Monday Night TV

I'm crashing like an old man before I can watch The Riches, but Everybody Hates Chris and Heroes are after the jump, and as far as I'm concerned, this might've been the best Heroes episode yet.

Everybody Hates Chris: Rochelle is being driven nuts by her mother being around all the time, so she decides to find a man to set her up with. A girl from the neighborhood has a crush on Drew, but Drew doesn't like her. Chris learns his first dirty jokes, and eventually hears George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words."


There were two really fun parts of the episode. Trying to remember the setup to the dirty joke that Chris tells the punchline to, and this exchange between Drew and Chris: "You know when a girl likes you, and you don't like her back?" "No, I don't." But I'm still not loving this show anymore. It's not bad, and I'll probably end up riding out the entire run of the series, but something made it work in the first season, and now the magic is gone.

Heroes: I think this was the kind of episode geeks (like me) absolutely love, but I'm not sure how the general public will feel about it. It didn't start out on a good note though. Have I mentioned that I hate the voiceover guy? Not only are his intros corny, but "Previously on Heroes" should not include footage from the episode that's about to start. They started to show Hiro at Homeland Security slicing some guys up before I was able to skip ahead. I really hate spoilers of all kinds, and all I want is the networks to not show spoilers during the show or immediately before it. Is that too much to ask?

But then... wow! So much cool future info, and all of it's going to turn out to be fake, because Hiro's going to kill Sylar, but here we go.

The New York explosion happened, and millions died, including Ando, Micah, and possibly D.L.. The world learns about Sylar, the super evil scary guy who blew up the city, and rallies behind Nathan Petrelli in what I gather is a regime of oppressive anti-superpowers legislation, and this popularity allows Nathan to ascend to the presidency.

Superpowered folks are now outlaws just by existing in public (they mention something called "the Linderman Act"), so many of them go into hiding with Bennett's help. He's working with Hana at Primatech Paper (whose URL they are shoving down our throats - if they'd been more subtle I'd check it out, but showing it over and over again irritates me) to provide cover for superpowered refugees, but he only gets to do it because he and Parkman, who is now a high ranking Homeland Security guy cracking down on the powered, share the secret that they are both hiding their children.

Parkman's (and his partner, the Hatian's) main goal is to catch the future Hiro, who is so desperate to change the past (and save Ando) that he's gotten into more than a few fights, and has made himself public enemy #1. He's not sure why going back to have Peter save the cheerleader didn't work, but he's decided that past Hiro can do it.

Speaking of Peter, he has that scar that future Hiro mentioned the first time we saw him, and he is a badass. He's living in Vegas and dating Niki, who has apparently lost her Jessica alter ego. They've both decided not to get involved with the superheroics anymore, but Hiro's plan to go back in time piques his interest. Why? Because despite what everyone believes, it wasn't Sylar who blew up New York, it was Peter, just like in his dream.


Everyone is also unaware that their president is not who he seems. Sometime around the time of the bomb, Sylar feasted on the brains of Nathan, so he could fly, and Candace, so he could look like Nathan, and become president. He also took out Claire, who'd been hiding out as a waitress at the Burnt Toast diner (her disguise is dark hair... very clever), so he's nigh invulnerable. Sylar's plan is to exterminate people with superpowers. As Nathan, he justifies it to Mohinder with Linderman's line of thinking, that the thousands and thousands of deaths would unite the world in mourning. But after we learn the truth, you can't help but think Sylar just wants to eliminate the competition. Nathan and Mohinder also indicate that they knew the explosion was going to happen and that they let it, but I'm not clear if it was Nathan Nathan or Sylar Nathan.

Anyway, the superhero extermination plan doesn't quite sit well with Mohinder, and he switches sides, helping Hiro and Hiro and Ando and Peter as they try to get Hiro and Ando back to the present to hopefully fix things. But Parkman manages to get a shot off on future Hiro, who dies handing a picture to Ando. I sure as hell can't tell what it is, but it has to be important.


Parkman also alerts President NathanSylar to what's going on, which leads to the completely awesome showdown between Peter and Sylar when they have even more powers. But all we see are orange and blue flashy lights as Hiro and Ando teleport back to the present (we think) to fix things, armed only with the above picture, and another one of Hiro killing Sylar.

As I said, as a geek, I completely loved this. It had a lot of Bishop feel to it. But it's awfully complicated for the casual viewer, especially since if Hiro is successful, none of this will ever happen. More importantly, wasn't there a whole episode dedicated to Hiro learning through the events with Charlie that he can't change the past? Well the future Hiro sure seems to be able to do just that, and our Hiro now has to do it too, if he wants to prevent the events of this episode from happening. Hopefully, they'll at least explain that discrepancy. Even with that nitpick, this was way too much fun, so who cares. Great episode.