What? I told you all last week. I'm done with this show.
Seriously. There's nothing here.
Showing posts with label HEROES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HEROES. Show all posts
Monday, November 9, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Heroes: Season 4 - Episode 7: Once Upon a Time in Texas
Here it is: the episode which is either going to break my heart or make me start to believe in this show again.
From the look of the preview, it looks like Hiro may try bargaining his knowledge for Charlie's safety... which could explain a lot of how Sylar kept surviving everything.
I'm going to keep this short because... well, there's not much to discuss except the four things that REALLY pissed me off about this episode.
1. The Whole "Noah Having An Affair" Subplot
It was wholly unneeded and unnecessary, save from the perspective that they can't have an entire episode center on just one character (i.e. Hiro) for some reason. What's worse is that the subplot served no purpose other than making Noah Bennet look like an even bigger jerk.
The really jarring thing is that Noah having an affair with a co-worker not only doesn't jibe with the image we have of him being an insanely devout family man - it makes him look like he's slacking off at work since he is meeting said co-worker at a hotel ON THE DAY HIS DAUGHTER IS SUPPOSED TO DIE!
2. Sylar the Psychic Surgeon
I know Sylar is awesome. The entire show at this point is dedicated to showing us how awesome Sylar is. That being said, I cannot justify how Season One Sylar - who is still relatively green at this point - is capable of mixing his Intuition AND Telekinesis so that he can identify a brain disorder JUST BY LOOKING AT A PERSON and then can perform surgery on them without cutting their head open.
He had to cut Claire's head open in Volume Three to begin understanding her power - don't try and say that he can just look at people and see brain tumors and blocked blood vessels now!
3. Claire's Presence At A Homecoming Event
One of the few good moments in this episode was a nice scene between Noah and Claire where they discussed what Noah really wanted to do with his life. Turns out Noah was a drama geek and loves Shakespeare.
One problem - this is occurring on the day that Claire is destined to die. The same day that, back in Season One, Noah grounded Claire and forbid her to go anywhere near the school in uniform.
This is so huge I don't even feel the need to point out that Claire's hair is visibly different.
4. The Timeline is officially broken!
See if you can follow me on this.
Volume One started with an eclipse on October 1st, 2006.
The events of Volume One took place over five weeks, with the destruction of New York being averted on November 8, 2006.
Volume Two started four months later, with an episode called Four Months Later filling in the gaps of what happened between the end of Volume One and the start of Volume Two.
Volume Two officially begins on March 11, 2007. The events of this volume take place over the course of a little over a week, ending on March 20, 2007 when Nathan calls his press conference in Odessa, Texas.
Volume Three picks up right where Volume Two left off on March 20, 2007. The events of this volume take place over a few days. No exact dates are given after March 23, 2007, but we do know that it is sometime in April when Volume 3 ends, "three weeks later", when Nathan is showing talking to The President about the existence of superpowers.
Volume Four doesn't start with an exact date either but we do find out later on, as Matt is ripping memories from Noah regarding how the government-backed power-hunting team was formed, that it all started five weeks earlier.
This puts a gap of two months/eight weeks between the end of Volume Three and the start of Volume Four, making it sometime in the middle of June, 2007 when Volume Four starts.
Volume Four takes place over the course of a couple of weeks, ending sometime in July.
Volume Five doesn't start with an exact date but we do know that six weeks have passed since the end of Volume Four. This information, coupled with the fact that Claire is just starting her first semester of college, puts the date at somewhere in late August/early September 2007.
So why is this a problem? Because Once Upon A Time in Texas made repeated references to it having been three years since Hiro met Charlie and Hiro being "Three Years Ago" when he time-traveled back to save her! But a cursory glance at the timeline proves that it's barely been 11 months, much less three years!
The Final Verdict: It broke my heart AND my brain. I really am done with this show now. Seriously.
From the look of the preview, it looks like Hiro may try bargaining his knowledge for Charlie's safety... which could explain a lot of how Sylar kept surviving everything.
I'm going to keep this short because... well, there's not much to discuss except the four things that REALLY pissed me off about this episode.
1. The Whole "Noah Having An Affair" Subplot
It was wholly unneeded and unnecessary, save from the perspective that they can't have an entire episode center on just one character (i.e. Hiro) for some reason. What's worse is that the subplot served no purpose other than making Noah Bennet look like an even bigger jerk.
The really jarring thing is that Noah having an affair with a co-worker not only doesn't jibe with the image we have of him being an insanely devout family man - it makes him look like he's slacking off at work since he is meeting said co-worker at a hotel ON THE DAY HIS DAUGHTER IS SUPPOSED TO DIE!
2. Sylar the Psychic Surgeon
I know Sylar is awesome. The entire show at this point is dedicated to showing us how awesome Sylar is. That being said, I cannot justify how Season One Sylar - who is still relatively green at this point - is capable of mixing his Intuition AND Telekinesis so that he can identify a brain disorder JUST BY LOOKING AT A PERSON and then can perform surgery on them without cutting their head open.
He had to cut Claire's head open in Volume Three to begin understanding her power - don't try and say that he can just look at people and see brain tumors and blocked blood vessels now!
3. Claire's Presence At A Homecoming Event
One of the few good moments in this episode was a nice scene between Noah and Claire where they discussed what Noah really wanted to do with his life. Turns out Noah was a drama geek and loves Shakespeare.
One problem - this is occurring on the day that Claire is destined to die. The same day that, back in Season One, Noah grounded Claire and forbid her to go anywhere near the school in uniform.
This is so huge I don't even feel the need to point out that Claire's hair is visibly different.
4. The Timeline is officially broken!
See if you can follow me on this.
Volume One started with an eclipse on October 1st, 2006.
The events of Volume One took place over five weeks, with the destruction of New York being averted on November 8, 2006.
Volume Two started four months later, with an episode called Four Months Later filling in the gaps of what happened between the end of Volume One and the start of Volume Two.
Volume Two officially begins on March 11, 2007. The events of this volume take place over the course of a little over a week, ending on March 20, 2007 when Nathan calls his press conference in Odessa, Texas.
Volume Three picks up right where Volume Two left off on March 20, 2007. The events of this volume take place over a few days. No exact dates are given after March 23, 2007, but we do know that it is sometime in April when Volume 3 ends, "three weeks later", when Nathan is showing talking to The President about the existence of superpowers.
Volume Four doesn't start with an exact date either but we do find out later on, as Matt is ripping memories from Noah regarding how the government-backed power-hunting team was formed, that it all started five weeks earlier.
This puts a gap of two months/eight weeks between the end of Volume Three and the start of Volume Four, making it sometime in the middle of June, 2007 when Volume Four starts.
Volume Four takes place over the course of a couple of weeks, ending sometime in July.
Volume Five doesn't start with an exact date but we do know that six weeks have passed since the end of Volume Four. This information, coupled with the fact that Claire is just starting her first semester of college, puts the date at somewhere in late August/early September 2007.
So why is this a problem? Because Once Upon A Time in Texas made repeated references to it having been three years since Hiro met Charlie and Hiro being "Three Years Ago" when he time-traveled back to save her! But a cursory glance at the timeline proves that it's barely been 11 months, much less three years!
The Final Verdict: It broke my heart AND my brain. I really am done with this show now. Seriously.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Heroes: Season 4 - Episode 6: Strange Attractors
Right. So the preview showed that this one is going to center on Parkman (FINALLY!) and Claire. Naturally, as they set up that GREAT Cliffhanger with Hiro last time, there's no indication he'll be in this episode at all. So... yeah. That's Strike One.
Strike Two is the fact that Matt is, once again, the series Butt Monkey.
Let's see if there's a Strike Three tonight.
PARKMAN/SYLAR'S MIND: Matt is making love to his wife. Sylar takes over, because he's a dick like that. The ultimate insult? Matt's wife - who, as has been noted before - is a total whore who cheated on him and broke his heart, gets off on the rough sex. Matt feels even lamer.
Matt shouts at Sylar and tells him that he can't control him. Sylar points out that Matt really can't fight back against him and that he's just becoming more and more erratic to everyone else's eyes the more tries to talk to Sylar.
Matt tries to get away from his wife and son before he hurts them. Naturally, despite everything she's seen in the last three seasons, she thinks it's an excuse to get out of trying to rekindle their relationship. He finally comes clean with her on the mind wipe. She tells him to stay there and she and Matt will go somewhere else... probably to call the guys from the funny farm.
Again, with everything else that has happened in their life, it is totally unbelievable to her that Matt could really be holding a bad guy prison inside his head.
Matt, showing uncharacteristic intelligence, tells his wife not to tell him where they are going. Sylar calls him on this and points out this STILL does nothing to get rid of him.
Matt tries calling Mohinder but, thankfully, Mohinder isn't answering his phone. And it is then that Matt discovers the key to keeping Sylar under control; booze!
Yes, heavy drinking makes Sylar weaker and as Sylar tries to taunt Parkman further (your wife said "why can't you be more like this all the time?" last night when I was doing her), Matt keeps drinking. And drinking. And realizes Sylar is afraid of dying (who isn't?) and howls in triumph as Sylar passes out, fades away and then Matt falls on the floor.... as his wife returns with the men from the funny farm.
No wait - it's Matt's AA sponsor. He tells Matt they need to start over, Matt agrees, goes into the next room to take a shower... and then Sylar takes over Matt's body completely, saying that Matt drinking himself into a stupor only enabled Sylar to take the driver's seat while Matt was passed out. Which begs the question of why Sylar didn't just do this while Matt was... you know, asleep.
Oh wait... because that wouldn't allow us the illusion of Matt showing basic competence for at least one episode and getting even ONE victory.
NOAH/TRACY/CARNIES/SYLAR'S BODY: Noah is trying to get Jeremy the Healing Kid from last time out of jail. Only problem is the sheriff has a vendetta and is out to see Jeremy swing. Noah calls in Tracy, hoping that "Aunt Tracy" can get the kid sprung where Noah the family friend couldn't.
Tracy has a heart-to-heart with Jeremy about know what it is like to lose control of a power, kill someone and feel guilty about it. Unfortunately, the Cracker Sheriff is still determined not to release the kid because - oh wow - some other teenagers said he killed animals for fun and his notebook is full of emo poetry. Noah points out that's hardly different from what most 17 year olds write but the sheriff refuses to budge.
Out in the street, Samuel shows up and talks with Tracy, somehow magically teleporting her to the carnival and telling her that it's the home she and Jeremy need. This is even lamer than it sounds thanks to some piss poor green screen work.
Samuel shows her around and sends her off with Lydia. Sylar/Nathan shows up and starts insisting that he knows Tracy and that he remembers having sex with her. Samuel insists that the memories he has aren't his, being unusually testy as he does so. Sylar/Nathan asks where his memories are then...
Somehow, Noah finally convinces the hick sheriff to let the kid go. I'm guessing a scene got cut here. He makes arrangements for Jeremy to go live with Tracy, not too far from him. Sadly, there's a violent mob outside the jail waiting as the emo kid is released, one redneck gets through the police to try and grab Jeremy... he dies almost instantly and rather than listen to Noah's pleas to heal the guy and save him, Jeremy goes back into jail with the cops who are pulling guns on him and freaking out.
As an aside, if this type of thing can happen at any time, anywhere, with who knows how many witnesses and the press covering things... how the hell did The Company keep superpowers quiet for so long?
One of the cops takes it upon himself to give Jeremy "the Jasper treatment", which Jeremy doesn't resist. Noah and Tracy find his bloody, dragged to death corpse in the middle of the town square streets an hour later. Tracy tells Noah never to call her again, pulls the compass out of her purse - it spins around to point east and Samuel shows up in town the next day, causing the police station to collapse in on itself as he causes a freak earthquake.
CLAIRE/GRETCHEN: Claire and Gretchen are about to talk about "the kiss", when they are kidnapped by the sorority elders. They are tied up, put in a car trunk and get to have the awkward conversation while in bondage. Somewhere, fan fiction is being written.
They get let loose in a slaughterhouse and are told they have to find some thingy in order to escape from Hell Week rushing. Problem is that the Slaughterhouse does seem to be rigged to be a lot more harmful than it should be and yes, I know that by any decent standard this is highly illegal and that no real sorority would ever do something like this without being shut down immediately.
There is more bonding and more death traps and I die a little more as I realize precious screen time is being wasted on this that could be spent on Hiro rescuing Charlie and messing with the timeline so none of this happened.
Long story short, The Evil Invisible Girl tries to kill Gretchen, Claire stops her but is critically wounded in the process and Claire's powers are revealed to two other sorority girls. Oh, and Evil Invisible Girl runs off after HER powers and identity are revealed.
The Final Verdict: So what did we learn? Don't be an emo teen in small-town Texas. Never join a sorority. And drinking booze will get rid of the evil voices inside your head.
At least the preview promises next episode will be All Hiro.
Strike Two is the fact that Matt is, once again, the series Butt Monkey.
Let's see if there's a Strike Three tonight.
PARKMAN/SYLAR'S MIND: Matt is making love to his wife. Sylar takes over, because he's a dick like that. The ultimate insult? Matt's wife - who, as has been noted before - is a total whore who cheated on him and broke his heart, gets off on the rough sex. Matt feels even lamer.
Matt shouts at Sylar and tells him that he can't control him. Sylar points out that Matt really can't fight back against him and that he's just becoming more and more erratic to everyone else's eyes the more tries to talk to Sylar.
Matt tries to get away from his wife and son before he hurts them. Naturally, despite everything she's seen in the last three seasons, she thinks it's an excuse to get out of trying to rekindle their relationship. He finally comes clean with her on the mind wipe. She tells him to stay there and she and Matt will go somewhere else... probably to call the guys from the funny farm.
Again, with everything else that has happened in their life, it is totally unbelievable to her that Matt could really be holding a bad guy prison inside his head.
Matt, showing uncharacteristic intelligence, tells his wife not to tell him where they are going. Sylar calls him on this and points out this STILL does nothing to get rid of him.
Matt tries calling Mohinder but, thankfully, Mohinder isn't answering his phone. And it is then that Matt discovers the key to keeping Sylar under control; booze!
Yes, heavy drinking makes Sylar weaker and as Sylar tries to taunt Parkman further (your wife said "why can't you be more like this all the time?" last night when I was doing her), Matt keeps drinking. And drinking. And realizes Sylar is afraid of dying (who isn't?) and howls in triumph as Sylar passes out, fades away and then Matt falls on the floor.... as his wife returns with the men from the funny farm.
No wait - it's Matt's AA sponsor. He tells Matt they need to start over, Matt agrees, goes into the next room to take a shower... and then Sylar takes over Matt's body completely, saying that Matt drinking himself into a stupor only enabled Sylar to take the driver's seat while Matt was passed out. Which begs the question of why Sylar didn't just do this while Matt was... you know, asleep.
Oh wait... because that wouldn't allow us the illusion of Matt showing basic competence for at least one episode and getting even ONE victory.
NOAH/TRACY/CARNIES/SYLAR'S BODY: Noah is trying to get Jeremy the Healing Kid from last time out of jail. Only problem is the sheriff has a vendetta and is out to see Jeremy swing. Noah calls in Tracy, hoping that "Aunt Tracy" can get the kid sprung where Noah the family friend couldn't.
Tracy has a heart-to-heart with Jeremy about know what it is like to lose control of a power, kill someone and feel guilty about it. Unfortunately, the Cracker Sheriff is still determined not to release the kid because - oh wow - some other teenagers said he killed animals for fun and his notebook is full of emo poetry. Noah points out that's hardly different from what most 17 year olds write but the sheriff refuses to budge.
Out in the street, Samuel shows up and talks with Tracy, somehow magically teleporting her to the carnival and telling her that it's the home she and Jeremy need. This is even lamer than it sounds thanks to some piss poor green screen work.
Samuel shows her around and sends her off with Lydia. Sylar/Nathan shows up and starts insisting that he knows Tracy and that he remembers having sex with her. Samuel insists that the memories he has aren't his, being unusually testy as he does so. Sylar/Nathan asks where his memories are then...
Somehow, Noah finally convinces the hick sheriff to let the kid go. I'm guessing a scene got cut here. He makes arrangements for Jeremy to go live with Tracy, not too far from him. Sadly, there's a violent mob outside the jail waiting as the emo kid is released, one redneck gets through the police to try and grab Jeremy... he dies almost instantly and rather than listen to Noah's pleas to heal the guy and save him, Jeremy goes back into jail with the cops who are pulling guns on him and freaking out.
As an aside, if this type of thing can happen at any time, anywhere, with who knows how many witnesses and the press covering things... how the hell did The Company keep superpowers quiet for so long?
One of the cops takes it upon himself to give Jeremy "the Jasper treatment", which Jeremy doesn't resist. Noah and Tracy find his bloody, dragged to death corpse in the middle of the town square streets an hour later. Tracy tells Noah never to call her again, pulls the compass out of her purse - it spins around to point east and Samuel shows up in town the next day, causing the police station to collapse in on itself as he causes a freak earthquake.
CLAIRE/GRETCHEN: Claire and Gretchen are about to talk about "the kiss", when they are kidnapped by the sorority elders. They are tied up, put in a car trunk and get to have the awkward conversation while in bondage. Somewhere, fan fiction is being written.
They get let loose in a slaughterhouse and are told they have to find some thingy in order to escape from Hell Week rushing. Problem is that the Slaughterhouse does seem to be rigged to be a lot more harmful than it should be and yes, I know that by any decent standard this is highly illegal and that no real sorority would ever do something like this without being shut down immediately.
There is more bonding and more death traps and I die a little more as I realize precious screen time is being wasted on this that could be spent on Hiro rescuing Charlie and messing with the timeline so none of this happened.
Long story short, The Evil Invisible Girl tries to kill Gretchen, Claire stops her but is critically wounded in the process and Claire's powers are revealed to two other sorority girls. Oh, and Evil Invisible Girl runs off after HER powers and identity are revealed.
The Final Verdict: So what did we learn? Don't be an emo teen in small-town Texas. Never join a sorority. And drinking booze will get rid of the evil voices inside your head.
At least the preview promises next episode will be All Hiro.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Heroes: Season 4 - Episode 5: Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa = blank slate in Latin. A reference to Sylar, certainly, but usually each episode title has a double meaning - what else is getting blanked or starting over?
Hiro/Emma - After teleporting to Peter last time and collapsing, Hiro is rushed to the hospital. Peter takes Hiro's power and teleports away, asking Emma - who is looking for more answers regarding her power, to keep an eye on Hiro while suggesting he talk to him about power.
Hiro attempts to offer what little advice he can (i.e. Powers are awesome!) and makes a pain of himself by doing a magic show to cheer up the other patients, using his powers. He also allows Emma to see what her power is like with time stopped and apparently she can touch sound waves, as she moves the colors around while they are stopped. This sounds much more interesting than it is, but it does explain a lot. Anyway, Emma is apparently inspired by this as well as Hiro's refusal to despair in the face of death. Shout Out to Season One: Hiro mentions Charlie, who was just as brave in the face of her death.
Hiro teleports away before Peter can get back, leaving behind an envelope containing part of his Bucket List. The envelope says "Save Charlie". We close on Hiro, still in a hospital gown, walking into the Burnt Toast Diner in Odessa, the day Charlie is supposed to die.
Peter/Noah - Peter teleports to Noah, figuring that Noah probably knows someone with a healing power that can save Hiro. Noah does - a boy he "bagged-and-tagged" several years earlier.
Claire, who is there doing laundry, asks why she just can't use her healing potion blood to help Hiro and Noah gives an answer that I think is total BS... but hey, give the writers credit for actually trying to give an answer. For those who care, the explanation is something about Claire's blood only causing the disease to spread faster... which I guess might make sense if Hiro had some form of cancer and Claire's ability made those cells grow faster as well. But since they never actually defined what Hiro has exactly, we don't know for sure.
Anyway, Peter and Noah jump gto the kid's house and find that the plants, animals and people inside are quite dead. The kid tries to blow Noah away with a shot gun but Noah tries to talk him down. It seems that the kid's power is such that he can control the flow of life energy, enabling him to heal or hurt others with a touch and he's trying to keep everyone away for fear of killing again.
At this point, Peter chooses this moment to teleport in front of the kid and freeze time as he is raising his gun to shoot Noah. Peter does stop time - but not before he takes a shotgun blast to the chest himself.
In what may be the most anti-climactic commercial break of the show's run, Noah figures out what happened as time restarts and gets the kid to get it together so he can heal Peter. Peter takes the kid's power, Noah calls in a favor to get Peter a personal plane to NYC and Noah stays to help the kid get things together.
Sylar/Carnies - Samuel, the Carnie leader, figures out that Sylar doesn't have any memories. Further consultation with Lydia the Empath (yes, according to HeroesWiki her power is sensing others' emotions) confirms that it's like there's two people warring inside Sylar. More, as they start trying to get him to remember things, the memories that come back sound more and more like Nathan Petrelli's.
Desperate times calling for desperate measures, Samuel hands "Sylar" over to a carnie who has some power that can restore memories: we'll call him The Jamaican since he has dreadlocks, doesn't speak much and his power seems to be the reverse of The Haitian's. Sylar has a bad LSD trip amongst some green screens masquerading as a Hall of Mirrors and begins freaking out as he sees every single person he killed.
Samuel, being a dick, invited the head cop and his family to the carnival. He goes to the freaked out Sylar, says the cops are there and that if he gets discovered, it could doom all the people who have been treating Sylar nice all this time. A confrontation is forced in the Hall of Mirrors and if the show still had a decent effects budget, the mirrors would all break and cut Ernie Hudson to ribbons. But they don't, so they don't. The job is left to super-speedster knife-freak Ray Park, who proves himself a cut above (ha-ha) after Sylar electrocutes the heck out of Ernie Hudson but cannot kill him outright.
The scene ends with Sylar being adopted into the Carnie Family - with a Baptism no less - and Sylar wandering off with Lydia to her trailer while speedster Ray Park look son and glowers because everyone likes Sylar better than him and now Sylar is making it with his would-be girlfriend.
The Final Verdict: I'm feeling a bit mixed. It's probably the best episode all season, but that's damning with faint praise if ever there was such a thing. The performances are top-notch and the writing has apparently been done by someone who watched Season One.
Masi Oka shines in all the scenes with Hiro and seeing the sweet, gentle geek who wasn't a complete idiot (well, he IS putting on a magic show despite being under doctor's orders to stay in bed) made me nostalgic in a good way. And when we see that Hiro's goals for things to put right before dying include "Save Charlie", you awwwww before you realize that's actually what he's gone to do.
Incidentally, I know nothing will come of this... but the hope that Hiro might somehow screw the timeline up and cause the last three seasons to have not happened by stopping Sylar before he kills Charlie is all the reason I need to tune in next week. Which means there will probably be nothing done with Hiro's story next time.
Jack Coleman also gets some nice moments here, playing Noah Bennet as we have never seen him before: vulnerable and actually wanting to help people rather than protect them. It's an important distinction and one he has just now woken up to. Pity the angry teen he's playing against isn't able to keep up.
Unfortunately, all of the good acting and character moments belay the fact that the writers are deliberately drawing out the drama for the sake of drama and while individual characters are written well, there are moments of stupidity that shatter the great character moments and remind you good and god damn well that you are watching something scripted.
For instance...
1. Why does Peter take the healer kid's power? Why doesn't Peter just teleport himself and the healer kid back to the hospital? Faster than waiting for a car to take him to a plane and then spending several hours in the air. Especially when Peter knows Hiro is loosing control of his power!
2. Granting that I am happy someone thought to explain why Claire couldn't do a healing-blood transfusion to save Hiro, I am severely annoyed that they brought this up NOW after ignoring it at the end of Chapter 4 when Nathan was freshly dead and they needed a live Nathan to convince The President that illegally imprisoning the superpowered was a Very Bad Idea. So bringing this up now just makes Noah look like a jerk/idiot because he should have known better.
3. Why in the bloody hell does Samuel seem to think that restoring Sylar's memories would be a good thing, given that Sylar = amoral psychotic genius who specializes in killing other people with powers?
Still, five episodes in - and no Mohinder!
Hiro/Emma - After teleporting to Peter last time and collapsing, Hiro is rushed to the hospital. Peter takes Hiro's power and teleports away, asking Emma - who is looking for more answers regarding her power, to keep an eye on Hiro while suggesting he talk to him about power.
Hiro attempts to offer what little advice he can (i.e. Powers are awesome!) and makes a pain of himself by doing a magic show to cheer up the other patients, using his powers. He also allows Emma to see what her power is like with time stopped and apparently she can touch sound waves, as she moves the colors around while they are stopped. This sounds much more interesting than it is, but it does explain a lot. Anyway, Emma is apparently inspired by this as well as Hiro's refusal to despair in the face of death. Shout Out to Season One: Hiro mentions Charlie, who was just as brave in the face of her death.
Hiro teleports away before Peter can get back, leaving behind an envelope containing part of his Bucket List. The envelope says "Save Charlie". We close on Hiro, still in a hospital gown, walking into the Burnt Toast Diner in Odessa, the day Charlie is supposed to die.
Peter/Noah - Peter teleports to Noah, figuring that Noah probably knows someone with a healing power that can save Hiro. Noah does - a boy he "bagged-and-tagged" several years earlier.
Claire, who is there doing laundry, asks why she just can't use her healing potion blood to help Hiro and Noah gives an answer that I think is total BS... but hey, give the writers credit for actually trying to give an answer. For those who care, the explanation is something about Claire's blood only causing the disease to spread faster... which I guess might make sense if Hiro had some form of cancer and Claire's ability made those cells grow faster as well. But since they never actually defined what Hiro has exactly, we don't know for sure.
Anyway, Peter and Noah jump gto the kid's house and find that the plants, animals and people inside are quite dead. The kid tries to blow Noah away with a shot gun but Noah tries to talk him down. It seems that the kid's power is such that he can control the flow of life energy, enabling him to heal or hurt others with a touch and he's trying to keep everyone away for fear of killing again.
At this point, Peter chooses this moment to teleport in front of the kid and freeze time as he is raising his gun to shoot Noah. Peter does stop time - but not before he takes a shotgun blast to the chest himself.
In what may be the most anti-climactic commercial break of the show's run, Noah figures out what happened as time restarts and gets the kid to get it together so he can heal Peter. Peter takes the kid's power, Noah calls in a favor to get Peter a personal plane to NYC and Noah stays to help the kid get things together.
Sylar/Carnies - Samuel, the Carnie leader, figures out that Sylar doesn't have any memories. Further consultation with Lydia the Empath (yes, according to HeroesWiki her power is sensing others' emotions) confirms that it's like there's two people warring inside Sylar. More, as they start trying to get him to remember things, the memories that come back sound more and more like Nathan Petrelli's.
Desperate times calling for desperate measures, Samuel hands "Sylar" over to a carnie who has some power that can restore memories: we'll call him The Jamaican since he has dreadlocks, doesn't speak much and his power seems to be the reverse of The Haitian's. Sylar has a bad LSD trip amongst some green screens masquerading as a Hall of Mirrors and begins freaking out as he sees every single person he killed.
Samuel, being a dick, invited the head cop and his family to the carnival. He goes to the freaked out Sylar, says the cops are there and that if he gets discovered, it could doom all the people who have been treating Sylar nice all this time. A confrontation is forced in the Hall of Mirrors and if the show still had a decent effects budget, the mirrors would all break and cut Ernie Hudson to ribbons. But they don't, so they don't. The job is left to super-speedster knife-freak Ray Park, who proves himself a cut above (ha-ha) after Sylar electrocutes the heck out of Ernie Hudson but cannot kill him outright.
The scene ends with Sylar being adopted into the Carnie Family - with a Baptism no less - and Sylar wandering off with Lydia to her trailer while speedster Ray Park look son and glowers because everyone likes Sylar better than him and now Sylar is making it with his would-be girlfriend.
The Final Verdict: I'm feeling a bit mixed. It's probably the best episode all season, but that's damning with faint praise if ever there was such a thing. The performances are top-notch and the writing has apparently been done by someone who watched Season One.
Masi Oka shines in all the scenes with Hiro and seeing the sweet, gentle geek who wasn't a complete idiot (well, he IS putting on a magic show despite being under doctor's orders to stay in bed) made me nostalgic in a good way. And when we see that Hiro's goals for things to put right before dying include "Save Charlie", you awwwww before you realize that's actually what he's gone to do.
Incidentally, I know nothing will come of this... but the hope that Hiro might somehow screw the timeline up and cause the last three seasons to have not happened by stopping Sylar before he kills Charlie is all the reason I need to tune in next week. Which means there will probably be nothing done with Hiro's story next time.
Jack Coleman also gets some nice moments here, playing Noah Bennet as we have never seen him before: vulnerable and actually wanting to help people rather than protect them. It's an important distinction and one he has just now woken up to. Pity the angry teen he's playing against isn't able to keep up.
Unfortunately, all of the good acting and character moments belay the fact that the writers are deliberately drawing out the drama for the sake of drama and while individual characters are written well, there are moments of stupidity that shatter the great character moments and remind you good and god damn well that you are watching something scripted.
For instance...
1. Why does Peter take the healer kid's power? Why doesn't Peter just teleport himself and the healer kid back to the hospital? Faster than waiting for a car to take him to a plane and then spending several hours in the air. Especially when Peter knows Hiro is loosing control of his power!
2. Granting that I am happy someone thought to explain why Claire couldn't do a healing-blood transfusion to save Hiro, I am severely annoyed that they brought this up NOW after ignoring it at the end of Chapter 4 when Nathan was freshly dead and they needed a live Nathan to convince The President that illegally imprisoning the superpowered was a Very Bad Idea. So bringing this up now just makes Noah look like a jerk/idiot because he should have known better.
3. Why in the bloody hell does Samuel seem to think that restoring Sylar's memories would be a good thing, given that Sylar = amoral psychotic genius who specializes in killing other people with powers?
Still, five episodes in - and no Mohinder!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Heroes: Season 4 - Episode 4: Hysterical Blindness
My apologies for being so late with this. I had it mostly written but then Real Life kept me from getting back to finish the editing.
Again, nothing much happened until the last ten minutes except for this: Ernie Hudson became this year's Chuck Norris.
PETER - Peter talks about trying to reconnect with his family and people in general again. This seems to be a blatant hint toward my theories on Peter's powers being right but Angela is about as interested in Peter's life as most people are in my theories and asks why Peter doesn't spend more time with Nathan.
Peter saves Emma, the deaf woman who sees sound as colors, from being hit by a bus and accidentally takes her power. He figures this out the next day and the two of them have a Hollywood Meet Cute moment that could only be more cliched if they were playing Heart and Soul at the piano where they explore her power.
Still, I'll give them props for remembering who Peter is at his core: the kind-hearted guy who wants to help, whether it's saving lives or just making people feel better. Even if the scenes with him and Emma were DULLLLLLL...
EMMA - Yeah - it turns out she can apparently focus the sound into destructive blasts. At the very lest, she can crack walls while playing the cello. I still don't care.
SYLAR'S BODY - Last time, you'll remember that "Nathan" was killed by a hitman and buried out in a remote stretch of land, somewhere rural. Several minutes later, Sylar was dragging himself from the grave, his "death" apparently having reset his shape-shifting powers.
Naturally, being out in a remote place where a shallow grave will never be found, a police car happens by two minutes later that has questions about the strange dirty man in the bloody clothes.
The cop - played by Ernie "Winston" Hudson - hauls Sylar in and finds out that only only does Sylar not remember who he is or much of anything besides walking down the road - he doesn't have memories of the sensations of heat and cold. They get an inexplicably British doctor whom reminds me of Martha Jones from Doctor Who for some reason to come in and try to talk to him. She is asked to leave after they identify Sylar as wanted murdered Gabriel Grey.
Hold on - didn't Sylar get declared legally dead by Danko after they faked his death? And even if he didn't, wouldn't Noah have taken care of that after they changed Sylar into Nathan? I just can't believe that Gabriel Grey is still on the most wanted list after all this.
Ernie decides to beat a confession out of Sylar even though they know who he is and there was apparently enough evidence against him for their to be an actual warrant for his arrest over his mother's murder. Ernie gets thrown through a glass window for his trouble after Sylar's telekenesis kicks in by accident.
Make a long story short, Sylar flees with the doctor, convinces her that he's innocent (despite her having seen his file) and she in turn convinces him to turn himself in. His lightning powers kick in - again by accident - and he winds up falling down a hill after getting shot at, heals, keeps running from the K-9 units the police in this backward just HAPPENED to bring with them in case they needed dogs during a car chase...
... and runs into Samuel and his waiting carnival, which disappears before the cops can get to it. No - really. Apparently they have a teleporter who can take the whole carnival where they want it to go. Which is kinda cool and is the only way to explain what happened earlier with...
CLAIRE - Claire and her new BFF Gretchen are getting along just fine. Suddenly, this other girl - who is with Claire's mothers old sorority - shows up to rush Claire. Gretchen is reluctant but Claire decides that she could do with the normalcy of something as mundane as a sorority.
It's at a "speed-rushing" party later that Claire learns that everyone already knows a lot about her, thanks to Gretchen. Gretchen says she just wound up talking about Claire because "you're more interesting and I don't like talking about myself."
Claire takes this at face value... until a book suddenly falls off the shelf while she's alone in the dorm, deactivating the sleep mode on Gretchen's computer... and revealing that Gretchen has a LOT of photos of Claire on a website. And that she's been reading a lot of things about places Claire lived in or did that made the news... including stuff nobody should know about (i.e. Claire Butler is Claire Bennet) And then there's that messy bit about murder/suicide pacts.
This creeps Claire out, but she doesn't say anything until after the sorority dance the next night, when Gretchen is nearby after Claire and another girl are nearly impaled by a falling flagpole. Gretchen doesn't deny having been the photos of Claire and indeed admits to kinda stalking her... because she has a crush.
Cue the tamest lesbian kiss ever and before a stunned Claire can do anything, the head sorority girl comes in with the rest of the girls and asks if they want to join the Sisterhood.
Okay. Now sit down before we move on because in the long line of stupid, unbelievable plot-twists... even for THIS show ... this one is a doozy.
We find out that the murderer of Claire's roomate is... the sorority leader.
How do we know this? A flashback where we discover...
a) The sorority leader has the power to become invisible.
She pushed the roommate out of the window... unseen. She planed the fake suicide note after Claire left the room to report the dead roommate. And then she set up the computer with the incriminating information and dropped the book to get Claire's attention
However, all of this pales to the revelation that...
b) The sorority leader is part of the Carnie Family.
As we find out in the opening scene of this episode, The Carnies take in any powered person who doesn't fit in the mainstream. Apparently that's not neetting them enough people for their "family". Hence why they need to go recruiting.
Their leader, Samuel, speaks of the importance of taking those they wish to recruit and driving them apart from the people in their lives so they are more susceptible to being brought into the fold. It's a good plan. Time-tested and cult approved. There are just a few problems with this plan in regards to Claire, who we find out is one of the ones he wants to recruit.
1. How Did They Get Their Agent Into A Position of Authority In The Sorority?
They would have needed several years notice to enroll their agent, get her into the sorority and then get her elevated to a position of power. This is especially jarring given that Claire didn't know what college she was going to six weeks ago. It isn't impossible if they have a PreCog among the family - but everything we've seen seems to suggest that they're just now figuring out who they need to recruit.
2. If They Had That Kind Of Power To See The Future, Why Go This Route?
Wouldn't it have been easier to use their pull and powers to make their agent Claire's roommate, rather than kill her roommate THEN wait a few days before approaching her about joining the sorority and befriending her that way?
3. Why Involve The Sorority In The First Place?
If you're ultimate goal is to drive someone apart from all other social outlets, why run a scam that requires utilizing one of the biggest social organizations that exists?
And do I even need to bring up the fact that one of the three people they are trying to recruit is Sylar?
Yes, all this intelligence they are able to gather on the people they are recruiting - everything they've learned about Peter and Claire and their mental state... and they still say "You know who we need to get first for our family? That crazed lunatic who KILLS PEOPLE TO TAKE THEIR SUPER POWERS!"
Again, nothing much happened until the last ten minutes except for this: Ernie Hudson became this year's Chuck Norris.
PETER - Peter talks about trying to reconnect with his family and people in general again. This seems to be a blatant hint toward my theories on Peter's powers being right but Angela is about as interested in Peter's life as most people are in my theories and asks why Peter doesn't spend more time with Nathan.
Peter saves Emma, the deaf woman who sees sound as colors, from being hit by a bus and accidentally takes her power. He figures this out the next day and the two of them have a Hollywood Meet Cute moment that could only be more cliched if they were playing Heart and Soul at the piano where they explore her power.
Still, I'll give them props for remembering who Peter is at his core: the kind-hearted guy who wants to help, whether it's saving lives or just making people feel better. Even if the scenes with him and Emma were DULLLLLLL...
EMMA - Yeah - it turns out she can apparently focus the sound into destructive blasts. At the very lest, she can crack walls while playing the cello. I still don't care.
SYLAR'S BODY - Last time, you'll remember that "Nathan" was killed by a hitman and buried out in a remote stretch of land, somewhere rural. Several minutes later, Sylar was dragging himself from the grave, his "death" apparently having reset his shape-shifting powers.
Naturally, being out in a remote place where a shallow grave will never be found, a police car happens by two minutes later that has questions about the strange dirty man in the bloody clothes.
The cop - played by Ernie "Winston" Hudson - hauls Sylar in and finds out that only only does Sylar not remember who he is or much of anything besides walking down the road - he doesn't have memories of the sensations of heat and cold. They get an inexplicably British doctor whom reminds me of Martha Jones from Doctor Who for some reason to come in and try to talk to him. She is asked to leave after they identify Sylar as wanted murdered Gabriel Grey.
Hold on - didn't Sylar get declared legally dead by Danko after they faked his death? And even if he didn't, wouldn't Noah have taken care of that after they changed Sylar into Nathan? I just can't believe that Gabriel Grey is still on the most wanted list after all this.
Ernie decides to beat a confession out of Sylar even though they know who he is and there was apparently enough evidence against him for their to be an actual warrant for his arrest over his mother's murder. Ernie gets thrown through a glass window for his trouble after Sylar's telekenesis kicks in by accident.
Make a long story short, Sylar flees with the doctor, convinces her that he's innocent (despite her having seen his file) and she in turn convinces him to turn himself in. His lightning powers kick in - again by accident - and he winds up falling down a hill after getting shot at, heals, keeps running from the K-9 units the police in this backward just HAPPENED to bring with them in case they needed dogs during a car chase...
... and runs into Samuel and his waiting carnival, which disappears before the cops can get to it. No - really. Apparently they have a teleporter who can take the whole carnival where they want it to go. Which is kinda cool and is the only way to explain what happened earlier with...
CLAIRE - Claire and her new BFF Gretchen are getting along just fine. Suddenly, this other girl - who is with Claire's mothers old sorority - shows up to rush Claire. Gretchen is reluctant but Claire decides that she could do with the normalcy of something as mundane as a sorority.
It's at a "speed-rushing" party later that Claire learns that everyone already knows a lot about her, thanks to Gretchen. Gretchen says she just wound up talking about Claire because "you're more interesting and I don't like talking about myself."
Claire takes this at face value... until a book suddenly falls off the shelf while she's alone in the dorm, deactivating the sleep mode on Gretchen's computer... and revealing that Gretchen has a LOT of photos of Claire on a website. And that she's been reading a lot of things about places Claire lived in or did that made the news... including stuff nobody should know about (i.e. Claire Butler is Claire Bennet) And then there's that messy bit about murder/suicide pacts.
This creeps Claire out, but she doesn't say anything until after the sorority dance the next night, when Gretchen is nearby after Claire and another girl are nearly impaled by a falling flagpole. Gretchen doesn't deny having been the photos of Claire and indeed admits to kinda stalking her... because she has a crush.
Cue the tamest lesbian kiss ever and before a stunned Claire can do anything, the head sorority girl comes in with the rest of the girls and asks if they want to join the Sisterhood.
Okay. Now sit down before we move on because in the long line of stupid, unbelievable plot-twists... even for THIS show ... this one is a doozy.
We find out that the murderer of Claire's roomate is... the sorority leader.
How do we know this? A flashback where we discover...
a) The sorority leader has the power to become invisible.
She pushed the roommate out of the window... unseen. She planed the fake suicide note after Claire left the room to report the dead roommate. And then she set up the computer with the incriminating information and dropped the book to get Claire's attention
However, all of this pales to the revelation that...
b) The sorority leader is part of the Carnie Family.
As we find out in the opening scene of this episode, The Carnies take in any powered person who doesn't fit in the mainstream. Apparently that's not neetting them enough people for their "family". Hence why they need to go recruiting.
Their leader, Samuel, speaks of the importance of taking those they wish to recruit and driving them apart from the people in their lives so they are more susceptible to being brought into the fold. It's a good plan. Time-tested and cult approved. There are just a few problems with this plan in regards to Claire, who we find out is one of the ones he wants to recruit.
1. How Did They Get Their Agent Into A Position of Authority In The Sorority?
They would have needed several years notice to enroll their agent, get her into the sorority and then get her elevated to a position of power. This is especially jarring given that Claire didn't know what college she was going to six weeks ago. It isn't impossible if they have a PreCog among the family - but everything we've seen seems to suggest that they're just now figuring out who they need to recruit.
2. If They Had That Kind Of Power To See The Future, Why Go This Route?
Wouldn't it have been easier to use their pull and powers to make their agent Claire's roommate, rather than kill her roommate THEN wait a few days before approaching her about joining the sorority and befriending her that way?
3. Why Involve The Sorority In The First Place?
If you're ultimate goal is to drive someone apart from all other social outlets, why run a scam that requires utilizing one of the biggest social organizations that exists?
And do I even need to bring up the fact that one of the three people they are trying to recruit is Sylar?
Yes, all this intelligence they are able to gather on the people they are recruiting - everything they've learned about Peter and Claire and their mental state... and they still say "You know who we need to get first for our family? That crazed lunatic who KILLS PEOPLE TO TAKE THEIR SUPER POWERS!"
Monday, October 5, 2009
Heroes: Season 4 - Episode 3: Acceptance
Nothing happened in this episode. Well, nothing involving the major plot, anyway. At least, not until the last five minutes. This might have been acceptable had there been much in the way of character development but we didn't even get that.
Here's what happened. The short short version.
* Tracy gets her old job back working under Governor Sheridan. She wants to make amends for what she did and asks for more responsibility that will allow her to help people. He says she doesn't need to impress him and suggests she "work under him". She goes to the bathroom, nearly falls apart (water woman, remember?) and then goes back out, turns him down and leaves.
* Hiro - breaking his rule about going in the past and trying to change things at a time when it least matters - tries and fails to stop a man from committing suicide 47 times. This might be darkly funny in a Groundhog Day sort of way, if Hiro weren't capable of just freezing time and pulling him off the ledge. Instead, Hiro learns a lesson about being honest with one's family and the value of life and he's just about to tell his sister about his powers when he suddenly has a spasm and teleports somewhere else before her.
* Noah is having a mid-life crisis. Claire talks him through it.
* Peter's weird tattoo is gone, having disappeared before he can show it to Noah.
* "Nathan" (really Nathan's memories in Sylar's body) keeps having flashes of memories that aren't his. He eventually works out that this is some kind of ability that lets him see the history of things by touching them - a power Sylar had before.
* Nathan starts investigating what he thinks is the murder of his old high-school girlfriend (he had flashes of her dead body touching his old ball-cap) and finds out that she died in an diving accident but that Angela covered up the whole thing and erased his memory. He tells the truth to the girlfriend's mom (played by Swoozie Kurtz), who pays a guy to have Nathan stabbed, shot and buried out in the woods somewhere. The episode ends with a very confused looking Sylar digging himself out of the grave zombie-style. Apparently the shape-shifting reset when the regeneration kicked in.
* The carnies show up at the end, briefly, to talk about the compass and their fears that Bennet might be interested in them again.
So yeah... apart from Nathan now being trapped in Sylar's body, nothing much has changed or happened involving any of the major storylines in the last hour.
Here's what happened. The short short version.
* Tracy gets her old job back working under Governor Sheridan. She wants to make amends for what she did and asks for more responsibility that will allow her to help people. He says she doesn't need to impress him and suggests she "work under him". She goes to the bathroom, nearly falls apart (water woman, remember?) and then goes back out, turns him down and leaves.
* Hiro - breaking his rule about going in the past and trying to change things at a time when it least matters - tries and fails to stop a man from committing suicide 47 times. This might be darkly funny in a Groundhog Day sort of way, if Hiro weren't capable of just freezing time and pulling him off the ledge. Instead, Hiro learns a lesson about being honest with one's family and the value of life and he's just about to tell his sister about his powers when he suddenly has a spasm and teleports somewhere else before her.
* Noah is having a mid-life crisis. Claire talks him through it.
* Peter's weird tattoo is gone, having disappeared before he can show it to Noah.
* "Nathan" (really Nathan's memories in Sylar's body) keeps having flashes of memories that aren't his. He eventually works out that this is some kind of ability that lets him see the history of things by touching them - a power Sylar had before.
* Nathan starts investigating what he thinks is the murder of his old high-school girlfriend (he had flashes of her dead body touching his old ball-cap) and finds out that she died in an diving accident but that Angela covered up the whole thing and erased his memory. He tells the truth to the girlfriend's mom (played by Swoozie Kurtz), who pays a guy to have Nathan stabbed, shot and buried out in the woods somewhere. The episode ends with a very confused looking Sylar digging himself out of the grave zombie-style. Apparently the shape-shifting reset when the regeneration kicked in.
* The carnies show up at the end, briefly, to talk about the compass and their fears that Bennet might be interested in them again.
So yeah... apart from Nathan now being trapped in Sylar's body, nothing much has changed or happened involving any of the major storylines in the last hour.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Heroes: Season 4 - Episode 2: Ink
THE GOOD
The revelation that Matt did indeed put Sylar's personality inside his head, using the logic that "I'm a cop, he's a killer. I stop killers. If that means imprisoning him inside my head, so be it." It's stupid but it's the ballsiest thing Matt has ever done, so I'm willing to let it slide.
The whole fake-out with Sylar proving just how much of a threat he can be inside of Matt's head was VERY effective. Basically, Sylar used Matt's own power against him and caused him to see several things that weren't there, tricking Matt into accusing a drug-dealer of kidnapping and murder with a lot of evidence that didn't actually exist and nearly beating the guy to death.
Again with the character growth! Noah actually admits he can't protect Claire for the rest of her life and that he has to let her handle her own problems.
Still no sign of Mohinder. He didn't even do the voice-over. Not even the Previously On Heroes.
THE BAD
The murder mystery re: Claire's roommate has been completely dropped. And they didn't even bother to hide the subtext of Claire's new friendship ("Can I see it?" "This is my first time?") If you're going to make with the lesbians, let's get it over with and see some kissing!
Our new carnie bad guy's power doesn't make any sense to me. He says he's an Earth-Mover and we did see him fill in a grave with a wave of his hand. But how does that translate into him being able to absorb ink, make someone's tattoo choke them, throw a bottle at a pyramid of milk bottles and letting it stand despite knocking out one of the middle pins and being able to photoshop newspaper photos with a touch?
Emma - the newest hero. A deaf woman who hates people, intentionally isolates herself by wearing headphones so people won't talk to her... and her power is seeing sounds as colors. Or maybe she really does have synthesia and her power is being able to pick up any musical instrument and play it like a pro instantly. Either way, what the hell is the point of this character and every scene she was in?!
I just realized - why is this show called HEROES when the only person who is really doing anything heroic or noble is Peter?
THE UGLY
I think that HEROES must take place in some parallel version of the Marvel Universe... because I'm hard pressed to believe there is anywhere else where people - much less hospital workers who presumably would be fairly intelligent and well educated - are so stupid/evil to believe it possible for an ordinary man (keep in mind none of his co-workers know about Peter's powers) to rig multiple accidents without people being killed, just so that he can set himself up as a hero - something that Peter is accused of doing after being sued for dislocating a man's shoulder while saving his life.
For that matter, aren't EMT's insured against this type of thing? Something like Malpractice Insurance for Doctors?
When people look back and ask at which point HEROES jumped the shark, I think the words "The Cello Scene" will be fairly common.
Heroes: Season 4 - The First Two Hours
THE GOOD
Peter is awesome again. His power is apparently back to full strength (I'm too tired to ask why at this point) and he's back to his heroic ways, working as a paramedic and using his powers to help make the job easier.
The sequence with Tracy trying to kill Noah was actually pretty good. And the brief flirtation between the two is the most interesting thing that has been done with either of them in a while.
Danko is finally dead. I'm curious how he stayed out of prison after last season but hey - no point in worrying now.
Matt and Noah both tell Angela off for forcing them into the whole "saving Sylar's life" situation. And Peter tells Noah off (politely) for trying to drag him back into being a Company man.
THE BAD
The whole story arc with Claire and her dead roommate is just BORING. I can't believe we spent two minutes watching Hayden P. suck at playing Guitar Hero.
The writers clearly have no idea what to do with Hiro. The whole "my powers are killing me" thing is classic soap opera. And the "I can use my powers to do this... but i must not!" thing got tired two seasons ago.
They didn't wait long at all before showing that Sylar/Nathan is breaking his programming.
I have no idea what the deal is with The Compass, The Carnies or how being able to move earth translates into controlling ink and using tattoos to strangle someone.
THE UGLY
I'm just going to lay this prediction out right now and promise myself an M&M Blizzard if I am right; Claire's new best friend killed her roommate as part of a misguided effort to "get to know Claire". Because I'm just cynical enough to think the only way NBC would allow a lesbian college girl relationship to be depicted is if it turns out that the other girl is a psycho killer.
What's the one thing worse than still having Sylar around? Having two Sylars around. Prediction: Matt will go over the edge as "Sylar" begins taking over Mr. Hyde style.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Because I Live To Answer These Questions...
Someone over at Topless Robot had the good fortune not to see any of HEROES thus far. He asked if anyone could give him any context going into the show.
Well, I love a challenge and I could use a catharsis to keep me awake tonight. So let's just see how well I can sum things up and how funny I can make it.
First, a list of the major players.
The Company - a shadowy organization founded after the Vietnam War, dedicated to policing/controlling people with superpowers. It was founded by 12 people with superpowers, who decided that there were a lot of corrupt bastards who would abuse their gifts if they weren't monitored. Corrupt bastards like them, to be exact. The Company (as an entity or through the actions of its' founders) has been responsible for 90% of the bad things that happen on this show.
Angela - the only surviving member of the Company founders going into Season 4. Has two sons, Nathan and Peter as well as a granddaughter, Claire - all of whom have powers. Angela is the queen of manipulative bitches and is the only person, up until the end of Season 3, who was written with a consistent IQ. She has dream visions of the future and a deep hatred of time-travelers, whose antics give her headaches when they 'change' things.
Peter - emo male nurse who had the power to copy the abilities of any other powered person he'd ever met, even if he never sees them use their powers. Would be the most powerful person in the world if he weren't a complete idiot. Currently working as an EMT in NYC and has his powers nerfed to where he can only store one power at a time and he has to touch a person to copy their power.
Nathan - ex-Congressman appointed state Senator. Had the power to fly but he didn't like using it and spent most of the first three seasons either denying his powers, giving the shaft to other people with powers and secretly overseeing a project to give everyone superpowers. Has been President of the United States in at least two alternate futures. Is currently dead, but being impersonated unknowingly by major villain Sylar.
Sylar - a watchmaker who had the power to instantly understand how any complex system works by looking at it. What made him a cracker-jack watchmaker also enabled him to "steal" the powers of others after he cut their heads open and took a look at how the brains worked. Was an effective villain in Season One and an afterthought in Season Two. And as for Season Three... well, wait for the season summaries...
Claire - the invincible cheerleader, with a Wolverine-style healing factor. Most of the show's main storylines have focused on how important she is and how very important it is that she not be put in any kind of danger. This is ironic (and stupid) since the show has shown Claire (or anybody with a healing factor) can regrow limbs, survive prolonged exposure to radiation and that they don't age after a certain point. So Claire is actually in the least amount of danger compared to any other character.
Noah - a.k.a Bennet a.k.a. HRG (Horn Rimmed Glasses) - Claire's adopted father, Company Agent and the one person who has kept the world safe from the stupidity of his bosses and the idiots who won the genetic lottery and got superpowers.
Hiro - the time-traveling, time-stopping, teleporting otaku. Alternates between being genre savy and a complete idiot as the plot requires. Would be able to solve most of the problems on the show in five minutes if he weren't easily distracted by the side-quests the writers keep throwing at him. Also has his powers nerfed, to where he can now only freeze time. Also, using his power might be killing him.
Ando - Hiro's long suffering Hetero Life Mate. Started out with no powers but, thanks to a dose of McGuffin Juice, now has the power to boost other hero's powers. (i.e. a moderately powerful telepath could read minds across a city) He can also shoot red lightning bolts when the plot says he has to.
Matt - the series butt monkey. He's a telepath AND has the power to see the future, but is continually distracted from actually doing anything to affect the plot by various side-quests. Exists primarily to show an Everyman suffering at the hands of characters who actually do things.
Mohinder - a.k.a. Mohinderance. Geneticist whose geneticist father apparently did a lot more harm than good with his research into superpowers. Mohinder is continuing the fine family tradition of dabbling in SCIENCE! and is here primarily to explain things to the viewer. Created a formula that gives people superpowers after spending the better part of four months trying to find a way to take their powers away. Tested the formula on himself and has now settled - after a brief period where he was turning into a giant cockroach - on having super strength.
Tracy - a lobbyist who spent most of Season 3 either working under Nathan (in every sense of the phrase) or being chained up in an oven. Was thought to have the power to freeze things but her powers may extend to controlling and becoming water, based on the Season 4 preview. Exists primarily to provide fan service until Claire is 21 and lusting after her is officially "no longer creepy".
CHAPTER ONE
Around the world, ordinary people are developing extraordinary powers. Three of them (office worker Hiro, junkie artist Isaac and nurse Peter) join forces after each of them is confronted with evidence that New York City will be destroyed in a nuclear disaster.
In Hiro's case, he accidentally went forward in time and saw the devistation. In Isaac's case, he paints visions of the future when he is high. And in Peter's case, he was approached by a man who claimed to be Hiro in the future, who only gave him the cryptic message "Save the Cheerleader, Save The World".
This message, it turns out, referred to Claire - a Texas cheerleader, who was the next target of a serial killer called Sylar. Sylar targeted other superhumans so he could take their powers. Using Isaac's paintings, Peter was able to figure out where to go and saved Claire. Everything was wonderful until Peter started having visions of exploding and realized that whatever destroyed New York would still happen and he was the cause.
It turned out that The Company had also foreseen Peter's impending doom and was planning to use it to put Peter's brother Nathan on the fast-track to the presidency, letting him milk the sympathy of having his district "nuked by terrorists" in order to run for higher office.
Sylar was captured by The Company but quickly escaped and set about continuing where he left off. At the same time, Claire's father was working to hide Claire's powers from his bosses, eventually putting her into hiding rather than let her become a guinea pig. This led to him being imprisoned and orchestrating a jail break with several others, including a scientist who had the power to manipulate radiation.
For a while, it looked like Sylar (who killed the radioactive man) was going to become the human bomb instead. But after he killed Isaac and gained the ability to see the future, he was able to manipulate things toward a final showdown with Peter, where Peter lost control of his powers and threatened to explode. Disaster was averted when Hiro showed up, killed Sylar with a sword through the chest and Nathan - feeling guilty over the deaths of the people he was supposed to represent - showed up and flew Peter into the sky, seemingly killing them both. The season ended with a time lost Hiro crash-landing in feudal Japan.
CHAPTER TWO
In the past, Hiro winds up setting up the birth of The Company by accident. His interference in a war leads both to the creation of the legends of Kensei (his favorite mythological hero) and an Englishman with a healing factor (the original Kensei) swearing blood revenge on all of humanity after Hiro accidentally won the heart of his girlfriend.
Back in the present, Peter (who survived the explosion) is imprisoned by The Company, befriends another prisoner named Adam and the two escape together. Peter is given telepathic amnesia and sent to Ireland in a crate, where he is discovered by Irish gangsters who quickly recruit Peter into their organization. Somehow, Peter is much more effective at using his powers without any memories... though he quickly winds up screwing up his new life after he accidentally goes forward in time to a future where a plague has destroyed most life on Earth and leaves his girlfriend there.
Eventually, Peter gets back, meets up with Adam again and we find out that Adam is the bloke Hiro pissed off in the past. He convinces Peter to help him break into a Company facility so they can get this virus "to destroy it", intending to use it himself the whole time. Despite being a telepath AND amnesiac, Peter never things to read his new best friend's mind... just to make sure.
Oh, and Sylar? It turns out The Company had an agent save his life and inject him with a virus that would remove his powers. That's good. But they only leave him with the one agent to guard him. That's bad. And by the end of Season Two, he has his powers back.
Eventually Adam is stopped by Hiro and buried alive in a coffin. The virus isn't released and Peter - after a talk with Nathan (who was healed with Adam's blood in the hospital) - agrees to out the existence of superpowers to the world. But at the press conference, somebody shoots Nathan before he can reveal that he can fly and the season ends.
CHAPTER THREE
It turns out that the gunman who shot Nathan was Peter FROM THE FUTURE! It turns out that revealing the existence of superpowers was a very bad thing and the future sucks because of it.
Sylar tracks down Claire and takes her power but it turns out cutting her head open won't kill her, making most of the worries behind Season One - COMPLETELY POINTLESS! He then goes after The Company's main headquarters, intent on revenge. The good news is that one agent is able to stop and subdue him. The bad news is that, in the process, a bunch of other people The Company has been keeping imprisoned escape.
We are told that together they are as dangerous as 10 Sylars. In actuality, most of the escapees are either innocent people The Company imprisoned because they thought they COULD be dangerous (i.e. a man who could create controllable wormholes) or idiots whose first action upon breaking out of prison is causing as much property damage as possible and robbing banks. Sylar is told by Angela that she is his real birth mother and he immediately goes to work for The Company, trying to recapture all the escapees. Most of them are dead or recaptured within two episodes, making the whole break-out plot... COMPLETELY POINTLESS!
All of this is put on hold, however, when it is revealed that Angela's husband Arthur isn't really dead, that he had the power to permanently steal other people's powers and that she tried to kill him after he used his stolen telepathy to turn her into a Stepford Wife. Arthur has some kind of plan to give everyone in the world superpowers using a formula The Company had access to at one point. He also recruits Mohinder, for some reason, to work on the project even though Mohinder's efforts at accidentally creating the same formula are slowly turning him into a cockroach. He also recruits Nathan and Sylar onto his team, along with all the escapees who didn't get recaptured and a few disgruntled ex-Company agents Angela fired.
Meanwhile, Future Peter takes Present Peter to the future to show him how much things sucked after everyone got superpowers. Future Peter is killed, Present Peter is captured and winds up killing his own brother (IN THE FUTURE!) after taking Sylar's power (IN THE FUTURE!) and time-traveling back to the Present, where he promptly loses all his powers after confronting his father.
It all ends badly when Peter destroys the facility where Nathan is mass-producing the formula to make an army of super-soldiers, Mohinder is somehow cured of his cockroachism by being drowned in the formula, Sylar kills Arthur after using his newly-acquired lie-detector power to figure out that he isn't really Angela and Arthur's son and goes back to his villainous ways. Oh, and Peter sorta gets his powers back in that he can still copy powers, but only one at a time and only through touching another person. So yeah, he's basically Rogue now.
Oh, and Hiro was running around trying to recover the formula this whole time... but it's really not worth going into except to say he lost his powers and Ando got powers. So... yeah.
CHAPTER FOUR
After spending most of the last chapter thinking that giving everyone superpowers would solve everything, Nathan does a total 180 and decides that he has to imprison everyone with superpowers, lest they prove to use them unwisely. He recruits Bennet to help him with trapping and monitoring these people... but things go screwy after The President (who Nathan tells about the existence of super powers) insists that he put a Black-Ops expert named Danko in charge of the field teams.
Danko, in the fine Marvel tradition, hates all mutants. Except for Sylar, who he eventually partners up with. And is screwed over by.
Pretty much everyone is captured by the government, escapes when Claire crashes the prison plane they were being held on and goes on the run. Except for Sylar, who manages to kill every agent who comes after him, tracks down his real father, figures out dad has the same powers and is kind of a jerk and goes back to his old goal of becoming as powerful as possible - by replacing The President of the United States.
Long story short (too late) the Heroes do eventually unite, convince Nathan of the error of his ways (after he gets outed as a filthy mutant to Danko, of course) and Sylar is subdued... after he killed Nathan.
If saner heads were in charge, they'd kill him right then and there. But because Angela is obsessed with the idea that her visions of the future can not NOT happen, she convinces a late-to-the-party Matt to use his powers to make Sylar (who can now shape-shift) think he is Nathan.
The chapter ends with Tracy (who really didn't matter until this point) starting to kill off various officials involved in illegally incarcerating her and other powered people and Nathan/Sylar showing signs that he is figuring out the truth.
Well, I love a challenge and I could use a catharsis to keep me awake tonight. So let's just see how well I can sum things up and how funny I can make it.
First, a list of the major players.
The Company - a shadowy organization founded after the Vietnam War, dedicated to policing/controlling people with superpowers. It was founded by 12 people with superpowers, who decided that there were a lot of corrupt bastards who would abuse their gifts if they weren't monitored. Corrupt bastards like them, to be exact. The Company (as an entity or through the actions of its' founders) has been responsible for 90% of the bad things that happen on this show.
Angela - the only surviving member of the Company founders going into Season 4. Has two sons, Nathan and Peter as well as a granddaughter, Claire - all of whom have powers. Angela is the queen of manipulative bitches and is the only person, up until the end of Season 3, who was written with a consistent IQ. She has dream visions of the future and a deep hatred of time-travelers, whose antics give her headaches when they 'change' things.
Peter - emo male nurse who had the power to copy the abilities of any other powered person he'd ever met, even if he never sees them use their powers. Would be the most powerful person in the world if he weren't a complete idiot. Currently working as an EMT in NYC and has his powers nerfed to where he can only store one power at a time and he has to touch a person to copy their power.
Nathan - ex-Congressman appointed state Senator. Had the power to fly but he didn't like using it and spent most of the first three seasons either denying his powers, giving the shaft to other people with powers and secretly overseeing a project to give everyone superpowers. Has been President of the United States in at least two alternate futures. Is currently dead, but being impersonated unknowingly by major villain Sylar.
Sylar - a watchmaker who had the power to instantly understand how any complex system works by looking at it. What made him a cracker-jack watchmaker also enabled him to "steal" the powers of others after he cut their heads open and took a look at how the brains worked. Was an effective villain in Season One and an afterthought in Season Two. And as for Season Three... well, wait for the season summaries...
Claire - the invincible cheerleader, with a Wolverine-style healing factor. Most of the show's main storylines have focused on how important she is and how very important it is that she not be put in any kind of danger. This is ironic (and stupid) since the show has shown Claire (or anybody with a healing factor) can regrow limbs, survive prolonged exposure to radiation and that they don't age after a certain point. So Claire is actually in the least amount of danger compared to any other character.
Noah - a.k.a Bennet a.k.a. HRG (Horn Rimmed Glasses) - Claire's adopted father, Company Agent and the one person who has kept the world safe from the stupidity of his bosses and the idiots who won the genetic lottery and got superpowers.
Hiro - the time-traveling, time-stopping, teleporting otaku. Alternates between being genre savy and a complete idiot as the plot requires. Would be able to solve most of the problems on the show in five minutes if he weren't easily distracted by the side-quests the writers keep throwing at him. Also has his powers nerfed, to where he can now only freeze time. Also, using his power might be killing him.
Ando - Hiro's long suffering Hetero Life Mate. Started out with no powers but, thanks to a dose of McGuffin Juice, now has the power to boost other hero's powers. (i.e. a moderately powerful telepath could read minds across a city) He can also shoot red lightning bolts when the plot says he has to.
Matt - the series butt monkey. He's a telepath AND has the power to see the future, but is continually distracted from actually doing anything to affect the plot by various side-quests. Exists primarily to show an Everyman suffering at the hands of characters who actually do things.
Mohinder - a.k.a. Mohinderance. Geneticist whose geneticist father apparently did a lot more harm than good with his research into superpowers. Mohinder is continuing the fine family tradition of dabbling in SCIENCE! and is here primarily to explain things to the viewer. Created a formula that gives people superpowers after spending the better part of four months trying to find a way to take their powers away. Tested the formula on himself and has now settled - after a brief period where he was turning into a giant cockroach - on having super strength.
Tracy - a lobbyist who spent most of Season 3 either working under Nathan (in every sense of the phrase) or being chained up in an oven. Was thought to have the power to freeze things but her powers may extend to controlling and becoming water, based on the Season 4 preview. Exists primarily to provide fan service until Claire is 21 and lusting after her is officially "no longer creepy".
CHAPTER ONE
Around the world, ordinary people are developing extraordinary powers. Three of them (office worker Hiro, junkie artist Isaac and nurse Peter) join forces after each of them is confronted with evidence that New York City will be destroyed in a nuclear disaster.
In Hiro's case, he accidentally went forward in time and saw the devistation. In Isaac's case, he paints visions of the future when he is high. And in Peter's case, he was approached by a man who claimed to be Hiro in the future, who only gave him the cryptic message "Save the Cheerleader, Save The World".
This message, it turns out, referred to Claire - a Texas cheerleader, who was the next target of a serial killer called Sylar. Sylar targeted other superhumans so he could take their powers. Using Isaac's paintings, Peter was able to figure out where to go and saved Claire. Everything was wonderful until Peter started having visions of exploding and realized that whatever destroyed New York would still happen and he was the cause.
It turned out that The Company had also foreseen Peter's impending doom and was planning to use it to put Peter's brother Nathan on the fast-track to the presidency, letting him milk the sympathy of having his district "nuked by terrorists" in order to run for higher office.
Sylar was captured by The Company but quickly escaped and set about continuing where he left off. At the same time, Claire's father was working to hide Claire's powers from his bosses, eventually putting her into hiding rather than let her become a guinea pig. This led to him being imprisoned and orchestrating a jail break with several others, including a scientist who had the power to manipulate radiation.
For a while, it looked like Sylar (who killed the radioactive man) was going to become the human bomb instead. But after he killed Isaac and gained the ability to see the future, he was able to manipulate things toward a final showdown with Peter, where Peter lost control of his powers and threatened to explode. Disaster was averted when Hiro showed up, killed Sylar with a sword through the chest and Nathan - feeling guilty over the deaths of the people he was supposed to represent - showed up and flew Peter into the sky, seemingly killing them both. The season ended with a time lost Hiro crash-landing in feudal Japan.
CHAPTER TWO
In the past, Hiro winds up setting up the birth of The Company by accident. His interference in a war leads both to the creation of the legends of Kensei (his favorite mythological hero) and an Englishman with a healing factor (the original Kensei) swearing blood revenge on all of humanity after Hiro accidentally won the heart of his girlfriend.
Back in the present, Peter (who survived the explosion) is imprisoned by The Company, befriends another prisoner named Adam and the two escape together. Peter is given telepathic amnesia and sent to Ireland in a crate, where he is discovered by Irish gangsters who quickly recruit Peter into their organization. Somehow, Peter is much more effective at using his powers without any memories... though he quickly winds up screwing up his new life after he accidentally goes forward in time to a future where a plague has destroyed most life on Earth and leaves his girlfriend there.
Eventually, Peter gets back, meets up with Adam again and we find out that Adam is the bloke Hiro pissed off in the past. He convinces Peter to help him break into a Company facility so they can get this virus "to destroy it", intending to use it himself the whole time. Despite being a telepath AND amnesiac, Peter never things to read his new best friend's mind... just to make sure.
Oh, and Sylar? It turns out The Company had an agent save his life and inject him with a virus that would remove his powers. That's good. But they only leave him with the one agent to guard him. That's bad. And by the end of Season Two, he has his powers back.
Eventually Adam is stopped by Hiro and buried alive in a coffin. The virus isn't released and Peter - after a talk with Nathan (who was healed with Adam's blood in the hospital) - agrees to out the existence of superpowers to the world. But at the press conference, somebody shoots Nathan before he can reveal that he can fly and the season ends.
CHAPTER THREE
It turns out that the gunman who shot Nathan was Peter FROM THE FUTURE! It turns out that revealing the existence of superpowers was a very bad thing and the future sucks because of it.
Sylar tracks down Claire and takes her power but it turns out cutting her head open won't kill her, making most of the worries behind Season One - COMPLETELY POINTLESS! He then goes after The Company's main headquarters, intent on revenge. The good news is that one agent is able to stop and subdue him. The bad news is that, in the process, a bunch of other people The Company has been keeping imprisoned escape.
We are told that together they are as dangerous as 10 Sylars. In actuality, most of the escapees are either innocent people The Company imprisoned because they thought they COULD be dangerous (i.e. a man who could create controllable wormholes) or idiots whose first action upon breaking out of prison is causing as much property damage as possible and robbing banks. Sylar is told by Angela that she is his real birth mother and he immediately goes to work for The Company, trying to recapture all the escapees. Most of them are dead or recaptured within two episodes, making the whole break-out plot... COMPLETELY POINTLESS!
All of this is put on hold, however, when it is revealed that Angela's husband Arthur isn't really dead, that he had the power to permanently steal other people's powers and that she tried to kill him after he used his stolen telepathy to turn her into a Stepford Wife. Arthur has some kind of plan to give everyone in the world superpowers using a formula The Company had access to at one point. He also recruits Mohinder, for some reason, to work on the project even though Mohinder's efforts at accidentally creating the same formula are slowly turning him into a cockroach. He also recruits Nathan and Sylar onto his team, along with all the escapees who didn't get recaptured and a few disgruntled ex-Company agents Angela fired.
Meanwhile, Future Peter takes Present Peter to the future to show him how much things sucked after everyone got superpowers. Future Peter is killed, Present Peter is captured and winds up killing his own brother (IN THE FUTURE!) after taking Sylar's power (IN THE FUTURE!) and time-traveling back to the Present, where he promptly loses all his powers after confronting his father.
It all ends badly when Peter destroys the facility where Nathan is mass-producing the formula to make an army of super-soldiers, Mohinder is somehow cured of his cockroachism by being drowned in the formula, Sylar kills Arthur after using his newly-acquired lie-detector power to figure out that he isn't really Angela and Arthur's son and goes back to his villainous ways. Oh, and Peter sorta gets his powers back in that he can still copy powers, but only one at a time and only through touching another person. So yeah, he's basically Rogue now.
Oh, and Hiro was running around trying to recover the formula this whole time... but it's really not worth going into except to say he lost his powers and Ando got powers. So... yeah.
CHAPTER FOUR
After spending most of the last chapter thinking that giving everyone superpowers would solve everything, Nathan does a total 180 and decides that he has to imprison everyone with superpowers, lest they prove to use them unwisely. He recruits Bennet to help him with trapping and monitoring these people... but things go screwy after The President (who Nathan tells about the existence of super powers) insists that he put a Black-Ops expert named Danko in charge of the field teams.
Danko, in the fine Marvel tradition, hates all mutants. Except for Sylar, who he eventually partners up with. And is screwed over by.
Pretty much everyone is captured by the government, escapes when Claire crashes the prison plane they were being held on and goes on the run. Except for Sylar, who manages to kill every agent who comes after him, tracks down his real father, figures out dad has the same powers and is kind of a jerk and goes back to his old goal of becoming as powerful as possible - by replacing The President of the United States.
Long story short (too late) the Heroes do eventually unite, convince Nathan of the error of his ways (after he gets outed as a filthy mutant to Danko, of course) and Sylar is subdued... after he killed Nathan.
If saner heads were in charge, they'd kill him right then and there. But because Angela is obsessed with the idea that her visions of the future can not NOT happen, she convinces a late-to-the-party Matt to use his powers to make Sylar (who can now shape-shift) think he is Nathan.
The chapter ends with Tracy (who really didn't matter until this point) starting to kill off various officials involved in illegally incarcerating her and other powered people and Nathan/Sylar showing signs that he is figuring out the truth.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thoughts on HEROES, Season 4, Chapter 12 - An Invisible Thread
This is the end.... the end... the end of the season.
8:00 - Recap Time! Ando and Hiro go after Building 26 - Hiro hurts himself using his powers - Mohinderance gets tranked - Matt reunites with his ex-wife and son, deciding he must finish this battle so they can all have peace - Sylar is going even crazier and is now planning to replace The President - and Nathan goes off to confront Sylar alone.
8:01 - And Danko took down Sylar before he could kill Nathan... or maybe he killed Nathan first... And yay... more Mohinderance narration about everyone being special. "Perhaps there is a master plan that drives the chaos of creation..." And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
8:02 - Angela had a dream.... Nathan is in trouble. He's not the only one as Noah realizes that the Feds are moving in and arranges for Angela and Claire to run away, even though I thought we saw them all getting caught last week... Maybe that was Angela's dream?
8:04 - And here's Sylar getting stabbed in the back of the head again. And Danko realizing he's done messed up. "Shape-shifting. Gotta love, it right?" Yes, Sylar shifted the vulnerable spot in the back of his head. He pins Danko to the wall and monologues on how he needs Nathan to take his memories (using that "history-reading" power he got from that one woman Angela fed him back in Season 3) and how he's going to become Nathan so he can then go on to meet and become The President. See, THIS is the kind of stakes you should be playing for with this show.
8:05 - I guess that means Sylar CAN'T get all of a person's memories just by touching a DNA sample after all. Damnit... I was proud of that theory. Shaking hands is apparently enough, though.
8:07 - And... Danko was played like a harp, with Sylar changing into him, firing shots at the men coming up the stairs, and changing back into his "Agent Alias" in time to "take down" the crazed commander. Nice.
8:10 - Angela lecturing Claire on how it's her fault Noah keeps putting himself in danger... somehow. She tells Claire to go up and talk to Nathan while she goes to figure out where Matt Parkman is since she saw him saving Nathan's life. Which can't be helpful if they know Sylar is masquerading AS Nathan. But Angela apparently can't stop visions from happening but she can work to make them happen. Geez, that kinda sucks.
8:11 - Ah. Nathan's not dead yet. Pity.
8:12 - Wait... so The President DOESN'T know that Nathan is a mutant? Why the hell didn't Danko go and tell him that after he pushed Nathan out a window and saw him fly? And if he didn't say "Hey, the head of the mutant-hunting program is a mutant!", how the hell did he get rehired?" after Nathan got Presidential permission to fire Danko for being a genocidal fuckwad?
8:14 - And Claire is insisting she has to say with Nathan. I think she knows...
8:15 - Okay. Hiro seems to have recovered but Ando is pleading caution on trying to use his power again since it gave him a headache "AND a nosebleed!" Naturally, Hiro is ready to die to save everyone locked up in Building 26, even if using his power may kill him. Predictable but cool. I really hope he isn't the one to die.
8:16 - "Fancy meeting you here." Ooooh hell. Danko locked in a cell with Noah. I almost feel sorry for the bald bastard.
Nah, not really.
8:19 - And Nathan wakes up just in time for Peter to show up. According to the comic, Peter was delayed dodging air-fire over Washington DC. Just in case you're wondering why it took Peter so long to catch up with Nathan. He was doped up on tranquilizer and trying to recover enough to be useful.
8:21 - Oh dammit... Danko admiting Noah was right. Noah saying that if it weren't for Claire, he'd be in the same position. The two about to shake hands to agree to work together to escape and stop Sylar.... and TIME STOP!
8:22 - And now Hiro's ear is bleeding. "Holy Crap!" A lot of people doped up.
8:23 - Hiro and Ando switch all the guards and staff with the people doped up. Of course they make the mistake of freeing Mohinder.
8:24 - Of course Noah figures it (i.e. why is our door suddenly unlocked and all the guards trussed-up) out in less than a minute.
And Hiro: "Bruce Wayne only slept for two hours a day..." BWAHAHA!
8:25 - Yeah. So Mohinder gives Hiro the "One More Time" speech, insisting that what is happening now with his powers is unnatural and doing it one more time will kill him. Betcha he will have to do it one more time before episode's end and Mohinder will be wrong.
8:26 - "I thought you were right handed?" Oh, Claire SOOOOO knows.
8:28 - And Sylar knows that she knows and answers her phone AS her when Noah calls. "Oh God, this is fun...."
8:30 - It just occurred to me... isn't Matt in California? How is he going to save "Nathan" (either of them) from across the country when everyone else is in Washington DC? Unless Angela was lying...
8:33 - Sylar moving Claire around telekinetically forcing her to walk and fix him wine. I can hear the fan-fic being written already.
8:34 - And here comes the "we are not so different, you and I" speech, with Sylar... ewwwwww... hitting on Claire and offering to make her the first First Lady.
8:35 - And Nathan finally admits to what he is... at the worst possible time; in front of a bunch of trigger happy Secret Service agents.
8:36 - Ah, and here it is... the plan? Get Peter close enough to Sylar to touch him. And whammy - the Peter/Sylar fight we've been waiting for four seasons.
8:37 - Except Claire gets tossed out of the room... Sylar gets the lighting ready as the doors close as Peter and Nathan fly and charge.
8:38 - Claire runs in to find a dazed and confused Peter... she says they need to go after them (Sylar and Nathan both went out the window) and Peter... does not fly out the window. Looks like he touched Sylar and he's adjusting to the power shock... I hope.
8:39 - And... there's a dead Nathan. Throat slit by Sylar. "Oh, Claire is going to be so mad at me..." Guess that answers the questions as to who the "person around since the first episode" Sylar would be killing is.
8:41 - Commercial Time. Just realized something... Either Matt is about to become the biggest bitch ever and save Sylar "Nathan" from everyone else... or Matt is about to show up and wave away the illusion of the dead Nathan.
8:42 - Matt just getting into town. Angela is waiting for him. Matt tells her to screw off. Angela insists that her dreams can't lie and that they need Nathan alive to fix things.
8:43 - This "FREEZE" thing is getting really old. With Noah pulling a gun on Claire and Peter demanding proof they are who they are and then the SS demanding the same thing. And yeah... Claire gets bad ass moment standing in path of panicky Secret Service agents. And Peter DOES have Sylar's powers.
8:45 - So much for saving Nathan, huh Angela?
8:47 - Bad ASS! Peter disguised as The President injects Sylar with enough tranquilizer to down an elephant as Sylar is very very confused as to why he cant change into The President and why The President's skin is shimmering.
8:49 - Wait. So where is Danko in all of this?
8:51 - So they need Nathan to convince The President that this was all a mistake.... So...
1) why not have Peter - who still has all of Sylar's powers - SHAPE-SHIFT INTO NATHAN?!?!
2) why go through this crazy plan of using Matt's powers to hypnotize Sylar into becoming Nathan when this is inevitably going to come back and bite them in the ass?
3) why can't they just tell The President... the truth?!?!
8:55 - *sighs* And now The Company is reforming, but with government sponorship and deniability. And Noah, Angela and Matt are now sitting on this secret and not telling all the rest of the characters, despite how all this crap started BECAUSE of the secrets and lies they held back from one another?!?! Did nobody learn ANYTHING?!?!
8:57 - Six Weeks Later. Start of Volume 5: Redemption Man comes home to find running water all over the floor... and it changes into a soaking wet Ali Larter.
8:58 - So Tracy is now Hydro(wo)man and is killing random people... for some reason. And "Nathan" already seems to be breaking his programming, staring at clocks and noticing that they are fast.
(deadpan) Oh good lord, I am so shocked.
THE FINAL WORD: I am very pissed off right now. After all the talk this season about how the lies and secrets of The Company were responsible for causing all these problems... and what happens? Noah and Angela turn around and make the SAME DAMN MISTAKES in order to bring some semblance of The Company back. Danko just disappears from the final episode after reconciling with Bennet. Tracy is brought back for one minute so they can undo the great character moment she got earlier in the season. And the suspense over how long it would take before "Nathan" began to recover lasted a good five minutes.
And I just realized something... what about all the people Hiro and Ando freed? Aren't they going to ask questions? Talk to the press? Sue the shit out of the American Government? And why can't they just tell The President the truth about how Nathan died trying to stop Sylar? Superpowers wouldn't have to come into it - just tell the public that Senator and War Hero Nathan Petrelli gave his life to save The President from a terrorist. That's the literal truth!
Maybe I'll give the show a look-see in a few months but right now... I doubt it.
8:00 - Recap Time! Ando and Hiro go after Building 26 - Hiro hurts himself using his powers - Mohinderance gets tranked - Matt reunites with his ex-wife and son, deciding he must finish this battle so they can all have peace - Sylar is going even crazier and is now planning to replace The President - and Nathan goes off to confront Sylar alone.
8:01 - And Danko took down Sylar before he could kill Nathan... or maybe he killed Nathan first... And yay... more Mohinderance narration about everyone being special. "Perhaps there is a master plan that drives the chaos of creation..." And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
8:02 - Angela had a dream.... Nathan is in trouble. He's not the only one as Noah realizes that the Feds are moving in and arranges for Angela and Claire to run away, even though I thought we saw them all getting caught last week... Maybe that was Angela's dream?
8:04 - And here's Sylar getting stabbed in the back of the head again. And Danko realizing he's done messed up. "Shape-shifting. Gotta love, it right?" Yes, Sylar shifted the vulnerable spot in the back of his head. He pins Danko to the wall and monologues on how he needs Nathan to take his memories (using that "history-reading" power he got from that one woman Angela fed him back in Season 3) and how he's going to become Nathan so he can then go on to meet and become The President. See, THIS is the kind of stakes you should be playing for with this show.
8:05 - I guess that means Sylar CAN'T get all of a person's memories just by touching a DNA sample after all. Damnit... I was proud of that theory. Shaking hands is apparently enough, though.
8:07 - And... Danko was played like a harp, with Sylar changing into him, firing shots at the men coming up the stairs, and changing back into his "Agent Alias" in time to "take down" the crazed commander. Nice.
8:10 - Angela lecturing Claire on how it's her fault Noah keeps putting himself in danger... somehow. She tells Claire to go up and talk to Nathan while she goes to figure out where Matt Parkman is since she saw him saving Nathan's life. Which can't be helpful if they know Sylar is masquerading AS Nathan. But Angela apparently can't stop visions from happening but she can work to make them happen. Geez, that kinda sucks.
8:11 - Ah. Nathan's not dead yet. Pity.
8:12 - Wait... so The President DOESN'T know that Nathan is a mutant? Why the hell didn't Danko go and tell him that after he pushed Nathan out a window and saw him fly? And if he didn't say "Hey, the head of the mutant-hunting program is a mutant!", how the hell did he get rehired?" after Nathan got Presidential permission to fire Danko for being a genocidal fuckwad?
8:14 - And Claire is insisting she has to say with Nathan. I think she knows...
8:15 - Okay. Hiro seems to have recovered but Ando is pleading caution on trying to use his power again since it gave him a headache "AND a nosebleed!" Naturally, Hiro is ready to die to save everyone locked up in Building 26, even if using his power may kill him. Predictable but cool. I really hope he isn't the one to die.
8:16 - "Fancy meeting you here." Ooooh hell. Danko locked in a cell with Noah. I almost feel sorry for the bald bastard.
Nah, not really.
8:19 - And Nathan wakes up just in time for Peter to show up. According to the comic, Peter was delayed dodging air-fire over Washington DC. Just in case you're wondering why it took Peter so long to catch up with Nathan. He was doped up on tranquilizer and trying to recover enough to be useful.
8:21 - Oh dammit... Danko admiting Noah was right. Noah saying that if it weren't for Claire, he'd be in the same position. The two about to shake hands to agree to work together to escape and stop Sylar.... and TIME STOP!
8:22 - And now Hiro's ear is bleeding. "Holy Crap!" A lot of people doped up.
8:23 - Hiro and Ando switch all the guards and staff with the people doped up. Of course they make the mistake of freeing Mohinder.
8:24 - Of course Noah figures it (i.e. why is our door suddenly unlocked and all the guards trussed-up) out in less than a minute.
And Hiro: "Bruce Wayne only slept for two hours a day..." BWAHAHA!
8:25 - Yeah. So Mohinder gives Hiro the "One More Time" speech, insisting that what is happening now with his powers is unnatural and doing it one more time will kill him. Betcha he will have to do it one more time before episode's end and Mohinder will be wrong.
8:26 - "I thought you were right handed?" Oh, Claire SOOOOO knows.
8:28 - And Sylar knows that she knows and answers her phone AS her when Noah calls. "Oh God, this is fun...."
8:30 - It just occurred to me... isn't Matt in California? How is he going to save "Nathan" (either of them) from across the country when everyone else is in Washington DC? Unless Angela was lying...
8:33 - Sylar moving Claire around telekinetically forcing her to walk and fix him wine. I can hear the fan-fic being written already.
8:34 - And here comes the "we are not so different, you and I" speech, with Sylar... ewwwwww... hitting on Claire and offering to make her the first First Lady.
8:35 - And Nathan finally admits to what he is... at the worst possible time; in front of a bunch of trigger happy Secret Service agents.
8:36 - Ah, and here it is... the plan? Get Peter close enough to Sylar to touch him. And whammy - the Peter/Sylar fight we've been waiting for four seasons.
8:37 - Except Claire gets tossed out of the room... Sylar gets the lighting ready as the doors close as Peter and Nathan fly and charge.
8:38 - Claire runs in to find a dazed and confused Peter... she says they need to go after them (Sylar and Nathan both went out the window) and Peter... does not fly out the window. Looks like he touched Sylar and he's adjusting to the power shock... I hope.
8:39 - And... there's a dead Nathan. Throat slit by Sylar. "Oh, Claire is going to be so mad at me..." Guess that answers the questions as to who the "person around since the first episode" Sylar would be killing is.
8:41 - Commercial Time. Just realized something... Either Matt is about to become the biggest bitch ever and save Sylar "Nathan" from everyone else... or Matt is about to show up and wave away the illusion of the dead Nathan.
8:42 - Matt just getting into town. Angela is waiting for him. Matt tells her to screw off. Angela insists that her dreams can't lie and that they need Nathan alive to fix things.
8:43 - This "FREEZE" thing is getting really old. With Noah pulling a gun on Claire and Peter demanding proof they are who they are and then the SS demanding the same thing. And yeah... Claire gets bad ass moment standing in path of panicky Secret Service agents. And Peter DOES have Sylar's powers.
8:45 - So much for saving Nathan, huh Angela?
8:47 - Bad ASS! Peter disguised as The President injects Sylar with enough tranquilizer to down an elephant as Sylar is very very confused as to why he cant change into The President and why The President's skin is shimmering.
8:49 - Wait. So where is Danko in all of this?
8:51 - So they need Nathan to convince The President that this was all a mistake.... So...
1) why not have Peter - who still has all of Sylar's powers - SHAPE-SHIFT INTO NATHAN?!?!
2) why go through this crazy plan of using Matt's powers to hypnotize Sylar into becoming Nathan when this is inevitably going to come back and bite them in the ass?
3) why can't they just tell The President... the truth?!?!
8:55 - *sighs* And now The Company is reforming, but with government sponorship and deniability. And Noah, Angela and Matt are now sitting on this secret and not telling all the rest of the characters, despite how all this crap started BECAUSE of the secrets and lies they held back from one another?!?! Did nobody learn ANYTHING?!?!
8:57 - Six Weeks Later. Start of Volume 5: Redemption Man comes home to find running water all over the floor... and it changes into a soaking wet Ali Larter.
8:58 - So Tracy is now Hydro(wo)man and is killing random people... for some reason. And "Nathan" already seems to be breaking his programming, staring at clocks and noticing that they are fast.
(deadpan) Oh good lord, I am so shocked.
THE FINAL WORD: I am very pissed off right now. After all the talk this season about how the lies and secrets of The Company were responsible for causing all these problems... and what happens? Noah and Angela turn around and make the SAME DAMN MISTAKES in order to bring some semblance of The Company back. Danko just disappears from the final episode after reconciling with Bennet. Tracy is brought back for one minute so they can undo the great character moment she got earlier in the season. And the suspense over how long it would take before "Nathan" began to recover lasted a good five minutes.
And I just realized something... what about all the people Hiro and Ando freed? Aren't they going to ask questions? Talk to the press? Sue the shit out of the American Government? And why can't they just tell The President the truth about how Nathan died trying to stop Sylar? Superpowers wouldn't have to come into it - just tell the public that Senator and War Hero Nathan Petrelli gave his life to save The President from a terrorist. That's the literal truth!
Maybe I'll give the show a look-see in a few months but right now... I doubt it.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Thoughts on HEROES, Season 4, Chapter 11 - I Am Sylar
I Am Sylar.
I Am Spartacus.
I Am The Son And Heir Of Nothing In Particular.
I Am Human And I Need To Be Loved.
I Am The Terror That Flaps In The Night...
I Am Ripper... Tearer... Slasher... Gouger.
I Am The Teeth In The Darkness, The Talons In The Night. Mine Is Strength... And Lust... And Power!
I am Beowulf!
I Am Done With This Joke.
8:00 - So, for those of you who need reminding... Sylar has mommy issues.. and doesn't know who his mommy was, Matt's baby son (also named Matt) has a power to turn things on and off remotely - including superpowers, Micah the Technopath is REBEL aka the leader of the superhuman resistance, Danko and Sylar have formed a partnership and Sylar now has the power to shape-shift and is masquerading as one of Danko's agents.
8:01 - And there is Sylar masquerading as Nathan.
8:02 - Sylar wakes up as his new identity...Identity crisis? Can't control his powers? And they let Janice out of prison pretty quickly, especially given that her baby was still on loose...
8:03 - Wow. Matt turned around pretty quickly on the whole "getting revenge" thing. But that's totally in-character given that becoming a dad WOULD change your priorities. But him telling Hiro and Ando to give up on stopping Danko seems a wee hypocritical given that it was Hiro and Ando's refusal to give up that lead to his son being saved. Not to mention that - Powerful as Matt is - I doubt even he can hold off the agents bound to come after him and his son forever. Especially if he doubts that he can reconcile with Janice and bring their family back together... still, I can reconcile hypocritical behavior better than I can out-of-character behavior...
8:06 - Oh, that's it! They finally came back to the whole "Sylar's altering his DNA is making him unstable in every sense of the word" idea from Season One... the shape-shifting is just making it more pronounced and accelerating things.
8:07 - And everyone thinks Peter is Emo... geez.... cool visual though, carving "I Am Sylar" in his arm with his telekinesis...
8:10 - Tom Miller? Who is Tom Miller? Wait... is that Red Foreman from That 70's Show?!?
8:12 - Snap your finger and make things break? That's nearly as lame as the melting guy from Season One!
8:13 - Yeah... so much for Sylar laying low, eh?
8:14 - I just realized... Micah's actor's name is in the credits this week. I hope Sylar doesn't get him...
8:15 - Oh gods... just what I wanted more of... More Sylar dealing with his issues and male bonding with Danko... gag me.
8:16 - "It's dangerous let... lady like." BWAHAHA! Now this is what we want... more Hiro/Ando development and comedy.
8:18 - Okay... I have no idea WHY Ando is suddenly immune to Hiro's time-stop. Neither does Hiro. But unlike Hiro, I like it. :) Probably has something to do with him touching Ando when he froze time. Seems to work like that for most of the other powers (invisibility, phasing, etc)
8:22 - Smelling your dead adopted mother's dress? Even for Sylar this is creepy and wrong.
8:23 - Oh geez... you're feeling all depressed now that you realized what a monster you are for killing the woman you thought was your mom? And now you're having an imaginary conversation with her? Cry me a river and die, Sylar. *gags*
8:25 - Aha! It's because they WERE touching.
8:26 - Ando and Hiro are Batman and Superman... that's the perfect metaphor for so many reasons.
8:27 - ...Because like Superman, Hiro is a dick.
8:28 - I asked them not to do it... and now they are doing it. Micah runs right into Sylar. Thankfully, I'm sure Micah is smart enough to have come up with a plan for this...
8:33 - Okay... he may not have had a plan. But he could sure as hell improvise... and as far as plans go, trying to convince a confused and dazed Sylar that he can be a hero and a savior to the "special" humans isn't a bad one. Wonder if Micah hacked The Company files re: Sylar and his mommy issues?
8:34 - Heh. Guard was wondering same thing as me - why is the other guard suddenly wearing glasses - and Ando winds up saving Hiro. Just like when one of Superman's plans goes wrong.
8:37 - So wait... Sylar is actually changing into people, body AND mind by touching their stuff? And he was actually changing into the woman who he thought was his mother... And Micah recognized it as what was happening to his mom... That is... actually kinda cool and explains why he is feeling so messed up. But it also kinda shoots that "Niki was merely skitzo" theory in the head... right?
If nothing else, this episode has me thinking... which is welcome.
8:42 - Still, looks like Sylar decided Micah had a good idea... and that this is how he decided to become Nathan... assuming this happened at the same time that the events of 1961. But how is Sylar doing this if Nathan is persona non grata and Danko outed him?
8:43 - Oh, now this is a nightmare... having your mom forever trapped inside your head criticizing your every move.
8:45 - And here we go... Sylar going back to the Season One idea of becoming President someday. And am I the only one who just realized that means Spock would become Worf? :)
8:46 - Who wants to bet that Janice sold Matt out to the agents and that's why she's so anxious to get him out of there?
8:47 - And... all of this was happening at the same time as 1961. Which leaves me wondering just how Matt got across the country so quickly. Then again, it does seem a few days have been passing here and there... so yeah. I'll just trust that it fits. Wouldn't be the first time they've had the exact events overlap.
8:48 - HEROES: Nowhere Man. Dammit... that was going to be the name of one of the characters in the superhero RPG I am running for my friends... :P
8:52 - Oh good... characters I actually care about.
8:53 - Yes, Pete. He started it. He can finish it. And then you can finish it when Sylar finishes him.
8:54 - Did Hiro finally give himself an aneurysm from squeezing his eyes like that all these years?
8:55 - And Matt finally found his balls again. Just in time.
8:56 - Oh wait... it wasn't a side-effect of the shape-shifting! It was the power he took from that one woman earlier in Season 3 that let him know the history of something by touching it and that applied to DNA... holy shit, that is awesome!
8:58 - Someone else we haven't missed... go away Mohinderance!
9:00 - Okay. So everyone except Peter, Hiro and Ando (and possibly Matt and his family) has been captured... Nathan is at the very least electrocuted, possibly dead. And Sylar apparently can't get hurt by something as simple as the knife in the back of the head anymore...
The Final Word: Next week can't come fast enough.
I Am Spartacus.
I Am The Son And Heir Of Nothing In Particular.
I Am Human And I Need To Be Loved.
I Am The Terror That Flaps In The Night...
I Am Ripper... Tearer... Slasher... Gouger.
I Am The Teeth In The Darkness, The Talons In The Night. Mine Is Strength... And Lust... And Power!
I am Beowulf!
I Am Done With This Joke.
8:00 - So, for those of you who need reminding... Sylar has mommy issues.. and doesn't know who his mommy was, Matt's baby son (also named Matt) has a power to turn things on and off remotely - including superpowers, Micah the Technopath is REBEL aka the leader of the superhuman resistance, Danko and Sylar have formed a partnership and Sylar now has the power to shape-shift and is masquerading as one of Danko's agents.
8:01 - And there is Sylar masquerading as Nathan.
8:02 - Sylar wakes up as his new identity...Identity crisis? Can't control his powers? And they let Janice out of prison pretty quickly, especially given that her baby was still on loose...
8:03 - Wow. Matt turned around pretty quickly on the whole "getting revenge" thing. But that's totally in-character given that becoming a dad WOULD change your priorities. But him telling Hiro and Ando to give up on stopping Danko seems a wee hypocritical given that it was Hiro and Ando's refusal to give up that lead to his son being saved. Not to mention that - Powerful as Matt is - I doubt even he can hold off the agents bound to come after him and his son forever. Especially if he doubts that he can reconcile with Janice and bring their family back together... still, I can reconcile hypocritical behavior better than I can out-of-character behavior...
8:06 - Oh, that's it! They finally came back to the whole "Sylar's altering his DNA is making him unstable in every sense of the word" idea from Season One... the shape-shifting is just making it more pronounced and accelerating things.
8:07 - And everyone thinks Peter is Emo... geez.... cool visual though, carving "I Am Sylar" in his arm with his telekinesis...
8:10 - Tom Miller? Who is Tom Miller? Wait... is that Red Foreman from That 70's Show?!?
8:12 - Snap your finger and make things break? That's nearly as lame as the melting guy from Season One!
8:13 - Yeah... so much for Sylar laying low, eh?
8:14 - I just realized... Micah's actor's name is in the credits this week. I hope Sylar doesn't get him...
8:15 - Oh gods... just what I wanted more of... More Sylar dealing with his issues and male bonding with Danko... gag me.
8:16 - "It's dangerous let... lady like." BWAHAHA! Now this is what we want... more Hiro/Ando development and comedy.
8:18 - Okay... I have no idea WHY Ando is suddenly immune to Hiro's time-stop. Neither does Hiro. But unlike Hiro, I like it. :) Probably has something to do with him touching Ando when he froze time. Seems to work like that for most of the other powers (invisibility, phasing, etc)
8:22 - Smelling your dead adopted mother's dress? Even for Sylar this is creepy and wrong.
8:23 - Oh geez... you're feeling all depressed now that you realized what a monster you are for killing the woman you thought was your mom? And now you're having an imaginary conversation with her? Cry me a river and die, Sylar. *gags*
8:25 - Aha! It's because they WERE touching.
8:26 - Ando and Hiro are Batman and Superman... that's the perfect metaphor for so many reasons.
8:27 - ...Because like Superman, Hiro is a dick.
8:28 - I asked them not to do it... and now they are doing it. Micah runs right into Sylar. Thankfully, I'm sure Micah is smart enough to have come up with a plan for this...
8:33 - Okay... he may not have had a plan. But he could sure as hell improvise... and as far as plans go, trying to convince a confused and dazed Sylar that he can be a hero and a savior to the "special" humans isn't a bad one. Wonder if Micah hacked The Company files re: Sylar and his mommy issues?
8:34 - Heh. Guard was wondering same thing as me - why is the other guard suddenly wearing glasses - and Ando winds up saving Hiro. Just like when one of Superman's plans goes wrong.
8:37 - So wait... Sylar is actually changing into people, body AND mind by touching their stuff? And he was actually changing into the woman who he thought was his mother... And Micah recognized it as what was happening to his mom... That is... actually kinda cool and explains why he is feeling so messed up. But it also kinda shoots that "Niki was merely skitzo" theory in the head... right?
If nothing else, this episode has me thinking... which is welcome.
8:42 - Still, looks like Sylar decided Micah had a good idea... and that this is how he decided to become Nathan... assuming this happened at the same time that the events of 1961. But how is Sylar doing this if Nathan is persona non grata and Danko outed him?
8:43 - Oh, now this is a nightmare... having your mom forever trapped inside your head criticizing your every move.
8:45 - And here we go... Sylar going back to the Season One idea of becoming President someday. And am I the only one who just realized that means Spock would become Worf? :)
8:46 - Who wants to bet that Janice sold Matt out to the agents and that's why she's so anxious to get him out of there?
8:47 - And... all of this was happening at the same time as 1961. Which leaves me wondering just how Matt got across the country so quickly. Then again, it does seem a few days have been passing here and there... so yeah. I'll just trust that it fits. Wouldn't be the first time they've had the exact events overlap.
8:48 - HEROES: Nowhere Man. Dammit... that was going to be the name of one of the characters in the superhero RPG I am running for my friends... :P
8:52 - Oh good... characters I actually care about.
8:53 - Yes, Pete. He started it. He can finish it. And then you can finish it when Sylar finishes him.
8:54 - Did Hiro finally give himself an aneurysm from squeezing his eyes like that all these years?
8:55 - And Matt finally found his balls again. Just in time.
8:56 - Oh wait... it wasn't a side-effect of the shape-shifting! It was the power he took from that one woman earlier in Season 3 that let him know the history of something by touching it and that applied to DNA... holy shit, that is awesome!
8:58 - Someone else we haven't missed... go away Mohinderance!
9:00 - Okay. So everyone except Peter, Hiro and Ando (and possibly Matt and his family) has been captured... Nathan is at the very least electrocuted, possibly dead. And Sylar apparently can't get hurt by something as simple as the knife in the back of the head anymore...
The Final Word: Next week can't come fast enough.
Monday, April 13, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
HEROES And Shakespeare
I made this statement in the blog on HEROES last night. Had some revelations further quantifying the statement that last night's episode - and the drama of late - has reached truly Shakespearean levels, with three subplots regarding revenge and romantic couples.
Let me toss this plot summary out as an example of the multi-level story we are dealing with here; Shakespeare's most critically acclaimed tragedy; Hamlet.
On the odd chance that there's anybody who is unfamiliar with Hamlet, let me sum up. The main story is about how a young prince named Hamlet is asked - by the ghost of his father - to seek vengeance upon his father's murderer. In this case, the murderer is Claudius - Hamlet's uncle - whom killed his own brother in order to marry his hot wife and, to a lesser degree, for the throne of Denmark.
Hamlet, who has a pretty heavy grudge against his uncle already, isn't entirely convinced that he's really seeing his father and elects to pretend to be crazy while waiting for a plan to present itself. After scaring his girlfriend Ophelia with his crazy behavior and worrying his mother, Hamlet finally comes up with a plan when a group of traveling actors arrive at the castle. He gets them to perform a play based upon how his father's ghost claimed to have been murdered and watches his uncle's reaction. Convinced now of his uncle's guilt. Hamlet begins to plan the opportune moment to get revenge.
Before he gets his chance, Hamlet winds up having to thwart Claudius attempts to get him out of the country where he can be assassinated, inadvertently kills his girlfriend's father Polonius, drives Ophelia to madness and possible suicide and winds up having to fight a duel with Ophelia's brother Laertes, who wants revenge on Hamlet for killing his family. Hamlet eventually does kill Claudius before bleeding to death from the wounds he received during the duel.
Enter Young Fortinbras; a young king who has been lying in wait on the borders of Denmark for most of the play, ready to seek revenge for his own father's death at the hand of Hamlet's father. The play ends with Fortinbras assuming the throne of Denmark for himself.
Basically, Hamlet is ultimately the story of three sons seeking revenge for the death of their fathers. Hamlet is after Claudius. Laertes is after Hamlet. And Fortinbras is after Denmark, now that the man who killed his father (King Hamlet) is dead.
Despite this similarity in want, the approach used by each son is totally different. Hamlet is all thought/no action; a "not to be", to quote the text of the play. He spends most of the play planning and plotting, waiting for a chance to act but never taking it. Laertes is all action/no-thought, rushing into everything and demanding blood at every turn as soon as he learns of his father's death. Fortinbras is the perfect balance between both thought and action; he plans on how best to conquer the kingdom and then takes action at the right moment.
We see a similar conflict in Turn and Face the Strange, with three men seeking revenge and four couples in play. Let us list our players.
THE COUPLES
Noah and Sandra Bennet
Matt Parkman and Daphne Milbrook
Danko and Alena
Gabriel Gray (Sylar) and Elle Bishop
THE MOTIVES FOR REVENGE
1. Gabriel wants revenge on Noah for having put him on the path to becoming a killer/Sylar in the first place, for having killed him (it didn't take) and for cracking the illusion Gabriel built up during Season 3 that he had parents who loved him and that he had a shot of redeeming himself, culminating in his becoming Sylar again and killing the only woman he ever loved.
2. Noah wants revenge on Gabriel for the numerous attempts to kill him, kill Claire, kill Sandra and every other bit of hell Sylar has put him and his family through.
3. Matt wants revenge on Danko for having indirectly caused the death of his girlfriend Daphne, by denying her proper medical treatment after she was shot by men acting on Danko's orders.
THE PLANS
1. Using his newly-acquired shape-shifting powers, Sylar goes to Noah while impersonating Sandra, whom Noah has recently become seperated from. "Sandra" claims that "she" has seen what a monster Noah is and that "she" wants a divorce. Knowing that Noah is deeply paranoid and that Noah doesn't believe Sylar is truly dead (Danko and Sylar used the "still looks like Sylar" corpse of the shape-shifting fugitive Sylar killed to fake Sylar's death), Sylar sets Noah up so that he confronts the later confronts the real Sandra after Noah uncovers proof that Sylar is still alive.
Thinking he still has the real Sylar, Noah roughs her up, accuses her of being Sylar and is on the verge of killing her when Sandra gets a call from their son on what he realizes is his wife's cel phone, asking a question regarding Mr. Muggle's medicine only his wife would know the answer too.
Abandoned by his wife, Noah puts 2 and 2 together and confronts Danko with his knowledge that he's been helping Sylar. Danko seemingly spills the beans as to who Sylar is now disguised as and leads Bennet to a team in the field. Once there, Danko denies everything when Bennet pulls a gun on the agent he identified as a disguised Sylar. Bennet shoots the agent expecting him to regenerate... and then is shocked when he fails to rise from the ground. Branded a murderer by the men he worked for, Noah makes a run for it and goes to the one ally he has left; Angela Petrelli. Naturally, the fallen agent was actually Sylar playing possum.
In this, we see that Sylar is Fortinbras - the perfect balance of plan and action who ultimately gets what he wants; to take everything that Noah Bennet holds dear and to have done so by causing Noah to trigger his own destruction.
2. Noah's plans for revenge run concurrently with Sylar's. In his case, however, Noah is so blinded by rage and his Ahab-like lust for revenge that while he is capable of pulling off several plans with his famous cunning, he does fall into two fairly obvious traps. First, attacking his own wife after being convinced she is Sylar. Then by walking into a situation with no proof of wrong-doing on Danko's part and no proof that Sylar is really alive.
In this, we see that Noah is Laertes - all action, with little thought behind his actions.
3. Matt uses his powers to cause Danko to think that the person he values most in life is in danger. Matt follows Danko to a house in the Washington D.C. suburbs, thinking that the woman he sees is Danko's girlfriend. In truth, she's an escort who - despite her occupation - does hold some feelings for Danko, who has told her that he's a married man with kids who will leave his wife for her as soon as the kids are grown.
Matt breaks into Alena's house with a loaded gun, yet he seems uncertain of what he will do once he is inside the house of the woman his enemy "loves". Using a combination of his powers and persuasion, Matt keeps Alena calm enough to talk to her before "showing" her the truth about her favorite customer.
Taking Alena to Danko's house, Matt forces both of them into the home at gunpoint. After making an impassioned speech about how he just wanted Danko to know how it felt to lose the woman he loved - and to do it by exposing the truth about what a monster Danko truly is and forcing him to admit it himself. Matt then drops his gun and tells Danko to go ahead and kill him, feeling that he has nothing left to live for and that his revenge is complete.
In this, we see that Matt is Hamlet - all thought with little action. He has plans but lacks the ability to follow-through on his dreams of revenge except through a muted plan that will do nothing but end his suffering. In this we see another parallel with Hamlet, who was himself gloomy and suicidal, soliloquizing about whether or not it would matter if he died.
We also note a rather disturbing parallel in that all three of these characters used basically the same means, to different degrees, to try and destroy the relationships of their chosen nemesis.
THE MEANS
1. Sylar masqueraded as Sandra, to push Noah over the edge and to later reveal to Sandra just how far the man she loved had sunk into The Abyss.
2. Noah shot down Gabriel's attempts at a normal life with Elle - first by chewing Elle out for getting cold feet about the plan to push Gabriel into killing then by later mocking Sylar's attempts at redemption and another attempt at a relationship with Elle, telling them both that it was just a matter of time before Sylar lost it and tried to kill her.
3. Matt using his mind-control powers to set up Danko to confess to his real life before the "girlfriend" he'd been lying to for years as well as the numerous immoral acts he committed in the line of duty.
*******
Comments?
Let me toss this plot summary out as an example of the multi-level story we are dealing with here; Shakespeare's most critically acclaimed tragedy; Hamlet.
On the odd chance that there's anybody who is unfamiliar with Hamlet, let me sum up. The main story is about how a young prince named Hamlet is asked - by the ghost of his father - to seek vengeance upon his father's murderer. In this case, the murderer is Claudius - Hamlet's uncle - whom killed his own brother in order to marry his hot wife and, to a lesser degree, for the throne of Denmark.
Hamlet, who has a pretty heavy grudge against his uncle already, isn't entirely convinced that he's really seeing his father and elects to pretend to be crazy while waiting for a plan to present itself. After scaring his girlfriend Ophelia with his crazy behavior and worrying his mother, Hamlet finally comes up with a plan when a group of traveling actors arrive at the castle. He gets them to perform a play based upon how his father's ghost claimed to have been murdered and watches his uncle's reaction. Convinced now of his uncle's guilt. Hamlet begins to plan the opportune moment to get revenge.
Before he gets his chance, Hamlet winds up having to thwart Claudius attempts to get him out of the country where he can be assassinated, inadvertently kills his girlfriend's father Polonius, drives Ophelia to madness and possible suicide and winds up having to fight a duel with Ophelia's brother Laertes, who wants revenge on Hamlet for killing his family. Hamlet eventually does kill Claudius before bleeding to death from the wounds he received during the duel.
Enter Young Fortinbras; a young king who has been lying in wait on the borders of Denmark for most of the play, ready to seek revenge for his own father's death at the hand of Hamlet's father. The play ends with Fortinbras assuming the throne of Denmark for himself.
Basically, Hamlet is ultimately the story of three sons seeking revenge for the death of their fathers. Hamlet is after Claudius. Laertes is after Hamlet. And Fortinbras is after Denmark, now that the man who killed his father (King Hamlet) is dead.
Despite this similarity in want, the approach used by each son is totally different. Hamlet is all thought/no action; a "not to be", to quote the text of the play. He spends most of the play planning and plotting, waiting for a chance to act but never taking it. Laertes is all action/no-thought, rushing into everything and demanding blood at every turn as soon as he learns of his father's death. Fortinbras is the perfect balance between both thought and action; he plans on how best to conquer the kingdom and then takes action at the right moment.
We see a similar conflict in Turn and Face the Strange, with three men seeking revenge and four couples in play. Let us list our players.
THE COUPLES
Noah and Sandra Bennet
Matt Parkman and Daphne Milbrook
Danko and Alena
Gabriel Gray (Sylar) and Elle Bishop
THE MOTIVES FOR REVENGE
1. Gabriel wants revenge on Noah for having put him on the path to becoming a killer/Sylar in the first place, for having killed him (it didn't take) and for cracking the illusion Gabriel built up during Season 3 that he had parents who loved him and that he had a shot of redeeming himself, culminating in his becoming Sylar again and killing the only woman he ever loved.
2. Noah wants revenge on Gabriel for the numerous attempts to kill him, kill Claire, kill Sandra and every other bit of hell Sylar has put him and his family through.
3. Matt wants revenge on Danko for having indirectly caused the death of his girlfriend Daphne, by denying her proper medical treatment after she was shot by men acting on Danko's orders.
THE PLANS
1. Using his newly-acquired shape-shifting powers, Sylar goes to Noah while impersonating Sandra, whom Noah has recently become seperated from. "Sandra" claims that "she" has seen what a monster Noah is and that "she" wants a divorce. Knowing that Noah is deeply paranoid and that Noah doesn't believe Sylar is truly dead (Danko and Sylar used the "still looks like Sylar" corpse of the shape-shifting fugitive Sylar killed to fake Sylar's death), Sylar sets Noah up so that he confronts the later confronts the real Sandra after Noah uncovers proof that Sylar is still alive.
Thinking he still has the real Sylar, Noah roughs her up, accuses her of being Sylar and is on the verge of killing her when Sandra gets a call from their son on what he realizes is his wife's cel phone, asking a question regarding Mr. Muggle's medicine only his wife would know the answer too.
Abandoned by his wife, Noah puts 2 and 2 together and confronts Danko with his knowledge that he's been helping Sylar. Danko seemingly spills the beans as to who Sylar is now disguised as and leads Bennet to a team in the field. Once there, Danko denies everything when Bennet pulls a gun on the agent he identified as a disguised Sylar. Bennet shoots the agent expecting him to regenerate... and then is shocked when he fails to rise from the ground. Branded a murderer by the men he worked for, Noah makes a run for it and goes to the one ally he has left; Angela Petrelli. Naturally, the fallen agent was actually Sylar playing possum.
In this, we see that Sylar is Fortinbras - the perfect balance of plan and action who ultimately gets what he wants; to take everything that Noah Bennet holds dear and to have done so by causing Noah to trigger his own destruction.
2. Noah's plans for revenge run concurrently with Sylar's. In his case, however, Noah is so blinded by rage and his Ahab-like lust for revenge that while he is capable of pulling off several plans with his famous cunning, he does fall into two fairly obvious traps. First, attacking his own wife after being convinced she is Sylar. Then by walking into a situation with no proof of wrong-doing on Danko's part and no proof that Sylar is really alive.
In this, we see that Noah is Laertes - all action, with little thought behind his actions.
3. Matt uses his powers to cause Danko to think that the person he values most in life is in danger. Matt follows Danko to a house in the Washington D.C. suburbs, thinking that the woman he sees is Danko's girlfriend. In truth, she's an escort who - despite her occupation - does hold some feelings for Danko, who has told her that he's a married man with kids who will leave his wife for her as soon as the kids are grown.
Matt breaks into Alena's house with a loaded gun, yet he seems uncertain of what he will do once he is inside the house of the woman his enemy "loves". Using a combination of his powers and persuasion, Matt keeps Alena calm enough to talk to her before "showing" her the truth about her favorite customer.
Taking Alena to Danko's house, Matt forces both of them into the home at gunpoint. After making an impassioned speech about how he just wanted Danko to know how it felt to lose the woman he loved - and to do it by exposing the truth about what a monster Danko truly is and forcing him to admit it himself. Matt then drops his gun and tells Danko to go ahead and kill him, feeling that he has nothing left to live for and that his revenge is complete.
In this, we see that Matt is Hamlet - all thought with little action. He has plans but lacks the ability to follow-through on his dreams of revenge except through a muted plan that will do nothing but end his suffering. In this we see another parallel with Hamlet, who was himself gloomy and suicidal, soliloquizing about whether or not it would matter if he died.
We also note a rather disturbing parallel in that all three of these characters used basically the same means, to different degrees, to try and destroy the relationships of their chosen nemesis.
THE MEANS
1. Sylar masqueraded as Sandra, to push Noah over the edge and to later reveal to Sandra just how far the man she loved had sunk into The Abyss.
2. Noah shot down Gabriel's attempts at a normal life with Elle - first by chewing Elle out for getting cold feet about the plan to push Gabriel into killing then by later mocking Sylar's attempts at redemption and another attempt at a relationship with Elle, telling them both that it was just a matter of time before Sylar lost it and tried to kill her.
3. Matt using his mind-control powers to set up Danko to confess to his real life before the "girlfriend" he'd been lying to for years as well as the numerous immoral acts he committed in the line of duty.
*******
Comments?
Monday, April 6, 2009
Thoughts on HEROES, Season 4, Chapter 9 - Turn and Face the Strange
Word from the episode summary is...
1. someone close to Danko will be putting him in danger.
2. Noah and Sandra's marriage is going to get pushed a step closer to ending
3. Hiro and Ando will introduce Matt to his Matt Jr.
4. Angela and Peter will reunite with the rest of the family, such as they are.
Best Bets?
1. It's Sylar.
2. Something happens to Lyle.
3. Matt will complain about how his powers to see the future didn't let him see this coming.
4. We're going to find out Angela's past.
8:00 - So - the recap this week; Daphne getting shot and dying, Noah going after Angela and letting her and Peter go, Angela saying they need to go find Nathan and Claire, Hiro has his powers back - kinda and he and Ando have Matt Jr. and are looking for Matt and Sylar and Danko are now working together, having faked Sylar's death.
8:01 - Noah inspecting the body... again. I knew he didn't believe it after last episode!
8:02 - Ah... glass melted in the fire. THAT'S how Sylar got out of the fire at the end of Season 3 after Claire spiked his brain with a glass shard.
8:03 - Heh! Matt Jr. can stop things as well as make them go! Betcha that's why the car stopped!
8:04 - Okay, not to nit-pic but how exactly is Mohinderance fleeing the country if he's a wanted fugitive? Technically I think he is a still a citizen of India but c'mon. Hiro and Ando I can excuse because Hiro has enough cash to get a charter plane and grease some palms... but not Mohinderance.
8:05 - So Matt is out for revenge on Danko. "You've been a really good friend, Mohinder."
What the... NO HE HASN'T! Ignoring his general whiny and cowardly personality and his second-guessing your every move all season, he's the reason you all had no warning that this whole "hunting the evolved humans" thing was coming. He also spent most of last season abducting innocent people, working for the bad guys and he's responsible for having made your foster daughter (who seems to be as forgotten at Kaitlin at this point) disappear "somewhere safe".
8:06 - Ooooh, so it's Claire being missing that has Sandra set off. Not to nit-pic again but where is their son in all of this? Alone in Costa Verde?
8:07 - As predicted, he's gotten much better at doing the shape-shifting thing. No pain at all now. And yeah - "I'm not going to kill him. I'm going to destroy him." That's our Sylar!
8:10 - Angela had a vision. Has to go to Coyote Sands? There's a name. And Noah has to be there too.
8:11 - I'll bet the baby makes the truck stop too.
8:12 - "Si!" Hee hee hee.
8:13 - Can I call them or what?
8:14 - So Matt is going after Danko... or is that Sylar? As Wily Wonka said, the suspense is killing me. I hope it lasts. :)
8:15 - Oh, Bravo Noah! You are Mister Clever.
8:16 - Okay. So it really was Danko. And he seems to have a girlfriend.
8:17 - Oh... crap. She's really serious about the divorce. Unless THAT is Sylar and this is all part of the wicked plan to destroy Noah.
8:18 - Well, they can't all be shocking surprises, I guess.
8:22 - Of course Hiro WOULD tell the truth about "the magic baby".
8:23 - Well, if the hero act ever fails, Ando can always find work with Confuse-A-Baby limited. :)
8:24 - You know, Matt... this isn't really helping the "I am not a terrorist" case. I'm just saying.
8:25 - "This was a bad idea". Oh, NOW you realize this. And yeah - go figure that she's a girlfriend-for-hire and not a real girlfriend. No surprise given how maladjusted Danko is and how serious he is about not having anything outside of his work.
8:26 - And so we have 2-and-2 together. Good man, Noah!
8:27 - And oh yeah... big shock... Danko has been lying to his "special friend". Still .. nice little mirror plot here with Matt and Sylar both trying to destroy an enemy rather than kill them, using what are basically the same means.
8:29 - And there's Claire and Nathan.
8:30 - Project Icarus? Oh, this can't be good... and the original Dr. Suresch was there? But I thought he knew nothing at all about powers!
8:31 - Oh.... SHIT! That twist I didn't see coming. But I have to wonder... did Sylar plan this as well?
8:34 - Actually, all the subplots this week - in some way - they have something to do with couples and revenge. Interesting parallel.
8:35 - Hey! There's Lyle! I guess they didn't forget about him.
8:36 - This is honestly heartbreaking... "I do believe you, but it doesn't matter." As Nietzsche said, "Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster..."
8:37 - And speaking of becoming a monster... Matt holding Danko and his lady at gun-point.
8:40 - Except Matt's plan all hinges on getting Danko to confess that he is a monster and that nothing is more important to him than killing.
8:41 - "Oooh. Close one." Yay Hiro!
8:46 - And yeah. Noah just pulled a hell of a gambit there. And the talking down to Danko for being an idiot here is just perfect.
8:47 - And yeah... Hiro gets a nice speech here telling Matt down for giving up the battle, as it were.
8:48 - I can't believe Noah didn't see this coming - Danko denying everything, I mean. There's a trick coming. Bet on it.
8:49 - Hee hee. "How would you know a thing like that?" I knew he'd have an edge going into this.
8:50 - Oh... crap. Either Noah really did just kill an innocent man... or he honestly did just kill Sylar. Either way... bloody hell.
8:55 - And yeah... looks like the perfect partnership is over.
8:56 - So... um.... I guess Mohinder is being allowed to stay in the basement. Apparently. I honestly forgot about his storyline with everything else going on.
8:57 - And two shots of two men begging their women for forgiveness.
8:58 - Okay. Looks like we'll have to wait until next time to get some answers about Angela's past. And yay - Mohinderance narration explaining the whole Icarus metaphor for those of us who slept through 10th grade English.
8:59 - Ah... did Claire talk to her mom? Does she know about what Noah nearly did to Sandra?
The Final Word: A tightly woven episode with multiple sub-plots involving the twin themes of couples and revenge. Sylar wants revenge on Noah. Noah wants revenge on Sylar. Matt wants revenge on Danko for Daphne's death and attacks Danko's relationship by exposing him as a monster to the woman he loves. Sylar exposes how much of a monster Noah has become to the woman he loves. And Matt himself, while not killing Danko, went further than he ever has before in abusing his power.
It's positively Shakespearean, complete with Hiro and Ando clowning it up with Will Kemp style antics to amuse us between the dramatic scenes. Let there be no more doubt; HEROES is back.
1. someone close to Danko will be putting him in danger.
2. Noah and Sandra's marriage is going to get pushed a step closer to ending
3. Hiro and Ando will introduce Matt to his Matt Jr.
4. Angela and Peter will reunite with the rest of the family, such as they are.
Best Bets?
1. It's Sylar.
2. Something happens to Lyle.
3. Matt will complain about how his powers to see the future didn't let him see this coming.
4. We're going to find out Angela's past.
8:00 - So - the recap this week; Daphne getting shot and dying, Noah going after Angela and letting her and Peter go, Angela saying they need to go find Nathan and Claire, Hiro has his powers back - kinda and he and Ando have Matt Jr. and are looking for Matt and Sylar and Danko are now working together, having faked Sylar's death.
8:01 - Noah inspecting the body... again. I knew he didn't believe it after last episode!
8:02 - Ah... glass melted in the fire. THAT'S how Sylar got out of the fire at the end of Season 3 after Claire spiked his brain with a glass shard.
8:03 - Heh! Matt Jr. can stop things as well as make them go! Betcha that's why the car stopped!
8:04 - Okay, not to nit-pic but how exactly is Mohinderance fleeing the country if he's a wanted fugitive? Technically I think he is a still a citizen of India but c'mon. Hiro and Ando I can excuse because Hiro has enough cash to get a charter plane and grease some palms... but not Mohinderance.
8:05 - So Matt is out for revenge on Danko. "You've been a really good friend, Mohinder."
What the... NO HE HASN'T! Ignoring his general whiny and cowardly personality and his second-guessing your every move all season, he's the reason you all had no warning that this whole "hunting the evolved humans" thing was coming. He also spent most of last season abducting innocent people, working for the bad guys and he's responsible for having made your foster daughter (who seems to be as forgotten at Kaitlin at this point) disappear "somewhere safe".
8:06 - Ooooh, so it's Claire being missing that has Sandra set off. Not to nit-pic again but where is their son in all of this? Alone in Costa Verde?
8:07 - As predicted, he's gotten much better at doing the shape-shifting thing. No pain at all now. And yeah - "I'm not going to kill him. I'm going to destroy him." That's our Sylar!
8:10 - Angela had a vision. Has to go to Coyote Sands? There's a name. And Noah has to be there too.
8:11 - I'll bet the baby makes the truck stop too.
8:12 - "Si!" Hee hee hee.
8:13 - Can I call them or what?
8:14 - So Matt is going after Danko... or is that Sylar? As Wily Wonka said, the suspense is killing me. I hope it lasts. :)
8:15 - Oh, Bravo Noah! You are Mister Clever.
8:16 - Okay. So it really was Danko. And he seems to have a girlfriend.
8:17 - Oh... crap. She's really serious about the divorce. Unless THAT is Sylar and this is all part of the wicked plan to destroy Noah.
8:18 - Well, they can't all be shocking surprises, I guess.
8:22 - Of course Hiro WOULD tell the truth about "the magic baby".
8:23 - Well, if the hero act ever fails, Ando can always find work with Confuse-A-Baby limited. :)
8:24 - You know, Matt... this isn't really helping the "I am not a terrorist" case. I'm just saying.
8:25 - "This was a bad idea". Oh, NOW you realize this. And yeah - go figure that she's a girlfriend-for-hire and not a real girlfriend. No surprise given how maladjusted Danko is and how serious he is about not having anything outside of his work.
8:26 - And so we have 2-and-2 together. Good man, Noah!
8:27 - And oh yeah... big shock... Danko has been lying to his "special friend". Still .. nice little mirror plot here with Matt and Sylar both trying to destroy an enemy rather than kill them, using what are basically the same means.
8:29 - And there's Claire and Nathan.
8:30 - Project Icarus? Oh, this can't be good... and the original Dr. Suresch was there? But I thought he knew nothing at all about powers!
8:31 - Oh.... SHIT! That twist I didn't see coming. But I have to wonder... did Sylar plan this as well?
8:34 - Actually, all the subplots this week - in some way - they have something to do with couples and revenge. Interesting parallel.
8:35 - Hey! There's Lyle! I guess they didn't forget about him.
8:36 - This is honestly heartbreaking... "I do believe you, but it doesn't matter." As Nietzsche said, "Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster..."
8:37 - And speaking of becoming a monster... Matt holding Danko and his lady at gun-point.
8:40 - Except Matt's plan all hinges on getting Danko to confess that he is a monster and that nothing is more important to him than killing.
8:41 - "Oooh. Close one." Yay Hiro!
8:46 - And yeah. Noah just pulled a hell of a gambit there. And the talking down to Danko for being an idiot here is just perfect.
8:47 - And yeah... Hiro gets a nice speech here telling Matt down for giving up the battle, as it were.
8:48 - I can't believe Noah didn't see this coming - Danko denying everything, I mean. There's a trick coming. Bet on it.
8:49 - Hee hee. "How would you know a thing like that?" I knew he'd have an edge going into this.
8:50 - Oh... crap. Either Noah really did just kill an innocent man... or he honestly did just kill Sylar. Either way... bloody hell.
8:55 - And yeah... looks like the perfect partnership is over.
8:56 - So... um.... I guess Mohinder is being allowed to stay in the basement. Apparently. I honestly forgot about his storyline with everything else going on.
8:57 - And two shots of two men begging their women for forgiveness.
8:58 - Okay. Looks like we'll have to wait until next time to get some answers about Angela's past. And yay - Mohinderance narration explaining the whole Icarus metaphor for those of us who slept through 10th grade English.
8:59 - Ah... did Claire talk to her mom? Does she know about what Noah nearly did to Sandra?
The Final Word: A tightly woven episode with multiple sub-plots involving the twin themes of couples and revenge. Sylar wants revenge on Noah. Noah wants revenge on Sylar. Matt wants revenge on Danko for Daphne's death and attacks Danko's relationship by exposing him as a monster to the woman he loves. Sylar exposes how much of a monster Noah has become to the woman he loves. And Matt himself, while not killing Danko, went further than he ever has before in abusing his power.
It's positively Shakespearean, complete with Hiro and Ando clowning it up with Will Kemp style antics to amuse us between the dramatic scenes. Let there be no more doubt; HEROES is back.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Thoughts on HEROES, Season 4, Chapter 8 - Into Asylum
Word from the TV Guide summary is that Claire and Nathan flee to Mexico while Peter and Angela are supposed to hide-out in a church - asylum, of course, referring to the religious and political practice of granting sanctuary and refuge. The other big story based on the previews is that Danko and Sylar may form an unholy alliance since both of them are working toward the same eventual ends for different reasons - kill as many powered people as possible.
We shall see.
8:00 - So, quick recap of the last few episodes that will be relevant to tonight... Danko finding Eric Doyle gift-wrapped, Angela escaping a drag-net with Peter and Claire escaping the drag-net with Nathan. No surprises so far.
8:01 - When did Claire have time to get her bangs done? Ah well... actually that does make kinda sense if she's changing her appearance.
8:02 - Gee... I wonder WHY she'd be reluctant to stay with you, Nathan. Jerkass. If Claire goes and turns him into the cops for attempted rape and the series ends with Nathan rotting in a Mexican prison, I think we'll all be a lot happier.
8:03 - "That's not why I saved you. I want answers." Yeah - Peter being less and less in touch with his empathic side is looking more and more likely.
8:04 - Yay! More Noah/Danko dick-waving!
8:05 - So there is the proposal. But c'mon - we know that Sylar is the one who killed the agents... right?
8:06 - What the... how did Sylar get there? Unless... was the math teacher he just killed a teleporter/time freezer like Hiro? If so... holy shit....
8:09 - "Nice speech." I love snarky Noah.
8:10 - Am I the only one who thinks that Noah knows a LOT more about what is going on with Sylar right now than Danko thinks he does? Because I find that much preferable to the idea that Noah is - once again - unintentionally sowing the seeds of his own destruction, like he did before with Sylar.
8:11 - "I sold my kidney. Both of them. Twice". Hee hee hee.
8:12 - Nathan? Do yourself a favor and shut up now. Like the eskimoes said to the air conditioning salesman, "We're not buying it!"
8:13 - Wow! The Petrellis are Catholic. Who knew? Interesting.
8:14 - Okay - Nathan is holding the Idiot Ball now - trying to win a drinking contest instead of selling his daughter's jewelry. Or - I dunno - letting the dainty looking woman who theoretically should be able to metabolize the alcohol before it can affect her - enter the contest instead of you.
8:15 - "You'd be amazed what you can do with a lifted ID badge, a 4 dollar tie and a Baltimore accent." Now there's the Sylar we know and love.
8:16 - "He's a shapeshifter." Again... I'm calling bullshit on this and am willing to put money down that Sylar is the real killer and that he's just trying to sow dissension in Danko's ranks so he can "save the day" and convince Danko to go for the partnership.
8:21 - Well, holy crap. Sylar was telling the truth. Now there IS a twist I didn't see coming! Unless it turns out THAT guy was Sylar...
8:23 - And now we see Nathan demonstrating how most of us coped with watching Season 3. And Claire is showing the savvy she used to show fairly often.
8:25 - Heh. Never really thought about it... but Sylar IS a bit of a drama queen, in the sense of how he enjoys playing a role and manipulating people.
8:28 - Are You There, God? It's Me, Peter. And yeah... Peter seems to be coming to a revelation regarding his anger and his issues with his family.
8:30 - Wow. Actual tension. Seems like forever since we've seen it.
8:35 - Nice little detective scene here. I realize I'm not commenting much but that's because there's so little to say about this other than "This is good." and describing the action.
8:37 - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Good one, Claire!
8:38 - "I was Cassandra". Ooooh... good literary allusion.
8:39 - And in case you doubted where Noah's loyalties still are... there's your proof.
8:40 - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I like this shapeshifter's sense of humor.
8:44 - "He's a better you than you." BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
8:45 - And Claire-issa explains it all (I'm sorry... I'm sorry!) for those of you who can't guess how regeneration = cannot get drunk.
8:47 - And for those of you who couldn't guess it, the whole reason Nathan gave Claire a pass had nothing to do with buying off Noah and was all because he felt guilty about not being there for her when she was growing up. Wow. I am feeling so much non-sympathy for him right now, I don't have the words to describe it. Is it wrong that I'm thinking Claire should probably consider just how much HIS organs would be worth on the Mexican Black Market?
8:48 - Yes, Claire. First the blanket... and then a pillow across the face!
8:49 - Okay, that was dark. And twisted. And actually kinda awesome. I'm just trying to figure out HOW Sylar can do it without the cutting and everything. I'd bet we'll see a repeat of the lost scene from Season 2 where he pulls a guy's brain out through his nose... but that wouldn't explain the blood on the hands.
8:53 - And finally, Nathan admits that he bit off more than he could chew and that he's screwed up. Cry me a river.
8:54 - And now Claire is giving the drunken, "Pity me" jackass a sarcastic pep-talk. Yay Claire!
8:55 - Sister?
8:57 - *sighs* Well, I guess he IS a better way home than the bus, Claire.
8:58 - I don't think Noah is buying this for a moment.
8:59 - And we have unholy alliance.
9:00 - Next time - Grave Robbing!
The Final Word: Not a bad episode by any means. Lots of good character moments here but I can't believe anyone is going to be feeling any sympathy at all for Nathan at this point.
He's brought this all on himself and has gone begging to sympathy from the last person in the world who would or should give him any benefit of the doubt at this point. Actually, he was so whinny in this episode... I would rather see him die than Mohinderance at this point.
I know. I'm shocked too. And I think I need a drink....
We shall see.
8:00 - So, quick recap of the last few episodes that will be relevant to tonight... Danko finding Eric Doyle gift-wrapped, Angela escaping a drag-net with Peter and Claire escaping the drag-net with Nathan. No surprises so far.
8:01 - When did Claire have time to get her bangs done? Ah well... actually that does make kinda sense if she's changing her appearance.
8:02 - Gee... I wonder WHY she'd be reluctant to stay with you, Nathan. Jerkass. If Claire goes and turns him into the cops for attempted rape and the series ends with Nathan rotting in a Mexican prison, I think we'll all be a lot happier.
8:03 - "That's not why I saved you. I want answers." Yeah - Peter being less and less in touch with his empathic side is looking more and more likely.
8:04 - Yay! More Noah/Danko dick-waving!
8:05 - So there is the proposal. But c'mon - we know that Sylar is the one who killed the agents... right?
8:06 - What the... how did Sylar get there? Unless... was the math teacher he just killed a teleporter/time freezer like Hiro? If so... holy shit....
8:09 - "Nice speech." I love snarky Noah.
8:10 - Am I the only one who thinks that Noah knows a LOT more about what is going on with Sylar right now than Danko thinks he does? Because I find that much preferable to the idea that Noah is - once again - unintentionally sowing the seeds of his own destruction, like he did before with Sylar.
8:11 - "I sold my kidney. Both of them. Twice". Hee hee hee.
8:12 - Nathan? Do yourself a favor and shut up now. Like the eskimoes said to the air conditioning salesman, "We're not buying it!"
8:13 - Wow! The Petrellis are Catholic. Who knew? Interesting.
8:14 - Okay - Nathan is holding the Idiot Ball now - trying to win a drinking contest instead of selling his daughter's jewelry. Or - I dunno - letting the dainty looking woman who theoretically should be able to metabolize the alcohol before it can affect her - enter the contest instead of you.
8:15 - "You'd be amazed what you can do with a lifted ID badge, a 4 dollar tie and a Baltimore accent." Now there's the Sylar we know and love.
8:16 - "He's a shapeshifter." Again... I'm calling bullshit on this and am willing to put money down that Sylar is the real killer and that he's just trying to sow dissension in Danko's ranks so he can "save the day" and convince Danko to go for the partnership.
8:21 - Well, holy crap. Sylar was telling the truth. Now there IS a twist I didn't see coming! Unless it turns out THAT guy was Sylar...
8:23 - And now we see Nathan demonstrating how most of us coped with watching Season 3. And Claire is showing the savvy she used to show fairly often.
8:25 - Heh. Never really thought about it... but Sylar IS a bit of a drama queen, in the sense of how he enjoys playing a role and manipulating people.
8:28 - Are You There, God? It's Me, Peter. And yeah... Peter seems to be coming to a revelation regarding his anger and his issues with his family.
8:30 - Wow. Actual tension. Seems like forever since we've seen it.
8:35 - Nice little detective scene here. I realize I'm not commenting much but that's because there's so little to say about this other than "This is good." and describing the action.
8:37 - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Good one, Claire!
8:38 - "I was Cassandra". Ooooh... good literary allusion.
8:39 - And in case you doubted where Noah's loyalties still are... there's your proof.
8:40 - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I like this shapeshifter's sense of humor.
8:44 - "He's a better you than you." BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
8:45 - And Claire-issa explains it all (I'm sorry... I'm sorry!) for those of you who can't guess how regeneration = cannot get drunk.
8:47 - And for those of you who couldn't guess it, the whole reason Nathan gave Claire a pass had nothing to do with buying off Noah and was all because he felt guilty about not being there for her when she was growing up. Wow. I am feeling so much non-sympathy for him right now, I don't have the words to describe it. Is it wrong that I'm thinking Claire should probably consider just how much HIS organs would be worth on the Mexican Black Market?
8:48 - Yes, Claire. First the blanket... and then a pillow across the face!
8:49 - Okay, that was dark. And twisted. And actually kinda awesome. I'm just trying to figure out HOW Sylar can do it without the cutting and everything. I'd bet we'll see a repeat of the lost scene from Season 2 where he pulls a guy's brain out through his nose... but that wouldn't explain the blood on the hands.
8:53 - And finally, Nathan admits that he bit off more than he could chew and that he's screwed up. Cry me a river.
8:54 - And now Claire is giving the drunken, "Pity me" jackass a sarcastic pep-talk. Yay Claire!
8:55 - Sister?
8:57 - *sighs* Well, I guess he IS a better way home than the bus, Claire.
8:58 - I don't think Noah is buying this for a moment.
8:59 - And we have unholy alliance.
9:00 - Next time - Grave Robbing!
The Final Word: Not a bad episode by any means. Lots of good character moments here but I can't believe anyone is going to be feeling any sympathy at all for Nathan at this point.
He's brought this all on himself and has gone begging to sympathy from the last person in the world who would or should give him any benefit of the doubt at this point. Actually, he was so whinny in this episode... I would rather see him die than Mohinderance at this point.
I know. I'm shocked too. And I think I need a drink....
Monday, March 23, 2009
Thoughts on HEROES, Season 4, Chapter 7 - Cold Snap
We know from the ads that this episode is supposed to feature Tracy heavily, which is kind of a "no-duh" given the title.
Word is that REBEL is supposed to be unmasked this time too. Smart money was on Micah even before we saw the clip in the ads where it appears Noah believes that Tracy can be used to track REBEL... which Tracy potentially could do as Micah's aunt.
This episode also marks the first episode since Pushing Daisies' Bryan Fuller returned to the show as head writer. So here's hoping tonight is even better than Season 4 has been - for the most part - so far.
8:00 - Right. So, last time... Bennet points Danko in the right direction and exposed Nathan, Hiro and Ando go to "save Matt Parkman" and find there is a second Matt Parkman - Matt's son, apparently. And Tracy was screwed over by Nathan.
8:01 - New from Gillete - the Mach 4 Turbo! (See.. cause Danko is shaving and we're getting a lot of close-ups....)
8:02 - And there's the puppet-master Eric Doyle, all strung up and gift-wrapped! Sylar is getting creative!
8:03 - And Noah is having trouble shaving too. That's got to be symbolic of something...
8:04 - Oh wait... maybe Noah was the one who got Eric Doyle? I can see him doing the stringing up and the bow as a joke. Then again, if it was Noah, he wouldn't have been anonymous given that he needs a way to bring Danko to heel NOW.
8:05 - Wait... so is Angela involved with REBEL or not? My guess before now was yes... but now I'm not so sure.
8:06 - Wait... so apparently Danko was rehired now that Nathan has been outed as a metahuman. But they still left Noah in charge? Or is Noah still in charge? So many questions... but I'm glad they're intelligence questions that have a chance of being answered.
8:07 - And yeah... Mohinder is still as clueless as ever. Nice to know some things don't change.
8:08 - No jokes about how hot Ali Larter looks in the heat lamp room, please.
8:10 - Ah. Recent management changes. So Noah IS still in charge.
8:11 - Yeah - typical Noah plan. Use the powered killer as bait for everyone else.
8:12 - Baby Matt Parkman... SO clueless, and yet so funny. And trust Ando to be the one to figure it out. Could this be the start of a new HEROES BABIES spin-off? :)
8:13 - "I'll be warm mommy". Hee hee hee.
8:14 - The baby has a power! And he's a technopath too! Hey... maybe the baby is REBEL...
8:15 - Ah. And now they come for Angela. Nice fake-out with the vision, too... "Rebel Rebel". Never figured Noah for a Bowie fan.
8:16 - Fast recovery time on that drug. Mohinder, Matt and Daphne are freed. And yeah - I so like Matt being smug about how Tracy should have waited for them as he EASILY mind-controls all the guards into seeing an empty hall.
8:17 - For the record: I don't believe for a minute Noah didn't account that maybe Tracy freeing some of the other captives. He's trying to bust some of the other Heroes out... mark my words.
8:21 - Ah. But Tracy ran off AFTER they all got out. No surprise there. And no surprise that Noah is more concerned about Tracy and REBEL than finding Matt, Mohinder and Daphne. Assuming he was even able to do that with Matt masking them all.
8:23 - Ah. Matt using his wife's name to see Daphne treated. Nice. Of course Mohinder wants to run too because - stupidly and like Tracy - he doesn't realize the Matt is probably his best chance at staying free right now
8:24 - The baby Genesis device. Nice. But I can't believe Hiro is so stupid as to think he can take the baby, leave a note for the mom and NOT have problems come up. Actually... wait. This is Hiro. Yes I can.
8:25 - Still, nice character moment with Hiro talking about how he saw his mom die...
8:26 - Heh. E.T. tribute for the win. And Janice is still not nearly as dumb as... oh, 90% of the supporting cast.
8:27 - So called it! Micah is REBEL! Or is working with them if REBEL is more than one person.
8:31 - Heh. Angela has a friend. And they referred to the shoplifting incident from the pilot! Wow... actual adherence to continuity. Nice.
8:32 - Anyone believe for a minute they actually got Swoozie Kurtz for such a small part? Me either.
8:33 - I can't believe for a moment that Janice would actually believe - as far gone as Matt went - that he's actually become a terrorist. Actually... wait. Yes I can.
8:35 - Ha-do-ken!!! Didn't know Ando could do THAT with his lightning. And neither did he, apparently.
8:36 - Wait... did the baby just start Hiro's power again? And hey... another fun note. Apparently if Hiro is touching someone when he freezes time, they become immune
8:37 - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wheelbarrow for the win. So Hiro can freeze time but not teleport. Wonder if that's permanent or if the baby has to be touching him for his power to work at all? Maybe if he's touching Ando while he's touching the baby....
8:41 - "You told them I was Gwen Stefani"? BWAHAHAHA!
8:42 - Oh NOW Daphne starts questioning the "destiny/vision-quest" thing. Fine time for them to get rid of the one new character from Season 3 we actually like!
8:44 - Micah mentions a "she"... "she thought you might be followed." Angela? Angela's friend? Both? Or maybe Monica is about to come back too?
8:46 - Heh. And Peter is there to air-lift his mom out of danger. Looks like Peter can control if/when he absorbs a power now.
8:50 - I love how Micah knows the difference between a revolution and a rebellion and corrects Tracy on the Che Guevara comparison.
8:51 - And yeah... I guess fighting those heat lamps DID give her a chance to boost her powers.
8:52 - Oh crap... I didn't expect them to kill her off. And just as she was becoming - forgive the pun - cool. Ah well... any bets on how soon until we see Barbara make an appearance?
8:54 - Heh. Shades of Lone Wolf and Cub here...
8:55 - Daphne back in Paris, looking somewhat regretful about all of this. And... holy crap, Matt can fly?!?! How the... what the.... psychically learning how to copy other heroes powers like he did with the precognition?
You know what? I don't care! That's cool! Unless it turns out this is a dream sequence.
8:57 - Oh hell... it IS a dream sequence. Well, close enough. But since it looks like Daphne might be dying in the hospital...
8:58 - Oh damnit. That was so manipulative... and so sweet. But DAMMIT.. again... why did they have to kill off the one good character to come out of Season 3?
8:59 - Heh. Crown of liberty. Nice bit of symbolism there...
9:00 - I just realized. They just killed the only two new characters to come out Season 3 who were still around. And both of them were women. And both of them died in order to add more trauma to a male character's life. Tracy dying to save Micah. Daphne having been shot - six episodes ago - trying to save Matt, and now existing mostly to give him one more reason to seek revenge on Nathan and everyone else responsible for going after the HEROES. That really sucks...
The Final Word: I'm torn. On the one hand, there were a lot of great moments here and some of the best cliffhangers going into commercial ever. And a lot of long-neglected characters got some much needed attention. Lots of revelations here which expanded the universe and explained a lot of the rules of reality.
On the other hand, we see two characters die. Well, one of them MIGHT be able to survive but that would be even cheaper than the death.
It gives little away to say that they were both female characters who died due to injuries sustained while saving a male character. It's hard NOT to get a WiR vibe from this episode... even if one of the deaths came as a point of redemption and the other came to a character we thought was dead for most of the season anyway.
I foresee a lot of pissed off fans, regardless.
Word is that REBEL is supposed to be unmasked this time too. Smart money was on Micah even before we saw the clip in the ads where it appears Noah believes that Tracy can be used to track REBEL... which Tracy potentially could do as Micah's aunt.
This episode also marks the first episode since Pushing Daisies' Bryan Fuller returned to the show as head writer. So here's hoping tonight is even better than Season 4 has been - for the most part - so far.
8:00 - Right. So, last time... Bennet points Danko in the right direction and exposed Nathan, Hiro and Ando go to "save Matt Parkman" and find there is a second Matt Parkman - Matt's son, apparently. And Tracy was screwed over by Nathan.
8:01 - New from Gillete - the Mach 4 Turbo! (See.. cause Danko is shaving and we're getting a lot of close-ups....)
8:02 - And there's the puppet-master Eric Doyle, all strung up and gift-wrapped! Sylar is getting creative!
8:03 - And Noah is having trouble shaving too. That's got to be symbolic of something...
8:04 - Oh wait... maybe Noah was the one who got Eric Doyle? I can see him doing the stringing up and the bow as a joke. Then again, if it was Noah, he wouldn't have been anonymous given that he needs a way to bring Danko to heel NOW.
8:05 - Wait... so is Angela involved with REBEL or not? My guess before now was yes... but now I'm not so sure.
8:06 - Wait... so apparently Danko was rehired now that Nathan has been outed as a metahuman. But they still left Noah in charge? Or is Noah still in charge? So many questions... but I'm glad they're intelligence questions that have a chance of being answered.
8:07 - And yeah... Mohinder is still as clueless as ever. Nice to know some things don't change.
8:08 - No jokes about how hot Ali Larter looks in the heat lamp room, please.
8:10 - Ah. Recent management changes. So Noah IS still in charge.
8:11 - Yeah - typical Noah plan. Use the powered killer as bait for everyone else.
8:12 - Baby Matt Parkman... SO clueless, and yet so funny. And trust Ando to be the one to figure it out. Could this be the start of a new HEROES BABIES spin-off? :)
8:13 - "I'll be warm mommy". Hee hee hee.
8:14 - The baby has a power! And he's a technopath too! Hey... maybe the baby is REBEL...
8:15 - Ah. And now they come for Angela. Nice fake-out with the vision, too... "Rebel Rebel". Never figured Noah for a Bowie fan.
8:16 - Fast recovery time on that drug. Mohinder, Matt and Daphne are freed. And yeah - I so like Matt being smug about how Tracy should have waited for them as he EASILY mind-controls all the guards into seeing an empty hall.
8:17 - For the record: I don't believe for a minute Noah didn't account that maybe Tracy freeing some of the other captives. He's trying to bust some of the other Heroes out... mark my words.
8:21 - Ah. But Tracy ran off AFTER they all got out. No surprise there. And no surprise that Noah is more concerned about Tracy and REBEL than finding Matt, Mohinder and Daphne. Assuming he was even able to do that with Matt masking them all.
8:23 - Ah. Matt using his wife's name to see Daphne treated. Nice. Of course Mohinder wants to run too because - stupidly and like Tracy - he doesn't realize the Matt is probably his best chance at staying free right now
8:24 - The baby Genesis device. Nice. But I can't believe Hiro is so stupid as to think he can take the baby, leave a note for the mom and NOT have problems come up. Actually... wait. This is Hiro. Yes I can.
8:25 - Still, nice character moment with Hiro talking about how he saw his mom die...
8:26 - Heh. E.T. tribute for the win. And Janice is still not nearly as dumb as... oh, 90% of the supporting cast.
8:27 - So called it! Micah is REBEL! Or is working with them if REBEL is more than one person.
8:31 - Heh. Angela has a friend. And they referred to the shoplifting incident from the pilot! Wow... actual adherence to continuity. Nice.
8:32 - Anyone believe for a minute they actually got Swoozie Kurtz for such a small part? Me either.
8:33 - I can't believe for a moment that Janice would actually believe - as far gone as Matt went - that he's actually become a terrorist. Actually... wait. Yes I can.
8:35 - Ha-do-ken!!! Didn't know Ando could do THAT with his lightning. And neither did he, apparently.
8:36 - Wait... did the baby just start Hiro's power again? And hey... another fun note. Apparently if Hiro is touching someone when he freezes time, they become immune
8:37 - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wheelbarrow for the win. So Hiro can freeze time but not teleport. Wonder if that's permanent or if the baby has to be touching him for his power to work at all? Maybe if he's touching Ando while he's touching the baby....
8:41 - "You told them I was Gwen Stefani"? BWAHAHAHA!
8:42 - Oh NOW Daphne starts questioning the "destiny/vision-quest" thing. Fine time for them to get rid of the one new character from Season 3 we actually like!
8:44 - Micah mentions a "she"... "she thought you might be followed." Angela? Angela's friend? Both? Or maybe Monica is about to come back too?
8:46 - Heh. And Peter is there to air-lift his mom out of danger. Looks like Peter can control if/when he absorbs a power now.
8:50 - I love how Micah knows the difference between a revolution and a rebellion and corrects Tracy on the Che Guevara comparison.
8:51 - And yeah... I guess fighting those heat lamps DID give her a chance to boost her powers.
8:52 - Oh crap... I didn't expect them to kill her off. And just as she was becoming - forgive the pun - cool. Ah well... any bets on how soon until we see Barbara make an appearance?
8:54 - Heh. Shades of Lone Wolf and Cub here...
8:55 - Daphne back in Paris, looking somewhat regretful about all of this. And... holy crap, Matt can fly?!?! How the... what the.... psychically learning how to copy other heroes powers like he did with the precognition?
You know what? I don't care! That's cool! Unless it turns out this is a dream sequence.
8:57 - Oh hell... it IS a dream sequence. Well, close enough. But since it looks like Daphne might be dying in the hospital...
8:58 - Oh damnit. That was so manipulative... and so sweet. But DAMMIT.. again... why did they have to kill off the one good character to come out of Season 3?
8:59 - Heh. Crown of liberty. Nice bit of symbolism there...
9:00 - I just realized. They just killed the only two new characters to come out Season 3 who were still around. And both of them were women. And both of them died in order to add more trauma to a male character's life. Tracy dying to save Micah. Daphne having been shot - six episodes ago - trying to save Matt, and now existing mostly to give him one more reason to seek revenge on Nathan and everyone else responsible for going after the HEROES. That really sucks...
The Final Word: I'm torn. On the one hand, there were a lot of great moments here and some of the best cliffhangers going into commercial ever. And a lot of long-neglected characters got some much needed attention. Lots of revelations here which expanded the universe and explained a lot of the rules of reality.
On the other hand, we see two characters die. Well, one of them MIGHT be able to survive but that would be even cheaper than the death.
It gives little away to say that they were both female characters who died due to injuries sustained while saving a male character. It's hard NOT to get a WiR vibe from this episode... even if one of the deaths came as a point of redemption and the other came to a character we thought was dead for most of the season anyway.
I foresee a lot of pissed off fans, regardless.
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