Here is No Why

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"Dying of the Light" or "Maybe this Season Will Be Good, Too"

October 20, 2008 11:49 PM

H and I agree that this is the best episode of the season so far. A lot of the things that were good about the first season were back, one of the final remnants of the abortion that was the second season is gone, and the overall plot started to seem cohesive and focused.

I liked the Hiro and Ando parts. I appreciated that they got the whole "Hiro killed Ando" thing out of the way immediately, although it did feel sort of cheap. Still, the follow up--their exploits in Africa--were entertaining, funny, and they furthered the plot a decent amount. "They all look the same to me." "That's racist."

I also liked the stuff with Parkman and Daphne. It's good to see Parkman being sort of himself again--goofy and lighthearted but also determined. And sort of clueless and overwhelmed. Plus I also liked the earnestness with which he talked to Daphne, who also started to become less of a caricature and more of a character in this episode.

In fact, I started really like Daphne in this one. Before, she seemed extremely two-dimensional and boring. And cliche. But she started to develop a little more of a personality in this one. She's gone from a standard hero-for-hire to having at least some sort of conflict over what she and her bosses are doing. I think that'll become more and more interesting--and important--as the series goes on.

The stuff with Claire and her family was also relatively interesting. I think that Claire and her moms made a good team, but I sort of wanted to see her biomom burn some shit down. And having Mr. Bennett show up at the end was good, too, as it hinted at a future Claire-HRG team, which I'd like to see, frankly. They have an interesting dynamic and Claire's got a lot of reasons not to trust him, even though he's her dad and all.

As for the last remnants of Season Two, it looks like we're really tying that shit up. That black girl who could learn talents quickly seems to have been just ignored. One of the Mexicans is dead and the other is glued to Mohinder's wall with magic semen. And now Adam Monroe is . . . umm . . . dust. I can't say I'll miss him, really, but that scene came across to me as way more of a Nikki-and-Paolo moment than I think it was supposed to be. But that's fine with me.

As far as Mohinder and his ever-increasing strangeness, that whole storyline was probably the weakest part of the episode, except the part where Tracy tricked Mohinder into letting her freeze his fucking arm. That was awesome, and it proves that Tracy is a thousand times cooler than Nikki-Jessica ever could have hoped to be.

Finally, the stuff with Peter, Sylar, and their father, I'm very intrigued. I'm not really sure what Mr. Petrelli's power is. Is it just to permanently suck other peoples' abilities out? Does that mean Peter will never have abilities again? Or can he get them back somehow? Either way, it's good that someone hit his reset button--the number of abilities he had was getting completely out of control. And now I'm really excited to see where this goes from here. Although I am partially confused: didn't Peter take Sylar's ability so that he'd be able to understand time well enough to know when and how to intervene to prevent the disastrous future we saw? So why did the writers give him the ability, then incapacitate him, then take the ability away? There'd better be a damned good in-story explanation.

Anyway, I'm really excited for next week's episode now, which is more than I've been able to say about this show for a long time.