Heroes - Season 1, Episode 19 - ".07 Percent"

And it's baaaaaaaack! The nation's favorite fictional drama without hospitals/cops/housewives is back and I couldn't be happier.

Unfortunately, it didn't come back with as much of a bang as I'd have hoped. For the most part, the episode was very predictable (although there were a few nice surprises), and was more of a set-up episode than an action-packed one. Let's review the storylines:

1. Petrellis/Claire/Mohinder/Sylar -- As anyone with a brain (sorry Isaac) could've told you, Sylar was not going to kill Peter or Mohinder. As expected, Peter regenerated after Sylar began to cut open his head and after Mohinder hit Sylar with a large map (obviously a more powerful weapon than Peter's TELEKINESIS for pete's sake), Mohinder escaped with Peter's "dead" body. For anyone who's been watching all along, we were simply waiting in boredom until Claire, who once "died" from having a sharp object in her own head, would figure out what was wrong with Peter and bring him back to life. So where did this story end? Peter is alive (and with a lame, 50's greaser haircut), Nathan wants Claire to disappear until after the election (yeah right), we still don't know what Angela Petrelli's power is, Sylar is on the loose, and Mohinder is teaming up with Primatech Paper Company a.k.a. The Company. Can't wait to see where that last part goes.

2. Hiro- Hiro and Ando go to Issac's loft in the Deveaux building five years in the future, only to find future Hiro and his elaborate timeline of newspaper clippings, etc. I'll go into more detail about this in my text post, which will be about recent Heroes Online Graphic Novels, the latest of which deals explicitly with this moment.

3. Ted/HRG/Matt - They escaped from The Company in a pretty cool mind-reading way, ate at the diner in Odessa where Charlie used to work (why can't Sylar just look at the map and memorize everything?) and then decided to head to New York to destroy The Company's tracking system. Somehow, I have a feeling this will lead to Peter absorbing Ted's abilities and then exploding...

4. Isaac- Poor guy is dead now. We've known this was coming since the first episode, but Issac was a great character with an incredibly unique ability that tied the entire show together. The "previously on" for this week's episode was based entirely around Isaac's paintings, using them as a map to display the entire story thus far. Narrated by Linderman, this "previously on" was maybe the best part of the episode and a must-watch for everyone, whether you're new to the show or an older fan. Issac, I'm going to miss you and your incredibly awesome power. Sylar, you suck at painting.

5. Linderman/Micah/Jessica - It seems as if Nikki is toast. We haven't seen her in awhile and Jessica seems to be easily and totally in control. We saw that Linderman has the ability to heal others, sort of the opposite of Claire's power (if Peter gets this one, he will really be the ultimate superhero). This is another moment that was hinted at in the Graphic Novels, and I'll talk more about it later. The episode's best surprise comes into play here, when Candace uses her mimic/shapeshifting ability to pose as Jessica in order to bring Micah to Linderman. Linderman needs Micah for some mission, and if you've been playing the Heroes 360 experience, you already know what it is.

Let me take a moment to let you all know about the Heroes 360 Experience. If you'll remember a few episodes back, we were introduced to a new hero named Hana Gittelman, a.k.a. Wireless, who had the ability to see wireless transmissions (emails, satellite intel, text messages, etc.) and manipulate them. While she's been absent from the tv show, she's been very busy online, interacting with people playing the Heroes 360 game. The game is what is referred to as a transmedia narrative, meaning that while the main narrative of Heroes is the tv show, the graphic novels and the game fill in extra pieces of the puzzle that enhance, but are not crucial to, the narrative as a whole.

There are a number of ways to participate in the game, all of them based through the internet or text messages. You can sign up with The Primatech Paper Company, follow the prompts that cross the bottom of the screen during Heroes broadcasts, follow Hana's blog. There are numerous fan sites dedicated to following this game, such as the one I often use, the Heroes 360 Blog. Here, fans use their collective intelligence to solve puzzles presented by Hana or Linderman (read: NBC). Recently, Hana tasked her followers to delete Nathan Petrelli votes from a computer database that Linderman was using to rig Nathan's upcoming election. And according to Hana, we succeed. This ties into the show now because Linderman must use Micah's abilities to rig the election, since his own attempt was defeated by Hana and the Heroes 360 participants. Pretty cool, right?

There are a number of ancillary sites that are linked to this game, such as VotePetrelli.com, Hiro's blog, Linderman's archives (password: Vietnam-- more from the graphic novels), Claire's MySpace, Mohinder's webpage, and HRG's database. Check all this stuff out, and if you're interested, the 360 Blog linked above is a good place to jump into the action.

If you have anymore questions about the 360 experience, please feel free to leave a comment.

And as always, to wrap up my post, some unanswered questions, predications and general notes:
1) Why hasn't Peter absorbed Sylar's super hearing? I think it's because for Peter to deal with that new ability would be a narrative inconvenience, so the writers are just hoping we forget about it.
2) I told you all that there must've been a group of old heroes before! Linderman proved me right!
3) I think next week's episode is going to be awesome/frustrating. This episode ties in yet again to one of the graphic novels (next post, I swear!) and will show what the future will be like in five years (where Hiro and Ando currently are) if Hiro does not succeed in changing the past. But who here really thinks that's ever going to happen?
4) Issac mentioned that he's going to be a hero because he knows Sylar will die and he's told "them" how to kill Sylar. Huh? This is now my new favorite unanswered mystery.

For its excellent opening, cool Heroes 360 tie-ins, disappointing Peter/Sylar/Mohinder showdown, and otherwise fairly action-less plot, I give this episode a B.

Favorite Scene: Sylar vs. Issac, crucifixion style. Isaac dies a hero and Sylar paints like 6-year-old.

Favorite Line: "Interesting. I can't wait to try that one." --Sylar, upon seeing Peter use his invisibility.