“Fight or Flight” continues season two’s inconsistency. Half the stories are worth watching while the other half aren’t. And even the ones that are worth watching have taken a while to develop. Such as the Peter Petrelli storyline for example. Peter has settled into his new life with Caitlin when a young blonde woman named Elle is shown to be looking for him on the docks of Cork. She gets information from a few men, like Will as to where he is. As she walks away she begins playing with electricty from her fingers. Elle is an interesting development. A new character with ties to the storyline ingrained as she is searching for Peter, she is immediately more interesting than Alejandro and Maya.

When Ricky hears of Elle looking for Peter, he considers Peter to be family so he tells him to go stay at Caitlin’s flat while he pushes her off the search. Peter tries to let him deal with it on his own, but Ricky is too loyal and too stubborn.

While at the flat Peter finally opens his box, as the woman searching for him proves that he can’t hide from his past. He finds a few items, such as his passport, a plane ticket to Montreal and a photograph of himself with Nathan, although he has no idea who he is. His frustration leads him to tap into Isaac’s precognition power as he paints the future - him and Caitlin on a street in Montreal.

Elle makes his way to Ricky’s pub who says he’s never met Peter. Elle is saddened, visibly, but then uses her electricity to weld the doors close and begins to shoot the bolts at Ricky until he’s nothing more than a charred corpse. In a weird twist she talks to someone on the phone who orders her off the missions. She accepts the orders begrudgingly as she calls the caller, “Daddy”.

Peter and Caitlin make their way to the pub where they find his body. Caitlin cries in horror as Peter tries to comfort her and tells her that the woman is looking for him and that he’ll have to take care of it.

Finally. Even though he hasn’t really been there long, it seemed as if Peter’s tale from Ireland was taking FOREVER. I can’t even pinpoint why. I liked Ricky, I liked Caitlin, but it was the detachment from the main story I think that led me to want them to just get on with it.

We then travel to another very slow moving story. Moncia Dawson is being questioned by the police where she went Mysterio on the gangbanger. Fearing retribution, she refuses to identify him to the disappointment of the officer.

As Micah is playing the piano at home, Monica claims not to be able to play and then all of a sudden she can play like a prodigy and it frightens her. Micah realizes that she has a power and using his comics identifies it as muscle mimicry — basically whatever she sees, she is able to copy. To test his theory they try at double dutch and then later on with a Bruce Lee movie when Mohinder finds her for the company and brings her in.

Again it has some potential, but it just isn’t moving quickly enough and while it’s not speed that’s of the essence, it’s the fact that they aren’t doing anything with the time they are using.

We then move to the crux of this episode’s story with Matt Parkman. He recruits Nathan Petrelli to go find Maury Parkman in Philadelphia to help rescue Molly and figure out what is going on. They find Maury and seemingly have the schlubby looking guy under their control. But they quickly learn that Maury has the same ability that Matt has, but it has developed much further. He can’t just read minds, he also can project his thoughts into anyone, including trapping them in their own nightmares. He traps Matt and Nathan in nightmares - Matt is in a prison cell, being confronted by Janice who tells him he abandoned them, just like his father, and just like he’ll do to Molly When he tries to leave he is confronted by a prison guard who begins beating him. Nathan meanwhile is on the roof of the Deveaux building overlooking a devastated north when he is confronted by the burned scarred version of himself from the mirror. The two fight and quickly it is revealed that they are really fighting each other until Matt sees through the illusion and is able to break it. But Maury is already gone, leaving only the clue of the picture of Bob, marked for death. It is a nice look at what Matt’s powers…and affiliation could be. Matt’s always had a small streak of a dark side — usually from good intentions, but none the less. If he does go bad in a later season, it is a nice subtle build up to it.

As Mohinder worries about Molly, he contemplates whether he should bring her into the Company. He asks the advice of Bennet who tells him that he should definitively not do that. But Mohinder feels he has no choice. Bob praises his choice.

We then jump back to Hiro’s story which is again a very interesting idea but for some reason, seems to just take forever to develop. We find that Hiro basically has seemingly corrected history as Kensei wants to be a hero, Yaeko is falling in love with Kensei and they are all set to destroy White Beard’s camp as history has proclaimed would happen.

All in all the good in the episode is really good, unfortunately there is a lot of filler still and still even more wasted time.

C+

Previous - 2.04

Next - 2.06