Residual bad effects from the World Series, Heroes talk and blackmail gone bad

With Prison Break off for a week (thanks for nothing, World Series, forcing a postponement of my favorite show even though you’re over), Heroes got my full attention Monday night and somehow managed to pack enough action into one hour to almost make up for missing PB. Among the things on the slate for our heroes was the continuing saga of Ando reading the scrolls sent to him in the hilt of the ancient Japanese sword from his friend Hiro, still back in 1671. Hiro and his new friend, legendary warrior Takezo Kensei, are preparing to attack the camp of White Beard along with Kensei’s girl Yaeko. Inside the camp, they find Yaeko’s father and try to rescue him only to find that he won’t leave until he destroys all of the guns he helped White Beard make. Hiro promises to take care of it, but when he does, in the midst of his getaway a bullet is fired at he and Yaeko and he has to teleport to avoid being hit, thus revealing his power to Yaeko. She realizes that he’s the one who’s been doing all of the amazing things she attributed to Kensei, kisses Hiro and in the process breaks the heart of Kensei, who sees the kiss. Kensei then pretends to forgive Hiro, only to knock him out and turn him over to White Beard. Another favorite hero, Peter Petrelli, is back in 2007 and off to Montreal. He and Kaitlin go to find the scene Peter painted of a street corner and building. They find the building, which looks to be a big empty space filled with old furniture and lots of boxes. Amidst the clutter is a note, taped to a mirror, telling Peter that “we” were right about the company, that the world is in danger. It’s signed by Adam, a person Peter doesn’t remember. It raises the question of who Adam is, a question furthered at company headquarters when Mohinder sees a file with the name Adam Monroe on a folder carried by Bob, the head of the company’s operations. At the time, Mohinder doesn’t have time to look into Adam Monroe further because he’s working with Monica, Micah’s cousin from New Orleans who is in Manhattan having her powers tested by Mohinder. When Bob turns the tables and asks him to inject Monica with a strain of the mysterious virus used to take away people’s powers, Mohinder refuses and the resulting confrontation ends up with Bob apologizing and assigning a partner to Mohinder to make sure this kind of problem doesn’t happen again. The problem is that this partner is the newly-cured Niki, who you have to figure will snap at some point. Monica returns to New Orleans, accompanied by Bob, who gives her an iPod loaded with new skills for her to learn with her muscle mimic ability to replicate anything she sees done. On the international front, Noah Bennett, a.k.a. H.R.G., and the Haitian, on the go in Odessa, Ukraine, where they meet and ultimately kill a Russian man, Ivan, who used to work with H.R.G. at the company. When Ivan refuses to tell H.R.G. where the rest of the Isaac Mendez paintings are that foretell the future, the Haitian begins taking Ivan’s memories one by one to threaten him into giving up the info. When he does, though, H.R.G. shoots him in the head, refusing an offer to return to the company and electing to go it on his own. Ivan warns him that, “You know that by killing me, you’re condemning yourself to hell.” To which H.R.G. cryptically, eerily replies, “I know.” The paintings themselves, located in a warehouse (of course, where else) appear erratic, random and not in a coherent order. Still, you know they’re a big part of the show’s story this season, so I’m sure we’ll be learning more about these paintings in episodes to come. Also on the international front, the trio of Maya, Sylar and Alejandro continued their drive to the U.S. border, making it across under difficult circumstances. Alejandro, wanting to get rid of Sylar, tells Maya they should ditch him but he disagrees, saying Sylar is “a gift from God.” At the border, Sylar talks Maya into driving across and using her powers to kill the border guards who stop their car. She does and they make it past, but when they stop to rest, a condescending Sylar tells Alejandro, who doesn’t speak English and thus can’t understand what’s being said, that he plans to kill both Alejandro and Maya and take their powers once he regains his own ability to rip others’ powers from them. At the least, he promises to use Maya’s powers to meet his own selfish ambitions. On a lighter note, Claire and new boyfriend West have some fun in the episode, exacting revenge on Debbie, the head cheerleader who denied Claire a spot on the squad. At a late night cheerleader gathering at the school, Claire pulls Debbie off to the side, asks for another tryout and when she’s rebuffed, West flies in, grabs Claire and drops her from 50 feet in the air, sending her crashing to the concrete stairs below, apparently dead. Debbie sees this and freaks out, especially when West chases her. Claire recovers, heals and when the police come, they find her in good health and pretending that nothing ever happened. Debbie, on the other hands, gets arrested when the cops find an empty bottle of alcohol nearby and blows a .13 on a breath test. Two AWOL heroes for the episode are Parkman and Nathan, along with the man they’re chasing, Parkman’s dad Maury. That being said, this episode was packed to the gills with action and it was the best of the season so far.

 

- I’m not a horror movie connoisseur, so I’m not the best person to judge Saw IV, but it did rake in a very respectable $32.1 million in its opening weekend this past weekend, so it’s off to a good start. High earnings dot mean it’s a good movie, but clearly the Saw franchise is established enough that a lot of fans want to see it simply because of its name value. Also, this film clearly benefited from a wisely chosen Halloween weekend release, which has to be the absolute best weekend of the year for a horror movie to come out. The movie itself has a twisted, convoluted, confusing plot, with the uber-creepy Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) back despite having supposedly been seen dead at the end of Saw III. We even see his creepy, disturbing autopsy for the first few minutes of this movie. Still, he manages to live on through flashbacks and weird microcassette recordings in which his voice speaks out of the freaky marionette dolls he’s placed in killing rooms throughout previous movies in the series. Characters from previous movies in the series are also woven into the plot of this installment, which muddies the waters even further. The story also tries to explain too many different things and tie up too many loose ends from prior movies, making it difficult to follow. The plot in this one centers on two cops who go missing, with a 90-minute deadline for finding them before they’re killed. Lots of deaths follow in dark, dank rooms with cryptic messages scrawled on the wall, messages such as, “See what I see,” or “Feel what I feel” and “Cherish your life.” What I happen to cherish is non-torture porn movies with good writing, so Saw IV doesn’t score well with me, but you might be a fan….

 

- If you’re going to try to extort millions of dollars from someone in a blackmail scheme, it’s always best to check beforehand to make sure that 1) you’re not a moron, and 2) you’re not attempting to blackmail the highest-profile, most heavily guarded and surveilled family in your entire country. Clearly these rules were not adhered to by two men who were just arrested for attempting to blackmail Britain’s royal family in September. The men claimed to have video of a member of the royal family having sex (hopefully not Queen Elizabeth, that would be disturbing)and evidence of that member of the family giving cocaine to an aide. The two idiot criminals were taken down in a sting operation in which they thought they were meeting with a member of the royal family member’s staff but instead were met by and taken into custody by the police. Well done, tools, clearly you are criminal masterminds who have a lot to offer the world.

 

- Nice crackdown on child labor in sweat shops, Gap. The fashion retailer has announced that it will convene a meeting with all of its Indian suppliers to “forcefully reiterate” its prohibition on child labor after children as young as 10 years old were found working in the sweat shop of a Gap supplier in New Delhi, India. According to the children, they were told that they’d been sold to the sweat shop by their families and couldn’t leave until they had repaid that debt. I have to ask, couldn’t we just promise the kids a 30-minute recess daily, give them extra juice boxes and fruit roll-ups and keep them working? Seriously, though, I don’t think a “forceful reiteration” of your policy is sufficient. Until you promise to immediately and permanently sever ties with any supplier whose sweat shops use child labor, your words will ring hollow and carry little to no weight.

 

-  Most of your constituents probably agree with you, Gover-nator, so just own your remarks to the British version of GQ magazine about marijuana not really being a drug and stop backpedaling. Ah-nold Schwarzenagger, California’s governor and the man with the heaviest Austrian accent since the Von Trapp family, is trying to pass off comments he made about the hippie lettuce to the British GQ as a joke. “It’s not a drug, it’s just a leaf,” he stated. He also told the magazine that he’s never taken drugs even though he’s on record as admitting to using steroids during his bodybuilding days. Clearly, his definition of drugs and whether he’s used them is sketchy and subjective, so maybe he and Bubba Clinton can form some sort of club. You know, a “depends on what your definition of is, is” club, named after the response Bubba gave when being questioned about his sexual escapades with one of the skanks he messed around with. If you’re going to make these kind of comments, Ah-nold, own it or else get smarter and stop saying things like this, your choice.

 

- Never have I hoped that international events aren’t predictive of future events in the United States as I do right now. Cristina Fernandez, the Argentina’s first lady, has been elected the country’s president. Her husband. Nestor Kirchner, is the current presidente, but he will be leaving office and his wife is replacing him. She’s a lawyer and current senator who has been by her husband’s side in his rise from small-state governor to president. Sound familiar? Fernandez may not have the menacing scowl, combative demeanor and angry lesbian haircut, but other than those minor details she sounds very much like a South American version of Hank Clinton. With a substantial lead in exit polls, it appears that Fernandez will have enough of a margin to avoid a runoff election with any of the 13 challengers in the race. She needs 40 percent of the vote with a 10 percent lead over her nearest challenger to avoid that, which she seems to have done. Let’s hope for our sake, America, that we don’t see this same story played out on our soil next fall.