Heroes #22:Turn And Face The Strange/Season 3/2009

[GSHamster]

I think Danko's girlfriend would have worked a lot better as his sister. He's set up as someone who's solely focused on his job, so all of a sudden revealing a "girlfriend" cuts against that. But family is family.

Sylar as a shapeshifter is cool, but also annoying. Now whenever any character comes onscreen, you have to wonder, "Is this Sylar?". A lot of effort by the viewer (though played beautifully by HRG against Danko).

 

[papastebu]

I am going against what appears to be the consensus regarding Heroes; I feel like the writing has improved a great deal this season, and they are doing more with what they have by editing out extraneous characters and using fewer characters in overarching storylines.

Danko (Denko?) is a foil for several characters, but as a walking plot device, he's not very interesting, and so they tried to make the inhuman more human by showing us that he has needs, too. He is as deranged as Sylar, really, but is rather pathetic because of it.

Matt has come full circle. He has always been someone who wanted to help people, to be the good guy. I like that he reverted to form by using his police training the way he did, and then not being able to follow through. He realized--again--that the end does not justify the means. His telepathy is definitely getting stronger, and he may have placated his son on a subconscious level, because he was happy himself at seeing the little guy.

I like Hiro's continued dedication to doing the right thing. Aside from a few minor ego-based slips, he has also been true to form. Ando is the same way. In an aside, Hiro and Ando have not yet reached the point where we saw Ando shoot Hiro with the red lightning. I don't think the power-generating formula has yet gone the way of the white buffalo. I also think that Baby-Stop-and-Go wasn't solely to blame for Hiro's time-stop power returning. Ando had just released his supercharge into the air, Hiro's timestop was at one point the most developed of his power's aspects, and he was holding little Matt, to boot. Inevitable.

Claire has finally gotten off of the angsty teenager bandwagon, and started looking at situations through--perhaps intermittently--adult-colored glasses. Kodos for growing up.

HRG is fairly true to form, even considering his blunders. He hasn't been squeamish about much of anything, if it wouldn't come home to roost. He couldn't off Denko without getting himself into the soup so thick as to be useless to anyone or any situation he cared about. Sylar set out to destroy him, rather than kill him. Noah's family has always been his Achilles' heel, simply because his life is--basically--the same as Denko's without them. Somewhere along the line, they actually became more important to him than the company's mission or directives.

Pete--and I can tell most, if not all, of ya'll are thrilled with the development, because Peter can't be allowed to be Ubermensch--can't use more than one power at a time. I think that he has lost a lot of what made him choose the career of hospice nurse; his loss of faith in the basic goodness of people, in general, and the loss of his faith in his closest relations and friends via his own father's theft of his powers has rendered him unsympathetic to others, at best, and sometimes outright hostile. That sympathy and concern for everyone allowed him to relate to almost anyone, and that was the key to his power, in the first place.

I would like to see Sylar use more of the host of powers he has gained over the past couple of years. He has super-hearing, why does this not disable him, from time to time? He has the power of unbreakable illusions, why not use that one? Electricity? Super-memory? Cold generation? What was the power of the girl that he "ate" in season two? He never uses it. The sound generation? Really, all Sylar needs, now, is to read everything he can get his hands on on the subjects of physics, string theory, molecular biology, biochemistry, ALL the sciences, really. He'll be able to remember it all, visualize certain things taking place, and, honestly, motion is power, so he could make it happen, just by thinking really clearly about the little pieces.

Is Suresh merely super-strong, or does he still have amazing spider-powers? I think it would be cool if he did.

 

[Dire Bare]

I would like to see Sylar use more of the host of powers he has gained over the past couple of years. He has super-hearing, why does this not disable him, from time to time? He has the power of unbreakable illusions, why not use that one? Electricity? Super-memory? Cold generation? What was the power of the girl that he "ate" in season two? He never uses it. The sound generation? Really, all Sylar needs, now, is to read everything he can get his hands on on the subjects of physics, string theory, molecular biology, biochemistry, ALL the sciences, really. He'll be able to remember it all, visualize certain things taking place, and, honestly, motion is power, so he could make it happen, just by thinking really clearly about the little pieces.

I still love the show and love the character of Sylar, but you make a very good point here. And really, Sylar is just the most obvious example of the writer's not building enough upon prior developments. Then again, this is a problem in TV writing in general, so . . . .

Although, I think he hase used the object-memory power from the woman Angela "fed" to him, at least once. It's how he remembered the incident in the diner when his father killed his mother and abandoned him. He "object-read" the toy car. In fact, I think there have been several examples of Sylar using a power we haven't seen in a while, but the writers/filmmakers don't always make it obvious enough to even regular viewers what is exactly happening. Radiating nuclear energy from your hands is attention getting, psychically reading memories surrounding a found object, not so much.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I would like to see Sylar use more of the host of powers he has gained over the past couple of years. He has super-hearing, why does this not disable him, from time to time? He has the power of unbreakable illusions, why not use that one? Electricity? Super-memory? Cold generation? What was the power of the girl that he "ate" in season two? He never uses it. The sound generation? Really, all Sylar needs, now, is to read everything he can get his hands on on the subjects of physics, string theory, molecular biology, biochemistry, ALL the sciences, really. He'll be able to remember it all, visualize certain things taking place, and, honestly, motion is power, so he could make it happen, just by thinking really clearly about the little pieces.

I'm unsure as to whether it was explicitly stated in the show (I know it was implied), but Sylar lost most of his acquired abilities when he got/was inject with the virus in Season 2. The only ones he regained when he took the healing shot were telekinesis and intuitive aptitude. Presumably empathic mimicry also fell into this category, if he had it all along.

I'd have to go back and watch the episode, but I thought that Sylar didn't take the sound guy's power. I thought it was implied, but after the break they showed HRG putting him in a cell in Section 5.

So per the show he only has seven(-ish) powers in addition to the three above: regeneration, electricity, clairesentience, lie detection, shapeshifting, transmutation, and possibly the sonic shout. Wikipedia says he has one from the comics (trivial), and he possibly has a projection power based on the last episode.

As for why he doesn't use the electricity more? Probably cost constraints - TK is probably a lot cheaper to show.

 

[coyote6]

TK also seems to be his favorite power; it's the first one he acquired, right? I think he just likes it better. It helps that it's the stealthiest attack power around (no booms, no light shows), and multipurpose to boot.

That, plus budget == lots of TK, not a lot of zappiness.

Though I do think he's used the electricity stuff passively -- shrugging off all those super-shotgun taser darts, for instance.