think the prank was really fucked up and also out of proportion with the teasing that we saw the lead Heather inflict on Claire.

I don't agree with this. I think it underestimates how fucked up bullying really is to the person suffering it. Now admittedly Claire had not suffered it very long, but it looked like overall a lot of people had. I don't think a severe trauma is too severe a punishment for a chronic bully, especially if it reduces her ability to bully in the future.

Something I've finally come to terms with in my life. I was bullied through middle school and most of high school. And I took Karate, and that helped but karate was really the wrong marital art for me -- too much speed and coordination required, I really couldn't win against the bullies with my slow kicks, where they could easily grab my leg, hold me helpless and continue their fun. By my Jr year in high school, I was thinking seriously about suicide.

And I said fuck it all instead. Fuck the rules they've taught me in Karate. Fuck everything. They are not going to get me for free anymore. And the next person who tried to beat me up for sport just got grabbed. No technique. I just held on, ignore everything they did to me, and hurt them any way I could. I banged their head against a brick wall. I bit. Yeah, I know little kids techique , unsantiatry. But you know what the kid who was beating me was bleeding where I took a bite out of them. Had to go to the hospital for a shot too, cause biting is very unsanitary. And the bully actually complained, I was sent to the Vice Principle. And the VP explained that real men didn't bite. I said that anyone who did not want to get bitten had a very simple option - to not use me as a punching bag. And you know maybe what I did was out of proportion. I mean the bullies had never seriously hurt me physically. But I'm not sorry.

And so when I saw this Heather who live to humilate other get get traumatized, my reaction was to cheer. Cause even though it was different kind of bullying humilation she was inflicting, I really don't think she was suffering anything worse than she was inflicting. Bullying if goes on for a long time is not something you shrug off. And the way to keep from going on for a long is to strike back hard the first time it is inflicting on you. I wish I'd taken up biting when I was first bullied, and not waited for it to build up for years and years. So I don't see what Claire did as out of proportion to what the Heather was doing, not just to Claire, but to others in front of her.

I'm not saying I don't understand the desire to do just what Claire did. I think it was totally in character for her to be swayed by West to do what they did. Whenever it goes to the level of physical violence (even if it's simulated) in a school setting, that's over the line and shouldn't be tolerated if there's any hope of making that school culture a place where student achievement and learning can happen. So for me, while the action was understandable from the POV of the characters involved, that doesn't make it right.

I am a high school teacher and now I work with new teachers who've just entered the classroom. We just did a session with the folks from the Office of School Safety this evening with about classroom managment, school based behavior managment, school safety procedures, etc. Everything from going over the citywide discipline code to what do you do as the teacher when a fight breaks out in your room and back again. We spend a great deal of time on bullying and how to deal with it. And that way is not to turn around and traumatize the bully (not for other students and not for the teacher). In the best of cases, it may get one student off the hook, but it doesn't really change the behavior of the bully. In the most extreme cases, it might backfire horribly and make the person wind up really dead and crumpled on the stairs in a heap rather than "fake" dead. In most of the schools where our teachers are placed bullying is very real and it is very serious. One of the real cases we dealt with tonight involved a teacher who'd seen the paraprofessional in the room with him get poked in the eye with a No. 2 pencil by one of his students in the midst of trying to break up a verbal altercation between two students over doing group work and another involved two students (one of whom was a favored target and the other who was the bully of the piece) beating each other up in the classroom so badly that one of them wound up with a broken nose and the other one wound up going to the hospital. But I am going to step away from this conversation because I know I'm getting heated and everyone is going to have different opinions depending on his/her point of entry into this conversation. For me, Claire and West's actions were over the line and out of proportion to the situation.

Um, I was going to post something in response to an earlier comment, but I can see things got pretty heated. As long as things are moving on, I won't reopen the question of the ethics of Claire's actions especially since I already kinda put my position out there. I just want to reply to victor's point

Claire is definitely a daddy's girl. And her daddy just tortured an old friend and then shot him in the head. IJS.

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. Somehow just feeding into my reading of her as deeply fucked up, not an innocent anymore.

Somebody needs to take Claire and West aside and explain that with great power comes great responsibility. Seriously.

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. Somehow just feeding into my reading of her as deeply fucked up, not an innocent anymore.

You know, when we first meet Claire, she's jumping off buildings repeatedly to see what she can break. I think one of the neat things about Claire is that the viewer (and many characters) want to view her as an innocent, but I don't think she has been for the entire time we've known her.

I say send them back into the past with Hiro, where they'd have a good moral example and no working blackberries or iphones to distract them.

Somebody needs to take Claire and West aside and explain that with great power comes great responsibility.

Hee. Yes indeed.

I'm kind of with Typo Boy. I understand about the fucked up prank, but witchy cheerleader was hazing the whole fucking squad. I hate bullies and she needed to be dealt with.

West definitely has a dark side, so I wonder how much he'll lose his shit when he sees Claire's daddy.

West and HRG smackdown? that should be interesting.

I hate bullying. I was bullied horribly in junior high--humiliated publicly many times. But I agree with Kat P; to me, the prank was out of proportion and misguided. I think I would have been almost as traumtized by pulling a prank like that as I was by being bullied, and I think Claire was, too. That said, I think it was a very well-written scene and perfect to show the influence West is having on Claire. Who, for the record, is craxy and Sylar-esque and ick.

I am bored to tears by the Hiro story (which sucks since I like Hiro so much), and black-tears girl is making me want to retch. Mohinder gets a spine for two seconds and gets ikkiN as a partner--hm. Not sure how I feel about that. I hope her storyline goes somewhere.

The episode frustrated me, as is probably obvious.

I did like HRG killing his old friend, though. Horribly appropriate.