Spoilers for “Flight or Fight” below.

Things that happened

Is it just me or has this show leveraged the whole ‘fight or flight’ thing for a big expository monologue before? I swear it felt familiar. Maybe that’s because it’s such a lame cliché, and this is a show that thrives on its continuous use of lame, tired clichés. But, whatever the reason, the title of this episode is particularly poignant and confusing because, as far as I can discern, no characters really were faced with the titular choice: when you really think about it, no one chose to fight or fly.

Most obviously related to that theme of choice is Peter Petrelli, as he is faced with the option of flying figuratively around Cork, Ireland while all blissfully amnesiac with his new Irish girlfriend. Or, alternatively, going to the Montreal of his future-painting and fighting Veronica Mars with electricity bolts and, I would assume, tales from the general cast trailers at the old The WB lot.

Making far far less of a choice is Parkman, who chooses to go fight his possibly-crazy and boogeyman-esque father over the far less appealing choice of flight that would have just left him hanging around Mohinder’s apartment while the good doctor told him what a jerk he was for putting theirs shared-custody daughter in a nightmare coma.

Also making a choice is Molly herself, who chooses to wake up from her nightmare coma after Mohinder makes the choice to drive her — probably by taxicab, I imagine (I don’t think they took the subway — people eye comatose children suspiciously on the subway) — to the oh-so-evil Company headquarters were they meet up with Ned — Ned Ryerson! — so that he might study and help the girl. While there, Mohinder runs into Ali Larter who is undergoing voluntary treatment to try and suppress her more evil (but equally wooden) side.

Meanwhile, across the country, Ali Larter’s son Micah is still embroiled in some bizarre bad-accented high-school-play-like New Orleans scenario with his cousin Monica Dawson. While he makes the choice to tell his cousin about his abilities as a means to make her feel better about her emerging abilities, she’s faced with a choice of her own: fly from her destiny and deny her powers or jump rope in a children’s playground after a sassy black girl dares her not to. She jumps rope like a pro. Ultimately it is a scene with a whole bunch of totally fucking creepy laughing and jumping up and down.

Meanwhile, in Feudal Japan, nothing happens but we still get a bunch of scenes set there, as if to prove to use that nothing is indeed happening. I guess the most notable bit would be that Kensei seems to have grown himself a totally disgusting neck beard for some reason. Did he have that before?

But let’s stop with the bolding of words and get right down to the meat of the episode: Parkman’s dad appears. At first Matt thinks his father is evil and spooky, but then Matt’s dad reveals that he too has received a photo of himself with the mysterious mark on it and is thus marked for death, just like Hiro’s dad and Nathan’s mom. But it turns out that Parkman has been tricked! His dad is evil, and is able to leverage his own mind-reading powers to actually put thoughts in other people’s heads and thus trap them in nightmare dreamscapes. Nightmare dreamscapes that primarily exist to give Tim Kring reason to re-use old set pieces and thus keep the budget down.

Both Matt and Nathan, who has tagged along for no real reason and is, all of the sudden, totally awesome in a million different ways, end up in their own nightmares, tricked by Father Parkman as he makes a hasty escape. The two young heroes manage to escape, but not before some awesome dream fighting with one another. They escape just in time to reveal the evil Parkman’s next target: Needlenose Ned Ryerson, puppet master of The Company, and the guy who just might be Veronica Mars’ dad?!

Things that were good

• Seriously, how great is Nathan Petrelli? I’m not sure what it is, but there was something so damn appealing about him this episode. Maybe it’s because he’s the bedraggled emotionally-vacant cynic with wild hair that I’ve always wanted to be. (I also always wanted to fly.)
• It was great to see Veronica Mars again. (I will always call her Veronica Mars. This might get annoying. Just a warning.) Her electricity powers were more than a little lame, but, still. I’ll take what I can get.
• As much as I really despise the whole New Orleans thing, Monica’s powers are really cool.
• I’d dig it if Ali Larter’s role was limited to just her appearing out of nowhere and choking people and then getting tasered. It could be like the running gag on this show.

Things that were bad

• I would never make the claim that Milo Ventimiglia is the worst actor in this cast, but when he’s bad — like he was this episode — he’s really bad. To be fair, though, doing an amnesia plot is probably the greatest acting challenge anyone could ever face.
• Seriously, a little bit of budget, that’s all I ask for.
• Ando spends the whole episode decoding an old scroll. And no one cares! Because the scrolls say nothing! This sucks.

Worth Watching If…

Sweeps starts soon, so I know better than to expect anything more than filler episodes for all the popular series. There was some nice set up in this episode — I can’t wait for Montreal! It’s in Canada! — but, in the end, it was entirely skippable.

In Five Words

My Double Dutch is Superheroic

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