Heroes Season 3 - yet again
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The story continues by going backwards and filling in some backstory about the current situation.
Everything takes place during Hiro's visionquest and we assume we are viewing the true facts of the events depicted. We've rolled back two years, watching the early events of the first season, knowing what we now know about the Petrellis, the guy with the Horn Rim Glasses, Sylar and the rest of the gang.
It's sort of an Origin story episode.
Over the last couple of weeks we have seen the Petrelli family a'fightin' and a feudin', so it was probably about time that we discovered why. Everything hinges around Arthur and Angela Petrelli, their plans to take over the world (or something) and their difference of opinion.
Arthur dominates his wife and family, literally messing with Angela's head any time she takes against him. He plans to kill Nathan, has Linderman attempt to do so, and is poisoned by Angela. We know he survives.
We also see Sylar attempt to kill himself, and be forced into becoming the relentless and unstoppable killer we came to know and love by HRG (who is busily manipulating things behind the scenes).
At least this week we get to spend relatively long periods of time with the characters. There's plenty of attention given to the Petrelli family, and in fact to the extended family given that we now know Sylar is in fact Gabriel Petrelli.
This should be a low key episode, and it more or less is. It's nice seeing Zachary Quinto turn Gabriel Gray into Sylar, it's also nice to see how much of a bastard Arthur Petrelli is.
Eric Roberts is in this too, as an Ageny for The Company, and Christopher Eccleston's character gets a mention.
And since this is all a vision quest, we're not overly concerned with Suresh turning into a monthter, or Peter turning into Sylar, or adding anything to the story at all. Until the last few seconds, when it all seems to go terribly pear shaped for Hiro.
Somehow, the threat to Hiro and the "origin" of Sylar are the most compelling threads of the whole episode. Gabriel Gray is a harmless enough guy who attempts to kill himself after he kills someone with an ability because he's unable to cope with his own feelings of guilt and remorse. This sort of makes sense, seems to be a good start point, feels right.
And it turns out that Clint, the guy in level 5 that can throw fire, is the brother of Meredith - Claire's biological mother.
- as an aside, will you please look at the amount of SOPE! in this storyline? If this was Doctor Who, people would be up in arms about the interrelationships of characters.
I, on the other hand, am sort of digging it.
3 comments:
I actually thought that the 'origins' episode was the best thing they've done in a long, long time. There was a danger some episodes back that the series was traveling up its own fundament. But this was a little stroke of genius and much more like the, frankly, far superior Season 1.
I commend the writer of that episode because it was a frantic job to knit together three years of continuity and not screw up!
Wow, I'm proud of you for being able to like this show past the second half of the second episode. I watched the first two seasons ( on my intrepid lap top in this forsaken country of Korea) and I have to say that I don't find any of the characters redeemable or interesting. I got the whole 'soap opera' vibe way too early and abandoned any interest in the show when the guy with the horn rimmed glasses was brought back to life using his daughter's blood. Please!!! Aside from the fact that Mohinder is about as good looking as an Indian national can be, I don't much care for the show:-)
The task of making it all hang together was monumental, and is something of a metatextual reaction to a lot of people yelling "Oh, this sucks!". Which parts of it do.
In terms of redemption, there are very few characters who are working for it. That's not a bad thing, because the big theme about this season is apparently "choice".
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