I think that was one of the most intense scenes on the show yet. A mother slowly suffocating her daughter in some bizarro integration, and then when Claire finally spits it out... the delivery is chilling. I think the sci-fi aspects of the show sometimes overshadow the fact that these are "real life" people these things are happening too. The Claire/Sylar scene from last episode had a lot of illusions to a sort of rape, and I think we are seeing Claire deal with the aftermath of that. I absolutely love it. Anyone else care to discuss? How do you think this will alter her character?

She's definitely got beef with Sylar now. It's on. I really liked that scene though. And how Meredith was willing to suffocate her just so that she could say it. I feel that Claire was acting too cocky in that scene also 'I walked through fire and didn't get burned' but did you know that you can suffocate from the heat as well.

Meredith was teaching Claire a valuable lesson...even a girl who feels no pain and cannot die can be brought to her knees. Even Superman can bleed...No one is untouchable and Claire has a lot to learn before she goes taking on the world. She kind of had a holier than thou attitude going in and I think Meredith helped reality smack her in the face.

Yes, it was definitely a great scene. It was interesting to see that Meredith's character and powers are more evolved than just having the ability to light her cigarettes.

Lol. It shows that she knows a lot about manipulating fire and the effects that it has.

I couldnt understand what claire was saying in this scene.
What did she say after her mom said "why do you want to fight bad guys?"

Oh god my DVR is broken. It was probably something to do with saving people.

That was probably the best part of the show. The scenes with Meredith and Sandra (that is her name right) were pretty good too.

I don't get what Sandra wants Meredith to do, just be as stiff and silent as one of those British guards and not say anything? That's not really fair when you're asking her to go to California to protect Claire from whatever souped up villains may pop up. OTOH, I understand her feeling like her toes are getting stepped on by Meredith, who I'm sure she'll blame for Claire running off.

She said she wanted to hurt him..after of course saying she wanted to help people. That's Claire for ya.

Anyone find it ironic that when Meredith was talking with Sandra later about what to do about Claire she said something along the lines of "you can't suffocate her"? Brava writers. Brava indeed.

Excellent scene. I got chills!

Even though people have been mentioning this scene as one of the negatives for this episode, I think Meredith did one of the most motherly things a person could do - make her face herself. Sure it seems soon for her to be doing this after running away to Mexico, but I think there's a reason she agreed to come back...

I like the tension between the two of them. I think that Meredith should just do what she's supposed to and protect them(and help Claire on the side). But Sandra should manage the house and Claire.

My only big question with this scene : Why didn't Meredith seem close to suffocating at all?

Well, I think her saying she wanted to help people was just a false reason, and Meredith new it. All she really wanted to do was to make Sylar suffer like he has made her suffer. She wants revenge, and to not be the victim anymore.

Maybe cause her body is already hot enough to the point to where it doesn't affect her.

Or why didn't Adam seem to be suffocating in the grave? Granted that could have been right after being put there, but... Or was Claire's deal just psychological?

I actually found this scene to be quite weak.

Meredith goes from being cautiously delighted to meet her daughter in the first season to torturing her in the third?

What happened during her stay in Mexico? O_o

But wasn't the whole point of the suffocation that the oxygen was being burned away? High body heat or not, you still need oxygen to breathe. Unless you're that girl from the graphic novels, I forget her name.




Adam probably has suffocated, many times over. A similar thing happened in torchwood, a character who can't die being buried alive. It's the ultimate form of torture for such a person, like supreme waterboarding (as mentioned by meredith) because the person will suffocate and die, then their body/lungs will heal, only to die imediately after over and over again until someone busts you out.

Yeah, wow was this scene intense! Pretty insane thing for Meredith to put her daughter through. Wasn't expecting all this out of Meredith. She seems to a good deal about putting powers to use. Seeing Claire deal with suffocation is something new, and it looked pretty torturous for her. And now we see a much darker side to Claire. Her main intentions aren't just to do good and use her powers to help people. She wants revenge. To get back at people like Sylar for what they've done. Claire's not so innocent anymore.

...tequila...

I suppose the argument could be made that her power requires her body to utilize oxygen differently than others. I mean, fire requires oxygen to burn, so since her body is producing fire, the loose argument could be that her body just utilizes it differently. It utilizes it differently enough that she can breath better than others in low oxygen environments.

Maybe her body does the opposite cause of her power or something. I hope we find out.

1: You're thinking of Bianca Karina (RIP) from the GNs.

2: Meredith would almost certainly fall victim to suffocation, since it's a side effect of her ability and not an actual part of her ability. But she was nowhere near being in danger of that. Claire has never been in something like that. She has no clue what her body's capable of handling. Notice that there was only 1 person panicking in there.

fair point... chances are that was more of a panic attack than an actual suffocation.

I loved this scene. Claire was pretty cocky about not being able to be injured or hurt physically. I think Meredith did a great job of driving home the point that people can still hurt her psychologically. Even though Claire wouldn't have died of suffocation (or would have recovered immediately after oxygen was reintroduced), her body still had the natural survival instinct and felt like it was dying. Claire has to learn to control that if she wants to fight bad guys with abilities of their own.

I think that's most likely the case, myself.

I like how they showed the tension between Meridith and claire's adopted mom. (big HEROES FAN just forgot her name i know it starts with an S lol) But they really showed a lot of jealousy through those scenes. The Next scene when they were in the crate was crazy lol. They really acted out that scene very well.

I forgot her name too(shame on me) but thank you Heroes Wiki. I REALLY like the tension between Sandra and Meredith. Maybe they'll fight someday. Sandra will throw knives and Meredith fire.

I don't think the writers would let Meredith suffocate from her own ability. Someone else earlier mentioned fire's use of oxygen in burning...maybe Meredith's body sucks available oxygen from the room toward her to generate the flames. Thus, Meredith couldn't suffocate from fire that she produced. this would also mean that she couldn't produce fire in an oxygen-less room...and that then she could suffocate. But I just can't see that Meredith would suffocate or suffer from smoke-inhalation from her ability.

That was a great scene. But, they missed a layer of subtext. Yes, Meredith gave Claire a dose of reality, and that's majorly important. However, there's an aspect of this that could backfire (no pun) for Meredith. So far, Claire's world has been divided into two groups of people: those who kill her on their terms (Sylar, Brody, Elle during Cautionary Tales) and those who kill her on hers...

West -- The prank
Matt -- Shooting her to save Sandra in Company Man
Herself -- all her tests
Accepting that Nathan was allowing her to die by omission, because he didn't fly to stop her fall in the S1 finale, and being OK with that to get back to HRG.

From her reaction at the end of the ep, one has to wonder if Claire now regards Meredith, well intentioned though she was, as one of the people prepared to kill Claire on her terms only. After all, Claire could've flashed back to early memories of suffocating in that first fire Meredith set before HRG rescued her. Claire may think that Meredith is only good for death or near death, now, even when motivated by tough love.

I think the Claire/Sylar scene last week was more intense. But I thought it was an excellent scene. I didn't like the political shot they had to make about waterboarding. It's like, ok, we watch this to escape, not to be letchered. But other then that I thought it was an awesome scene. You think she is going to do what she promises, then she completely turns it around on Claire! Brilliant!!

Although I agree with some of your post, how exactly would Claire flash one those memories? She was 6 months old when that happened.


Hmm.. interesting catch. I didn't think of it as a political shot, but I can see how it can be taken that way...

I think that the reason Meredith is not affected by her own ability is because she is immune to it and its side effects like Ted was in his.

Otherwise Meredith would had died when she went nova at the time she wasn't able to control her ability and lost claire thinking she was dead.

I love their scenes already as I love meredith now even more!
She gets one place under my favorites for sure.

totally love this scene!
meredith actually defied sandra and brought claire out though i think sandra over-reacted a little and didnt actually give meredith the respect? :/

was claire mad at meredith a little bit for forcing the truth out of her that way?

the message Merideth was trying to give was "you're all defense and no offense and even your defense can be penetrated, get a gun"

which is why future claire seems to be so handy with a pistol

You're right. In the GN and the flashback, she's 6 months. But, when Claire and Zach find the article about the fire it says she was 18 months at the time. It's discrepancy. They've never been good about Claire's age.



But, Claire understood that drawback of her power already. Hence her I can heal, but I'm still a victim comment to F-Peter. It's the logistical reason she knew she had to learn to fight.

Her body can cope with depleted oxygen the same way Nathan's body can deal with the extreme g-forces of flying w/o his skin peeling off.

I thought the scene in general had a very comic-book/star aspect to it with the Meredith pushing Claire to not only acknowledge her true motives and teaching her a valuable survival lesson at the same time, very Yoda-esque.

like someone said earlier immunity from side effects, giving the ted example was a perfect example or even how tracy strauss doesn't seem to get frost bite/ice burn when using her power.

That's beginning to make more sense to me, as opposed to her just being prepared or whatever. I'd think that there would have to be some kind of "protection" in regards to oxygen and breathing when generating fire around her.

All the powers have a bit of "protection" - an immunity to side effects - as the writers have stated.

The same reason why her hand wasn't burning from the flame.

While I agree that perhaps her body uses oxygen differently, it's also important to notice the placement of Meredith's fire when Claire is suffocating. Meredith makes sure to keep the fire near Claire's face (hint: where oxygen enters the body) where she could continuously burn oxygen that Claire would otherwise have accessible to her. It's conceivable that all of the oxygen in the box wouldn't have to be depleted if this were the case, it would just be a fancier method of strangulation.

I would like to believe that Meredith was trying to teach her that she dose not need oxygen to fight.

What the hell did Claire say exactly when Meredith asked her why she wanted to fight bad guys? I keep rewinding it and still can't understand...

I personally thought this scene was the worst.

I hate the fact that they are trying to "train" claire. Just let her be her and stop forcing her to be a superhero.

There is so much going on with Bio-mom, Sandra and Claire. Everything from the regular threat most adoptive moms have about bio-moms inflated by the whole super-power thing.

I loved the power play scene. Meredith just tried to get through to Claire the best way she knew how...using powers to get to the real angst Claire is feeling. Unfortunately, I think Claire has to travel the dark path on her own before she can get back on track.

I think Claire said "I want to hurt him."

Meredith doesn't believe in selfless acts. Claire doesn't want to help good people just to help good people. She wants to help good people in order to hurt bad people. This was her way of teaching that to her.

She mentioned waterboarding because a waterboarded person is not in real danger, they just think they are. Just like Claire wasn't in danger, but was crippled by fear of suffocation anyway.

I'm pretty sure Adam mentioned dying of suffocation several times while in that coffin.

I found this scene amazing, it kinda made me cry a little. I felt bad for Claire and what Sylar did to her.

And what, exactly, would you have them do with her?