Well that felt a little rushed. Hindsight is 20/20 and everything, but I wonder whether Tim Kring didn’t miscalculate when he rewrote this episode as an impromptu season finale. Instead of leaving a bunch of threads hanging sort in a sort of enormous cliffhanger, he’s instead capped them off in a really unsatisfying way. In my mind, this actually provides far less incentive to tune in for the next season – whenever that may occur.
My biggest criticism of the episode is that we still don’t have a terribly good explanation for why Adam wants to destroy humanity. It feels lazy to chalk this up to insanity, yet what other information do we have? With his biblical name and explicit references to God and his flood, it feels like the show’s writers were intending to create something much grander with Adam. But in the end all we got was a vague speech about wars and plagues, before concluding that the world would be better off without humans. Humans suck - there’s no getting around that - but the inner-grade-school-teacher in me really wants Adam to show his work here, instead of just blurting out the answer.
Also ruined by being rushed: the Noah-Claire reunion. What could have been a timeless piece of slap-stick comedy got compressed down into one of the weirdest two minutes I’ve seen on TV. The dialog was weird, the timing was weird, and the reactions were weird. It was all weird. The whole scene could have been acted out by monkeys on a trampoline and come off more fluidly. What a wasted opportunity.
Other things:
Mohinder, knowing that the world’s most dangerous man is in his apartment and is holding his adopted daughter hostage, decides that he can handle it on his own. I’ve been joking all season about Mohinder’s growing stupidity, but this is actually insane. Did he think even for a second of telling Bob about this? Doesn’t Bob have guys with guns at his disposal? Or an old black lady who can breathe fire or something?
If Mohinder wasn’t bluffing when he analyzed Sylar’s blood, we now know that Sylar had a strain of the Shanti virus, specifically the same strain they used to “cure” Niki. This seems reasonable – Sylar was held in a Company facility in Mexico – but it again raises the question: what was Sylar doing down in Mexico? Why was he saved, then infected, then hidden? Given all the other crap going on this episode, I guess it’s probably better that they didn’t try to shoe-horn this explanation in. Still, what point did Sylar serve to the story this season?
Unintentionally Funny Moment Number One: Maya to Sylar: “You lied to me!?”
When last we saw Parkman, he didn’t know where Victoria Pratt was. This episode, he returns from Maine, where he evidently found her house with ease. Adam and Peter found her really easily last episode as well. This is ridiculous. Did she go into hiding as a TV weatherperson?
Elle really backpedaled away from becoming an interesting character this episode. Nothing terribly complex or deep about this one: all she wants is her Daddy’s approval. Now that I think about it, there’s actually a lot of father-issue stuff in Heroes. What did Tim Kring’s dad do to him as a child? I’m picturing a pickup truck rolling down a lonely desert highway when Tim’s father pulls over, tell his son to get out and says, “Boy, if you don’t create a moderately successful comic-based serial drama on network television, you are nothing to me.”
Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Two: The picture of Bob holding up a fish. The only thing that would make him any less menacing of an evil mastermind would be if there was a picture of him splashing water on the Haitian in one of those peddle boats.
I’m still not too sure about Peter’s motives; i.e. how does he think he’s going to rescue Caitlin from the future, by changing it? I wasn’t entirely sure I understood this correctly, yet in this very episode, Adam actually confirmed Peter’s motives for both his benefit and the viewers. It still didn’t make a lick of sense, but to Adam’s credit, he did manage to keep a straight face the whole time.
Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Three: Parkman riding Nathan across the country, bareback.
The employees of Primatech Paper are really good at not noticing things. Two dudes stroll into the Primatech Paper warehouse and no-one questions them. Then another dude appears unconscious on the floor beside them with a sword, and no-one bats an eye. If the Primatech employees are in on the conspiracy, shouldn’t they be doing something to stop everyone from strolling into the ultra-secret vault? And if they’re not, why are they so non-chalant? At my office, work stops for hours every time someone gets new office supplies. How on earth these people didn’t notice the parade of men who were armed, flying, or Japanese is beyond me.
Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Four: When Molly can’t find a person it sounds like someone trying to start an engine that won’t turn over. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.
For everyone sitting on the edge of their seat, anxiously waiting to find out the fate of Micah’s backpack, you can sleep easy now. It’s OK. I have nothing else to say about this subplot.
Ok, one thing. If a building explodes while Niki’s in it, and no-one’s around to care, does it make a sound?
Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Five: “Sylar’s gone; my dad is going to kill me.”
Special Cliffhanger of next season’s Heroes Analysis!:
Sylar will discover that his powers, impressive though they may be, can be enhanced with the power of spinach. He uses this knowledge to defend his willowy girlfriend from the local town bully.
Last 5 posts by Chris Bucholz
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May 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Luggage Sets…
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you….
January 8th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
The thing I hated most about this season is the continuation of universal solutions to almost any problem, leaving every single conflict or cliffhanger completely uninteresting. Now that we know Claire’s, Adam’s, and possibly Peter’s blood can cure/heal/revive anyone, it will no longer EVER matter if a character dies or is horribly injured. It was bad enough when soap operas and X-Men comics started doing this kind of crap, I thought Heroes would have learned a few lessons about how not to piss of your fans.
There need to be way more stringent rules and constraints on some of these powers and technologies, or else all tension, drama, suspense, will be lost forever.
December 23rd, 2007 at 12:16 am
Never mind the fact that Niki could have easily crawled under the burning timber blocking her path.
December 11th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Damn… a lot of my post got messed up.
>>
December 11th, 2007 at 1:16 am
As stupid as it was of the company to shoot Nathan Petrelli in public, it was even more stupider of Petrelli to do all that speechifying at the podium. The guy… is able… to fly. A party trick like that is its own introduction. Just whizz up >overThat’sright before your very freakin eyes, man
December 9th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I can’t understand burying Adam. Sure he doesn’t have anything besides immortality but if a fricken zombie can dig through a grave then Adam could. Since he doesn’t have to eat or breathe he can just spend his entire time smashing the coffin open and digging up. Burying him in concrete. Since he seems to be the same as Claire you could just bury him up to his head and drain him of blood.
December 7th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
I like Jason’s point, although if Hiro transported Adam back to the distant past, like 100 million years ago, mightn’t he still be around in the present (albeit having passed through the digestive tract of a dinosaur a few times)? For that matter there might be two Adams in medieval Japan waiting for Hiro at the end of season 1.
It’s impossible at this point to know Hiro’s range, but I thought a one way ticket to the moon would be warranted. That would at least keep him freeze dried until the Chinese astronauts arrive.
I wasn’t too crazy about the coffin solution. As Syndrome says to Mr. Incredible, “That’s a little dark for you, isn’t it?”
Toastwell-I still think it peculiar that Maya would trust Sylar–some dude she met on the road and that she comes to learn is wanted for murder–over her own brother. It makes as much sense as Frodo trusting Gollum over Sam in that movie.
December 7th, 2007 at 1:26 am
*lack and not like (never post at 1H30 AM)
December 7th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Yet another moment of stupidty in the show. In every episode we hear ” no more secret, we’ll going to be honnest now”. Every next episode people start to hide things AGAIN and bad stuff happen. People don’t learn.
So here come our heroes going to tell the truth to the world. The compagny knows it, how do they act? They kill them in the middle of a press conference. If I’m a stupid tv-watcher, I now know that what that guy was about to say is really important. The compagny has no style, or brain really. They could have come down to Nathan and Co and say ” well it’s not a good reason to tell for X,Y,Z reasons “. Then if he refuse, having Mother Petrelli comme to them and try to talk them out of it. The if he refuse a “Listen, if you’r going to go public some things might happen to your health” seems a good warning. Then while he think you can kill them from a ” heart attack” or wipe thier memory out. But no, the compagny decides to shoot them in public. Wouldn’t at been simplier to wait they go public, abduct them, shoot them with virus, ask them to prove what they say, and then discredit them ? At the VERY least kill them BEFORE the press conferance.
For an illuminati-like organization, the compagny like some real intelligence and style.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I can’t wait till Adam returns. Sure he’s buried underneath several feet of dirt in a coffin with a concrete shell, but his imprisionment seems nothing less than temporay considering he has nothing better to do than punch his regenerating fist at his confines again and again.
Also, I was expecting some sinister link between Bob and Adam to be revealed. I thought it was all too convenient that Peter, a man with unlimited power, and Adam, an immortal criminal mastermind with a genocidal fantasies, were jailed side by side with minimal surveillance. They apparently have cameras everywhere except they neglect to install ones monitoring the movements of two potentially dangerous men? They seemed to have no idea Peter was spitting his “no power pills” in the toilet or have a clue Peter and Adam were hatching a “great escape then torment our captors” plan. Despite the fact they were talking loudly through a shared air vent. No listening devices? cameras? seems unlikely. But it also seems like all the other retarded plot holes this season.
Anyhoo, I hold hope it wasn’t a plot hole and actually Bob was ensuring Adam’s escape so he could off the other board members and then release the plague and arouse no suspicion on himself. Bob having Mohinder shuffle around for a cure was so Bob could be protected from the super plague and he could pick and choose who would survive the epidemic.
But one thing I didn’t get was why they went through all this hubbub about Claire’s regenerative blood and going through needlessly difficult means to get some when they had a guy with the same powers locked up for 30 years. They never thought to drain him dry during that time? The guy regenerates in seconds. They could have gallons of cure-all blood in hours. An entire lake of blood after 30 years if they did it on the regular.
Meh, that kinda thing just pissed me off. I’m hoping the 3rd season is better.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Well, Mrs. Petrelli seems to know damn near everything about what’s going on. And she saw Peter die from a glass shard in the head and then get back up from it once he was healed, so I guess she knows how to kill super-people.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
I also wondered about the shoot him in the head thing. They seem so sure that it works, but how do they know? The only way they could possibly know that is if there was another immortal healing character in the past that they had done that with and it worked.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
As far as Adam buried alive I was actually a little dissappointed because I had this flash when Hiro dissappeared with him that they were going to cut to Adam lying on the ground. He rubs his head and sits up and says “what happened?” Then he turns around gets this “Oh shit” expression on his face and the camera pulls back and what does he see? A dinosaur. A FUCKING DINOSAUR!!! Human race got you down, asshole? How ya like me now bitch?
But buried alive is OK too, I guess.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Good point on the “old hole in the brain is the only way to kill him.” Peter had a glass hard through his head and whn that was removed he regenrated. I really wish Kring and the team would get their shit straight. All these episodes this season didn’t have me saying “Oh my god. . . !” but “what? that makes no sense?” Maybe that worked for being John Malkovich but not Heroes. It all strated with the ultimate mind dump of season ones’ finale. Awful.
Another thing, what kind of Company is Dr. werner Brandes running here? The security is inexcusabel, and no one montorint the camera’s. Even my HS had someone doing that. You would think after Marty Bishop broke into his toy company 15 years ago he would no better.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Could peter have saved nathan by pouring his own blood onto nathans bullet wounds? Since he has Claire’s and Adam’s powers inside him would that work?
December 5th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
oh and andos power is finally reviled!
http://bp1.blogger.com/_hM91Q1377fg/R0JHr7E-xqI/AAAAAAAAAlY/0hRO_H0VTkI/s400/10-+Ando+was+startled+by+Slusho+.jpg
December 5th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
i did right a really fucking long comment on here but firefox died on me (wow, firefox isn’t in firefoxs built in spell checker)
so here is a picture instead:
http://bp3.blogger.com/_hM91Q1377fg/R1UMRhqeUJI/AAAAAAAAApA/Geyhs0laln0/s400/11+sylar+and+a+cat.JPG
December 5th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
i dont get how Sylar “persuaded” Parkman to leave him with molly in his and mohinders apartment, i assumed he was locked up in the bedroom or something but nope, hes flying around on peoples backs and being no help atall. =D
December 5th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Boy, I’ve heard of sophomore slumps, but this is ridiculous. Heroes needs to have an amazing Season 3 to make up for this. Also, I doubt Nathan will stay dead since he has a daughter whose blood could bring him back to live.
And, the best moment of the last episode was Hiro burying Adam alive. That was badass.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:52 am
It annoys me that Peter is so trusting of everyone. He’s way too dramatic and never seems to calm down. He let’s his emotions get in the way (so caught up with trying to save his irish girlfriend), not unlike Anakin Skywalker.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:53 am
“Did he think even for a second of telling Bob about this? ”
Actually there’s that scene where Mohinder’s taking Sylar’s blood and he looks up significantly, and you can see he’s looking at a hidden security camera. So yes, he did tell Bob about the hostage situation, indirectly.
Not that Mo hasn’t made plenty of other WTF moves this year. I feel so sorry for that actor sometimes.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:16 am
The final episode of the season did seem quite rushed, though it was badass. Especially with what Hiro did to Kensei. Rob’s comment about the characters trusting people that they shouldn’t have is just silly though, Maya had no knowledge of Sylar’s past actions, Peter had no reason to doubt Kensei (although he should have suspected something was up after finding out that Kensei had made an enemy of Hiro), and Mohinder has always been a dumbass. Also, (relating to Brian’s comment) why would Claire and Nathan have a father/daughter relationship anyway? Noah is Claire’s dad, Nathan is merely the guy who sired her.(That may sound sarcastic but isn’t meant to be.)
December 5th, 2007 at 4:47 am
I thought Adam wanted to destroy humanity because he was pissed at Hiro. I also thought Sylar lost his powers when he had a ventilation hole put in his torso, so while Claire’s blood may cure the virus, I doubt it would bring back his stolen powers. Maybe his original one though. I also think their “shoot him in the head and he’ll die” theory is wrong cause A.) Claire did die back in season 1 when she got raped and a metal stake went through her brain. But, as soon as the offending object was removed during the autopsy, she woke up. B.) Noah was shot in the head and died. But he also came back from it when he was injected with Claire’s blood. So since Claire and Adam have the same ability, it stands to reason a shot to the head wouldn’t be permanently fatal to Adam. Or Peter for that matter. Who also had his brain impaled. But hey, what do I know. I’m just a viewer.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:12 am
The writers have really lost their mind if they kill Nathan. Here we have an interesting character with bucketload of potentials and they went out of their way to save him back in S1. To have him being shot like this is ridiculous. We haven’t even seen his interaction with Claire like real father/daughter.
December 5th, 2007 at 12:23 am
They ended up screwing up the story because they waited too damn long getting into it because they had to introduce 2 worthless new characters (the twins) and two wasted potential characters (Elle and the Katrina Sympathy vote mimic)
Then they spent the “Answers” episode saving and then killing D.L. which was for me, the biggest waste of time. And that INCLUDES having the mimic learn how to scale a house only to get kidnapped.
Bob couldn’t bother putting some dodge bullets/escape capture vids on there?
December 4th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Niki dying like she did…THAT was heroic. No powers, no superhuman ability, just running into a burning building and using what’s left of her ooomph to get her niece out, and not being able to make it herself is major sacrifice, and it’ll probably set Micah up for some big character development as the series rolls on. But overall…stupid writers’ strike.
December 4th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
For all of Niki’s shityt lines, she is by far the best lookng pieve on he show (picture up top excluded) and her going apeshit psycho-nympho rampaging beast still makes for a far better story line teh st. “I watch my ipod kungfu movies one minute at a time” Joan. I mean if you have a few hours to kill wouldn’t you be renting everything from Onbonk (or however that is bad as smovie is spelled) to DragonBall Z?
For all these trust issues in the show these idiots sure are trsuting. And ditto on Hiro’s bad ass revenge. To top it off he should have put lit a bag of dogshit on fire in the coffin.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I liked the picture of Bob with the fish. Yes it made me laugh out loud, but I think that’s the point–Bob seems like a major goofball but he’d cheerfully have you injected with a deadly virus if it helped the company.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I think this season has been disappointing in general as the writers have forced the characters to behave in ways that are dumb or otherwise out of character in order to advance a plot thread. Mohinder going after Sylar alone? If I got home from work and my door is standing open I’d call a policeman to come and check it out. If I knew a superpowered serial killer was there…? The one part I liked with Mohinder was when, after hearing that Sylar had lost his powers, he without hesitation grabs the knife.
Maya’s uncritical acceptance of Sylar, Mohinder’s uncritical acceptance of the company and rejection (and shooting) of Noah, and Peter’s uncritical acceptance of Adam… it’s all just a little too much.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
So we lose Nikki the thug-eviscerating model and we keep St. Joan the jump-roping moron? ARGH
I’m pretty sure mohinder was trying to stall Sylar. But yeah, he’s dumb. He still lives in his dad’s old apartment, the address of which is in his dad’s oddly well-distributed book which dangerous people keep reading, with no security alarms… and then there’s his laptop.
My computer, you need a password to play starcraft.
his computer, you turn it on probably and find this:
C:\Documents and Settings\Mohindiebaby77\Desktop\ILLEGAL MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS\Antipower\VIRUSINFO.txt
December 4th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
In my best Sylar impression I said ‘I’m strong to the finish’ over his last line. Boy, were my roommates pissed.
December 4th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Idiotic Mohinder move #2 (of this episode, #453 overall). He tells Sylar he needs to take his blood sample first because an overdose of the “cure” would kill him. That instead of, you know, just overdosing him and killing him. Douchenozzle.
December 4th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
No corpse = no death. Hell even corpses don’t mean death in this series. Nikki will unfortunately be back.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:32 am
I love that the can Sylar is able to pull to him is a Spinach can. It’s such a great metaphor.
December 4th, 2007 at 10:52 am
I seriously hope they bring Nathan back from the dead. I love Nathan. :[
Nikki’s death was a little…unexpected, as well.
I still can’t wait until this bloody strike is over and Heroes starts back up again (which’ll probably be in september or october).
December 4th, 2007 at 9:14 am
I liked Hiro’s turn to the dark side. It’s all the more fucked up when you realize that everyone’s cremated, not buried, in Japan. That means Hiro had to take Adam back to Japan, freeze time, get a shovel and dig Adam his own personal grave. That’s some cold shit, Hiro, my man…
December 4th, 2007 at 8:03 am
The umpteenth loose end, what happened to Nichelle Nichols character ? also has anyone else but me notice that for a world constantly in peril very few people die?