TV Recap: ‘Heroes,’ “Once Upon a Time in Texas”

Image courtesy of heroestheseries.com

How coincidental, given my critique last week of how Heroes should return to its roots, that this week’s episode quite literally takes us back to season 1. Unfortunately, not even time travel has brought back that authentic feel which captivated fans in the past.

This episode perhaps reveals the key problem with season 4: while in season 1, we knew that the destruction of NYC was the ultimate dilemma of the show,we absolutely have no idea what’s going to happen in this season. Though the carnival serves as some sort of backdrop, we really don’t have a grasp of what the main conflict is. That’s why returning to season 1 and exploring Hiro’s relationship with Charlie seems so confusing – what exactly was the purpose of this episode, and how does it relate to the bigger picture? From where I’m standing, the show hasn’t offered us any answer or guide.

As I mentioned, this episode begins once more at Burnt Toast Café (for those forgetful fans, the place where Charlie worked as a waitress), and Hiro wants to rescue Charlie. Samuel, whose time-traveler Arnold is dying, needs Hiro to complete his family, and so he follows Hiro to the past. The old Sylar, dressed in black with his trademark cap, is obviously intent on killing Charlie, and as she takes his order, Sylar reveals that he can sense she has a blood clot which helps her memorizing ability. Samuel meanwhile cautions Hiro in changing the past and urges him to pay close attention, because one mistake can have dire consequences. So begins the complexity of this episode.

Hiro freezes Sylar before he kills Charlie, taking his time-stopped body and dumping it in the luggage compartment of a Greyhound bus, and he informs past-Hiro that he must go back in time to save Charlie. This action, we try to understand, is necessary because, should he save Charlie himself, past-Hiro will never travel back in time. So past-Hiro travels back in time, with the knowledge that Charlie is to be the Mary Jane to his Spiderman.

Samuel also warns Hiro to make sure that Ando stays put for Hiro’s return. Consequently, Hiro’s mission works: Charlie is once more enamored of Hiro. He offers her a trip anywhere, she chooses Japan, but then all of a sudden Charlie goes into some encyclopedia-trance and recites Japan facts. As it turns out, Sylar was right about the blood clot: Charlie has had an aneurysm and is on the precipice of death. So Hiro rushes back to Sylar, who had told Charlie he knows how to fix the problem (how that involves cutting up her head remains unclear). Sylar and Hiro thus engage in a duel, and Hiro begins to grow fatigued as he teleports through time and space to evade Sylar’s attacks. Hiro finally lures Sylar into saving Charlie’s life by promising to tell Sylar his future, and so begins a very messed-up, biologically-impossible mind-surgery where Sylar somehow solves Charlie’s blood clot problem. Following this messsed-up scene, he informs Sylar of his lonely, miserable death. Hiro then transports Sylar back to allow him to fulfill his destiny.

Charlie, the ungrateful woman, isn’t happy, because she has moral issues with what Hiro did – why save her out of all the hundreds of thousands of people? Hiro finally realizes he broke his own rules to save her, and Charlie leaves Hiro completely heart-broken. Things aren’t over yet, however; she shows up after Hiro and Noah have a frank and sorrow-filled conversation about broken hearts – and she shows up with a paper crane (a representation of the first time Hiro surprised her with a thousand cranes – how cute!). For no reason at all, she has decided she doesn’t want to give up on them, and so they begin their journey together. All of a sudden, when Hiro looks up from his paper crane, she is gone, and Samuel explains she’s been put in some kind of time limbo to force Hiro to help him undo past transgressions. The plot ends with both appearing in front of Mohinder’s bullet-covered body! Wu-oh!

As always, I’ll mention the minor plot: it turns out Noah was in love with a woman working at his company, and they narrowly avoided starting a full-on affair. It turns out Noah likes being himself around her – and even more surprisingly, he once had aspirations to be an English Shakespeare teacher (seriously? How completely cliché and ill-suited to his character). Noah ultimately decides to preserve his family instead of go through with this, and the woman, Lauren, offers him a note at one point with the motel key where they were going to perform the dirty deed, and she reveals that she had the Haitian wipe her memory of their love – it would be cleaner this way. It’s a touching addition to Noah’s character, but at this point, I’d rather the man find a definitive purpose in life, because it’s clear that without this company, he is ill-defined and basically irrelevant.

Like I said, folks, the episode returns to roots, but you can’t expect roses when you haven’t watered the soil properly (yes, I am using this extended metaphor), and Heroes needs to find a central, all-powerful conflict before it continues with its development of seemingly disparate plot lines.