Heroes 4-7 “Once Upon a Time in Texas”
In the present, Samuel tells Lydia that Old Man Arnold is dying. Remember, Arnold’s the guy with Hiro’s powers. If he dies, Samuel has a lot less mobility. He and Lydia discuss recruiting Hiro and talk about how he needs to fix the past. Lydia’s tattoos shift to show Charlie, and Samuel sees an opportunity.
Inside the diner, Hiro hides behind a newspaper. Wasn’t Hiro in the diner at the same time as Sylar when Charlie died? Does this mean he’ll run into himself? And is this past the original version, where Charlie met him the day she died, or the altered version where he met her six months earlier? I can already tell, this is going to be a confusing episode. Anyway, Sylar and Charlie talk about Sylar’s watch. Sylar can tell she has a power, and tests her with trivia. (Charlie had perfect photographic memory.) As a sidenote, she mentions Elie Wiesel, and I am reminded that in college, my paper on the theologian and Holocaust survivor was graded down because I titled it “Pop Goes the Wiesel”. Good times.
Sylar next tells Charlie that he knows she has a blood clot in her brain. None of this happened in the original episode, and I’m curious as to whether the continuity will work. Did they map this out like Bender’s Big Score, because it seems to me that they’ve got a lot happening in this little diner. That aside, Samuel pops up to talk to Hiro. They walk out right by Past Bennet, who’s arguing with his wife on the phone. Then a woman who we have never seen before sits down with him. He explains that he’s trying to save his daughter’s life, and the indication is that she’s his partner. Why is this previously unseen character being inserted into documented past events? She’s pretty, though. That helps. As it goes in, she talks about how they’ve been flirting, and both agree that they want more from this relationship. She gives him the key to a motel room (Room 108, which is totally a Lost reference!). How is this happening? These events happen during the middle of Season One, and she wasn’t Bennet’s partner then. Is this supposed to be evidence that Hiro’s already started to unravel the timeline with his attempts to fix things? Bennet leaves when he gets a call about some new evidence.
OK, we get a look around the diner and we see that Past Hiro and Ando are also in the diner. Samuel explains to present Hiro that this is a very delicate time in the past, and wonders if saving Charlie is worth the potential consequences. Hiro says that it is. We cut to the scene where Charlie opens a can in the back room, which is the moment when she died in Season One. Just as Sylar prepares to open her head, Hiro freezes time.
Hiro wheels Sylar out of the diner on a handcart and puts him in the luggage compartment of a bus. Hee. Once he gets back to the diner, he stops to wonder what he could do to history. If Charlie doesn’t die, that means he doesn’t go back to save her and spend six months falling in love with her. So this is the original version of the past, then. Hiro finds past Hiro in the bathroom and unfreezes time. Hiro is excited to meet Future Hiro, but wonders where his sword is. Future Hiro tells Past Hiro that Charlie has been killed, and he needs to go back in time and save her. And I just realized that I’m now calling Present Hiro “Future Hiro”. You guys, seriously. I recap Lost, for cry Pete. I had absolutely no problem tracking the time-traveling machinations of Season Five. Heck, I kept track of that darn compass that Locke and Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert passed back and forth through the ages. This is something I’m actually good at. And yet, I am completely lost here. I will say that it’s funny when Present Hiro tries to act tough to impress Past Hiro, though. Sure enough, as soon as Past Hiro disappears, the picture of Charlie’s birthday changes to include him.
Still in the past, Bennet visits Isaac (remember him?) to get some information about Claire – who appeared in so many of his paintings. Bennet explains that it’s very important to find out what the man who plans to kill her looks like. When he leaves Isaac’s cell in frustration, his partner shows up, admits she was eavesdropping, and kisses him. Meanwhile, G4 informs us that the co-writer of this episode wrote a tie-in novel about Hiro’s attempts to save Charlie. That’s kind of cool. Of course, at this point, continuity is collapsing on itself, so I don’t know what’s what anymore. G4 also manages to misspell “Spider-Man” here. There’s a hyphen! Always a hyphen!
Present Hito, still in the past, brags to Samuel that he saved Charlie without collapsing history. Samuel reminds him that he left some loose ends behind, gesturing toward Ando. Hiro announces himself to Ando as “Future-Hiro”, and Ando immediately asks “Where’s your sword?” Ha! Hiro explains that Past Hiro is even further in the past, but will be back shortly. He then goes into the back room and gives Charlie a big hug. She can’t understand why he’s acting like he hasn’t seen her in a long time. He says that he’s going to take her around the world, and she suggests starting with Japan. Well, that won’t be such a great vacation for Hiro, what with that being where he lives and all. She starts reciting mildly connected facts in a spooky way, and she sounds exactly like that ad for bing.com. She can’t stop talking about Japan until Hiro shakes her out of it. She explains that her aneurysm is rupturing, and that she’s dying. Hiro assures her that won’t happen.
He rides out to the bus and opens the luggage compartment. I’m not sure Sylar is going to be willing to help, but it’s a good thought. Sure enough, as soon as he opens the door, he gets telekinetically tossed into the side of a bus. Sylar’s waiting, and very curious as to how Hiro managed to pull that trick off. Sylar starts his finger trick, but Hiro freezes time and runs behind him. Awww, he can’t even teleport anymore. He keeps repeating his trick, but it’s obviously getting more and more difficult for him. Finally, he tells Sylar that if he kills him, Sylar will never learn about the future. In fact, he claims he can tell Sylar about his own death. Hiro buddy, you can’t back up that claim! Sylar’s going to outlive everybody on this show!
Hiro brings Sylar back to the diner, and tells Charlie’s boss that he’s a doctor. Hiro thinks Sylar can fix her brain, and that would be pretty cool if his powers extended to that. My gut reaction was that it didn’t make any sense, but he is a brain expert, after all. Still, 2006 Sylar didn’t have such fine control of his powers yet. Back then, he made a total mess whenever he got into somebody’s head. Hiro tires to keep Charlie calm while Sylar does his finger trick. After a bit, she cries a tear of blood – when Hiro wipes it away, she says that she’s fine.
Still in the past, Bennet stops by to see Claire who’s… cheering… in the street, I guess? My experience with cheerleaders is minimal, but don’t they usually cheer at games and stuff? I didn’t think they just randomly performed unfocused cheers. The two of them share a little moment, and Bennet admits he always wanted to be an English teacher. You guys, what is happening here? This never happened! Why is Bennet’s past so messed up right now? Anyway, Claire gets on the cheerleader bus, and Bennet looks at the motel key once again.
Sylar demands that Hiro keep up his end of the deal and tell him how he dies. Hiro responds “You die alone. I’m sorry.” Wow, that’s cold. He tells Sylar that he’ll collect many powers but eventually he dies, unmourned. 2009 Hiro actually does think that Sylar is dead in the present, so this is pretty cool. Hiro teleports them both out of there, and Sylar puts on his hat and heads for the cheerleaders.
Bennet meets his partner, Lauren, in Room 108. He tells her that he can’t do it, and that it wouldn’t be responsible. She says that he cares about her too much to let her go. He responds that his family is too important to him. Even Lyle? She finally agrees that hooking up would be a mistake.
Future Hiro talks to Past Ando and reminds him that the time-appropriate version of Hiro will be back shortly. Charlie comes out and is very upset – she doesn’t know how Hiro can justify saving her but not save any of other Sylar’s victims. She’s not sure that she deserves to be the one to cheat death, and calls Hiro “selfish”.
Still three years ago, but back at work, Lauren returns the motel key to Bennet, and asks if he was planning on going there. She acts like nothing happened, and with the key is a note from her – “Gone Hatitian. Wiped my memory. More professional this way.” That’s pretty cool. What makes it even better is that the clipped sentences make her sound more like Rorschach. I’m expecting her to start eating beans straight from the can. “Good this way. Hurrrm.”
At the diner, Present Hiro sits down next to Past Bennet. Bennet thinks he looks familiar and strikes up a conversation in Japanese. Bennet wishes him luck before heading out. At this point, Charlie comes back and apologizes to Hiro for being awful to him. She tells him (in Japanese) that she loves him, and they share a kiss. Hiro follows her out of the diner, but once he gets outside, she’s gone and Samuel is waiting. Samuel explains that he took Charlie to the present. Hiro freaks out, and suddenly, he and Samuel are at the Carnival, surrounded by Samuel’s “family”. He finds her nametag in the hay, but no sign of Charlie. Samuel explains that Arnold’s last act was to trap Charlie “somewhere in time”. He did so, but the stress killed him. Samuel explains that he needs Hiro to fix his past. He couldn’t ask Arnold to help, because he couldn’t take the chance that anybody else would learn about his transgressions. Hiro reluctantly agrees, and Samuel tells his story. We cut to “Eight Weeks Ago”, where we see Samuel in a hotel room over the dead body of Mohinder Suresh. And that’s where the episode ends. G4 takes this opportunity to tell us that “inside sources” report that Adrian (Nathan) Pasdar is leaving the show. By “inside sources”, they mean “every magazine last week and also the fact that his character died last season”, I bet.
I really liked most of this episode, but they played really fast and loose with the past. I think they broke their own rules about time travel, and they made a mess out of continuity without any clear purpose. So Bennet had a partner during Season One that never appeared before and was never referenced again? Unless there’s a huge payoff to her sudden existence, I don’t see what that accomplished. Still, I approve of episodes that focus on Hiro, Sylar, and Bennet.
In the next recap, a friend of mine comes up with an interesting possibility that never occurred to me, or to the Heroes writers.
