Monday, February 23, 2009

Thoughts on HEROES, Season 4, Chapter 4 - Cold Wars

Word is that we're going to get a lot of flashbacks this time, including a LOT of Noah Bennet stuff. Don't hurt my feelings none, but with a title like that I hope we get at least some update on what is going on with Tracy.



8:00 - Quick recap of everything Noah was involved in, especially everything that makes it very unclear as to what side he is on. And Matt wanting revenge...

8:01 - Wow. Matt being the smart one and explaining the limits of his powers. And yeah... I can already see Mohinder going back to being Mohinderance. Ten to One he winds up selling out the rest of the team.

8:02 - And in case you forgot this from last week... here's how they did it. Petrelli's Three, as it were.

8:03 - And yeah for once, a good guy plan worked flawlessly! And... cue flashback.

8:04 - So, Noah wanted to keep The Company going out of responsibility but Angela backed out because she was sick of "The Game" and she wanted to put her family back together. She urged Noah to do the same. And Noah admits that wanting to keep The Company going is just as much about him not being able to live any other way as it is feeling like he has to do something to stop the bad people with powers.

Very complex. Very nuanced. And totally fits with my beliefs about how hypocritical Noah is for telling Claire to just live a normal life when he's totally unable to do the same thing, for pretty much the same reasons.

8:06 - Yeah. Looks like Matt just took an alignment step to True Neutral.

8:10 - And yeah... more tension between Hunter guy and Nathan.

8:11 - Okay... first confirmation that Daphne actually is dead. There was the hope she had just been shot and captured but... yeah. Matt would have been able to tell if that were the case, wouldn't he?

8:12 - You know, Mohinder picked a really funny time to rediscover the Hippocratic Oath. Or Hypocritical Oath given the Mengele-level experiments he was pulling last seasons. But whatever.

8:14 - And yeah... Nathan insisting that he can cover this all up and that he's eventually going to cure everyone once they are contained. Noah pointing out all the problems with that.

8:16 - 7957 - wonder if that's significant. Birthday? Wife's birthday? Must look up Jack Coleman's birthday.

8:18 - For those of you playing the D&D Alignment game at home, the Lawful Neutral (Mohinder - stepped up from Lawful Evil last season) is whining at the True Neutral (Matt), forcing the Chaotic Good (Peter) to play peacekeeper between them. Except something doesn't smell right here after everything Mohinder has done...

8:19 - "Try not to kill one another". We should be so lucky, Peter.

8:20 - 10 to 1 this is a trap, somehow. And am I the only one who notes the irony that Peter is pretty much giving them all the evidence they need that he really IS a terrorist?

8:21 - See, I'd like to think this is intentional on Noah's part... but I know it's more than likely Nathan had Noah's unit bugged in case he wound up going rogue. Again.

8:25 - Nice job mobilizing a team from across the country in minutes. And nice escape job, Peter!

8:26 - Ah... building 2-6. Not Twenty-Six.

8:27 - And yes, in case you didn't get it already, Hunter is a mutant-hater. And yeah... he doesn't like Noah either. And yeah... another wrinkle - Noah signed on when he thought he was going to be in charge.

8:28 - "How else am I going to randomly bump into old acquaintances?" Hee Hee.

8:29 - And... big shock. Noah tried to recruit Mohinder and turned him down. And he didn't bother to tell anybody that this was coming. And Matt is rightly pissed. And now we know what Mohinder is suddenly so considered about medical ethics.

8:30 - And this is all the distraction Bennet needs to escape.

8:31 - And... there's an escape! Way to go, Mohinderance! Your indecision has doomed everyone... AGAIN!

8:34 - So Matt doped Noah up to deaden the pain - not to make it harder for him to resist. That explains why they weren't worried about the drugs making it harder for Noah to think clearly and therefore harder to read.

8:37 - And yeah... Noah preaching the virtues of humanity to a sociopath who has none. I can't wait until Sylar gets a hold of this guy.

8:38 - And here goes Peter into another trap...

8:39 - Or not. Say what you will about Nathan's Nazis, but they are a lot more efficient than most government-contract employees.

8:43 - Can I say that I like how much more competent Peter is this season? Thank you.

8:44 - I know this is going to blow up somehow. Can't kill the main new bad guy this early. And Peter is too smart to fall for this "kill me and I get what I want" line. Yeah, I can't believe it either - Peter being smart AND competent. I love this Series.

8:45 - Ah yes... another Brother To Brother talk. Of course Peter doesn't believe a word of it but does decide it isn't worth letting his friends get caught. And he doesn't leave without shooting Hunter non-lethally.

8:47 - Okay... apparently Matt couldn't sense whether Daphne was dead or not. But I don't believe for a minute that Noah is telling the truth either. And Matt has no good reason to believe that either at this point.

8:48 - Which, naturally, means that he IS telling the truth. And what is more, he's the only one who saw to it that Daphne was taken care of. No surprise there.

8:49 - Holy crap... did Mohinderance just do something heroic? And die in the process? I might have to take back nearly every nasty thing I ever said about him. Well, a few of them anyway...

8:50 - And... the skipping thing just happened at the worst possible time... did Peter just snatch-and-grab Matt?

8:53 - Oh, dammit. He survived! Ah well... I didn't think they'd really kill him... but if they were, it would have been doing something stupid and heroic like that.

8:54 - And here comes the Lawful Evil appeal to Lawful Neutral... "we're going to cure everyone" thing. And Nathan blackmailing Mohinderance with the lives of everyone. Yeah... if you didn't think Nathan really had really gone bad, here's all the evidence you need.

8:56 - And if you really believe for a moment that Noah has completely gone bad here or that at the very least Claire won't wind up doing a Luke Skywalker "I know there's still good in you" speech at some point, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

8:57 - Ha! Is one minute too long to wait before saying "I told you so"? Because I did tell you all just one minute ago that Noah is just going even deeper in cover. Although I didn't expect Angela to be working with him but it makes sense that she'd be working to stop Nathan after everything that just happened.

8:59 - And yeah... not sure where Matt and Peter are set up... but yeah... that looks worrying, even though you think they'd know by now these paintings rarely mean exactly what they show. Although the painted floor was a bit much...

9:00 - And yeah... looks like the Hunter is going rogue. And that Claire is starting a romance with Aquaman... or that he'll be kissing her to let her breathe indirectly at some point. Either way - score one for the Comic Book Guy with the lame ass power!



The Final Thought: It's like Season One, all over again. Cynics may say that's because they're stealing some of the best imagery (like the painted floor and the visions of doom) but I think it's because they are finally putting the focus back on the characters and not on the plotlines.

2 comments:

  1. I am finally catching up after missing a few weeks. I swear, if Hunter has a powered kid, the writers really are just aping X-men. Might has well just named him Stryker.

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  2. Since Jeph Loeb was one of the executive producers (i.e. head writers) for most of the past year, I don't doubt it.
    Of course, it has been argued that Season One was basically Watchmen Redeux simply because it had to deal with the main characters trying to stop a disaster which turned out to be engineered by another powered person. Which is a bit of a reach, in my humble opinion.
    Now, Season 2 = Legacy Virus and Season 3= Days of Future Past... little more clear-cut.

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