Matt Parkman

Matt Parkman
Portrayed by	Greg Grunberg
First appearance	Don't Look Back
In-story stats
Known ability	Telepathy
Gender
Age	35
Residence	Matt Parkman's home
Occupation	LAPD police officer
Significant other	Janice Parkman (wife)

Matt Parkman is a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. He would like to become a detective, but has flunked the test three times. He discovers he has the ability to hear thoughts.

Character History

Don't Look Back

Matt is helping to secure a crime scene, a suspected serial killing/abduction, when he begins to "hear" the thoughts of the missing girl, Molly Walker. He locates her in a secret room under the stairs, and immediately draws suspicion from the investigating FBI agents. When he mentions the name "Sylar", which he picked up from the agents' thoughts, Audrey Hanson arrests him on the spot.

One Giant Leap

After proving his ability by reading Audrey's mind in the interrogation room, he is offered a position to assist in the investigation. Things turn dangerous when a man who appears to be Sylar shows up. Stopping the mysterious man harming Molly Walker in the building, Matt tries to comfort the girl while Audrey gives chase. Ultimately, the man escapes, but not before displaying apparent telekinesis and almost forcing Audrey to shoot herself in the head. Matt shoots the suspect, knocking him down. The suspect soon stands back up and disappears. Later, he came home to his wife, Janice, with whom he is in couple's counseling. Though he apologizes for missing the day's session and tries to tell her about his amazing day, she is still upset with him and doesn't want to hear it. Janice also comments about how, when she got promoted, he seemed to resent her for it. Matt tells her he didn't mean to, but she just further shuts off to him. Hearing Janice think she wants him to leave, Matt responds "I will" verbally and then storms out.

At a bar, Matt hears most, if not all, the thoughts of the various patrons. However, when he comes across a patron whose mind he cannot read, he begins to hear the other voices fade out. The mysterious other man sits and stares at Matt until Matt finally collapses on the floor, unconscious.

Collision

Matt wakes up strapped to a table in a laboratory to find Mr. Bennet and the mysterious man standing over him. Bennet tells him he doesn't work for any agency and that he knows Matt is telepathic, but that his abilities won't work with the mystery man present. Nevertheless, Matt is able to pick Claire's name out of Bennet's thoughts, and Bennet instructs the man to "go deep and clean him out."

Hiros

Matt wakes up on the couch at home. His wife Janice has been frantically searching for him. He believes he merely got drunk and passed out, but she tells him he's been missing for a full day. Matt reads her mind to assuage her anger, telling her he knows how frustrated she's been with him. He uses his powers to plan the perfect date. Later that night, he leaves to pick up some ice cream and talks a would-be convenience store robber into setting down his gun and leaving. Immediately afterwards, he is overwhelmed by the thoughts of the other shoppers, who are panicking at the sight of the gun, and passes out.

Nothing to Hide

Matt says everything has been going well at home and seems to want to confess to his wife about his power. However, Janice thinks she has been "found out" and Matt grows distressed and leaves.

Audrey Hanson arrives later at the police station and says they have found another murder victim, an oncologist who has been burned to a cinder and whose body is emitting high levels of radiation. that she believes to be the work of Sylar. When they arrive at the morgue, Matt is skeptical that it was Sylar. Audrey tells him that a fingerprint was retrieved seared into the bone, and a match comes up on the computer: Theodore Sprague. Audrey and Matt leave to investigate his place of residence. They investigate the burned and radiation-filled home, where Matt finds cancer medication prescribed to Karen Sprague by the murdered doctor. They leave for the hospital where Karen is being treated. After arriving, Matt defuses a tough situation by reading a comatose Karen's mind and communicating to her husband.

Matt calls his wife, whom he has been avoiding all day, and leaves a heartfelt voicemail while his wife listens. Back at the station, his former partner Tom McHenry informs him that he'll be able to retake the detective test in interview form so his dyslexia won't be an excuse for failure anymore. Then, reading Tom's mind, Matt finds out he was having an affair with someone's wife, presumably with Janice. Matt punches him in rage and is pulled out of the locker room by other cops.

Seven Minutes to Midnight

Audrey yells at Matt for hitting his former partner because any trouble Matt gets in jeopardizes her investigation of Sylar. She asks Matt if he's suspended, and he tells her he'll work it out. When she asks Matt if his partner deserved it, he says yes. Audrey leads him to an interrogation room with Theodore Sprague where she tells Matt they've got one hour before Homeland Security takes him away as a suspected terrorist. Audrey complains about how only a few months ago her job made perfect sense, but now she's dealing with things she can't explain. She gives Matt a radiation detector badge and tells him that dark green is good and anything else is bad.Audrey gives Theodore a glass of water. Theodore complains that they won't let him go to his wife's funeral. Audrey tells him that they need him to answer a few more questions. She asks Ted how he's able to do what he does. Ted exclaims that nothing matters since he killed his wife. Matt glances at his radiation badge and notices it's turned red. Ted screams that he just wants to be left alone and doesn't know anything about any nuclear material. Matt tells him to relax, but Ted just gets angrier. He tells them out of frustration that if they want him to be the bad guy then he'll blow the place apart. He grabs the glass of water and it quickly begins boiling. Audrey threatens to shoot him and Ted tells her to just do it. Matt tries to calm Ted down by showing that he's not alone in having abnormal powers. He tells Ted they're just trying to understand what's going on and to relax. He manages to calm Ted down and tells him to take him back to when this all started. Matt hears Ted think that he blacked out and when he woke up things just started dying. Remembering his own experiences, Matt asks him how long he blacked out for and whether he was drinking. He asks if when he woke up he had bruises on his arms. Ted shows them the mark on his neck and Matt shows the same marks on his own neck. Ted explains that he was in Kansas a few months back having sold a dialysis machine to a university hospital. He went to the hotel bar where he saw a couple from Wyoming, a few professors, and a student from Haiti. The next thing he knew he woke up in his car two days later in Arizona with cuts and bruises on him. Matt asks Ted if he feels sick at all or gets headaches and Ted admits he has headaches. Audrey asks Ted if there are any more dead bodies that they need to know about and Matt defends him, telling Audrey that it's not his fault. Matt tells Ted that he, too, blacked out and lost two days, and now he can't stop hearing people's thoughts. Matt offers a description of the Haitian man Ted saw at the bar and they confirm that they both saw the same guy right before they blacked out. The FBI Agent Audrey had worked the Walker murder scene with comes in and several agents take Ted away. The agent tells Matt he shouldn't even be there since his badge was suspended. As he's being escorted out, Ted tells Matt to find the Haitian. Matt tries to convince Audrey to get Ted back, but she tells him she can't.

Powers

Matt has the ability to hear thoughts. It is not yet known whether he possesses other telepathic abilities, such as the ability to project thoughts. Matt sometimes is unable to control his abilities, and can be overwhelmed by intense thoughts.