Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Ep 9

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives


Episode Nine: "Turn and Face the Strange"

What Happened:

Let's nutshell this one:

*Sylar and Danko frame HRG, who figures out the two are working together (clever girl). HRG also faces divorce, after Sylar messes with him while looking like his wife, prompting the company man to slam his wife into a table and press a gun to her head before a conveniently-timed call from Lyle (who? Oh, the brat) convinces him of her real-ness.
*Peter and Angela (later met by Claire, Nathan, and HRG) show up at a broken down camp of sorts where the bodies are buried, or something ominous (summer camp gone horribly wrong!).
*Matt Parkman meets his son, successfully delivered by Hiro and Ando, after ruining the one good thing in Danko's life (because that's heroic; to be fair, he doesn't kill anyone and realizes he's hit bottom).
*Suresh discovers what his dad was up to back in the 60s.

***

There are three great things about this episode:

1) Matt meets his kid, and it's a genuinely happy moment in a grim story. We see this has/will change Parkman's characterization for the better, both within the story and narratively. The guy's been Debbie Downer since this all started, not thinking logically, ignoring all the cop stuff and any sense of levity.

2) HRG is still amazing. No non-powered character is better than him, and I'd say he's more rounded than anyone on the show. So not only does he deduce the Sylar-body isn't Sylar, but James Martin, he then puts two and two together that Danko rigged this up. Sans glasses, he strolls into Danko's office, pretending to be Sylar-as-HRG and holds up some "new" files from Primatech. The bald hunter takes the bait. HRG holds him at gunpoint, but it goes downhill after that (Danko correctly tells HRG which agent Sylar is posing as, HRG shoots him and tells those around that it's really Sylar, but Sylar holds off healing to frame Noah. Noah flees, etc etc.). He's smart, and he operates using real logic, not make-believe emotional snap-decisionry (a Petrelli favorite).

3) The Japanese Trucker that sounds like GW Bush's neighbor.

***

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"
Episode Three: "Building 26"
Episode Four: "Cold Wars"
Episode Five: "Exposed"
Episode Six: "Shades of Gray"
Episode Seven: "Cold Snap"
Episode Seven: "Into Asylum"

-Hooper