Heroes: Hysterical Blindness

By TrinityVixen

A shame that such a poetical title is wasted on what has been and shall be known as the lesbian kiss episode. Doubly a shame that Ernie Hudson should be so little utilized in his guest-starring role. Couldn’t we have incorporated him into the Carnival? (He has been in one before.) I’ll miss him when he’s gone. They need to stop teasing me with these cameos. Perhaps he’ll show up later and be as awesome as Swoosie Kurtz turned out to be. Mustn’t get my hopes up. This show has been so cruel to hopes in the past.

Volume Five, Chapter Four – “Hysterical Blindness”

Ernie Hudson gets three seconds to be derisive about newly revived and amnesiac Sylar. He would disgust me, too; he seems to have inherited Peter’s awful season one bangs and a bad case of the Lady Macbeths. Is this the result of the success of the Star Trek reboot? Is Zachary Quinto in complete acting shutdown until he’s back on the sequel? His scenes are dreadful. He whimpers and plays dumb while a shrink and Detective Ernie Hudson try to work out what his game is. The lady shrink buys that Sylar is a good boy, which is weird because she also totally believes he has amnesia, too, so why the hell does it matter if he’s good now? The second he gets his memory back, he becomes the guy in Ernie Hudson’s file who’s wanted for the murder of his own mother.

Ah, skip it. Much as I’d love to talk about Ernie Hudson some more, there is absolutely nothing to this whole nonsense. Amnesia? I thought we were getting away from the soap-opera clichés that ruined the last two volumes. Long story short, Sylar runs away from the police to join the circus. The best part that can be said about this plot is that Sylar’s escape saves Samuel’s bacon.

Samuel starts the episode on a gloriously happy note. He’s so thoroughly charming, beaming at the Carnival folk, who quaintly sit down to breakfast together in the morning. He has the energy of one in love with the world, like a new father opening his arms to accept his baby for the first time. In a way, he is: he announces to assembled family that by day’s end, they’ll finally fill an empty seat at their table. It’s important, in a show full of precognizant folk, to stress that this is just a feeling, not a literal vision of the future. Samuel has a mighty fine feeling, though.

And this feeling nearly does him in. Lydia and Edgar share a significant look at breakfast, which Lydia follows up on later, asking Samuel if he’s not counting chickens ahead of egg season. As the day wears on, Samuel shows the first hint of nerves, growing increasingly agitated with Lydia questioning him and his decisions. Come nighttime, Lydia’s tattoos have yet to produce a clear image of who’s coming to validate Samuel’s intuition. Samuel’s earlier calm and beloved world-oneness fall apart; Lydia grows impatient with being stuck with needles to no avail.

As Samuel is close to coming apart, however, an absolutely adorable girl shows up and greets him like her favorite uncle. (She does actually call him “Uncle Samuel.”) Samuel’s mood improves almost immediately. Perhaps Samuel makes himself more forgivably evil than previous villains in his genuine care for those under his charge. Yes, he’s using them, but the palpable love for these people rescues him from being another stooge-ish villain. Samuel’s visitor, Rebecca, an invisible girl, has been attending college with Claire, inveigling to separate her from people there. Rebecca is another one of Samuel’s assassins; it was she who killed Claire’s first roommate (so much for that jump/push/fall test). Luckily for her, she hardly has to lift a finger to convince Claire that Gretchen is a total stalker. I was totally convinced before this episode’s invisible shenanigans.

Alas, Rebecca is not bringing Claire in time to satisfy Samuel’s end-of-day deadline. This is where Sylar runs in as he’s trying to get away from Detective Ernie Hudson. Thankfully, Samuel returns to form, swank and styled in his nattiest three-piece suit–tuxedo tails, red vest, eyeliner and black nail polish. He could be Satan, he radiates so much sin. Behind him, the Carnival flashes in a blur; the creepy music associated with nightmare clowns the world over plays as Sylar gawks. Wordlessly, Samuel beckons a bewildered Sylar into the fairgrounds. By the time Detective Ernie Hudson catches up, there’s nothing but an empty grotto. Not sure if that’s Samuel moving the earth to bury the Carnival or moving the Carnival along the earth, but like all the best demons, Samuel disappears when his mischief is done.

Would that Gretchen would also disappear. Let us get one thing clear, show: love means never having to stalk someone. I don’t care that Gretchen is a woman stalking another woman, stalking is stalking is creepy. It is not at all excusable. You have a pretty good example of why stalking is disgusting and uncomfortable—Hello, Sylar!—so why do you then try to turn around similar behavior as love?

I suppose the best that can be said about Gretchen behaving like a stalker is that the show is not trying to make the much-hyped lesbian flirtation with Claire into anything like titillation. Gretchen comes across as pathetic and weird and Claire is obviously not into the kiss Gretchen eventually plants on her. No time is spared to examining either Gretchen’s “crush” or Claire’s (correct) suspicions that Gretchen is a little too Fatal Attraction-lite because their sorority rushing pays off at an inopportune moment. Off they go for what will be the most awkward initiation evening ever. I am still hoping that Gretchen is told to step off at some point. Barring that, it’s time for Mr. Bennet to bring in the Haitian. This is the least comfortable “But I love you!” declaration since Peter stole Isaac Mendez’s girlfriend in season one.

Speaking of Peter: He walks out on lunch with Mama Petrelli, who is too distracted by “Nathan’s” prolonged absence to string coherent thoughts together, let alone pay attention to Peter’s crises. It’s hard to say if Mama P is just worried that something’s gone wrong with Nathan 2.0 or if his absence depresses her to the point that she has to remember that her son is actually dead. Some part of her is constantly on guard where “Nathan” is concerned, but some part of her is also relieved of her grief when he’s around. As long as she has “Nathan,” she doesn’t have to confront the knowledge that her son died so ingloriously.

Peter, bless him, is unburdened with curiosity enough to ask too many questions. When Mama P won’t give his neuroses about heroism the time of day, he bolts. He happens to prevent Emma (the deaf woman) from being hit by a bus and accidentally ends up with her synesthesia ability (losing his much more useful super speed in the process). It only takes three episodes for Peter to work out what her deal is. Not the superpower, I mean the fact that she’s deaf. That’s our Peter! Despite Peter’s obvious deficiency where it comes to smarts, he is always very generous and caring; when he sees Emma freaking out about her ability, he attempts to explain things to her. Emma’s not ready for it, though. She runs off to discover more about her power on her own, while Peter returns to his ludicrously huge apartment in time to see Hiro teleport in and pass out.

Overall, while the episode was a tad grating on the Sylar front, there were some superbly subtle touches here. The pacing was decent, as the cliffhangers to be resolved next week hit at just the right moments. However, the best development of all is a recognition Peter has about normal people while talking to Emma. Although her only other choice is to consider her ability a sign of oncoming insanity, Emma still balks at Peter’s talk of people having abilities like they have last names. Peter has this pause, this conscious recall of how much his life has changed since that day he jumped off a roof to prove that he wasn’t crazy. Peter has been dealing with the repercussions of being with a super, and interacting almost exclusively with people who know about supers, for so long that he’s forgotten what it’s like to not believe, to not know about such things. Peter’s reflection on how normal people or isolated supers don’t have his knowledge is so sweetly sad. There is just a hint of envy to it, perhaps because Emma is in that honeymoon phase of discovery, unburdened by any of the other crap that comes with having an ability.

Bringing the fantastic back down to reality is a step in the right direction as far as reclaiming this show from the heights of lunacy that it reached in the past few volumes. What makes Emma’s story touching is how she has to incorporate this ability with all the rest of the worries and woes that make up her life. We don’t have to ignore what Peter’s experienced to have him be able to connect with what she’s going through. Instead, we can focus on this little personal connection and mine a million more credible, heartbreaking stories from it than from all of the overpowered antics. A little goes a long way.

Of course, that doesn’t look like what they’ll be doing next week, what with Mr. Bennet and Peter seeking a healer for Hiro and Samuel trying to recover Sylar’s memories. Methinks that is not a good idea. Of all the Carnival folk, Samuel has the most impressive ability by far. If Sylar wakes to his real self, he’ll be gunning for Samuel’s brains first. And then I will cry because without Robert Knepper I wouldn’t have tuned in this season at all.

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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