Commentary: Heroes 3x09
Nov. 17th, 2008 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brighteyedjillInside be spoilers for tonight's episode. Obviously.
No voiceover guy for the flashbacks this week! Hooray!
But, joy of joys, Mohinder’s opening narration returns. Luckily his lizard transformation hasn’t affected his vocal chords.
Go go unspecial Ando! He valiantly attempts to kick Arthur's ass! But not in time to prevent a weird side-effect (or intentional effect?) of Arthur’s power; now Hiro thinks he’s 10 years old. Science fiction trope #284: someone thinks they’re younger than they are.
And now: Chapter Nine: They’re Coming
Cool title card. Sylar is an empath, too? Interesting. Sylar’s no dummy: he had to know that Arthur had figured out he’d saved Peter. So it's remarkable that Sylar trusts Arthur enough to not be alarmed when he shuts him in a dark room with a shadowy figure. Luckily that shadowy figure is Elle!
And of course, they wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble ret-conning last week if they weren’t going to throw Sylar and Elle together again. As much as the ret-con irritates me, I do have to say that I loooove Zachary Quinto and Kristen Bell together. I mean, together as in shoe-shopping together, not like sweaty together, but if I had to go for a het ship, I could understand this one.
Commercial: I can’t behind all this Santiago crap. I wanted my Heroes Origins, damnit, with Kevin Smith. You can't fool me with cheap substitutes! >:(
Back at House of Paire, Peter takes Claire’s advice and runs, very slowly, down the fire escape. Claire’s other other uncle threatens her, and then she jumps out a window. I guess if a trick works, you may as well keep using it.
Cue the pseudoscience! How do you know it’s pseudoscience? Mohinder’s mouth is moving. And he apparently he shows no remorse in turning a poor innocent muggle into an Alien: Resurrection refugee. And yes, later he will beg Mohinder to kill him.
Sylar tries to get through to Elle by taking off his shirt. Good move: distract her with your manly pecs!
Conveniently, the hero with mental powers is the one who finds coma!Angela. Daphne gets suspicious about spousal abuse. Note to Arthur and writers: you can only dangle the carrot of Daphne’s shady past so many times before we stop caring. What could possible be so terrible? Was she a prostitute? We've already had an internet stripper. Serial killer? We're working on retconning that one into a fluffy puppy. Mediocre loser? See Matt Parkman circa Season 1. So... What else is in the bag of Horrible Past tricks?
Unfortunately, Knox is not a complete idiot, and is therefore easily able to follow Claire into the sewer. I’m not quite sure how Claire thought she was going to defend Peter other than glaring, or perhaps busting out a biting, "U G L Y you ain't got no alibi, you're ugly" cheer. Knox pushes her down and holds her hands behind her back in about 2.5 seconds. Hope those 2.5 seconds were long enough for Peter run further away.
Claire’s not big on tactics. Or planning. HRG should really have agreed to train her as an agent; then perhaps she'd be less useless. I’m a little disappointed in Peter for running away, although it shows more practically than he usually does. Or perhaps he has grown as a character: remember, this is the guy who in Seasone One pushed himself and Sylar off the back of some bleachers when he didn’t know he could heal.
Writer 1: Hiro’s new maturity is really inconvenient for our plot development.
Writer 2: I have an idea! Let’s regress him to the mind of a 10-year-old!
Writer 1: Will that get annoying…? Like, Hiro-trapped-in-the-past annoying?
Writer 2: Shut up! Potential for James Kyson Lee to show us his best Masi impression! It’ll be cool!
Writer 1: Well, okay. Let’s do it!
NBC: You. You. Fired.
Arthur’s pretty clever putting Sylar in the room with another sociopath. Because if Sylar can’t feel empathy for Elle, then who? Also, did that last blast burn off Sylar’s shirt? Bonus.
Arthur took his boys fishing? I never saw the Petrellis as outdoorsy. Although I can see Angela buying her sons designer outdoorswear. If you had sons that pretty, wouldn’t you dress them up like little dolls?
The door opens dramatically, Nathan comes face to face at last with the figure that has shaped so much of his life, his father stands to face him, and then… Tracey walks strangely through the frame and interrupts the reunion. Does she have to be in the room? Arthur agrees and sends her away so he can tell Nathan his master plan.
Petrelli parenting fail #781: telling one of your sons that he's your favorite. Never healthy. It's probably best that you gave away Gabriel. Speaking of whom...
Sylar is the Zen master. Check out his shirtless kneeling Yoga pose. But I totally thought they were going to kiss, thereby transferring Elle's powers. But apparently Sylar’s bad-ass enough to not have to touch. And he’s so happy he cries; he’s not a monster, and not only that, but he saved Elle, too!
Oh good: Peter is still the foolhardy romantic of season one, deep down. He confronts Knox and Flint with a steely glare and resurgent emo!bangs as his only weapons. Also, he didn’t see the leaking gas main until he’d already come out into the open. So… What was his plan before that? I guess crappy planning runs in the family.
Zach and Kristen are clearly having so much fun together. And the writers remembered that Elle has some sexual boundary issues. Luckily for us!
Way to show some backbone, Tracy. Don’t take any of that Petrelli bullshit. And an excuse for Nathan to fly! It’s been a while. I missed sonicboom!Nathan.
The director is having a lot of fun with the Primatech set. Dream sequences are good opportunities to mess about with the camera. And to break my brain with dream logic. Arthur makes Matt see Daphne stab him, but he really stabbed him because he thinks he was stabbed? Dream logic hurts my brain.
Angela convinces Arthur to let her loose. He still has feelings for her? Or a deeper plan? Interesting… I hope that means we get more exciting Angela and Arthur interaction as their teams square off. Oh, and Matt, Peter clearly isn’t scary scar!Peter. I mean, it's probably good that you used your brainmajik to verify, but this Peter clearly has much less hair product and much smoother skin.
Hiro and Ando walk into a comic store. Wait, I've heard this one. The punchline is 9th Wonders. How many issues ahead was Isaac before he died? I seem to remember that he made a big deal of giving his "last issue" to that currier in Season One. But forget that. Let’s revisit Season One by following a comic book! It worked last time!
Dawn’s the key! Oh wait, I mean Claire’s the Catalyst. Same difference.
Arthur’s future drawing power (from Usutu, right?) is almost as useful as a Farmer’s Almanac! Yes, there’s a total eclipse visible from everywhere in the world every two years or so. That’s normal, right?
And now we’re in teams again: Daphne, Matt, Peter, Claire, Angela, and Nathan. Awesome! This team’s my favorite. And the villains: Arthur, Tracy, Knox, Flint, Sylar and Elle. And I choose to think that Sylar and Elle aren’t really evil. Exciting that Arthur and Angela, team captains, will get to face off at the coin toss. Elle will slap Sylar's butt after he spikes the ball in Peter's face. And Matt will give confusing signals near his crotch until Nathan calls him up to the mound to chew him out. I'm not sure what game they're playing, exactly, but it's bound to be entertaining.
No voiceover guy for the flashbacks this week! Hooray!
But, joy of joys, Mohinder’s opening narration returns. Luckily his lizard transformation hasn’t affected his vocal chords.
Go go unspecial Ando! He valiantly attempts to kick Arthur's ass! But not in time to prevent a weird side-effect (or intentional effect?) of Arthur’s power; now Hiro thinks he’s 10 years old. Science fiction trope #284: someone thinks they’re younger than they are.
And now: Chapter Nine: They’re Coming
Cool title card. Sylar is an empath, too? Interesting. Sylar’s no dummy: he had to know that Arthur had figured out he’d saved Peter. So it's remarkable that Sylar trusts Arthur enough to not be alarmed when he shuts him in a dark room with a shadowy figure. Luckily that shadowy figure is Elle!
And of course, they wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble ret-conning last week if they weren’t going to throw Sylar and Elle together again. As much as the ret-con irritates me, I do have to say that I loooove Zachary Quinto and Kristen Bell together. I mean, together as in shoe-shopping together, not like sweaty together, but if I had to go for a het ship, I could understand this one.
Commercial: I can’t behind all this Santiago crap. I wanted my Heroes Origins, damnit, with Kevin Smith. You can't fool me with cheap substitutes! >:(
Back at House of Paire, Peter takes Claire’s advice and runs, very slowly, down the fire escape. Claire’s other other uncle threatens her, and then she jumps out a window. I guess if a trick works, you may as well keep using it.
Cue the pseudoscience! How do you know it’s pseudoscience? Mohinder’s mouth is moving. And he apparently he shows no remorse in turning a poor innocent muggle into an Alien: Resurrection refugee. And yes, later he will beg Mohinder to kill him.
Sylar tries to get through to Elle by taking off his shirt. Good move: distract her with your manly pecs!
Conveniently, the hero with mental powers is the one who finds coma!Angela. Daphne gets suspicious about spousal abuse. Note to Arthur and writers: you can only dangle the carrot of Daphne’s shady past so many times before we stop caring. What could possible be so terrible? Was she a prostitute? We've already had an internet stripper. Serial killer? We're working on retconning that one into a fluffy puppy. Mediocre loser? See Matt Parkman circa Season 1. So... What else is in the bag of Horrible Past tricks?
Unfortunately, Knox is not a complete idiot, and is therefore easily able to follow Claire into the sewer. I’m not quite sure how Claire thought she was going to defend Peter other than glaring, or perhaps busting out a biting, "U G L Y you ain't got no alibi, you're ugly" cheer. Knox pushes her down and holds her hands behind her back in about 2.5 seconds. Hope those 2.5 seconds were long enough for Peter run further away.
Claire’s not big on tactics. Or planning. HRG should really have agreed to train her as an agent; then perhaps she'd be less useless. I’m a little disappointed in Peter for running away, although it shows more practically than he usually does. Or perhaps he has grown as a character: remember, this is the guy who in Seasone One pushed himself and Sylar off the back of some bleachers when he didn’t know he could heal.
Writer 1: Hiro’s new maturity is really inconvenient for our plot development.
Writer 2: I have an idea! Let’s regress him to the mind of a 10-year-old!
Writer 1: Will that get annoying…? Like, Hiro-trapped-in-the-past annoying?
Writer 2: Shut up! Potential for James Kyson Lee to show us his best Masi impression! It’ll be cool!
Writer 1: Well, okay. Let’s do it!
NBC: You. You. Fired.
Arthur’s pretty clever putting Sylar in the room with another sociopath. Because if Sylar can’t feel empathy for Elle, then who? Also, did that last blast burn off Sylar’s shirt? Bonus.
Arthur took his boys fishing? I never saw the Petrellis as outdoorsy. Although I can see Angela buying her sons designer outdoorswear. If you had sons that pretty, wouldn’t you dress them up like little dolls?
The door opens dramatically, Nathan comes face to face at last with the figure that has shaped so much of his life, his father stands to face him, and then… Tracey walks strangely through the frame and interrupts the reunion. Does she have to be in the room? Arthur agrees and sends her away so he can tell Nathan his master plan.
Petrelli parenting fail #781: telling one of your sons that he's your favorite. Never healthy. It's probably best that you gave away Gabriel. Speaking of whom...
Sylar is the Zen master. Check out his shirtless kneeling Yoga pose. But I totally thought they were going to kiss, thereby transferring Elle's powers. But apparently Sylar’s bad-ass enough to not have to touch. And he’s so happy he cries; he’s not a monster, and not only that, but he saved Elle, too!
Oh good: Peter is still the foolhardy romantic of season one, deep down. He confronts Knox and Flint with a steely glare and resurgent emo!bangs as his only weapons. Also, he didn’t see the leaking gas main until he’d already come out into the open. So… What was his plan before that? I guess crappy planning runs in the family.
Zach and Kristen are clearly having so much fun together. And the writers remembered that Elle has some sexual boundary issues. Luckily for us!
Way to show some backbone, Tracy. Don’t take any of that Petrelli bullshit. And an excuse for Nathan to fly! It’s been a while. I missed sonicboom!Nathan.
The director is having a lot of fun with the Primatech set. Dream sequences are good opportunities to mess about with the camera. And to break my brain with dream logic. Arthur makes Matt see Daphne stab him, but he really stabbed him because he thinks he was stabbed? Dream logic hurts my brain.
Angela convinces Arthur to let her loose. He still has feelings for her? Or a deeper plan? Interesting… I hope that means we get more exciting Angela and Arthur interaction as their teams square off. Oh, and Matt, Peter clearly isn’t scary scar!Peter. I mean, it's probably good that you used your brainmajik to verify, but this Peter clearly has much less hair product and much smoother skin.
Hiro and Ando walk into a comic store. Wait, I've heard this one. The punchline is 9th Wonders. How many issues ahead was Isaac before he died? I seem to remember that he made a big deal of giving his "last issue" to that currier in Season One. But forget that. Let’s revisit Season One by following a comic book! It worked last time!
Dawn’s the key! Oh wait, I mean Claire’s the Catalyst. Same difference.
Arthur’s future drawing power (from Usutu, right?) is almost as useful as a Farmer’s Almanac! Yes, there’s a total eclipse visible from everywhere in the world every two years or so. That’s normal, right?
And now we’re in teams again: Daphne, Matt, Peter, Claire, Angela, and Nathan. Awesome! This team’s my favorite. And the villains: Arthur, Tracy, Knox, Flint, Sylar and Elle. And I choose to think that Sylar and Elle aren’t really evil. Exciting that Arthur and Angela, team captains, will get to face off at the coin toss. Elle will slap Sylar's butt after he spikes the ball in Peter's face. And Matt will give confusing signals near his crotch until Nathan calls him up to the mound to chew him out. I'm not sure what game they're playing, exactly, but it's bound to be entertaining.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:20 am (UTC)So... your accounting of the teams failed to count all the possible double agents. Mainly, Nathan, possibly still Daphne, Sylar, and probably Tracy, who... as my dad pointed out to me (yes, how much do I fail as a Heroes fan that MY DAD noticed something I missed?) has great reason to hate Arthur (seeing as she probably sees him as being responsible for her murdering someone?) and may be maneuvering to stab him in the back, which Mr. Arthur Oh-I'm-Also-Sexist-By-The-Way Petrelli will probably totally miss.
Also: I noticed that all of Angela's team is dressed in black and is lurking in bad flourescent lighting, while Arthur's team is in cheerful colors and sunlight. Could this perhaps be a heavy-handed hint that things are not as they seem?
Oh, this episode was GOOOOOOOOOOD. I didn't even notice the cringe-worthiness of the dialogue.
PS I'm sorry I failed at cowriting. My muse is just not with me these days. :(
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:38 am (UTC)P.S. I've also written hardly anything since the kink meme. But that bunny's still in the yard somewhere... Crouched in the dark beneath the bushes... Waiting...
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:42 am (UTC)dude, I just noticed your icon, and it is beautiful. It's like...
--anyway, for one thing, if we have to replace Heidi, she should at least be replaced with someone of equal or greater awesome. It's only fair.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 05:09 am (UTC)Yeah, where the hell is Heidi, damnit?! And Simon and Monty, too! *grumble grumble*
And your review! I am saving it to read tomorrow, when going to bed I am not. But... Episode = hooray!
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-21 09:11 pm (UTC)