Heroes Recap: “Seven Minutes to Midnight”

Title: “Seven Minutes to Midnight”
Original Air Date: November 13, 2006

Mohinder chants back in India as he puts his father’s ashes to rest in the ocean.

Isaac wakes feverishly with Eden pressing a cold cloth to his forehead. She says he’s had a rough couple of days, but he’ll be clean in no time, and he’ll still be able to paint the future. The drugs were just a facilitator; she’ll show him how to do it without that. She reassures him that the “mural on the floor – we’re not going to let that happen.” Why is she sure? Because she went through the same thing. As she walks out, we notice a new painting, a red-haired waitress carrying armfuls of plates.

Then we’re watching her in real life as she delivers food to a couple cop customers, who she helps with their crossword. One starts to ask her more trivia, and though the other says, “She’s not Google, Lloyd,” she gets it with no problem. Smarty-pants.

In the same diner, Hiro and Ando are taking a pit stop on the way to saving the cheerleader and the world. The waitress, Charlie, comes by to take their order and chats them up. She spots a phrase in Japanese on Hiro’s jacket and reads it: “I don’t belong here.” Girlfriend can read – and speak – Japanese, after studying for a week? I want her power.

Meanwhile, their conversation is being observed by a dimly lit stranger with a broken watch (time: 7 minutes till 12) in the corner who opens his hand, and the coffee cup just moves towards him.

Mo talks to his friend, who asks whether he’s planning to go back to New York. He’s not. “I’ve see things I wish I never had.” His buddy says he can move right back in to his father’s office and start teaching again. Next thing we know, we’re over at Chennai University and Mo’s going through his father’s things. Hot chick with a history comes in to apologize for things she said about his father’s theories before he left. She wants him to come in for an interview at her company, where they’re doing genetic research. Mohinder considers it.

At FBI Headquarters, Detective Audrey chastises Matt for hitting a fellow officer, though she seems more concerned that he didn’t just tell her. “Did he deserve it?” Hell yeah. He called Matt a loser! (Well, and he was banging his wife.) They head over to Ted’s containment cell, where he’s being held briefly before homeland security comes to pick him up as a suspected terrorist.

(Ted, I should note, is played by Matthew John Armstrong, who I remember best as the patient with AIDS who coughed on Cameron in House. Just saying that ’cause people were curious last week. The red-headed waitress is played by Jayma Mays, who appeared as another of House’s patients.)

Audrey says three months ago she pulled the Sylar case, and now she’s met Ted and Matt as well, bringing the total up to three people with abilities she can’t explain. Matt’s angry that she thinks he’s like them, which is logical because the only powers he’s seen have been destructive.

Hiro excitedly teaches Japanese to the cute waitress. She picks it up shockingly quickly, explaining “lately I sort of remember everything I read.” But who cares about that, we care that she thinks Hiro is sweet! “I like the way your cheeks wobble when you concentrate.” You and half of America, sweetheart!

Matt and Audrey head in to talk to Ted. Audrey asks how he burnt the doctor and probably (ouch) gave his wife cancer. She’s playing bad cop, Matt’s trying to be nicer. They start frustrating Ted, and he’s so angry that he starts boiling his glass of water. Wow. Now Niki’s a bit scary, but I really wouldn’t like Ted when he’s angry. Matt manages to calm him down by saying he’s having the same problems. He asks when it all started, and discovers they both blacked out and woke up with two black lines tattooed on their necks.

Mo keeps going through his father’s things. He glances at the computer, still running his father’s formula, then drifts back to a memory of an argument between him and his father. His father is heading to NY, “chasing a theory that is pure fantasy,” and Mohinder doesn’t approve. It might’ve been the last conversation he and his father had. Then he seems to remember a conversation he wasn’t even present for: his father and mother talking afterwards when he wasn’t even there. He spots a kid with a soccer ball who he speaks to before waking up back in his office.

Ted explains when his radiation powers first started. He’d made a big sale, and went out to buy some celebratory drinks. There were people in the bar, including “a Haitian student.” Two days later, he woke up in Tempe, AZ. Matt picks up on the student mention, and describes the silent memory-stealer who travels with Claire’s dad. Homeland Security arrives to drag Ted away, but he leaves Matt with the instruction to “find the Haitian.”

At Primatech Paper Company in Odessa, Mr. Bennett (HRG or BBD if you prefer) arrives and heads inside to a back room, where Eden, Isaac, and all Isaac’s paintings are located. He heads in to meet Isaac for the first time, and tells him they’re going to help him figure out the painting. Why, Isaac wants to know. “I need your help,” Bennett tells him.

The sinister coffee drinker observes Hiro head to the restroom and Charlie to the stockroom. She hears a noise, but ignores it. Suddenly a black liquid drips from her forehead and she falls to the ground. One scream later, and we learn Charlie is dead. Dammit! I liked her!

Mo talks to his mom. He’s upset that if his dream was real, she convinced his father to go to New York. He asks why in the dream his mom said that Mo could never take the place of “her”. Who’s “her”? His mother confesses he had a sister, Shanti, who died when she was five and Mo was two. The father was convinced she was special.

Bennett goes through the paintings with Isaac, pointing at the set about the cheerleader. He tells him the cheerleader is his daughter, “my Claire.” The figure looming over her is Sylar, who he says is going to kill her tomorrow night at her homecoming game, because she’s special. If they know who Sylar is, why can’t they stop him, Isaac wonders. Valid question. It’s because they don’t know where he is. They need Isaac to draw him. And if he can’t do it while he’s sober, they’ll provide the drugs. But Isaac wants his life back, and pushes the drugs away.

Okay, here comes the big Bennett speech we’ve been waiting for. “For many years now, a number of us have been tracking, locating, and monitoring people like you. Sometimes the process goes smoothly, as in your case. But sometimes, well, let’s just say some people misinterpret our motives and they go very wrong. Fourteen years ago, there was just such a case that sadly ended in a death. A woman left behind a baby girl who had no one to take care of her.” They got Claire, who they saw as a gift from God. Saying that it’s his daughter at stake, he begs Isaac to paint, who says he’ll try one more time without the drugs.

Mo finds soccer ball kid in his office and chases him out to the alley, where it’s suddenly night, and not India. He’s in NYC, on the night his father was killed. He sees his father’s taxicab and rushes over, but it’s locked. Within we can see Suresh, hands grabbing him from behind and banging his head on the glass repeatedly as Mohinder yells in horror. Suresh’s eyes go dim, and the camera pulls over to spot the broken watch on his killer’s wrist. Seven minutes to midnight.

Mo turns around to spot soccer kid who hands him a key. Mohinder wakes up in the office, going to grab the key he saw earlier in the back of his father’s diary.

Claire visits her dad at work. She says she has a paper emergency (wonder if they get those at Dunder-Mifflin?) and needs to get a huge banner. Her dad starts to help, but he gets interrupted by Eden, who tells him Isaac can’t paint without the drugs. Eden says, “he has worked so hard to get clean, you can’t ask him to do this!” I know Bennett’s response before he says it: “I’m not going to ask him.” But here’s a twist: “You are.” Turns out Bennett found her, too, and she’s special. Eden walks in, whispers something in Isaac’s ear, and gives Bennett a look of resentment as Isaac starts to set up his drugs.

Charlie’s body is being wheeled out. The policeman tells them her head was ripped open, and we can see the gears in Hiro’s head start turning. As he tells Ando, it’s just like Isaac was killed in the future. Hiro insists he should be able to do something. Ando protests that she’s already dead, but Hiro says he can go back. Ooh, do it, Hiro! I liked her, and she liked you! Ando is not so enthusiastic, but Hiro feels a responsibility. He’ll go back to the day before and stop her from being killed. Ando worries about Hiro’s abilities, since his time travel skills are a little imprecise, but Hiro tells him, “If I’m too scared to use my powers, then I don’t deserve them. I have to try.” Just count to five and I’ll be back, he assures his friend.

Matt’s wife flips through a photo album. She got a call asking why he punched his friend/superior officer. Seeing this as her opportunity to confess the affair, she starts, “something happened, between me and Tom…” Matt takes a wild guess that she slept with him. Bingo! But it’s over. Are they over too? He’s not sure. The phone rings, and it’s Audrey, explosions in the background, calling to say Ted escaped.

Mohinder looks at the key, wondering if it will open a locked drawer in his father’s desk. It does. Hidden behind the drawer he finds a file on “Iyer Sanjog” detailing learning and sleep, with a picture of the boy with the soccer ball.

A drugged up, white-eyed Isaac paints as Eden looks on a bit sadly. Claire makes her homecoming banner as her dad does the same. Ando waits for his friend in the diner, where behind him we see a picture that previously contained just Charlie, now has Hiro.

Next week: Homecoming! Fun! Or fatal, possibly, if you’re Claire.

Missed the episode? Check it out online: http://www.nbc.com/Video/rewind/full_episodes/?show=heroes

Julie is a firm believer in “all things in moderation” – except when it comes to TV, writing, Logan Echolls, and carbonated beverages. When she’s not debating TV Boyfriends with GMMR, she’s writing for her site, TV & Sympathy, or kicking ass and taking names.

Julie is a firm believer in “all things in moderation” — except when it comes to TV, writing, Logan Echolls, and carbonated beverages. When she’s not debating TV Boyfriends with GMMR, she’s writing for her site, TV & Sympathy, or kicking ass and taking names.