "U R SO HAWT - F THE MAN" and the like for the last week. If nothing else, it's distracting her from pretending to her exceptionally gullible mother that she and her dad did a college tour the week before instead of crashing a plane into generic countryside somewhere. Eventually, she snaps (with the great line "Dad was busy... locking up innocent people."), tells her mom that Daddy HRG has been lying to her for the seven-millionth time, and then cries when her mom throws him out because, like, she loves him really. It's just hard when your domineering father figure happens to be a bad-ass spy who forces you to go to community college instead of become a guerilla warrior against the government. Or something.

In HRG's defense, he's clearly still on the side of the good guys and working to bring them down from within... which is why I'm not too bothered that he gets drugged and kidnapped by Peter, Matt and Suresh - oh, the moral ambiguity! - at the end of the episode. Also, as Claire showed when she saved the life of Alex, the most stereotypical comic book clerk in existence ("You're a girl!" he exclaimed upon seeing Claire, shocked that one would be in a comic book store. That groan you heard was every single comic retailer in the country), she's not the greatest freedom fighter in the world. After all, good freedom fighters generally don't keep those they free in their closet.

Of course, maybe Claire just got her planning skills from her biological father, the increasingly ineffectual Nathan. This week, Nathan's new governmental agency got shut down and then unshut down within an hour, because Tracy Strauss froze someone to death in front of a governmental investigator. Which, when put like that, almost works as a plot. Sadly, in the actual show, it was less of a nuanced look into the way that fear of the unknown can impact decision making, and more a sudden swing of extremes from "This is inhuman, and worse, unamerican!" to "You can have whatever you want" because the plot demanded it. Was this all a cunning plan by Nathan, showing a previously hidden Machiavellian side? No, not exactly; it was all manipulation by this volume's cardboard cut-out badguy, the Hunter, who's eager to show that he has no limits to how far he will go yadda yadda yadda.

Also undergoing ill-advised father issues, Sylar continued his strange roadtrip with new sidekick Luke, who only seems to exist to give Sylar a reason to tell us that he's not so bad really, he's just looking for his father to find out how he ended up this way. While we can put up with - almost - his saving Luke from the Hero Hunters, we're really not too convinced by his attempts to teach him not to waste his powers and be more responsible with them. What's next, telling him not to put his elbows on the table? We can only hope that, when he eventually appears, Sylar Snr. will tell his son to stop being such a wuss... and perhaps kill Luke in the process.

In the grand scheme of things, this episode didn't really move any of the larger plots forward (with the exception of HRG leaving his family and being captured), and maybe it's that sense of pointlessness - and the characters' uselessness, or yet another pointless plot where Hiro "learns to be a hero" (This week: You can be a hero without superpowers! Who knew?) - that made it feel like Heroes again, as opposed to the last couple of episodes. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you, of course, but there was one good side to this episode that no-one can deny: Only one scene of Milo Ventimiglia means less frustration. The less Peter Petrelli whining, the better.

Spoilers ahead!

As you can see in this clip, a lot of the episode was devoted to the theme that has been beaten to death this season: Every hero also contains a villain, and all good guys are also monsters. Not a bad theme, but nobody wants to hear the writers telegraphing it every episode a couple of times in long voice-overs and speeches. Still, Sylar looks kind of shock-jock sexy in this scene, crooning through microphones to the captured Primatech crew about how repulsive he is.

Most of the episode was devoted to face-offs between old enemies: It was Primatech vs. Pinehearst, Nathan vs. Peter, and Petrelli vs. Petrelli. Then there was the weird moment when grownup Hiro teamed up with little Hiro - less said about that the better.

I think the main problem with the episode was the fact that it was a rather clumsy attempt to wrap up dozens of story lines through exposition.

And in those moments when we did have some action, it felt random: How many times can Nathan flip-flop his loyalties before it's just impossible to say what he wants to do, or what his vision is for "a better world"? It's pretty clear that he's become a bad guy, and that he wants to take over Pinehearst so that he can create a "better world" - but one minute that "better world" includes handing out powers like candy, and in the final minutes of the show we discover it involves rounding up all the special people and putting them special facilities.

Probably the best moment in the show took place in Suresh's lab at Pinehearst, where he's got a giant vat of the formula that creates superpowered people. He's about to inject himself, and hopefully cure his botched attempt to become Jeff Goldblum, when Peter shows up with Anger Dude and the Lame Flame. They destroy all the formula, but not before Suresh gets soaked in it and loses his scales. And not before Peter injects himself and gets repowered just in time to save his perfidious brother from the now-burning experimental chambers.

Meanwhile, Ando has also injected the formula and developed a seriously lame power, which is that he can boost other people's powers. I sort of love the Ando-Speedy-Parkman troika, but still found myself groaning when he boosts Speedy's power so that she can run so fast she travels back in time, and rescues the time-stuck Hiro. Question: How does she return to the present? She runs backward? What? Look I know it's not realism, people, but please.

As Pinehearst goes up in smoke, Speedy and Hiro manage to get the formula out and rip it to shreds. And at the same time, Claire and her crew at Primatech manage to get out just as Claire's mom explodes. In another "oh please" moment, Sylar has injected her with adrenaline in order to force her fire power out of control. So she's a goner, and indestructable (but unconscious) Sylar got left in the burning building.

Papa Petrelli is dead, but Mama lives on. HRG lives on, too. So Claire still has a ton of mommies and daddies and grannies to order her around. Primatech and Pinehearst, the special people's seats of power, are in ruins. Things are about to change in a major way.

And here is where the episode got really cool. "Villains" ends with the usual awful voice-over from Suresh, and then "Fugitives" starts with an amazing scene where Nathan gets into a car with the president of the U.S. . . . who turns out to be none other than Michael Dorn, the guy who played Worf on Star Trek: TNG! There's a face we're happy to see again, especially without the Klingon makeup.

Nathan's outlining a deal with President Worf that will sound familiar to anyone who read the "Civil War" comics or dipped their toes into the X-Men universe(s). Nathan says he wants to round up all the special people and put them away.

Though Nathan has discarded icy spin doctor Tracy, clone of Jessica, she's still in circulation too. We see the cured Suresh getting into a car with her.

I think we can guess why the next chapter of Heroes is called "Fugitives," and I'm frankly excited. Bryan Fuller, lately of the beloved show Pushing Daisies, is coming back to work on the show's next chapter, too. With a radical new direction for the show - humans vs. specials - and a new creator on the team, I think Heroes may bounce back from doom like a superpowered cheerleader.

Two plot developments really stood out in "Our Father," and both were related to the "catalyst" that Papa Petrelli wants so he can complete the formula that will give anyone who injects it a special power. In fact, as supervillian PR lady Tracy explains to Nathan, they can even bestow whatever power they want. I love this scene where Tracy gives Nathan a crash-course in how they'll use the formula. First she refers to it as "intelligent design" (an idea this show obviously classifies as evil), and then she unveils the cadre of PTSD-borked soldiers who are willing to throw their lives away to try what they've been told is a new supersoldier therapy.

So how will the bad guys at Pinehearst get the catalyst? We learned in "The Eclipse" double episode that Claire is the catalyst, and last night we found out why. If you recall, the brain-mangled Hiro rescued Claire from Sylar last week, and took her back in time sixteen years to the day when Hiro's dad asked HRG to take care of baby Claire for the Company.

As regressed Hiro and Claire watch in astonishment, Hiro's father discusses "the light" with Hiro's ailing mother. It turns out Hiro's mom was a healer who possessed the catalyst herself, and had the ability to hand it off. She wants to give it to Hiro, but Hiro's dad says no - he thinks his son is too obsessed with manga and videogames to bear the responsibility of the catalyst, so he wants to hide it in Claire. As they watch, Claire and Hiro figure out what they have to do: Claire has to try to stop her father from letting the Nakamuras implant her with the catalyst; and Hiro has to get a healing kiss from his mother (yes her power really is a healing kiss - bleah).

In the process of carrying our their missions, grown-up Claire gets to help her mom take care of her baby self. This includes a scene where she CHANGES HER OWN DIAPERS. Yes, people, this is some kind of fetish taken so far that it's actually become a new fetish, or maybe a meta-fetish, or something even weirder than that. Posing as a neighbor, Claire achieves this new level in fetishism by babysitting herself while her mom sets up her nursery. When HRG arrives home, she reveals only that she's got a special knowledge of his future, and convinces him that he must always guard "his Claire Bear" and not to let Nakamura put anything in her.

Meanwhile, Hiro reveals himself to his mother and she heals his damaged brain so that he's got his memories back. Once he tells her that he's saved the world twice and is the master of space and time, she puts the glowing light of the catalyst inside him and then dies. Much sadness!

But also: Much coolness. This is one of those subplots that works because going back in time actually allows Hiro to significantly change the present.

Except, and here's where things get a wee bit unexplained, somehow Papa P travels back in time and catches Claire and Hiro before they can get back to the present. How does he have time travel powers? He couldn't have stolen them from Hiro, because Hiro still had them. Was there another master of space and time whose powers Papa had already plundered? Is there some time paradox where he has time travel powers because he went back in time and stole them (yes this is really about as logical as many Heroes plot developments)?

OK, whatever, so it makes no sense. It's still totally cool because now Papa really does steal Hiro's power, and the catalyst. He tosses Hiro off the roof, where he dangles dorkily on a flagpole, and sends Claire back to the present. Meanwhile, speedy Daphne, Parkman and Ando have managed to use their combined powers to wrest Isaac's last comic book from the hands of a bicycle messenger who says he's being pursued by "every fanboy in the city." They're reading about how Hiro is "lost in time" just as he's getting lost.

Then Papa heads back to Pinehearst, where he releases the catalyst into what looks like a flagon of red punch. Once the catalyst flows inside, it sort of hardens into red jello and Suresh tests it out on the most PTSD soldier of them all, who promptly has some kind of seizure and flares his nostrils and then becomes super strong. Interestingly, the actor who plays the PTSD soldier was in the much-missed superpower/time travel show The 4400, taking a drug (Promicin) which gave him superpowers.

Peter had one thing to do in this episode, and that was to bring the Haitian to Pinehearst so that he could shoot Papa while his powers were being muffled. But he's saved from having to be a mean murderer just in time when Sylar arrives. He's just eaten the brain of a woman whose superpower is knowing when people are lying, so he's able to figure out that Papa's been lying about being Sylar's daddy. He takes control of the bullet that Peter's shot at Papa, first stopping it, and then restarting it so that he can be Papa's killer while Peter stays emo.

More supersoldiers are coming next week, which means we can get back to having interesting new plot developments instead of watching Sylar act like Sylar again. Come back, Gabriel! We loved those glasses and sweaters!

Hiro is an innocent otaku for great justice again

I have said a number of times that I'm annoyed with the direction of Hiro's character this season. He's been a slapsticky little kid, making faces for weak laughs, and even his cute little mop of hair looks lackluster. But in this episode, where he and his pal Ando look for answers in a small town comics store (managed by the awesome Seth Green), Hiro grows up a little bit again. He's re-figured out his powers by reading back issues of 9th Wonders, and girded himself with geekish courage after a funny lecture from Green. And at last, he actually saves the day by preventing Gabriel/Sylar and Elle from kidnapping Claire. Plus, he and Claire will now be on an actual time-traveling adventure together! (As geek Green points out, while poring over back issues, they're two characters who have almost never been in the same storyline.)

Powerful white men are learning life lessons from nasty dictatorial Afro-Caribbeans again

Now that the magical African who helped white people and Asians get in touch with their spirit lives is dead, the now-unmuted Haitian and his nasty dictator brother are back to teach whitey a lesson about human dignity and why blacks don't deserve to run their own countries. And by "whitey," I mean Nathan and Peter specifically. After the two brothers lose their powers, they randomly get embroiled in some kind of Haitian coup or gang war or something. Turns out the nice mind-sucking Haitian who did whitey's bidding is fighting his mean super-invincible brother who wants to rule Haiti by enslaving weeping women who say "bonjour" a lot. Don't try to understand the political context - your takeaway message is that there are parts of the world that are scary and bad, where nobody should be allowed to have superpowers. After rescuing the weeping girls, Nathan decides that he's going to join evil Papa Petrelli at Pinehearst and develop the specialness serum so that "the right people" in the world can become superpowered. Then he soars off, leaving Peter feeling sad that soon "the right people" in "the Middle East" (as Nathan puts it) will be as special as he once was.

Suresh is gross again

Remember those brief and glorious moments this season when Suresh was mostly topless and got to be all sexy with Maya? Remember last week, when he was TOTALLY BUCK NAKED when he slid out of that giant oozy cocoon all covered in sperm? Well, forget about it. He's covered in scales again, and despite figuring out that Papa Petrelli is weak and paranoid, all he can think of to do is stalk Maya and whine.

Gabriel is Sylar again

This is probably the most disappointing and simplistic of the change-backs. Crazed brain-masher Sylar, the Big Bad of the first two seasons, had been growing a conscience this season and turning into hottie nerd Gabriel. Sure, he was dating the mentally-unstable electrical Elle, but that was hot. And he was working for murderous, power-hungry Arthur, but that gave him the is-he-or-isn't-he double-agent depth his character desperately needed. But after the scary gunfight with HRG, who is like the most badass agent in the world when the heroes' powers are eclipsed, he's decided to go back to being totally evil. HRG has played with his mind, casting doubt on whether the Petrellis really are his parents and whether he can really trust Elle. And for some reason, despite the fact that HRG has been trying to kill him for two episodes, he decides to revert to Sylar. After a juicy makeout session with Elle on the beach, he informs her that he'll never lose his desire to eat brains, and cuts her skull open. Yawn - seen it before. Want Gabriel back.

Parkman is going to get the nice girlfriend he deserves - for the first time!

After Speedy Daphne's cerebral palsy reveal last week, and endless conversations about how Parkman doesn't really know Daphne, it looks like the two future lovebirds are going to get together and have happy time in the cornfields. When they get their powers back, Parkman reads Daphne's mind and knows all about how she plotted with Pinehearst. And he still loves her, and still is willing to listen to all her crap about how she's really a villain. Plus, he helps her figure out that she needs to hug her dad goodbye. In a cornfield. Which symbolizes like home and safety and stuff. Even though everybody else reverted, it was fun to see the Parkman/Daphne pairing achieve new levels of sappiness.

Hiro's dependence on the comic book 9th Wonders to show himself and Ando what to do next is the most obvious example of our characters behaving as if they are just following directions rather than forging their own path of justice. Comic book characters may be preposterous but at least they know how to chew the scenery when they feel like it. The heroes in "Eclipse" do nothing but submit to a fate they never made.

Hiro is frozen mentally at the age of 10 right now, so it's somewhat forgivable that he can't act without consulting a comic book. But all our other characters, robbed of their powers by the eclipse, seem like they're just coasting on some flimsy destiny trip. Elle and Gabriel/Sylar come together to shoot the powerless Claire - a scene already predicted by Papa Petrelli, who was doodling it while in his cartoon-prediction mode. It's a hopeful sign that Gabriel is glad to be rid of his powers, though his continuing obsession with pleasing Papa is starting to feel a little tired.

Meanwhile, other characters locked into destiny mode include psychic cop Matt and speedy Daphne, who are linked by this dream Matt had of their future married life. Though they barely know each other, and we know Daphne has been double-agenting, Matt keeps seeking her out seemingly just to have annoying fights with her about trust and whether he really KNOWS her. Which he doesn't.

But the biggest fateful clusterdestiny in this episode is the clash between Mama Petrelli and Papa, which has been pre-ordained and pre-cognitioned out the yin-yang. Now Petrelli granddaughter Claire, who is the "catalyst" for the serum that will turn the whole world into heroes, is caught up in this destiny. Which means she has to be hidden somewhere with stepdad HRG, practicing hitting people with broken boards. So her destiny is always to be protected and saved, unless she's evil future Claire who must never be allowed to exist.

And the destiny bug has bitten Peter and Nathan too, who somehow turn into bickering antigeniuses the moment they lose their powers. With everyone powerless, you'd think it might be time for some serious heroism. But instead we get this feeling that we're being propelled to a conclusion that's only happening because it fits our paradigm for what a climactic moment should be: A clash between good and evil, pitting brother against brother. The clash between Peter and Nathan seemed particularly odd. The two have had their problems in the past, but they always have each other's backs.

My hope is that next week we'll discover that at least some of these characters are being compelled to act this way because Papa P is mind-controlling them. Otherwise the whole setup feels just too much like a setup: Saying that something is "destined" to happen is basically code for "I couldn't figure out how to get the plot where I wanted it so I did it by fiat." On a more pragmatic level, at least we know that next week will bring more comic book store Seth Green, which is to say some humor that doesn't rely on infantilizing Hiro.

There's a lot of coolness in "It's Coming," including a showdown between mind-reading Parkman, speedy Daphne, and the whole Petrelli clan. Suffice to say Parkman and mama Petrelli manage to defeat papa Petrelli's mind-smoosh, and are now scheming with Peter and Nathan to stop papa's evil plan to find the "catalyst" that will make the formula work. Yes, the "catalyst" is in Claire's blood, and yes of course freezy PR girl Tracy is scheming with papa to turn Nathan to the dark side.

But the most interesting developments by far last night involved Hiro and Sylar.

First let's consider Hiro's predicament. The once-beloved character has reached pretty much the nadir of his arc. He began so promisingly in the show's first season as an innocent otaku with a future of sword-wielding badassery, and then somewhere in season 2 it was if the show creators gave up on making him into a capable adult. Throughout the current season, he's been a grating clown who acts like a 10-year-old; and now, thanks to papa P's mind-scramble, he actually believes he's a 10-year-old. As you can see in the clip above, Hiro spends most of the episode acting silly in a waffle restaurant at a bowling alley.

Why haven't we seen Hiro developing into badass Future Hiro with the leather and sword? The man who no longer has to speak in pidgin? The simple answer is that the dystopian future where he became that man isn't going to happen. But the more disappointing answer is that this show can't seem to allow its Asian male heroes to be powerful, fully adult, sexual beings without punishing them. Each time Hiro has inched towards having an adult identity, whether that's as Future Hiro or the lover of the feudal-era princess in season 2, he's slapped back. Not only is he robbed of these identities, he's actually turned into somebody (a child) who can never have them.

And don't even get me started on Suresh, who was an unctuous weakling for two seasons, a guy who spent all his time whining or being a voice-over. And then when he finally became sexually involved with somebody, it turned out it was because he was slowly mutating into a hideous monster. Why can't Heroes make these men sexy and tough, instead of reducing them to aimless boy-children, easily manipulated and undermined at every turn?

It's interesting to compare Hiro's fate to Sylar's because their beginnings were oddly parallel. Sylar, AKA Gabriel, began as an awkward geek who wanted to be a hero. But unlike Hiro, whose dark future self never came to pass, Gabriel's dark self was fully realized in the serial killer Sylar. Gabriel moved through that dark self, a kind of hideous adolescence, and is now progressing beyond it. Hiro never got the opportunity to explore his darker half, and therefore his character remains a kind of eternal child. Meanwhile, Gabriel is evolving into a multi-faceted character who is the master of his fate even when captured by papa Petrelli.

One of the very best scenes all season came last night, when Gabriel truly emerged from Sylar. Papa Petrelli tells Sylar that he can actually take someone's powers without killing them, as long as he feels empathy. And then he locks Sylar in with electric Elle, who is filled with pain, wants to be rid of her powers, and hates Sylar for killing her father.

She also, of course, loves Sylar too. Last week we learned that she worked with HRG to seduce Gabriel into becoming the monstrous Sylar - and her seduction was not entirely a put-on. As Sylar faces Elle's rage, his dark self is burned away and Gabriel emerges. He's become a man who understands his power and can control it. And he's finally able to connect with another human being without taking her life. We know that Elle and Sylar are going to end up romantically involved, and there is nothing cutesy-poo or innocent about that connection.

While Hiro scampers around acting like a kid, Gabriel has become a man. And now I'd like to see Hiro get the same thoughtful treatment that Gabriel has. His character was my absolute favorite during the first season, and I feel like we've missed out on the opportunity to see him develop into an interesting, complex superhero. Will we ever get that chance, or do the show creators think the only possible role for our brave otaku is one of babyish impotence?