# Heroes "Six Months Ago" OAD 11/27/2006 *spoilers*



## terpfan1980 (Jan 28, 2002)

Hiro in the past speaking to Hiro in the present - "Great Scot!" (in Hiro broken English). Classic.


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## TomK (May 22, 2001)

This is a cool episode.


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## slydog75 (Jul 8, 2004)

OK, so who said Sylar was collecting Powers? So much happened in this episode.. I need to watch it again!

So Sylar's revealed as a jealous guy who's only power is stealing others by killing people.

Jessica is Niki's dead sister who was killed (possibly accidentally) by her abusive drunk father who is now trying to reconcile. Niki obviously blocked that memory out and has created Jessica to deal with the memories. Of course, Jessica also has all the super powers. 

Eden was a hooldum

Charlie has a blood clot in her brain and is apparently terminal and can't be saved.

Hiro is going through the classic heroes journey. Done very well.

Peter is definetely empathic.. or might we call him a dreamer? As his empathic power only seems to manifest itself in his dreams.

Information overload.. Awesome, awesome episode!


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

slydog75 said:


> OK, so who said Sylar was collecting Powers? So much happened in this episode.. I need to watch it again!


Several people theorized it, including myself, based on one of the early episodes when he had a book with a picture of the human brain in it. But I was definitely thrown off the scent by the last few episodes.

I still am really hoping that only sylar can steal powers by eating brains. The potential for this to turn into highlander is not a real pleasing thought to me, even though I kind of liked highlander.

From what we can see so far, Hiro can in fact change the past (when he spoke to peter he changed it). Is he being hard on himself or can he not manipulate the past directly and only through proxy? Or only through peter!

Is Niki's dad Linderman?


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## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

Can someone tell me why Niki's dad sounded so freaking familiar? I keep thinking he did a cartoon, and I can't place what... am I just going insane?


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## slydog75 (Jul 8, 2004)

bdowell said:


> Hiro in the past speaking to Hiro in the present - "Great Scot!" (in Hiro broken English). Classic.


Nice tip of the hat to Back to the Future.


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## caslu (Jun 24, 2003)

LoadStar said:


> Can someone tell me why Niki's dad sounded so freaking familiar? I keep thinking he did a cartoon, and I can't place what... am I just going insane?


Not sure if he's done cartoons (and I can't speak for your sanity) but he was the exec officer of the Pegasus on Battlestar Galactica.


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## slydog75 (Jul 8, 2004)

TAsunder said:


> Is Niki's dad Linderman?


He seemed to want to reconcile, so I doubt he'd extort her into sleeping with Nathan to blackmail him.


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## yaddayaddayadda (Apr 8, 2003)

Am I the only one a little sick of Nathan / Peter storyline? Nathan seems like such an over-the-top prig, and Peter a whiny brat that it gets annoying. Also, it seemed like Nathan would have had to decide to run for office more than six months ago.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

slydog75 said:


> Nice tip of the hat to Back to the Future.


And it was funny because there was a Back to the Future marathon on Sci-Fi last night. I ended up going on a rant about the possibilities of time travel ripping apart the space time continuim and such. All because of the debates that spring from these threads!

This episode was absolutely great! Exactly how long do we have to wait after next week's episode for more new episodes. I know they said 2007 so hopefully it won't be too long after Jan 1.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

slydog75 said:


> He seemed to want to reconcile, so I doubt he'd extort her into sleeping with Nathan to blackmail him.


Until she beat the crap out of him.


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## slydog75 (Jul 8, 2004)

TAsunder said:


> Until she beat the crap out of him.


'
ehh.. either way.. if he took that to heart then he's gonna be afraid of her, not extorting her.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

A few comments/questions:

1. I enjoyed the episode, overall. Still loving this show.

2. In a few scenes in this episode, you could see the eclipse (reflected in the window when Peter and Nathan are talking in the hospital, for example). But the eclipse also was featured in the first episode of the series. Were there two solar eclipses, six months apart from each other? I thought they are supposed to be more rare than that, no?

3. Are we now to believe that Mr. Bennet has a power? (Immunity from the effects of the powers of others?) I guess that could explain why he's not worried that The Haitian may decide to erase his memory at some point. 

4. It may not have been an intentional allusion, but Sylar's origin story reminded me of Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen - the chapter of the Watchmen that deals with Jon's origin talks about his being a watch repairman and there are a couple of panels of him working on a watch that look strikingly similar to a few frames that we saw of Gabriel working on the German timepiece.

5. I'm sorry to open up the whole "how time travel works" can of worms again, but the following bothered me: In this episode we saw Hiro call and speak to himself over the phone. So he can exist in two places in the same reality at once. How, then, can what he did in the first episode be explained? (At work, when he was sitting at his desk and he forced his clock to stop and then move back in time a second. If he traveled back in time one second, shouldn't he have wound up pretty much sitting on his own lap?)


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

yaddayaddayadda said:


> Am I the only one a little sick of Nathan / Peter storyline? Nathan seems like such an over-the-top prig, and Peter a whiny brat that it gets annoying.


I completely agree about the Nathan/Peter storyline. One of them needs to grow up while the other needs to pull his head out of his rear and accept that he is different for a reason that is bigger than he is.

Speculation based on the previews for next week:



Spoiler



If he isn't careful, it could get him killed.



I loved the Back to the Future reference. Very cool. Definitely in character for Hiro.


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

Danterner - number 3 in your list is an interesting question. Is the Haitian protecting him and giving him the immunity? Or is it his own power and if he had it, why did he need to tape Edens mouth up at all? 

And if Matt has such a problem with reading/dylexsia, how did he get into the police academy and pass? He is one of my favorite characters and I wonder if the next six months is when his wife cheats on him....or if it is a thing of the past.

And missing from our 'six months earlier' storyline - Issac the painter? (and who else?)

I also was interested in the names - Peter, Matthew, Isaac, Gabriel, Eden.....very biblical feeling to them.


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

danterner said:


> A few comments/questions:
> 
> 3. Are we now to believe that Mr. Bennet has a power? (Immunity from the effects of the powers of others?) I guess that could explain why he's not worried that The Haitian may decide to erase his memory at some point.


I don't think we know enough about the Haitian to make any conclusion as to his loyalty or origin. I also got the impression that he had the ability to block powers.



> 5. I'm sorry to open up the whole "how time travel works" can of worms again, but the following bothered me: In this episode we saw Hiro call and speak to himself over the phone. So he can exist in two places in the same reality at once. How, then, can what he did in the first episode be explained? (At work, when he was sitting at his desk and he forced his clock to stop and then move back in time a second. If he traveled back in time one second, shouldn't he have wound up pretty much sitting on his own lap?)


Creative license should be enough.

For a lesson on time travel, I leave it to Basil Exposition and Austin Powers to explain:



> Austin: So, Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumeably, I could go back and look at my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the '90s and traveled back to the '60s?
> [goes cross-eyed]
> Austin: Oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.
> Basil: I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself.
> ...


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## slydog75 (Jul 8, 2004)

danterner said:


> 3. Are we now to believe that Mr. Bennet has a power? (Immunity from the effects of the powers of others?) I guess that could explain why he's not worried that The Haitian may decide to erase his memory at some point.


I was definetely under the impression that the Haitian was blocking her powers.

Though another question did come to mind. Clearly Bennet knew about these people before Dr. Suresh contacted him. How? We know Sylar learned about them from Suresh.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

I thought hiro just stopped time, not went back one second? Some of those wall clokcs go back one tick before going forward, not sure why.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

slydog75 said:


> I was definetely under the impression that the Haitian was blocking her powers.


Okay - the more I think about it, the more I agree with you. It's not Mr. Bennet that has the power to block other's abilities - it's the Haitian. Mr. Bennet is just a third party beneficiary. If the Haitian has multiple powers (the power to erase memories, and the power to block other people's powers), that would explain why Matt couldn't read his mind in the bar a few episodes ago. Also, it could explain why Eden and the Haitian were able to so easily subdue Sylar in the woods last episode. I guess his power can be targeted, though, since Eden was still able to work her power of suggestion mojo on Sylar with the Haitian standing right by her side.

Love the Austin Powers explanation. I'll sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.


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## Mr. Happypants (Jan 30, 2006)

slydog75 said:


> Though another question did come to mind. Clearly Bennet knew about these people before Dr. Suresh contacted him. How? We know Sylar learned about them from Suresh.


Perhaps Bennet knew _about_ their existence, but Suresh handed him the means to find them more easily?

And a Sylar question, if hasn't been covered in previous week's posts: How did he manage to kill the wrong cheerleader? He either 1) Knows their identities from Suresh's map or 2) can sense their "misfunctioning brains" with his creepy watch/Spidey sense. So - why did he make the other blonde's head into a can of Dole Pineapple?


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

betts4 said:


> And missing from our 'six months earlier' storyline - Issac the painter? (and who else?)


Firestorm, the Nuclear Man (or whatever he's called - can't remember his name at the moment. The guy Matt interrogated a few episodes ago).

Also, the kid that can dreamwalk.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

How ironic that Hiro didn't realize that he DID save Charlie. She was going to die anyway (from the aneurysm); but instead of leading a sad and hopeless life capped off (cough) by a brutal murder, she was happy in her last weeks before her natural death.


Mr. Happypants said:


> 2) can sense their "misfunctioning brains" with his creepy watch/Spidey sense. So - why did he make the other blonde's head into a can of Dole Pineapple?


I think he senses their mutant brains in a general way (he knows he's in the right neighborhood), but his main power is to take apart the brain, figure out how it works (like he did before with the watches), and then do it himself. So he knew about the cheerleader from the painting, and once in Odessa could sense a mutant brain, but he picked the wrong cheerleader, and didn't realize until he got inside the brain.


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## vertigo235 (Oct 27, 2000)

I still don't understand why charlie didn't recognize hiro, he's obviously the one who gave her the book all along.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

vertigo235 said:


> I still don't understand why charlie didn't recognize hiro, he's obviously the one who gave her the book all along.


That was a different Charlie...the one who was killed by Sylar. The Charlie who died of an aneurysm is the one Hiro gave the book to.


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## jradford (Dec 28, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> That was a different Charlie...the one who was killed by Sylar. The Charlie who died of an aneurysm is the one Hiro gave the book to.


Now I'm lost again. The Charlie that got killed by Sylar HAD the Japanese book when Hiro and Ando met her, thus Hiro had already given it to her in the past? No? Maybe I need to be going the Austin Powers route: Blind eye to all time-shifting confusion.


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## vertigo235 (Oct 27, 2000)

OK then, so who gave her the book before? And why did they not give the book to her for her birthday like she said?


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## johnperkins21 (Aug 29, 2005)

This show is definitely fun, but there are plot holes a-plenty. Any time you bring time travel into the equation, things are going to be off. 

I will do my best to just sit back and watch. This being a live action comic book, we'll have to allow for some creative license.


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## ebonovic (Jul 24, 2001)

You got to love the time Paradoxes...

On the flip side... it could be the Brain aneurysm that possible could cause memory loss as well... And it was teh same Charlie, but she just didn't remember him.

Because 6 months ago, she said.. "recently" I have been able to remember things.
She said the same thing in current time....


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## alansh (Jan 3, 2003)

danterner said:


> 2. In a few scenes in this episode, you could see the eclipse (reflected in the window when Peter and Nathan are talking in the hospital, for example). But the eclipse also was featured in the first episode of the series. Were there two solar eclipses, six months apart from each other? I thought they are supposed to be more rare than that, no?


When we first see the ER waiting room, there are these round light fixtures on the walls. The "eclipse" is one of them out of focus. That's not to say the effect was accidental, though.


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## askewed (Sep 12, 2000)

I see I may not find anyone here to agree but... worst episode of the season.

The pacing made me want to turn it off. It felt like 10 hours. I'm getting tired of the scene titles every five seconds. I got it... it's 6 months ago, thanks. It's starting to feel like a desperate attempt to turn an idea into 26 epsodes. I hope it turns around.. I was enjoying it.


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## spikedavis (Nov 23, 2003)

The Haitian definetely dampens powers. He dampened Matt's powers in that bar, and Sylar wasn't able to use his telekinesis on Eden when the Haitian was there.


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## lordargent (Nov 12, 2002)

TAsunder said:


> From what we can see so far, Hiro can in fact change the past (when he spoke to peter he changed it). Is he being hard on himself or can he not manipulate the past directly and only through proxy? Or only through peter!


Maybe he just realized his powers aren't everything. He couldn't save her by traveling back in time because the blood clot would kill her anyway and his powers couldn't do anything about that.



Sirius Black said:


> I don't think we know enough about the Haitian to make any conclusion as to his loyalty or origin. I also got the impression that he had the ability to block powers.


I thought he just had some sort of super mental ability. So he can stop any mental based abilities. IE, can stop mind reading, and can also stop suggestion.

On second thought, he can probably stop anyones abilities. Since all of their abilities are based in the brain.



danterner said:


> shouldn't he have wound up pretty much sitting on his own lap?)


I forgot where I saw/read this. But there was some bit of sci-fi where if you traveled back in time and met yourself. The two instances of you would merge into one.


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## drpr (Nov 16, 2006)

I'm new to TiVo and finally recorded Heroes. I'm watching the Six Months Ago episode right now. I'm sure someone has noticed this before but I can't find a mention in any of the threads. There are two teen girls in this program. One is a cheerleader and the other is about to become one. The taller one, who is already the cheerleader, HAS to be the same person who does the voiceover for that credit card ID theft commercial- the one where the weightlifter appears to be singing but it is her voice singing "unbreak my heart." Does anyone know if this is the actress who does that voice? They sound exactly alike.


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## FlugPoP (Jan 7, 2004)

'Save the cheerleader save the world"
If skylar would have gotten her powers he would have been almost unstopable.


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## Warren (Oct 18, 2001)

dammit this is two weeks in a row that my DTivo has said that is could find SAT 1 or 2 (south park on other receiver) good this Sci-Fi is showing the reruns (note: the pilot with the hand in tha garbage disposal is re-airing on sci fi


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> That was a different Charlie...the one who was killed by Sylar. The Charlie who died of an aneurysm is the one Hiro gave the book to.


They are the same person. We didn't see her die of a brain aneurysm. She may have had another year to live. Because if she had died in the past in the one time line, Hiro would never have met her in the first place thus never having a need to go back in time to save her. This is dizzying.

As for why the Charlie of the present originally didn't remember Hiro if in fact she didn't get the book from the library by chance, well, I can't think of a logical reason so I'll just go back to being dizzy.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

betts4 said:


> I also was interested in the names - Peter, Matthew, Isaac, Gabriel, Eden.....very biblical feeling to them.


I agree - its interesting - but I suspect it probably doesn't have any deep significance in the context of the show. I do think, though, that Charlie's name might have been an intentional reference to Charlie Gordon, from "Flowers for Algernon".


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## lordargent (Nov 12, 2002)

Sirius Black said:


> They are the same person. We didn't see her die of a brain aneurysm. She may have had another year to live. Because if she had died in the past in the one time line, Hiro would never have met her in the first place thus never having a need to go back in time to save her. This is dizzying.


Ahh, but you have to wonder, did she do anything different when Hiro was around? Maybe flying on a plane made her condition worse. Or any number of other things. Or maybe sylar was able to hunt her down even faster. Maybe she killed herself a few days after Hiro disappeared.

We can't assume anything about her past now because it's been altered. All bets are off. It's the butterfly effect.


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## prefect42 (Sep 10, 2001)

I think that Charlie didn't let on to Hiro because she knew that if she did he may not travel back and she would not have had those six months at all. Hiro still gave her the travel book and helped her enjoy her time and then he left. So by acting like it was the first time she had met Hiro it prevented a paradox from occurring. and I just went cross-eyed


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

lordargent said:


> I thought he just had some sort of super mental ability. So he can stop any mental based abilities. IE, can stop mind reading, and can also stop suggestion.
> 
> On second thought, he can probably stop anyones abilities. Since all of their abilities are based in the brain.


We've seen his power take the form of memory suppression and superpower suppression. If his power is to 'suppress brain function,' he's maybe the most powerful of them all. He could stop a hero from using their power against him, kill the hero with a thought by suppressing their autonomous nervous system (if he were predisposed to do so - I don't think he's necessarily 'evil'), and then make any witnesses forget that it ever happened or that the hero ever existed in the first place. Of course, his power may be limited to just what we've seen - memory tampering and blocking superpowers; we've seen nothing yet to support that he can fiddle with other brain functions apart from those. Still, in that case he'd be the only hero we've met thus far with multiple abilities - everyone else has only one. (I'm counting Sylar and Peter as having one ability. Their ability allows them to utilize the abilities of others).


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

lordargent said:


> Maybe he just realized his powers aren't everything. He couldn't save her by traveling back in time because the blood clot would kill her anyway and his powers couldn't do anything about that.


Even if he wasn't able to change her life expectancy, if he was able to change her manner of death it is still significant. We know that in "present day" she's dead, and Hiro's attempt to save her failed because she was terminally ill anyway. But I'm not clear on how she actually died. Because Sylar killed her, or from the aneurysm? If the latter, then at least Hiro prevented Sylar from taking her brain/power.


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

danterner said:


> Even if he wasn't able to change her life expectancy, if he was able to change her manner of death it is still significant. We know that in "present day" she's dead, and Hiro's attempt to save her failed because she was terminally ill anyway. But I'm not clear on how she actually died. Because Sylar killed her, or from the aneurysm? If the latter, then at least Hiro prevented Sylar from taking her brain/power.


If she had died six months earlier in the past, the candles, cards, etc would likely have been removed from the diner. No, I think that Hiro made no difference in the time line at all. They spent time together and, had he come back before she died at the hands of Sylar (aside from there being two Hiros (Great Scott!) in the diner, she would have know who both of them were immediately, even though the first Hiro wouldn't know who she was.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

One last question, then I'll rein myself in:

How, I wonder, did Chandra Suresh locate Gabriel (Sylar) in the first place? Gabriel wasn't evidencing any power yet, was he? I'm curious to learn more about Chandra's research. Did he somehow have access to Gabriel's genetic code, allowing him to draw the conclusion that it was the code of someone who must have some type of power? It wasn't coincidence that he entered Gabriel's shop - he was there specifically to talk to Gabriel about being evolved. How did Chandra know?


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## TriBruin (Dec 10, 2003)

danterner said:


> One last question, then I'll rein myself in:
> 
> How, I wonder, did Chandra Suresh locate Gabriel (Sylar) in the first place? Gabriel wasn't evidencing any power yet, was he? I'm curious to learn more about Chandra's research. Did he somehow have access to Gabriel's genetic code, allowing him to draw the conclusion that it was the code of someone who must have some type of power? It wasn't coincidence that he entered Gabriel's shop - he was there specifically to talk to Gabriel about being evolved. How did Chandra know?


Maybe someone can better explain it, but I have gottent the impression that Chandra has discovered some "magical" formula that allows him to "calculate" who should have powers. He has no idea what powers they may have.


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

danterner said:


> One last question, then I'll rein myself in:
> 
> How, I wonder, did Chandra Suresh locate Gabriel (Sylar) in the first place?


Was anyone named Gabriel in NYC on that list on the computer screen in India from last week?

I found it very interesting that all the heroes that showed us in this episode all manifest their powers at essentially the same time. Perhaps there is some signifigance in that. All the segments started with six months ago, at least.


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## mask2343 (Jan 6, 2003)

Lots of time travel holes, but the ride is fun.

Here's the thing I don't get. Sylar steals the brains to study them. Are we supposed to believe that he performs surgery on himself to change his brain? And if he can detect the mutants, why did he pick the wrong cheerleader? And how is Claire's ability linked to her brain?! 

This show has lots more questions and inconsistencies than LOST, but still an enjoyable experience.


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## chronatog7 (Aug 26, 2004)

Previous rejected names prior to Sylar:
Fossil
Rolex
Seiko
Omega
Timex
Gucci
Casio
Citizen

Glad the guy was not fixing those watches.
PS. I hope this does not turn into a highlander type of show. Besides that Awesome show.


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## TeddS (Sep 21, 2000)

Sirius Black said:


> If she had died six months earlier in the past, the candles, cards, etc would likely have been removed from the diner. No, I think that Hiro made no difference in the time line at all. They spent time together and, had he come back before she died at the hands of Sylar (aside from there being two Hiros (Great Scott!) in the diner, she would have know who both of them were immediately, even though the first Hiro wouldn't know who she was.


So, memory girl knew that Hiro would show up one day at the diner and knew his powers to bend time/space, so she played dumb around him so as not to mess up the timeline? That would explain how she knows Japanese from the birthday present and doesn't mention that it was from Hiro.

--Tedd


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Sirius Black said:


> If she had died six months earlier in the past, the candles, cards, etc would likely have been removed from the diner. No, I think that Hiro made no difference in the time line at all. They spent time together and, had he come back before she died at the hands of Sylar (aside from there being two Hiros (Great Scott!) in the diner, she would have know who both of them were immediately, even though the first Hiro wouldn't know who she was.


But in the original timeline, Sylar killed Charlie I that night (when he first found her). In the new timeline, Charlie II had been dead for an unspecified time before that night (as shown by the shrine). Obviously, she died from the aneurysm, since Sylar would only have caught up with Charlie II after she was already dead.


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## trnsfrguy (Apr 28, 2005)

askewed said:


> I see I may not find anyone here to agree but... worst episode of the season.
> 
> The pacing made me want to turn it off. It felt like 10 hours. I'm getting tired of the scene titles every five seconds. I got it... it's 6 months ago, thanks. It's starting to feel like a desperate attempt to turn an idea into 26 epsodes. I hope it turns around.. I was enjoying it.


I agree with you, Askewed...
This is the first episode in which I had to struggle to watch. Eventually, I fell asleep on it... Will try to watch it again later.


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

prefect42 said:


> I think that Charlie didn't let on to Hiro because she knew that if she did he may not travel back and she would not have had those six months at all. Hiro still gave her the travel book and helped her enjoy her time and then he left. So by acting like it was the first time she had met Hiro it prevented a paradox from occurring. and I just went cross-eyed


Or perhaps Charlie actually doesn't remember Hiro because she receives a visit from HRG & the Haitian after Hiro jumps back to the future.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

RBlount said:


> Maybe someone can better explain it, but I have gotten the impression that Chandra has discovered some "magical" formula that allows him to "calculate" who should have powers. He has no idea what powers they may have.


I thought he was tracking them through their DNA. That doesn't make sense, but it could be that the writers don't understand the concept of "mapping the human genome," and think that somebody could use that data to find individual people with certain genetic markers. Certainly wouldn't be the first time sci-fi TV writers have blown simple science (cough *Battlestar Galactica* cough).


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

slydog75 said:


> Jessica is Niki's dead sister who was killed (possibly accidentally) by her abusive drunk father who is now trying to reconcile. Niki obviously blocked that memory out and has created Jessica to deal with the memories. Of course, Jessica also has all the super powers.


It's also possible that Niki didn't create Jessica, but that Jessica the dead sister with superpowers really is living inside of Niki.


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## Squeege96 (May 1, 2006)

There definitely is a pretty obvious plot hole here. It's too bad, because I really like the Nathan/Peter backstory. I never would have thought that Nathan was about to prosecute Leiderman.


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

I think the one character I'm tired of the most is Nathan, just don't like his character much.

I also think some of the heros have had their powers for years. Niki/Jessica, seems from the story line tonight Jessica has been living inside of Niki for years, she just didn't come out and get hostile until Daddy tried to reconcile.

I also think Sylar had his power from the day Suresh showed up in his store. He could "hear" everything in a watch like it was plain as day. He just realized he could hear what was in the human brain when the other guy came in to his shop. Sylar is a whack job with super powers and clearly the ability to steal those powers, scary!


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## SuncoastTivoFan (Jul 29, 2002)

Danterner wrote:
>> 3. Are we now to believe that Mr. Bennet has a power?
>> (Immunity from the effects of the powers of others?)
>> I guess that could explain why he's not worried that
>> The Haitian may decide to erase his memory at some point.

Slydog wrote:
> I was definetely under the impression that the Haitian
> was blocking her powers. 

I don't think Mr. Bennet has any powers. I inferred that the
Haitian was erasing any suggestion that Eden planted before Mr.
Bennet acted on it. 


lordargent wrote:
> I thought he just had some sort of super mental ability.
> So he can stop any mental based abilities. IE, can stop
> mind reading, and can also stop suggestion.

The Haitian's doesn't need to have more than the "erasing"
power. He could erase any thoughts that Matt read which would
seem to Matt, and us from his P.O.V., that he hadn't read
anything.


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## robbhimself (Sep 13, 2006)

there had to be some effect on the timeline, cause hiro worked at the restaurant for a while as a bus boy, so they would have known him when he first came in with ando.. yes, probably best to suspend all logic on that story.. it seems like sylar is more of a leech than peter on taking powers, peter is more of a sponge.. maybe sylar is just trying to steal everyones powers so he can the the only and most powerful.. hmm.. there can be only one.. where is that from? (kidding, i know it's been mentioned many times in this thread)


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Jeeters said:


> It's also possible that Niki didn't create Jessica, but that Jessica the dead sister with superpowers really is living inside of Niki.


It's also possible that Niki killed Jessica in the first place, and blocked it out (much like when she "framed" her husband). Thus the mental illness is real, not a superpower, but she can only access her superpowers when she is "Jessica" because Niki is too traumatized by what she's done.


robbhimself said:


> it seems like sylar is more of a leech than peter on taking powers, peter is more of a sponge..


I don't think Sylar is a leech. As I suggested above, I think he simply takes apart heroes' brains, literally figures out how they do it (like he does with watches), and once he's figured it out, he can do it himself.


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## eddyj (Jun 20, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> It's also possible that Niki killed Jessica in the first place, and blocked it out (much like when she "framed" her husband). Thus the mental illness is real, not a superpower, but she can only access her superpowers when she is "Jessica" because Niki is too traumatized by what she's done.


It was Jessica who did the framing.


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## MassD (Sep 19, 2002)

Am I the only one who FF's through the Jessica/Nikki parts? I really don't care what her deal is... She's some schizo kung-fu freak with serious daddy issues...

Whoopty-do...

The rest of the episode rocked though... it's nice to get some back-story on the other people.


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## mmilton80 (Jul 28, 2005)

The girl with normally short hair was gorgeous with longer hair. I don't know her name. I mean, she's a wickedly cute girl in general...but the longer hair...nice.


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## dimented (May 21, 2003)

So, what other powers has Sylar gained? We know he has telekinisis, but does he have anything else?


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## stiffi (Jun 14, 2006)

yaddayaddayadda said:


> Also, it seemed like Nathan would have had to decide to run for office more than six months ago.


Not necessarily. The current Mayor of Baltimore jumped into a wide open race just months before the primary, and ran away with the election.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

mmilton80 said:


> The girl with normally short hair was gorgeous with longer hair. I don't know her name. I mean, she's a wickedly cute girl in general...but the longer hair...nice.


Weird... I prefer the short haired version, and I normally prefer long hair.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

I had a different theory about Mr. Bennett's immunity. I thought there was some kind of mojo with his glasses. I noticed as he was talking to her he said no one could tell her no, then he put on his glasses and said, now there is. There has to be a significance to those glasses...why else would he be referred to as HRG all the time? Also, he seeme resilant to Eden's powers even without the Hacian being there.


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## jpwoof (May 19, 2004)

slydog75 said:


> I was definetely under the impression that the Haitian was blocking her powers.


Mr. Bennet had already mentioned from previous episode that Haitian can block people's powers when he is around them. Much like Leech in X-Men.


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## jpwoof (May 19, 2004)

betts4 said:


> And missing from our 'six months earlier' storyline - Issac the painter? (and who else?)


You can read Isaac's storyline 6 months ago from the comic novel online. Nothing eventful.


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## zuko3984 (May 4, 2002)

I don't think the Haitian can block powers if he could how was it that Nathan was able to fly away when HRG and the Haitian had him in Vegas a few episode back.


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## jpwoof (May 19, 2004)

is it safe to say Hero can never get a hard on, otherwise, he'll blink?


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## jpwoof (May 19, 2004)

dimented said:


> So, what other powers has Sylar gained? We know he has telekinisis, but does he have anything else?


laser beam? super strength?


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

mmilton80 said:


> The girl with normally short hair was gorgeous with longer hair. I don't know her name. I mean, she's a wickedly cute girl in general...but the longer hair...nice.


Agreed. I didn't even recognize her in this episode, because I've never thought of the short-haired Eden as being cute, probably because of the short hair. But when I saw that hottie in the Ferrari, I was surprised when my wife said it was Eden.

Great episode. Really liked getting to see some backstory on many of these characters. I hope the next episode (Fall Finale) is satisfying enough to get us through the break.


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## zuko3984 (May 4, 2002)

jpwoof said:


> Mr. Bennet had already mentioned from previous episode that Haitian can block people's powers when he is around them. Much like Leech in X-Men.


I remember something about that from one of the episodes but then goes against what happened in Vegas with Nathan when he flew away so maybe the Haitian can only block mental powers like mind control and mind reading.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

zuko3984 said:


> I remember something about that from one of the episodes but then goes against what happened in Vegas with Nathan when he flew away so maybe the Haitian can only block mental powers like mind control and mind reading.


Maybe the Hatian has to actively try to use his powers, just like Hiro does, and Nathan shooting into the sky just caught him off guard.


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

Mr. Happypants said:


> Perhaps Bennet knew _about_ their existence, but Suresh handed him the means to find them more easily?
> 
> And a Sylar question, if hasn't been covered in previous week's posts: How did he manage to kill the wrong cheerleader? He either 1) Knows their identities from Suresh's map or 2) can sense their "misfunctioning brains" with his creepy watch/Spidey sense. So - why did he make the other blonde's head into a can of Dole Pineapple?


I think it was just a matter of him being over confident and messy.

He has to actively sense or scan someone it's not on all the time. He probably saw no need since he knew it was a cheerleader and saw a picture in the front display case of the cheerleader who leapt into the fire to save people.

I can totally buy into this part of the story..


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

yaddayaddayadda said:


> Also, it seemed like Nathan would have had to decide to run for office more than six months ago.


I was under the impression that Nathan was running to fill the seat that had been occupied by his father until his death. Given that his father died during the "Six Months Ago" storyline, deciding to run six months (or less) before the election is perfectly plausible.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

dimented said:


> So, what other powers has Sylar gained? We know he has telekinisis, but does he have anything else?


We saw one of his victims frozen, so presumably flash-freezing is one power. If he managed to kill Charlie in the modified timeline, he'll have incredible memory, but Charlie's cause of death after Hiro's "Six Months Ago" trip is, IMHO, unknown at this point.


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

srs5694 said:


> We saw one of his victims frozen, so presumably flash-freezing is one power. If he managed to kill Charlie in the modified timeline, he'll have incredible memory, but Charlie's cause of death after Hiro's "Six Months Ago" trip is, IMHO, unknown at this point.


Don't forget healing and flight.

His healing doesn't seem to be as good as Claire's tho 

So lets see what the current list is:

Healing
Flight
Telekinesis
Ability to detect minute differences (Clairsentience?)
Freezing (kinetic power?)
Laser

I'm not sure if he has super strength or if his telekinesis allows him to appear to have super strength.


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

glumlord said:


> Don't forget healing and flight.
> 
> His healing doesn't seem to be as good as Claire's tho
> 
> ...


Do we know he can fly? We saw him up on the fire escape, but he could just be able to jump (really well).


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## bonscott87 (Oct 3, 2000)

zuko3984 said:


> so maybe the Haitian can only block mental powers like mind control and mind reading.


Exactly. The Haitian's powers are not to "block" other powers but his power is like Prof. X. Mind powers in general. So Matt's power to read minds is a mind power and thus the Haitian could block it, manipulate it. Eden's power is also mental control, that of suggestion. Thus the Haitian could block that as well. The Haitian can obviously project other people's minds as well from other mental powers.

As for Mr. Bennet knowing about these powers before Suresh.
My guess is that Mr. Bennet works for a super secret government agency which is aware of these mutant powers but just figuring it out. Suresh has also figured it out on his own and so Mr. Bennet can further his research/agenda thru Eden manipulating Suresh.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

Martin Tupper said:


> Do we know he can fly? We saw him up on the fire escape, but he could just be able to jump (really well).


I'm also pretty sure he can't heal. We know he was shot at be we didn't see him actually wounded. And when he walked away from Peter he looked like he was hurt.


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## Tyrannosullyrex (Oct 6, 2004)

Sadara said:


> I also think some of the heros have had their powers for years. Niki/Jessica, seems from the story line tonight Jessica has been living inside of Niki for years, she just didn't come out and get hostile until Daddy tried to reconcile.


Jessica said that she took over when Daddy was abusing/beating Niki so Niki wouldn't feel/remember the abuse, to protect her (one assumes).


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

danterner said:


> 4. It may not have been an intentional allusion, but Sylar's origin story reminded me of Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen - the chapter of the Watchmen that deals with Jon's origin talks about his being a watch repairman and there are a couple of panels of him working on a watch that look strikingly similar to a few frames that we saw of Gabriel working on the German timepiece.


Thank you. I knew that whole scene reminded me of something out of a comic I'd read, but I couldn't place which one.


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

prefect42 said:


> I think that Charlie didn't let on to Hiro because she knew that if she did he may not travel back and she would not have had those six months at all. Hiro still gave her the travel book and helped her enjoy her time and then he left. So by acting like it was the first time she had met Hiro it prevented a paradox from occurring. and I just went cross-eyed


That was exactly what I assumed happened. I want to go back and re-watch the previous episode to see if she had a glimmer of recognition.


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

Tyrannosullyrex said:


> Jessica said that she took over when Daddy was abusing/beating Niki so Niki wouldn't feel/remember the abuse, to protect her (one assumes).


Yup, she's been coming up, but not coming out AND getting hostile.... that sounds like a more fluid sentence when I say it, but not so much when it's typed out.....


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

unicorngoddess said:


> I'm also pretty sure he can't heal. We know he was shot at be we didn't see him actually wounded. And when he walked away from Peter he looked like he was hurt.


Both of you bring up valid points..

I assumed he could fly but it is possible he could just have super jump.

And I would have to disagree with you about the healing somewhat. He jumped up quickly after a few seconds of being shot.

Also Peter was really messed up from the fall. I'm assuming that Sylar couldn't escape the same fate, therefore if he got up and was walking away he was able to heal himself somewhat. Obviously he was still injured but you don't just get up from a fall like that unless you can heal the damage taken.

Another thing which is obvious at this point that wasn't brought up is that it seems ALL of the heroes are vulnerable if there brains are injured. The brain is apparently what controls all of there powers.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

glumlord said:


> Both of you bring up valid points..
> 
> I assumed he could fly but it is possible he could just have super jump.
> 
> ...


But you're still assuming that he was actually shot. We know he was shot at but we never saw any blood. As someone once pointed out, knowing that he was barging into a police headquarters, he could've been prepaired with a bullet proof vest. One thing's for sure...there was never any blood shed in that scene. And as for the scene with Sylar and Peter falling off the roof, if Sylar used Peter to break his fall, for sure Peter would definately be more injured than Sylar.


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

slydog75 said:


> Eden was a hooldum


She's a young girl that no one can say no to. Not a surprising way for her to end up. 



> Charlie has a blood clot in her brain and is apparently terminal and can't be saved.


This reminded me of the story-arc in Highlander with Methos falling in love with the waitress with cancer.



> Hiro is going through the classic heroes journey. Done very well.


And it seemed that each time he was using his power, it required more and more effort until he finally became unable. It looks like he's got some kind of limitation that requires recharging or somehting like that. Nice way of making him less than omnipotent.



Mr. Happypants said:


> Perhaps Bennet knew _about_ their existence, but Suresh handed him the means to find them more easily?
> 
> And a Sylar question, if hasn't been covered in previous week's posts: How did he manage to kill the wrong cheerleader? He either 1) Knows their identities from Suresh's map or 2) can sense their "misfunctioning brains" with his creepy watch/Spidey sense. So - why did he make the other blonde's head into a can of Dole Pineapple?


The first task Mr. Benett gave to Eden was to go to Suresh and erase Claire's name from his records.

The only reason Sylar subsequently tracked down a Hero cheerleader in Odessa was because of the "cheerleader runs into a burning fire" story that made the papers.



Rob Helmerichs said:


> it could be that the writers don't understand the concept of "mapping the human genome,"


Hmmm, you don't suppose that map of the earth with all the pins and strings on it is the writers' idea of "mapping" the human genome, do you?


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## johnperkins21 (Aug 29, 2005)

Tyrannosullyrex said:


> Jessica said that she took over when Daddy was abusing/beating Niki so Niki wouldn't feel/remember the abuse, to protect her (one assumes).


No, she said she took the beatings so that Niki wouldn't have to. I took it to mean that as the big sister, she protected her little sister by taking beatings from their dad while Niki sat in a corner and cowered. I did not get the impression that there was a split personality during the time of the beatings. And I don't think that the Jessica personality is the actual Jessica, it's a split personality with superpowers that Niki chose because she was a very strong person.


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## jpwoof (May 19, 2004)

what about in the second episode? Is it safe to say that Sylar has super reflex/speed? He seemed to be able to dodge bullets fired by Matt and was able to escape. Also from the homecoming scene, he super speed to Peter's location outside the building, when he was chasing them.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

johnperkins21 said:


> No, she said she took the beatings so that Niki wouldn't have to. I took it to mean that as the big sister, she protected her little sister by taking beatings from their dad while Niki sat in a corner and cowered. I did not get the impression that there was a split personality during the time of the beatings. And I don't think that the Jessica personality is the actual Jessica, it's a split personality with superpowers that Niki chose because she was a very strong person.


I took it to mean that the split personality Jessica was taking over for the beatings. She mentioned that after he killed her (Jessica) that he used Niki as his punching bag. But the reason Niki doesn't remember that is because Jessica took over for all the beatings.


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

unicorngoddess said:


> But you're still assuming that he was actually shot. We know he was shot at but we never saw any blood. As someone once pointed out, knowing that he was barging into a police headquarters, he could've been prepaired with a bullet proof vest. One thing's for sure...there was never any blood shed in that scene. And as for the scene with Sylar and Peter falling off the roof, if Sylar used Peter to break his fall, for sure Peter would definately be more injured than Sylar.


True you are right that he could be wearing a vest at police station, and also landed on Peter the second time.

But if there are two occurences, usually the simplest answer is the correct one. There alot of possiblities but I think he has some form of healing, which is watered down compared to Claires. Or maybe he is able to slowly alter and fix his body by finding the problems and repairing them, which might tie into this original power.

All of this is speculation anyway  I'm assuming we'll find out more next week.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

unicorngoddess said:


> I took it to mean that the split personality Jessica was taking over for the beatings. She mentioned that after he killed her (Jessica) that he used Niki as his punching bag. But the reason Niki doesn't remember that is because Jessica took over for all the beatings.


Yeah, that's classic dissociative identity disorder behavior--which is why I suspect Jessica may not be real, and is just a personality Niki created to "take the fall" when bad things happen. And again, I think the first bad thing that might have happened was Niki killing Jessica (accidentally) with her powers, which led to the dissociative break in the first place. And since Niki wasn't aware of her internal Jessica, she blamed her father for Jessica's death, just as she later blamed her husband for her later murders (which is what I meant by framing her husband; since Jessica is a part of Niki, Niki framed her husband).


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

johnperkins21 said:


> No, she said she took the beatings so that Niki wouldn't have to. I took it to mean that as the big sister, she protected her little sister by taking beatings from their dad while Niki sat in a corner and cowered. I did not get the impression that there was a split personality during the time of the beatings. And I don't think that the Jessica personality is the actual Jessica, it's a split personality with superpowers that Niki chose because she was a very strong person.


I agree. I don't think this split personality is part of her powers, but a product of trauma. I think Niki has power all the time, she just doesn't know it until the Jessica personality takes over. I think her power is simply super strength. Now, how she doesn't accidentally break or crush something if she still has the strength as Niki, I haven't figured out yet...



unicorngoddess said:


> I had a different theory about Mr. Bennett's immunity. I thought there was some kind of mojo with his glasses. I noticed as he was talking to her he said no one could tell her no, then he put on his glasses and said, now there is. There has to be a significance to those glasses...why else would he be referred to as HRG all the time? Also, he seeme resilant to Eden's powers even without the Hacian being there.


There may be something to this. I seem to remember a scene a few episodes ago where HRG looked over at a pair of glasses on his desk or bookcase and had no idea at the time what it meant. It would make sense that if he works for the government as a "hero hunter" that they might have developed some type of device that would allow them to resist certain powers.

But I still think it has more to do with the Haitian.


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## TheGreyOwl (Aug 18, 2003)

It's also possible that the Haitian was using his powers on the intended victim and not on the person with powers. For example, he could have manipulated HRG's mind so he wouldn't be susceptible to suggestions. He also did the same to his own mind so the cop couldn't read his mind. It doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with blocking powers. Just a theory...



bonscott87 said:


> Exactly. The Haitian's powers are not to "block" other powers but his power is like Prof. X. Mind powers in general. So Matt's power to read minds is a mind power and thus the Haitian could block it, manipulate it. Eden's power is also mental control, that of suggestion. Thus the Haitian could block that as well. The Haitian can obviously project other people's minds as well from other mental powers.
> 
> As for Mr. Bennet knowing about these powers before Suresh.
> My guess is that Mr. Bennet works for a super secret government agency which is aware of these mutant powers but just figuring it out. Suresh has also figured it out on his own and so Mr. Bennet can further his research/agenda thru Eden manipulating Suresh.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

srs5694 said:


> We saw one of his victims frozen, so presumably flash-freezing is one power. If he managed to kill Charlie in the modified timeline, he'll have incredible memory, but Charlie's cause of death after Hiro's "Six Months Ago" trip is, IMHO, unknown at this point.


On the other hand, if Sylar did scan Charlie's brain, would he also get the blood clot and the aneurism?


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

JYoung said:


> On the other hand, if Sylar did scan Charlie's brain, would he also get the blood clot and the aneurism?


I don't get the feeling his brain/power stealing abilities would give him the blood clot.


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## Amnesia (Jan 30, 2005)

TAsunder said:


> From what we can see so far, Hiro can in fact change the past (when he spoke to peter he changed it).


No we haven't.

The future Hiro talking to Peter on the subway may only have been doing what was necessary to preserve his timeline. There's no indication that in future-Hiro's timeline, Peter did *not* save the cheerleader (or did not talk to future-Hiro).

No changing of the past required.


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## JCWest (Mar 23, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> How ironic that Hiro didn't realize that he DID save Charlie. She was going to die anyway (from the aneurysm); ...


I expected Hiro to use his powers to heal Charlie. He could freeze time, while a Neurological Surgeon repairs her. I'm not a neurologist but I would imagine if you have all the time in the world and no bleeding, you could repair almost anything. Or, if he hasn't yet developed the power to let others interact with him while time is frozen (I can't remember if he has or not, the future Hiro used that power when he spoke to Peter on the subway), he could freeze time, study to become a brain surgeon (ala Ground Hog Day) and operate on her himself.

I hope his time travel is severely limited otherwise it's just a can of worms and everything can be undone. Sylar would have a field day with his power. (by the way, what's a "field day" anyway?)


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

JCWest said:


> I hope his time travel is severely limited otherwise it's just a can of worms and everything can be undone.


It appeared that it required mroe and more effort each subsequent time that he used his powers in this episode. Also, at some point his ability appeared to completely shut down.

So yeah, there apparently are some limitations.


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

busyba said:


> It appeared that it required mroe and more effort each subsequent time that he used his powers in this episode. Also, at some point his ability appeared to completely shut down.
> 
> So yeah, there apparently are some limitations.


Or he's still learning about his ability. I'm sure there are limitations to it, but last nights episode gave me the impression that Hiro is still learning the boundries of his ability.


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## DLiquid (Sep 17, 2001)

This episode started off slowly but ended up being my favorite so far. No Mohinder! :up:

So if Hiro can travel back in time and this results in two Hiros, he could theoretically create an army of Hiros.

Nice Jedi Mind Trick reference with Eden's "move along, nothing to see here" donuts line. I loved that later we actually see him kind of dazed and confused eating a donut.

I must have been out of it last night, because I didn't realize that was Sylar until the reveal. I'm glad, cause it was a cool twist. Sylar went from being a cheesy villain to being really cool. I love the whole watch repair savant angle.


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

Sadara said:


> Or he's still learning about his ability. I'm sure there are limitations to it, but last nights episode gave me the impression that Hiro is still learning the boundries of his ability.


There's that too, but he was squinting harder and harder each time he did something, and then when he jumped back to Japan he couldn't do anything at all anymore.

Also of note, his leap back to Japan didn't appear to be initiated by himself. And the leap took him back to his own timeline before he went back to save the girl. Perhaps there is some kind of "rubber band" type deal that forces him to get snapped back into his own timeline after a while. (Now why the snap-back took him to Japan and not Texas, I don't know....)


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## DLiquid (Sep 17, 2001)

JCWest said:


> Or, if he hasn't yet developed the power to let others interact with him while time is frozen (I can't remember if he has or not, the future Hiro used that power when he spoke to Peter on the subway)


We don't know that for sure. Since Peter can mimic others' abilities, that could be the reason Peter was able to interact while time was frozen. Not sure this is true, but it's plausible.


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## Zevida (Nov 8, 2003)

JCWest said:


> (by the way, what's a "field day" anyway?)


In elementary school, a "field day" was when you spent all day outside playing relay games. Usually your parents come to watch. There's probably a picnic involved. It's basically like all-day (or several hour) recess. It usually takes place on the big field where recess is. Hence, field day.

Wikipedia says it has military origins.


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## miketx (Sep 22, 2005)

I think alot of Sylar's abilities can be explained via telekinesis. Since you can manipulate objects (including yourself), you could fly, stop bullets, cut someone's head open, etc.... Freezing...well, that would have to be acquired. Just my thoughts. 

I hope Heroes doesn't have too many more "flashbacks". I would really hate it to change into another "LOST", where each episode is 1 minute of plot and 59 minutes of "flashbacks". I know time travel is a key element in the storyline, but it is very possible to have too much "past" storyline. I stopped watching LOST because I was tired of being spoon-fed the "present day" plot, one kiddie cracker per episode. I hope Heroes keeps the pace moving.

Mike


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

DLiquid said:


> So if Hiro can travel back in time and this results in two Hiros, he could theoretically create an army of Hiros.


Perhaps, but if you kill the right one, the rest would cease to exist.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

busyba said:


> There's that too, but he was squinting harder and harder each time he did something, and then when he jumped back to Japan he couldn't do anything at all anymore.


It's seemed to me all along that the harder he tries, the less success he has. His best luck is when he does it without thinking about it.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

glumlord said:


> Don't forget healing and flight.
> 
> His healing doesn't seem to be as good as Claire's tho
> 
> ...


*SIGH* This has been covered in just about every week's thread. Very little can be said about Sylar's abilities with any certainty. He's definitely got some sort of telekinetic power, and based on the frozen guy, some sort of freezing (or perhaps more general temperature control) ability. The incident in which Parkman shot at Sylar can be explained in at least a dozen different ways, only one of which involves rapid healing. Ditto for the fall in "Homecoming." We have _not_ actually _seen_ Sylar fly, although we have seen camera moves, sound effects, etc., that suggest flight, abnormal speed, unusual jumping ability, or something similar. (Telekinesis could account for this, if we suppose that Sylar can apply his telekinesis to himself -- but the distinction between this and a flight-only power may be unimportant, from a practical point of view.) With this week's episode we can add some sort of unusual atunement to machinery, possibly including the human brain, hence the ability to mimic others' powers once he can examine the brain, but the details are still unclear. (Is this one power or two? Is the clockwork atunement a real power or just an ordinary, albeit well-developed, skill?) I have no idea what your laser reference is about.

In sum, Sylar's abilities are still very unclear, for the most part. IMHO, only three are certain: telekinesis, freezing, and power absorption. The exact nature of each remains unknown.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

DLiquid said:


> So if Hiro can travel back in time and this results in two Hiros, he could theoretically create an army of Hiros.


Kind of like "The Falconer" .


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

johnperkins21 said:


> No, she said she took the beatings so that Niki wouldn't have to. I took it to mean that as the big sister, she protected her little sister by taking beatings from their dad while Niki sat in a corner and cowered.


That's how I interpreted it the first time I watched, but I just re-watched the episode, and I came away with the distinct impression that she was saying that Jessica took over the body whenever her father went on a rampage. I don't recall what precisely gave me that impression, but it's pretty firm in my mind.


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## RickStrobel (Jan 19, 2000)

Nobody's mentioned it but it looks to me like Sylar's ultimate goal is to eliminate all the "defectives".

When the first guy with telekinesis came by he seemed like he did want to acquire the power or learn how to be special - to help lift him from his dismal existence. Then he heard him "tick" and flipped out. That guy was "defective" and had to be exterminated.

Gaining their abilities is a by-product. He's not after power for power's sake. He just wants to fix the world by eliminating the defectives. 

I didn't realize that until last night. Maybe it was obvious to everyone else. Maybe I'm wrong.


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

srs5694 said:


> That's how I interpreted it the first time I watched, but I just re-watched the episode, and I came away with the distinct impression that she was saying that Jessica took over the body whenever her father went on a rampage. I don't recall what precisely gave me that impression, but it's pretty firm in my mind.


That's definitely what I heard.


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## Squeege96 (May 1, 2006)

Then why is there a gravestone for Jessica? I saw it as Jessica "died" to save Nikki, and now they share the same body.


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## miketx (Sep 22, 2005)

RickStrobel said:


> Nobody's mentioned it but it looks to me like Sylar's ultimate goal is to eliminate all the "defectives".
> 
> When the first guy with telekinesis came by he seemed like he did want to acquire the power or learn how to be special - to help lift him from his dismal existence. Then he heard him "tick" and flipped out. That guy was "defective" and had to be exterminated.
> 
> ...


Maybe......but I think he is psychotic and wants each power......as much as he wants to "fix" the defectives, he desires their power also, since it enables him to carry out his mission. I think he probably believes he is the ultimate "evolution".


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

srs5694 said:


> *SIGH* This has been covered in just about every week's thread. Very little can be said about Sylar's abilities with any certainty. He's definitely got some sort of telekinetic power, and based on the frozen guy, some sort of freezing (or perhaps more general temperature control) ability. The incident in which Parkman shot at Sylar can be explained in at least a dozen different ways, only one of which involves rapid healing. Ditto for the fall in "Homecoming." We have _not_ actually _seen_ Sylar fly, although we have seen camera moves, sound effects, etc., that suggest flight, abnormal speed, unusual jumping ability, or something similar. (Telekinesis could account for this, if we suppose that Sylar can apply his telekinesis to himself -- but the distinction between this and a flight-only power may be unimportant, from a practical point of view.) With this week's episode we can add some sort of unusual atunement to machinery, possibly including the human brain, hence the ability to mimic others' powers once he can examine the brain, but the details are still unclear. (Is this one power or two? Is the clockwork atunement a real power or just an ordinary, albeit well-developed, skill?) I have no idea what your laser reference is about.
> 
> In sum, Sylar's abilities are still very unclear, for the most part. IMHO, only three are certain: telekinesis, freezing, and power absorption. The exact nature of each remains unknown.


Found the story listed on http://www.tvfodder.com/heroes/archives/2006/11/heroes_chapter_nine_homecoming.shtml and just copied the relevant paragraph to perhaps refresh your memory.



> Peter walks outside and sees the banner and the clock, same as the picture. Hes got 12 minutes before he bites it.
> 
> Next, we see Sylar looking at the same display case as Peter had. Hes come to the same conclusion as well, Jackie is the hero that hes looking for. Claire and Jackie have words but as they are about to leave the locker room, the lights go out. We see Sylars shadow run by. Dad is at the amphitheatre looking for Claire. Claire senses something is wrong and he tries to pull Jackie away, but Sylar is there and grabs her. Claire jumps on Sylar to try to stop him but he tosses her like yesterdays news. Jackie screams. Dad thinks its Claire and starts running. Peter hears the screams too and starts running toward it. *In a graphic moment, we see Sylar use his finger like a laser pointer as he slices open Jackies skull.* Claire rights herself and Sylar realizes he got the wrong one and starts chases her. She runs into the hallway and into Peter. They both turn to see Sylar. He sends her off thinks he can fight this guy. No can do. Sylar uses his mind to pull the locker doors off their hinges and flings them at Peter. He takes off running after Claire.
> 
> Dad comes into the locker room thinking the dead cheerleader is Claire. When he realizes its not, he leaves to find his daughter.


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## DreadPirateRob (Nov 12, 2002)

Squeege96 said:


> Then why is there a gravestone for Jessica? I saw it as Jessica "died" to save Nikki, and now they share the same body.


+1


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

Squeege96 said:


> Then why is there a gravestone for Jessica? I saw it as Jessica "died" to save Nikki, and now they share the same body.


This is not confusing and I don't know why people are making it out to be. Yes, Jessica was a real person. But guess what? She died at age 9. After that (in Jessica's own words) her father then turned on Niki and started abusing her. Jessica seems to have the abillity to possess Niki so whenever their father would start beating her, Jessica would take over so Niki wouldn't remember the beatings.

I also get the destinct impression that Jessica and Niki are twins...maybe that's why they have such a close connection.


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## bryhamm (Jun 30, 2004)

glumlord said:


> Found the story listed on http://www.tvfodder.com/heroes/archives/2006/11/heroes_chapter_nine_homecoming.shtml and just copied the relevant paragraph to perhaps refresh your memory.





> Peter walks outside and sees the banner and the clock, same as the picture. Hes got 12 minutes before he bites it.
> 
> Next, we see Sylar looking at the same display case as Peter had. Hes come to the same conclusion as well, Jackie is the hero that hes looking for. Claire and Jackie have words but as they are about to leave the locker room, the lights go out. We see Sylars shadow run by. Dad is at the amphitheatre looking for Claire. Claire senses something is wrong and he tries to pull Jackie away, but Sylar is there and grabs her. Claire jumps on Sylar to try to stop him but he tosses her like yesterdays news. Jackie screams. Dad thinks its Claire and starts running. Peter hears the screams too and starts running toward it. In a graphic moment, we see Sylar use his finger like a laser pointer as he slices open Jackies skull. Claire rights herself and Sylar realizes he got the wrong one and starts chases her. She runs into the hallway and into Peter. They both turn to see Sylar. He sends her off thinks he can fight this guy. No can do. Sylar uses his mind to pull the locker doors off their hinges and flings them at Peter. He takes off running after Claire.
> 
> Dad comes into the locker room thinking the dead cheerleader is Claire. When he realizes its not, he leaves to find his daughter.


I think this is just describing the motion for the viewers. Nothing actually came out of his finger. If he had not done that with his finger then we (the viewers) would have wondered WTF just happened. I think the finger "motion" was just to show us that he was concentrating his telekinis (sp?) powers on her head.


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

unicorngoddess said:


> She died at age 9.





unicorngoddess said:


> This is not confusing and I don't know why people are making it out to be.


1976-1987 makes her 11


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

glumlord said:


> Found the story listed on http://www.tvfodder.com/heroes/archives/2006/11/heroes_chapter_nine_homecoming.shtml and just copied the relevant paragraph to perhaps refresh your memory.
> 
> 
> > In a graphic moment, we see Sylar use his finger like a laser pointer as he slices open Jackie's skull.


First, that's somebody's description of the episode, not the episode itself.

Second, note the use of the word "like." In this context, that makes it a simile -- Sylar used his finger in a manner similar to the way in which he might use a laser pointer, but his finger is not literally a laser pointer. You could as easily say "George jumped like a cat," but that doesn't mean he is a cat, just that he's got cat-like agility. In the case of Sylar's finger, we just know he was pointing at Jackie. His skull-slicing ability is probably unrelated to actual laser technology (although we don't know with certainty one way or the other). He might not even need his finger to do the job; that could just be an affectation or mental crutch when using his telekinetic abilities, or whatever other power he was using to open the skull.


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## mtcbuilder (Nov 9, 2006)

unicorngoddess said:


> This is not confusing and I don't know why people are making it out to be. Yes, Jessica was a real person. But guess what? She died at age 9. After that (in Jessica's own words) her father then turned on Niki and started abusing her. Jessica seems to have the abillity to possess Niki so whenever their father would start beating her, Jessica would take over so Niki wouldn't remember the beatings.
> 
> I also get the destinct impression that Jessica and Niki are twins...maybe that's why they have such a close connection.


You're assuming Niki continued to live with, and be beaten by, her father after Jessica's death. We don't know this. I think Jessica took the beatings for Niki to the point that Jessica died. Micah said that Niki changed about six months ago, so we don't know that she always had the power to channel Jessica.
Speaking of which, it seems that all of the heroes' powers just started to manifest in the past six months. There's no sign that they have had these powers much before that -- Matt couldn't read Eden's mind, Claire didn't know her cut would heal (what kid hasn't gotten hurt before?), Syler was just a watch maker, Nathan was surprised when he flew out of the car, Hiro was answering phones for Ando, etc.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

unicorngoddess said:


> This is not confusing and I don't know why people are making it out to be. Yes, Jessica was a real person. But guess what? She died at age 9. After that (in Jessica's own words) her father then turned on Niki and started abusing her. Jessica seems to have the abillity to possess Niki so whenever their father would start beating her, Jessica would take over so Niki wouldn't remember the beatings.


Or maybe (third time's the charm?) Jessica is a split personality that Niki created under the stress of knowing that she murdered her sister.


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## murrays (Oct 19, 2004)

devdogaz said:


> But when I saw that hottie in the Ferrari, I was surprised when my wife said it was Eden.


Minor detail, but I think it was a Lamborghini, perhaps this one:










-murray


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

I also get the impression that Niki and Jessica were twins.


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## murrays (Oct 19, 2004)

chronatog7 said:


> Previous rejected names prior to Sylar:
> Fossil
> Rolex
> Seiko
> ...


I would have named him Skagen (my watch) 

-murray


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Or maybe (third time's the charm?) Jessica is a split personality that Niki created under the stress of knowing that she murdered her sister.


I heard you.

Jessica was real and died at 11. Obviously, from her dad beating her in a drunken rage (he is a member of AA or whatever that group was Niki goes to).

Niki brought Jessica back to life as an extra personality to protect herself from the mental aspect of the beatings that continued on the surviving twin (Niki). Go read or watch Sybil (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075296/) to understand this. BTW, Sybil was based on a true story.

Since Dad and Niki were not around, Jessica wasn't needed. Dad came back into Niki's life 6 months ago and Niki comes back.

I think Jessica has the powers but she only uses them as Niki who is a personality not a ghost or anything like that.


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

murrays said:


> Minor detail, but I think it was a Lamborghini, perhaps this one:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I could have sworn I saw the distinctive Ferrari logo on the hood.

phox


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## JETarpon (Jan 1, 2003)

So is Jessica/Nikkkki's dad the body that Jessica led Nikkkkkkki to in the desert?


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

mtcbuilder said:


> You're assuming Niki continued to live with, and be beaten by, her father after Jessica's death.


But "Jessica" came right out and told her father she took the beatings AFTER she died.


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## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

phox_mulder said:


> I could have sworn I saw the distinctive Ferrari logo on the hood.
> 
> phox


Nope, twas a bull, not a horse.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

cherry ghost said:


> 1976-1987 makes her 11


Yep, I admit...my math sucks.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

JETarpon said:


> So is Jessica/Nikkkki's dad the body that Jessica led Nikkkkkkki to in the desert?


No. The bodies that Jessica lead Niki to in the desert were that of DL's old crew. The ones he had planned the $2 million hiest with then decided not to go through with it. Jessica stepped in and "did what needed to be done" then apparently killed the crew to keep her secret.


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## murrays (Oct 19, 2004)

SeanC said:


> phox_mulder said:
> 
> 
> > I could have sworn I saw the distinctive Ferrari logo on the hood.
> ...


It was hard to see the logo, but I think it was: 









not:










-murray


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

murrays said:


> It was hard to see the logo, but I think it was:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I looked at both of the 2006 Lamborghini and Ferrari and the car is clearly a 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder.

http://www.rsportscars.com/eng/cars/gallardo_spyder.asp


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## murrays (Oct 19, 2004)

Sadara said:


> I looked at both of the 2006 Lamborghini and Ferrari and the car is clearly a 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder.
> 
> http://www.rsportscars.com/eng/cars/gallardo_spyder.asp


Giddyup, that's the picture I posted 

-murray


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

murrays said:


> Giddyup, that's the picture I posted
> 
> -murray


Yup, I just gave a link that showed the make and model...  The other car looks very different!!


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## Billyh1026 (May 21, 2006)

Any guess as to how the whole show will end? Or, is that allowed in these threads?


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

I just rewatched the whole scene between "Jessica" and the Dad. It's really pretty unclear if she took the punches before Jessica died or as an alter ego in Niki's body. There's enough said to give the idea that Jessica could have been taking the punches as Niki's alter ego. But, one thing is certain, Jessica was real and really died and Niki was left in abusive Daddy's care after Jessica died. The other stuff just isn't clear to me.


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## Martha (Oct 6, 2002)

Billyh1026 said:


> Any guess as to how the whole show will end? Or, is that allowed in these threads?


All the heroes end up on a plane that took off in Australia and as they're crossing over the ocean, oh wait....wrong thread.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Sadara said:


> But, one thing is certain, Jessica was real and really died and Niki was left in abusive Daddy's care after Jessica died. The other stuff just isn't clear to me.


Yes, that is what we know. The rest is speculation. We don't know how Jessica died (Niki blames her father, but then Niki blames her husband for the Vegas murders she committed), we don't know the nature of the "Jessica" that emerges from Niki, we don't know whether it's Niki or Jessica that has the powers.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

Sadara said:


> I just rewatched the whole scene between "Jessica" and the Dad. It's really pretty unclear if she took the punches before Jessica died or as an alter ego in Niki's body. There's enough said to give the idea that Jessica could have been taking the punches as Niki's alter ego. But, one thing is certain, Jessica was real and really died and Niki was left in abusive Daddy's care after Jessica died. The other stuff just isn't clear to me.


First Jessica accuses the dad of killing her. He says he didn't kill anyone. Jessica says, that's right. It was an accident..."I left Niki with you to be your punching bag" she says. Then she says he doesn't owe Niki an apology, he owes her (Jessica) the apology. "Niki doesn't remember, but I do." And we know that Niki doesn't remember things from when Jessica takes over. To me, that indicates that Niki does't remember the horrible person that her dad was because every time her dad abused her, Jessica took over.


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

So how about the helix tatoo that's been shown on Jessica's shoulder? A hint that maybe it's more than just a personality that takes control?


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

unicorngoddess said:


> First Jessica accuses the dad of killing her. He says he didn't kill anyone. Jessica says, that's right. It was an accident..."I left Niki with you to be your punching bag" she says. Then she says he doesn't owe Niki an apology, he owes her (Jessica) the apology. "Niki doesn't remember, but I do." And we know that Niki doesn't remember things from when Jessica takes over. To me, that indicates that Niki does't remember the horrible person that her dad was because every time her dad abused her, Jessica took over.


I thought so at first too and now that I've watched it 3 or 4 times, I'm totally confused.... lol


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

mtcbuilder said:


> Speaking of which, it seems that all of the heroes' powers just started to manifest in the past six months. There's no sign that they have had these powers much before that -- Matt couldn't read Eden's mind, Claire didn't know her cut would heal (what kid hasn't gotten hurt before?), Syler was just a watch maker, Nathan was surprised when he flew out of the car, Hiro was answering phones for Ando, etc.


The Haitian and Eden seem to have had their powers long enough to be comfortable with them six months ago.


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

bryhamm said:


> I think this is just describing the motion for the viewers. Nothing actually came out of his finger. If he had not done that with his finger then we (the viewers) would have wondered WTF just happened. I think the finger "motion" was just to show us that he was concentrating his telekinis (sp?) powers on her head.


Weird, I swore I saw some sort of light or connecting factor between finger and the person's head.

Maybe all the description's I've heard of Laser has altered my memory of the scene.

I looked here:

http://www.heroes-tv.com/modules/xcgal/thumbnails.php?album=31&page=16

I was hoping a screencap would answer my possibly fault memory but in the screencaps I don't see anything that would support my stance.

I fully accept the possibility I was wrong  but does anyone else remember anything resembling a light or laster coming out of Sylar's finger at any point.

Either way Psychokinesis or Telekinesis neither would not allow for that type of cutting. It's more like he was slicing which falls into the field of actually creating a mental blade or some type of energy beam... well in my opinion


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## DreadPirateRob (Nov 12, 2002)

unicorngoddess said:


> First Jessica accuses the dad of killing her. He says he didn't kill anyone. Jessica says, that's right. It was an accident..."I left Niki with you to be your punching bag" she says. Then she says he doesn't owe Niki an apology, he owes her (Jessica) the apology. "Niki doesn't remember, but I do." And we know that Niki doesn't remember things from when Jessica takes over. To me, that indicates that Niki does't remember the horrible person that her dad was because every time her dad abused her, Jessica took over.


I don't know. I took that whole scene as telling us that Jessica was Niki's sister (twin?) who was dad's favorite punching bag, probably because she was the stronger/tougher/more outspoken of the two sisters (something that happened in my mom's family) and that ultimately the dad ended up (accidentally) killing Jessica during one of the routine beatings.

Your scenario is certainly plausible, but I just didn't take it that way when I watched the episode.


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## mtcbuilder (Nov 9, 2006)

unicorngoddess said:


> First Jessica accuses the dad of killing her. He says he didn't kill anyone. Jessica says, that's right. It was an accident..."I left Niki with you to be your punching bag" she says. Then she says he doesn't owe Niki an apology, he owes her (Jessica) the apology. "Niki doesn't remember, but I do." And we know that Niki doesn't remember things from when Jessica takes over. To me, that indicates that Niki does't remember the horrible person that her dad was because every time her dad abused her, Jessica took over.


It's hard to say conclusively who was beaten and when. Just because Niki blacks out when she turns into Jessica now, doesn't necessarily mean that's the only way she could not remember. Niki clearly has some mental and emotional problems and probably has for a while, since she was either mentally or physically abused. Niki turns into Jessica now, but did she at the time of Jessica's death? We don't know, and I didn't see anything in the episode that indicated that after Jessica was killed that Niki became the object of her father's abuse, and so "became" Jessica to deal with it. For all we know, the scene where she stuffed the check in his mouth may have been the first time Jessica returned in Niki. Or maybe not.


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## getbak (Oct 8, 2004)

busyba said:


> The Haitian and Eden seem to have had their powers long enough to be comfortable with them six months ago.


Plus, we know that HRG has been doing whatever it is he does for at least 16 years because he adopted Claire after her mother died during one of his experiments.


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## mtcbuilder (Nov 9, 2006)

busyba said:


> The Haitian and Eden seem to have had their powers long enough to be comfortable with them six months ago.


We don't know much about the Haitian. You're right, he doesn't seem to be struggling with his power, whatever it is, but we don't know how much control he has over it. He seems to also be a loyal servant of HRG. What is HRG's hold on him?
Eden may have just acquired her power too. She kind of seems like she knows how to use her Jedi mind power, but someone that looks like her may have been honing this skill long before the hero power started to come out. I think somebody who just discovered the ability to make others do whatever they ask might go wild with the power just like she did.


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## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

It seemed to me that Sylar was wearing glasses very similar to HRG's when they first showed him repairing watches. Coincidence?


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

mtcbuilder said:


> We don't know much about the Haitian. You're right, he doesn't seem to be struggling with his power, whatever it is, but we don't know how much control he has over it. He seems to also be a loyal servant of HRG. What is HRG's hold on him?


I gave this some thought a while back, but in a more general way: How would an ordinary person, or a group of ordinary people (ranging from just a couple to a government) control people with the sort of extraordinary capabilities exhibited in the show? One possibility that occurred to me was to employ multiple such people, some of whom are unknown to each other. For instance, HRG tells Eden to keep an eye on the Haitian and stop him from misbehaving, gives the Haitian the same instructions with respect to Eden, and warns them both that unknown others are lurking in the shadows watching the two of them to keep them from colluding. These unseen others will each have instructions to keep an eye on each of the primaries and on one or two of the other unseen ones -- but not on all of them. The goal is to keep all of them guessing so as to prevent both individual mutinies and conspiracies. Of course, careful thought would have to be devoted to the powers of each of the individuals. A mind-reader like Matt Parkman wouldn't fit too well, despite the obvious advantages, because such a person might discover the identities of some or all of the unseen monitors. Perhaps that's part of the reason why HRG released him rather than recruiting him.



> Eden may have just acquired her power too. She kind of seems like she knows how to use her Jedi mind power,


Actually, her power seems more akin to the Voice from the _Dune_ novels.



> but someone that looks like her may have been honing this skill long before the hero power started to come out. I think somebody who just discovered the ability to make others do whatever they ask might go wild with the power just like she did.


Online comic #8....



Spoiler



...provides background for Eden. No time-frame is given, but it reveals that she was verbally/emotionally abused by her stepmother and chose to retreat inward. (It seemed rather like the Cinderella fairy tale in that respect, but with a very different ending.) When she discovered her power, it resulted in her stepmother's death and the destruction of her house in fire, which could well be the source of the claim by HRG that she's wanted for arson and suspected of murder. She certainly wasn't honing any skill for manipulation before she discovered her power.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

glumlord said:


> Weird, I swore I saw some sort of light or connecting factor between finger and the person's head.
> 
> Maybe all the description's I've heard of Laser has altered my memory of the scene.


Must have. I just checked and there was no visible beam. There was a whining sort of sound effect, though. Also, there was some strong foreshadowing for the next episode ("Six Months Ago"): The background music included lots of ticking, as in clockwork mechanisms.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

DreadPirateRob said:


> I don't know. I took that whole scene as telling us that Jessica was Niki's sister (twin?) who was dad's favorite punching bag, probably because she was the stronger/tougher/more outspoken of the two sisters (something that happened in my mom's family) and that ultimately the dad ended up (accidentally) killing Jessica during one of the routine beatings.


Actually, here's the whole scene (any transcription errors are mine):

Jessica enters Hal's hotel room (seen through a mirror); the camera pulls back as the two characters enter the main part of the room.

Hal: You do remember.
Jessica: Oh, how could I forget?

Jessica grabs Hal, throws him against a wardrobe, holds him there by the throat.

Hal: Nicole!
Jessica: Not Nikki. It's me, Daddy, Jessica. The daughter that you threw beer bottles at. The daughter that you choked. The daughter that you killed.
Hal: I didn't kill anyone!
Jessica (sarcastic): No, it was an accident! And they left Niki with you to be your punching bag.
Hal: I came to apologize, Nicole.
Jessica: Apologize? You don't apologize to Nicole. You apologize to me. Niki doesn't remember. But I do. Someone had to be there to protect her. I remember the stink of alcohol on your breath. I took every punch so that she wouldn't have to.
Hal: You are not Jessica.
Jessica: You have no idea who I am.

Jessica throws Hal to the bed.

Hal: Nicole, you need help.
Jessica: You're right, she does. I thought she had learned to protect herself, but no such luck.

Jessica pulls out the check Hal gave Niki in an earlier scene.

Jessica: You're going to go away and _never_ come back.

Jessica stuffs the check in Hal's mouth and leaves.

Assuming that Jessica was telling the truth, I interpret this scene, along with earlier information, thus:


The "real" Jessica was abused by her father, Hal, probably more than he abused Niki.
Hal killed Jessica in a drunken fit but the death was declared to be accidental and Niki was left in Hal's care.
After Jessica's death, Niki developed dissociative identity disorder, with one personality being called Jessica. This identity might or might not be a channelling of the "real" Jessica.
The Jessica personality came forward to protect the Niki personality whenever Hal went on another drunken rampage.

Point #2 might not be true; as others have speculated, it's possible that the "real" Jessica died because of something related to a superpower (superstrength, presumably) possessed by Niki. This is an alternate interpretation that doesn't really affect the rest of the analysis.

The reason I think point #4 is correct is because in earlier scenes Niki doesn't accuse her father of abusing her, but of abandoning her. Jessica's monologue indicates that Hal threw beer bottles at the "real" Jessica and that Niki was left in Hal's care "to be [his] punching bag," indicating that the child abuse continued after Jessica's death. Yet in earlier scenes, Niki never accused her father of abuse; she was upset because he _abandoned_ her. That indicates that she doesn't remember the abuse, which is more in line with the idea that the Jessica personality took over to "absorb" the abuse, leaving Niki without such memories. Niki might remember earlier abuse of Jessica, but maybe not -- if the two _weren't_ twins, and if Jessica was the older sister, then Niki might have been young enough to not remember abusive incidents. An additional factor is that if you interpret Jessica's dialog as describing events in a linear fashion, the "I took every punch" line occurs after the line about Jessica's death. This is admittedly very weak evidence by itself, but it fits with everything else.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

I'd just like to add that when Dad said "I didn't kill anyone," he seemed genuinely surprised by the accusation. That's why I think Niki killed Jessica, and (since she doesn't remember it) she (and thus her inner Jessica) assumes Dad did it.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I'd just like to add that when Dad said "I didn't kill anyone," he seemed genuinely surprised by the accusation. That's why I think Niki killed Jessica, and (since she doesn't remember it) she (and thus her inner Jessica) assumes Dad did it.


Or the surprise could have been that of someone who was just busted after having gotten away with murder for the past 20 years.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

unicorngoddess said:


> Or the surprise could have been that of someone who was just busted after having gotten away with murder for the past 20 years.


That's the way I read it.
He was surprised that she knew.


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## Tangent (Feb 25, 2005)

Great episode! We got some clarification for some characters and frustratingly little on others.

Sylar - Sociopath that desperately does not want to be "ordinary". While he coveted the powers of the telekinetic guy, it wasn't until he realized that he was "broken" that he made the decision to kill him. He seems to be following in the footsteps of Hitler in a psychotic dream for making the human race "better" by eliminating anyone he deems to be "broken".

It also confirmed that one way or another he is able to mimic/steal the powers of the heroes he kills. His native ability seems to be "seeing" how things work, something he'd been honing with the watch repair work but apparently also works with brains. I agree with previous speculation that he simply has the ability to see how a hero's brain is different and copies what they do, kind of like mimicking an accent.

Mr Bennet - So what exactly _is_ his agenda anyway?!? He obviously already knew about the abilities before the meeting. This was confirmed in a previous episode's conversation with Isaac when he said that he adopted Claire from parents that dies when he tried to "help" them like he was trying to help Isaac. What does he mean by "helping"? He doesn't seem to be trying to eliminate their powers; is he just trying to catalog them?

Niki/Jessica - The way I interpreted itwas that the real Jessica was accidentally beat to death by the dad, and that Nikki created a "Nikki" persona in her head to shield herself from the trauma. This Jessica persona used to only appear when she was being abused, but 6 months ago when dad came back it returned to get revenge and to take a more active part in protecting Nikki.

Nathan - Serious guilt/inadeqacy issues conflicting with his natural self-assuredness. His wife was in danger and his powers sub consciously let him run away. I don't think he'll be able to use his powers for good till he gets that out of his system.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

I recently had an idea concerning what might be called the "laws of destiny" in the Heroes universe. As witness the inevitability of Charlie's death, the writing so far seems to indicate that it's very difficult, or perhaps impossible, to "cheat fate" in the Heroes universe. Our assumption in these threads has been that the heroes ultimately will do so and we won't see NYC go up in a mushroom cloud. If we stick with that assumption, this leaves us with the necessity of finding a loophole in the laws of destiny, as it were.

Enter a discussion from a previous thread: Why the cryptic warning from future-Hiro: "save the cheerleader, save the world"? As noted in that earlier thread, Hiro could have been much more specific: "Save Claire Bennet of Odessa Texas from the serial killer Gabriel Gray, aka Sylar, who has powers X, Y, and Z." Of course, being cryptic provides the audience with more puzzles, but it makes no sense if you really want to change the past -- unless being cryptic is your way around the laws of destiny. Hiro was unable to save Charlie by going back in time, because (I speculate) she was fated to die and Hiro didn't fully understand this. Future-Hiro, though, has a much better grasp of things, and rather than try to derail destiny, he wants to shunt it onto another track. By giving that cryptic warning, he hopes to shift Claire's destiny of being killed by Sylar onto another track, which happens to have turned out to be Jackie's. "Save the cheerleader," Hiro said -- well, we saw a cheerleader die, and so Hiro's warning might not have prevented the death of a cheerleader. Of course, from a logical and scientific point of view, this makes little sense, but if you squint your eyes just right (perhaps that's what Hiro's doing), it kinda-almost-sorta makes literary sense. What I find really intriguing about it, though, is what it reveals about Hiro's future path: He'll choose to give the warning even knowing that it will cause the death of an innocent person who didn't die in his original timeline. He believes that this will ultimately save more lives, but it's still a very cold and calculating thing to do -- perhaps even along the lines of many of the things HRG has done.

Anyhow, this is of course _very_ speculative, and I won't be at all surprised if the next episode blows it out of the water. It's interesting speculation, though -- at least to me.


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## mtcbuilder (Nov 9, 2006)

srs5694 said:


> I recently had an idea concerning what might be called the "laws of destiny" in the Heroes universe. As witness the inevitability of Charlie's death, the writing so far seems to indicate that it's very difficult, or perhaps impossible, to "cheat fate" in the Heroes universe. Our assumption in these threads has been that the heroes ultimately will do so and we won't see NYC go up in a mushroom cloud. If we stick with that assumption, this leaves us with the necessity of finding a loophole in the laws of destiny, as it were.
> .


Yes, I think you're right. Destiny, and your path to it, is a pervasive theme in this story. Ultimately each hero may be headed toward a particular destiny, but how they get there may be more important than where they are going. Yes, Charlie had to die, but is Hiro better for having gone back to spend time with her? Probably. If he diverted her from her eventual absorption into Sylar then maybe everyone is better off. Hal was a monster for beating his girls, but if it ultimately made Niki into a warrior who might save the world, or help to, then was it his destiny to set her on her path to her own destiny? Maybe NYC will go up in a mushroom cloud, but do we know that that's not the goal? Well, OK, probably not, but what is the goal?


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## ced6 (Jul 30, 2003)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I'd just like to add that when Dad said "I didn't kill anyone," he seemed genuinely surprised by the accusation. That's why I think Niki killed Jessica, and (since she doesn't remember it) she (and thus her inner Jessica) assumes Dad did it.


I think that the dad killed (the real) Jessica because even though Niki thinks that DL killed the guys in the desert, Jessica (the alter ego) knows better. She knew she killed the conspirators, where the money was hidden, etc. Thus, the alter ego Jessica would know that she killer her namesake if she was actually the one to do it. [Hope that makes sense - very confusing to write about!!]


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

ced6 said:


> I think that the dad killed (the real) Jessica because even though Niki thinks that DL killed the guys in the desert, Jessica (the alter ego) knows better. She knew she killed the conspirators, where the money was hidden, etc. Thus, the alter ego Jessica would know that she killer her namesake if she was actually the one to do it. [Hope that makes sense - very confusing to write about!!]


Except under this theory, it's the killing of Jessica that caused the dissociative break--in other words, internal Jessica didn't exist until after real Jessica was killed, and therefore would have no memory of Jessica's death.


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## TivoFan (Feb 22, 2000)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I think the first bad thing that might have happened was Niki killing Jessica (accidentally) with her powers


Except that Jessica died in 1987 and they are showing everyone finding their powers six months ago. (And hinting that it's tied to the eclipse that is shown in the opening montage)


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## Hay997 (Dec 17, 2005)

I think that Sylar really did kill Charlie, but everyone that she worked with THINKS it was the aneurysm that killed her. Hiro was obviously there in the past and present, but he didn't change the events, since he can't control everything his powers do, and he couldn't control the timing of an aneurysm.

If Sylar killed Charlie, ate her brain, and assumed her super memory power, he would definitely have killed the wrong cheerleader, since (with his super memory), he would remember seeing the other cheerleader's picture and story in the paper. Remember, the bad cheerleader "stole" the fanfare from Claire.

I still can't figure out how the Niki/Jessica storyline will blend in with the rest of them yet.

One other thing... I don't remember seeing HOW the 2 small black lines got on the neck of the cop and radioactive man. They seem to be the only 2 with these lines.


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## getreal (Sep 29, 2003)

srs5694 said:


> ... it's possible that the "real" Jessica died because of something related to a superpower (superstrength, presumably) possessed by Niki.


Jessica's gravestone indicated that she died at the age of 11, back in 1987. That pre-dates any of the superpowers. Isn't the "Six Months Ago" title of the episode meant to say that six months ago is when all of the powers were beginning to manifest?


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## teknikel (Jan 27, 2002)

Question: Why did Hiro wait until that moment to get back to Ando? There were many other places (geographically and chronologically) that he could have gone to find Ando. Why did he chose the diner at that time?

Also, is Jackie dead? She was able to tell Claire to run. Did she in fact die? Maybe the cheerleader was saved (sorry if this was mentionedin last week's thread, but I don't remember seeing anything about this).



stiffi said:


> Not necessarily. The current Mayor of Baltimore jumped into a wide open race just months before the primary, and ran away with the election.


Are you kidding? The only reason O'Malley didn't run in 2002 was because Kathleen Kennedy Townshend was the Lt. Gov and a Kennedy (thought to be a sure win in a majorly democratic state). Believe me, he has been running for this for years.

Sorry for the local political interuption.


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## TivoFan (Feb 22, 2000)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> That was a different Charlie...the one who was killed by Sylar. The Charlie who died of an aneurysm is the one Hiro gave the book to.


I don't think there are two Charlies. If Hiro going back alters the past and Charlie dies by aneurysm instead, when does that change manifest itself in the timeline? I see two main options:

1) When Hiro leaves the present. Assuming that as soon as he goes back to the past, the present should be changed by whatever actions he takes in the past. But since there are still police in the diner just after he leaves, I'm vetoing this option.

2) When Hiro comes back to the present. Assuming that the changes, don't take effect until he returns to the present. But since he returns to japan and flies back to Texas, his return would have been before Charlie died and possibly before he met her.

I'm pretty sure the shrine to Charlie was put together during the time that Ando was waiting for hiro to come back.


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## johnperkins21 (Aug 29, 2005)

teknikel said:


> Question: Why did Hiro wait until that moment to get back to Ando? There were many other places (geographically and chronologically) that he could have gone to find Ando. Why did he chose the diner at that time?


He couldn't use his powers. When he was on the roof in Japan where they were doing calisthenics (sic?), he tried to teleport or go back in time, but he couldn't, so he "took a bus."

And am I the only one who thinks it's possible that Niki is the alter, and Jessica killed her twin Niki and then created an alter to take Niki's place? It's definitely reaching, and probably doesn't make too much sense, but it could be why she has powers as Jessica and not Niki because Niki doesn't exist?


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## Fraser+Dief (Nov 18, 2005)

mmilton80 said:


> The girl with normally short hair was gorgeous with longer hair. I don't know her name. I mean, she's a wickedly cute girl in general...but the longer hair...nice.


Wow. Couldn't disagree more. She was average with long hair, stunning with short hair.



glumlord said:


> Weird, I swore I saw some sort of light or connecting factor between finger and the person's head.


100% definite no beam.



DLiquid said:


> I must have been out of it last night, because I didn't realize that was Sylar until the reveal.


I *never* see stuff before it happens, but I did this time. I told the wife my theory just moments after the prof gave him the book. One reason was this:



stellie93 said:


> It seemed to me that Sylar was wearing glasses very similar to HRG's when they first showed him repairing watches. Coincidence?


That was his Clark Kent disguise, the writers trying to hide him from us based on what we saw previously. He looked so much like a superhero in plain clothes that my mind immediately started figuring out what his story was.


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## Aniketos (Mar 6, 2006)

+1 to Eden needing to grow her hair back out.


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## balboa dave (Jan 19, 2004)

As evil as Sylar is, and as good as Zachary Quinto is playing him, I can't shake the image of him as Tori Spellings's gay friend.


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## balboa dave (Jan 19, 2004)

I'm a little surprised at all the confusion with the Hiro and Charlie storyline. I thought for a time travel story it was fairly straight forward while being touching and tragic at the same time. He meets her, she dies, he tries to use his powers to save her simply because it's the right thing to do. But he doesn't have enough control and travels six months back. But then they fall in love, and Hiro learns that even if his ability worked correctly, she would die anyway. And then he loses even the short time he does have with her, again, because he can't control his power. 

I don't get where anyone would think she didn't die at Sylar's hand, er, pointy finger. From Ando's point of view, she died, Hiro disappeared, then reappeared. Nothing else changed, except maybe her life was a little happier because of Hiro.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

srs5694 said:


> I gave this some thought a while back, but in a more general way: How would an ordinary person, or a group of ordinary people (ranging from just a couple to a government) control people with the sort of extraordinary capabilities exhibited in the show? One possibility that occurred to me was to employ multiple such people, some of whom are unknown to each other. For instance, HRG tells Eden to keep an eye on the Haitian and stop him from misbehaving, gives the Haitian the same instructions with respect to Eden, and warns them both that unknown others are lurking in the shadows watching the two of them to keep them from colluding. These unseen others will each have instructions to keep an eye on each of the primaries and on one or two of the other unseen ones -- but not on all of them. The goal is to keep all of them guessing so as to prevent both individual mutinies and conspiracies. Of course, careful thought would have to be devoted to the powers of each of the individuals. A mind-reader like Matt Parkman wouldn't fit too well, despite the obvious advantages, because such a person might discover the identities of some or all of the unseen monitors. Perhaps that's part of the reason why HRG released him rather than recruiting him.


Yeah, maybe...

_Or_...

HRG made a case to the the Haitian just like he did with Eden.

GG Occam's Razor!


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

teknikel said:


> Also, is Jackie dead? She was able to tell Claire to run. Did she in fact die? Maybe the cheerleader was saved (sorry if this was mentionedin last week's thread, but I don't remember seeing anything about this).


A Cheerleader died. I think the right one was saved, but in the end I don't think the death of the cheerleader was prevented, it was just not the hero cheerleader. I honestly don't think the timelime/the past was altered. Others may disagree, but I think Peter would have been thorough about finding out the story behind the paintings. He gives me the impression of being someone that doesn't let things go easily.


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## murrays (Oct 19, 2004)

Sadara said:


> A Cheerleader died. I think the right one was saved, but in the end I don't think the death of the cheerleader was prevented, it was just not the hero cheerleader. I honestly don't think the timelime/the past was altered. Others may disagree, but I think Peter would have been thorough about finding out the story behind the paintings. He gives me the impression of being someone that doesn't let things go easily.


Perhaps there's another event (death) that Claire needs to be "saved" from. I don't believe future Hiro specifically stated who or what Claire was supposed to be saved from.

-murray


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## Squeege96 (May 1, 2006)

balboa dave said:


> I'm a little surprised at all the confusion with the Hiro and Charlie storyline. I thought for a time travel story it was fairly straight forward while being touching and tragic at the same time. He meets her, she dies, he tries to use his powers to save her simply because it's the right thing to do. But he doesn't have enough control and travels six months back. But then they fall in love, and Hiro learns that even if his ability worked correctly, she would die anyway. And then he loses even the short time he does have with her, again, because he can't control his power.
> 
> I don't get where anyone would think she didn't die at Sylar's hand, er, pointy finger. From Ando's point of view, she died, Hiro disappeared, then reappeared. Nothing else changed, except maybe her life was a little happier because of Hiro.


Dave,

I agree with you completely with one exception: When they first introduce Charlie, she doesn't recognise Hiro at all. Wouldn't the fact that he had a relationship/friendship with her jog her memory when she saw him? And if so, wouldn't that derail the sequence of events that we originally saw?

That is the one point that I am having a tough time getting my arms around.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

TivoFan said:


> Except that Jessica died in 1987 and they are showing everyone finding their powers six months ago. (And hinting that it's tied to the eclipse that is shown in the opening montage)


That argument might carry some weight except for the fact that we know HRG was in the business of finding people with superpowers for at least 14 years. (I think that was the timeframe he mentioned when explaining his adoption of Claire to Isaac. If not, it's only off by a year or two.) This means that it's not simply a case of superpowers being "switched on" in 2006; they've been around for a while, but society as a whole hasn't yet noticed. It's entirely plausible to me that Niki/Jessica has had superpowers for two decades (or more) of her life. It's even possible that HRG found and catalogued her back then.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

Tangent said:


> Niki/Jessica - The way I interpreted itwas that the real Jessica was accidentally beat to death by the dad, and that Nikki created a "Nikki" persona in her head to shield herself from the trauma. This Jessica persona used to only appear when she was being abused, but 6 months ago when dad came back it returned to get revenge and to take a more active part in protecting Nikki.


Or Jessica and Nicole were mentally "linked" but had a stronger bond than Nathan and Peter, and when Jessica died, her _real_ consciousness transferred into Nicole.

In a show where unrealistic things happen, why are you looking for a "common" or "real world" solution? This one is simpler and explains why Jessica remembers things that Nicole wasn't even around for.

Nicole has probably been as strong as "Jessica" is all along, but doesn't know it or how to activate it.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

Hay997 said:


> I think that Sylar really did kill Charlie, but everyone that she worked with THINKS it was the aneurysm that killed her. Hiro was obviously there in the past and present, but he didn't change the events, since he can't control everything his powers do, and he couldn't control the timing of an aneurysm.


We know that Hiro changed at least one event: The taking of Charlie's birthday photo. He wasn't in that photo before he went into the past, but he was in the photo after he went back.

For the most part, the writers have been vague about how Charlie died after Hiro went back in time, with one exception: HRG, when convincing Eden to get Isaac to shoot up, showed Eden photos of Sylar's victims, including one that looked a lot like Charlie. Thus, my inclination is to believe that Sylar did get Charlie this time around, but I'm not 100% convinced of it -- perhaps the photo was of somebody else who happened to look like Charlie, or maybe Hiro made multiple attempts (unseen on screen), the final one of which succeeded in saving Charlie from Sylar but caused the death by aneurism to be accelerated.



TivoFan said:


> Assuming that as soon as he goes back to the past, the present should be changed by whatever actions he takes in the past. But since there are still police in the diner just after he leaves, I'm vetoing this option.


Given the changed photo, I'd say any changes Hiro causes in the past appear in the present either instantly or very soon after his departure. The police are a poor indication of anything; they were in the diner initially to have lunch. Even if Hiro's original plan (to keep Charlie from coming to work that day) had succeeded, the police would probably have been there to have lunch anyway.


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## Squeege96 (May 1, 2006)

classicX said:


> Or Jessica and Nicole were mentally "linked" but had a stronger bond than Nathan and Peter, and when Jessica died, her _real_ consciousness transferred into Nicole.
> 
> Nicole has probably been as strong as "Jessica" is all along, but doesn't know it or how to activate it.


Classic,

That is a GREAT point. If the Petrelli brothers have a bond, wouldn't it stand to reason that twins would have an even stronger one? Now, I can't say for sure that Nikki and Jessica ARE twins, but I sure think it was inferred.

Nice call. That ties that together nicely, IMHO.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

Hay997 said:


> If Sylar killed Charlie, ate her brain, and assumed her super memory power, he would definitely have killed the wrong cheerleader, since (with his super memory), he would remember seeing the other cheerleader's picture and story in the paper. Remember, the bad cheerleader "stole" the fanfare from Claire.


There's no need for supermemory. Remember that there were newspaper clippings in the hallway of the school. Peter was initially thrown off by them when he first encountered Claire. IIRC, there was a shot of Sylar looking at those same newspaper clippings before he attacked Jackie. Even if there wasn't such a shot, he could have done that off-camera.



> One other thing... I don't remember seeing HOW the 2 small black lines got on the neck of the cop and radioactive man. They seem to be the only 2 with these lines.


AFAIK, there haven't been any scenes showing how or why those lines are created. In the thread for an earlier episode, there was lots of discussion of the matter, though.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

Snipped theorizing on how normals can control those with superpowers....



classicX said:


> Yeah, maybe...
> 
> _Or_...
> 
> ...


Except that you don't really know you can trust them. How do you know they won't reject your arguments, pretend to accept them, work with you for a while, then wipe your memory or use their Voice to tell you to jump off a cliff or whatever, and walk away with whatever it is that they want? If you're in a super-secret business like HRG is, you're a fool if you don't put in safeguards against betrayal.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

danterner said:


> I agree - its interesting - but I suspect it probably doesn't have any deep significance in the context of the show. I do think, though, that Charlie's name might have been an intentional reference to Charlie Gordon, from "Flowers for Algernon".


I just read the Wiki entry....I am going to have to try and find that book. IT sounds really good. Very interesting is the allusions from other works:



> Allusions/references from other works
> - There is a recurring allusion to the story of Adam and Eve[citation needed], from the Christian bible(Genesis). In the story, Charlie repeatedly feels "naked" when he realizes that his friends are not really his friends, and he realizes that there is a price to knowledge. This is comparable to Eve when she eats the fruit.
> 
> - The 1986 Stephen King short story "The End of the Whole Mess" is written in a similar first-person narrative style. In the story, the narrator also regresses to a mentally retarded state due to Alzheimers and cannot understand his previous writings.
> ...


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## EvilMidniteBombr (May 25, 2006)

danterner said:


> A few comments/questions:
> 
> 2. In a few scenes in this episode, you could see the eclipse (reflected in the window when Peter and Nathan are talking in the hospital, for example). But the eclipse also was featured in the first episode of the series. Were there two solar eclipses, six months apart from each other? I thought they are supposed to be more rare than that, no?


I noticed that too. It is actually a reflection (probably intentional to give the impression that you got) of a light fixture on the wall behind Peter. If you still have the episode, look carefully at the scene when Peter meets Nathan in the waiting room and look at the lights on the wall. Then slo-mo the scene when Nathan goes to the other room to talk to the Doctor. There are 2 reflections of the light fixtures and both look like eclipses.

Sorry if this has been addressed, but I am just getting into the thread.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

classicX said:


> Or Jessica and Nicole were mentally "linked" but had a stronger bond than Nathan and Peter, and when Jessica died, her _real_ consciousness transferred into Nicole.
> 
> In a show where unrealistic things happen, why are you looking for a "common" or "real world" solution? This one is simpler and explains why Jessica remembers things that Nicole wasn't even around for.


First, we have no evidence that the Jessica personality remembers anything that Nicole didn't witness. Go back and review the dialog I posted earlier. She betrays no knowledge of anything that Nicole might not have seen. The death of Jessica is a possible exception, but there are multiple explanations either way, as has been discussed in this thread.

Second, I disagree that a fantasy explanation is simpler. Every new power exhibited on-screen requires some new expansion in the laws of nature. Hiro's powers require rewriting much of physics, Eden's power requires changing parts of psychology, etc. Having one person's memory and consciousness jump into another person's body requires a lot of changes, even in a universe that includes telepathy (as in Parkman's power). Thus, the simpler explanation is the mundane one that requires no additional changes to the laws of nature -- that Nicole is simply suffering from dissociative identity disorder rather than that she's channeling or otherwise hosting her dead sister's consciousness. (In either case, super-strength appears to be present, but that doesn't change the analysis.) Another factor is that they're doing a pretty good job of portraying the real dissociative identity disorder, at least as far as I can recall from my undergraduate and graduate-level abnormal psychology classes from over a decade ago. For instance, the condition really is often associated with child abuse. Either the writers have done a better job of research than is common in TV or they've coincidentally created a scenario that mimics a real condition but have a fantasy explanation for it.

Also, consider this: A good writer of fantasy or science fiction doesn't just throw away all the rules and tools for writing good fiction just because s/he is working in the fantasy or SF genres. Characters can still laugh and cry and be enraged and so on. This includes the possibility of psychological disorders. We've seen that Peter and Nathan's father suffered from depression and that Niki is an alcoholic. Although dissociative identity disorder is extremely rare, it's perfectly legitimate to include a character who suffers from it in a fantasy show. If a real condition achieves your goals as a writer, you might as well use the real condition rather than make something up. Having the real condition to use as a guideline will help give you consistent rules and help provide a touch of realism that would be hard to match if you make something up.

That said, I'm not convinced that the writers really intend for Nicole to be a person who's suffering from a real psychological disorder vs. a superpower. It _is_ a fantasy universe, after all, so they could go either way. At this point, I'd say the jury is out on whether Nicole's multiple personalities have a mundane or fantasy explanation.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

srs5694 said:


> Snipped theorizing on how normals can control those with superpowers....
> 
> Except that you don't really know you can trust them. How do you know they won't reject your arguments, pretend to accept them, work with you for a while, then wipe your memory or use their Voice to tell you to jump off a cliff or whatever, and walk away with whatever it is that they want? If you're in a super-secret business like HRG is, you're a fool if you don't put in safeguards against betrayal.


Who says that the Haitian isn't the boss?


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## RyMcQ (Oct 15, 2001)

yaddayaddayadda said:


> Also, it seemed like Nathan would have had to decide to run for office more than six months ago.


Way late on this response, but Petrelli's dad was the politician. When he died, Nathan took his place as a candidate.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

Squeege96 said:


> Dave,
> 
> I agree with you completely with one exception: When they first introduce Charlie, she doesn't recognise Hiro at all. Wouldn't the fact that he had a relationship/friendship with her jog her memory when she saw him? And if so, wouldn't that derail the sequence of events that we originally saw?
> 
> That is the one point that I am having a tough time getting my arms around.


Well, there IS a memory erasing Haisan going around wiping out memories of those that are exhibiting powers. It wouldn't be a stretch that Charlie's memory got wiped out by the Hacian shortly after Hiro left her thus leaving her no memory of Hiro...so she wouldn't have remembered him when he and Ando came in.,


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

srs5694 said:


> Must have. I just checked and there was no visible beam. There was a whining sort of sound effect, though. Also, there was some strong foreshadowing for the next episode ("Six Months Ago"): The background music included lots of ticking, as in clockwork mechanisms.


Yeah I re-watched the scene in "Homecoming" with Jackie and there is no freaking laser!!

No idea where I got the laser idea


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Yeah, that's classic dissociative identity disorder behavior--which is why I suspect Jessica may not be real, and is just a personality Niki created to "take the fall" when bad things happen.


Except Jessica has a tattoo and Niki doesn't.


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

unicorngoddess said:


> Well, there IS a memory erasing Haisan going around wiping out memories of those that are exhibiting powers. It wouldn't be a stretch that Charlie's memory got wiped out by the Hacian shortly after Hiro left her thus leaving her no memory of Hiro...so she wouldn't have remembered him when he and Ando came in.,


But wouldn't others at the diner remember him? The other waitress only recognized him after he went back, not when he walked in.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

srs5694 said:


> First, we have no evidence that the Jessica personality remembers anything that Nicole didn't witness. Go back and review the dialog I posted earlier. She betrays no knowledge of anything that Nicole might not have seen. The death of Jessica is a possible exception, but there are multiple explanations either way, as has been discussed in this thread.
> 
> Second, I disagree that a fantasy explanation is simpler. Every new power exhibited on-screen requires some new expansion in the laws of nature. Hiro's powers require rewriting much of physics, Eden's power requires changing parts of psychology, etc. Having one person's memory and consciousness jump into another person's body requires a lot of changes, even in a universe that includes telepathy (as in Parkman's power). Thus, the simpler explanation is the mundane one that requires no additional changes to the laws of nature -- that Nicole is simply suffering from dissociative identity disorder rather than that she's channeling or otherwise hosting her dead sister's consciousness. (In either case, super-strength appears to be present, but that doesn't change the analysis.) Another factor is that they're doing a pretty good job of portraying the real dissociative identity disorder, at least as far as I can recall from my undergraduate and graduate-level abnormal psychology classes from over a decade ago. For instance, the condition really is often associated with child abuse. Either the writers have done a better job of research than is common in TV or they've coincidentally created a scenario that mimics a real condition but have a fantasy explanation for it.
> 
> ...


My explanation is simply a hypothesis, and (if we're keeping with the "expansion of the laws of nature"), then I'd explain certain characters' powers as thus (note, this is how I might explain the powers, if I were one of the writers):

Matt Parkman's brain can 'pick up' or 'tune' to the minute electrical signals in another person's brain. His brain, in turn, interprets them and send them to his conscious mind as an auditory sensation.

Peter Petrelli's "link" to his brother works much in the same way, over longer distances, and is much stronger - Peter "sees" himself in Nathan's body, and experiences his sensations as Nathan does - meaning the parts of his brain responsible for his senses, at the time he is experiencing Nathan, will appear exactly the same (if say, they both were in an MRI, you might think you're looking at one person's brain, rather than two).

Now, in order for my previous hypothesis to work, we must assume at least one of two things: 1) that Nicole and Jessica shared a similar bond, perhaps much stronger, because 2) Nicole and Jessica were twins.

At this point, we can posit that Niki, at the moment of Jessica's death, was somehow (perhaps unconsciously) experiencing everything that Jessica was - not just what was currently happening, but also her memories, emotions - her brain would have been, in essence, Jessica's. Then when Jessica died, the "link" was severed, and Jessica's brain "setup" got stuck in Niki's head. To protect itself, Niki's brain "segmented" itself, keeping Niki in control, and perhaps Jessica to "explore" Niki's brain, and find out about her power (since as Sylar pointed out, it is in the brain).

This is a nice clean way to reconcile the "real" dissociative disorder with the "fantasy" world explanation.

Futher evidence might be the fact that Jessica does not have any of Nicole's memories from before she "died" - (I gather this from Jessica's statement to her father that she though Niki would be able to protect herself, but found out later that it was not the case. If Jessica had Niki's memories, she would have known better.)

and at this point I realize that I am WAY too much of a nerd, so I will stop typing.

Thoughts?


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

MickeS said:


> Except Jessica has a tattoo and Niki doesn't.


This may be a side effect of the "Jessica" persona, or it could also be a side effect caused by her accessing the 'super strength' that Nicole possesses.

Given my above explanation, either is plausible.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

MickeS said:


> Except Jessica has a tattoo and Niki doesn't.


And Bruce Banner isn't green.

What is your point?

The Hulk is just another manifestation of Banner, not another person.


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## scooterboy (Mar 27, 2001)

Can someone remind me how we know that Sylar _eats_ the brains of his victims?


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

scooterboy said:


> Can someone remind me how we know that Sylar _eats_ the brains of his victims?


We don't, and IMO he doesn't


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

TonyD79 said:


> And Bruce Banner isn't green.
> 
> What is your point?
> 
> The Hulk is just another manifestation of Banner, not another person.


If you read the message I replied to, you might understand my point.  I never said it was another person.

Are you saying Hulk is just a "personality"? It's a physical manifestation of Banner's alter ego. Which is how I see Jessica. Which is NOT just a "personality".


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## GDG76 (Oct 2, 2000)

I assumed he takes them to study and duplicate the same patterns in his brain. His brain is like an FPGA and all the others are just plain old souped up ASICs


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

classicX said:


> and at this point I realize that I am WAY too much of a nerd, so I will stop typing.
> 
> Thoughts?


I didn't completely understand it, but I do REALLY like that explaination. Good job.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

cherry ghost said:


> We don't, and IMO he doesn't


I think once he examines the "defect", he can create it in himself. But he must examine the brain directly?


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

GDG76 said:


> I assumed he takes them to study and duplicate the same patterns in his brain. His brain is like an FPGA and all the others are just plain old souped up ASICs


And I thought I was a nerd! 

Then again... i did find it funny... {goes to cower in the corner}


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

teknikel said:


> Question: Why did Hiro wait until that moment to get back to Ando? There were many other places (geographically and chronologically) that he could have gone to find Ando. Why did he chose the diner at that time?


When Hiro accidentally teleported back to Japan one of his friends asked him "aren't you and Ando on a trip?" (or something to that effect), meaning he teleported back to present day. So with that and the fact that his powers were apparently failing, there was no other time he could meet with Ando other than when he did, and (since he knew where Ando was), meeting him at the Diner made the most sense.



Squeege96 said:


> When they first introduce Charlie, she doesn't recognise Hiro at all. Wouldn't the fact that he had a relationship/friendship with her jog her memory when she saw him? And if so, wouldn't that derail the sequence of events that we originally saw?
> 
> That is the one point that I am having a tough time getting my arms around.


Either that or she pretended not to know him, realizing that that was his first time meeting her. She does know about his time travel, after all.


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

scooterboy said:


> Can someone remind me how we know that Sylar _eats_ the brains of his victims?


All he want's to do is eat your brains.

But he's not unreasonable; I mean no one's gonna eat your eyes.


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## Sadara (Sep 27, 2006)

murrays said:


> Perhaps there's another event (death) that Claire needs to be "saved" from. I don't believe future Hiro specifically stated who or what Claire was supposed to be saved from.
> 
> -murray


Good Point!! I actually like that theory better!!


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

classicX said:


> Futher evidence might be the fact that Jessica does not have any of Nicole's memories from before she "died" - (I gather this from Jessica's statement to her father that she though Niki would be able to protect herself, but found out later that it was not the case. If Jessica had Niki's memories, she would have known better.)


I don't think there's any evidence of whether or not Jessica has Niki's memories from before the "real" Jessica died, one way or the other. I took her comment about Niki being able to protect herself as referring entirely to current-day events; memories (or lack thereof) from before the death wouldn't affect that statement.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

MickeS said:


> Except Jessica has a tattoo and Niki doesn't.


Can you point to a scene where Niki's shoulder has been clearly seen to not possess that tattoo? I've kept an eye out and haven't spotted anything definite, although I might easily have missed it. If it's definitely missing when she's in "Niki persona," then that does tend to favor a superpower-based explanation of the multiple personalities. OTOH, it could be that the tattoo appears only when her super-strength is readily available for use, whichever personality is in charge.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

scooterboy said:


> Can someone remind me how we know that Sylar _eats_ the brains of his victims?


IIRC, there was some scene where brains were shown to be more-or-less intact under the opened skulls (maybe the scene where HRG shows photos to Eden?). Thus, if any eating is involved, it must be of just a small part of the brain. I think "eat their brains" just came in as a semi-humorous zombie-reference shorthand for what Sylar was doing to acquire powers from others, and wasn't intended to be literal.


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## bpurcell (Mar 16, 2005)

hapdrastic said:


> Either that or she pretended not to know him, realizing that that was his first time meeting her. She does know about his time travel, after all.


The problem with this theory is that the other employees in the restaurant would also have to fake not knowing Hiro as well (not likely).

My theory: The first timeline Charlie simply picked up a Japanese saying book by chance. She's reading a lot and it's not unusual that this would happen normally. When Hiro goes back, he becomes the one who gave her the book. This would solve the problem of why no one knew him before, and everyone knew him after (plus the birthday picture changed as well).

I think Sylar still killed Charlie. There's Claire's MySpace page that talks about the murder still.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

Squeege96 said:


> I agree with you completely with one exception: When they first introduce Charlie, she doesn't recognise Hiro at all. Wouldn't the fact that he had a relationship/friendship with her jog her memory when she saw him?


What we saw in the diner prior to Hiro's going back in time might not have happened in the new reality. Clearly Hiro's actions _did_ affect the present. At the very least, his image is now on one of the photos pinned to the board in the diner when it hadn't been there before. Presumably there were other changes, but we don't know what they were. Perhaps in the altered timeline Charlie _did_ recognize Hiro, but we don't know how that played out.



> And if so, wouldn't that derail the sequence of events that we originally saw?


Quite possibly, and that's one of the paradoxes of time travel. Specifically, it's a less flamboyant version of the Grandfather Paradox. The writers might or might not have an explanation themselves of what happened in the diner in the altered timeline, but presumably it was something that caused the altered Hiro to go back in time, else Ando wouldn't be sitting there alone waiting for him to come back. Also, Ando related those events to Peter Petrelli, and his summary is similar, but not quite identical, to what actually happened. The differences are very minor and are easily attributable to faulty memory or distortions introduced when trying to summarize something, or they could mean that things played out in a very slightly different way this time.

Somehow I doubt if the show will be delving into this in any detail, unless perhaps it's part of a future time travel plotline.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

srs5694 said:


> Can you point to a scene where Niki's shoulder has been clearly seen to not possess that tattoo? I've kept an eye out and haven't spotted anything definite, although I might easily have missed it. If it's definitely missing when she's in "Niki persona," then that does tend to favor a superpower-based explanation of the multiple personalities. OTOH, it could be that the tattoo appears only when her super-strength is readily available for use, whichever personality is in charge.


It is definitely not there when Niki is in control.

See post number 192.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

Regarding Hiro and Charlie,

It doesn't seem right that everything could be explained by Euro Dude erasing her memories. She really doesn't seem to recognize Hiro and Ando - and more importantly, nobody else recognizes Hiro either. In a small town, regulars at a diner like that would certainly remember him from six months ago.
A few points from going back and looking at their "first meeting" -- she says that she got a Japanese phrasebook for her birthday six months ago, and "I started poking through it last week." That doesn't square up with having known Hiro before. I think that what she said was true - she got a simple phrasebook, since Tokyo was on her fantasy itinerary, from one of her local friends. This caused her to know enough Japanese for her to hit it off with Hiro, and when he went back in the past, he gave her an additional Japanese phrasebook - no doubt a better one, so she now had two, as well as his company for a while, and the plane ticket to Japan.

I think it is clear that Charlie died on the same day no matter what else Hiro may have changed. When he popped out, he told Ando to count to five and he would be back. Ando counts to five, and when Hiro does not reappear, he stands, stretches, and goes to stand next to the bulletin board, and we get to see the camera zoom in to show the changed picture of Charlie's birthday party. BUT -- there is clearly no "shrine to Charlie" on the vending machine next to the bulletin board. 
The next day, (Homecoming morning) we see a weepy waitress being comforted by the older woman, and there is a framed photo an a lot of "Charlie memorabilia" on the vending machine by the board. The only reasons I can think of for that are 1) Charlie died the same day, probably from Sylar (WAY too much of a coincidence otherwise), or 2) We actually saw two separate altered present timelines, because of some ongoing changes made by Hiro or some sort of "delayed reaction" in the present to his changes in the past. The fact that the photo changed immediately shoots the idea that things don't change until he gets back.

As much as I hate to say it, I think that the changes Hiro made in the past didn't keep Sylar from killing Charlie on the same day as in the unaltered timeline.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

classicX said:


> Or Jessica and Nicole were mentally "linked" but had a stronger bond than Nathan and Peter, and when Jessica died, her _real_ consciousness transferred into Nicole.


That is exactly what I was thinking. The trauma of being linked to her (actual) sister when she was killed caused two things -- first, in self preservation, the actual Jessica snapped into Nikki, sharing the body, and in self-defense, Nikki created a dissociative situation so she didn't have to deal with it.

People are treating this as an "either/or" about whether there is an actual Jessica inside Nikki or whether there is a dissociative disorder. Why not both?


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## DPF (Mar 20, 2003)

glumlord said:


> Yeah I re-watched the scene in "Homecoming" with Jackie and there is no freaking laser!!
> 
> No idea where I got the laser idea


I agree there was no laser, but there was definitely a "red-light-ing" of his fingertip when they showed him bring it up and start to move it slowly from one side to the other. Then show the cut on the cheerleaders head follow that movement. No light or beam to her head, but his finger tip a a kind of muted "E.T." glow to it.

Maybe not a laser, but something dammit!!! 

-DPF


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

srs5694 said:


> Can you point to a scene where Niki's shoulder has been clearly seen to not possess that tattoo? I've kept an eye out and haven't spotted anything definite, although I might easily have missed it. If it's definitely missing when she's in "Niki persona," then that does tend to favor a superpower-based explanation of the multiple personalities. OTOH, it could be that the tattoo appears only when her super-strength is readily available for use, whichever personality is in charge.


When she sleeps with Nathan Petrelli. You can see the tattoo when she's Jessica, but the next morning when she's Niki again she's sans tattoo. I believe we also see the same thing in her fight with DL.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

mask2343 said:


> And how is Claire's ability linked to her brain?!


We know it doesn't work when it has a big stick through it.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

glumlord said:


> Or maybe he is able to slowly alter and fix his body by finding the problems and repairing them, which might tie into this original power.
> 
> All of this is speculation anyway  I'm assuming we'll find out more next week.


And -- when he uses his ability to detect "flaws" to understand how someone's brain is different, maybe he uses the same power to slowly modify his own brain to give him the same power. We aren't sure how long it takes him to manifest a power he "steals." (Only a day or so at most, though, since he went right back to Chandra with working telekinesis.)


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

classicX said:


> I think once he examines the "defect", he can create it in himself.


If the powers are hard-coded genetically, then does this mean that his power is (1) sensing the defects and then, after analyzing them closely, (2) being able to restructure his own genetic code "on the fly" to incorporate what he has learned from the dissections? That's pretty wild.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

srs5694 said:


> What I find really intriguing about it, though, is what it reveals about Hiro's future path: He'll choose to give the warning even knowing that it will cause the death of an innocent person who didn't die in his original timeline.


Why do you think that saving Claire was at the cost of Jackie dying when she wouldn't otherwise have done so? Sylar killed Jackie and went after Claire. Future Hiro sent Peter back to Isaac, so his involvement "changed" things so Peter went to Odessa. Peter's involvement slowed him down enough for Claire to get away, but only started AFTER Claire screamed when Jackie was attacked.

I think Jackie was going to die either way, and that if Peter hadn't been there, Claire would have died, too, especially if Sylar does have a power that lets him move really fast. I don't think it is fair to say that Hiro's involvement caused Jackie's death.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

danterner said:


> If the powers are hard-coded genetically, then does this mean that his power is (1) sensing the defects and then, after analyzing them closely, (2) being able to restructure his own genetic code "on the fly" to incorporate what he has learned from the dissections? That's pretty wild.


I'm betting we're going to find that, while these powers are manifesting genetically, they are caused by some external event, government project, time commandos, or something. That list came from somewhere.

If the powers are imposed by medically manipulating kids (or their parents), then Sylar may be able to duplicate the manipulations.

Chandra Suresh's book apparently has "chapters" on things like telekinesis, regeneration, etc. Is he basing that on the projected effects of some project he was working on or found out about, rather than just pure theory? Seems conveniently specific in terms of how the powers would play out.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

MickeS said:


> Except Jessica has a tattoo and Niki doesn't.


Remember all the way back when we first met Micah, and he had several issues of the comic book that Isaac publishes, including the one with Hiro on it? Someone pointed out then that one of the covers showed a blonde female monster with claws.

We have seen the Jessica personality talk to Nikki, and we have seen her take over. We saw her throw DL across the room -- but we haven't seen her shred the people she has killed. The way people talk about the remains, it sure sounds like it is more than just super-strong punches smashing their faces in.

Jury is still out, and it might be a wild surmise, but maybe the people who were calling her power the "She-Hulk" power might be right, and that she actually changes shape when really, really pissed. If she can, then that may explain the on-again, off-again tattoo.

I don't think Dad is Linderman; especially if Nikki doesn't remember either the abuse or Jessica's attack on her dad, she would sure have reacted differently to being blackmailed into sleeping with Nathan. But Dad is clearly wealthy, and I won't be surprised to hear he is involved with Linderman somehow.


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## bobcarn (Nov 18, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> That was a different Charlie...the one who was killed by Sylar. The Charlie who died of an aneurysm is the one Hiro gave the book to.


This is why I absolutely hate stories about time travel. If he gave her the book, she should have recognized him. If he didn't give her the book, then somebody else would be giving it to her. If someone else gave it to her, then there should've been somebody else at the party with a Japanese phrase book!

Very sloppy plot design. If you're going to do stories with time travel, you have to be extra careful.


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

bobcarn said:


> This is why I absolutely hate stories about time travel. If he gave her the book, she should have recognized him. If he didn't give her the book, then somebody else would be giving it to her. If someone else gave it to her, then there should've been somebody else at the party with a Japanese phrase book!


We don't know where Hiro got the phrase book from. Maybe he found the guy that was going to give it to her and killed him and took the book so he could impress her.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

PeternJim said:


> Remember all the way back when we first met Micah, and he had several issues of the comic book that Isaac publishes, including the one with Hiro on it? Someone pointed out then that one of the covers showed a blonde female monster with claws.
> 
> We have seen the Jessica personality talk to Nikki, and we have seen her take over. We saw her throw DL across the room -- but we haven't seen her shred the people she has killed. The way people talk about the remains, it sure sounds like it is more than just super-strong punches smashing their faces in.


+1, good point.

It could have just been a metaphor (she becomes a monster on the _inside_), but I'm willing to bet that she changes at least a little.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

bobcarn said:


> This is why I absolutely hate stories about time travel. If he gave her the book, she should have recognized him. If he didn't give her the book, then somebody else would be giving it to her. If someone else gave it to her, then there should've been somebody else at the party with a Japanese phrase book!
> 
> Very sloppy plot design. If you're going to do stories with time travel, you have to be extra careful.


Do we know there wasn't someone else at the party with a phrase book? She obviously had her planned itinerary set up in advance, and Tokyo was "third" on it. Who says it's the same book?


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## alpacaboy (Oct 29, 2004)

busyba said:


> We don't know where Hiro got the phrase book from. Maybe he found the guy that was going to give it to her and killed him and took the book so he could impress her.


Maybe she just has a bad memory.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

PeternJim said:


> Do we know there wasn't someone else at the party with a phrase book? She obviously had her planned itinerary set up in advance, and Tokyo was "third" on it. Who says it's the same book?


But Hiro gives her the book AFTER her party. So if someone was at the party with a phrase book, why wouldn't they have given it to her?


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

unicorngoddess said:


> But Hiro gives her the book AFTER her party. So if someone was at the party with a phrase book, why wouldn't they have given it to her?


Because Hiro killed him.

I don't see why everyone refuses to see the obvious answer. Sheesh.


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## Hound (Sep 11, 2003)

We don't know that Sylar freezes people. We assume from one scene but we have not seen the skill again. That may have been that persons skill. Sylar may not have had time to copy it, or the person froze themself and destroyed their brian (poss invol) for Sylar to study.

If Sylar has to focuse on using the powers of others it may take him a minute to completly repair himself.

I belive that Jesica bodyhopped into Niki and I belive they are twins.

The eclipse is just a connection that this has started IMO its not triggering powers cuz most of the powers started six months ago, but not all.

I think that Hiro can't totaly change time but they can alter it. When he talked to Peter on the subway he basicly said that this could open a space time rift. 'This' was assumed to be his going back. However it may be his giving Peter the info. He can only adjust/push/tweak the past so much before it flings him back into the present. If he dosent try to touch it too much he can watch whats going on.

So he was cryptic. Save the cheerleader. Save the world. Now we assume those two are together cuz its one fluid statment. He said save the cheerleader and Peter was able to use Issac's paintings to figure WHAT cheerleader to save. Issac never painte Jackie. He helped Claire escape from Sylar, a cheerleader dies to make fate happy. So Peter became aware that the cheerleader Issac was painting needed to be saved and saved now, but Hiro didn't give so many details that space and time would pop him back out of the equation.

Now for some reason Claire's life is part of their need to save the world. It could just be to stop Sylar from getting her cool powers, or it may be because she is needed later. We don't know.

A lot of Nathan's statments now make sense. "How is being able to fly going to help anything?" he asked Peter that time. He sounded bitter like flying was the dumbest thing ever. We're all thinking its great. Now we see that his flying is one reason his wife was in a horrible car accident and he wasen't there to save her or help her. He has some extreme bitterness against his ability.

I do think Peter is also an empath to some level. Nothing says people can not have more then one ability.


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

Hound said:


> I do think Peter is also an empath to some level. Nothing says people can not have more then one ability.


...just ask Sylar.


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## Zevida (Nov 8, 2003)

Hound said:


> I belive that Jesica bodyhopped into Niki and I belive they are twins.


I really, really, really hope this is not true. I am very definitely on board with the theory that Niki split her personality to deal with the abuse from her father and her "other" personality she named Jessica because her sister was the one who usually took the beatings. Because Jessica is the "strong" one, she is the only one that uses the super strength powers.

I will be very disappointed if Jessica is somehow in Niki's body/mind, other than as a split personality.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

PeternJim said:


> Why do you think that saving Claire was at the cost of Jackie dying when she wouldn't otherwise have done so?


I don't _believe_ that; I presented it as part of a hypothesis about the "laws of destiny" in the Heroes universe. My hypothesis explains why Hiro was unable to save Charlie and why future-Hiro gave such a cryptic message to Peter. A consequence of this interpretation is that Jackie died in this timeline but survived in the original one -- it's the old "life to balance a life" schtick, basically. If this hypothesis is not what the writers have in mind, fine; I'm not wed to the hypothesis. It just seems to explain a lot of the clairvoyance/time travel dynamic we've seen so far.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

srs5694 said:


> A consequence of this interpretation is that Jackie died in this timeline but survived in the original one -- it's the old "life to balance a life" schtick, basically.


Okay, we'll wait and see. I think Jackie was toast from the moment she claimed credit for the rescue.

However, I do note that Isaac couldn't complete the painting showing what it was that Sylar (we now know) had done, and it was _Peter_, post-Hiro, who painted Jackie's death, so maybe the future Hiro visit did create that reality.


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

Zevida said:


> I really, really, really hope this is not true. I am very definitely on board with the theory that Niki split her personality to deal with the abuse from her father and her "other" personality she named Jessica because her sister was the one who usually took the beatings. Because Jessica is the "strong" one, she is the only one that uses the super strength powers.
> 
> I will be very disappointed if Jessica is somehow in Niki's body/mind, other than as a split personality.


The show is about ordinary people discovering they have extrordinary abilities. There's nothing much special about having a mental disorder.

I don't think Niki split her personality...I definately think she's got Jessica in there with her somehow.


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

unicorngoddess said:


> The show is about ordinary people discovering they have extrordinary abilities. There's nothing much special about having a mental disorder.


As has been suggested by several people here, the mental disorder is not the manifestation of the power. The special power is some kind of strength/she-hulk thing. The split personality mental disorder is a seperate unrelated trait of this person, and it so happens that only one of the personalities is willing and/or able to make use of the special ability.

That's the popular theory anyway.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

unicorngoddess said:


> But Hiro gives her the book AFTER her party. So if someone was at the party with a phrase book, why wouldn't they have given it to her?


My take on it is _they did_. In the revised reality, she got _two_. Hiro just made sure she got a good one from him. There is absolutely no indication that she didn't get a phrase book from someone else. But she would certainly tell the nice Japanese guy that she just met how nice it was for him to give her one. And, as nice as she is, she would probably not bother to mention that she got a different book from someone else.


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## scooterboy (Mar 27, 2001)

srs5694 said:


> I think "eat their brains" just came in as a semi-humorous zombie-reference shorthand for what Sylar was doing to acquire powers from others, and wasn't intended to be literal.


Thanks for that explanation. As one who isn't familiar with the zombie "eat their brains" reference, I thought people _were_ being literal.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

danterner said:


> If the powers are hard-coded genetically, then does this mean that his power is (1) sensing the defects and then, after analyzing them closely, (2) being able to restructure his own genetic code "on the fly" to incorporate what he has learned from the dissections? That's pretty wild.


I was thinking some more about it, and it occured to me that he thinks he is "fixing" these individuals; he sees them as broken.

Then I thought, if he sees this flaw as a defect, why would he consciously create it in himself? Could it be that, in examining the brains of his victims (or eating, or whatever), he is gaining their ability unconsciously??

Furthermore, in doing so, is he "perfecting" their ability, so it is no longer a flaw, but maximized to it's full potential? He exhibits much more control over the powers he's gained than the unfortunate victims from which he's stolen them.

Then I thought... it's just a show man, why think about it so much?


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

Rewatched the show, and it brought up a couple of new questions. Any thoughts?

Why would their father's death stop Nathan and Peter from prosecuting Linderman? I could certainly accept Nathan deciding that his wife's injury and recovery needed his attention, or that getting run off the road isn't worth it. But Peter seemed to accept "Dad's dead, there is no point in going after Linderman." Wassup with that?

Another thing caught my attention. Chandra approached Sylar and called Mr. Bennett to tell them both about the "mutations." Both of them appeared to react positively. But none of the other Heroes got such a call. It wasn't alphabetical; "Davis" (the telekinetic) comes before "Gray" (Sylar), and it wasn't geopraphical, since Bennett lives in Texas and there are several (the Petrellis, Davis, Isaac Mendez) other New Yorkers. It wasn't by age, since Claire is young, and it wasn't by power, since he clearly says he has no idea what people's powers might be.

Any thoughts on what Chandra was up to -- or maybe he has a knack for talking only to the worst possible people?


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## glumlord (Oct 27, 2003)

Hound said:


> We don't know that Sylar freezes people. We assume from one scene but we have not seen the skill again. That may have been that persons skill. Sylar may not have had time to copy it, or the person froze themself and destroyed their brian (poss invol) for Sylar to study.


I thought we saw two scenes with frozen bodies and missing brains.

1) Scene in future with Isaac
2) Scene with Cops and the guy impaled to stairwell wall.

If my memory serves correctly which it isn't always that reliable  , then two times would seem he can freeze people.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

classicX said:


> I was thinking some more about it, and it occured to me that he thinks he is "fixing" these individuals; he sees them as broken.
> 
> Then I thought, if he sees this flaw as a defect, why would he consciously create it in himself? Could it be that, in examining the brains of his victims (or eating, or whatever), he is gaining their ability unconsciously??


I wouldn't read too much into the "broken" reference, particularly not beyond the first killing. In an earlier episode (I don't recall which one), Mohinder discovered an answering machine recording from Sylar, in which he refers to his killing spree in terms that made it sound like an addiction. In other words, perhaps he flipped out with the first guy and killed him in an attempt to understand, fix, or destroy the "abnormality;" but now he's become addicted to killing people with powers and (presumably) absorbing those powers himself. Any hint of rationality in his motives is now gone.

Of course, we're likely to learn more on Monday, since Sylar is now in custody and will probably be interrogated by HRG.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

hapdrastic said:


> When she sleeps with Nathan Petrelli. You can see the tattoo when she's Jessica, but the next morning when she's Niki again she's sans tattoo. I believe we also see the same thing in her fight with DL.


I've reviewed those scenes. You're _probably_ right, but it's not 100% clear. In the scene where Jessica seduces Nathan, she clearly has a tattoo, located fairly low and on the left part of her right shoulder blade. In the next episode, when she wakes up as Niki, there are two very brief shots where her bare right shoulder is visible, and I can't make out a tattoo; however, both of these shots were very brief and are filmed in such a way that the area in which the tattoo appeared on Jessica is in fairly deep shadow. Thus, it's conceivable, but unlikely, that it was there but just didn't show up clearly enough to perceive. In the scenes in which she was Jessica before and after the fight with D.L., she was wearing a tank-top that barely covered the relevant areas. A slight shift of the clothing could reveal the tattoo, but the clothing could plausibly be covering the tattoo.

As the producers have taken pains to highlight the tattoo when she's Jessica but not when she's Niki, my take is that they want to keep us guessing on this particular detail.


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## murrays (Oct 19, 2004)

So when Sylar acquires Niki's "power", will he have a good side?

-murray


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## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

mask2343 said:


> And how is Claire's ability linked to her brain?!


Suresh said it in this episode: it's all controlled by the brain, even autonomic functions. His little speech about it screamed out to me "Plot exposition! All you nerds on the Internet, pay attention here!" in fact. 



zuko3984 said:


> I don't think the Haitian can block powers if he could how was it that Nathan was able to fly away when HRG and the Haitian had him in Vegas a few episode back.


Unless they _wanted_ him to fly, for some reason. Perhaps to prove what his power was. After all, why did they take him outdoors in the first place?



DLiquid said:


> I love the whole watch repair savant angle.


I'm also appreciating the symbolism. Cutting from Hiro time-travelling to change time, to someone fixing a watch... then talking to an evolution specialist about being a watchmaker. Nice circle, particularly with Sylar wearing a broken watch in earlier episodes.



Tangent said:


> Sylar - Sociopath that desperately does not want to be "ordinary". While he coveted the powers of the telekinetic guy, it wasn't until he realized that he was "broken" that he made the decision to kill him. He seems to be following in the footsteps of Hitler in a psychotic dream for making the human race "better" by eliminating anyone he deems to be "broken".


Not sure I agree. My sense was that he wanted to not be "ordinary" very badly, and envied the telekinetic, but when he saw how the teek was "broken" he realized in a flash that with more study he could replicate it. That possibility, a means to replicate it and thus not be "ordinary", was what drove him. He didn't want the man's death, but he also didn't care about his death if that's what it took to get the power he wanted. That's why he's willing to make himself "broken" -- he has no repugnance for the state if it lets him be more than ordinary.



danterner said:


> If the powers are hard-coded genetically, then does this mean that his power is (1) sensing the defects and then, after analyzing them closely, (2) being able to restructure his own genetic code "on the fly" to incorporate what he has learned from the dissections? That's pretty wild.


Or he just replicates the effects of the genetics. DNA doesn't do much of anything directly, it just directs the creation of other things that do stuff. Suresh said that the powers bits were all controlled in the brain, so all he'd have to do is replicate the results in the brain that cause the powers, not the DNA that caused them.


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## Hound (Sep 11, 2003)

glumlord said:


> I thought we saw two scenes with frozen bodies and missing brains.
> 
> 1) Scene in future with Isaac
> 2) Scene with Cops and the guy impaled to stairwell wall.
> ...


Issac was just laying on the floor dead.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

PeternJim said:


> Rewatched the show, and it brought up a couple of new questions. Any thoughts?
> 
> Why would their father's death stop Nathan and Peter from prosecuting Linderman? I could certainly accept Nathan deciding that his wife's injury and recovery needed his attention, or that getting run off the road isn't worth it. But Peter seemed to accept "Dad's dead, there is no point in going after Linderman." Wassup with that?


Two reasons. First, the way his wife got hurt was because Linderman was sending a message. He now knows that if he continues to pursue the prosecution, there will probably be more incidents like this and either he or someone he loves will end up dead. Second, out of respect for their father. They were very uncomfortable with the fact that they were going to have to drag him through the mud when he was alive, but they're not about to tarnish his memory or reputation by bringing all these things up after he's dead.



PeternJim said:


> Another thing caught my attention. Chandra approached Sylar and called Mr. Bennett to tell them both about the "mutations." Both of them appeared to react positively. But none of the other Heroes got such a call. It wasn't alphabetical; "Davis" (the telekinetic) comes before "Gray" (Sylar), and it wasn't geopraphical, since Bennett lives in Texas and there are several (the Petrellis, Davis, Isaac Mendez) other New Yorkers. It wasn't by age, since Claire is young, and it wasn't by power, since he clearly says he has no idea what people's powers might be.
> 
> Any thoughts on what Chandra was up to -- or maybe he has a knack for talking only to the worst possible people?


I don't think Chandra had a complete list of people with abilities. He was just learning the process of locating them and was still trying to figure out if it was accurate. Those must have simply been the first ones he was able to locate with whatever goofy algorithim he developed. The heroe's locations are random, and so is the way Chandra was trying to locate them.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

I don't get that Sylar is trying to fix anyone or is acting out of motives to either fix individuals or protect the gene pool -- at least, not based on what we've seen so far.

The way I read what we saw was that Sylar had developed the ability to see when a watch was not operating correctly just by looking at it or sensing it. Since he was raised by and trained as a watchmaker, he was never aware of applying that skill to anything else -- although I don't think it is too much of a stretch to feel that maybe he wasn't the world's most outgoing kinda guy, which might have been an unconscious reaction to everything that is "broken" in the world.

Then Chandra alerts him to the fact that this whole evolution thing is going on, and when he meets his first "hero" he has reason to _really_ look at the guy, which in effect means using his sense, and realizes that the Davis guy really_ *is* _different, just the way broken watches are. Not surprising that his startled reaction is "you're broken." So he opened the guy up to see how he ticks.

I confess I really don't get the taking off the heads thing. Without several advanced degrees, is he really going to be able to visually identify the differences in the brain, and even if he can, how does that translate to changing his own? But I'll let the jury be out on that one.


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## Jericho Dog (Feb 10, 2006)

unicorngoddess said:


> The show is about ordinary people discovering they have extrordinary abilities. There's nothing much special about having a mental disorder.
> 
> I don't think Niki split her personality...I definately think she's got Jessica in there with her somehow.


I've been thinking more along the lines that Jessica is the one with the powers, not Niki. 
Jessica's the one with the super-strength. Maybe she was taking the beatings and then 'jumped' into Niki.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

devdogaz said:


> I don't think Chandra had a complete list of people with abilities. He was just learning the process of locating them and was still trying to figure out if it was accurate. Those must have simply been the first ones he was able to locate with whatever goofy algorithim he developed.


I'll buy that, but it begs the question: if he doesn't have the list six months ago, how does it get developed in the time between six months ago and his death? And why did he call Bennett in Texas but not Davis in New York? (Or did the guy just make the mistake of not answering Chandra's calls, but answering Sylar's?)


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

PeternJim said:


> Why would their father's death stop Nathan and Peter from prosecuting Linderman? I could certainly accept Nathan deciding that his wife's injury and recovery needed his attention, or that getting run off the road isn't worth it. But Peter seemed to accept "Dad's dead, there is no point in going after Linderman." Wassup with that?


I just figured that their dad was a crucial witness for the prosecution (albeit unwilling) and without him they wouldn't be able to go to trial.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

Hunter Green said:


> Unless they _wanted_ him to fly, for some reason. Perhaps to prove what his power was. After all, why did they take him outdoors in the first place?


Um... I doubt the Haitian can block ANY power, he can just block mental powers, which is why Parkman couldn't read his mind in the bar, and why the girls mind control doesn't work.

We've never seen him block any other type of power.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

devdogaz said:


> Two reasons. First, the way his wife got hurt was because Linderman was sending a message. He now knows that if he continues to pursue the prosecution, there will probably be more incidents like this and either he or someone he loves will end up dead.


This particular part of the explanation doesn't fly. Remember that Peter and Nathan discussed it briefly at the party, at which point they both seemed reluctant to prosecute. _After_ the auto accident, Peter and Nathan discussed it again and it seemed Nathan was going to prosecute -- Linderman's intimidation tactic had backfired. After their father's death, Nathan decided to back down, perhaps for your second reason (respect for the dead) or MickeS's reason (their father would have been a critical witness).

FWIW, I recall getting a "their dad's death is suspicious" sort of vibe when I first watched the episode. I'd forgotten that until now, but if their father really _was_ a crucial witness, it's conceivable that Linderman had him killed to derail the pending prosecution. If so, I'd wager this will come up again, although perhaps not this season. OTOH, it could really be what they said it was -- a suicide (although Peter's family told him it was a heart attack to lessen the blow).


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

PeternJim said:


> I'll buy that, but it begs the question: if he doesn't have the list six months ago, how does it get developed in the time between six months ago and his death? And why did he call Bennett in Texas but not Davis in New York? (Or did the guy just make the mistake of not answering Chandra's calls, but answering Sylar's?)


Remember that when Mohinder entered his father's office a couple of episodes ago, a program was running on the computer. Presumably this was the program with the voodoo algorithm to locate people with powers. If so, the program had presumably been churning away for months. The list would have been relatively short in "Six Months Ago" and much longer by the time Mohinder found it.

As to why the characters were contacted in the order they were, who knows? Perhaps the list was short enough that Chandra Suresh just contacted them all and waited for call-backs, some of which came and some of which didn't. Maybe he contacted them in the order in which his software spat them out, which would presumably not be alphabetical and might well not have been geographical.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

Jericho Dog said:


> I've been thinking more along the lines that Jessica is the one with the powers, not Niki.
> Jessica's the one with the super-strength. Maybe she was taking the beatings and then 'jumped' into Niki.


Wasn't Niki's name on Chandra Suresh's list, though? If Jessica had powers that enabled her to survive her own death by jumping into another body, I'd expect to see _her_ name on the list (in red, with a "deceased" notation), not Niki's. Unless of course Niki _also_ has powers, independent of Jessica's, and the software somehow identified Niki but not Jessica. That's possible, but it's not as simple an explanation as that Niki is the one who has powers.

Besides which, a big deal is being made about the powers being biological and based in, or at least mediated by, the brain. A disembodied entity imparting physical super-strength on a person who it possesses doesn't fit very neatly with this model. I suppose you could cram it in with a very inelegant explanation, but it'd definitely be a square peg in a round hole, as it were.


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## ping (Oct 3, 2005)

Speaking of the list, Gabriel wasn't on it. Seems odd the first one he goes after isn't on the list.


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## Vroomfondel (Jul 10, 2006)

Jericho Dog said:


> I've been thinking more along the lines that Jessica is the one with the powers, not Niki.
> Jessica's the one with the super-strength. Maybe she was taking the beatings and then 'jumped' into Niki.


No, Nikki is the body that has the powers, not Jessica. Nikki just doesn't know how to control it yet. If they were sisters, it would make the most logical sense that they BOTH had powers.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

srs5694 said:


> A disembodied entity imparting physical super-strength on a person who it possesses doesn't fit very neatly with this model. I suppose you could cram it in with a very inelegant explanation, but it'd definitely be a square peg in a round hole, as it were.


I think that the powers are definitely coming from Niki's body (physical brain). I suspect that Jessica, had she lived, would have had the same powers in HER body.

That's independent of Jessica moving in with Niki. Whatever that trauma was, Jessica retains the memory, and Niki doesn't. I suspect that the ability to control the powers goes along with the memories.

What I was suggesting was that the two of them were linked, sharing consciousness, and that when Jessica's body died, she moved in with Niki. That isn't "posession."

But we really don't have enough information to go on, and unless she gets written out of the show, we'll find out eventually.

We're clear that Niki doesn't remember what Daddy did to her, but are we even clear that she remembers having a sister?


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## KRS (Jan 30, 2002)

devdogaz said:


> But when I saw that hottie in the Ferrari...


Nitpick Smeek: it was a Lambo



hapdrastic said:


> That was exactly what I assumed happened. I want to go back and re-watch the previous episode to see if she had a glimmer of recognition.


I am totally confused by the Charlie/Hiro timetravel thing. He meets her, she gets murdered, and then he jumps back six months to try to save her. Meanwhile, his friend Ando sees the old picture on the shrine. Wasn't that shrine for her murder? Then, before Hiro can go to Japan with her, he gets ripped out of that timeline and winds up back in Japan.

So wouldn't she have either A) recognized him completely, or B) already been dead?


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## unicorngoddess (Nov 20, 2005)

PeternJim said:


> I'll buy that, but it begs the question: if he doesn't have the list six months ago, how does it get developed in the time between six months ago and his death? And why did he call Bennett in Texas but not Davis in New York? (Or did the guy just make the mistake of not answering Chandra's calls, but answering Sylar's?)


I thought Chandra had said he tried to call some of the people but they thought he was crazy and hung up on him or something.


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## srs5694 (Oct 14, 2001)

PeternJim said:


> We're clear that Niki doesn't remember what Daddy did to her, but are we even clear that she remembers having a sister?


She absolutely remembers her sister Jessica, at least as of "Six Months Ago;" she visited her sister's grave and discussed her with D.L. I suppose it's conceivable that her increasingly frequent blackouts and possession by Jessica are causing some sort of selective amnesia, but I see no evidence to support that hypothesis.


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## TivoFan (Feb 22, 2000)

Random thought... is there any chance that the Haitian isn't a real character, but rather an expression of HRG's alternate personality? I think there has only been one scene with him where HRG wasn't present.

It would explain why he is not fleshed out with a storyline like the other heroes and why he never talks. Also, if he is his own character, we have to assume some reason why he is going along with HRG. Obviously he could wipe HRG's memory and leave if he wanted to.

It's a wild theory and probably wrong, but I had the thought and can't get rid of it.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

srs5694 said:


> she visited her sister's grave and discussed her with D.L. I suppose it's conceivable that her increasingly frequent blackouts and possession by Jessica are causing some sort of selective amnesia,


I think so... in me. I watched the episode twice, and I swear I don't remember that. I believe you! But I am going to have to go watch it again. Yikes. I remember the gravestone from the coming attractions last week, but not the aired show.

Okay, I went back, and by golly, there it is! I must have blinked, because I remember the "Hal came to one of my meetings" and DL saying that if she wanted to reconnect that was fine with him. I just didn't notice the Jessica references.

Odd, I don't remember any Haitians lurking around.....


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## madscientist (Nov 12, 2003)

Sorry I'm late; I've been so busy this week I just watched this last night.



Sadara said:


> I also think Sylar had his power from the day Suresh showed up in his store. He could "hear" everything in a watch like it was plain as day. He just realized he could hear what was in the human brain when the other guy came in to his shop.


My thinking here is that Sylar can only sense the power when the person is using it. It looked to me like he didn't sense anything odd about the TK guy until he pushed that glass, then all of a sudden he saw it.

It would also explain why he couldn't sense that he had the wrong cheerleader.



PeternJim said:


> I confess I really don't get the taking off the heads thing. Without several advanced degrees, is he really going to be able to visually identify the differences in the brain


It's his power. Is Hiro really going to be able to bend time? They just can do it... Sylar probably doesn't even really know exactly how he does it.


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## Big_Daddy (Nov 20, 2002)

The Haitian's powers are likely primarily telepathic - so far we've only seen him clearly blocking memories and causing people to go unconscious, not "blocking" other peoples powers. It's quite possible in the scene with Claire's dad and Eden that when Eden planted a suggestion, the Haitian erased any recollection of the suggestion. Or he helped Claire's dad resist the suggestion - so if Eden had telekinesis, or the radiation power, the Haitian couldn't have blocked it without knocking her out. But for something that affects thinking - maybe he could reverse it.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had Eden told the Haitian to go away.


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

Big_Daddy said:


> if Eden had telekinesis, or the radiation power, the Haitian couldn't have blocked it without knocking her out. But for something that affects thinking - maybe he could reverse it.


I agree with you, but he can probably also prevent people from choosing to use their power, either by blanking their mind, or by "erasing" their moment-to-moment choice to use it.
He seems to need to concentrate, which makes sense, since he has to hook into the specific mind, which is probably why Nathan was able to get away - he made the choice and WENT rather than thinking about it far any length of time and giving the guy the chance to make him forget to.


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## Big_Daddy (Nov 20, 2002)

PeternJim said:


> I agree with you, but he can probably also prevent people from choosing to use their power, either by blanking their mind, or by "erasing" their moment-to-moment choice to use it.


Perhaps - that would make sense assuming my guess is correct. Except with Eden we saw her using her "deep scary voice" power - which would suggest that at least in that case, Haitian-guy's powers weren't directed at Eden.

I suspect we'll get more clues about him now that they've captured Sylar.


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## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

classicX said:


> Um... I doubt the Haitian can block ANY power, he can just block mental powers, which is why Parkman couldn't read his mind in the bar, and why the girls mind control doesn't work.
> 
> We've never seen him block any other type of power.


Probably true, though some people are saying he blocked Sylar's powers when Eden captured him. Personally I don't think we have anywhere near enough information to speculate yet on what his power is.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

Hunter Green said:


> Probably true, though some people are saying he blocked Sylar's powers when Eden captured him. Personally I don't think we have anywhere near enough information to speculate yet on what his power is.


I happened to watch the scene again, and it didn't look like he stopped Sylar from doing anything. Sylar motioned as if he was going to telekinetically blast Eden, she told him to sleep, he began to fall and the haitian caught him, perhaps erasing his memory in the process.


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## bryhamm (Jun 30, 2004)

TivoFan said:


> Random thought... is there any chance that the Haitian isn't a real character, but rather an expression of HRG's alternate personality? I think there has only been one scene with him where HRG wasn't present.
> 
> It would explain why he is not fleshed out with a storyline like the other heroes and why he never talks. Also, if he is his own character, we have to assume some reason why he is going along with HRG. Obviously he could wipe HRG's memory and leave if he wanted to.
> 
> It's a wild theory and probably wrong, but I had the thought and can't get rid of it.


Off the top of my head, I can think of 2 scenes where Haitian was there and HRG was not: 1) In the bar with Matt and 2) when he and Eden capture Sylar


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

bryhamm said:


> Off the top of my head, I can think of 2 scenes where Haitian was there and HRG was not: 1) In the bar with Matt and 2) when he and Eden capture Sylar


and this episode when he brings Eden in


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## tivogurl (Dec 16, 2004)

Tangent said:


> Sylar - Sociopath that desperately does not want to be "ordinary". While he coveted the powers of the telekinetic guy, it wasn't until he realized that he was "broken" that he made the decision to kill him. He seems to be following in the footsteps of Hitler in a psychotic dream for making the human race "better" by eliminating anyone he deems to be "broken".


It is unclear, however, whether he perceives all superpowered people as "broken", or just some of them.


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## BetterYeti (Aug 24, 2004)

Finally able to watch. This show is the highlight of my week. Random thoughts:

Struck me that Micah's powers might be similar to Sylar's original power, just digital instead of analog.

Convenient Nathan drives a convertible and doesn't wear seatbelts.

I wish I had a friend as loyal as Ando.

In the "Heroes" universe, I'm glad there are people with superpowers to protect us, since apparently the police don't have to be able to read until they become detectives.

Anyone recall what Niki was drinking when she met Nathan in the Vegas bar? Is she off the wagon? Is it possible that Niki's "Jessica" superpower is being a _really_ mean drunk?

Eden cleans up nice.

Hey, mean-girl head cheerleader: isn't karma a b*tch?


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## Zevida (Nov 8, 2003)

BetterYeti said:


> I wish I had a friend as loyal as Ando.


I think the evolution of Ando is just as fascinating as any of the heroes. He has gone from being completely dismissive and mocking of Hiro's powers, to jumping on board the bandwagon, to using the powers for personal gain, to showing genuine concern for Hiro and how the powers are affecting him. Good stuff :up:


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## PeternJim (Sep 25, 2004)

BetterYeti said:


> Anyone recall what Niki was drinking when she met Nathan in the Vegas bar? Is she off the wagon?


Good catch, but really, she was there specifically to catch and seduce Nathan -- so even if she wasn't an alcoholic in treatment, it wouldn't be prudent for her to be drinking much of anything, just to appear to be so he would pick her up. So maybe she was off the wagon, but likely not.

Here's a thought -- what if she was in AA because, even though she really wasn't drinking too much, she was aware of having blackouts, and decided she needed help, but the blackouts were Jessica, not Johnny Walker?


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## EvilMidniteBombr (May 25, 2006)

PeternJim said:


> Good catch, but really, she was there specifically to catch and seduce Nathan -- so even if she wasn't an alcoholic in treatment, it wouldn't be prudent for her to be drinking much of anything, just to appear to be so he would pick her up. So maybe she was off the wagon, but likely not.
> 
> Here's a thought -- what if she was in AA because, even though she really wasn't drinking too much, she was aware of having blackouts, and decided she needed help, but the blackouts were Jessica, not Johnny Walker?


Wasn't she drinking champagne with Nathan in his hotel room?


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