Heroes recap: “Six Months Ago”
Writing this in REAL TIME, people!
NBC says:
As the clock turns back six months for all of the “Heroes,” Mohinder’s father Chandra Suresh (guest star Erick Avari) arrives in New York to begin his quest to find individuals with extraordinary abilities, and meets someone all to eager to be special. Peter celebrates his graduation from nursing school, and learns that Nathan plans to prosecute a case that could mean trouble for the entire Petrelli family. A surprise visit from her father brings out the worst in Niki. Hiro attempts to be a hero and change the future for someone important. Claire joins the cheerleading squad and makes a curious discovery. H.R.G. and the Haitian meet someone special.
INteresting! I sure like that waitress, I hope he saves her.
First, my impressions from the show as we watch along….
- Pesky Eden, using her powers for donut-evil. Interesting to see that she was the No. 2 find for HRG. I wonder where HRG found his mind-wiper. Handy, that guy. But yes, I think (and have always thought) that HRG is a red-herring bad guy. Sylar + something else are the real villains.
- 5 minute prediction: watch-fixer is Sylar.
- Poor Hiro doesn’t have control over his powers. Good think that waitress is nice!
- Niki’s one year sober. Not for long! Stereotype abusive daddy will change all that. A bit tired, really.
- Again with the Lindemans intertwined with the Petrellis. We couldn’t break out of that mold? Rena Sofer, AKA tv-show-killer, is better in a wheelchair. “Avalon” can’t save this scene. Seriously, this is the weakest, most predictable episode thus far.
- Gabriel “I’m not Sylar!” watchdude Grey is really not pulling his weight yet. I realize this is comic-book land and he’s the villain, but he’s laying it on pretty thick isn’t he?
- OK, I admit it — “Great-o Scott!” was a good line. They have a real gold mine with the Hiro character, I hope they don’t screw it up by overplaying him.
- Time to see if Supergenius is right: where does Jessica come from? The dead girl comes to live in Niki’s mind. We’ll see how that comes into play: either she has the power to commune with the dead, or Jessica has the power.
- OK, the Petrellis have more intrigue there — Nathan hates flying because of his power, and Peter absorbs more than powers: like Rogue, he gains limited memories from his absorbees. Marvel lawyers are preparing litigation as we speak.
- Sooooooooo predictable, Daddy killed Jessica. *yawn*. Again, just because it’s a comic book doesn’t mean it needs be predictable, does it?
NOOOOOOOOOOO! DVR DIES with 20 minutes left!!! Niki walks in to Daddy’s hotel room…. and zap!! STUPID FRAKKING COMCAST AND PIECE OF CRAP DVR I HATE YOU COMCAST!!!
Gleaning what I can, and repeating my prior predictions:
-Sylar is obsessed with perfection (as all watchmakers are, apparently). He wants to become god-like/perfect, and feels he can do so by absorbing the powers of other special heroes via brain-munching. Again, this is why Peter, a power-multiplier, is best suited to battle him.
-Jessica came out of the whole “daddy-killed-me” episode. Haven’t seen the ep fully but I am sure this won’t be satisfactorily explained.
-Again, not sure what happens, but I believe the waitress cannot be saved and that Hiro will fail.
-HRG and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are who set Sylar in motion, or at least they knew of him and set him loose. HRG prolly has immense creepy guilt over this.
-I think we’ll only have one more episode of Heroes in 2006.
Speculate away, ye fairies.
Yep, one more episode before the new year. That’s it.
Hiro fails- but because of nature; she has an aneurism. He loses the ability to transport and time-hop, and takes the bus back to Texas. Hiro is having an identity crisis, one all heroes eventually get to, right?
How is it Sylar figures out eating brains will give him the original power?
HRG is not a bad guy- definately a red herring. SO far I’m not impressed with Sylar, either.
Comment by tracy m — November 28, 2006 @ 1:03 am
I’ve normally been very interested in this show, but I didn’t want to go six months into the past. I’m more interested in the show picking up where it left off in the last episode.
Comment by danithew — November 28, 2006 @ 5:47 am
I actually liked this episode better than the last one. I guess I felt the last one was so hyped up, but the execution wasn’t too grand…plus, Sylar was too easily taken down by Eden and the mind-breaker guy that I wonder why Claire’s dad didn’t just rely on them to protect his daughter…
Comment by Dan — November 28, 2006 @ 8:01 am
“How is it Sylar figures out eating brains will give him the original power?”
My theory on Sylar:
He doesn’t actually eat the brains. Gabriel’s powers is that he can sense when something is not performing according to usual standards. This applies to watches and brains. But, in order to truly understand them, he has to extract them disassemble them, and analyze them. Once he’s extracted and dissected the brains of other supermutants, he can understand the unique genetics and neural pathways that give them their abilities, and he can mimic them.
Other comments from last night:
* Does HRG have any powers of his own? Was he able to withstand Eden’s powers on his own, or only by virtue of the Haitian? What’s his relationship with the Haitian, anyway? Will the Haitian ever have any of his own dialog?
* I disagree with SG that Eden was “second.” According to last week’s episode, HRG has been at this for some time, at least since Claire was an infant. (Remember that her true parents were supermutants and she was orphaned.) I think there were many before Eden.
* I’m glad that Hiro can’t control his powers. Time-travel plots are so full of paradoxes that it’s nearly impossible to pull one off without jumping space-time-continuum shark. (Back to the Future Part II.) If Hiro can bend space and time at will *and* change the past, the whole so deteriorates pretty quickly.
* HRG is neither a hero nor a villain. He’s self-motivated (protection of his child), plus motivated by things we don’t yet understand. I’m not at all convinced that he’s a nice guy.
* I don’t think Jessica and Niki were twins. This explains why it took Niki so long to figure out that her evil reflection was Niki, and why their father had such a hard time accepting that it was Jessica who was confronting him. (Well, that and the fact that Jessica’s six feet under.)
* You could be right about HRG’s role in setting Sylar loose, but from what we know now, it looks like Suresh could have supplied all of the necessary conditions himself. There’s no compelling plot reasons to involve HRG in Sylar’s rise to villainy.
Comment by BTD Greg — November 28, 2006 @ 9:16 am
I believe in an earlier episode Sylar had left a message on Suresh’s answering machine to the effect that he couldn’t be stopped(?). So I don’t think HRG really knew of him until later–probably until he somehow found Suresh’s list.
This was the first episode that felt like filler.
Comment by Tim J — November 28, 2006 @ 9:29 am
“This was the first episode that felt like filler.”
If this was LOST, this would have been three episodes worth of flashbacks.
Comment by BTD Greg — November 28, 2006 @ 9:33 am
Good point.
Comment by Tim J — November 28, 2006 @ 9:37 am
Disappointed there wasn’t more action in this episode but I liked the going back in time to see some of the backstory.
Comment by Susan M — November 28, 2006 @ 9:52 am
“I disagree with SG that Eden was “second.—
OK, OK, second on the current HRG bench team, then. Yes, Claire’s parents, etc. factor into it.
Comment by Supergenius — November 28, 2006 @ 11:45 am
I agree this episode wasn’t as good as I was expecting. But there were some big revelations. For one, I think the mafia guy in the background is going to be big. It was surprising that the mafia was responsible for the Senator guy’s wife’s paralysis as was the dad being in cahoots.
The whole Nikki bit is a bit annoying. I know the popular interpretation is the possession by the dead sister but I’m not quite buying it. It’s too obvious. I think she has honest to goodness multiple personality disorder due to the abuse. I know the abusive father bit seems like a cliche, but I thought it an interesting way to explain the split peronae ala Two Face.
I liked the Hiro bit. Avoids the time travel paradox stuff. Nice. I was pretty worried about that.
Sylar was a bit ham fisted. He’s clearly messed up serial killer type. I was expecting a bit more.
The whole HRG is still intriguing. It’s now more ambiguous as to his status. I thought they’d show him to be a good guy. Clearly he’s known what is going on for a while. (We knew that already due to the adoption of his daughter) But what’s his angle in everything. We also don’t know who killed the Indian professor dad. Was it HRG or (more likely) Sylar?
BTW - I agree with the Sylar analysis. I was hoping for a bit more for the character though.
Comment by Clark Goble — November 28, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
BTW - Eden couldn’t be second. HGR had said there were others in a previous episode. So we have the silent black guy, Claire’s parents, and so forth.
I still think HGR is a good guy, but there presumably will be the predictable revelation about Claire’s real birth parents driving a wedge between her and her father. (Dang I hope they don’t play it too predictably)
Comment by Clark Goble — November 28, 2006 @ 12:38 pm
– I’m waiting for the superpowered mafia man to show up. Yes, Lindeman has superpowers. I’m calling it, right now.
Comment by Supergenius — November 28, 2006 @ 12:46 pm
It’s interesting to see that some people’s powers are effected or brought on by trauma, drug abuse, etc.
One of the thing that first intrigued me about X-Men was that Professor Xavier was basically a superhero in a wheelchair. I’m not sure if Heroes is really pulling that kind of thing off yet, but it’s a dynamic they might want to use.
Comment by danithew — November 28, 2006 @ 2:10 pm
Didn’t Dr. Suresh elude to the fact that people who had these powers also had some sort of defect?…much like the waitress having the blood clot thing. Maybe I’m wrong.
Comment by Tim J — November 28, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
Yes, there’s speculation that the powers come at a cost — shortened life, cancer, etc. That would be an interesting touch.
Comment by Supergenius — November 28, 2006 @ 3:51 pm
-I agree that Linderman probably has super powers. He is too connected to too many supers to not.
-There was a time travel gaffe, BTW. Waitress would have known Hiro when he showed up in October the day of her death because of the time travel.
-I think HRG is a tweener character — neither good nor bad. He represents The Man.
-I’m not sure that Peter has Rogue-powers. But the dream/vision thing he had of the accident is something that I hope they eventually explain. It seems like he must have some residual of the power when the other supe is out of range though based on him fixing his broken leg after Claire had left last episode.
-I wish they would have saved waitress. She was a good character.
-I hope they do explain how dissecting brains of supes could give Sylar power. It isn’t obvious why that would be the case. I got the impression Sylar might have killed his parents (I thought I heard references to patricide in his comments about being special).
Comment by Geoff J — November 28, 2006 @ 9:26 pm
Good point Geoff although I think they are still allowing a kind of “Back to the Future” change of the past. Note that he can go to the future and change it. (Well, I presume anyway) Note that “Back to the Future” styled time travel is the most annoying. But I was glad they limited what he could do.
Regarding HRG as a middle-man. I guess I’d call him a good guy who perhaps has different worries than the mutants. Call me crazy but in the films I always thought the foes of the mutants had a point. Likewise I always thought Magneto, who in the movies was well developed until the third film, was a bit of a middle-man character. Not that I think HRG is as villanous as Magneto or the Black Panthers.
I got the impression Sylar was a serial killer before getting his powers.
Comment by Clark Goble — November 29, 2006 @ 11:56 am
Heroes fans will definitely want to check THIS out.
Comment by Supergenius — November 30, 2006 @ 12:25 am
HRG is Linderman. You heard it here first.
Comment by Last Lemming — November 30, 2006 @ 8:23 am
Why would a Las Vegas-based crime boss maintain a wife and kids in Midland, Texas? The paper company would be good for laundering money, I guess.
Comment by BTD Greg — November 30, 2006 @ 8:35 am
HRG is not Linderman. Remember HRG pulled Petrelli out of his Vegas hotel room and Petrelli had no idea who he was. He knows who Linderman is.
Comment by Tim J — November 30, 2006 @ 10:10 am