Episode Review - Wednesday, September 27, 2006 23:32 - 3 Comments

Episode 1 “Genesis” Recap

The series open with a monologue by Mohinder Suresh. The camera pans to Peter Petrelli standing on the edge of a tall building. He takes a step off and fly…

He is startled from his daydream by Simone Deveaux. Peter is sitting in an apartment tending to Simone’s father, Charles Deveaux. Simone says that Charles loves Peter like a son, to which Peter quips, “That would kind of make it awkward for me to ask you out then.” This backfires, and makes them both have an awkward silence.

In Madras, India, Mohinder Suresh is teaching a class on human evolution. He makes a joke about how a cockroach is god due to its ability to stay alive for long periods of times without a head or food. As Mohinder dismisses his class, a somber man greets him. Mohinder asks what’s wrong, to which he finds out his father, Chandra Suresh, was killed driving a taxi in New York city. He then goes to his father’s apartment in India.

At his father’s apartment, he finds a file named, “Genesis.” In this file he finds articles on different “super abilities.” As he is viewing a map of the world with push pins and strings everywhere he hears someone answer a phone on the other side of the wall. As the man is talking Mohinder takes a picture of the map. This makes the man aware of Mohinder’s presence, although Mohinder does get out before the man sees him.

In Las Vegas, we see a striptease by Niki Sanders to the song Mustang Sally. After a rude comment on the laptop by the chat room visitor, she puts on a towel and wakes up her son. The doorbell rings and startles them. She quickly tells Micah to leave through the back. As they are driving away the thugs kick in the front door.

In Odessa, TX, we see through a home camera. We see a girl running up a set of stairs out doors. She gets to a catwalk, and jumps off. The cameraman flips out and goes to see if she was ok. She gets up, and pops her shoulder back in place, then says, “This is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt number six.”

Peter gets out of a cab after dreaming about flying some more, and heads into his brother Nathan Petrelli’s Campaign Headquarters. Nathan is just getting off the phone with Mr. Linderman. Peter proceeds to tell Nathan about all the crazy dreams he’s been having. Nathan shirks it off, but Peter insists, and goes even further to say he thinks he can fly. Nathan tries to get Peter to shut up and tells him not to “pull a Roger Clinton.” Nathan then receives a phone call telling them that their mother has been picked up for shoplifting.

Claire tells Zach how depressed she is because she can’t live a normal life. Zach takes this moment to point out that she has something sticking from her side. She pull up the side of her shirt to see exposed ribs, which she calmly pushes back in. The wound heals instantly. She takes the tape and they continue walking.

In Tokyo, Japan, a bored office worker named Hiro Nakamura is staring at the clock on his desk. He focuses on it intently, and nothing happens. He focuses again, and the second hand stops, then moves backward a second. “Yatta!” he yells. Hiro dashes over to his friend Ando’s desk and tells him all about his ability to bend space and time. Ando dismisses his claims as foolish, and joking refers to Hiro as Spock from Star Trek as he is getting dragged back to his desk. Ando then flips back on Niki’s strip tease web feed.

Note: the translation shown on screen actually is slightly wrong when Hiro yells “Yatta.” It actually means “it’s done!”, “ready!” or “all right!” not “I did it!”

Niki is in a meeting with a private school principal. As the conversation continues, the principal makes excuses about why Micah shouldn’t go to their school, but eventually spills that Niki’s last three tuition checks have bounced. She tells him to take the money out of the $25,000 dollar donation she gave. He reiterates that it was a donation and that it has already been spent. Nikki grabs the principle by the tie, and demands the money back, but finds the he will not budge. She leaves the office, and sees her reflection nod at her in the glass of the fish tank on the way out. Niki then tells it to leave her alone and dashes out.

Peter and Nathan meet their Mom at the police station to find the charges have been dropped. She tells them that she shoplifted socks to get caught. Nathan is primarily concerned about keeping the news out of the press, while Peter tends to his mother’s emotions. They get into a discussion on whether Nathan loves Peter or if the feeling is just one-way. Peter tells his mother that they have a connection. He continues to say that he knew that Nathan had been hurt in a car accident before he had gotten the call. His mother proceeds to slap him.

Niki and Micah stop by her friend Tina’s home. Tina asks how long she will be babysitting Micah. Niki tells her for only a couple hours. She tells Tina that she borrowed thirty thousand dollars from Linderman for bills and to get Micah into private school. Niki then tells Tina she feels like shes being watched by someone she can’t see. Then she retracts the statement and leaves.

Zach and Claire walk up on a derailed train that has caught on fire. Claire tells Zach to film. She walks into the fire and sees a man trapped inside. She drags him out to the fireman. One comments about Claire not being burnt before attending to the injured man. Claire takes this opportunity to run away.

Mohinder arrives at Chandra’s New York apartment with the landlord. They find the room in a wreck. Mohinder comments that “they” were here too. He asks the landlord to move in, and states his job to be none other than taxiing. He starts to rebuild the map off the photograph he took. He then finds a tape labeled, “Sylar.”

In New York, we meet the painter Isaac Mendez as he is destroying a painting. Simone walks in on him. He says he was high as he painted the pictures. He shows her a painting that he painted of a suicide bombing before it happened. He then yells at Simone to leave. The TV then shows the fire of the train Claire had gone into. The camera then pans to a painting of the fire Isaac had already painted.

Peter arrives at Nathan’s headquarters and discusses their mother. Then Nathan offers Peter a job, but then reveals that it is all self serving. Peter leaves saying he doesn’t want Nathan’s pity. He catches a cab driven by none other than Mohinder. They get in a philosophical conversation about greatness. This turns into a genetic conversation about evolution.

Niki returns home to retrieve a few items. She picks up Micah’s light box to watch the solar eclipse. She hears one of the thugs still in the home, but is grabbed before she can get away. They take her to the garage, where they offer to lower her debt by having her “work” for them by stripping for them. One of them hits her, and she blacks out.

Hiro continues to try to convince Ando that he can bend time and space. Ando jokes about him being in Star Trek.

Hiro and Ando go to a karaoke bar, and talk about how time works. Ando challenges him to teleport himself into the female restroom, then gets up to get a beer. Then Hiro starts concentrating on the door.

A message on the answering machine wakes Niki. She looks around to a bloody mess of the two thugs. Both of which are dead. Her reflection puts her finger over her mouth as to silence her.

Peter gets a call from Simone in Mohinder’s cab. He pays and gets out. Another man gets in the cab. They make small talk until the man brings up Chandra. Then Mohinder realizes this was the same mysterious man as the one in Chandra’s apartment in India. He pulls over and runs away.

Claire and her family sit down to dinner. Her father is absent, but her mother says that he will be home later that night. Claire says that she walked through fire and didn’t get burned, but her mom thinks she was being metaphorical.

Ando sees Hiro getting thrown out of the womens bathroom. He follows and asks why Hiro wants to be different. Ando yells sarcastically as Hiro is leaving that Hiro is a “Super Hero.”

At the Deveaux’s apartment, Simone is looking for morphine, with Peter there. She says she needs Peter to come along because he is a nurse.

Claire is washing the dishes and making small talk with her mother. Her ring slips off and falls into the garbage disposal while on. She quickly reaches in, before turning it off. She mangles up her hand pretty good, without her mom noticing. It starts to put itself back in place by itself. Claire then asks to know who her real parents are. We meet the mysterious man as Claire’s father.

Hiro is standing in the subway looking very dejected. He sees an ad to visit New York. All of a sudden the clock behind him starts to whiz through numbers and he is standing in Times Square. He yells, “Yatta! Hello, New York!”

Peter and Simone go to Isaacs and find him overdosed. Peter asks Simone to call 911, but gets distracted by a painting that Isaac did of Peter flying. Isaac tells them that they “need to stop it” as he points to an explosion painted on the floor.

Nathan shows up to an alleyway from a Taxi. He is talking to someone on a cellphone. A phone drops and breaks right beside him. We see Peter on the rooftop saying that it is his time to find out who he is. Then he takes a step off the ledge. As he is falling Nathan grabs him from midair. As Nathan is flying he accidentally lets go off Peter.

“To be continued…”

Trivia In the pilot they had several scenes which were not shown in the first episode on TV. One of which was an alternate scene of Isaac’s overdose. In the screener he had handcuffed himself to a cabinet to stop himself. But in the end he sawed off his arm to get the drugs. Very different…