'Heroes': Shadowboxing in the dark

Tonight on "Heroes," Samuel finds Claire and Matt gets Sylar shot.

Claire & Gretchen
Claire and Gretchen spin a story of how the water bottles were drugged and that's why the other pledges saw invisible Rebecca and skewered Claire. After the scavenger hunt, Gretchen is totally freaked about being almost killed by Becky. She wants to stay with Claire, but Claire says no and goes off to investigate the sorority house.

At the house, it turns out the other two pledges have been Haitianized, courtesy of Noah. He seraches Rebecca's room while sending the Haitian back with Claire to the dorm (so Rebecca can't be invisible). When they get there, Gretchen is packing to leave and Claire begs her to stay. But she can't because she's not used to this kind of stress and drama and danger and leaves. Claire cries. Awww, is that the last we see of Gretchen? That would be sad.

Once she's gone, though... cue Samuel's entrance. Excellent. He tells Claire about the "family" of heroes and how Rebecca is actually after Noah, for killing her father for having an ability. Noah runs into Rebecca in the sorority house, gets the same story and heads back to Claire's dorm.

He confronts Samuel about the magic compass and Samuel says the compass needs to stay hidden. He then asks to find Rebecca and get her some help. As they take Samuel away, Noah gets attacked by Rebecca and Samuel tasers her. Claire begs Noah not to shoot either one and Samuel and Rebecca escape.

Back at the carnival, Samuel asks Rebecca to keep going along with him and he'll help her get revenge on Noah.

Peter & Emma
There's a train crash on New York. Emma does a little suturing on an accident victim and Peter sees her. Turns out she dropped out of med school. Peter keeps using his powers to heal the crash victims and is getting exhausted. His power is draining out and coming back.

When a little girl collapses, Emma performs a thoracotomy on her. Later, she and Peter bond over Emma's nephew drowning when she was babysitting. She couldn't hear him and he drowned and she dropped out of med school.  Peter gives Emma a crown from the little girl she saved.

Sylar & Matt
Sylar tries to catch a flight to NYC, but he's stopped by TSA when he has a service revolver in his carry-on. Yeah, that has to be inside a plastic bag and can't be over 3 ounces. He's hauled off for questioning, as Vision Matt just laughs.

Sylar tries to drive to New York, but Matt is messing with him and making things hard.  When Matt gives the car a flat (by making Sylar run over a piece of metal), Sylar kills the man who stops to help with a tire iron. Geez.  I love Zachary Quinto, but I don't like Evil Sylar. I liked the Sylar who loved Elle.

Anyway, Sylar uses that as a demonstration to get Matt to cooperate and spill all about Nathan and the body switching. They end up in the Burnt Toast Diner in Texas and Matt tells Sylar the truth. He then forces Sylar to doodle "I have a gun and I'm going to kill everyone in here" on a napkin and hand it to the waitress. The cops are called, Sylar is shot many times and Matt disappears. Matt's body is worked on by paramedics.

Karn Evil
Sylar's body is going back and forth between looking like Sylar and looking like Nathan. And then he disappears from the Karn Evil and shows up at Peter's apartment.

Thoughts & Tidbits

• Seriously, how cute is Hayden Panettiere in this episode? I'd be all lesbian for her too.
  
  
• I wish more could've focused on Samuel, Noah, Claire and Rebecca. I don't care that much about the other plots this week.
  
  
• I hope that isn't the way Gretchen leaves the show. That would be a bummer.
  
  
• Claire: That's actually a really good plan.
  Noah: This isn't my first rodeo.

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Related Links
12 steps to a better 'Heroes' 
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