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    Heroes: Villains
    Tuesday, 11 November 2008
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    After the recent story about NBC firing two producers from Heroes after "creative differences" regarding the direction the series is taking, I have to admit that I went into this week's episode with a fair amount of trepidation and concern. Just what could be happening in the upcoming episodes that is so controversial that NBC could possibly warrant sacking Jeph Loeb, one of the great comic writers of our time?

    I got my answer last night.

    From the very outset, I knew this was going to be a bad episode, as it's essentially the culmination of a full season's worth of bad ideas. The show's near-strict adherence to Hiro's "I will not travel into the past...okay, I will but only when I really need to" philosophy, the struggles amongst the ever-growing members of the Petrelli family, and the latest entry in the series' "flashback episode" sub-genre all came together last night in what I can only describe as a "massive clusterf**k of nonsense".

    We don't need no water...

    Leading from last episode, Hiro goes on his "spirit walk", which is basically just code for "he's traveling back in time so that we can overload the audience on exposition, but he's not time traveling because he doesn't do that anymore, remember?", which in itself is absolutely ridiculous. Regardless of the fact that they've done the exact same thing in the previous two seasons (with both Hiro and Peter), the fact that the Heroes writers are so reliant on the time travel gimmick that they have to invent new ways for Hiro to go back without actually going back proves that the entire time travel bit needs to be removed from the show entirely.

    Reach for the sky!
    "Fastest Fire Extinguisher in the West. Ka-CHOW!"
    Anyway, this season's flashback covers the past of three characters, the first of which is Meredith. In a travesty of writing, they conveniently reveal that not only does Meredith have flame abilities, she's also just so happens to be related to the only other pyrotechnically gifted character on the show, Flint. They knock over a convenience store (I think, it's never revealed if they were robbing the place or if Flint was just causing some mayhem), and it brings them into contact with Agent Thompson, played by the always mediocre Eric Roberts. Because yeah... we really need more cameos from past cast members (sarcasm).

    What follows is an absolutely unnecessary subplot about how Meredith is captured, then offered the chance to become an Agent herself. She trains (apparently, although they never show it), and even helps apprehend an unruly vet with Colossus-like powers, but throws it all away when she finds out that the Company captured Flint and has offered to make him an Agent as well. Yeah, I have no idea why either. They explain it away by having Meredith explain to Thompson that the Company killed her child in a confrontation 14 years earlier (the one where HRG found and adopted Claire), but the whole thing just seems tacked on, like they only put all of this stuff in the show so that they could point out that Flint and Meredith are siblings, and so that they could haphazardly tie a bunch of unrelated events together (more on this further down).

    That's telekinesis, Kyle

    The second focus of the flashback episode is Gabriel Gray, nerdy spectacles and all. In the next all-too-convenient plot twist, we learn that Elle and HRG actually met Gabriel/Sylar early on in his career as a psychopath. After Sylar's first encounter with another super-powered person (in which he killed Brian Davis and stole his telekinesis), Sylar feels a wave of remorse and attempts to hang himself. Elle arrives in the nick of time and saves him, then pretends to be interested in him so that HRG can study his abilities without capturing him. Ummm... yeah. I know HRG can pretend to be cold and heartless, but are we really supposed to believe that he'd let an innocent person die, just so that they can find out how Sylar's powers work? That's a bit of a stretch, and almost completely out-of-character for Noah Bennett.

    Not enough parameters! You must have 4 parameters separated by "|" : e.g. {playerflv}290|140|false{/playerflv}So Elle befriends Sylar with pie and awkwardly nosy questions and it appears that there might even be a bit of a love connection going on, as she relates to his feelings of remorse about his powers. The friendship with Elle seems to be doing some good, as Sylar even starts to clear away all the research he stole from Dr. Suresh regarding other people with powers. One item, a list of names, contains Brian Davis (the telekinetic Sylar killed), Trevor Zedlan (who we meet later), Molly Walker (the seemingly narcoleptic ability locator), Charlene Andrews (aka Charlie, Hiro's adorable love interest from the first season), and a woman named Sparrow Redhouse (who we haven't met yet, but Future Hiro saves in one of the graphic novels). Sylar attempts to throw the list away, but Elle manages to pocket it and then track down, then introduce Sylar to Trevor Zedlan, a guyliner-wearing emo with the ability to kill a yak from two hundred yards away... with MIND BULLETS!

    (sorry, had a Tenacious D moment there)

    Yeah... we can all see where this is headed. Sylar kills Trevor (presumably takes his powers), Elle flips out and reveals that she has abilities, HRG watches the entire thing from a van. Again - totally out of character for him. I'd like to think that even after being given that assigment, Noah wouldn't just let some poor My Chemical Romance fan die (I would, but that's beside the point)... and if he did, he'd capture Sylar immediately afterwards instead of letting him go free. But hey - it's not my show.

    Good Guy. No, Bad Guy. Okay, Good Guy Again. ...What?

    The final part of this trio of FAIL is the subplot behind Angela and Arthur Petrelli's conflict with each other. Nathan is still snarling after Linderman like Scott Weiland at an all-you-can-snort buffet, and Arthur doesn't like it. He tries to convince Nathan to back down, and when Nathan refuses, Arthur orders Linderman to kill him, leading up to the infamous car crash that caused Nathan's powers to manifest and his wife to become paralyzed. Angela is suspicious of Arthur's hand in the event, but he promises her he had nothing to do with it, and she believes him.

    Not enough parameters! You must have 4 parameters separated by "|" : e.g. {playerflv}290|140|false{/playerflv}Later, Arthur and Linderman discuss the "plan for New York" (presumably the one where they all get blown up) and Arthur tells Linderman to make another attempt on Nathan's life. This time, however, Angela overhears it and she runs from Arthur. He catches her in the kitchen, and using his mental abilities forces her to forget the conversation and agree with him that Nathan has to die. There's only one tiny little problem: if Arthur can force people to do things they don't want to do, why didn't he just force Nathan to drop the investigation? It's massive New York Nuclear Explosion-sized plotholes like this that are slowly ruining this show.

    Later, Linderman (who is apparently not without a conscience) meets with Angela alone and offers to heal all the mental scars that Arthur has inflicted upon Angela by the apparently semi-regular mental manipulations he's performed on her. At first she's resistant, but then allows him to heal her and she again learns the truth about her husband. She confronts Arthur (with the Haitian in attendance to cancel out his powers) and poisons his soup. Before she can dispose of the body, however, Nathan arrives and finds him collapsed on the floor, leading to the whole "heart attack" cover story. Arthur is taken to the hospital, where he somehow arranges to have a doctor tell Angela and Nathan that he died (the same doctor that worked for him at Pinehearst until Sylar played "impale the bystander" while trying to rescue Peter).

    The Final Straw

    Hiro awakens from his not-time-travel-walk, and shouts out that he needs to warn Angela and Nathan, but they suddenly hear a scream outside. They run outside to see Usutu on the ground, about 8 pounds lighter (if you catch my drift). Arthur Petrelli appears and tells Hiro that he knows that Hiro has been dreaming about him and puts his hands on Hiro's head. Ando, who apparently decided to spend this time wetting himself, just stands in shock as Hiro screams out in pain.

    Not enough parameters! You must have 4 parameters separated by "|" : e.g. {playerflv}290|140|false{/playerflv}And that's that. "To be continued" flashes and the episode ends. Not surprisingly, that's also when the massive fan-backlash began, which only solidifies my theory that neither the show's creator, the writers, the studio, or the fans have any idea about what they actually want for this show. While I would miss Hiro as a character, I really want to see the time travel bits gone from the show, or at the very least regulated until strict conditions that would prohibit using them as the go-to-gimmick to explain and/or fix everything. Maybe Arthur will just take away some of his powers. Who knows?

    Spoilers from the upcoming episodes spell out the full story:

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    Really, the only thing I thought they did well this episode was in the actual execution of the intersecting clips. While I disliked the way they tried to tie every event in this episode to some other event that we've already seen in Season 1, the director and effects team did a really good job of combining the new footage with the previous footage we've already seen. They even did a good job giving Peter back his "fabulous!" Season 1 hair for the few scenes between Peter and Nathan (they tried the same thing in Season 2, but it looked like an obvious wig).

    While I thought it was a little contrived to have all these events interspersed so closely (c'mon - Meredith was the cause of the train wreck that Claire happened to rush into?), the show could do worse than to hearken back to the first season in all it's noir-ish beauty and gritty mystery. Maybe someone over at NBC needs to buy a clue and take notes from the first half of Season 1.

    The official NBC episode description for next week, entitled "It's Coming" reads:
    "After a preemptive strike against Hiro and Ando in Africa, Arthur Petrelli orders Knox and Flint to hunt down his son Peter and granddaughter Claire. Nathan is stunned to learn his father is alive -- and leading a villainous charge to worldwide destruction. Meanwhile, back at Pinehearst, Sylar has a charged confrontation with Elle. Suresh begins testing his new, combined superpower formula. Later, with the others dead, injured or on the run, Matt attempts to wake Angela."

    Beside the ultimate "my kung fu is best" moment when Matt tries to undo Arthur's mind control on Angela, I'm interested to see how the Sylar/Elle confrontation goes (maybe we'll learn who the mother of his future child is? Hmmm? Did they maybe name him Noah after the man that first introduced them?).

    See you next week.

     





    Peter Sorensen is a part-time reviewer and was kidding about killing My Chemical Romance fans... mostly. You can email him here or follow his updates on Twitter.

    Thoughts? Opinions? Is Hiro really Angela's illegitimate son? Maybe Meredith is Nathan's 3rd cousin?     Post a comment below and let us know!
    Comments (6)
    Minzoni wrote...
    emm... I think that on the description for next episode it says "and Matt tries to revive Angela" xD
    || November 12, 2008
    Peter wrote...
    @Minzoni - Haha, yes. You're completely right. It was a typo in the media release I was sent. I just checked the NBC Media Village and they've updated the show info, so I rewrote that section.

    The funny thing is that NBC will put lame puns in their show descriptions, so I thought they were just trying to be clever or something by calling them Angels (referring to the episode "Angels and Monsters").

    So... yeah. My bad smilies/cheesy.gif
    http://www.bleepinggeek.com || November 12, 2008
    crood wrote...

    The problem with this episode is that nothing revealed in the flashback was all that shocking:

    Angela tried to kill Arthur: DUH, I think I figured that out when she stated his "death" was suicide, not a heart attack.

    Arthur tried to kill Nathan: Slightly interesting, but nothing requiring a full episode flashback. Nathan really doesn't need any more motivation to confront Daddy and it kind of undercuts Linderman as season 1's big bad. Now he's Arthur's toady.

    The less said about Meredith's story the better. Way too much focus for a C level character and her D level villain of a brother. Can anyone explain Thompson's reason for letting her go?

    Sylar/Elle/Noah: I kind of like the Gabriel/Elle interaction, but it's so obviously forced into a place in the timeline where it doesn't really fit. Presumably, he's killed at least 2 people at this point? By the way isn't Elle supposed to be a sociopath? Aren't they supposed to be unable to feel real emotions and just mimic behaviors?

    Obviously, the whole Noah thing is to increase tension with Claire and give her a real reason to hate/fear him rather than her current motivation, which I don't understand. Why exactly is she pissed? Because he tried to get a fairly nice guy to get rid of a serial killer who attacked his daughter? Yeah, Dad's a creep.

    However, my main thought was. Noah was based in Odessa, TX at the time. Didn't the company have anyone in NY to handle the Gabriel Gray operation? However, I don't think it was all that out of character for Noah. The only thing that's ever been more important than his job is protecting his family and at this point Gabriel was just a job.

    || November 12, 2008
    jbsoren wrote...
    Worst. Episode. Since Season 2.
    If this keeps up, I'm three weeks away from walking away from this show. I mean, I'm willing to overlook glaring plotholes (I do watch "24" after all), but I can't tolerate complete stupidity.
    || November 13, 2008
    crood wrote...
    By the way, if Angela was so upset about Arthur killing Nathan, why didn't she have a problem telling Matt Parkman to kill Peter if necessary?
    || November 13, 2008
    crood wrote...
    Well, I got an answer to the "other catalyst" question. Over in the Behind the Eclipse column on http://www.comicbookresources.com.

    || November 25, 2008

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