Heroes: One Giant Leap

Nathan Petrelli from the Heroes on-line comic

Since it is getting closer to Halloween, I thought I might run a screencap of Claire lying on the autopsy slab, but I thought better of it. What a way to end an episode, but this mini-comic panel compliments my current coloring better.

This third episode was written by Jeph Loeb, who happens to be one of my favorite comics writers. Loeb is a current supervising producer on the show and has served as a producer in some capacity on Smallville and Lost in the past. All three shows are in my must-see list.

I watched the episode pretty late last night, so I may not have caught everything, but I wanted to post soon so I could hopefully get some commentsation going before deciding if I need to watch it again (okay, so by the time I finished writing this, I had watched it again). Ideally I’ll always have something posted by Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

This week’s episode is titled “One Giant Leap” …and thud, Peter is face down in the sandbox! Oh… he’s down again folks! Not exactly a giant leap for superhuman kind, but he’s working on it. The scene reminds me a lot of Peter Parker standing on the building ledge trying to shoot webs in the first Spider-Man film. At least Peter Parker got airborne before smacking into a wall.

After eating sand in front of a bored little boy in a red cape, Peter finds Papa Chandra Suresh’s book, Activating Evolution, in the library and brings it to Nathan’s attention. Nate again rebuffs Peter’s calls to figure out what is going on. The book features this week’s first sighting of the symbol on its cover.

So, while Peter is still working on the flying gig, it would appear from this week’s mini-comic on nbc.com that Nathan has been doing a better job of it. Apparently on the way home from visiting Peter in the hospital he stops to save a girl from a burning building. It would seem Nathan may not be as evil as we might want to believe he’ll be. I guess we’re still waiting to see where that heads, but his *outing* of Peter as another suicidal family member last night wasn’t exactly a nice-guy thing to do.

Following that, Peter slugs Nathan a couple times and Nate shows no remorse for what he did. Peter then lays one on Simone after she finds him post fisticuffs in the rain. That about does it for the Petrelli brothers this week. I didn’t see any other hints about what Peter’s power/s really are/could be, did you? It would seem that last week’s Entertainment Weekly agrees with me that there is something more to him. In full disclosure, I read that after writing my post.

We also see that Isaac sees the kiss in his sketchbook at the same time it happens. We previously see him getting dumped by Simone and I guess he can envision a future without Simone. Nothing else with Isaac this week other than Hiro trying to phone him a warning to watch out for a skull sized ice cream scoop in November.

Mohinder and his new shadow (Eden) find more secrets in his father’s flat. A small book and key hidden in the laptop lead them to Sylar’s apartment in New York. Mohinder finds that Sylar is far ahead of his father in finding people with powers. His map is twice as full and each photo features the symbol drawn on it. The only person we recognize is Nathan Petrelli. When Mohinder returns with the police at the end of the episode, the place has been Mr. Wolfed. Did Eden call it in?

We find Matt being interrogated by Agent Hanson (Clea DuVall) with someone taking notes behind the glass (is that Claire’s father after a fast flight from Texas?). Matt ends up working with the FBI in Los Angeles and saves the little girl (again!), and Agent Hanson, from (possibly) Sylar. It would certainly appear to be the same person capable of murdering the girl’s parents as the man exhibited telekinesis. Whether or not it is Sylar, we don’t know. He looked to be a short, white guy with brown or dirty blond hair and Matthew Fox-like stubble.

Matt apparently thinks he flies off, but I thought I saw him shrink down or disappear into the shadows. He certainly seemed to do some kind of body morphing when rising up after being shot by Matt. Anyway, we last see Matt passing out in a bar after not being able to read the mind of a black man with the symbol around his neck as a necklace.

Hiro spends the episode following Isaac’s 9th Wonders comic he picked up in future New York and recruits his friend Ando to help him. The effect of Hiro stopping time to save the girl was pretty cool with all the stuff floating in air and the camera following him thru/around it. After the in-show Nissan Versa ad, Ando takes a peek at his video iPod and we again see him checking out another video from Niki’s website (lasvegasniki.com). Go ahead and click on the link, it leads to the official/unofficial fan site for Heroes (9thwonders.com). I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for something a little less clothed. Speaking of Niki…

Niki’s trip to the desert and to Micah’s Grandma’s house reveals some facts about D.L., the boy’s father and Niki’s husband. D.L. escaped from prison and had previously stolen $2 million from the same shark already after Niki. I originally believed D.L. was the man with the funky eyes who we see in the bar when Matt passes out, but that would be my bad for believing he’s the only black guy on the show. A trip to IMDB reveals, based on pictures of cast members, it was not D.L. From the looks of the preview for next week, the “Mysterious man” looks like he is working with Claire’s father.

Like the show, I’ll end with Claire. When she pulls her Geometry book from her locker, it has the symbol doodled on the side. It looks like she can be killed, but if the thing that kills her is removed — in this case, a stick in the noodle — she’ll heal. I wonder if she could survive having her head severed, or a limb for that matter, and if it were held back in position, she would heal. Looks like she may be getting some revenge on the football player rapist — they were all in love with dying they were doing it in Texas (Butthole Surfers) — and possibly meeting Hiro, unless that’s a very lookalike blond, next week.

Next week’s preview also shows Niki meeting up with Nathan and Peter possibly stopping time like Hiro, but with Mohinder present. Is Hiro also there or is it Peter? Am I seeing this part wrong? Is something else happening? My recording got cut off during this part.

One thing is for certain, and Peter references this, New York sure is a city where you run into people. Between the Six Degrees going on here, and in that craptacular show, you’d think it were true.