Our Father
Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 02:00pm by GeekBoyThis week, on Heroes …
RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …
Wow, so Claire and Hiro have never met before? That seems crazy. I mean, thinking back, I guess it’s true, but it really tells you something about how little time passes in each episode that this is possible. Has even a year passed within the timeframe of the show yet? I don’t think so. Anyway, so Hiro and Claire go back 16 years, and Claire’s first priority is to take care of herself (surprise), in this case, her infant self, so she interjects herself into her adoptive mother’s life, changes her own diapers, and even manages to keep Noah from shooting her, all to make sure that Hiro’s father can’t put The Catalyst in her.
Meanwhile, Hiro realizes that his mother — who is still alive at this point — is a healer, and that she can heal the memories that Arthur took away (I know, it’s a silly idea, don’t think about it too much), so he tells her who he is, and she believes him, and it’s actually a very touching scene, him getting to see his mother one last time, and her getting to see how her boy turned out, and after she heals his brain, he tells her to give him The Catalyst, and she does, and it’s all glowy, and once it’s gone from her, she dies, and Hiro goes up to the roof to tell Claire that everything is okay … and then Arthur shows up, takes both the Catalyst and Hiro’s power, throws Hiro over the edge of the building, sends Claire back to the present, and Hiro is left hanging on to a flag pole.
Now, when Arthur first showed up behind Hiro on that roof, for some reason I thought it was Arthur from 16 years ago, and I got pissed off about the sheer coincidence of that. But in hindsight, I realize now that it was present day Arthur using Hiro’s power. Still, it kind of bugs me that we never saw the moment that it occurred to Arthur exactly when/where Hiro and Claire might be. I mean, he had all of time and space to search in. The roof of that building was probably a logical choice, since that’s Kaito’s U.S. home, and likewise with the day Kaito gave Claire to Noah. Yet my first response was that it seemed contrived when Arthur showed up, and a little exposition about his reasoning process would have gone a long way toward fixing that. Which is too bad, because it was actually a great plot reversal … just a clumsily written one.
Anyway, so Arthur returns to the present with The Catalyst, fixes Mohinder’s formula brew, they and Nathan and Tracey test it on one of the Marines (the guy from The 4400) they’ve recruited as guinea pigs, and the result is the kind of super-strength that Jessica used to have. Matt and Daphne and Ando find Isaac’s sketch book and learn everything that happened to Hiro and Claire in the past, including that Hiro is now “Lost In Time”, and their big plan now is to use Mohinder’s brew to give Ando the power to go back and time and save Hiro. Sylar kills Elle on the beach, sets her on fire, then finds a hero with the ability to detect lies, takes her power (the old fashioned way), so he’ll be able to tell if Arthur is lying about being his father. Then Sylar changes his shirt and goes to Pinehearst — where Peter is hemming and hawing about killing his father — confirms that Arthur was lying, and kills him, saving Peter the trouble.
Next week: the fall finale. To be honest, with the exception of how that scene with Arthur on the roof played out, I really liked this episode in and of itself. But I’m less invested than ever in the overall “moral dilemma” that’s been the central plot point all season. At this point, I could really care less whether everybody gets powers or nobody gets powers. Moral ambiguity might be realistic, but it’s not as much fun to watch. And I kind of resent that we had to watch Sylar’s uphill evolution from evil to good only to have him, seemingly on the spur of the moment, choose to be almost slapstick-ily evil, running around with blood all over himself and delivering shtick-y lines. Remember when he used to be scary?
By the way, if you didn’t understand that last screencap, then you weren’t watching Saturday Night Live this weekend …
1. freakgirl said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 2:17 pm )
Excellent LOLHeroes, as usual.
Question: Why does Ando assume he’ll get the time-travel power if he takes the formula?
2. GeekBoy said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 2:22 pm )
Yeah, I wondered that too. I couldn’t tell if the writers were just writing Ando as naive about how the formula works. He’s eager to be the hero for once, so he’s hoping that’s the way it works, and doesn’t really know enough about the formula to realize it doesn’t.
3. Soosan said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 2:25 pm )
Seriously your best screencaps to date.
does Ando + Formula = Stab Hiro?
4. GeekBoy said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 4:49 pm )
As somebody on my blog just pointed out to me, Arthur has/had the same power as Isaac.
So duh, yeah, he was perfectly capable of drawing the same picture Isaac did, of Hiro and Claire on the roof. Although it still would have been nice to see that drawing. You know, like he could have had it in his hand and shown it to Hiro just before he attacked him, then said, “You’re not the only one who reads comic books.”
5. GeekBoy said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 4:57 pm )
Soosan, stab or zap? Didn’t Alternate Future Ando have some kind of red energy beam power? But it’s a good question all the same. What if Ando, in his zeal to save Hiro, ends up with a power that eventually results in Hiro’s death? Even if that future gets changed, Hiro and Ando disagree ALL THE TIME, so it could just be a matter of time before that scene plays itself out.
Along these lines, it’s convenient how what the writers have basically done is let Mohinder and Nathan create one batch of the formula before Arthur died. So unless that batch gets destroyed in the next episode, I’m sure it will serve as a device to give a limited number of characters powers in future episodes. Personally, I hope it gets destroyed, so we can go back to watching people who were born with powers deal with them, for better or worse.
6. Soosan said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 6:36 pm )
I probably meant to say zap.
My memory could use a shaking every now and then.
7. Greater Czarina said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 8:01 pm )
Okay, I really have to stop trying to make sense or consistency out of this show. To wit:
Even though they pulled the whole, “Isaac drew a bunch of issues of the comic before his death” thing out of their asses last week, this totally contradicts Season 1, when it was stated that Isaac couldn’t see beyond NY blowing up. ‘Cause if he could, and thus drew all these future comics, then why would anyone have been worried about the world being destroyed?
Everything you said about Petrelli popping back to the roof to confront Hiro. PLUS, I’m mightily pissed off that their making Hiro into such a bonehead/incompetent this season. First he takes out the Sooper Sekrit formula from the safe because he was bored, for cripe’s sake, then he vows to his mother that giving him The Catalyst is the right move, only to lose it like five minutes later. Not nice, Show, not nice at all.
What the blue fuckity-fuck is The Catalyst? Are the powers in our core characters derived from birth/inheritence, as we were originally shown, or did they all have to have had some contact with Claire + the eclipse to activate them? Because I’m pretty dern sure not all of them had Claire contact.
And, by the way, we’ve been told this season that Tracey, Jessica, and the as-yet-unseen whats-her-name in California are triplets — so where does that leave Jessica’s late, identical TWIN, Nikki?
When Lost looks like a model of careful, coherent plotting and consistency in comparison….
8. GeekBoy said ( Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 9:26 pm )
re: Isaac, this is one of many cases where the show should have resisted the urge to revisit old territory. They decided to kill Isaac, and already created another character to take his place … so why keep using him as a device? Presumably for the comic book connection, which just isn’t a good enough reason.
re: Hiro, amen to that. Hard to believe that he’s arguably THE most powerful hero in the bunch.
re: The Catalyst, I’d like an explanation of that too. I didn’t get the impression that it has anything to do with the heroes who were born with their powers, only with the formula to create heroes artificially. But even so, what is it? Something that Hiro’s mother was born with? Something that another hero passed on to her? Something created artificially that was in injected into her? When they first started referring to it a few episodes ago, I assumed it was just some kind of DNA marker or something, not something all glowy and spiritual looking.
re: the triplets, Niki & Jessica were the same person in the same body with a multiple personality disorder, while Tracy and the as-yet-unseen Barbara were the other two triplets.
9. freakgirl said ( Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 8:13 am )
Re: the triplets — didn’t we see Niki/Jessica visiting her sister’s grave at some point? Gah, I can’t remember.
10. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 8:35 am )
The real Jessica was Niki’s older sister (adoptive sister I assume) who her father (again I think adoptive) abused to the point where he killed her. Then Niki manifested Jessica as a split personality as a way to deal with the father abusing her too.
11. freakgirl said ( Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 8:50 am )
Oh, riiiiiiiight. Thanks!
12. Bianca said ( Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 11:58 am )
So apparently Heroes is going over the 10pm mark thus screwing up my DVR recording. Did anything of note happen after the Marine threw the chair into the glass?
13. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 12:07 pm )
Yeah, that’s really been pissing me off for the past few episodes. It’s as if NBC is trying to trick people into watching “My Own Worst Enemy” … even though they’ve already canceled that show. Thankfully, I happen to DVR that show too, so I’m always able to pick up that last 30 seconds or so and the previews for next week.
Anyway, nothing really happens. They ask the soldier how he feels, and he smiles and says, “I feel good.” But we knew that he would. It remains to be seen next week whether or not he also feels like sugar and spice.
14. Bianca said ( Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 1:37 pm )
haha thanks. I really hate when shows do that.
How he should feel is like a traitor. I’m pretty sure the Army of Superpowers is another 4400 storyline
15. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 2:00 pm )
Well … the soldier’s not doing anything wrong (yet), is he? His goal is to better protect his fellow soldiers, which is noble enough. He just happens to be working with some nefarious people toward that end. So he’s kind of a Confused Captain America.
My guess is that the Super Army won’t happen. They only have that one small tub of formula, with no prospect for creating more now that The Catalyst is gone.
16. GeekBoy said ( Friday, December 12, 2008 at 10:39 am )
I’ve reprinted a recent EW interview with Bryan Fuller over my blog that I think is very encouraging …
http://gagglefrak.com/televisi.....-could-be/