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Heroes: Once Upon a Time in Texas

I was conflicted about this episode.

On the one hand, I really enjoyed the trip to the Burnt Toast of the past, because it reminded me of when Heroes was innovative and new and I liked it a lot more than I do now. On the other hand, I was expecting it to be an open and shut episode: a visit to see Charlie again, oops, can't save her without completely demolishing time and space, possibly with some twist I hadn't considered, end of story. But no. Now Charlie is a pawn in Sullivan's little game, a hostage to keep Hiro in line; she's not dead any more, but she's in character limbo. This just feels wrong. I don't want Charlie in character limbo.

Why didn't Hiro force Sylar to fix his own brain, while he was at it?

Lauren (Elisabeth Rohm of Angel) came in out of nowhere. I was thinking that she was a time traveler, too, and was there to interfere or stop Hiro or something. But she was just a co-worker with a thing for HRG. That was disappointing. HRG doing Shakespeare was fun, though. And I liked the "don't Haitian me" bit, although it reminded me of how annoying it was that we never knew the Haitian's name.

I liked the white hat and the black hat, and the constant references to the butterfly effect. And I liked Hiro manipulating Sylar, especially into the luggage compartment of the bus. Fun to watch, like most of this episode.

Looks like we're finally going to find out what happened to Mohinder. I'm tempted to insert a sarcastic "yawn" in here, but I'll restrain myself.
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

8 comments:

  1. "Why didn't Hiro force Sylar to fix his own brain, while he was at it?"

    If Hiro allowed Sylar to work on his brain, Hiro wouldn't have control over his power and Sylar could just steal it during the procedure without interference.

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  2. Hiro was holding information about Sylar's future hostage. If Sylar had killed Hiro, he wouldn't have found out what he wanted to know.

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  3. But remember Sylar does not HAVE to KILL people to obtain their powers.

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  4. That's true but he didn't know that yet 3 years ago. And Sylar can't exactly fix Hiro, because I don't think telekinesis can get rid of tumours short of ripping it out of his head. Charlie's was just a blood clot, Sylar just had to guide it out the tear duct.

    I was actually really enjoying this episode, it felt so different from the past few ones, where I felt it was "Uhh, guess it's good, it's OK". Whereas this time I'm really into it. The HRG/Lauren bits were a bit boring but still the episode's great. Feel sorry for Charlie but having her die anyway after 3 years would almost be too sad for Hiro.

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  5. I really liked this episode too. I find the focus this season to be better than before. They try to develop fewer subplots per episode, which makes the show feel more focused. We don't really know where this season is headed, but it seems to be building towards something. Is Heroes getting back on its feet?

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  6. Remco,

    The problem with Heroes is that it always seems to be building towards something, but it never does. I've been asking myself why I keep watching it, and the only conclusion I've come to is that I like to torture myself from time to time. On a weekly basis, to be more accurate.

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  7. That's been the problem in the past, yes. But it has always been clear in seasons 2 and 3 that they were building towards nothing. This season, I'm not so sure.

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  8. I expected Hiro to almost change Sylar's frame of mind, it would be nice to see us get back to Sylar with his son & being a good guy. In which case, I too expected Sylar to say, hey lil buddy let me fix your tumor.

    I am not a fan of ret-conning things and the entire HRG office romance was boring. They made HRG too sympathetic, which is his current portrayal and I wanted to see some of the old coldness.

    Overall though, I liked this episode, mostly because it was Hiro-centric and those usually rock. As opposed to the Parkman constipated episodes that drive me nuts.

    The whole, whooops I kidnapped Charlie thing is a bit lame. As was "oh I need you to help me fix something 11 weeks ago so instead of using the old man to send me back, I asked him to send me back to time to get you to send me back to time..." Um...yah, made no sense.

    At least we'll find out why they finally stopped the Mohinder voice over's.

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