Zach's Heroes Watch - "The Art of Deception"

Previously on Heroes: Claire’s angsty, Emma’s probably evil, and Sylar’s lonely.

Samuel’s angsty, too, which creeps out the carnival – especially Lydia, who Samuel thinks is replacing Joseph. But Samuel just wants to prove that he’s a nice guy again, so he sulks off to go be dastardly again.

Peter’s having bad dreams about Emma, and Mama’s still sad about Nathan. Peter says Sylar can save Emma, but Mama reminds him that Sylar’s not a nice guy. Peter does his “serious voice” and convinces Mama to tell him where Sylar is.

Fortunately, Sylar’s still entertaining – being inside Matt’s head “was so two months ago.” He’s playing houseguest at Matt’s house and wants to catch up, but Matt knows he’s still a bad guy. Sylar’s amazed that Matt can just live with his ability, so he asks Matt to take his powers away. Matt gives it a try, but it doesn’t work; Janice comes home and surprises them, so Sylar reacts adversely and threatens “being creative.” But Matt talks Sylar down and gives it another try, and this time it works, but there’s a catch – Sylar still gets to live forever, but Matt trapped him in a weird nightmare and then buries him in the basement.

Just when you thought it was safe to bury Sylar, Peter shows up and steals Matt’s power, finding out that Sylar is almost buried alive. But as Peter goes in to try to fix everything, Matt traps him in his head, too.

Gretchen forces Claire to come clean about her Sylar encounter, so Claire finally gives in and pays a visit to her dad – but Lauren opens the door. Awk-ward. Claire’s cool with Lauren getting romantic with Noah, but she’s not okay with the Primatech files coming out of storage. When Lauren tells Claire about Samuel’s latest landslide, Claire gets peeved and ditches. Gretchen tells Claire to go to class, and Noah loads up his rifle.

Meanwhile, Claire’s visiting Samuel to try to get him to surrender, but Noah’s ready to go all sniper on Samuel, so Lauren goes to walk him out. Samuel delivers an emotional apology, but someone shoots him anyway and then tags Claire in the throat. Even though it seems like Noah’s doing the firing, it’s actually Multiple Man, who shoots Lauren and Lydia, too. It’s like the writers are just cleaning house at this point.

Samuel apologizes to Lydia, and any viewer with a brain figures out that Samuel ordered Multiple Man to do it. Just in case we had any questions, Samuel then explains the plot to Lydia and the viewers before Lydia dies. Claire has problems believing that her dad shot all those people, but Multiple Man drags Noah to the carnival and tosses him into the house of mirrors.

Then Emma joins the carnival – yay? She patches up Samuel, and Edgar comes back to say goodbye to Lydia while Lauren sends out a call for help – to Tracy. Samuel promises that the carnival is going to come clean with the rest of the world.

Verdict? Well, at least Samuel’s evil again, but it feels a little like the writers are stretching. Samuel’s super smart in this episode, and hopefully this is a return to form for what used to be my favorite character on the show. What’s more, Sylar’s plotline got really interesting this week, and we got a pretty nifty new side to Matt; finally, someone trapped Peter in his own emo noggin. But are we gearing up for a Sylar/Samuel smackdown?