Super-Powered TV: Heroes 4.6: Tabula Rasa

I am going to take a different tact with this episode of Heroes. While I cannot promise no spoilers, I am going to focus the review less on a recap and more on my thoughts about individual events as the show progresses. Let me know what you think.

“:Tabula Rasa” opens with the regular recap scenes and another rather random Samuel speech. At least he isn’t Mohinder. No one wants that kind of narration again.

Why is Peter using the powers that are killing Hiro to try to save him? That seems rather foolish to me.

Is it me, or does Noah seem to be keeping the entire company’s file system unsecured on his laptop? That seems to be a global catastrophe waiting to happen.

The Jeremy subplot feels a little out of the place with the current flow of this season. I honestly think we have seen too many one or two appearance powers at this point.

Emma and Hiro make a rather interesting combination. Hiro’s never-ending optimism fits perfectly with her paranoia. Although I am a bit confused as to how Hiro knows even the sign for applause in ASL. It is American Sign Language. Why would he ever learn that?

Sylar sees his memories, but apparently still doesn’t connect with them. He is dangerously close to becoming an utterly broken character this season.

Please don’t bring back Charlie!

Hiro disappears before he returns to his bed. While it is an overly easy way out of a quick cure for the character, it is almost too simple. And I will reiterate, please don’t bring back Charlie. The book was bad enough, but we are going to apparently cover this base one more time. Heaven help us.

Oh and that is three weeks now without a Parkman appearance. Can we please get back to him and evil phantom Sylar some time soon? This episode was completely all over the place and continues a seeming need to focus only on what have become the writers’ three crutches: Peter, Hiro, and Sylar.

We will see what happens with next week’s episode: “Strange Attractors”.

Super-Powered TV: Heroes 4.5: Hysterical Blindness

This week we have “Hysterical Blindness”. I am already writing this late, so let’s get right in to it.

More generic plans by the carnival folk. We continue to randomly talk about the new member endlessly.

Claire and Gretchen enjoy lunch together. Claire especially enjoys being normal. She convinces Gretchen to tag along to a sorority initiation. Yawn. We get a bizarre speed dating segment at the beginning of the pledge day. Claire begins to get creeped out by Gretchen’s clinginess. It took her weeks to figure out the girl is a little odd? After an accident(?) at the mixer, Claire accuses Gretchen of some sort of murderous plot. She admits that she is a little bit stalking Claire. Gretchen admits that she has a crush on Claire (after the much talked about girl-on-girl kiss). We learn that Rebecca, head of the sorority, is actually Samuel’s ally and an invisible girl. She has been responsible for all the weirdness in Claire’s life of late. Samuel, Lydia, and Rebecca see the new member of the group after that.

Sylar gets pulled over by former ghostbuster turned police officer Winston Zeddmore. Or just a cop played by Ernie Hudson. I prefer to think it’s Winston though. But alas, he apparently is Captain Lubbock (meh). Why is a police captain on patrol in the middle of the night? Anyway, he gets a new criminal psychologist who is British. Strange, this stuff. Lubbock sends the good doctor away and tells Gabriel his identity. But he doesn’t remember any of this. He inadvertently uses his powers to send Lubbock crashing through the glass. He escapes with the doctor, but the cops quickly pursue. Sylar gets shot, and they both roll down the hill. Sylar’s wounds quickly heal and the doctor tells him to make a break for it. He runs down the hill... straight in to the carnival.

Emma continues to have problems coping with her new powers and in a confused state almost gets hit by a bus. Peter speeds to her rescue. She wanders off and Peter finds he no longer can run at super-speed. Instead, he has absorbed her synesthesia. He returns to the hospital looking for Emma, but only sees kids singing “The Greatest American Hero” theme. Nice. She realizes he can see the sound too. But she runs away from him. Back home, she learns that she can channel the light in to an energy attack. And as Peter returns home for the night, Hiro finally reappears (from last week) just to collapse in to his arms.

We do finally get past the Carnival’s quest for a new member this week. I think Emma’s story arc continues onward nicely and she continues to prove herself one of the show’s more interesting characters. It’s a shame though that the best storyline of this season, starring Parkman and phantom Sylar, spends the second week in a row on the shelf. It is good to see that the Heroes staff continue to know that former Veronica Mars cast members are good snags as Tessa Thompson joins the cast as Rebecca. Just as on that show, she seems to be able to channel the right levels of friendly and evil to make the character work. This season continues to have potential, but it is clear by the ratings that it cannot continue to push back that potential in order to build suspense. At this point, I hope that these eighteen episodes can serve to properly bring the series to a close.

Next week: “Tabula Rasa”.

Super-Powered TV: Heroes 4.4: Acceptance

Apologies for the lateness of this report. I am way behind on all my television viewing, reading, and other entertainment forms after a rather hectic week. On to the episode!

We start with Tracy reconnecting with her former employer, the governor of New York. She gets her job back, but already seems to have doubts about it from the get go. Tracy visits Noah and admits that she is uncomfortable in the position. Noah tries to convince her that she might be read to move on. Tracy leaves for dinner with the governor anyway. She tries to convince the governor she wants to help people. The governor just hits on her again. She leaves as she begins to lose control of her powers. She returns from the bathroom and just abandons the senator.

Dial-A-Hero gets another call, from the rooftop of their own building. He is going to jump, apparently because he got fired for copying his butt at the Christmas party. Really? And we are supposed to take Hiro’s dying seriously? He stops the copying, but Tadashi is still on the rooftop. This is idiotic. After multiple attempts, he finally realizes that he needs to talk Takashi down and does so easily. The talk also makes Hiro realize he needs to tell Kimiko the truth about his situation. Hiro has an attack after his confession, then disappears.

Peter meets with Noah about the compass tattoo, but when he arrives the tattoo is gone. Noah turns Peter down. Peter leaves as Claire arrives. Claire tries to get Noah to get a job. Their heart to heart does help them reconnect emotionally. Noah reconnects to his desire to stop the Carnival.

We get a brief digression with Samuel, Lydia, and Edgar. Edgar express his doubt which seems to draw Samuel’s ire. Lydia gives a vision of Bennett.

Angela brings Nathan a pile of keepsakes that help to refresh “his” memories of the past. He visits Peter and confesses about the image of his dead girlfriend, Kelly. Nathan visits Kelly’s mother, but she tells Nathan that she left for London. He wanders to the pool where he uses Sylar’s psychometry to remember the past. They both fall in to the pool, but Kelly hits her head on the side of the pool and breaks her skull open. Angela confesses that she used the Haitian to erase Nathan’s memory and clean up the “problem”. He tells her mom Millie the truth, but Millie just tells her to leave. Nathan gets attacked in a parking garage by a mystery man. Millie meets with Angela and tells her that he forgives Nathan, even as her hitman shoots and buries Nathan in the woods. Nathan survives and quickly digs himself out of the shadow grave... as Sylar.

While the Nathan parts of the episode did a good job of establishing where exactly his mind is in the currrent situation, much of the rest of this episode is middling filler at best. The Hiro bits just show us how redundant Hiro is becoming on this show. For a man so obsessed with the hero’s journey, one would think he would be smart enough to figure out he keeps repeating himself. Even as he is now dying, Hiro seems to be traveling the same path he has traveled in the previous three seasons. Tracy’s part of the story on the other hand seems to be filler at best and an attempt to keep Ali Larter’s characters stupid at the worst. Nothing about the epiphany Tracy has at the end of this episode needed to be acted out this way. Having her life destroyed in the last volume honestly should have been enough to make her realize her path was no longer as a governor’s personal aide/prostitute.

Like so many episodes before it, Heroes wants to spend too much time on the build. We still have no idea what motivates the carnival, who they are, or where they come from. This isn’t Lost, guys. You do not have the size of the cast or the over-arching design that Lost has. You cannot get away with taking an entire season to develop the plot this way. This kind of deconstructed storytelling is dying in the comics your stories obviously cop from and should do so here.

Next week (okay, tomorrow night): “Hysterical Blindness”.

Super-Powered TV: Heroes 4.3: Ink

“Ink” opens with a un-narrated montage followed by cryptic plans told by Samuel to Lydia.

Parkman has problems with Sylar in his mind, but Sylar uses Matt’s powers to keep him safe. But only after harassing Parkman during a drug bust. Parkman finds a stuffed animal by the toilet. Sylar hints that something worse is happening at the residence. Only problem is that all of it is a plant by Sylar. In the end, Parkman has to use his powers to keep from losing his career after he beats down a suspect. In the end, Sylar makes an ultimatum about the future.

We meet a woman with some kind of audio processing disorder. Peter meets her, but the conversation gives us no real information. Her name is Emma (played by Deanne Bray, a mostly deaf actress) visits her doctor who tells her she is synesthetic, able to view sounds as a kind of light. The doctor counsels her to actually get back to work as a doctor herself, instead of her job in the records department. In Central Park, Emma uses the audio-lights to perfectly play a cello. Peter comes to watch, but she runs away before he can speak with her.

Claire gets a visit from dad, but Gretchen throws herself in to the lunch-date the two have set. Claire does manage to convince dad that she can handle the situation with Gretchen. Gretchen hints at her past as a bulimic. Claire decides to come clean with her new friend. Claire invites Gretchen to become her roommate.

Peter leaves his meeting with Emma to confront a man who has sued him, only to find it is an incognito Samuel. Samuel does his best to set up Peter, going as far as to break in to his house and alter the photo in his montage. Samuel agrees to drop the charges and goes back to his family home. No one will let him in so he takes his vengeance with his powers, which are apparently earth-related. (Apparently in the world of Heroes all ink contains dirt.) Peter and his partner show up after the disaster, and a tattoo of the compass appears on Peter’s wrist as the show comes to an end.

Super-Powered TV: Heroes 4.1: Redemption and 4.2: Push, Jump, and Fail

Welcome to Volume Five of Heroes: “Redemption”. We have two episodes to cover from the first night, so let’s get right to it!

We open with a funeral of a character named Joseph attended by a handful of folks we have never seen before. We get a montage of some of the Heroes we do know in the process (most of which are from season one) before we move in to images that appear to be of the characters’ current location. Our eulogist (already a better narrator than Suresh) uses his powers (I assume telekinesis) to bury his brother as the funeral breaks up.

Chapter one, “Orientation” starts after the break as Claire makes her way to her college dorm room in Arlington, Virginia. Her roommate ends up being a little overly pushy; far pushier than any normal human should be. Seriously, I met some overly pushy people in college, but this goes a little far. Claire meets Gretchen after bailing on her new roomie during a test. Gretchen is a far friendlier student (despite her resemblance to a former ward of a nanny named Fran). She discusses her new surroundings with her father and embraces truthiness. (Stephen Colbert must be proud.) After a party where she chooses to hang up with Gretchen instead of

In Japan, Ando and Hiro have set up a business called Dial A Hero. Hiro’s sister Kimiko shows up to tear them a new one for wasting the company’s money. But after she leaves, they do get their first call. It is of course, a stuck cat. Ando goes to get it and predictably falls. Hiro uses a time freeze to keep him from getting hurt, but when he flashes the power off he seems to get stuck in time himself. After he awakens back in the office, Hiro reveals he is dying. He talks about his history in the carnival... before disappearing fourteen years in to the past.

Peter is a medic again, and uses his flight (or is it strength) powers as a really cheap form of parkur to get to an injured patient on the other side of a traffic jam.

Noah and Angela discuss the death of multiple Building 26 agents by Traci Strauss. Traci tries to murder Noah in his car, but he is rescued by Danko of all people. We get several tense and rather pointless moments. Later, Noah tries to convince Traci to work with him to find redemption, but Traci declines. Danko & Bennett have another terse converstion about Traci, but this time the Haitian lies in wait to make Danko forget his target.

Angela sits down for dinner with Nathan, a dinner she saw only moments before in a vision... only with Sylar. She begins to get worried about the nature of Sylar/Nathan.

Parkman receives Angela’s phone call for help, but he refuses to help. He is dealing with his own issues with “darkness” that has arrived recently.

Nathan begins to display Sylar’s power traits while in his office. He reaches out to Peter, but Peter ignores his calls.

At the circus, Lydia the tattooed woman works with the carnival master to uses his powers to summon up an image of Emil Danko. Our villainous carnival master assigns Edgar (go, Ray Park, go!) to hunt down and assassinate Danko. Edgar goes after the mind-wiped Danko and kills him in his apartment just after Traci decides to let him go. He cannot cut water and Traci chases him away from the scene of the crime before he can get the “compass” he wants.


Episode two, “Push, Jump, Fall”, opens with Parkman having headaches in Los Angeles, while Nathan is having the same in Washington. Parkman finds his son gone, only to have him in the hands of Sylar. Sylar demands to have his body back. It seems instead of wiping Sylar from Nathan’s mind, Matt absorbed the villian’s consciousness in to his own. Not quite sure how that would work, but let’s run with it. Parkman uses a police drug recovery program to discuss his powers in the loosest sense. Sylar pays a visit, and as always, Matt ends up looking crazy. He again looks crazy in the interrogation room. Sylar’s influence finally strikes with the water guy, as Matt forces him away from the house.

At his apartment, Noah calls Sandra only to have a man answer at the house. The phone dials right back, but this time it is Traci. Traci calls Bennett to the scene of Danko’s demise. They discuss the unknown killer and find a key buried in Danko’s stomach. This seems to be getting slightly preposterous. Noah pays Peter a visit, and after a brief conversation about Peter’s situation, he asks Peter to back him up. They open the safe deposit box and find that it is an actual compass, a broken one. Edgar arrives, but Peter uses his own speed and strength to keep the fight moving. They start a super-speed fight, and either Edgar clearly does not have any fighting abilities past his speed or Peter is a secret ninja, because Peter easily defeats him with one less blade. After the fight, we learn the compass isn’t so broken when held by Peter. Peter refuses to follow Noah on the mission, but he quickly finds that Noah has become a victim of Edgar after Peter leaves. Traci visits the injured Noah in the hospital... and Noah ends up hitting on her. Really?

In the past, Hiro realizes his location. He encounters Samuel the carnival master, himself time traveled in to the past. With Samuel’s influence, Hiro stops the accident that made Kimiko have a grudge against Ando. Now they are in love, and Hiro immediately decides that he must fix every mistake of his life.

In the aftermath of her roommate’s death, a suicide note appears out of nowhere in the room. She moves in with Gretchen who seems set on solving the murder. They start talking about a push, jump, fall test to determine how the body landed. Alone, Claire decides to run the test all by herself. She finds that her roommate did commit suicide. But Gretchen watches her recovery.

We end in the carnival with the words we gather the rest, and images of Sylar, Peter Petrelli, and Claire.

All in all, the debut shows a cohesiveness that hasn’t been seen since the end of season one. The loss of Mohinder (so far at least) gives the show a chance to pull itself out of its old funk. The new villains have solid potential, but so did every other villain introduced on Heroes. The challenge will be to keep them from derailing the way every other villain did. The characters seem to have received a reset as well, with most of their personalities reverting back to season 1. Nicely done, if not for the fact that we had two seasons of wild motivation changes. Hopefully the stream-lined writing staff can keep the show focused asd we progress over the next few weeks.