In every journey, the traveler must ask 'Was the right path taken?' Many roads are long and winding, filled with those who have lost their way. Some forge their own course, guided by faith, seeking not a location but a kindred soul. Others step together, finding safety in the arms of another. A few remove themselves from the trail to avoid the path of temptation. But those who watch the track too closely fail to see where it led them. And they're often all too surprised by their destination." So goes Suresh's introduction monologue.
Right away, I'm proven right in my prediction that Hiro pulled off some time travel trick to fake killing Ando. Specifically, he froze time and teleported to a trick shop where he picked up a collapsible sword and fake blood, then went back in time to right before the bartender attacked Adam Monroe, gave Ando the fake blood and told him to be ready to play dead, then traveled back to the moment right before he stabbed Ando, which brings us to last week. As we know from last week, Daphne and Knox fell for it and accept Hiro's bid to join them. Knox leaves to take Adam to Pinehearst and Daphne gives Hiro his first assignment - "recruit" the African that helped Matt see the future while Daphne goes to recruit Matt. After Daphne finally leaves, Hiro gives Ando the all-clear and they plot their next move.
Hiro figures that his "mastery over time and space" will give him the edge over the African's precognition and tries to sneak up on him at home. As they look around, Hiro sees the paintings of Matt and asks Ando if the painting looks familiar to him. Ando tells Hiro that they all look the same to him, to which Hiro replies "that's racist". I had to chuckle at this, since I'm not sure that Ando really meant that all white people look the same to him, but more that all the paintings look the same. This could be more of a comment on Tim Sale's artwork, just sayin'.
Ando also expresses misgivings about their plan to kidnap a man for the villains. Hiro makes some sort of rationalization that comes down to the ends justifying the means, perhaps setting up a discovery by Hiro of how easy it would be to become a villain. I'm also starting to think that, when Hiro saw Ando kill him in the future, Ando may have been the hero and Hiro may have been the villain. It's been said before, but most people see themselves as the hero of their story, including villains.
ANYway, when Hiro begins exploring the African's hut, he sees a picture of himself being hit on the head with a shovel. Just as Hiro realizes that the paint is still wet, he turns around and the African hits him over the head with a shovel. When Hiro wakes up, Ando convinces him to go back in time to one minute before the African hit him over the head, hide behind a rock, and then trap the African after he hits him over the head. As Hiro's waiting, he notices another painting of him getting hit over the head with a shovel, at which point - you guessed it - the African hits him over the head, walks into the hut, and hits him over the head again. He wakes up just as Ando is convincing him to go back in time and he disappears. He then walks up to Ando and decides to do things the old-fashioned way - hide and wait for the African to come back. Eventually he does, and congratulates Hiro on using his head instead of his powers. He then points out a new painting - of all of the villains surrounding the Pinehearst logo - and tells Hiro that he can either take the African to them or find his own path.
At Pinehearst,, Adam is trying to give Knox the badass who's not afraid of anything speech, but he gets scared in a hurry once he sees Arthur Petrelli. Adam tries to run, but his fear has made Knox strong enough to put Arthur's hand on Adam's, at which point we finally find out Arthur's power - he can take away others' powers, leaving them with none - taking Peter's power to another level. Without his powers, Adam crumbles away into dust and I'm left shouting at the TV, since Adam was one of my favorite characters. Arthur stands up and pulls the tube out of his trachea hole, commenting on how nice it is to breathe again.
Daphne, stricken with doubt over Pinehearst - she thinks - turning Hiro into a killer and conflicted over what else could come from their mission, tries to throw away the dossiers on Hiro and Matt, but "Lindeman" reminds her that they can't "help" her if she quits the company. They must have some serious dirt on her. Realizing that she's in too deep at this point, she takes the dossiers back out of the trashcan and searches for Matt. Conveniently, Matt has just arrived in New York, turtle in tow, looking for Daphne. She tries to give him the recruitment speech, he tries to give her the "we're married in the future" speech. After he spouts some details of her life that he shouldn't know, she asks him to wait for her while she runs some errands. After seeing all of the people "Lindeman" wants her to recruit, she realizes Matt won't fit in and warns him to stay far away. Matt wants to help her get away from Pinehearst, but she tells him that he can't help her and disappears.
Claire tries to take off to save Meredith the fire chick, but Mrs. B insists on coming, invoking the "One of us, one of them" rule. Meredith is, of course, still trapped with the creepy creepy puppet man, who is trying to force her to fall in love with him "again". Apparently, Meredith use to be a chubby chaser! She tries to tell him that she never loved him and that he disgusts her, but you can see the lie in her eyes. She loves chubby dudes, she can't deny it. To prove a point about being able to make her do anything he wants, Chubster goes all crazy-eyed and makes her cut herself with a wine glass. Claire and Mrs. B disrupt Meredith and Chubster's forced dance when they discover his marionette theater and break in. Of course, they don't know Chubster's power and are easily caught. Chubster forces them into a game of spin the revolver/russian roulette by making them shoot at eachother in turn, with only one bullet in the revolver. When Mrs. B's turn to shoot Claire comes up, Claire encourages her to keep pulling the trigger until she actually shoots Claire. Chubster, who doesn't know Claire's power, taunts the other two women when Claire gets up and knocks her out. The ladies finally call HRG to take Chubster in and he's impressed by Claire taking the creepy dude down, but Claire plays indifferent. Meredith explains that Claire needs to be independent to HRG, who recruits her as his partner.
Nathan and Tracy show up at Suresh's lab where, as you may expect, Suresh mistakes Tracy for Nikki. Once they get that whole thing cleared up, they tell Suresh about Zimmerman and his experiments. Suresh, excited that someone else has already found a way to do what he's trying to do, tells them that he thinks they can all help each other quite a bit. Suresh tells them that he's injecting them with genetic tracers to identify any abnormalities, but shoots them up with some kind of tranquilizer instead. He never wraps them up in the cocoons like he's done everyone else, so I'm not sure what he has planned. Daphne shows up to his lab as part of her recruiting drive, but only leaves a card with him after she finds the cocoons and realizes that he's another monster that Pinehearst is trying to recruit. Before Suresh can do any real experimentation, Tracy tricks him into allowing her to touch him and incapacitates him long enough to free herself and Nathan, though Suresh recovers before they can completely escape.
Another stop in Daphne's recruitment drive is Level 5, where Sylar and Flint, the Kane wanna-be, are being held. Sylar refuses her offer, but Daphne leaves a card before busting Flint out. We don't see it, but Daphne must have left Sylar's cell door open and he must have wandered around some, because his next scene has him waking up Peter and telling him that there's something wrong with their mother. In Angela's hospital/clinic/whatever room, she's in a sort of waking coma. With Sylar freaking out, Peter finally realizes that Sylar really does care about Angela. Peter tries to read her mind to see what happened, but only sees the double helix insignia, which Sylar recognizes from the Pinehearst card that Daphne left with him. Peter storms off to confront Pinehearst and Sylar tries to stop him and explain that the hunger that Peter has picked up from Sylar is controlling him, but Sylar can help him control the hunger and get answers at Pinehearst. Peter, of course, doesn't trust Sylar and has this beserker rage thing going besides, which leads to the first Sylar/Peter throwdown in almost a year and a half. Peter wins again and hooks Sylar up to machine that was keeping him in an induced coma.
Back at Pinehearst, Arthur is meeting his new recruits when Peter blows the doors off the hinges - literally - to make an effective entrance. Peter, shocked to see his dad alive, demands some answers. Arthur agrees that they have alot to talk about but first asks for a hug. Peter allows Arthur to hug him at which point Arthur says he's sorry that it's come to this and drains Peter of all of his powers.
...and that's all for this week. It'll be interesting to see where everyone goes from here - will Sylar keep trying to do good? Spoilers and whatnot that I've read indicates that he'll be allied with the "villains" at some point. How will Peter get his powers back, because we all know that he will somehow. What will Hiro do next, because I really get the feeling he's headed towards unintentional evil here. Will Suresh sign up with Pinehearst so that he can get some answers? He's already sold his soul to Primatech before, I'm getting the same "ends justify the means" vibe from him that I get from Hiro. Am I the only person who's starting to think that the Petrelli's are starting to resemble the Summers family with all of the big powers coming from their family and somehow being related to almost everyone? As for the others.... I can't really bring myself to care what happens to them - maybe next episode.
