After the breather that was The Hard Part, the pace picked right back up again with Landslide. Another extremely well plotted episode with two really unexpected deaths and one that was pretty much expected. I really enjoyed this episode, not just for the action and the continuing of the plot, but also for some of the lighter moments, and some of the really interesting character moments.
Hiro/Ando/Mr. Nakamura - Hiro takes his sword to a repair shop with the "GodSend" symbol on it, thanks to Ando, and meets up with his dad, who never left the country. A very interesting situation, especially now with the knowledge that Hiro's dad has a power, even if we don't know what it means. And I've really grown to love Ando's character. From the fellow office drone to now the man without power who is going to try and stop Sylar, even if it costs him his life.
Sylar - Sylar has definitely come into own as a villain now. After last week, he's made the full decision to make the explosion happen. He has decided to use all of his powers and go hard after Ted and he did, even pulling a Magneto a la XMen3 with the police truck. And now he's got Ted's power. I actually feel really bad for radioactive Ted. He was brought to New York to stop the explosion and inadvertently gave Sylar the power for it. Also, it was nice to get some continuity with Agent Hanson from the FBI from earlier this season. Nice to know that even though we haven't seen her, she was still working the Ted case.
Nathan Petrelli - I'm not sure that I agree with Hiro's assessment that he's a villain yet. I think he' s been inexorably drawn into Linderman and Mama Petrelli's plan, and I'm fully convinced that now that she's taking over the whole thing now that Linderman has been so effectively lobotomized. It does make you wonder two things: 1) What was Papa Petrelli's power? 2) Did he really commit suicide or did something more sinister happen?
Peter/Claire - These two were joined at the hip and even though Peter was able to control the nuclear reaction (nice non cliffhanger there, writers), I feel positive that he's going to come back into play with the nuclear power, especially next week where there looks to be a huge confrontation with Sylar.
Micah/Candice - Micah did his thing and Nathan the win, but the amazing thing about this pairing was the ability of the writers to make Candice almost... almost sympathetic, while making a very interesting commentary on the nature of appearances and making judgments by them. Almost sympathetic. Then you remember that she tricked Bennett into telling the OWI about Claire being gone and it's easy to not like her again.
Now for the interesting part...
Jessiki/DL - Finally, this aspect of the story became the most interesting it's been since the beginning of the show. Obviously, Jessica has been in control for a while, but on Monday, she allowed Niki to come back out. I found it interesting that Jessica mentioned that she had been doing everything she'd done "for them." It makes me wonder if her feelings for DL have changed since she obviously didn't care about him earlier in the season and was only concerned about Micah. And DL came through strong against Linderman. Some people have wondered why DL didn't just grab Niki and phase her out like he did to get them through the walls, but I'm thinking he was caught up in the moment and just made an instantaneous decision, resulting in getting shot and then getting up and squeezing Linderman's brain until he died!?! I mean, seriously, does the creator of the show Tim Kring have some weird brain fetish? First Sylar accessing the brains of his victims and now this? Crazy. Oh, and Jessica got the greatest line of the episode. Upon seeing Parkman, she says, "Didn't I throw you out a window?"
Mohinder - Hi everyone. I'll just stand here protecting Molly and looking handsome for the ladies...
Parkman - I thought Greg Grundberg really brought the funny this episode. The whole mind reading thing with the security guard was funny, then apparently he suggested a shot of DL, Jessica, him, and Bennett listening to muzak in the elevator. He also did a great job as the decoy for
Bennett - Any doubt? Any doubt at all that Bennett is the cold, smoothest operator on this show? Now, that's not to say that I like everything he does. For instance, I love, love his relationship with Claire and the look on her face when she saw him in Kirby Plaza was just heart melting for a dad. And while I think we can all agree that him taking out Thompson was just super cool (for a violent TV show), he did it in complete cold blood and even left Parkman to hang out to dry. But great, great exchange between him and Thompson at the end: "What am I thinking now, Parkman?" "Your last thoughts." Bang. Bang.
Which leads us to the next thing. It was obvious from Bennett talking to Parkman as they were entering the room that Bennett knew the tracking device was a person and he was ready to take the person out to protect Claire and by extension all the other special people. What took him back was the fact that it was a little girl and I'm almost positive that he saw a vision of Claire as a little girl in Molly, who is not only as cute as a button, but a terrific actress as well. It's weird how the writers and producers and even Jack Coleman the actor have created this completely morally gray character that most people seem to really, really like.
So another great week and great setup for next week's finale. I'm interested in seeing how the final stuff goes down, and I'm predicting that Molly will be around next season as a surrogate little sister to Claire and protected by Bennett.
For comment from the director of the episode, visit http://gregbeeman.blogspot.com/
And now for the preview...
Lots of interesting shots in this
- We get spoiled about someone surviving one of the "deaths"
- Parkman looks to be in a bad way
- Sylar is seriously coming after Molly
- Someone jumps out a window. Sheryl and I slo mo'ed several times (I love my wife) and we decided it's Claire trying to escape Casa de Petrelli because the hair looks blonde.
- Peter and Sylar are facing off
- Peter and Sylar BOTH go off. But New York won't blow up. I'm not sure how that will work, but it really seems like that's the way the writers would go. What's interesting in the preview is that there are a ton of shots of the characters looking up in the sky. I wonder if Nathan does something with his flying power, or if Peter flies Sylar out of range of NYC.
- I think Sylar is toast. He's been a great villain this season, but he could get way too powerful, and Peter will take him out.
- Molly is safe, and I think she'll be a major part of next season.
6 comments:
What if Linderman was actually Candice standing in (or morphing) for him? So Linderman is not actually 'brainless'? So Linderman and momma Patrelli are smug and think all will work out, but what they don't realize is that they have absoulutley no control over Syler, they think he will be the bomb and then be out of their hair, but no. And what if Clair discovers that not only she can heal herself but can heal others also? She could heal DL. I think Hiro's father has a smililar power to Mollys, that's how he has been able to track Hiro, he was just waiting for Hiro to realize a few life lessons so that he could train and prepare him for his battle with Sylar (or evil), this would somehow help him to overcome the guilt of not being able to defeat the 'evil' when he had the chance as a young man? At some point Hiro's sister will have to come back into the picture with some discovered power? And somehow I missed what happended to "invisible guy"??
What if everyone was Candice? How do you believe anything?
Sylar must've gotten to invisible guy.
I've seen that theory about Sylar getting to Claude (the invisible man). I think that if someone as important as Claude had been gotten to, we'd know that for certain. The writers certainly didn't make it clear how he got out of the FBI agent's field of view so quickly after Ted got captured.
I'm at a loss as to how they end this, although I tend to lean toward the Peter starts to have a nuclear reaction (as we see in previews) but controls it similar to the beginning of this episode (I'm with you on the non-cliff hanger story), then Sylar starts to blow up, like in the previews and Isaac's visions, then Hiro stops time and Peter and Nathan work together to carry Sylar away to somewhere safe.
But, while that is my theory, I have a problem with them knocking off Sylar. As one of the better villians in television, I don't see how the show continues it's theme of hero/saving the world from evil/etc. without him.
And while I'm at it, I've realized that although I love this show, I feel like it somehow feels like cheating because no matter what the storyline is or what corner the writers write themselves in to, they can pretty much make anybody have any weird kind of special ability/power (why did Zane melt metal appliances?) and they can always get themselves ot of it or take the story in another direction. I know I defend Lost a lot lately, but at least they have a somewhat linear and interconnected storyline with questions that have pretty finite answers. For Heroes, they decide they need to have next season be where Mohinder and whomever searches for other "specials" and so, lo and behold, they find another special whose power is, you guessed it, finding other people and putting a thumb tack on a map wherever they are. How convenient...and an abuse of the premise of the story that pretty much anybody could do anything.
I don't disagree with you on the endless supply of heroes Jeff. However, I will disagree on how the Molly thing was handled. We saw Molly in the second episode and according to Greg Beeman's blog that I linked to above, when they cast her at the beginning of the season, they were told to get a great actress, so I don't think they pulled this out of their posteriors with her. I do think that unlimited powers available in the world could become a deus ex machina.
As far as Sylar goes, I really hope he survives because he has become such a compelling villain and could provide a continuing threat to the Heroes, but they would have to find some way to limit his ability to access new powers to avoid making him too powerful.
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