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Heroes: I Am Become Death

Future Claire: "I just killed my uncle. And now I have to do it again. Give me a second to be a human being."

Season one's "Five Years Gone" was delicious. This episode just tasted bad.

Future characters turning evil is technically preventable. I can tell myself that present day Peter will find a way to prevent Claire from becoming evil. The title of this volume is "Villains," after all, and I get the concept. But there's a line, and I think they crossed it twice: when Peter killed Nathan (again), and when Claire tortured Peter. I could almost handle Matt as a brownshirt in "Five Years Gone," but Peter and Claire are our heroes, our main characters. It bothered me. What can I tell you.

Apparently, Nathan's destiny is to become president, no matter how much they change the future. Getting killed also appears to be his destiny. It's funny how the romantic pairings go wild in these future scenarios; future Nathan ended up marrying Tracy. (Or possibly Barbara. I guess if Tracy doesn't work out as a character, like Niki, they can always move on to Barbara.) Nathan rescuing Tracy was pretty romantic. Ali Larter's character, whoever she is, is definitely more fun with a Petrelli guy.

We know now that some superheroes were born that way naturally, and some were created, like Niki/Tracy/Barbara. Who is artificial and who is natural? And does it matter? Mohinder's plight suggests that it does. It just seems so unfair that all these other people get superpowers and Mohinder turns into a creepy crawly. At least his affair with Maya appears to be over, thank the gods.

So I didn't hate everything about this episode. I loved Sylar. Or more accurately, his alter ego Gabriel. Seeing him in Costa Verde, a happy dad to little Noah, was a lot of fun before it all went to hell and Gabriel went nuclear. Who was little Noah's mom? Why was Noah named for HRG? And most importantly, why did Gabriel have Mr. Muggles? Did Future Peter kill Claire's parents? Is that why she turned to the dark side?

Making Sylar sympathetic by telling us that he couldn't control his "hunger" is an interesting concept. I didn't think it was possible to make Sylar sympathetic, but you know, it's working for me. I just really don't want to see Peter doing what Sylar did with the brains. Yes, I know they're two sides of the same coin and now they're even brothers, but they're screwing with my Peter and I really, really don't like it.

Bits and pieces:

-- Future Claire was part of a hit squad that consisted of Knox, Daphne, and the Haitian. And they might have been working for Nathan.

-- Matt Parkman is still stuck in Africa; this Spirit Walk guy thing has just dragged on. (I don't miss Isaac Mendez, but I liked his paintings a lot more than these.) At least we know that Matt's blonde woman was/is/will be Daphne. I rather liked that.

-- Future Molly was four years older and looked it. The actress probably is older; kid actors usually play characters younger than themselves.

-- The photograph they showed early in the episode suggested that Zimmerman raised Barbara himself.

-- Future Gabriel was wearing an apron that said "hail to the chef." Remember that in "Five Years Gone," Sylar was president. Nice touch.

-- Interesting that present day Nathan chose Robert Kennedy's desk over John Foster Dulles'. A Democrat over a Republican, I couldn't help but notice.

-- There was another cockroach cameo.

-- The future Bennet house got blown up again. It's probably just destined to explode.

-- BFFs Hiro and Ando are resolving their trust issues. Was Angela sincere with Hiro? Or did she just want Adam back?

-- Apparently, Adam was unconscious. That's reassuring. Sure, he's evil, but still. Yay! Adam's back!

Quotes:

Future Peter: "I made terrible choices. Stepped on too many butterflies."

Ando: "You know what I think? I think you're still upset that future me murders future you."

Matt: "What, is that some African mystical mojo thing?"

Spirit Walk guy: "Carl Jung. Clinical psychology. You don't read much, do you?"

Two out of four stars,

Billie
---
Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

4 comments:

  1. To illustrate how i feel about heroes i should mention that back in the 1st season the only character who annoyed me was Nikki. (and that because the double personality thing had much more potential then seen on screen)
    Flashforward to season 2 and now 3. Now it's easier to list who doesn't annoy me. That would be HRG and Elle (i just can't dislike KBell).
    The writers managed once again to undead everyone who "died" in the finale. Season one had Sylar Nathan Parkman, season two had Nikki Nathan Adam (not technically dead but buried forever is like being put on a bus never to return). Maybe it's more creative now, with giving Ali Larter a new character to play, but still i want people to go. Otherwise it will end up like this: "oh my god they killed Nathan in the season finale, oh right he will be back next season no matter what"
    Compare it to Lost where new introduced characters work(Desmond and Ben imho are even better then the original cast), where old ones go and people accept that.
    I'm still watching Heroes but not like in season one where i watched in awe of what will happen next, but rather as an excercise of how not to write a show.
    Season 3 to season 1 is like the prequel trilogy of Star Wars to the original trilogy.

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  2. Unfortunately they have to screw with Peter. It seems to me the writers didn't think ahead very much when creating his character and made him simply too powerful. It worked well in the first season when he was still learning his abilities but nowadays if they don't disable him somehow right at the beginning of the season, he could solve all the problems like this (the sound you just didn't hear was me snapping my fingers), effectively ending the whole season's plot in a single episode and making all the other characters irrelevant :-)

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  3. What bothers me the most is that NONE of the characters seem to learn from their mistakes, they just keep repeating them over and over.
    And can we PLEASE drop "goofy" Hiro and Ando, it's getting SO OLD!

    Speaking of Hiro - remember how he actually DID change the past in season 1? Future Hiro did, anyway.
    Now they're just hopping forwards and backwards in time and confusing the HELL out of me.

    More structure. PLEASE more structure!

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  4. Yeah, the writer's really dropped the ball by not establishing early on SOME kind of limitation on Peter's power.

    For a while, I thought they did; it seemed he couldn't use more than one power at a time, which was an acceptable limitation. But that's not the case.

    Instead, he has to have character/plot limits put on him (he's untrained/amnesiac/gullible/trapped in another body/hungry) that in some cases, seem to harm the character more than anything else. But still, he needs to be controlled somehow.

    Also, I don't think Future Nathan was dead-just extremely injured. I think Peter stopped before killing him, but that could just be me.

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