NBC Heroes Characters: Sylar and HRG/Mr. Bennet (Source: NBC.com)
NBC Heroes Episode 14: “Distractions” Recap
February 5th, 2007 – Wow, just… wow. NBC has really struck gold with their absolute smash hit TV show Heroes. Every week I look forward to watching the newest episode and every week I am impressed. This weeks episode in particular was fantastic and, without a doubt, one of my absolute favorites.
The Heroes are all developing and learning more about their powers, their stories are slowly starting to cross paths and intertwine more and more, and things just keep getting better and better. In last weeks episode 13: “The Fix”, they finally revealed exactly who Claire’s [Hayden Panettiere] biological mother is (Meredith Gordon [Jessalyn Gilsig]) and promised to reveal her biological father in episode 14: “Distractions”. Well, as was promised, they revealed just who Claire’s biological father is, and all I can say is… I KNEW IT!
Find out what happened in Heroes episode 14: “Distractions”, after the jump!
Tonight’s show kicked off with Peter Petrelli [Milo Ventimiglia] and his newly acquired invisible sidekick Claude [Christopher Eccleston] going for a lovely stroll down the sidewalk, all the while Claude steals everything and anything from anyone they happen to bump into or pass along the way. While at the same time Claude is trying to explain to Peter exactly what is keeping him from controlling his powers and what he needs to do to better control his powers, one at a time.
Niki and her new shrink meet-up again and things go less then stellar, at least for the shrink, that is. The shrink pushes Niki to let Jessica take control and, sure enough, she gets her wish. Jessica takes control, breaks the chains that were securing her to her chair and grabs the shrinks taser from the table. Uh oh, you know this isn’t gonna end well.
Over in the thickly veiled world of Primatech Paper Company, the fearless Dr. Evil/Mr. Bennet/HRG/whatever you want to call him decides to pay the supposedly deceased Sylar an extra special visit, only to pull the sheets off his body, revealing his dearly deceased Dr. friend. Sylar pops up from behind HRG and throws him against the glass wall of the cell, stunning him. Sylar pulls the implant out of his skull, throws it down beside HRG, rifles through his pockets and walks out of the cell with HRG‘s wallet in hand, closing the door behind him. Sylar traps HRG in his former cell and taunts him by pulling his drivers license from his wallet and rubbing it around on the glass wall. Old habits die hard, and Sylar is after Claire again!
Simone Deveaux [Tawny Cypress] pays former boyfriend Isaac Mendez [Santiago Cabrera] a visit at his studio in the hopes of tracking down her new lover boy, Peter. While walking around the studio Simone pulls a clothes off a giant canvas, revealing one of Isaac’s newest paintings depicting the smoldering ruined landscape of what was once New York City. Simone is desperate to track down Peter and wants Isaac to paint where he is, but there’s just one problem, he has been trying to… and he can’t. Any time he tries to paint Peter he draws a blank, nothing happens, like Peter doesn’t even exist. Or maybe he’s just invisible?
Claire and best buddy Zach [Thomas Dekker] are at Claire’s house trying to convince her “mom” to let them skip school so they can go to the aquarium and research for their manatee project. Suuuure, like I haven’t tried that one before. Naturally, all Claire and Zach want to do is pull the wool over ‘ol gullible “mom’s” eyes so they can sneak off to find Claire’s biological mom in Kermit. Yes, just like the frog.
Hiro Nakamura’s Father and Sister
(Source: NBC.com)
Last we saw intrepid Heroes time traveller Hiro Nakamura [Masi Oka], things weren’t going the greatest for him and best buddy Ando Masahashi [James Kyson Lee]. Hiro’s father, played by legendary Star Trek actor George Takei, had him and Ando picked up and taken to a secluded building where his father demanded that he return to Tokyo and his job. Hiro’s father even goes as far as to offer him an Executive Vice President position with a future as CEO once his father retires. Hiro refuses the offer and explains everything to his father. Naturally, his father doesn’t take to kindly to being turned down, and tears up Isaac’s paintings. Poor Hiro. On the plus side, Hiro’s sister Kimiko is hot, and Ando thinks she’s got the hots for him, ha!
Hiro and Ando aren’t the only ones having a crappy day though. Niki snaps back to consciousness in the interrogation room as guards bust in the door to find the shrink face down in the corner of the room, her clothes covered with taser burns and an opened cellphone laying beside her. Niki, having no recollection of what happened while under Jessica’s control, asks to be taken back to her cell and gets put back to sleep again with a quick crack of the baton from a friendly guard.
Claude and Peter continue their lovely afternoon stroll as Claude continues to try and explain why Peter can’t control any of his powers. It looks like Peter’s mind is to clouded with thoughts of his friends, family, etc. to focus on controlling his powers. Claude tells him to forget about his family and friends and to stop thinking about them and worrying about them so much, or he’ll never be able to control his powers.
As if getting crap from his father wasn’t bad enough, Hiro’s sister Kimiko takes a turn ragging on Hiro, saying he has shamed his family by running from his job and leaving his country. Ouch! Shaming your family is not something to be taken lightly in Japanese culture. It turns out his father is having a lot of troubles back at the company and has come to America with Komiko in the hopes of bringing Hiro back to help fix things up. After all, if he can’t control his own family, how can he be expected to control a giant company. Naturally, Ando takes Kimiko’s side on the battle and tries to convince Hiro to go home as well.
Claire and Zach arrive at a trailer park in Kermit and find where Claire’s biological mother lives, in a trailer. How fitting. Zach decides the best way to force a nervous Claire into going through with meeting her mother is by hopping back in his car and taking off until it’s time to pick her up and leave again, which seems to work. Claire approaches the door, knocks, and Meredith Gordon answers. Claire finally meets her biological mother face to face, yay
Sylar manages to track down HRG’s house and let’s himself in, sneaking up on Claire’s mom as she returns from grocery shopping, scaring the holy hell out of her. Sylar, being the conniving, sneaky bugger that he is, manages to convince Claire’s air-headed mother that he’s a delivery many from Primatech Papers and was there to drop stuff off for HRG and only came in ’cause he found the dog running around outside. Naturally, Claire’s doofus of a “mom” buys the story and starts to chat with Sylar about Claire. Sylar mentions that he wants to meet Claire and Claire’s “mom” invites him to join them all for dinner. To bad HRG is still trapped in Sylar’s old cell.
Claire and Meredith sit down and talk about everything that’s happened. Meredith was positive that Claire died in the fire and, after the fire, ran for years, staying in Mexico and various other places. Claire’s “mom” calls to bug her and is promptly shrugged off so Claire can get back to talking to her real mom, and she does it, she breaks the news to her, but not just by telling her. Claire grabs a kitchen knife, cuts open her arm and lets it heal up in front of Meredith. At first Meredith freaks out, that is until Claire heals, at which point Meredit holds out her hand and creates a fireball in her palm, showing Claire her powers. Sweet! This is going to get good!
NBC Heroes HRG/Mr. Bennet
(Source: NBC.com)
Back at HRG‘s house, Sylar is starting to get creepy with all the talk of Claire and her mom is starting to get a bit worried. Sylar starts to talk about how special Claire is and about her powers and how he’s going to kill her and Claire, he just can’t decide which to kill first. As Claire’s mom tries to escape, Sylar uses his powers to throw her into a grandfather clock and, as he’s walking up on her to finish the job, the front door bursts open and HRG bust’s in with the Haitian [Jimmy Jean-Louis], unloading a clip into Sylar. Sylar runs away and the Haitian gives chase, as HRG is screaming for him to kill Sylar. HRG comforts Claire’s mom as she lays on the floor when the Haitian comes back empty handed. HRG tells Claire’s mom not to worry and has the Haitian erase her memory, again.
Back in Kermit, Claire decides she’s learnt enough for one day and better get home before she gets into trouble, but, before leaving Meredith, she ask’s one last question. ‘Who’s my father?’ Needless to say, Meredith was caught a bit off guard and said she would tell her the next time they met. Meredith gives Claire her necklaces and the two part ways. Oooooooh, what tease!
Simone returns to Isaac’s studio to try and get some more information, only to find that Isaac is no where to be found. She does, however, happen upon a new painting depicting Isaac and her standing on top of a familiar building. Simone goes to the building and finds Isaac waiting. Isaac tells her that he has to find Peter and stop him from exploding and Simone tells him that he can do it, he has the ability to change the future, not paint the future. Ooooh, I wonder if that was just being nice, or maybe that really is his power after all? At the end of their conversation, Isaac and Simone hug. Big mistake, both Peter and invisible buddy Claude were standing nearby watching. Peter just caught his girl getting all huggy with another guy. Uh oh!
Back near the docks, Hiro comes up with a strategy and gives in, agreeing to return to Japan with his father and sister, as long as he can restructure the management of the company and generally mess things up. Kimiko gets pissed and goes off on Hiro, explaining how he can’t do that, why he can’t change those things and the things that he should be changing. Without even really knowing it, Kimiko has just proved to her father that she can take over the company and Hiro has got himself out of having to go home. Nicely done!
Niki awakes once again, in her padded cell, to a new visitor. Mr. Linderman’s henchman has decided to pay her a visit and comes bearing interesting news. All the charges against her have been mysteriously dropped and she will be set free, as one of her fellow inmates confessed to all of her crimes and the DNA evidence matched. Nice setup. I wonder what Linderman wants from Niki now.
Back on the roof, Peter is yelling at Claude for showing him Simone and Isaac hugging, like he was responsible for it or something. Claude tells Peter that he’s trying to teach him how to control his powers, that he can’t trust anyone and needs to stop thinking about all the people in his life that are clouding his judgement and, before he has a chance to catch up, Claude tells Peter to control his powers to fly and pushes him off the roof. Wtf! Peter comes to a grinding halt as he falls all the way, smashing through the roof of a taxi cab, impaling himself on a shard of metal. Peter doesn’t manage to switch into fly mode, he does, however, switch into healing mode just before hitting the cab and ends up healing himself using the powers he absorbed from Claire. He’s learning how to control his powers, yay!
Claude eventually finds his way to the alley way where he finds Peter sitting beside the taxi, recovering. Peter finally realizes how he can control his power, he has to think of the person he absorbed the powers from before using them and he’ll be able to control them. But things go sideways quickly, as Peter overloads and begins to lose control all together. His hands turn invisible, his eyes go cloudy and white and he starts to see visions of going nuclear. Luckily Claude was there to offer a hand by punching him square in the face and knocking him out. Apparently he can’t do any damage if you knock him on his ass. Good to know.
Back in the studio, Isaac is on a mad painting spree and paints a picture of Peter sitting beside the crushed taxi cab. Isaac calls HRG to tell him he was finally able to paint Peter and that he hasn’t been able to until now, it’s almost like he was invisible, and the lightbulb clicks for HRG. HRG knows of Claudes powers, knows who he is and has met him before. He thought he was dead, but now knows that he must be alive and working with Peter. Very interesting.
Micah makes his only, brief appearance of the episode, asking Niki – who just got home, if she wants to play a board-game. But it doesn’t look like Niki’s around anymore. Jessica has taken control and is now in complete control of Niki’s body.
Back in the Bennet house, Claire finds out very quickly that her “mom” was brain drained yet again, as she yells at her and Zach for skipping school, since she didn’t remember any part of the conversation they had earlier about Claire and Zach going to the aquarium.
And, the most important part of the entire episode, and the moment every Heroes fan has been waiting for, for at least a week: Meredith calls Claire’s genetic father to let him know that Claire found her and, as the camera pans up, we find out exactly who Claire’s biological father is. It’s Nathan Petrelli! I knew it!
I made my prediction for Claire’s biological father last Thursday and my top two guesses were Mr. Linderman and Nathan Petrelli, and sure enough Claire’s biological father is Nathan Petrelli!
That’s all for this week, stay tuned for the NBC Heroes episode 15: “Run” recap next Monday, February 12th!
NBC Heroes TV Show Recaps:
NBC Heroes Recap – episode 13: “The Fix”
NBC Heroes Recap – episode 12: “Godsend”
NBC Heroes Recao – episode 11: “Fallout”
i thought it was HRG and not HGR?
You are very correct. Thanks a lot, I completely missed that I was doing that.