Welcome to the Bennet and Danko show, my friends.
Back at Building 26, Bennet rechecks Faux Sylar’s dead body, not entirely convinced the proclaimed decedent is truly deceased. Danko joins him, gloating, and Bennet asks to hear the details of the capture, musing that he’s been “chasing this one a long time.” He looks at Danko, saying that perhaps Danko is just better at [hunting Heroes] than he is. No frickin’ way, man. They are interrupted by an agent who tells Bennet that he has a visitor claiming to be his wife. Bennet is totally surprised: “My wife is here?” Danko tells the agent to send Mrs. Bennet on up.
Highway 40, Ohio. Hiro, Ando and Baby Parkman are in the Parkman minivan. Ando has called every phone number they have for Parkman but has only been able to leave messages, unable to find him. Hiro is determined that first they’ll find the baby’s dad, and then they’ll find the mom. Suddenly, at the mention of his mom, Baby Parkman starts wailing uncontrollably. The men wonder if it’s his diaper, or maybe he’s hungry … and then the car just stops.
In NYC, Mohinder has arranged passage to India (he actually says that) for himself – and he wants Parkman to come with him. Parkman’s not going. Mohinder tries some empathy, saying that he knows the other man is upset over what happened to Daphne; Parkman cuts him off, retorting that “what happened to Daphne was protocol, because she was different.” He cocks his gun (not a euphemism). Mohinder protests that the government agents are too strong, this fight is futile, but Parkman has his resolve face on. He’s out to hurt Danko to make him pay for what he’s done. Mohinder wants to talk about it some more but Parkman is done talking. He gives Mohinder a hug and tells him goodbye.
Building 26. Sandra Bennet paces, waiting for her husband. He wants to know why she’s here. She is pissed off: agents invade their house; their daughter goes missing; and Bennet won’t return any of her phone calls. He protests that he’s returned all her calls and she snaps that he hasn’t told her anything. She knows when she’s being handled (now that the Haitian isn’t wiping her brain clean anymore) and she’s sick of it. Bennet tells her that Claire is safe and the less she knows about it the better. Sandra notices that he is distracted so he tells her that there’s a body in the other room that they’re saying Sylar, but he doesn’t believe it. Sandra is furious, hissing that Claire is MISSING and he’s obsessing over stupid SYLAR! Danko picks this exact moment to interrupt, saying that he recognizes Sandra from her photographs. She snarls that she bets he does what with all the surveillance on her house. Non-memory-wiped Sandra is awesome. Danko murmurs that it was nice to meet her and slinks away. Bennet tries not to smile and asks his wife to please go back to Costa Verde. Nope – she’s staying at the Regency and won’t go home until Bennet finds Claire.
Danko slithers into the men’s room … where the real Danko is relieving himself at the urinal, and not well pleased to see himself come in. Sylar-Danko smarmily grins that he likes being Danko, commanding all this respect. He gloats about having shown Bennet the shapeshifter’s body. Danko cuts him off, saying he’s crazy to be doing this – it’s dangerous and not a game. Sylar shifts back into his own form as Danko shouts through clenched teeth that all this isn’t worth it just so Sylar can kill Bennet. Sylar growls that he’s gonna kill him – he’s going to destroy him.
Wow - that was a long teaser!
Bennet – so very busy today – gets a call from Angela Petrelli. She says she’s had a “dream” and asks if he knows what happened at Coyote Sands twenty years ago. He replies that he’s heard rumors: everyone tells him that he needs to stop asking questions about that place. She tells him that she and Peter are heading to there; Nathan and Claire are meeting them there; and she wants Bennet to join them. “Everyone needs to know what happened.” He says that he needs to tie up some loose ends first and tells her that Danko showed him Sylar’s purported body, but he’s not convinced it was really Sylar. Angela tells him to leave it alone but Bennet’s not listening. Over the phone she hears him ask an agent where the bodies are: “the crematorium.” Bennet heads off that way as Angela screams “Noah!” over and over into the unhearing phone.
Mohinder breaks into his old apartment in Brooklyn. The place is empty. The scruffy super informs him that “Homeland Security” took everything away … except what Mohinder’s “crazy old man” left in storage downstairs. Show me, orders Mohinder.
Hiro, Ando and the baby are hitchhiking. They’re having no luck until a trucker stops and picks them up, saying he’ll take them to the next town where a friend of his is a mechanic. The baby is still unhappy and starts screaming again. And all of a sudden, the truck shuts down. Hiro and Ando finally realize that the baby can make things stop as well as start. Way to keep up, guys.
D.C. Parkman observes Danko come out of Building 26 and sends some telepathic paranoia his way: “Something’s not right … the person closest to you is in danger. Go to them now.” Danko hails a cab and takes off, Parkman following. Some time later, at a nice home in the suburbs, Parkman watches Danko gets out of the cab and embraces a slender blonde woman, asking her if everything is all right. They go into the house together, out of Parkman’s sight. Annoyed, he pulls his gun out of the glove compartment.
Meanwhile, Bennet has caught up to the bodies just as they arrive at the crematorium. He tells the other agents to draw their weapons as he pulls the metal spike out of “Sylar’s” head. When “Sylar” doesn’t come back to life, he hands the spike to an agent and tells him to run a DNA test on it. The agent protests that he has an order to cremate the body as Bennet sinks to his knees, whispering, “Who are you?”
Later, Sandra finds Bennet at his apartment. He assumes that she wants to know about Claire but she says that Claire is fine, she just called to check in. Instead, Sandra hands him divorce papers and tells him to sign the damn things. He asks her not to throw away their twenty years together but she talks over him, saying she’s tired of his lies and guns and violence. Their argument escalates, desperation creeping into Bennet’s voice, until Sandra finally shouts, “I don’t love you anymore!” This stuns him into silence. Sandra: “You’re a liar and a betrayer. You say you care about your family – you don’t. It’s over. I don’t love you. I don’t trust you. I don’t even respect you. And when that’s gone …” – she walks out. Bennet is staggered, devastated. Down on the street, Sandra strides away purposefully. Until she turns down and alleyway and morphs back into Sylar. Ooh – that’s awful. Poor Bennet!
These Hiro storylines are just so sucky. The trucker asks them to move their “magic baby” away from his truck as he’s got a load to deliver. Sadly they go back to the minivan and do their best to calm the child. Ando finally hits on the right funny face that appeases the baby and Hiro is able to start the car. Ando protests that he can’t hold this expression all the way to NYC. Hiro just floors that sucker.
Danko’s Russian girlfriend Elena tells him that she’s glad to see him. He says he has to go to Chicago but will return to D.C. very soon. A car arrives and whisks him away. Parkman makes his move then, breaking into her house and pointing his gun at her while she unwittingly does some dishes. He soon starts to feel bad about what he’s doing and backs away, gun hidden away. Elena turns just then and sees him. She thinks that the escort service sent him even though she’s finished with that work. Parkman is confused, wondering how the person most important to Danko could be a call girl. He decides to run with it, however, saying that he’s her client’s coworker. She’s delighted and invites him to sit, ready to talk about her boyfriend, “Jakob.”
Back at Building 26, a despondent Bennet stares glumly at video screens. Picking up a pen, he decides to sign the divorce papers but when he looks at his wife’s signature, it is clearly not her signature. Hope flashes over his face and he calls the lab, asking for the DNA results from that spike. The lab confirms that the blood was from Jenkins, formerly geometry teacher. “Sylar’s a shapeshifter,” Bennet breathes.
Parkman asks Elena if she’s been seeing Jakob for a while now. Yes, for about a year now – she’s even got photographs – relationship-y ones. She says that Jakob is wonderful, a miracle, he loves her. Parkman can’t stand it, first telling her that her lover is a bad man, then saying that he’ll show her how bad he is.
Hiro calls Mohinder from a gas station, saying that they’re looking for Parkman. Mohinder tells them that Matt is still in D.C. and on a very destructive course. Hiro is quite distressed and as soon as the minivan is gassed up, they take off again. Just around the corner, coincidentally, are Nathan and Claire, consulting a map, trying to find Coyote Sands – which is “a million miles from nowhere.” Claire asks why they have to go there but dutiful Nathan (now he’s dutiful – now that he’s not betraying other Heroes to the government) says that when Angela has a dream, it’s best to pay attention. They fly away.
Mohinder is poring through the boxes of his father’s stuff, finding research from an “Operation Icarus” from the 1960s – medical research at a place called Coyote Sands.
Sandra – or is it? – lets herself into her hotel room. Bennet steps out behind her and points his gun at her head. She quavers that there’s cash in her purse but he growls that if she says one more word, she dies. Gosh, this could be awkward if she’s actually his wife. After the commercial, Sandra asks what he’s doing and Bennet flips the fuck out, screaming about divorce papers and the wrong signature. She babbles about his mother’s name and where they honeymooned and how he sleeps on his left side and his joints ache … Bennet’s all, “You’re a mindreader now? Did you kill Parkman?” He shoves her down onto the table roughly, gun pressed hard into her skull. “I didn’t kill anybody!” Sandra shrieks. Bennet is beside himself: “Danko’s in on it, isn’t he?” His wife cries out, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Noah – please, these kids, don’t do this!”
Her phone starts ringing and Bennet snatches it out of her pocket. Luckily for her it’s Lyle who’s forgotten which pills he’s supposed to give to Mr. Muggles. Sandra correctly identifies which pill bottle and a shaking Bennet hangs up the phone, in tears. He pats her shoulder awkwardly and backs away from her. Sandra whirls on him, face wet with tears - once scared, now angry. Bennet pleads that Sylar shapeshifted into her earlier and served him with divorce papers, said the locks had been changed. “Probably a good idea,” snarls Sandra. She tells him to get out. Bennet pleads, saying that this is exactly what Sylar wants. She shoves him, hard. “You gotta believe me,” he says. Sandra: “I do believe you, but it doesn’t matter – it’s too late.” He goes and she deadbolts the door behind him. Bennet’s face is a wasteland. Jack Coleman rocks. This whole scene with the two of them was good stuff.
Danko answers a knock on his door. It’s Elena, who says she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Danko wants to know how she found him. “I brought her,” says Parkman from behind his gun. Danko begs Elena to ignore all the crap Parkman stuffed into her head. He’s really upset with what Parkman has done. Elena begs Danko to explain. With a little mental push from Parkman, Danko confesses that he hunts people for the government. Parkman insists that Danko tell Elena exactly what he did to Daphne. Danko struggles, but says it. Parkman, with tears in his eyes, observes that Danko really does love Elena - and that is the only way that Danko will understand what he has done to Parkman. He turns the gun on the girl – while Danko sneers that killing her won’t change how he feels putting dogs like Parkman down – and prepares to shoot. But he can’t. His hand shakes and he drops the gun. Danko lunges for his own weapon and Parkman stares at him passively, telling him to go ahead and end it. Danko fires. But Hiro (who was apparently closer to D.C. than we all thought) freezes time and drags Parkman out of Danko’s apartment. When time unfreezes, the bullet slams into the woodwork and Danko and Elena are alone. Furious, s gets right up in his face and calls him a monster. He doesn’t argue.
Building 26. Bennet – without his glasses, so it’s probably Sylar – goes into Danko’s office and closes the blinds. He hands Danko some files and says that he got them from Bennet’s apartment: they’re old Primatech files and it seems that “Bennet’s been holding out on us.” Danko reaches for the files, saying he’s not surprised. But I am, because it’s actually Bennet, here to trick his boss. Good trick! He pulls a gun and makes Danko hand his own over. Danko looks uncomfortable. Bennet snarls that Danko was stupid to trust that an all-powerful Sylar would let him live when all this was over. Bennet goes on: he wants Sylar on a platter and Danko’s going to help him. So where is that bastard? Danko tells Bennet that Sylar has been going out on patrol in the form of one of the agents. I’ve already forgotten what the agent’s name was – let’s call him “Agent Ormond.”
Parkman ungratefully thanks Hiro but grumps that he didn’t want to be saved. Hiro’s like, yeah, you did. They turn a corner and Ando happily hands the baby to Parkman – who is overjoyed to learn he has a son. Apparently his bitch of an ex-wife didn’t see fit to tell him. That’s just mean.
Bennet and Danko catch up with Sylar’s team and Bennet wastes no time in shooting Agent Ormond in the back of the head. He tells the other agents to stand back and watch as Sylar resurrects. Nothing happens. Danko tells the other agents that he doesn’t have any idea what Bennet is doing. Bennet screams at Ormond to get up – live again already. But the blood spreads and spreads, and there’s no pulse. Danko grins like a skull: it wasn’t Sylar – Danko lied and Bennet just killed an innocent man. Oops. Bennet bolts.
After everyone is gone, Danko watches as dead Agent Ormond stands up, and morphs back into Sylar. He gags and then spits the bullet into his hand. That’s cool. Not terrifically pleased, Sylar notes “You almost got me killed.” Danko: “Didn’t know you could bleed like that.” It was all for show.
On the lam, duffel bag slung over his shoulder and presumably heading for his rendezvous with the Petrellis, Bennet leaves a message for Sandra. He misses her, loves her, and he’ll call her again when it’s safe. Montage: Mohinder has a new map with strings, centered on Coyote Sands; a happy Parkman plays with Junior; Danko leaves a sincere-sounding message for Elena, saying that he really does love her; Elena gets into a cab without picking up the phone.
FINALLY, Angela and Peter arrive at Coyote Sands. To Peter’s question why are they here, Angela tells him that “This is where our story really begins.” When the camera pans wide, they’re standing near a number of dilapidated huts. It looks like a concentration camp. As Nathan and Claire swoop in, Peter’s angry that his mother asked Nathan to come but Angela insists that the family all has to be together. “To prepare for the future, you have to understand the past. You want answers? You’ll have to dig.” And so they do: Nathan finds the first skull, bullet hole in the forehead. Overcome, Angela falls to her knees. Peter asks if she knew who that person was. “I knew all of them,” she says. How many of them are there? “Keep digging.” The Petrelli boys keep digging, while Angela looks on, and Claire sees the headlights as Bennet drives up, better late than too late. To be continued!
Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes
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