'Strange Attractors' Ignite 'Heroes' Drama

With raised stakes and huger payoffs, Heroes kicked it up a notch Monday night with slaughterhouses, vigilantes and Sylar's sexual deviancy. Tempers, and temperatures, both flared throughout "Strange Attractors" as several heroes saw their "normal" lives suddenly slip from their grasps. Even still, Samuel and his carnival stand ready to intercept them.

Matt Parkman reclaimed his family, his career and a tastefully-decorated space to call home. Now, he seems about to lose it all again to an uninvited houseguest named Sylar. Together they share a consciousness, but Sylar shall not rest until he owns Parkman entirely. In the meantime, he pursues Parkman's wife, Janice, and later regales his host with the graphic details of their wild, sexual romp.

"Now I've made two Parkman's scream today," Sylar wolfishly sneers.

Unable to contain his madness, or libido for that matter, Parkman makes one last desperate attempt to save the family he loves from this monster within. So, he decides to hit the road. But before he can lift a suitcase handle, Janice intervenes and begs Matt not to leave. Despite her husband's appalling confession – that he and another man share his body – Janice acts reluctantly at the thought of splitting up. Either she secretly enjoys Sylar's tantric company, or she has always been this stupid.

Eventually it gets decided that Janice and baby Matty should disappear so Parkman may stay at home to grapple with his demons. Fortunately enough, the fully-stocked liquor cabinet at his disposal appears ready to do battle. But by giving up control of both his mental and physical faculties, Parkman instead lets Sylar into the driver's seat.

Claire keeps the sex and violence evenly mixed as the Psi Alpha Chi sisters get a teensy bit psychotic and kidnap her, Gretchen and two other pledges for a field trip to the neighborhood's abandoned slaughterhouse.

No knife seems sharp enough though to cut into the sexual tension between Claire and Gretchen. Confused, but not confrontational, Claire does not reject Gretchen, yet fears anything further could disrupt their otherwise happy lives. Never mind they were recently abducted by ninjas, hog-tied and forced inside the trunk of a car.

Even still, this abrupt detour into "Hell Week" pales by comparison to the respective hells of Pinehearst, Building 26 and a family breakup.

The four ladies are then told to split into pairs, and scour the facility for clues to a scavenger hunt. The team that does best wins the ultimate prize – not getting hazed. But for Claire and Gretchen, not getting skewered becomes their goal after several strange mishaps nearly turn Gretchen into mincemeat.

Blinded by her ambition to help "Uncle Samuel," Becky seems to have lost her touch as the sorority's leader. The twisted challenge she arranged failed to rattle Claire's cage, and it certainly did not dissuade Gretchen from growing closer to her. Besides, if you are going to be an invisible monster with a meat hook at least use it for its intended purpose.

Claire gets it right and slashes her opponent with it; prompting Becky to drop her invisibility act. Unfortunately, Claire also gets turned into a kabob by rebar, and Gretchen's "help" reveals Claire's ability to the other two pledges.

Noah does not fare much better than his daughter after a Podunk sheriff decides to detain Jeremy despite his objections. Surely enough, Jeremy snaps underneath the stress and kills a member of Cainan's local angry mob chapter. With Tracy there to witness the incident, and Jeremy's heinous death by vigilantism, she later poses the fundamental question to Noah that defines this season's theme:

"Do we have to be invisible?"

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Claire's sorority as Alpha Psi Chi.