Heroes!
I really, really enjoyed this episode.
Spoilers!
I knew something was off about Nathan — well, clearly something was off about Nathan — but I can’t believe I didn’t see it being Sylar. Like, last week, when he said the special comment. I mean, sure, the show was moving along so fast you didn’t have time to think, but crap.
What I don’t understand: Parkman couldn’t read Sythan’s mind because the Haitian was there, but — Sythan never saw Peter except when the Haitian was there? Why is the Haitian always around, anyhow — what made him agree to be Sythan’s henchman? Why is he still there when his boss is clearly both batshit insane and evil? What exactly happened to Nathan? (Well, we know *what*, obviously, but how and when? I assume that Sylar pretended to be someone, maybe Peter, maybe Claire, then killed Nathan. Actually, that’s a good enough explanation, so I guess I don’t need to wonder more about how, just when. Sylar said it was after he’d turned against the heroes, but Sylar is a psychopath and we should probably not take his word for it. Or is that for Lost?) Also, this explains the weird picture Sylar painted last week. I think. Still, I don’t get why Peter didn’t clue in for 5 years.
We still have no good clue what Niki/Jessica are, which is somewhat annoying. Is Jessica really a person, or is it more another personality, as implied last week? (On the other hand, I find that storyline dull.) I am not hugely shocked that Ando died. I would like to have heard more about the elder generation of Heroes. I assume Linderman was killed, but Mama Petrelli? Papa Nakamura?
Why did Sythan fly off in the middle of a press conference? I mean, yeah, he had to go, but was that the only possible way?
Was the person working with Mr. Bennet Hana Gitelman? I think so, but am not sure.
Mohinder finally did something! After five years of being a lapdog, apparently, but still. He also had bad continuity on his beard, which grew and disappeared during the episode.
In other news, Peter is incredibly hot. And I think Hiro still thinks Sylar blew up the city, not Peter, so that should be interesting. It leaves open the possibility that NYC still explodes. And that Peter dies. Though clearly having lots and lots of powers doesn’t *necessarily* kill you, since both Peter and Sylar lived another 5 years.
Wondering if we’re going to see Claire’s boyfriend again. I am still not clear on what time travel involves or means on this show. I guess they’re going to keep it vague so people can’t nitpick, which seems fair enough.
Who is Molly? The name is unfamiliar to me. (One of the people that future-Hiro wanted Mr. Bennet to give him the address of.)
Update: also read this interesting post, which discusses many of the sexism issues in Heroes which I am ignoring because I like the show. Link now fixed.
Update 2: Molly, apparently, is the little girl that Parkman found hiding in an early episode, whose entire family was killed by Sylar.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:43 pm
HTML error on the sexism link. Thanks for the link, though I’ll also try not to get too annoyed by it. Oops, too late.
Awesome episode, didn’t want to see it end.
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:23 am
I fixed the link. The post is accurate, about something which would annoy me about the show if I allowed myself to think about it. (And which *will* annoy me, if they don’t take pains to fix it next year. Which they won’t.)
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:11 am
I really liked this episode. Things happened! People didn’t act like chumps! People other than Sylar effectively used their powers!
Random bits:
-Future Hiro listed a bunch of names to Bennett, and I assumed they were just people he helped during the intervening five years.
-I hate the name concatenation thing that TWoP (and other sites) does. It took me forever to figure out who the hell Sythan was.
-Sylar flying off in the press conference made sense to me. He was finally invulnerable, having killed Claire. The only thing that could stop him was Hiro going back in time, so he wanted to put an end to that nonsense.
-If Sylar could kill invulnerable Claire, then couldn’t Peter kill Sylar in the exact same way?
-I really want to know more about the elder generation too.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I made up Sythan on my own. Because I hate typing Sylar-as-Nathan and crap. Hiro listed names all of which we knew, except Molly. Candace, DL, um. People who Sylar ate, it seems.
Ok, I’ll grant the Sylar flying away. I assume he managed to freeze Claire’s powers somehow? Or stuck something in the back of her brain?
Which makes me wonder: why didn’t he eat the Haitian? Wouldn’t he want the power to neutralise other Heroes?
I’m not entirely sure why Peter didn’t freeze time, then kill Sylar. (This ability makes Peter way too strong a character, of course, so they will need to change that somehow. This is also a problem with Hiro.)
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Yes to the freezing time comment. Hiro rarely seems to use that technique. He teleports more often I think. Probably, as you said, because that makes him too strong for anything interesting to happen.
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:37 am
Sylar-as-Nathan gets old after typing it about once, I agree.
Peter is way too powerful. Probably some blah-blah about only Hiro having mastered time travel and freezing? Who knows.
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:34 am
Or he’s so pissed about Sylar killing his brother that he’s not rational. But I mean more that Peter is a problem for the series in general — if he has every single power in the world, all of which he can control at will (it seems like he can only use one at a time, though), and which cause no problems for him (he lived 5 years with them in alternate timeline, so I guess we dropped the “all these pwoers together will kill you!” idea) — what’s the point of anyone else? Even with Hiro, if he’s perfectly competent at stopping time for an indefinite period of time, and teleporting accurately wherever and whenever he needs to go: too powerful.
May 4th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Also, what happens with Peter’s invulnerability/healing power? That’s not one that is consciously used; it just happens. So he can never die either?
May 4th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Well, it looks like decapitation would kill him, since it severs his brain from his spinal cord, and happens fast enough that he cannot heal. At least, I’m assuming.
I do not know if healing is conscious or not. I do think the “one at a time” idea would be really interesting. Like, sure he can stop time, but while it’s stopped he can’t use his other powers. I still think he’s too powerful, but there we go.