What I’m Watching: Heroes

Heroes: Season 4, Episode 5 “Hysterical Blindness” (F)

The much-hyped inevitable episode where Claire officially experiments with lesbianism as her roommate starts crushing on her finally arrives, and it’s just as stupid and uninteresting as expected. Claire attending all of the sorority pledging events is a waste of precious screen time for this series, and it continues to have not one thing to do with what this show is supposed to be all about: super powers. It turns out that someone with ties to the sorority does have powers, and that would be Rebecca, played by Tessa Thompson, who I knew I recognized from somewhere but couldn’t quite place. It turns out she’s an alumnus of the fantastically classic “Hidden Palms” which aired on the CW two years ago. She doesn’t bring much to this show, but her being in league with Samuel, connecting this plot to the rest of the show. Flashing back with the idiotic repeats of previously-seen scenes to demonstrate how Rebecca was present in all of these seemingly unimportant moments which pointed to Gretchen as a creepster was pretty unnecessary, and feels too much like dumbing everything down for the audience (not that the audience should be expecting much now). At least things make a bit more sense now, but Claire still shouldn’t be taking up a quarter of each episode just hanging out at college. Nobody cares. Bringing Sylar into the fold of Samuel’s clan makes him relevant again, which is good, and hopefully he’ll soon regain his memories and start exerting his evilness on purpose instead of inadvertently in jail or accidentally as Nathan. The actual living Petrelli brother is the focus of this episode’s only scene stupider than Claire’s girl-on-girl kiss: his three-times-in-a-row musically-scored stop-and-go attempts to run at super speed only to find that he now has Emma’s bizarre sound-as-color power. These heroes used to be sort of cool, but not anymore. Not by a long shot.