Watching the Eclipse
by Russell Burlingame
It's funny that I, and a great number of viewers I've talked to, went into this season wishing that maybe they'd give Sylar a break...and when Samuel and the Carnival appeared, it seemed like salvation: new villains! New ideas! This week, the episode revolved largely around Sylar's and Samuel's plot beats, and before starting the episode, I was already looking forward To Sylar's and dreading Samuel's. The plot has seemed to grind to a halt in and around the carnival, leaving viewers stranded in a strange and uncomfortable land where there's awkward tension, rather than fun; Sylar, on the other hand, seems to have stolen all the energy from all the show's other characters and run with it all season long.
At the Carnival, Samuel is moping around with a blanket around his shoulders, still reeling from Vanessa's rejection in the last episode; when he notices that nobody's around much, or doing anything, he inquires to Lydia as to what's going on and she tells him that the Carnival is closed. She tells him that everyone is scared of him and he tells her that everyone is looking to her for guidance; she says they don't respect him anymore and he tells her that he'll do whatever he has to do to win them back.
Because, y'know, that worked out so well for him with the girl he spent the last ten or so years stalking.
In Peter's dreams, Emma is playing the cello at the Carnival and people are screaming all around her; Sylar arrives and tells her that he's there to save her, and then Peter wakes up. He tries to call Emma at the hospital, but they apparently haven't seen her; he says he's already been by her apartment with no luck. Immediately, his phone rings, and he answers his mother.
At Parkman's house, he arrives home and Sylar is there already; his son is at daycare, but his wife is there, so when Sylar pretends to be someone who used to work on the police force with Matt, Parkman feels obliged to play along. The two sit down to lunch.
Gretchen convinces Claire to tell her father about Sylar's visit to the college, and when she goes to Noah's apartment, Lauren answers the door. Awkward silence pause. Noah has apparently stepped out, and Claire asks about the files and stuff all over the apartment. They talk about Samuel wiping out that town last week and that the Primatech Duo have plans to respond; Claire, upset that her father hasn't really put that life behind him, leaves before her father can return.
At Parkman's, he and Sylar leave the lunch table to go in the basement and talk. Sylar tells him that he's impressed at the way Matt has found a way to live with his powers. He asks Matt to go into his head again, and take his powers away. Matt resists, but Sylar threatens Janice and Little Matt if he doesn't cooperate. They come to the agreement that Matt will help after Sylar allows Janice to leave the house unmolested.
At Angela Petrelli's home, she's asked Peter to join her because she's having trouble coping with committing to wording what should be on Nathan's tombstone. Peter tells her about the dream, which she confirms, but warns him that doing one (apparently) good thing doesn't change who Sylar fundamentally is. Peter asks Angela to help him find Sylar so that he can save Emma, and despite her better judgment she considers it.
Back at their dorm, Claire is ranting to Gretchen about Noah's plan to take down Samuel. Gretchen tries to convince her to forget about it and go to class, but Claire can't let it go, takes Gretchen's car keys and leaves.
Noah is trying to reach Claire on the phone, with no success; he decides that he can't wait to find out what she's doing, and needs to take down Samuel now. He packs up a rifle in a suitcase and heads out, but not until after sharing a moment with Lauren.
Claire, meanwhile, has arrived at the Carnival. She finds Lydia and moves to warn her that Noah is coming. Of course, Eli hears the conversation. By the time Claire and Lydia are done conferring, Samuel is there. He rambles for a while about how he's lost his way; they try to convince him to give himself up peacefully to Noah.
As Noah, meanwhile, camps in a hill outside the Carnival grounds and gets Samuel in his rifle scope, Lauren stops him, pointing out that Claire is a few feet away. He focuses on her, and sees her calling him on the cell phone. She tells him that Samuel wants to surrender, as long as the rest of the Carnival is safe and left alone; Noah agrees to meet him in the field outside the Carnival. Lauren tells Noah how stupid it is to believe Samuel, but Noah tells her that he has to trust in Claire. Lauren offers to go down and walk Samuel herself so that Noah can keep him in the crosshairs. Before the meeting happens, though, Samuel is making a long speech to the rest of the carnies and is shoot in the shoulder. He goes down and a dozen or so more shots are fired, damaging real estate, injuring Claire and sending Lauren scampering back to Noah.
Back at his house, Parkman tries to help Sylar, but keeps getting some kind of mental feedback and can't seem to make it work. As he's accusing Sylar of not really wanting to change, Janice returns and Sylar immediately uses his telekinesis to pin her to the wall. He tells Parkman to purge him of his powers, or he'll use them all on Janice.
In the hills above the carnival, Noah looks around him for the shooter, given that it wasn't him pulling the trigger. He sees Eli, shooting more or less randomly at the Carnival, the treeline, all over the place; one of his shots (stray or not? Hard to tell) hits Lauren as she runs back to Noah's stand. Noah shoots Eli, and Eli disappears-but then reappears behind Noah and smashes him in the face with the butt of his gun. Below, Lydia has been hit; as she lays there, bleeding out, Samuel kisses her so that she can see what really happened. She says, "You did this?" and he confirms it for her-all within earshot of the seer with the dreadlocks. She dies there, while Lauren is sitting under a tree, trying and failing to shoot Eli; he's got Noah in a fireman's carry, but she can't pull the trigger because she's been shot in the arm and is too shaky to hold the pistol up.
Eli drags Noah back to the Carnival, where Samuel tells him to tie Noah up and put him in the Hall of Mirrors; he instructs that Claire should be taken to his (Samuel's) trailer.
Back at Chez Parkman, Matt convinces Sylar to let his wife go; before she leaves, she deduces that he's Sylar (duh), and Matt tells her what Sylar wants, and that he has looked into Sylar's head to see that Sylar isn't lying but that he doesn't know he can do it. She tells him that she doesn't care what Sylar wants; what Matt has to do is "bury him." She leaves, and when Matt goes back into the living room, he "hides" Sylar's powers inside of Sylar's head, telling him that now he'll have to live all alone, forever, with his immortality; he says that once he leaves, Sylar will forget all of this ever happened and just be living in his own personal hell. After a few quick cuts, Matt is building a brick wall, with Sylar behind it, in his basement "project room." Before he's finished, Peter Petrelli shouts to him from upstairs.
Back at the Carnival, Emma walks through the bleeding, frantic crowds and is welcomed as the "family doctor." Samuel tells her that she's not just going to heal him, but help him create a "new world." This idea doesn't seem to sit perfectly with Emma, but Samuel's too wrapped up in it to notice.
In one of those scenes that works quite well with no dialogue, Peter and Parkman shake hands; now they can just read each other's minds. Peter starts walking to the basement, knowing what Matt is doing. Matt, meanwhile, figures out that Peter is here to take Sylar and follows him down the stairs yelling about it. Peter tells him that he has to bring Sylar back, and Matt tries to warn him that if he goes into Sylar's head he might not find his way out. He does so anyway and is almost immediately lost in Sylar's "worst nightmare," a completely empty New York City where he (or in this case Peter) is completely isolated, and when you walk, there's MTV-style editing. Shouting "hello!" an awful lot, he wanders away from the camera and deeper into the City.
In the hills above the Carnival, Lauren is coming back to a more resolute kind of consciousness. She takes out her cell phone and dials "Noah's friend," and on the other end, Tracy Strauss answers; Lauren tells her that Noah told her to call if anything went wrong.
Samuel closes Lydia's eyes, and Edgar arrives at super-speed. He's mourning Lydia while Samuel blames "normal people" for the death. As Claire, Noah and Lauren look to be preparing for the next step, Samuel delivers a long speech to his people that concludes with "It's time we showed the world what we truly are."
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Russell Burlingame (russell@comicrelated.com) / Columnist, Reviewer and Contributor
Russell is a journalist and columnist living and working in New York City. In high school, Russell interviewed Elliot S. Maggin for a review of the Kingdom Come novelization, and since then has worked consistently in and around the comics industry. He interned for Wizard magazine, and has freelanced for Wizard and Newsarama, in addition to a number of non-comics publications, Russell is currently working on a graphic novel based on Cap'n Internet, the comic strip that ran in his college newspaper; and a graphic biography of folk singer Phil Ochs with artist Marion Vitus.
Currently, in addition to his freelance work and his comics projects, Russell writes a number of columns for ComicRelated, including Conscientious Sequentials, The Gold Exchange, What's Perhappenin', Closing Statements, Reflecting 'Pool and To See or Not To See.
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