The episode was called “Thanksgiving,” and we had something to be thankful for: an episode that didn’t suck! Nothing really made any sense, and if you think that last night was yet another example of the show’s long spiral down the toilet bowl of badness toward the sewers of TV oblivion, I won’t argue with you. But human existence is nasty, brutish, and short, and you could’ve done much worse than spend an hour (only 42 minutes on DVR!) watching Heroes last night.
Let’s take a look at the three Thanksgiving dinners that formed the bulk of the episode:
The Family Bennet (with friends)
Claire wants to be normal! But everyone thinks she’s weird! Etcetera. Noah listened patiently to his daughter whining about her sole character trait for the millionth time, but there was a glimmer in his eyes and a spring in his step. Claire Bear, he explained, I’m planning a Thanksgiving Dinner! One of those divorced-family dinners where Mommy brings her new boyfriend and your little brother doesn’t show up because he’s hasn’t been important since season one! So cheer up, emo kid!
I know what you’re thinking: Noah Bennet, cooking dinner? Yeah right! More like cooking up a harebrained plot! While shopping for turkey, he just so happened to run into Lauren Gilmore, his retcon amnesiac office romance from that terrible episode a few weeks ago. Lauren asked him what he was doing in the supermarket. “Shopping for canned yams!” “Didn’t peg you for a yam man.” “Big yam man!” Awful dialogue! Thankfully, Lauren’s no dummy: “You’re stalking me, aren’t you?” Noah admitted he was. She liked it. Noah invited her to dinner with his ex-wife. She said yes. Looks like Uncle Haitian may have removed more brain cells than he meant to!
We were led to believe that Lauren had all her feelings for HRG Haitianized into oblivion. So, the fact that HRG was tracking her down led me to believe that we were going to see some serious HRG flirtation, as he tried to woo the woman who once gave him an illicit motel room key out of her love amnesia. (She Forgot That She Loved Him… But He’ll Make Her Remember!) But she practically fell into his arms. So everything that happened before was meaningless, but call me crazy, I kinda like the idea of good ‘ol HRG (it sounds cooler than Noah) having a love interest, especially one who’s as kooky, workaholic, and semi-homicidal as he is.
Even better, Lauren bears a striking blonde resemblance to Claire, which leads right into my Oedipal thesis of Heroes, which I’ll explain next time there’s a crappy episode. Probably next week!
The dinner itself was a charming little farce. Claire arrived first… and met Lauren. “You brought a date to Thanksgiving?” she asked her papa. HRG: “Your mother will understand. We’re a complex modern family.” Ex-Mama Bennet has a new boyfriend. His name’s Doug. He loves dogs way too much. He’s probably repressing something. Claire doesn’t like Doug. Doug doesn’t understand Claire. The only person who understands Claire is Gretchen. Claire tried to explain this over dinner. In the process, she recapped the season so far for her mother’s benefit. It took about ten seconds. Thank god nothing ever happens!
“I’m thinking about leaving school,” she said. She wants to figure out who she really is. Doug thought she was just being a normal teenager, but Claire was all like, “I’m not normal!” And then she stabbed herself in the wrist with a knife. Doug fainted.
Noah, your party’s spinning out of control! Ah ah ah, kids, but look behind door number 2: our clever HRG called Gretchen off the Crappy Supporting Character bench. Get in the game, Gretch! Hope you die soon! Gretchen ran off with Claire into the night, searching for the Carnival of Love with the Compass of Mystery. Ex-Wife Bennet shared a laugh with Platonic Galpal Lauren. Doug the New Boyfriend was proven to be a pansy boy. And HRG got Lauren’s number! It was the best Thanksgiving ever.
La Famiglia Petrelli
Meanwhile, over in the land of Blue Camera Filters and Frowny Faces, Peter Petrelli and the shapeshifting body that currently houses the mental imprints of his brother and his worst enemy had a surprise visitor. It was Mama Petrelli! She wanted to throw a special Thanksgiving dinner for her boys. Peter and Nathan asked her about that Nathan Petrelli body they found in the storage locker yesterday. “That was just a shapeshifter posing as your brother!” she said. “Imagine if the press had gotten wind.”
I like Angela Petrelli. She’s one of those utterly corrupt power-mad matriarchs that modern TV excels at (I’m thinking about Sherry Palmer on 24, Atia on Rome, or Julie Cooper on The O.C., women whose sole motivation is to further their family’s rise to power, but who are totally willing to essentially destroy their family in the process.) Angela always sounds like she knows what she’s talking about, which is helpful, considering that most characters on Heroes now spend whole seasons moping around and being all like “What am I? Who am I? Oh look, a carnival!” Tracy, I’m looking at you!
Despite the season-long narrative idiocy that led up to last night, the Petrelli Thanksgiving was a tense, darkly comic little ride. Angela tried to convince Nathan that he was really Nathan; he had Nathan’s memories, and he had Nathan’s bodies. If everyone on earth tells you you’re Nathan, then you’re Nathan. Heavy stuff! (I felt like I was watching Battlestar Galactica. Except cheaper and bad.)
Nathan wasn’t having it. “When you look at me, you don’t see your son. You see the man who murdered your son.” Adrian Pasdar, totally killing it! Angela tried to distract him by serving the next course, but then some crazy lightning bolts sprung all around Nathan’s body. He looked at his brother, his sad Pasdar eyes expressing nothing but complete defeat, and said, “We never should’ve gone to Texas.” What a line! Adrian Pasdar, be my father!
Boom! Shapeshift sound effect, and hey, presto: Brain Sylar and Body Sylar, together again! Zachary Quinto bit into his reunified role with relish. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in months. You think that’s some kind of existential soul thing?” Some Kind Of Existential Soul Thing: That’s a WAY better name for this volume than Redemption! Here’s a guy who knows he can destroy the world, and he loves it. Yes, yes, I was thinking, finally, we get Sylar without the safety brake on! Sylar about to go crazy! He pointed his magic finger at Angela’s forehead and said, “Time to carve the turkey!” he said. Ha ha! That’s funny! Kill her!
But no! Brain Nathan fought back, and he took over Sylar’s body again, and flew off, leaving Peter with a worried expression on his face. That wasn’t a fun Thanksgiving dinner; not at all!
The Sullivan Idiot Carnival
Meanwhile, over in the land of Tilted Camera Angles and Characters That Only Exist For The Sprint Tie-In Webisodes, Hiro was impotently begging Samuel to tell him where he hid Charlie. Seriously, people, let’s start the betting. You know she has to be somewhere ironically close to Hiro’s past, since no Heroes villain is smart enough to hide her somewhere completely random. But where? Maybe back in feudal Japan? Maybe two weeks in the future at Ando’s wedding? You just know the answer is going to be somewhere stupid!
I keep on hoping that the show will let Robert Knepper off his leash and just act the crazy heck out of his role: Scotch-Irish-Terrakinetic T-Bag 2.0. We saw a bit of this in the first scene of the episode, when Samuel was watching the film of his birth, and he was basically seat-dancing with happiness at how powerful he can be. We also saw a bit of energy in the flashback: I kind of glossed over this last week, but according to the show, eight weeks ago Samuel was about 15 years old and he kept on asking his fun-killing older brother to let him stay out after midnight. Seriously, he was adolescent. How did he become a pontificating patriarchal mastermind in the last eight weeks? The magic of bad writing, kids!
What else happened in the Circus? The Clairvoyant Tattoo Lady and Hiro went back in time and saw that Samuel killed his brother. (Anyone who didn’t call this way back in the first scene of the season: you’re an idiot.) There was a charming moment where Tattoo McGee and Hiro were hiding behind one corner of a trailer and they saw Mohinder pass by, and they were about to step out and follow him, but then they saw Samuel come out from behind the opposite corner of the trailer. How much of this Circus plot is based on characters lurking behind corners and hearing secret information? Man, I hate the Circus!
During the Thanksgiving dinner, Samuel Sullivan used his brilliant powers of oratory to claim that Edgar (Ray Park) killed his brother. (I was going to make fun of what a pointless character Edgar is, but then I looked at the picture on Ray Park’s wikipedia page, and my heart melted.) Stuff happened, Edgar ran off. All in all, the dinner was subpar. You call that a carny dinner? THIS is a freaking carny dinner!
At the end of the episode, Hiro had enough. He stormed over to Samuel’s trailer. He demanded that Samuel show him where Charlie was. By god, this is the Hiro I’ve been missing! Strong! Passionate! Sure, Hiro will always be a geek, but finally, he wasn’t just some stupid amnesiac man-child!
Samuel was all like, “What’s that in the sky!” Hiro turned… right into the arms of a magical bearded man, who put his hands over Hiro’s face. Images from Hiro’s stupid story line flashed before his eyes. Hiro said, “I must rescue Watson! Beam me up, Scotty!” and disappeared. Yes, you guessed it: Hiro’s a stupid amnesiac man-child! Again!
Conclusion
Actually, in hindsight, this episode wasn’t very good. I think I would’ve been much happier with a whole episode of tense, blue-tinted Petrelli holiday dining. On the comment boards, one commenter (sonny) (if that is your real name) rightly took me to task last week for mentioning ‘Company Man’, the episode which everyone and their mother usually references when they talk about how good Heroes used to be. Sonny, you are right, and I apologize for being an unimaginative critical gasbag.
What I should have said is: I miss the idea that Heroes could do a whole episode about one single set of characters, with one unified narrative, and scenes that didn’t constantly cut away to other scenes occurring on the opposite side of the country with a completely different cast of characters. I miss the notion that Heroes could shake up its whole storytelling style every episode, instead of just cross-cutting between zany unconnected subplots and hoping that at least one will get your attention. Seriously, the show’s basically a gritty Telenovela half the time, now!
Think about it: How awesome would the slow-burning tension of the Petrelli dinner have been, over the course of a full hour instead of just little snippets intercut with Carnie Shenanigans and the Noah Bennet Dinner Theater Hour? Sylar’s appearance would have felt genuinely thrilling and inevitable. The Petrellis could have talked about something other than the plot. “So Nathan, you’re a senator. What’s that like?” I dunno, maybe I just like the Petrellis. They’re way cooler than the Bennets, and man, they blow the Sullivans out of the water.
What’d you think, fight fans? Do you agree with me that the episode successfully achieved not-terrible mediocrity? Do you think that the absence of Matt Parkman made a big difference in the overall suckage level? Don’t you wish that all the commercials during the show were product tie-ins? Wouldn’t it be great to see Mohinder Suresh trying to solve a science mystery while telling his lab assistant how comfy he feels in Gap clothes?
Comments (1-15) of 146 Add your comment
you my friend just won the oscar for the most hilarious recap ever. Congrats! I enjoyed the ep the carnies and the Petrellies where great out the wasoo!! I can’t till next week
I cannot agree more. I died laughing the entire time. The recap was more entertaining than the episode itself and I’ll take it. Oh and thank god Mr. Muggles was back!
It was funnier than most recaps on this site, thats for sure. So Hiro had his memories wiped, again? Oy vey.
Agreed… that was the best recap of Heroes I’ve read on this site. It almost makes up for having watched the ep.
I am a big fan of the show and I hate when the review bashes the show but agreed hillarious recap this episode wasnt very good.
The folks who used to write Gilmore Girls are now writing this show, hence the character Lauren Gilmore (Lauren Graham starred in Gilmore Girls). So they will be turning Claire into Rory, HRG into Luke, Jess is already Jess (way to go Milo.)
I’m sorry, I didn’t find the recap that great, and found myself skipping over large portions of it, especially where it was trying to be funny, but really wasn’t. I understand you watch the show because you get minor/or major duckets from it. But geez people, don’t claim you don’t watch the show, but yet, less than 12 hours later your posting on the recap page. I guess I’m just a fan, I admit there are major flaws, and some bad episodes, but its not that bad, and I haven’t missed an episode since the show started. But its better than alot of crap out there, like, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, and Flash Forward, which looks like its getting cancelled. Its a unrealistic show, about unrealistic things happening, on a shoestring budget, but people are compaining about it. There is a thing that came with most TV’s, its called a remote, change the channel if you don’t like what your watching. I don’t go reading the Flash Forward recap just to write negative things. And it seems its the same people every week. OK, we get it, you stopped watching Heroes 2 years ago, if only you could have stop posting during those 2 years
I totally agree. especially with the last part.
This is the greatest recap ever.
Great Recap. While watching the show I found myself actively wondering “where is Claire’s brother?”.
Lyle got smart and decided to skip this turkey of a series. You know, for a moment, I forgot his name. That tells you what Heroes thinks of him.
Lyle disappeared to wherever Chuck Cunningham went.
Lyle went to go clean his room with Judy.
Maybe Claire’s brother eloped with her gay friend from season 1 that we’ve never seen again.
I assume Lyle is at college since they stated he couldn’t attend due to school.
Agreed! I totally would have been up for just a whole hour of the Petrellis as well. Good idea!
Yes. I totally agree. The Petrellis should’ve had the whole hour. I love this family. Then the extra kick, Sylar!
Cut Tracy, Claire, and Hiro and I would be a devoted Heroes fan again. One of the great things about season one was that any character could die at any time. The nature of the show, people with powers means that there are an endless number of characters that could be added. Without character deaths then there is no risk, which is what made the first season good.
Tanner is so right. Without risk there is no reward. I don’t believe anything dramatic that happens because it is either dropped suddenly or something will happen to redeem that character. When Matt was shot I genuinely gasped. What an credible heroic thing to do. Then he is brought back to life, and it is meaningless. What I liked about Claire is that she was a genuinely confused teenager who made mistakes, but was always on the path to being a hero. Now she is a whining, bratty kid with no purpose. I agree with the recap, if Lauren is going to run off into the sunset with Noah, why did we get that episode about her erasing her memory? What was the point? I also miss Claire’s mother, and was happy to see a glimpse of her. She was this wonderful counterbalance to the craziness, and now she is divorced from Noah. I am closer than ever to dumping this show.
I hate this show and I am completely done watching it. I will read the recaps to see if it ever gets back on track, but as of now, they have lost another fan. If they did what DL said by making Hiro the badass immediately, I’d definitely tune in. But, with the writing and terrible plot, I’m better off watching anything other than this…and that includes Dancing with the Stars (which I hate with a passion). That’s how bad Heroes sucks now.
I’d be fine with them keeping Hiro IF they made him into the guy Peter met in the train in Season One immediately. Badass Hiro would be totally worth watching.
Thank you DL !! I don’t see why people love Hiro so much. You would think after 4 seasons, he’d be somewhere close to being that bad ass in season 1 instead of this irritating man-child.
Oh, and if I have to deal with one more episode of Claire moping and whining, I’m hoping she FINALLY meets her end at the carnival.
They can’t make Future Hiro. Future Hiro doesn’t exist anymore. He became a bad ass after Ando was killed, since that doesn’t happen, I don’t see him changing.
for sure. this kind of summed up everything I’ve thought about this season. and why do characters always do stupid things that make no sense?! like Claire cutting a giant suicide-gash in her wrist? I think everyone’s an idiot in the heroes universe. still, I had fun watching it, and no Matt definitely made me happy.
Any episode without Parkman, Tracy and (mostly) Mohinder is always better.
How did Claire’s family explain what she did to Claire’s mom’s new boyfriend? Something about eating a peanut. What does that mean? He choked and imagined that Claire cut a six inch gash in her arm? Stupid.
He stated he was allergic to legumes so the peanut would have caused an allergic reaction which might have caused hallucinations.
Gooble gobble indeed. NBC should have just broadcast that video and trashed the episode. Would also have left way more time for commercial breaks.
At this point, if you still watch the show (which I do), you have to enjoy it for what it is (which isn’t much). This recap sums that up nicely.
I agree with this comment as well. I made my roommates watch it as I was eating dinner and at one point I was like ‘come on, this is awful!’ and they were just like ‘then why do you keep watching?’ The truth? Lately I’m watching so I can see how it ends. The show can redeem itself. If the OC can come back from one of the worst seasons in television and end well, I have faith in Heroes. Just start killing people!
Yes! That’s exactly why I’m watching it, a dim hope that the show will achieve redemption in a satisfying series finale. The OC is a great analogy — that finale came out of, like, nowhere and captured everything I loved about the show.
I watched this episode after not watching Heroes after Season 2 and WOW. When did it get so stupid? The writing is repetitive, cliche, banal, CHEESY, self-indulgent, and … *sigh* it’s so sad. What happened? Did the original writers leave the fold? Or did they never have an idea of what they were doing? I’m so surprised this show is still on the air.
What else does NBC have going on? Their new shows like Trauma have lower rstings than Heroes.
Reading your recap is, oh, I dunno, twenty times more fun than watching an actual episode of Heroes. You express snarky disdain for this show so much better than Marc Bernardin. Take a bow, Mr. Franich!
Yes, this recap was thoroughly more entertaining than the episode itself. Still, I can’t seem to tear myuself aweay from watching Heroes each week
What is with the attack on Gretchen who has turned out to be a well liked character on the show? Also hoping for this bisexual character who is probably becoming Claire’s girlfriend to die and calling another character a “pansy”. I sense something troubling beneath your unfunny snark.
Yvette I totally agree with you. Pansy? Not funny, not even current except for the aversion and phobia behind the word.
Plus, I really enjoyed the episode.
I agree with both of you. I really like Gretcben and therefore i hope she stays on the show for a little while.
I thought Hiro was dying? Why doesn’t he?
LOL, “Land of Blue Filters and Frowny Faces”–you are too funny! And so spot on!
Totally! It’s been a long time since I laughed outloud while reading something, but this line had me in stitches. Brilliant summary!
Scary scenes with Sylar.I just detest Samuel…enough of this already!! They better be leading up to a showdown against Samuel, and it better be good.
What makes the show pointless to me is the idea that I have no idea where they are going anymore. Week after week, pointless storylines with no direction, no action, just weak characters who don’t seem to know what they are doing. This is a series that is spinning in a circle and it is shamefully boring. Shamefully because it could be so much better.
Yeah, I hear you. If Buffy Summers found her way into this Heroes universe she wouldnt whine. She would kick a-ss and take names.
I SECOND THIS MOTION!!!!!!
I agree. In season 1, no matter what directions the characters were going, we knew that in the end they all had a common purpose…save the cheerleader, save the world.
get rid of Claire. Her story line is tired and rehashed season after season and lets face it. Girl can’t act.
Dont know if you were stoned writing this weeks recap but shocker of shockers, its hilarious! Big improvement, thanks!