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"Truth & Consequences" or "When Average Is Good"

November 27, 2007 6:14 AM

s much as I love it, Heroes really has not been as good this season as it was at its best last season. Perhaps that's why good episodes like tonight's are still kind of disappointing. This would have been an average episode last season; this season, it's one of the best. Still, there was some good stuff and, as is unfortunately the case nowadays, some pretty stupid stuff.

Peter, Adam, and Victoria Pratt
We're off to save the world again. Only not really because Adam is a sociopath, but Peter's too stupid to see that, even when Adam kills someone he didn't really have to kill. Victoria Pratt got kind of built up, so I was hoping to see more from her. I was disappointed on that front. I was also disappointed to see Peter take Adam's killing her so lightly. This is Peter restored, right? This is the same guy who used to be a hospice nurse and care for dying people, right? Seems sorta ridiculous that he's just be like "ok, well, you shot her dead, that's cool." To me, anyway.

We've heard that Linderman was Adam's disciple, and that seems to be hinted at here: Linderman wanted to save the world by killing lots of people; Adam apparently wants to save it by killing everyone.

But the most interesting part of Peter's story--and the worst, I thought--was his confrontation with Hiro. Let's review: this is Hiro Nakamura. He came back in time from the future to tell you that, in order to save the world, you had to save the cheerleader. Then he was there with you, fighting alongside you as you battled Sylar (if you can call what happened a battle, which you can't, but I digress). This is Hiro fucking Nakamura--you've worked with him before. You should trust him, Peter. But, no. Let's fucking electro shock the fuck out of him.

It's not all Peter's fault, though. Hiro shows up and says "Adam killed my father, now I have to kill him!" Well, sure that's going to set Peter off. But that's not the only reason Hiro's there. In fact, the dialogue in a previous scene made it seem pretty much like Hiro was primarily motivated by, you know, saving the world. He left with the express purpose of doing that. So why, then, when confronted with a situation where he has to explain his purpose, would he open by saying that he's there to kill someone a potential ally clearly trusts? if Hiro had just said "Peter! I'm here to stop a deadly virus from being released!" Peter wouldn't have started with the pyrotechnics. Sure, the Adam issue would have come up, but then at least Hiro and Peter wouldn't have immediately jumped into a confrontational situation. It's stupid writing, and it's getting pretty frustrating. Also, if the fight between Hiro and Peter ends up being better than the fight between Peter and Sylar, I'm going to be really fucking pissed.

But, anyway. I guess we'll see what happens next week.

The rest of Hiro's story was decent but, again, only because I like backstory. Hiro's timetraveling is becoming more of an overused plot device than anything. Scene in the writer's room:

Writer 1: Ok, we should probably give some background here. But I don't want to develop characters or anything like that. Is there some way that we can do it in a pointless flashback or something?
Writer 2: Wait a minute! I've got an even better idea! Ok, ok, hear me out! You know how we've got Hiro? And he can travel through time? Well--and I know this is kind of out there--but what if we have Hiro travel in time for some reason? Like, to go and actually see some dramatic event? Huh? Huh? Yeah?
Writer 1: I love it! Let's do that all the fucking time. Jeez, writing for TV is really fucking easy.

Claire
First of all, why couldn't West have been like this before? He's not a fucking creep or a forced caricature--he's just a teenage boyfriend trying to be there for his girlfriend. He's much more believable and likable.

Also, Kristen Bell rocks. She plays the Elle perfectly as a petulant pseudoadult, and the relationship between Elle and Bob is one of the few new relationships that actually works on some level.

As for Claire herself, she looked damned hot in this episode. Also, I like where her story's going. The stuff with her feeling guilty is predictable but also believable and good. We completely understood why she felt angry and betrayed before, and we completely understands why she feels guilty now. The writers should learn from these scenes. What I really liked was the scene where Claire sees Elle and confronts her. Claire decides to stop hiding and running and to take the fight to the Company. It's proactive, it's heroic, and it's, I thought, a very believable path for her character. And I really want to see where it goes.

Sylar and the Mexicans
Alejandro and Maya were both worthless to begin with but Alejandro was always less so. If there's anything worse than not having a super power, it's only having the power to undo one specific person's power. Alejandro was the superhero equivalent of an egg slicer: he was extremely useful in a very, very, very limited range of circumstances. And when you've got a knife that'll do exactly the same thing just about as fast, there's no reason to keep the egg slicer. So Alejandro's fortunately gone, but we still have to deal with Maya's irritating presence. Blah.

Sylar was good again, though. And the scene with him with Molly at the end really freaked me out--he'd better not hurt a hair on her cute-as-a-button head!

Mohinder
Fuck you, you stupid Indian piece of shit.

Next week is the finale, which is kind of surprising and seems to have come up real quick. I'm split about the whole thing with this season being split into two large arcs. On the one hand, this arc has largely sucked, so I'm glad to see it go. But there just isn't the tension in this finale that there was for last year's when we got to see all the characters slowly come together to save the world. This time, a few of them are going to stop something that only a few of them know about. And then some other stuff is going to happen. We'll see how it plays out. Maybe it's a good thing: the writers have proven that they're not particularly clutch, so maybe lower tension and lower expectations are good for them. We'll see.



1 Comments


JLee said:

I LOVE this show and do love this season, but you did bring up some good points that are valid. It's becoming a little "Lost"-like in the confusion. Who's good, who's bad, what are people's intentions. I think it odd anyone would want to kill off the whole world? What's the purpose of that??

November 27, 2007 8:13 AM



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