overnights

‘Heroes’: Claire Must Die, For the Greater Good

Courtesy of NBC

On last night’s Heroes, Claire faced a thorny problem: She told her dad she made the cheerleading team, but the evil Queen Bee head cheerleader holds a grudge against Claire and won’t let her on the team. Even though her tryout was way better than anyone else’s! So Claire and her hot new boyfriend gin up a plan to embarrass the head cheerleader and get her busted for underage drinking. It totally works, and by the end of the episode, Claire has made the team, but she feels conflicted about the sneaky things she did to get what she wanted. Is her hot new boyfriend a bad influence? Will Claire realize that just because someone is mean to you isn’t license to cruelly trick them?

We found this plot a little frustrating, for two reasons:

1. First, c’mon! What high school allows vindictive students to be in charge of cheerleading tryouts? Coaches run the tryouts and choose the team at big schools like this. That was a glaringly obvious mistake.

2. And secondly, THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A SHOW ABOUT PEOPLE WITH SUPERPOWERS SAVING THE FREAKING WORLD, NOT A CRAPPY B PLOT FROM AN OLD EPISODE OF SWEET VALLEY HIGH. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?????

Clearly, there is but one solution: Claire must die.

We floated this idea a while ago, including Claire in our list of pop-culture characters who need to get the ax. And that was before Heroes started sucking! Now that fully 30 percent of an episode is devoted to Claire’s cheerleader drama, it is clearly time for someone to blast Claire into space, or bury her in a thousand pounds of cement, or drop her into the middle of the ocean or whatever it would take. Jack Bennett is a way more interesting character when he’s running on rage, as we saw last night when he cruelly tortured his former mentor at the Company in order to find out where the paintings are. Imagine how awesome he’d be if he spent this entire season questing for revenge!

In other news, Stephen Tobolowsky, the New Face of Evil, transforms from an evildoer who urges Suresh to rob Monica the muscle mimic of her powers “for the greater good” to a sappy good guy who returns Monica to New Orleans with the quease-inducing advice that “this town could use some amazing.” Maya, Alejandro, and Sylar make it into the United States. And way back in feudal Japan, Kensei sees Hiro kissing the princess, and betrays him to Whitebeard. Oh, and where are all those interesting characters we dealt with last week? Veronica Mars, Maury Parkman, Matt and Nathan? No time for them this week! Cheerleading drama!

Happily, the episode ends with some overarching mystery, as Peter and Caitlin travel to Montreal, find a note from a mysterious “Adam,” and then are magically transported to the future — a future that includes an abandoned New York and a virus that kills 97 percent of the population. We can only hope Will Smith and his dog are there to keep Peter company.

‘Heroes’: Claire Must Die, For the Greater Good