Didn't HRG say he wanted to save her from suffering precisely those kinds of injuries because he didn't want them to push her past her pain threshhold?

Ok, she did cut off her own pinky toe and only flinched and hissed a little. One could presume that her pain tolerance is higher than average humans, and so "pushing her past her pain threshold" probably amounts to extreme torture, not just a short drop and sudden stop.

(Not that I don't think it's kinda fucked up, but y'know... superpowers + questionable teenage ethics could = fucked up.)

Well, the adage is that teenagers think they're invulnerable ... and here you have one who KNOWS she is.

the prank: they achieved the aim of public humiliation, sure, but not before they also achieved psychological and emotional trauma. I hope at the least the show acknowledges this and follows through on it, because while Claire was upset afterwards, I can't remember if it was for the right reason. It was like countering a knife with a tank.

Parish: now that scene in K-ville (die!) makes sense! I thought they were referring to a town or something that had "Parish" in the name.

The one thing is that West continues to ping me as a probable psycho. He said something along the lines of "We're better than everyone because we have powers." (That was from memory, so not an exact quote.) This along with the whole "Aliens and Robots" thing makes me think he sees everyone without powers as things. He is well on the road to Sylar's attitude. OK, he still sees those with powers as fully human; but he is only in high school, and he already manages to be pretty patronizing to Claire. If I had more faith in the writers, I'd assume this going to payoff down the road West turning to extreme evil. But it is possible they see this as normal sensitive teenage male angst.

He said something about how his parents didn't matter because he has parents. (Totally paraphrasing.)

ETA: I mean because he has powers.

My powers of typing are disappearing.

In terms of the prank: I don't know. The kind of bullying Claire was fighting against is pretty traumatizing. I don't see the way the fought back as more extreme than constant continued humiliation (not so much of her, but of everyone). That kind of bullying can drive people to suicide, or totally break them in other ways. Claire and West never put her in physical danger. Suppose it had been done without superpowers. A fake hanging, and a hiding place the cops couldn't find for Claire and West to disappear into?

Would cheerleader bitch be anymore traumatized than she would be if she HAD been "seeing things" because she was extremely drunk?

Good point, Typo Boy, about what the cheerleader had been doing as worse than what Claire and West did. Except it's still wrong on Claires' part, and was not what they had set out to do, which was simply public humiliation. And I'd say that a fake hanging would still be out of line.

But now I feel a little better about it. Does that make me a bad person?

I dunno: is frightening her really that bad? Maybe it was because I was bullied a lot in high school, but I'd totally have done that if it would have stopped the bastards from torturing me any more. Wouldn't have had a moments guilt either.

I think the only time I'd refer to a highway with the definite article is if I were calling it by a name, not the numerical. "The Dan Ryan," for example.

That's the way it is here. It is I-95, but it would be The Palmetto, or The Don Shula Expwy.

I was upset by the prank, but found Victor's point about it being in character for the teenage Claire that drove the car into the wall valid. Also rather hard to feel too sorry for the bitch.