In Washington DC, Danko’s getting a little nervous that Bennet’s off the grid. We also get an indication that he’s been spying on Nathan. Probably not too carefully, since he hasn’t caught on to the flying. It’s clear by this point that Danko is more than just an employee here. I think he’s the whole focus of the infiltration plan, but we’ll get to that later.
The next round of mind-reading takes us back four weeks. Bennet’s hanging out, working on a crossword puzzle to kill time. (And seriously, “Asta” is an answer in about 50% of all crossword puzzles. Nice detail.) After Sandra leaves, Nathan stops by for a chat. At this point, he’s already “set some things in motion”, and he makes it clear that the arrests are just the beginning – he’s going to try and cure them. So, since they don’t have a workable cure, Nathan’s really just trying to make sure he has a bunch of subjects to experiment on. Isn’t that a little, well, deplorable? Creepy? What the heck has happened to you, Nathan? We get a glimpse of Bennet’s storage space / arsenal, which was pretty awesome. Dude’s ready for anything.
Back in the hotel room, Matt and Mohinder turn on each other. You know, these guys are a bad team. I kind of like that, because, you know, they were regular joes a year or so ago. They didn’t suddenly become the Justice League. They’re bad at planning and get distracted. Peter heads to the storage space, which is being monitored by Danko. Man, that guy doesn’t trust anybody. What’s really amazing is that Peter pulls off an escape. But that’s not the most surprising thing Peter does this week, as we’ll see shortly.
Now, let’s see Two Weeks Ago. Bennet meets Danko, and they really don’t hit it off. Bennet seems to think this is going to be run like The Company, “one of us, one of them”. Danko rules out the possibility of working with Heroes at all. Thankfully, this is where it’s really clear that Bennet’s philosophy is not in step with what we’ve been seeing in this arc. Danko gets weirdly defensive here, with his ‘Do not presume to know anything about me”. We’ve seen hints of his dark past, including the possibility that he’s a war criminal, so clearly we need to get some flashbacks from him real soon. His irrational, broad-ranging hatred of all Heroes, along with his baldness, kind of invoke Lex Luthor, at least for me.
After his meeting with Danko, Bennet hops into Mohinder’s cab. How desperate do you have to be to turn to him? I mean, he used to stick people to walls with webs that may or may not come out of his butt, and keep them there until he got hungry. Anyway, Bennet tries to give Mohinder a warning, and as we see in the present, he didn’t bother to pass it along! How freaking useless do you have to be not to pass along genocidal warnings from a man who is firmly plugged into the intelligence community? Get over your pouting and make some calls! Stupid Mohinder. Matt is right to punch him at this point.
Of course, in the commotion, Bennet gets away. Hee. He used his memories to pit them against each other! Nice job, Bennet. He almost manages to drive off in a stolen car, but Peter shows up just in time to stop him. Once they duct-tape him up, Matt dives in for on last mind-read.
One week ago, Bennet meets up with Danko in his apartment. He’s trying one last time to rein Danko in, but it’s just not working. Bennet mentions several times that they “need to be human” in the way they approach this. The way he says it makes me wonder if he’s got some information about Danko. Does Danko have a power? That’s what Bennet seems to be getting at, to my mind. Is Danko a self-loathing Hero? At the very least, it would give him and Nathan something to talk about. By the way, Bennet gets a nosebleed from Matt’s psychic assault, which is something we’ve seen before. The Maxwell Lord Effect, I call it.
Using the address Matt gives him, Peter flies off to ambush Danko at home. Peter’s got one of the guns from Bennet’s arsenal, and if the entire run of this show has taught us anything, it’s that Peter might just as well make a gun with his finger and say ‘bang’. You know what Peter’s going to do with that gun? Nothing at all. Or maybe he’ll get talked into handing it over. We’ve seen that happen. Danko’s clearly a fan, because he puts his head right up against the barrel.
Nathan arrives, which surprises Danko. Now, I’m a little puzzled by the timeline here – why is Danko going home so soon after a Hero sighting, and why is it surprising that Nathan made it to his apartment? They both started out in Building 26, after all. Not a fatal flaw, or anything, but the storytelling didn’t quite hang. It does let us know that Danko has absolutely no idea that Nathan can fly, at least. So we can assume he’s not actively plotting against Nathan. Yet. And then, in the most surprising thing that has ever happened on this show, Peter pulls the trigger! Who thought that was possible? Sure, he just wings Danko, but nobody thought Peter was actually going to fire a gun. I love that Danko is exactly as surprised as I am, to the extent that pain is second to surprise on his emotion list. He lets it slip that SWAT is on the way to the hotel, and Peter’s off.
At the hotel, Bennet tells Matt that Daphne’s alive. Yay! Let’s see, Daphne’s alive, Peter actually acted on a threat, and Mohinder was proven to be just as useless as we thought. I’m calling that a win for this week! Of course, Matt’s not convinced, so Mohinder creates a diversion so Matt can poke around Bennet’s brain. In this case, Mohinder’s “diversion” consists of fighting the Army. Where was this proactive mindset two weeks ago? It is one of Mohinder’s finest moments, as it takes about a dozen tranquilizer darts to bring him down.
Finally, SWAT takes the hotel room, after a few wrong guesses. Matt tries for a standoff, but ultimately surrenders. It strikes me that Matt doesn’t try to use his powers to turn them away. In retrospect, he only misuses his powers like that to save the lives of other people. I can’t think of a time when he’s tried to influence people’s minds out of nothing other than self-interest. See, Matt’s still a good guy!
Peter surprises me again by rescuing Matt with a concussion grenade. Man, Peter’s into the ordnance this week. But poor Mohinder gets taken in, and we get a look at him in the containment facility. He’s tied town with some serious chains, and it looks like they’ve taken the fight out of him. Nathan comes in, and tries to make his case. Hee. Nathan really believes that he can convince the people he’s imprisoning and persecuting that it’s for the best. It’s very important to Nathan that people still like him. On the plus side, he does ask Mohinder for help saving Daphne. We don’t really know what the deal is, but I assume a super-fast metabolism is making a mess of things. They don’t really know how to sedate her, and probably can’t make sense of how to treat her bullet wounds. So, it’s possible that Nathan isn’t the worst person in the world, but he’s still pretty bad.
At the end, Bennet gets Danko’s congratulations on a job well done. It seems like Bennet’s gone to the dark side, but after everybody leaves, Bennet heads over to a park bench to sit with Ma Petrelli. He’s infiltrating Nathan’s group! That’s right, Bennet’s back to Double Agent status, which means Danko is going to have his hands full. I knew Bennet was still on the side of right!
And then we get a last scene of Matt painting. His paintings include numerous scenes where he’s a suicide bomber, as well as an explosion in Washington DC. Not a mushroom cloud, but a big blast nonetheless. Now, Matt’s paintings are less accurate than Isaac’s, but that’s still worrisome.
Hey, no Claire or Hiro in this episode. It’s pretty unusual not to have at least one of the two. But at least we got confirmation that Bennet’s still a good guy. But it looks like it’s going to get worse for him before it gets better. Until next week, let’s all just try to process that Peter actually used a gun!
