Thoughts on HEROES, Season 4, Chapter 10 - 1961

Here it comes; the answers to how exactly The Company was founded and just how many bad things Angela Petrelli may have done.



8:00 - Recap Time. Peter, Angela, Nathan, Claire and Noah are all heading to Coyote Sands where the government did something involving kids with powers. And Mohinder digs through his dad's old records, finding that his dad was at Coyote Sands when the government was doing experiments... apparently he had nightmares about it.

8:01 - "Why is she making us do this?" Because she doesn't want to get her own hands dirty, Peter. I thought that was obvious. And holy crap... Claire defending Nathan!

8:02 - "We need some answers." Thanks for voicing my own thoughts, Pete.

8:03 - Angela and Alice Shaw. Nice job finding a young actress who actually looks like Christine Rose. And Dr. Zimmerman - that's the guy who Tracy talked to about the experiments that gave her and Niki powers! Unless there's another Dr. Zimmerman... which seems a bit unlikely.

8:04 - Daniel Linderman is there. Guy with the glasses is Bob Bishop. And so is Charles Deveaux - aka Peter's first patient. This really IS where it all began!

Sorry. Just noting all the continuity here that is actually being utilized for the first time in a long while.

8:06 - "My sister, my parents... they all died here." So why dig here apart from giving us a nice physical metaphor? And who is that watching from the window?

8:10 - Ah, okay. Apparently the government found out about superpowers back during the Kennedy era and started trying to "cure" powers. Which translated into interment camps. And eventually "The Final Solution" stuff.

8:11 - And The Company was started by the survivors of Coyote Sands to keep powered people a secret and cover up the first government program... erasing people's memories and killing people in the name of protecting themselves. Which makes everything The Company has done between then and now make sense up until the part where certain elements went rogue and started planning covert world domination... although it does little to explain why they felt it was a good idea to start giving people superpowers at some point in the past.

8:12 - And there's the idealistic Peter we all know and love, refusing to have any part of any of this.

8:13 - Okay. Slight problem - cool as this is, it that it kinda conflicts with established continuity as far as the comics go for Linderman to be here, since the comics say that Linderman ran away from home as a preteen after discovering his powers and going into hiding until he joined the army as a medic, where he never used his powers until he needed to save a young Arthur Petrelli. But I guess the comics aren't necessarily canon.

8:15 - Weather control. That's a cool power, if you'll pardon the pun.

8:16 - Hmmm... looks like Angela might have been responsible for her sister's death, all this talk about wishing she had Claire's inner-strength and confidence.

8:21 - I'm with Peter on this one. Nathan is a selfish bastard and the sooner he goes into the cornfield, the better.

8:22 - Here's a line for the old-school MST3K fans. "SANDSTORM... SANDSTORM... DEEEEP HURTING!"

8:23 - Oh great... now Mohidnerance is here looking for answers. And yes... the answer is that the government tried killing everyone with powers 50 years ago.

8:26 - Yeah. Now we see where Mohinderance got his "dumb as a post, way too trusting" attitude from.

8:27 - Well, don't go flying off to look for Mom or anything, boys...

8:32 - Yes, split up... you can cover more ground. You could also cover more ground if the two guys who can fly DID it!

8:33 - It's a little late to be showing remorse for what you did last season, Mohinderance. And Peter is the last person in the world who should be ready to tell Mohinderance to stop being so hard on himself. Still, it's nice to see that they are attempting to try and have some character-building here... even if it fails to ring true coming from him.

8:34 - Love this line.

Nathan: "Peter blames me for everything."
Noah: "I can't say I entirely disagree with him."

Thank you, Noah!

8:36 - And now here comes Claire forgiving Nathan and Noah for everything they've done since they kept her from becoming even more emotionally screwed up than she should be. Well, that's all down to Noah, really. Nathan did jack and squat.

8:37 - More flashbacks. Angela is sneaking out with the boys from The Company. Alice needs to stay behind, for some reason.

8:39 - And... it turns out that person watching Angela was Alice! She's still alive. And doesn't look happy.

8:43 - They've been doing a nice job with the music lately on the show for setting mood.

8:44 - Aha! I think we know what Charles power is. Knowing Angela likes a song and that she missed prom without telling her? Telepath.

8:45 - And telling them to ignore a Black man dancing with a White woman in that time? I think that just confirmed it. :) And there's even an explanation for how Angela became obsessed with socks...

8:46 - Wait... she spent 50 years hiding in the ruins of this camp because she thought she'd be safe there?

8:47 - Oh... so the world would be safe FROM her. Did she have self-loathing of her powers beaten into her THAT badly?

8:48 - Ah. So Alice indirectly sparked off the war between the normals and the powered people. It was directly caused by Mohinderance's dad slapping Alice in front of her energy-blasting daddy after trying to euthanize her. Is anyone at all shocked that someone from the line of Mohinderance was responsible for this disaster?

Like father, like son. Think about it won't you?

8:50 - If she just killed Mohinderance, Alice just officially became the best character on the show. Of course since Angela survived the lightning strike, that's probably not likely.

8:55 - Oh, dammit! He's still alive!

8:56 - "I'm not ready to forgive myself." Good, cause neither are we. Especially since we're not getting any answers on exactly what your dad was doing and because all the evidence points toward him being a spineless, genocidal fuckhead like you.

8:57 - Most awkward family dinner ever!

8:58 - And yeah... trust Peter to finally be the one to say the line about them needing a Family, not a Company to solve the problems before them.

8:59 - Umm... Angela? Not a good time to be smiling. Really. And yeah... I can't say I'm shocked Sylar is pulling this. I'm just shocked he's doing it without Nathan being dead first.



The Final Word: The weakest of the post-Fuller episodes but still better than most of what we've been given this season. Got a lot of much-needed exposition out there, but nothing has really changed as a result of this episode. The revelation regarding the lost sister did nothing plot-wise. Still, lots of good character moments here... even if I now hate Mohinderance and his whole stupid family more than I ever have before.