Dual
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 03:54pm by GeekBoyThis week, on Heroes …
RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …
So there you have it. A slightly better than sloppy ending to a sloppy season. When all was said and done, the good guys all went back to being good guys (except Nathan), the bad guys all went back to being bad guys (except Daphne), including Sylar, and for the most part, all of the bad guys died. And the super-power formula that’s been at the center of things all season was destroyed. Oh, and both Primatech and Pinehearst were burnt to the ground. Talk about wiping the slate clean for the next half of the season.
What, you need more details? Sigh. Okay …
Sawlar … sorry, I mean Sylar returns to PrimaTech to teach Angela, Noah, Claire, and Firestarter (Claire’s “bio-mom”) a lesson, Saw style, by locking them in the facility and pitting them against one another in convoluted ways, forcing them to make hard decisions. In the process, the Puppet Master and Hobolossus die, as does Firestarter, who takes the building down with her. But not before Sylar learns that Angela knows who his real parents are. Nobody bothers to kill Sylar, so I assume we’ll be seeing his ongoing parent search next year.
Over at Pinehearst, Peter and Nathan argue some more, then Peter knocks Nathan out and proceeds — along with Knox and Flint — to destroy the entire batch of formula in Mohinder’s lab. But not before some of it splashes onto Mohinder, clearing up his nasty complexion. Knox snaps the Super Marine’s neck, then when Knox tries to kill Nathan, Tracey freezes and shatters him. Peter and Nathan face off again, but this time Nathan has the upper hand, until Flint sets the lab on fire. Peter shoots himself with the formula, gets his powers back, flies he and Nathan out of there before the place goes up in flames, and then they part ways.
Back in New York City, the brain trust of Matt, Daphne, and Ando are determined to save Hiro from being trapped in the past. Daphne zips to Pinehearst (before it blew up), steals a shot of formula, and Ando takes it, hoping to get the ability to time travel. He doesn’t, but instead ends up with the power to temporarily supercharge other heroes’ powers. In this way, Daphne is able to move so fast that she can move backward and forward through time. She and Ando go back and rescue Hiro, who is just about to rip the formula in half (and just about to be killed by father), then — instead of just going back AGAIN and actually destroying the formula like Hiro intended — Daphne and Hiro go to Pinehearst and take the formula from Tracey, in one of the funnier scenes in the entire series to date. “Out of my way, Pikachu.”
And there you have it. End of Volume Three. Then we get a quick tease of the next volume, entitled “Fugitives”. Why? Because Senator Nathan has apparently made it his goal to hunt down and imprison all heroes, and has the full backing of the President (played by Michael Dorn, aka Worf from Star Trek TNG) to this end. Tune in next February to see where the show goes from here.
All in all, I thought the episode did a half-decent job of wrapping up a story line that was kind of wacky to begin with. Although I’m not sure whether I was sad or relieved that Hiro didn’t end up getting his powers back. Which on the one hand is good, because he can’t time travel any more (although Daphne/Ando can now), but on the other hand is kind of a bummer, because he’s arguably the most heroic and certainly the most sympathetic character in the lot. But I’m sure they have some plan for that.
I’m glad this half of the season is over, so I can start looking forward to what I hope will be big improvements on the other side of the season. Fingers crossed.
1. Greater Czarina said ( Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:15 pm )
So many holes — where to start?
1. How did Knox kill Supersoldier? Supersoldier didn’t even know he was there, so he couldn’t be scared enough to empower Knox.
2. How did Peter get back his powers inside of a second after injection? And why did he get his old ability back (assuming he did – it appeared so) to absorb, when the formula otherwise seems to work randomly (re: Ando).
3. Why does Nathan suddenly not give a shit about his brother? Their throughline has been their damned near incestuous lurve for one another. All of a sudden, Nathan’s all evil and saying he would’ve left Peter to die? Eh?
4. Firestarter’s brother, Dumbass Firestarter, said that he was inflammable. And we know from the past that Firestarter blew up when the Company came for her and Claire orginally and survived. So why is she dead now? (Unless the building fell on top of her, which we didn’t see).
5. Why did Claire wait until now to mention the handy-dandy fact that sticking something in the back of her head would turn off her healing ability, and thus would incapacitate Sylar? Shouldn’t she have mentioned that, oh, IN THE FIRST EPISODE?
6. Would it really have been so difficult for Hiro to cock out, “I’m your son, Hiro, and I have (had) the power to time travel, and this formula’s gotta go” to Sulu-Dad, all the while ripping the formula into wee pieces, instead of just tearing it in two?
I could go on, but you get the idea. I sincerely hope the return of Bryan Fuller returns some semblance of consistent characterization and sensible plotting to this show.
2. GeekBoy said ( Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:27 pm )
1. Good point. Unless the supersoldier was just generally scared about all the shit that was going down and/or unless Knox has a black belt in martial arts that we don’t know about .
2. I didn’t have a problem with this. Peter was born with a specific power, which was artificially stripped away from him. So I would have assumed that the formula would just reboot his own genetic nature. And it did. And the only power we saw him use was flight, which is Nathan’s power, and Nathan was in the room at the time.
3. Agreed. Lame.
4. Good point. I’m assuming both fire siblings are dead, but who knows. If they are, as you say, it’s probably from structural non-fire trauma.
5. Because Claire is a dumbass.
6. For that matter, is tearing it into wee pieces even all that effective? If you really want to destroy the thing, burn it. But even that does nothing, because unless Mohinder is a complete moron (not out of the realm of possibility), he would have sent his scans of the formula to some backup server somewhere outside of that building. Which is probably why Tracey is interested in him. Which brings me back to my point, which is why the hell didn’t Daphne/Ando/Hiro just go back 16 years again and destroy the paper formula as Hiro had intended?
3. Maggie said ( Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:57 pm )
Since we’re asking all these questions, let me ask about the catalyst. Evil Dad stole the catalyst out of Hiro and then infused the formula with it, then was killed. So does this mean there is no more catalyst? Because without the catalyst, the formula is useless, no?
Here’s something that’s been bugging me about Sylar’s belief that he was a Petrelli son: Soon after that was revealed, Peter jumped to a “possible future” where Sylar was living in the Bennetts’ old house with his own little son (named for Noah) who was happy to see “Uncle Peter.” I totally bought into this at the time, but now that we know it was based on a lie, I’m having a lot of trouble accepting that something so pivotal to the plot of the show (Sylar teaching Scarless Peter his power/hunger) happened in a future that I just don’t believe could have ever been possible.
Also, I feel sorry for Ando. He’s wanted powers so badly this whole time and all he gets is the power to supercharge the powers of other people. That sucks! I want to make him a t-shirt. “I injected myself with the formula and all I got was this lousy superpower.”
4. Soosan said ( Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 5:16 pm )
Ok, MacGruber could very well be my favourite lolscreencap so far.
I can not pinpoint when Nathan suddenly became so evil and less than friendly to his brother, it just seems so out of the blue. Anyone? Probably when he left Peter in Haiti I guess…
I wonder if Ando’s supercharging ability can help Peter out any… or Sylar for that matter (whenever he shows up again).
All in all, I was entertained by the final episode and haven’t given up hope!
5. freakgirl said ( Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 5:20 pm )
“I injected myself with the formula and all I got was this lousy superpower.”
HA!
I also wondered why Hiro didn’t tell his father he was his son from the future. That could have been a touching scene, much like the one with his mother from last week.
6. Beth said ( Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 5:26 pm )
My thinking on Hiro not telling his dad, though I was screaming at him, JUST TELL HIM!, was that he’s so aware of not changing the past. He spent much of this season trying to avoid it. But telling his mom, who was about to die, was one thing. Telling his Dad who would be pissed at him for screwing up the formula thing is another. Who knows what kind of ramifications in the future he would have changed with that one?
I think most of all, I just don’t get that Nathan transition like everyone else is mentioning. Otherwise, I was entertained. It was cathartic to have things that were bugging me – Primatech and THe Company – suddenly blown to bits. Same with all those new villains. They are gone and that makes me happy.
Finally, in the folder he gave President Worf, I didn’t see Peter or Claire or Angela in the file at all. Not that they aren’t there, it’s just they were the ones missing from all the other major characters, including Micah.
7. Dave said ( Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 9:28 pm )
So, with Ando’s help, Daphne can run really, really fast. Okay, so according to the law of relativity (?), wouldn’t people approaching the speed of light be able to visit the future (since time for them would stop as the world around them went on), and not the past? And, even if I have that backwards, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t work both ways. It would be a one-way ticket.
Poor Ando, ever the sidekick. Even his power screams “eternal sidekick.”
8. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 9:08 am )
Maggie – Yes, I’d say that without the catalyst, the formula is useless … unless there’s another catalyst out there? Since we were never told what the catalyst is, I guess we have no way of knowing if it was unique or not.
Regarding Future Happy Sylar, I was wondering about that too. I guess it’s possible he was an honorary “Uncle”, the way I am with some of my friends’ kids … but the writers weren’t really making it sound that way.
As for Ando, as Dave said, I think he got the power that was appropriate to him. He’s a helper, a sidekick. And there does seem to be something to what Daphne or Matt said, that the powers reflect the person to some extent. Daphne couldn’t walk without crutches and got the ability to run fast, Matt was a cop and got the ability to read minds, Peter had no compelling personality of his own and got the power to mimic other people’s powers, Maya was really annoying and got the power to kill people with her tears. I don’t think the writers have followed this perfectly, but it does seem to be a clear trend, which Ando has followed.
As for Daphne traveling backward and forward through time, I’m torn. On the one hand, there’s a precedent for this with The Flash from the comics. On the other, the show’s explanation of it was a bit simplistic, and I think they made the process sound a bit too easy. As Matt said, they could have easily ended up in the Ice Age or even a pre-Big Bang universe. But this is the same problem I had with Hiro bouncing around through time — that it should really take more practice and experience to do the big stuff like this. Daphne accidentally goes back ten seconds, and suddenly she’s able to control the power well enough to go back to a specific day 16 years ago.
I kind of thought a better way to handle Hiro’s “trapped in the past” problem would have been for him to simply write his future self a letter, the way Doc Brown wrote Marty McFly a letter in Back to the Future 2/3. “Dear Hiro 2007: I/you are stuck in 1992 without any powers, because Evil Arthur stole them. Could you/I please travel back to the rooftop five minutes before Arthur gets there and not let him do it, so I/we can save the world? That would be awesome. Sincerely, Hiro 2008″
9. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 9:25 am )
By the way, did anybody out there understand the joke in my Daphne screenshot?
How about now? …
10. Dave said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 9:52 am )
Yes, there is a precedent by The Flash for traveling through time, but he needed to use his cosmic treadmill….
I’m so lucky I found a woman who would marry a geek like me.
11. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 10:04 am )
I guess maybe we can consider Ando the cosmic treadmill in this case? It’s possible that Ando’s power is not only to supercharge somebody else’s power, but also give them greater control over it at the same time.
12. Maggie said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 10:49 am )
The point I was making wasn’t that Peter wasn’t a real uncle, rather that in this possible future, Sylar was a happy, good guy because he’d found his real parents who loved him and from that point on he worked to be good and change his life. But since that was never true, there was never any reason for Sylar to strive to be good, and therefore never be in the state of mind he’d need to be to help Peter by giving him his power.
It’s bugging me because it seems like the writers just changed their minds about Sylar being a Petrelli, and now they hope we’ve forgotten that whole thing.
13. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 11:00 am )
Well, in reality, it’s probably true that the writers just changed their mind.
But within show logic, an argument could be made that Peter going to the future and seeing Happy Uncle Sylar, then coming back and mucking with the timeline — letting everybody know about the formula and all that — complicated Sylar’s life for the worse. Maybe in that other timeline, his relationship with Noah grew stronger, and he never even found out that he wasn’t a Petrelli. Which would be consistent with how the season started, with Future Peter figuring out that he was only making things worse by trying to change the past, and finally leaving it in Present Peter’s hands … as if Present Peter could do any better.
Bottom line: I’m pretty sure Peter’s the one who screwed everything up. Isn’t he always?
14. Maggie said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 11:26 am )
Those things did occur to me and we could go back and forth, filling in the blanks, formulating possible reasons for how it could still make sense, sure. But I don’t feel it. Maybe I just don’t like the direction the story is taking and I can’t get past that. Kind of like that season of Angel where Cordy goes evil and has Connor’s baby, Jasmine. I was so angry with what they’d done to her character that sometimes I pretend it never happened.
I was talking to a friend on Monday night; she’d seen the episode already and I hadn’t. We didn’t get into details because she didn’t want to spoil me, but from her perspective this season of Heroes is just as good as the other seasons have been. She doesn’t see the things I’m picking apart…to her it all works and she’s really enjoying the show. Can’t help but be envious of that!
15. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 11:44 am )
I’m usually the world’s biggest apologist for TV shows that I like, but Heroes is an odd show for me. Because while I still really like it, I can’t possibly come up with explanations for all of the bad writing moves it’s made over the past two seasons. Even when it seems like I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt that the writers were possibly following “show logic”, I realize I’m doing that more for my own sanity than anything else. Because the continuity of plots and characters has been all over the place.
Freakgirl has compared my forgiveness of Heroes to shows like BH90210 and The O.C., which she continued to love right till the end in spite of themselves, even after they got to the point where the writing started to step all over itself.
16. Michael said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 12:16 pm )
I can’t believe I didn’t consider that Peter has his old power back. I just thought he could fly now.
When Papa Petrelli died, the catalyst just ghosted out of him. People were nearby. Or does it have to be directed, like with Hiro’s mom?
You can justify destroying the present day formula vs. the past in the same way that you justify Hiro not telling his dad who he is. Both significant changes to the past, and they did spend a good amount of time establishing that it might not be good.
My best, most oft-replayed moment of this ep. was the SOUND EFFECT they used for the Super Soldier’s extra-physiological head rotation. If you still have it, check it out.
17. Maggie said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 12:19 pm )
Ah, but that’s what I loved most about shows like BH90210! Particularly Melrose Place. I want more from Heroes. Although, Noah Bennett used to be on a Spelling show, he was Gay Son Steven from Dynasty!
18. Dave said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 12:57 pm )
I just find it irritating that we seem to be working far harder than the writers to make this work. I don’t mind bringing something of myself to an artistic work, but I shouldn’t have to do all the heavy lifting.
19. freakgirl said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 1:23 pm )
Exactly. I LOVE discussing a show, but with Heroes lately, we’re just all questioning and fanwanking in order to make sense of things. Tedious.
20. Greater Czarina said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 1:46 pm )
5. Because Claire is a dumbass.
I believe this is the best explanation I’ve ever read.
Ah, thanks for explaining the “Mimimi” cap. I thought you were going for self-involvement (me, me, me) and you were actually going for Beaker. Her expression really is dead-on, isn’t it?
21. Michael said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 2:08 pm )
GC, thanks for explaining the explanation!
22. Maggie said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 2:12 pm )
Ah! Beaker! I didn’t get it.
23. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 2:29 pm )
I have to make you guys work for them sometimes.
As for the comparison with BH90210, I guess the bar is set higher for a sci-fi show like this, where it’s necessary to justify not only how the characters behave, but also the very physics of the show itself — how certain powers work, etc. If the writers were getting the latter right, we probably wouldn’t care so much about problems with the former.