Heroes: Chapter Nine – Homecoming Review

Now the review of chapter nine of the Heroes saga, Homecoming. Homecoming manages to show almost every one of who we’ve met so far into 42.5 minutes of jam-packed action, minus the action (until the last 10 minutes anyway). I will say that this episode is pretty good. It appears that the next episode will be some sort of flashback episode, so it may just get taped and I’ll watch it after finals. My review, complete with spoilers and inserted commentary, follows.

Setting aside the fact they announced (via a flyer) the homecoming queen during the day instead of at halftime of the game (but hey, maybe that’s how they do it at Texas high schools, and for purposes of the storyline, it is largely irrelevant anyway), Homecoming starts off by showing that Peter’s brother is a moron. Realizing this, Isaac’s not-so-super-ex-girlfriend Simone realizes that she has to tell Peter that his brother splattered the painting he was looking for a couple weeks ago (and it's how we know from last week that Claire's father knew the date and time his daughter was supposed to be killed). Simone brings Peter to Isaac’s studio and tells him what happened. She then hands him a photograph of the painting, which was a painting of Peter lying in front of a high school banner shortly after 8 PM (that night actually). Simone tips him to the location of the high school, and Peter calls Hiro to tell him to get to Odessa.

Hiro’s friend answers the phone and announces that they are in Midland, a mere 20 miles from Odessa. Since they are still mourning the sudden death of Hiro’s girlfriend-hopeful waitress, however, Hiro obviously was unsuccessful in preventing her death. On another hand, a different waitress appears to remember Hiro, and the writers clumsily but craftily avoid any mention of the waitress’s death (meaning they could try and Sixth Sense surprise us in a future episode). Peter announces that he’s going to hop on the next flight to Odessa, and from New York to Midland/Odessa on a Friday, he’ll probably pay an arm and a leg or just flap his arms and avoid the stand-by line. In either case, he makes it there in record time, and his cab takes him right to the café, where Hiro’s friend is still waiting patiently. Peter introduces himself and announces that his power is not that of a flyer, but that of a copycat – he absorbs other heroes’ powers, a regular Xerox hero.

And since the show is about homecoming and saving the cheerleader, we realize that her super healing powers also must give her fists of fury since she is able to knock out in a single punch to the eye the annoyingly jealous homecoming queen cheerleader runner-up. Her father grounds her, forgetting that a real father would not do so without sufficient cause on the day of her coronation. Her nerdy future-Dr. McDreamy savior helps her escape from her balcony prison and he whisks her away to her fated dance as her mother watches the whole event transpire from the living room window. The Agent, clouded by his emotions, realizes she has run off and chides the mother for her deviant behavior.

On her way in, Claire-bear bumps into the Xerox hero and engages in a short and pleasant conversation, just long enough (in the world of foreshadowing) for him to absorb some of her healing powers. Realizing that he may be trespassing, he steps outside and sees he is standing in front of the steps of the picture to which he had taken from Simone. He hears screaming and we see that Sylar has mistaken Claire for the non-mutant cheerleader. Sylar does the touch of death and kills the wrong girl. Claire, not thinking to stick around and pretend to be dead, gets up, and Sylar realizes his error. She runs, Sylar follows, Xeroxman bumps into her again, and he helps her escape. The two wrestle to the ground and somehow or another fall off the roof, and if neither were mutants, they would both be dead. The picture comes true.

Having absorbed enough of Claire’s power to survive the fall, however, Peter awakens to find Sylar disappeared and Claire is okay. Dazed, he sits there and waits for the cops to show up. Unfortunately for Peter, he is New York Yankee in a Texan court, and being found covered in blood, within minutes of the crime being reported and the body of a dead cheerleader still warm only a few hallways away, the police don't have too much more investigating to do. Hopefully he can absorb Niki/Ikin’s insanity defense ability and attempt to avoid the capital murder charges that will be brought against him but we won’t have to worry about that storyline just yet since all we see is the arrest.

Claire and her stepfather unite and she’s about to tell him her secret. The last scene is of Hiro teleporting to the café six months earlier and re-introducing himself to the waitress. Next week’s episode is going to be set six months before and thus we’ll get a reprise of the development of some of the characters and their power.

Other storylines:
You see Ikin/Niki at target practice. The computer kid and his walk-thru-any-wall father manage to avoid to generate any reasonable articulable suspicion while stopping for gas, but the computer kid runs away in order to teach his well-intentioned but criminally prone father a lesson. After his pop catches him at a bus stop, the computer kid reveals his knowledge about Niki/Ikin’s psychotic break. To his credit, he says that his mom is sick and with the same gusto as Tim Allen delivers the “never give up, never surrender” line of Galaxy Quest, he convinces his father to go back for his better half. It’s too bad he can’t predict the future, though, because he would know that Ikin will be packing heat. In either case, the computer kid's logic is no better than a computer's, and he decides not to tell his father that he already called his mom to tip her off where they were. Ikin (supposedly) snipes D.L. at the end of the episode. Maybe the bullet passes right through him, we'll have to wait and see.

Professor Suresh also continues his quest to figure out his role in the show and meets the dream catcher who tells him that it is he can provide explanations for questions people seek answers to, at cost. Suresh decides to continue his father’s work and miraculously cracks his father’s computer password using the name of his sister. The computer (Cerebro) finds that his father had already compiled a list of all the mutants and now Suresh can fulfill his role as Professor X and unite them.

Sylar is caught by the Agent's assistant who has some sort of Jean Grey mind-controlling power that convinces Sylar to go to sleep. With the help of the Hatian, they take him into their custody.

Tags: heroes, homecoming, review, nbc