[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
When Mohinder is on the phone talking to the FBI(?) about “Charlotte Something-or-other was just killed 2 days ago”… wasn’t that about Charlie? The nickname makes sense, and I’m pretty sure he said it was in Texas. So Hiro came back to the café 2 days after Charlie was killed, which was the same day as the Homecoming attack… 2 days for a memorial to be set up makes sense, doesn’t it?
I’d pretty much have to rewatch everything… can someone else who’s been following things better than me see if it works under that assumption?
[/QUOTE]
I just rewatched the relevant portions. Assuming that AED’s meeting with Isaac takes place on the same day that Charlie dies (given that they cut back and forth between the story lines in “Seven Minutes to Midnight”), then the homecoming murder takes place exactly one day after Charlie’s death (AED tells Isaac who Sylar is in his painting, and says he’s going to kill Claire the following night).
At the beginning of “Homecoming”, Simone shows Peter the digital image of the ruined painting showing him lying bloody under a homecoming banner, and tells him she found out the school is having a homecoming game that night. He calls Hiro’s cell number, which rings his phone in his bag at the diner, where Ando is there to answer it. A memorial to Charlie is up, and the place is busy with customers and patrons all going about their business with nary a care in the world.
So my perception of the timeline is off. But the whole thing still strikes me as weird. Everyone’s back to normal way the hell too quickly, and I can’t imagine the place isn’t a taped-off crime scene still. Or is this sort of thing just run-of-the-mill in Midland? “So, Jim, looks like we had ourselves one of those head-slicing murders you hear about in the storeroom yesterday. Yep, right in back where we keep the flour and fruit for the pies. Turned poor Charlie into an overgrown Pez dispenser. Warm up your coffee?”
Also:
The diner waitress tells Ando about Hiro’s history with Charlie after he asks about the altered birthday picture. Ando begs her to tell him where Hiro might be. Reacting as though it’s the first time she’s heard the name in forever, she informs him that Hiro “popped out of her life a few weeks ago”. Which means Ando, in the perception of the locals, has been hovering around the diner alone since the the murder yesterday with no explanation, and suddenly wants to know about the dead girl’s oddly-vanished sweetheart. Who shows up that night. Greeted by cries of recognition by exactly no one who knew Charlie.
The next day, after two similarly gruesome murders in the area in as many days have happened, the suddenly-reappeared Hiro shows up again (or have they been there the whole time?) with his friend and some guy who looks like a junkie and they speak in hushed tones for a time.
“Howdy. Would any of you boys like a danish?”