Last week on Heroes, Hiro snapped out of his nerd-riddle-speak thanks to Ando’s shock therapy treatment, Peter learned that Emma will be responsible for killing thousands of people, and Noah avoided going to Claire for help in tracking down Samuel.  Somehow, Sylar is playing a role Emma’s fate, as evidenced by his appearance in Peter’s “future dream.”

This week’s episode, “Pass/Fail,” didn’t do too much to progress the overall storyline, but involved more personal subplots that I thought were actually pretty good.  Keep reading for the full review.  As always, there will be spoilers.

Last week, Hiro, Suresh, and Ando appeared in Noah’s apartment, and that’s where we pick things up this week.  It appears that Suresh will not be returning after this episode.  He built Noah a compass – the type that can locate the carnival – and informed him that only someone with abilities can use it before saying goodbye and peacing out.  Before Noah can begin his search, though, Hiro’s vision becomes blurry and he passes out.  And then, in a setting reminiscent of the Seinfeld finale, Hiro finds himself in some sort of “death waiting room” dimensional court where he’ll be tried for altering the timeline.  I’m not really sure where or when this place is supposed to be and how much of it is in Hiro’s head (as opposed to the consciousnesses of other people being able to join him in this dimension), but it wasn’t the type of thing we usually see on Heroes.  Whether that’s good or bad I’ll leave up to you.

The court is in a diner (presumably the one where Charlie worked), with Hiro’s father as the judge, Adam Monroe as the prosecutor, and Ando as Hiro’s defense lawyer.  The charges against Hiro are altering the timeline for personal gain, and Adam Monroe calls several witnesses to testify as to Hiro’s character. After a young Ando and young Hiro’s sister, Sylar (how is he or part of his mind there?), and Charlie are called (Charlie can’t appear because she been lost in space-time), Hiro has a samurai sword duel with his old nemesis, Adam Monroe.  Hiro wins (of course) and his mother soon appears.  She tells Hiro that destiny is stronger than science (and anti-atheist jab?  Hmmm) and heals Hiro’s brain tumor.  Did Hiro’s mother have the ability to heal when she was alive?  Does it matter?  Hiro regains consciousness in a hospital room, healed but exhausted.

For a minute or two I thought that Hiro may really die, which really would have been something.  He’s one of the biggest characters the show has had, and killing him off may not have been the worst idea.  It erases time travel paradoxes and “reset buttons” for good, plus if the writers are willing to kill Hiro, who knows what else they’d do.  But Hiro lives.

Samuel, meanwhile, spent most of the episode charming the pants off of Vanessa.  Thanks to the homeless guy from Central Park, Samuel was able to build his and Vanessa’s dream cottage in a beautiful valley.  Samuel brings Vanessa to see the cottage and asks her to live there with him, only to get rejected.  Completely devastated from getting shot down, Samuel picks a fight with a diner waitress (diner waitresses have pretty sh*tty luck on this show).  Samuel completely flips out and displays how powerful he can be by creating a sinkhole to swallow the entire town.  It’ll be interesting to see how he’s stopped.

The one guy who would have a chance of stopping Samuel – if he wasn’t “impotent” -is Sylar.  Because of his new magical Claire tattoo, he tracks down Claire at college and explains to her that they have a lot in common: they’ve both been adopted, abandoned, and are immortal.  Plus, they both have gone their entire lives being unable to relate to anyone and fear dying alone.  These similarities convince Sylar that he and Claire are linked (an idea that has been proposed in the past but never really explored), and if he figures out what Claire desires, he’ll be somehow able to figure out how to get his killer mojo back.  Sylar uses Lydia’s power to read Claire’s desires, but he lets his guard down and takes a pencil to the eye in a scene straight from a B-horror movie.  Just because he doesn’t have the balls to kill doesn’t mean he isn’t smart, so Sylar gets Claire to spill her guts about her feelings for Gretchen by using his shapeshifting ability to disguise himself as Gretchen, and he’s then able to figure out that purging himself of his powers will help him regain his humanity.

I’m not really sure this makes sense.  For one, why would regaining his humanity help him kill again?  And furthermore, why would Sylar want to become more humane? I’m not really sure where this is going, to be honest, and maybe I’m overlooking something.  But otherwise, it seems pretty contradictory.

After finding out what he needed to know, Sylar leaves Claire unharmed and heads over to Parkman’s house.  It’s safe to say that Sylar is going to ask for Parkman’s help, most likely to erase some (or all?) of his powers.  Why?  Again, I have no idea.

What did you guys think of this episode?