Broken Frontier

It’s a shame that Hayden Panettiere’s steamy lip-lock with Madeline Zima is likely distracting audiences from the fact that “Hysterical Blindness” is the best episode of Heroes this season. But, when a once-popular series’ overwhelmingly male audience begins drifting away, sometimes a little girl-on-girl action is a necessary—albeit cheap—way to drum up interest. Did it work? Not really. E! Online reports that ratings for this week’s installment weren’t much higher than they were the previous week.

But the more important question for longtime fans of the show is whether or not this blatantly exploitative kiss serves a purpose in moving Claire Bennet’s story forward. It does, in a way. At the beginning of the episode, Claire is relishing the normalcy of college life. She’s even approached to pledge a sorority, an opportunity that’s frowned upon by her roommate, Gretchen. Claire convinces her to go along with her to the open house, but when she’s introducing herself to her potential sisters, she’s surprised to learn how much everyone already knows about her. Gretchen, it seems, has been chatting her up quite a bit. For someone trying to keep her super-healing abilities a secret, this understandably worrying.

Claire gets even more wary when she has a look at Gretchen’s computer and learns that her roommate’s been doing some online research on her past and the death of her previous roommate, Annie. Does Claire have a stalker on her hands?

At a sorority mixer, Claire is nearly impaled when a flagpole suddenly falls from a balcony. When Claire looks up, it appears that Gretchen is the only one who could have dropped it. Claire comes to the conclusion that Gretchen is trying to injure her to expose her ability and spoil her chance at a normal life.

When Claire confronts Gretchen in their dorm room, she swears that she had nothing to do with the flag incident. As for the information on Claire’s computer, Gretchen admits that she is a bit obsessed—she has a crush. Gretchen then plants a kiss on Claire, who doesn’t seem to reciprocate. But hey, at least her roommate isn’t a psycho.

By the way, anyone anticipating a softcore porn makeout session in this episode will be sorely disappointed. Heroes isn’t that desperate. Yet.

Despite a misunderstanding about Gretchen, Claire’s still in danger. We learn that one of the sorority sisters, Rebecca, is working for Samuel Sullivan, leader of that mysterious and apparently evil group of carnies we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks. Using her power of invisibility, Rebecca has working in secret to keep Claire feeling isolated, which Samuel hopes will make her easier to lure to his rag-tag band of super-powered carnival folk. Claire’s roommate’s suicide? Rebecca pushed her. The flagpole incident? She was responsible for that too. Now, with both Claire and Gretchen being accepted into the sorority, Rebecca can manipulate Claire even further.

Peter Petrelli, another character pursued by Samuel this season, makes an unsuccessful attempt at reconnecting with his mother, Angela, who is preoccupied by Nathan’s mysterious disappearance and hardly pays him any attention. Peter does, however, connect with Emma Coolidge, whom he saves from a speeding bus. As we learned earlier this season, Emma, who is deaf, is able to visualize sound as colored lights. Peter absorbs her power and, in a downright touching moment, he is able to share the discovery of this power with her. It’s invigorating to see this kind of well-executed levity from a show so often preoccupied with super-powered angst. But when Emma’s ability proves far more potent than she’d thought, new questions emerge.

Speaking of things emerging, the episode kicks off with Sylar rising from a shallow grave. With his mind a blank slate—courtesy of Matt Parkman at the end of last season—the notorious serial killer has no idea who he is or what he’s capable of. Wandering down the road, he’s picked up by a hard-as-nails cop (played by Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson) and interrogated at a local police station. A trusting young psychologist tries to help Sylar reconnect with his former self, but she makes no progress. However, a fingerprint analysis reveals to the police that this mystery man was once known as Gabriel Gray, who is wanted for murder. Sylar reflexively uses his powers to push Hudson’s character through a window and escape. Sylar conveniently finds refuge with Samuel and his traveling supernatural carnival. Even though Sylar has yet to connect with his true evil self, this pairing cannot bode well.

“Hysterical Blindness” is the type of episode I’m sure we’d all like to see more of. With this installment, Heroes seems extremely confident with himself, and not only because of the aforementioned same-sex smooch. This ailing series may have hit its stride.