Heroes: Ink

By TrinityVixen

What is up with Samuel’s ability? He is very definitely an earth-mover, but there’s also this inking ability. Is it related to his ground-shaking? If so, this would be perhaps the most deviously clever translation of an ability ever—giving him the power to move materials from the soil even if they end up in another medium (in this case, ink). I wouldn’t have guessed that, five volumes in, Heroes had that level of creativity left in it.

Volume Five, Chapter 2 – “Ink”

Samuel continues to be all sorts of surprising and sly this week. After buying Hiro’s good will for a song, he’s after Peter’s loyalty. It is so sad to see someone as glamfabulous as Samuel throw cold cream at his eyeliner and retire the pirate outfit in favor of slicked back hair and a suit. Lydia, the tattooed lady, concurs, warning Samuel not to let this excursion to the mundane world distract him from who he really is. (Somebody got her SAG card this week.) Not to worry, my dear; even if he forgets, he’ll remember again in a hurry.

Some folks who should be in less of a hurry to be heroes: Matt Parkman and Peter Petrelli. In Peter’s defense, nobody knows that he can physically be at accidents and crime scenes inside of a second and work three shifts at once without losing any sleep. But still, that’s sloppy, Peter. If you want to work 18-hour shifts, can’t you at least work at two different hospitals? Spread the love, spare yourself the bureaucracy coming down on you for the overtime you’re clocking. It looks bad, especially if someone were to look into it because of a lawsuit. (More on that to come!)

Matt, on the other hand, has no excuse. He was never able to focus through the voices in his head when they didn’t belong to a psychopathic brain-nibbling monster. How the hell does he expect to do his job with Mind-Sylar riding shotgun? Long story short, Mind-Sylar helps Matt avoid being shot by a suspect. “I always thought I’d be an excellent cop,” Mind-Sylar crows. Truthfully, Sylar is actually not a bad detective; he’s proven himself to be more observant than people who make observations for a living. It’s the respect for the law that he lacks. Anyway, Matt never stops to consider how Mind-Sylar could know where the shooter was. He assumes Mind-Sylar is being true to his word and giving him a helping hand since he has nothing better to do while he’s stuck in Matt’s brain. (Ha! Somebody’s brain ate Sylar! The tables are turned!)

Of course, how Mind-Sylar worked out what Matt did not is more important than why. He did it because Matt is able to do it; just because Matt chooses not to eavesdrop on people’s thoughts doesn’t mean that the ability isn’t there for someone else to use. That Matt did not recognize the monster using his powers is a Very. Bad. Thing. What makes it worse is that he doesn’t connect the hallucinations that Mind-Sylar can induce as being connected to his own ability at all. Before the episode is over, Mind-Sylar has invented a preposterous kidnapping for Matt to investigate; Matt so fully commits himself to saving the nonexistent victim that he must once again stoop to rewriting the memories of those around him to explain why he beat the tar out of his handcuffed suspect.

I lost all sympathy for Matt when he justified his mind-wiping by saying if he didn’t his life would be ruined. I’m sorry,  were you or were you not caught on TV wearing a dynamite vest? The entire nation thinks you tried to blow up Washington D.C. but the possibility of being suspended for using excessive force is what is going to ruin your life? What about the psycho in your head? Isn’t that more likely to ruin your life? Even Mind-Sylar thinks so: either Matt finally commits to getting him back to his body, or they are going to have a lot of these kinds of days. Defeated, Matt makes no attempt to refuse. For my part, I’d love their relationship to end, unless prolonging it will give Matt some damned confidence already. Mind-Sylar might be right about that much—that maybe Matt held onto his psyche because if there’s one thing Sylar had, it was confidence. (Except for when the narrative demanded that he didn’t. See: Sylar’s Mommy Issues.) Then again, if I have to hear beanpole Zachary Quinto insult Matt’s weight one more time, I might vomit. Dear Heroes: Greg Grunberg is not fat. Knock that off right now.

(And is Zachary Quinto wearing a toupee? Backwards? Why does his hair look so fake? Claire’s hair issues have finally improved. Do not do this to me again.)

Know what else you can knock off? Gretchen. I mean, she’s Claire’s new roommate, and look at how easily you took care of the last one! Get Gretchen gone. She is less interesting and even worse at keeping a secret than West was. I never thought I’d admit that I missed West…well, I’m still not admitting it, but he at least didn’t scream up and down a dormitory hallway about Claire being a government experiment or mutant freak. She’s so obvious about it that she manages to toss roughly a billion significant pauses and looks at Claire while they are out at an Indian restaurant having lunch with Mr. Bennet. (Which neither of the girls likes. Anyone who doesn’t like Indian food is dead to me.) Mr. Bennet doesn’t have to be half as smart as he is to know in about three seconds that Claire’s managed to expose herself again. He, however, is much better at the stating the dangerous truth blandly; when Gretchen asks him what he does, he says that he is “Retired, but I’m always finding new reasons to go back to work again.” Dear God, yes.

Alas, no. Claire says no Haitian action on Gretchen. She’s going to handle her loquacious new friend by…telling her everything and rooming with her and giving her an experimental cut to prove to herself the truth about Claire’s ability. (Which Gretchen then tries to “relate” to by saying she had an eating disorder. Invulnerability, bulimia, they’re all the same, right?) I predict that this will never come back to bite Claire in the ass. Nope. At least Mr. Bennet did the right thing and let Claire try to sort out her own mess. You are the bigger person, Mr. B. Of course, Claire will prove entirely incapable of protecting herself and go back to relying on you by the next episode, but the important part is that you tried.

Sometimes, it’s enough to trust a person. Samuel, bless him, gets that. He’s behind the lawsuit currently derailing Peter’s heroism quest. Samuel uses his ink manipulating ability to insert himself into newspaper clippings about an accident that Peter worked as an EMT; for all anybody knows, Samuel was there that day, and Peter jostled him so hard that he was injured more for being helped than for being in an accident. This revelation is crushing for Peter, who thought he had left behind the days of doing the most harm with his good intentions.

Newly contrite, Peter chases down Samuel to apologize. Another masterful bit of plotting on Samuel’s part: Peter comes to him, begging him for forgiveness. It reminds me of the cat in Homeward Bound: “I’ll get food by pretending I don’t want food!” Samuel rebuffs Peter until Peter is desperate to please. This puts Peter in Samuel’s debt, and Samuel can easily exploit his eagerness in the future. But more than that, it provides an excuse for Samuel to talk to Peter. If nothing else, Samuel has proved himself to be a man of due consideration. Just because Peter is an empath (which, given that he is to replace Joseph, is probably the ability that Samuel’s brother had) doesn’t mean he’s empathetic and it doesn’t mean that he’s a good enough person to be a member of Samuel’s family. It’s funny that a man who condones and commits murder should be so choosy about other people’s morals, but it works with Samuel’s character. He needs someone who gives a damn. Inside of a two-minute conversation, Samuel discovers that Peter, dumb as he may be, does actually care about people.

Problem solved—for both men. Samuel promises to drop the lawsuit, so Peter is happy, and Peter’s in his corner, so Samuel is happy. They shake hand for just longer than is necessary. Peter offers a bit of parting advice to his new friend. He suggests that Samuel throw over Lydia’s advice and take a visit to his old home. I cannot wait to see Peter’s reaction when he realizes that he has, once again, caused more harm than good by so doing.

You see, Samuel was the child of the hired help at a luxurious mansion; he was worse than invisible on the swanky estate where he grew up and to which, on Peter’s advice, he returns. Things do not go well, to put it mildly. Robert Knepper, bless him, conveys all of Samuel’s agony, reluctance, and embarrassment at returning to this place where he was a nobody and having to plead with the lady of the house just to let him wander about the stables. The shame of having to ask burns Samuel to his core, made worse by the fact that he grovels, sacrificing his pride and dragging his brother’s recent death into the conversation to try and move this complete stranger to compassion for him. The heartless cow turns him away because she’s too enthralled with her dinner party to be bothered with someone else’s problems–least of all those of an old stable brat. In real life, this would be a rather creepy encounter, but even so, most people would be moved to help. No one goes, “I’m busy. Too bad about your dead brother. Ciao.” This woman is inhuman.

Luckily, she’s one of the people who dies in the ensuing sinkhole. It says a lot about how much I love Robert Knepper and Samuel both that he can cause the earth to swallow the entire mansion, party goers and all, and my sympathies are with him. (Then again, how hard is it to hate the rich, really?) So Samuel and Joseph ran away to join the circus, to escape people like that woman who don’t see anyone without money as a person and, probably, people like their parents who kow-towed to them. Who can blame them? Stick around and be treated like furniture or go be the superpowered ringleaders in the crazy Carnival? Samuel did try—he did—to open himself up, to be a normal person, and look where it got him. Bet he never makes that mistake again. His revenge is righteous. As a bonus, his handshake transferred over a handy compass tattoo to Peter. So Peter gets to clean up the mess that he inadvertently created, and Samuel is riding high of a double victory. Even without the eyeliner, Samuel is a hard rock bastard.

One more new development: Peter meets a deaf woman at the hospital with the ability of synesthesia. (Congratulations! Your ability is probably a horrible brain tumor or something.) She gets freaked out about being able to see sounds as colors, though she uses the ability to great effect on a cello she borrows from a busker. I dread the episode (that I know is coming) where someone offers to make beautiful music together with her. It will probably not come from Peter, however, as he is too dim to possibly be capable of even the lowest form of humor that is the pun. Otherwise, I kind of like her, though I’m worried about the setup of her character’s particular pathos: she chose being a file clerk over practicing medicine because she hates having to endure pitying looks from patients. Couldn’t she just have found some medicine where she didn’t have to interact with patients—like radiology? Countdown to this portrayal of someone other than a white male Petrellli becoming offensive: 3…2…1…

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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