RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …

What did everybody think of the season finale? I was definitely entertained, as I have been ever since Bryan Fuller returned to the show partway through the season — and even a bit before that — but have to say, I wasn’t really blown away. The finales for this series have just never managed to please 100%, and part of the reason is because the episodes throughout the season are so uneven, and tend to a lack a cohesive logic and set of rules about how these powers work and when and how people would use them.

Case in point: Sylar kills Nathan, Peter uses Sylar’s own shape-changing power to defeat Sylar, then Matt uses his mind power to convince Sylar that he’s Nathan. Then once Sylar morphs into Nathan, it’s as if Sylar is dead and Nathan is alive. It’s a very clever twist. But does it really make sense? If the plan is to keep Nathan around so that he can influence the President and keep The Company alive, then couldn’t Peter — who currently has shape-changing ability — do that just as easily, and without the risk of Sylar one day remembering who he is? Which we all know will happen, sooner or later.

Another case in point: Hiro is told that if he uses his power one more time, he could die. The Hunter is about to stab Noah in the neck with an elephant tranquilizer. Instead of just bashing The Hunter over the head with something heavy, or Ando zapping him with his Crimson Arc, Hiro stops time and takes the syringe out of The Hunter’s hand, potentially signing his own death warrant in the process. It makes for a dramatic moment, but one that kind of stretches sense a bit. As does suddenly deciding that Hiro’s body is rejecting his power like a virus in the first place. This is the first we’ve heard of somebody’s power acting that way, isn’t it? And why punish Hiro, who’s arguably the most heroic one of the lot?

So I liked the season finale, but didn’t love it.

In the teaser for the next volume, “Redemption”, we see that, as expected, there is still a bit of Sylar in Not-Really-Nathan, when he can tell by looking at it that a clock is running fast. Needless to say, Mama Petrelli seems a bit perturbed by this. And Tracy enters the scene again, this time with a water-morphing power — water and ice being different states of the same thing — and seems to be out to kill everybody who worked at Building 26.

RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …

Let me start by saying that normally, the flashback episodes for this series are my favorites.  But not this time.  The up side is that overall, it was a well written and cohesive episode, which certainly sets it above what we were seeing last season.  But the down side is that it was just kind of … well … boring.

We get to see Young Angela Petrelli, Young Daniel Linderman, Young Charles Deveaux (Simone’s dad), Young Bobby Bishop (Elle’s dad), and younger versions of Dr. Chandra Suresh (Mohinder’s dad) and Dr. Zimmerman (who superpowered Niki, Tracy, and Barbara).  We also meet Angela’s sister, Alice, who has the power to control weather.  By all rights, it should have been an episode with some cool revelations.  Instead, by the time I got to the end, I wondered what, if anything, had actually been gained by the flashback.

Anyway, so it turns out Coyote Sands was a resettlement camp in Arizona, run by the government, for the purpose of isolating and testing superpowered kids.  Young Angela was displeased with this, egged on some of the others to venture away from the camp for a night, leaving her sister behind.  Her sister freaked out, caused a storm, the Army guys freaked out, many people got shot, and mayhem ensued.  Young Angela and her crew returned to find a bunch of dead people, which they presumably buried, then vowed to never let this happen again.  Which is where “The Company” eventually came from.

In the present day, Angela learns that her sister isn’t actually dead, but has been living in a bunker and going crazy all these years.  She reaches out to her, but it’s too little too late, and when Alice learns that she’s lived the life she has because Angela lied to her, she freaks out, causes a storm, and disappears.  Angela uses this and her memories of 1961 as a reminder that those with superpowers should remain ever vigilant, and convinces all the Petrellis and Noah and Mohinder that the time has come to start another Company to restore the security and secrecy of superpowered people everywhere.

Oh, and at the very end, in what was presumably the setup for next week’s episode, we learn that Sylar is now pretending to be Nathan.

RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …

My day job has me a bit scattered, so I’m keeping it short this week.  So far, I continue to be happy with the improved writing on this show.

Hiro and Ando drive cross-country with Baby Matt Parkman, figure out that he is also Baby-Cry-and-Stop,  and get rejected by an Asian redneck trucker.  Noah confirms that Sylar isn’t really dead and that he’s a shapeshifter.  Sylar tricks Noah into holding a gun to his wife’s head.  Noah tricks Danko into confessing.  Sylar and Danko trick everybody into thinking Noah killed a police officer — including Noah himself.  Matt Parkman screws up Danko’s love life, then almost gets killed by Danko, but gets saved by Hiro.  Matt Parkman meets Matt Parkman.  All the Petrellis go to Coyote Sands, site of “Project Icarus”, and start digging up bodies.

I smell a flashback episode coming on!

RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …

Okay, so the only thing more surprising than getting a strong episode last week was getting another one this week.  Why?  Because this one revolved around the three characters I’ve actually been the most bored with this season — Peter, Claire, and Sylar.  But as with last week, a good script can make all the difference in the world.

In the past two seasons, we’ve seen Sylar go from Hannibal Lecter to emo misunderstood guy to moo-haha bad guy to looking for daddy guy, none of which I ever felt captured the full potential of the character.  And while I think that changing his persona yet again probably dilutes his potential over the long run, I have to say I really did enjoy this latest incarnation of Sylar as a detective helping Danko the Hunter track down a serial killing shape changer.  If last week’s episode echoed the Superman movie, this one clearly echoed the Brad Pitt / Morgan Freeman movie Seven … right down to the scene with the severed head in a box.  Sylar operating intelligently behind the scenes, immersing himself in the mind of his prey, is so much more interesting to me than over-the-top Sylar throwing people around with his mind and slicing foreheads open with his finger.

In the past two seasons, we’ve seen Claire go from an interesting twist on the stereotype of a cheerleader to a useless lovesick teenager to Miss “Claire Bear” Daddy Issues to Harriet Tubman for Heroes.  As for Nathan, he’s gone from politician to politician to religious nut to politician, with little to no explanation of why exactly he does any of the seemingly self-loathing things he does.  So color me surprised that in this episode, I was actually interested in the way that Nathan and Claire interacted with each other when they had no choice but to spend some time together.  Claire’s “You’re Supposed to be Superman” speech was almost sappy … but I actually believed her disappointment over her father not living up to his drunken promises.  And I believed Nathan’s visible shame over what a horrible father and/or hero he’s been to his daughter.  And I liked that in the end, they both owned their dysfunctional relationship and moved on.

As for Peter … okay, I was still a little bored with him.  But Mama Petrelli’s admission that she hasn’t been able to sleep was somewhat compelling.  Her power is to see the future in her dreams, but she can’t sleep.  She looks like hell, and my guess is that she’s got the cause and effect mixed up.  It’s not that she can’t dream because she can’t sleep — it’s that her mind won’t let her sleep, because she’s afraid of what she’ll dream.  Either guilt or a crisis of faith — or more likely both — have detached her from her own heroic nature, and it takes the faith of her “good son” (with the Jesus complex), and maybe the act of HRG choosing not to arrest her, for her to find the peace she needs to connect with her power again.

And then there’s Danko the Hunter.  For some reason, his plot twist reminded me of Buffy Season 5 (which I’ve been re-watching recently), in which Riley the Boyscout feels so powerless compared to his Slayer girlfriend that he starts letting vampire chicks suck his blood at night.  Sylar is everything Danko hates about superhumans … but he’s compelling and convincing to him too.  He offers the desperate hunter a light at the end of the tunnel, and convinces him — in a way that HRG has been unable to do — that the “One of Us, One of Them” concept makes sense.  But I suspect it’s a relationship born of necessity that won’t end well, because there’s something sad and shameful about the pairing from Danko’s perspective.  He’s always been kind of a dickhead, but at least he’s been a dickhead with strong principles … and now he’s compromising, sliding into a situation that I don’t think he understands well enough to control.  At least, not as well as Sylar does.

RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …

Something strange happened on this latest episode of Heroes:  It didn’t suck!  As expected, the return of Bryan Fuller as writer made all the difference in the world this week.  Although it may also have had something to do with the absence of two of the more aimless characters — Sylar and Claire.  And while I’m sure they’ll be back next week, it was nice to see some of the more likeable characters get their time to shine in the sun.

Providing comic relief this week were Hiro and Ando with their “Two Supermen and a Baby” routine, which, I have to say, was actually pretty funny.  The ongoing joke of Hiro and Ando not noticing Matt Parkman on the television over and over again was right up there with Hiro believing that Baby Matt was Big Matt shrunken to baby size.  Fuller doesn’t overplay the humor, however, and also uses the setup as opportunity for Hiro to finally tell Ando about the fact that he was there when his mother died.  As for Baby Matt, it turns out he has a power.  “He’s Toddler Touch and Go … he touches and makes things go … like a Baby Genesis Device.”  (That’s one of two Star Trek references, for those who are counting.)

When Matt’s ex-wife returns home, the boys learn that Baby Matt’s powers first manifested during the most recent eclipse, but they don’t have much time to talk about it before the Government Goons come calling.  Things look bleak until Baby Matt uses his power to jump-start Hiro’s time freezing power.  Unfortunately for Hiro, this is the only power he gets back, and so instead of teleporting them to safety, he’s forced to load Ando into a wheelbarrow, strap Baby Matt to his chest, and walk them both to a bus station 12 miles away.  Armed with the limited return of Hiro’s abilities, their plan is to keep looking for Big Matt.

Meanwhile, Rebel disrupts things at Building 26 long enough for Tracy to escape, who in turn helps Matt and Mohinder and an unconscious Daphne also escape before going her own separate way.  Following Rebel’s trail of bread crumbs, Tracy makes her way to a locker at the train station, where she finally meets Rebel himself … who she is surprised turns out to be Micah.  This throws a wrench into the deal she made with HRG — to lead him to Rebel in exchange for her freedom — and in a final act of nobility, she sacrifices herself to buy Micah time to escape, freezing not only the goons but herself.  While Tracy’s frozen, the Hunter takes her out with one bullet, shattering her … but we’re left to wonder if she’s truly dead when we see her frozen face wink.

As for Matt and Mohinder, after they escape, they bee-line immediately for a hospital to get Daphne the medical attention she needs, with the help of some telepathic persuasion.  The doctors are able to patch her up, and once she feels better, Daphne decides that it’s best if she and Matt part ways.  She zips off to Paris, but Matt follows her there, and in a surprising turn, reveals to her that he can fly.  He flies her around the Eiffel Tower, and just as things couldn’t get more romantic, tells Matt that he can let her go.  This is confusing for both us and Matt at first, until Daphne reveals that she’s aware she’s still in the hospital, dying, and that this is all just Matt in her head, trying to give her a storybook ending.

I have to say, it’s one of the few “didn’t see that coming” moments this series has offered in the past couple of seasons, and it made for a very touching moment when — after Matt flies her to the moon — Daphne finally and truly dies, in a dark hospital room, with Matt kneeling next to her, holding her hand.

And then there’s Mama Petrelli, who has cashed in all of her political chips at this point, and is now being hunted the same as the others.  Thanks to her ability to see the future while catnapping, she’s able to evade being captured, borrows some money from a friend, then evades capture again when Peter shows up at the last second to fly her away.  When last we see them, they’re looking out at New York City from the head of the Statue of Liberty.

All in all, I thought this was a strong episode, and it has me hopeful for the rest of the season.  I wasn’t happy to see Pushing Daisies get cancelled, but its loss was clearly Heroes‘ gain.  And hey, we even got a cameo from Daisies alum Swoosie Kurtz!  I expect a well-placed pie joke any episode now.

RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …

So I have to say … I kind of liked this episode.  I’m not sure why exactly, because plot-wise, it was just carrying on the same story they’ve been running all season.  But for some reason, the pacing, plotting, and characterizations all struck me as being much stronger than usual, and I’m actually having a hard time coming up with a moment in the episode where I rolled my eyes.

The closest I might have come was the moment I realized that Claire is apparently being repackaged as some kind of “Harriet Tubman for Heroes,” who helps those with superpowers escape the clutches of the government.  Which on the surface is perfectly consistent with how she’s been portrayed over the past couple of seasons — always bucking authority and very vocal about how the superfreaks should stick together.  But for some reason, I can never quite shake my impression of Claire as self-absorbed and self-interested.  Anyway, having helped AquaLad escape last week, she grudgingly agrees to help the Puppet Master relocate this week.  Then she gets herself a job at the local comics store, where the geeks are more than happy to have an ex-cheerleader hanging around, presumably so that she’ll have a cover for her comings and goings from the house.

Sylar finally hooks up with his real father, and we can be pretty sure it actually IS his real father, because he has a similar power-stealing power to the one Sylar has.  Then again, so did Papa Petrelli … so who can really say for sure.  Anyway, grizzled old Pappy Sylar lives in a rundown shack, breathing oxygen from a tank with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other in a way that just CAN’T be safe, performing taxidermy as a hobby.  He’s dying of cancer, and at first seems very level-headed and resigned to his fate … until he finds out that Sylar has a healing power under his belt.   Then Evil Pappy rears his ugly head, tries to steal Sylar’s power, fails, and Sylar leaves him to die a slow, painful cancer death.

Meanwhile, the ongoing love affair between Nathan and the Hunter plays out with another round of macho posturing on both sides.  Nathan learns about the Hunter’s plan to blow Matt Parkman up in front of the Capitol Building, and flies there to prevent it.  Once that crisis is averted — presumably with the help of some interference by “Rebel” — it sets the stage for the Hunter to explore exactly how Nathan keeps arriving at destinations so quickly.  Worried about the Hunter’s brutal tactics, Nathan goes to the President and has him fired, but the Hunter isn’t giving up that easily.  Based on suspicions confirmed by his questioning of both Mama Petrelli and Tracy, he confronts Nathan, pushing him out of a window, thereby proving that Nathan can fly.  Game, set, match.

Before I discuss the closing montage, I have a theory about Rebel.  I’ve already decided that it’s probably Micah, based on all the technology hacking.  But … what if it’s Micah AND Molly working together?  This would explain how Rebel always seems to know where the heroes are, and which systems to hack into in order to communicate with them.  Just a thought.

And now the closing montage …

Hiro and Ando arrive at some house where they believe they’ll find Matt Parkman, and they do … sort of.  Except it’s Matt Parkman Jr., a baby, and for some reason or another — my guess would be because it’s a Super Baby — it drives the frantic babysitter to run babbling from the house.  The phrase “diaper’s clean but that WON’T hold” puts all sorts of horrible images in my mind.

The Hunter arrives at his apartment with a bag of groceries in hand, and sees a stuffed rabbit on his desk that didn’t used to be there before.  What he doesn’t see is Sylar (whose father sits brooding in his rundown shack) lurking in the dark.  My guess is that won’t end well for the Hunter.

Government goons smash their way into Claire’s home, but find her bedroom empty.  She’s already been tipped off by Rebel that her “free pass is up,” and Nathan has arrived there just ahead of the goons to help her escape.  Now they’re fugitives too, like everybody else.

RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …

Claire hides AquaLad in her closet, Mom finds him, makes him a fake ID, Claire helps him escape from the feds by way of an extraneous makeout session at the bottom of a pool, then Claire receives a visit from the Puppet Master, who’s been sent there by “Rebel”.

Sylar telekinetically slaps his sidekick Nukie around, then finds an abandoned diner in the middle of nowhere, flashes back to being there as a kid, remembers and mourns the loss first of a cool Matchbox car, then of his mother, who was killed by his father’s superpowered hand, then telekinetically slaps his sidekick Nukie around some more.

Matt Parkman and Peter get a message from “Rebel” with Daphne’s location, escape Isaac’s studio just in time, then break into Building 26 using tandem mind control powers, steal some information and video footage, Peter escapes, Matt doesn’t, and Creepy Dude uses Matt’s own paintings as the inspiration to strap some explosives to him and leave him near the Capitol Building in Washington DC.

When Peter escapes, he tries to arrange a swap of Matt and Daphne for the footage and FAILS, when Creepy Dude won’t negotiate with terrorists and shoots him instead, while Noah tries to mentally warn him and FAILS, then Nathan rescues Peter at the last moment, tries to convince him to turn himself in and FAILS, Peter steals his flying power and flies away, and Mama Petrelli whispers something to Nathan about the future which she claims will change everything.

I mostly enjoyed this episode, even though it still didn’t feel as focused as it should.

One thing I’m really liking is Peter’s inability to hold more than one power at once, and I really wish he had been limited in this way right from the start.  It makes for a great “Deal or No Deal” kind of dilemma, where he has to decide whether it makes more sense to keep the power he currently has, or go with another one that will come in handy now, and risk needing the previous one later.  I think I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, that my empathy for both Peter and Hiro as characters was really hurt early on by making them so powerful so soon in the series.  The best superheroes are defined by their limitations.

Other than that, I’m about ready to find out who “Rebel” is already.  They’ve stretched that out far enough.  My guess at this point is that it has to be Micah … right?  I mean, who else would be able to manipulate all the electronics and computers the way he’s been able to?  The question is, what’s his overall plan — if he even has one? Because specifically having Claire rescue AquaLad, and sending Puppet Master to Claire, both seem kind of random choices.  So I’ll be curious to find out if there’s a logic there.