Heroes #17:Cold Wars-Season 3-2009

[satori01]

It is pretty noteworthy that powers that get treated lightly in supehero comics or RPG's are actually amongst the most useful in Heroes, while the heavily offensive stuff is of more dubious value because a bullet can kill just as easily.

Lets be fair, in the 3 seasons of the show...this is the best writing for flight we have seen so far. Nathan using flight to slam the Haitian warlord into the car is a close second.

Sylar disproves the theory that offensive powers can not be effective...it comes down to what the writers want to happen. Mohinder needed to be caught so yet again like w/ Sylar, Primatech, Pinehurst, and now Nathan; Mohinder can work with a group he probably should not.

If Mohinder was supposed to escape we would see him climb walls, throw furniture and go Ninja on the strike team.

Heroes' motto should be Battlestar Galataca's " This has happened before, and it will happen again" but no plan here

Did Bennett tell Matt something telepathically to make him calm down...like I will help you get Daphne out? Else Matt should have set up an illusion or at least put the first couple of people through the door into a mental prison. It is apparently easier to capture people on TV shows then in D&D games .

Continuity is a problem for the show...when Matt said about Peter, Mohinder, and himself: " I was a cop, you a nurse, and you a scientist, we did nothing wrong".....Matt could potentially not know (however doubtfull), or the writers simple chose to ignore the fact that Mohinder apparently kidnapped, and experimented on people....causing death.

Otherwise I liked the episode.

 

[fodigg]

Wow. And I thought that was the worst episode yet. I guess expectations really make the difference.

 

[Arnwyn]

It was an all right episode. But Daphne being alive is hugely disappointing, even if it's not surprising at all.

Nathan is fulfilling his own prophecies. He PUSHES people to kill and become violent - justifiably - by unjustly persecuting them, imprisoning them, and threatening them with death. Nathan is a hypocritical, bigoted, fascist who doesn't understand and/or blithely ignores legal, constitutional, and moral rights, he appears to know that he can't even control his own attack dog and admits the events he's set in motion are now beyond his control, but nobody seems capable of identifying/stating this contradiction. It's really, freaking annoying that they just sit chained in a chair and go, "Whaaaa!" Are all these people really supposed to be that obtuse and incapable of pointing out the train-wreck of his logic and justifications?

But this - which I though last night in pretty much it's entirety, almost word for word - is incredibly frustrating for this particular audience member.

 

[F5]

You know what I DIDN'T like about this episode? There wasn't a single sympathetic character in it. Everyone came off as a jerk. I want, more than is healthy, to slap Nathan, The Hunter, and Peter. Repeatedly. Parkman COULD have pulled off the sympathy schtick, what with grieving for his lost love and all, but he reacts to his grief and his rage by becoming an a**hole. (And since when did his mind-reading power become torture? "Stop making him think so hard! You're KILLING him!!!") Big reveal that Mohinder is harboring a stupid, self-centered secret. The only character I could relate to, and whose plight interested me, was HRG himself.

I didn't like any of the characters in this episode. So, ultimately, I didn't care what happened.

You know what I DID like about this episode? The plotting. It was a tight, well put-together story. Like others have said, there was an A story, and the various B stories all served to support and improve the A.

I thought this was a very good episode. I just didn't LIKE it.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Repeatedly. Parkman COULD have pulled off the sympathy schtick, what with grieving for his lost love and all, but he reacts to his grief and his rage by becoming an a**hole. (And since when did his mind-reading power become torture? "Stop making him think so hard! You're KILLING him!!!")

First season, "Five Years Gone." Matt forced the location of Claire out of HRG and seemed to physically hurt him. Second season, Matt forced the location of the bio chick out of Angela, gave her a nosebleed when she resisted. It's not without precedent.

Also, I had no problem with Matt being a jerk, because the woman he was in love with was seemingly killed. That tends to bring out some emotion.

"Hi". I missed you bad-ass Peter! Please stay a little while! That said, I liked how they could make Peter kick some butt but still be the moral compass.

I already covered Matt somewhat, but I will point out the logical inconsistancy that others had - why couldn't Matt create an illusion (already done with Daphne) or take over the soldiers' minds (already done two episodes ago)? That said, I like the concept of someone being faced with the knowledge that they will do something horrible, and know it will happen. Despite the rehash of blowing up D.C. (in Isaac's loft no less) I'm hoping there will be some sort of payoff. It's the type of question that is difficult to pose without fantasy, and I always like those.

I'm glad Daphne is alive. I like her a lot more than I like Claire, especially given her chemistry with the rest of the cast.

I think at this point they're deliberately writing Mohinder as smart but not very wise (see Michael of Lost). I got tingles when he told Matt he would hold off the soldiers, hoping for a great scene with Mohinder fighting against impossible odds and finally getting taken down. That was a huge let down.

Aside: I don't know how expensive it would be to coreograph a large fight, but it seems to be something Heroes all too often shies away from. The episode it really should have happened in was "Exploding Man" when they fought Sylar. Still, there have been many opportunities, and they've all been squandered. The best ones, sadly, were all Sylar.

Nathan/Hunter Guy - more blah. I was hoping HRG would give away Nathan's secret in the end.

Also, the HRG/Angela "morally grey" stuff is also pretty old, but the actors sell it well, so it goes down easier.

In the end I thought that this was a good episode. In the end I also thought that it was a huge tease with no payoff, since nothing really got answered at all. I can honestly say I'm ambivalent about it.

Also, an episode without Claire, Hiro, and Sylar was nice. Good to know the other actors on the show get some screentime.

[EDIT]One other inconsistency: how did Peter grab Matt and manage to fly away? He should have absorbed Matt's powers.

 

[Steel_Wind]

A disturbing thought came to me last night, thinking about the show and where this is all going. Bennett's comment on how Nathan's 30 second spiel to the President changed 20 years of secrecy and how that 30 second event could not now be undone....

Oh really? Is that where all of this is going....again?

Because how else do the writers get us out of this plot arc smoothly? Right now, I don't see how that happens. It looks to me that we have the government chasing Heroes, and that's pretty much it for the rest of this show. Barring mind control of the President or some similar plot device which radically changes policy - I think this policy carries on now for a good long time.

Not an easy plot arc to end or resolve without extreme intervention.

But if undoing that thirty second conversation would serve - who says that the writers can't undo it? That's pretty much what this series has been about from the get-go - undoing and reshaping the future via prophecy and time travel.

We still have Ando and Hiro's scene from the beginning of the third season to deal with - a scene in which the issue of the formula has not been wholly resolved and in which Hiro had a power of some kind (we know this as Ando's red charge up lightning power had an effect on Hiro when it zapped him).

The end of Villains did not resolve all plot arcs.

My point: that plot arc between Hiro and Ando which began in Villains has yet to end. And Hiro WILL get his powers back.

So.... are we destined for a bit of time travelling to extricate the series from the current plot arc in Fugitives? Are we dstined to have Hiro make all this go away and prevent Nathan from telling all of this to "President Worf"??

Are we watching a "dream season"?

 

[Mark]

[EDIT]One other inconsistency: how did Peter grab Matt and manage to fly away? He should have absorbed Matt's powers.

Seems not to be automatic any longer.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Seems not to be automatic any longer.

Or may require some skin contact (I sort of remember that he only got Mohinder's super-strength in the plane after touching his hand). If new-Peter is smart-Peter, he might have avoided that.

But I might be wrong...

Cheers, LT.

 

[Krug]

Ratings continue to decline: 'Heroes,' 'Chuck' hit lows; 'Beauty' finishes solid--The Live Feed

 

[Mark]

Or may require some skin contact (I sort of remember that he only got Mohinder's super-strength in the plane after touching his hand). If new-Peter is smart-Peter, he might have avoided that.

That could be, to the best of my recollection.