“That was my virgin-alarm. It’s programmed to go off before you do!” - Dot Matrix

By TrinityVixen

Where to begin the kvetching? I’d like to begin with the bad science, move onto the misogyny, and finish with some (more) character assassination. A holy trifecta of ensuckitude!

Volume Three, Chapter Nine – “It’s Coming”

And wherever there is bad science, there is Mohinder Suresh. Arthur Petrelli checks in on the good doctor’s work on the Formula (hey, remember that?). Mohinder’s Mr. Hyde cocktail and the Formula should be enough to trigger superpowers in anyone, but they leave all his test subjects looking even less appealing than the scaly, slimy Sureshenstein monster. Something’s missing: the Catalyst! The Catalyst combines with the Enzyme to make the Formula give superpowers to people. If you slept through high school biology, this might sound fine.

That’s a hint to let you know that it’s not fine. First of all, catalysts don’t cause reactions; they act to lower activation energies of reactions. If it takes less energy input into a system to cause a reaction, the reaction is more likely to happen. Catalysts are not reactants—they are unchanged at the end of the reaction. Something else catalysts don’t do, but Mohinder claims they can: “stabilize” a reaction. You don’t get a different result by injecting a catalyst into a reaction; you get the same end products, plus the catalyst.

This is chemistry, which is far outside the realm of Mohinder’s Cracker Jack prize genetics doctorate, and is thus summarily ignored. He says the Catalyst can’t be made synthetically or stored, so a person has to make it and keep making it within their own body, and you have to tap that person to get at it. So someone is the Catalyst that causes all the supers who have the Enzyme and the Formula in them anyway. (Someone’s power is the ability to give people powers. Yeah, The 4400 called; they want their finale plot back.) Next week, the show is arguing that the eclipse gave them all their powers. (Except the ones that had them before the eclipse, like all the Petrellis, Sylar included, Niki and DL Saunders, etc. etc.) I’m all for superpower potluck—hey, we can’t all be bit by radioactive spiders—but I do wish they’d stop declaring all these methods were the one, true way to get supers. I also want Mohinder to step away from science. Now, please.

Arthur knows who the Catalyst is. So do we. Long story short, it’s Claire. She and Peter spend the episode running from Knox and Flint, and there’s nothing worth reporting about their various escapes except that Claire is getting ballsy with her death-defying and Peter’s scared to death that his niece might be claiming agency for herself. Because you know what happens when you let the womens have the right to decide stuff for themselves? Men die. Literally. Peter harangues Claire about not giving in to her inner badass because she’ll grow up to become the woman who shot the Future!Peter dead. Gotta love irony-proof Peter: his telling Claire what to do is probably what pissed her off enough to make her want to kill him in the first place. (And isn’t the future of Future!Claire and Future!Peter is supposed to have been stopped by now?)

“I want you to stay innocent!” Peter whines. That’s his sole defense. “Please don’t become competent or morally gray because you might decide not to put up with my bullsh*t.” I have gone into this show’s attempts to keep Claire an eternal victim at great length. How wonderful for me that this is the sole plot thread they’ve maintained with any consistency. Sylar may have had his rabies shots and now sits and fetches, but Claire will always, always be a puppet. Save the Cheerleader, Get the Catalyst. But whatever you do, don’t let her do anything. Women who do things on this show? Evil. Mama Petrelli, Daphne, Tracy Strauss, take your pick. Just stay at home, fall in line and fall in love, ladies, because if you don’t? You’ll be picking your teeth with the bones of infants inside of a week.

Speaking of the Speedster, Daphne becomes a cheerleader herself this week as she stays faithfully by Matt’s side despite Arthur exposing her as a double agent. Thanks to her highly improbable, overnight-onset of love for Matt Parkman, the guy who showed up with a turtle and told her they were getting married, Matt is able to forgive her weaknesses and rescue another damsel-in-distress, the still-comatose Mama P. Wow, aren’t men great? They can do anything.

Like demand you apologize so they can forgive you when they are at fault. Continuing on his meandering track to redemption-at-any-cost-of-characterization, Sylar pays a visit to Elle at Arthur’s insistence. Arthur promises that if Sylar just goes and makes nice with Elle, maybe he can learn to steal powers without murdering any more. Seeing as this doesn’t bring Elle’s father back from the dead, I’m sure she doesn’t give a rat’s ass about trying to help Sylar be a better person. She is, however, keenly interested in frying Sylar over and over with her still-fritzing powers. Sylar says “Bring it on, and then we’re totally even.” And because he’s the dude, this is so. Elle forgets “Look what your Daddy used to be able to do,” and falls in love with (sweaty, shirtless, swooning) Gabriel Gray all over again. She even teaches him to use her incredibly destructive power. The little six-foot-tall wooden murderer becomes a real boy, who can control his hunger and take powers without killing and he fixes Elle’s power problems. Ah me, true love.

Too bad love is a trust game, and Nathan’s still losing. Tracy promises Arthur that she can sway Nathan’s good opinion Pinehearst’s way. Agency is evil, Mesdames. That means that while her new lover joins the Primatech faction (Mama Petrelli, Matt, Daphne, Peter, and Claire), Tracy does the perp walk into Arthur’s Pinehearst office with Knox, Flint, and the newly reconciled Elle and Sylar. Arthur draws the eclipse. Dun-dun-DUN!

Up next: The eclipse. Duh.

PS: Hiro thinks he’s ten years old after Arthur messed with his head. You’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference. But just in case this becomes relevant, I told you all about it.

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About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.

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