Sketches - You know nothing about me.

Heroes Season Four Episode Eleven – Thanksgiving.

The "Redemption"-Volume of "Heroes" has been about finding a new path and making up for past mistakes, but this issue has always been linked very closely to the idea of family. So what better way to escalate some of the conflicts that have been simmering under the surface for quite some time now on the rich Thanksgiving dinner tables of three separate families? In a season that struggled with at least eight separate storylines that only intersected occasionally, having an episode that sticks to an internal structure for these storylines, instead of just providing a puzzle of different locations and events, is an appreciated change of pace.

The Carnival Thanksgiving Dinner Table Power Play (Hide the Knives!)

Let’s start out with the Carnies. I mentioned in my discussion of last week’s episode that I preferred the idea that Samuel was basically just trying to protect his people and using questionable methods to do so: “Heroes” has had a fair share of power-hungry white male villains obsessed with collecting something, something a little different would have been nice for a change. Samuel is still an interesting character, and now that he is holding Hiro hostage, we also get glimpses of the dying Master of Space and Time trying to figure out what he can do about the miserable situation he has gotten himself into. One of the biggest mistakes “Heroes” has made in past seasons was always reducing Hiro to an almost child-like (sometimes even literally that) state whenever he was about to realize his potential (and probably become the dark, sword-bearing man from the future we saw in the first season). Giving Hiro something that might push him to make difficult decisions in Charlie, the love of his life, is a fantastic opportunity.
Hiro discovers frictions inside the Carnival. The series itself has only hinted that Lydia and Edgar don’t always agree with Samuel’s choices (there is a more complex exploration of this in the additional content provided by the graphic novel and the webisodes, that also answer the question who the newly introduced character of Lydia’s daughter is). Lydia asks him to go back eight weeks so they can figure out what happened to Joseph, Samuel’s brother – and they watch as Samuel, angry after finding out about the true potential of his power, kills his own brother, who intends to deliver him to the government because he can no longer control Samuel’s hunger. Samuel later framed Danko for the murder of his brother and used this to spark the conflict between his family and the government.
Not that Hiro himself could do much with this information. The conflict threatens to break out at the dinner table, but Hiro is still Samuel’s hostage, so instead of telling the truth about what he saw, Edgar now gets framed for the murder and Hiro can only manage to buy him time to run away, which leaves Lydia all on her own. And now that Samuel has seen the film Hiro saved from Mohinder (who, by the way, is to blame for ALL OF THIS, he decided not to destroy his father’s work, figured out the formula, built the compass, and came to the Carnival to talk to Joseph), he knows what he has to do to consolidate his powers, and as these things go, it looks like another hero might be on her way to accidentally help him with that (although wiping some of Hiro's memories to keep him in check turns out to be not such a good idea).

The Noah Bennet Thanksgiving Dinner Bloodbath (Hide the Knives!)

In the beginning of the episode, we get so see something that we probably have never seen before (except for some small scenes from the past in “Once Upon a Time in Texas”): Noah Bennet in a social interaction that does not involve either his family or people with powers. Although he is the one who is building his life from scratch (one of the reasons why he connected so well with Tracy in the beginning of the season), we haven’t really seen him do that. Now it turns out that he has apparently decided to take matters into his own hands by stalking Lauren (Lauren’s “You’re stalking me, aren’t you” is so different from Claire’s reaction when she thought Gretchen was a psychopath – cute how the two storylines mirror each other), the previous co-worker who had a crush on him and decided to go Haitian because that’s what you do in the Company with feelings and emotions. Lauren, possibly the least complicated character we have ever been introduced to, gracefully accepts an invitation to the “unconventional” Bennet family dinner (which is good, cause Noah can’t cook).
While Noah successfully connects to another person, Claire is still miserable in her room. We are treated to another one of her longing stares at the empty bed - Gretchen moved “to the other side of campus” (she apparently sneaked into the room to get all her stuff, as we have no indication that the two of them spoke since she left – because there is no such things as phones or the internet on “Heroes”), and other people in the dorm don’t even greet her back, now that she is a social pariah. She doesn’t really want to have dinner with her family, but accepts anyways because she wants to talk to Noah. That Other Child I Seem To Remember From Previous Seasons is somewhere else and will not be spoken about ever again (but hey, the cute dog is back!)
So, to sum up the people present in Noah’s miserable one-room apartment (he didn’t even bother to cover up his creepy serial killer “clippings about Samuel”-wall): Noah, Lauren (“She’s not a date! That’s Lauren!”), Claire, and Mrs Bennet with her new partner, Doug Douglas, who is pretty much the exact opposite of Noah (he breeds show dogs! He tries to use French words randomly!  - Sandra nicely sums him up by saying that he’s not very bright, but a good man). The dinner goes as awkwardly as expected. Doug doesn’t pick up on the weirdness in the room and makes strange comments like “you are so likeable” (while asking why her roommate would move out) to Claire, who has never been so sorry that it’s physically impossible for her to get wasted. Lauren tries to save the evening with cute and funny comments (They are already calling each other cute names! Is she going to be around? I like her!), even after being treated like domestic help by Sandra, who thinks its okay for her to move on, but not for Noah.
Then, in the middle of the awesomeness, Claire decides to tell everybody that she intends to quit College (that’s what you do when “one relationship” fails – and that was Noah’s word) and travel through Europe or join the Carnival or something. Since Sandra has been absent from her daughter’s life for the past months, she has no clue what this is about. I thought the moment when Noah mentioned to Claire that he had invested a lot of money in her education, and Claire reminded HIM of where all that money came from, was one of the best – it sums up their relationship pretty nicely, the working around the shady past, how they are close despite all the things Claire knows about her Dad. Then Doug intervenes and compares Claire’s freakiness (no, he doesn’t know anything about her) to his like for show dog breeding when he was in College (“Do you think I had any friends?”), which prompts the only logical reaction: Claire cuts her arm, and Doug faints dramatically.
The Bennet dinner is played for the comedic element, to lighten up an episode that is otherwise pretty dark (as Claire has served the exact same purpose last episode with Tracy, I assume that really bad things are coming her way in the future) – but the last few scenes actually do advance Claire’s plot. The last surprise guest is late, and it’s… Gretchen (which of course wasn’t exactly a surprise for anyone who watched the trailer for the episode, but that’s how “Heroes” deals with surprises these days).
As I mentioned before, I liked what the writers did by separating the two for a couple of episodes to give Claire time to think, I just thought that the decisions that led them both to this point were out of character. At least now someone had the fantastic idea not to make this scene awkward at all, instead Claire and Gretchen are all smiles and just happy to see each other again. As everybody else leaves (Doug doesn’t even need the Haitian, Sandra just tells him that he ate a peanut – Noah was more concerned about two over-exited college girls than Sandra’s boyfriend?), Noah tries to show Claire all the things he has figured out about Samuel, but the message doesn’t really get through, and she misinterprets his lecture about “choices”. She tells him she’ll return to College, but in the car with Gretchen, she proposes a different idea: she will take her very un-invincible girlfriend (okay, friend. For now.) on a road-trip to the Carnival to check out her choices. And yeah, the invisible psycho killer might be there, but hey, it’s an adventure, right? I hope Gretchen remembered to pack the baby powder.

So again, while I like the idea that Gretchen and Claire team up, go on a road trip and do some detective work (I thought that was the one thing that actually worked in the weakly constructed Slaughterhouse-scavenger-hunt), I just can’t see that Claire would drag Gretchen to the person who has tried to kill her (although the returned Gretchen is once again the seemingly unshakable tough girl we met before the fall-out of the slaughterhouse: to paraphrase, she basically tells Claire that the past weeks without being scared for her life were rather dull).

“Maybe because of all the people I’ve met in College so far, you’re the only one who makes sense to me.” –Gretchen

Gretchen makes a choice here, to follow Claire wherever she goes (saying that Becky isn’t one her favourite people, but Claire is) – but I just hope that Claire doesn’t end up regretting hers, because by going to the Carnival, she is doing exactly what Samuel wanted her to. Turns out, you don’t get Claire by isolating her, but by appealing to that part of her that was most interesting in the third season, when Claire decided to use her powers and do things on her own.

The Petrelli Thanksgiving Dinner Surprise Guest (Hide the Knives!)

This is probably the most miserable of all the dinners, especially since the setting is devoid of light and decorative elements (it’s Peter’s apartment, so Angela had to provide the furniture). Angela, the one character that beats Noah’s unpredictability. We never know what she is thinking, or what motivates her actions – and yet, even as Peter asks her what exactly she did to Nathan and Sylar, she blackmails them into having a normal family (“or you’ll never see me again”). When she explains what she did, it’s hard to read whether she did all this to save her son, or the investment she made into his political future – and she only realizes her great mistake when she sees that the person appearing as Nathan is PEOPLE – and that there is now an internal struggle going on between the two minds inhabiting this body, and considering Sylar’s powers, it’s not hard to predict who will prevail. Nathan flies away after realizing that he is a threat to the people he loves, but Peter is determined to protect that little bit of family he has still left, and follows.

Sketches - A Tale of Two Towns

Contains Spoilers for the fourth season of "Friday Night Lights" (up to Episode Four, "A Sort of Homecoming")

When last season's finale brought the graduation of many of the main characters of the show, it became clear that the fourth season would require a reinvention of sorts, a new beginning. The last scene from "Tomorrow Blues" had Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) walking over the weedy football field of East Dillon, the "other school", which he had helped to deprive of its biggest talents when the special interest of the West Dillon Panthers interfered with the redistricting. This would be a new beginning indeed, a sort of Tabula Rasa: not only would Coach Taylor have a new team, but he would also suddenly find himself on the "wrong side of the tracks" - the part of Dillon that got left behind during the developments of the Eighties, struck by poverty and lack of funding. One of the community leaders Eric Taylor turns to for funding turns him down: he's fed up with hearing people from the other side of town tell him what the problems of his community are, as they are the ones who got funding, the mall, the hotel back in the Eighties.

The writers of the show set this sudden change up perfectly, introducing the unsympathetic character of Mr McCoy (DW Muffett) up to become the driving force of the process of alienation from the team the audience cheered for in the first three seasons: Father of quarterback JD McCoy (Jeremy Sumpter), a wealthy and obsessed man, he became the opposite to the passionate and resourceful Coach Taylor, and slowly, as the final episodes of season three progressed, he took over - as money had always been a driving force of sorts for West Dillon Football. Finally, in the last episode, he used his power to send Coach Taylor to Exile in East Dillon.

The first few episodes of the fourth season pick up where the season finale left off. First of, the alienation continues as all of the remaining characters suddenly find themselves re-districted to East Dillon (Landry, Devin, Julie Taylor out of sympathy for her two friends), while  principal Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) had a hard time standing up to the machismo of the West Dillon footballteam. JD McCoy, portrayed as a boy suffering from the expectations of his dad in season three, turned into an arrogant jerk, enjoying his new stardom too much. The East Dillon Lions, meanwhile, turned out to be an imaginary team: Coach Taylor had to start from scratch, desperately finding moldable talent among the underprivileged students of East Dillon. This talent turned out to be very "raw": Among them a boy who had practiced running quickly by fleeing from the police (Vince, played by Michael B. Jordan), for whom football became the only chance to escape prison, and talented West Dillon player Luke Cafferty (Matt Lauria), who had cheated his way into the right school district. The fact that Tami Taylor supported her husband in this matter put her in a miserable position: it was well-established in previous seasons how far the love for the Panthers goes for the Dillon townies, and depriving her own team one of the biggest talents put Tami on the receiving end of much animosity (spray-painting of her car, lack of funding for her own projects like the school library).

Football as the only way out of Dillon for the kids playing it was already an important issue in the first three seasons, but for the Lions, this bears even more importance, as they come from the part of town that is even less resourceful. Coach Taylor is used to be faced with high expectations, but in East Dillon, he has to battle against all odds, as the families of these kids are not invested in football at all, and the community has much bigger problems than funding a team - the big business (and Buddy Garrity) are on the other side of town. Finally, in season four, we start to see the downside of a town obsessed with one team: this is also a town that does not address more burning issues of poverty and unemployment - and this seems to be a racial division as well.

Two characters who have already graduated didn't make it out of Dillon after all, although they had every chance to do so: Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) is such a likeable character because he is different from all the other kids: while they struggle to get out of Dillon at all costs, getting scholarships anywhere else, he was always the one guy convinced that he could build a life here. Everybody else tried to push him out of Dillon, into a different life, but it only takes the series a couple of seconds to show how out of place he is at College: and soon, he's driving his shabby truck back to Dillon, tossing his books out of the window. For Tim Riggins, it's Texas Forever, even after his best friend has successfully managed his unlikely big escape to New York, even after his girlfriend has managed to get into college ("I think we had different paths", he tells Matt Sarecen in "A Sort of Homecoming"). Tim ends up as an assistant coach to Eric Taylor in East Dillon - Matt Sarecen (Zach Gilford) meanwhile had different reasons for not going to art school in Chicago: his didn't want to leave his girlfriend Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden) behind and still felt responsible for his grandmother (Louanne Stephens). Matt ends up where most former Panther stars who didn't get into College are: in the booming fast food industry (and, in Matt's case, in community art college). While Tim Riggins seems firmly set on staying in Dillon, Matt slowly starts to realize that probably this wasn't such a good idea: the local artist he assists turns out to be not much of a help artistically, and Julie is dead-set on leaving Texas for an Ivy League College anywhere but here. These two characters have fallen from grace fast: there is no better place to be in Dillon than a member of the winning team after a Friday night game, but once you've graduated and gotten out of your uniform, you are suddenly nothing but a shadow of your previous fame and left to fend for yourself. Newly returned from his short stint in College, Tim finds out about that soon: "So what's it like to be the guy who used to be Tim Riggins?"

"Friday Night Lights" manages to tackle issues of race, gender, being a teenager in a small town, politics, the receiving end of failed policy choices and foreign wars and sports - and usually talks about the bigger issues in such an amazingly subtle, character-driven way, that it usually takes you some time to realize what you've just seen. In the most recent episode, unlikely teenage musician Devin (Stephanie Hunt) asked her friend Julie to accompany her to a gay bar "outside of Dillon" ("I need you not to be weird about it")- a truly miserable place, but it's amazing how undramatically the show handles an issue that could easily be exploited. There is space for indie kids, artists and gay and lesbian people in Dillon, but its a tiny, cramped niche, and the show does an incredible job at portraying why exactly most of the students are trying so desperately to get out of the tightly-knit community, as cosy and familiar it might be. The fourth season now turnes to the real underdogs of Dillon - and it was also much easier to root for the underdogs than the shiny stars with the big budget and the jumbo screen.

Dream One - The Apocalypse

Zwischen den Regalreihen, auf einem weichen Teppichboden, in der spezifischen Stille und dem grellen, aber nicht unangehmen Licht der Bibliothek, suchte ich nach Dietmar Daths "Abschaffung der Arten" und Olga Flors "Kollateralschaden". Als ich nach draußen ging, fand ich die Straße nicht verlassen, aber die wenigen Menschen füllten sie nicht. Das Licht war wie am frühen Vormittag, aber die Stimmung wie kurz vor Sonnenuntergang im Sommer, wenn alle von der Arbeit nach Hause gehen.

In der Ferne sah ich den Pilz einer Atombombe, der sich perfekt in die Landschaft einfügte.

Ich ging zurück in die Bibliothek, um weiter nach den Büchern zu suchen - aber zusätzlich suchte ich noch nach einem Band, in dem ich all das schon einmal gelesen hatte. Es war weniger eine Prophezeiung als ein Erlebnisbericht eines Zeitreisenden. Als ich all diese Bücher gestapelt in meinen Händen trug, die auf altem Papier gedruckt und in Leder gebunden waren, machte ich mich auf den Weg, sie auszuleihen, als Mark, der Freund einer Freundin, mich in eine abgetrennte Kammer zog und mir zuflüsterte, dass wir miteinander fliehen müssten. In dem Moment kam Sarah, die Freundin einer Freundin, zu uns. Mark und Sarah kannten sich nicht, aber ich sagte zu ihm, er solle sie mitnehmen - ich würde bleiben um zu sehen, wie all das ausgeht.

traum 1. 

Sketches: It's like what I do

Heroes Season Four Episode Ten: Brother's Keeper. May contain spoilers for future episodes ("Thanksgiving").

Oh "Heroes". There is this cat in my neighbourhood that always greets me enthusiastically. Whenever I come visit my parents, it comes running towards me whenever it sees me coming, and then follows me home. It's perfectly sweet and loves to be petted for a certain period of time: But I know exactly that a point comes when that cat leashes out, growls at me, and will attack me with its claws when I come close. This ALWAYS happens.
And "Heroes", that is how I feel about you. It's one of the reasons why getting attached to you is so much more difficult than obsessing over, say, "Dollhouse" (which too is painful, but the pain is usually either caused by outside forces like "the network" or it's so mind-blowing and makes so much sense that it becomes part of what makes the show great). The other reason: I can suspend disbelief like you wouldn't believe and ignore when you invent physics as you go along (so now people with powers emanate a measurable force that is amplified when two or more specials come together, huh? How did that work out last season with the hoarding of hundreds of specials in the secret government facility?), but the one thing that is hard to forgive is when you are not sure about your own characters, if even after four years of writing for them, each episode feels like you started from scratch and just made up things about them.
In retrospect, last week's episode wasn't as bad as I made it out to be (obviously I hadn't read the spoilers for upcoming episodes and was concerned about Gretchen leaving like that) - but I still think that it's indicative of this season (which so far has been way better than anything else since season one) when I sometimes feel like well-established characters like Claire act out-of-character (and am I the only one who felt like both Hayden Panettiere and Madeline Zima weren't really sure how to act in all their scenes previous to Gretchen deciding to leave? Like they didn't really understand the motivation and decision-making progress of their characters?).
There are two sides to this. On the one hand, the end of last episode with Claire staring over longingly at Gretchen's empty bed and Matt deciding to make the ultimate sacrifice because there was nothing else he could do to battle the way superior Sylar who was driving his body were emotionally compelling scenes, which gave both characters the opportunity to go to new places. On the other hand, the thing about narratives is, they have to make sense. Even if the aftermath, the consequences, of a particular decision or event are amazing for the story and provide a new direction, how you get there still matters, and if you have to ignore something you previously established about a character to get there, you shouldn't.
Also, if you take away the consequences of someone's action, or devaluate a particularly brave decision or action, within the first half of the episode, this tends to diminish the entire thing in retrospect.
In "My Brother's Keepers", everything falls into place and the characters are placed on the tangent that will finally lead them together and give them a shared storyline, instead of oh-so-many individual stories that are barely connected - but the episode also takes away the most emotionally compelling moments of "Shadowboxing".

Peter / Nathan / Matt / Sylar
After the season finale of last year, when Matt drove Sylar's memories out of his body to replace them with Nathan, it was hard not to see parallels to "Dollhouse", which was starting its first season at about the same time. The idea that some things in a person can not be wiped and remain, that some character traits are more than just memories and are fixed, was conveyed in such a tiny scene (Nathan hearing a clock, knowing exactly what was wrong with it). "Heroes" potential has always intrigued me: in no other show you could have three actors in one room who all share some fragment of the same identity or body (Matt in Matt's body, Sylar in Matt's body, Matt in Sylar's mind, Nathan in Sylar's body, Nathan and Sylar in Sylar's body, I think my head is spinning now). The tragic element of the scene in which Peter, not knowing what he is doing, is reversing Matt's decision by saving him, and therefore also Sylar inside of him, is that this is a game of "musical chairs": there's two bodies for three people, and one of them will have to go. The idea of family, that was so far more present with Samuel and probably the complicated relationship between Claire and her Dad (this will come to fruition in "Thanksgiving", the ultimate family-episode), now comes up here too: Peter didn't know about Nathan before, and it's the Haitian who reveals the truth, but Peter trusts his brother, so despite all warnings, he takes him along for the ride. They both discover Nathan's actual dead body (which, for some ominous reason, Mama Petrelli has kept around in a cryogenic box), and go to Texas to save Matt. Of course, Peter's decision to make Nathan a part of this, instead of finding out what exactly happened on his own, puts Nathan/Sylar's body in exactly the spot where he shouldn't be. But Peter only has a small family, and his mom has proved to be anything but trustworthy, so he needs to stick to the one person he still has left.

“Are you hearing yourself? Look you know what I see when I look at all this? I see a Big Brother who would let me win by a nose when we raced. I see a naval officer who would re-arrange his leave so I could have a good birthday. For the past couple of years, I’ve seen a guy that saved my ass more than a few times.”

It's not just Samuel who profits from people wanting something they can't really have - at the end of this, Sylar also has exactly what he wants, and in a way, so does Matt, who makes a half-heartedly happy phone call to his wife, saying he's finally back in the driver seat for good.

Tracy / Claire

At the beginning of this season, I was surprised how interested I was in Tracy Strauss' arc: it was well-executed and fit in so well with the Volume-title "Redemption". When we see her here, we have to remember the long way she's come so far: she went on a vengeance spree, Noah convinced her to start something new, she tried to get back her old life as a Washington lobbyist and failed miserably, then she tried to redeem herself by helping Noah save a troubled kid, which failed miserably and horribly, and now she is out on the road, trying to figure out whether she should join the Carnival or not (I supposed the Compass can only show the way once the person carrying it has made up their mind? Yes?). After what she saw in Georgia, she has probably the best reasons to actually follow Samuel's call, which is interesting as he didn't really have much to do with what happened to Jeremy - the hateful townspeople did all his work for him.

“Just because they’re different doesn’t make them freaks.” – Tracy in the diner, about circus people

Then, her powers go out of control. She just saw what happens when "Specials" get exposed to the public, how antagonistically human beings can react to anything that is different - so she decided to go to Noah to ask for help, because she literally has nobody else to turn to.
The person she finds there is Claire, not Noah. This is an interesting pairing, as these two have more in common that one might have suspected from Tracy’s roots. This is also a scene in which “Heroes” wholeheartedly embraces the potential weirdness of having a character who can freeze anything and one who can heal and grow back body parts (also, this probably sparked a whole new femslash community). In many ways, the scene in which Tracy freezes Claire was like an “Ink, Part 2”: and one has to appreciate when a foot that is breaking off can be played for comic relief (also classic: When Noah comes back and finds the two women on the couch, with the now useless extra-foot in front of them on the table, as Claire has grown a new one. So what exactly does Bennet do with all of the extra parts Claire has left behind over the years?). Especially after the doom that has loomed over Claire’s relationship to her powers over the past episodes, it’s nice to see her actually enjoying having them (“I heal! That’s like what I do!”). I love how "Heroes" delves into the idea that having a show about superpowers is sometimes not about flying or blowing stuff up in creative ways, but also about pretty things (like Emma and Peter, enjoying their own personal rainbowy goodness) and the wackness that is severed-body-parts-humour.
The down-side to this is, of course, that Claire has just found out that she can not have a normal life. She tried, and now the only person who made it worthwhile is gone. She tells Tracy to run with her instincts and join the Carnival (weird. So Noah failed to mention to her what he has found out about Sinkhole Sam? She actually bought his good guy/bad invisible girl-spiel from last episode?)

Tracy: “I was sitting in this diner, thinking about…about changing everything. My entire life. I’ve been so lost Claire. I tried so hard to put my old life back together, but once I did, nothing fit anymore. Then I met this strange man named Samuel. He lives with a group of people…
Claire: “Who all have abilities? Yeah, I met him too.”
Tracy: “He invited me to join them, to move to this place where we’re all accepted. I think I might do it. Give up everything, start a new life.”
Claire: “Maybe you should. Maybe that’s what your body is telling you it wants.”
Tracy: “It’s great to have someone to talk to about all this. It’s hard to find a friend out there in the normal world. Someone you trust.”
Claire: “Yeah, I had something like that. I’m pretty sure that’s over. It just sounded so good on paper, College… Now I’m starting to wonder.”
Tracy: “It’s hard out there, for girls like us.”

Noah: “Ladies! How was your day?” [seeing the severed foot on the coffee table]
Claire: “Well, you know. Same old, same old.”

We’ve come to understand now that almost everything Noah does is to make the world a saver place for his daughter to grow up in: But his earnest wish that she should lead a normal life can not come true, and Claire is coming to terms with the idea that she might not get that, even is she does trust her father now. The questions is if she realizes in time that Samuel isn’t the right place to go, or what exactly changes if it should turn out that she can have the one thing that Tracy lacks: a real friend. For Tracy, there isn't any way around Samuel's Carnival.

Hiro / Mohinder / Samuel
We find out, finally after the reveal from two weeks ago that Samuel killed Mohinder, that the Indian scientist has indeed started a normal life back in India, teaching, living with his girlfriend. But the past does not just go away because you turn your back – and the film reels of his dad’s research are still looming over Mohinder, revealing Samuel’s “Heroes”-story quite literally, as Dr Suresh Senior was present when he was born. Another vital information on the tape, that Samuel is keen on getting his hands on, is that the presence of other Specials increases his power. And, as is revealed now, Samuel isn’t just trying to protect and grow his family, he lusts for power, and his brother, before he died, tried everything to keep the information about his power from him.
This is an interesting development but also sad, because Samuel was so intriguing because his motives were not entirely evil, and because some episodes even showed that some of his actions were justified or at least understandable from his perspective (like when he took revenge on the police men who killed Jeremy, or even supporting Becky in taking revenge on Noah). I am more interested in the idea that past actions by Noah and Nathan as a politician give reason to Specials to do anything to protect themselves from harm, than see another power-hungry villain who likes to collect stuff.
Of course, anybody who felt sympathy for Samuel probably changed their opinion two episodes ago, when he sacrificed his own time traveller only to strand recently saved Charlie in time, and make Hiro his pawn. He desperately wants the video reel to find out about his own powers, and Hiro has already indicated that he would do pretty much anything to save the love of his life (“forget about the cheerleader”, he said back in Texas, clearly stating his priorities). He gets Samuel what he wants, but he also proves he is more resourceful than he was in past seasons, saving Mohinder and hiding him from Samuel (in an insane asylum of all places).