Zach's Heroes Watch: "Tabula Rasa"

Previously on Heroes: Peter has Emma’s lamest-power-ever, Noah is having a mid-life crisis, and Dirty Sylar (originally Sylar-Nathan) doesn’t know who he is.

Samuel takes over as narrator since Mohinder is MIA, and Hiro is a goner if the show gets cancelled this year. There’s a lot of our favorite talk about destiny and missions, which is all very empowering. But Emma’s spooked because someone sent her a cello that can break walls if she plays it really fast. Like I said, lamest-power-ever. Now we know why Emma’s going through superhero counseling with Hiro: because she wants to turn her power off.

Hiro shows off his power and helps Emma see that her power isn’t all that lame. And Emma helps Hiro do a magic trick to impress some little kids. It’s all about being yourself and using your abilities to help others. Suddenly Hiro remembers Charlie, the cute waitress he romanced way back in Season One. To save her, he’ll have to go all the way to “Glee” to find her. (Nah, just to the past.)

Just in time for Halloween, Spooky Sylar (or Dirty Sylar, if you like) joins Creepy Carnival. If anyone’s up for some hardcore redemption this year, it’s Sylar, now free of the brainwashing that made him think he was Nathan. Talk about identity crisis: Sylar doesn’t know who he is, but he’s starting to figure out that he’s special. Here’s our blank slate of the week, but let’s see how else this parses itself out this episode.

We start to get an idea that Samuel might be evil. He’s definitely okay with Killer Sylar and kind of wants to see that happen, so he sends some carnival tickets to the cop that was hunting Sylar last week. Meanwhile, Lydia is hitting on Sylar big time, and Speedy (Edgar) gets jealous. But thank goodness there’s a guy in the carnival whose superpower is restoring memories (convenient). Samuel, though, is almost a Magneto type of character, wanting to band the people with abilities against the people who hate the superheroes.

Wonderfully inventive cinematography when Memory Man takes Sylar into a house of mirrors to try to figure out who he really is. But he’s still being haunted by the ghost of his mother, and he can’t believe that what happened actually happened. He starts to get some vicious flashbacks of all the bad things he’s done. Time to start filling in the blank slate.

But this episode is all about confronting who we are and being comfortable with it. Emma’s okay with her power, but Sylar is really struggling with being who he is. To nudge him along the path toward self-acceptance, Samuel tells Sylar that his cop nemesis is at the carnival, so Sylar gets all evil again (didn’t you hear the ticking clocks?) and almost kills the cop, but Edgar (still jealous about Lydia) steps in and does it for him. “You’re safe now,” Samuel says as he welcomes Sylar into the family with a weird baptismal rite. Get it? He’s not Dirty Sylar anymore.

Claire goes home for fall break or something and steals some quarters from her dad. Peter breaks in with Hiro’s power, and poor Noah is never going to get a good insurance rate with all this crime in his house. But Noah is still willing to help, since he bagged-and-tagged a healer way back when. (Also convenient.)

But it turns out that Healer Kid Jeremy can kill people, too, and not just with his giant shotgun. He can control the flow of life and death, and he’s pretty peeved about it. Fortunately, he gets the opportunity to prove that he can still heal people when he accidentally shoots Peter. Yay, redemption! Peter nicks his ability and goes back to save Hiro while Noah’s going to “save” Healer Kid.

What Peter doesn’t know is that Hiro disappears after finally teaching Emma why her power is beautiful. Peter’s peeved, but Hiro is back at the diner where he first met Charlie, and it’s love at second sight all over again.

Verdict? For all the teasing I do about the show being transparent or predictable, this season has been really strong, and this was a tight episode with some very interesting character developments and a lot of interesting plot turns that I can’t say I entirely predicted. Well done, “Heroes” – keep it up.