Heroesville: Heroes, Season 3, Episodes 8 – “Villains” (Nov 11)
Hey, check out the opening sequence – the title of the show is actually Villains this week. Not the episode title, either. That’s actually the name of the series. Pretty neat. Oh, and this is as good a place as any to mention it, but this episode is full of binary choices. Hero or Villain. Agent or Prisoner. Client or Family. Various characters are called upon to make these decisions throughout the episode, which is interesting. People have these black and white choices put before them, and most of our leads have been heading into a gray area. Heck, this episode really casts some doubts on Bennet all over again. So maybe the point is that all of these choices are artificial, and everybody had the chance to pick ‘both of the above’ or ‘none of the above’ as the case may be.
Next, we head into “One Year Ago”. This is all before the series begins, by the way. Man, these guys had a busy year. Anyway, Flint and Meredith are robbing a convenience store, and they’re brother and sister. Makes sense, with both being pyrokinetics and all. Though Meredith got an unfair share of the looks. Poor Flint, stuck as a bridge troll. So who’s there to bust up the robbery? It’s Thompson! Old Eric Roberts himself, getting sleaze all over the episode. And he manages to take Meredith down, all by his normal self.
We see pre-evil Sylar. Well, he’s got one kill under his belt, but he feels really bad about it. He killed Brian Davis the telekinetic in an earlier flashback. I’m ashamed that I didn’t catch it then, but the paperweight he bashes Brian with looks like the Fortress of Solitude in the Superman movies. Sylar’s ready to kill himself, rather than live with what he’s become. Luckily for all of us, Elle walks in at that moment and cuts him down. (Comic Book Guy would probably complain that cutting a rope with electricity doesn’t make any sense, but we’ll let that go.) Sylar cries out “Forgive me”, and seems to undergo a religious conversion. Not a long one by any means, but that’s how those Petrelli Boys cope. After she leaves, we see that she’s partnered up with Bennet. Yeah, like she needed to be more awesome.
Thompson wants to train Meredith as an agent. I like this turn, because it makes her character more interesting. She was so defeated back in the first season, and this is fleshing her out a little more. Sure, she has to be pressured, but I like the context it gives her.
Arthur and Nathan have a nice little faceoff here, and we see that Arthur has a real hatred for nursing. Remember how that was like a running thing in the first season, where everybody gave Peter crap for it? Boy, wouldn’t it be ironic if Arthur were paralyzed for a year and needed constant care from a nurse? I mean, he probably wouldn’t learn anything at all, but it would sure be satisfying. This leads to the flashback of Nathan’s car accident, which we’ve seen before. But now with the lead-in, it’s pretty apparent that Arthur actually took out the hit on Nathan. That was surprising right there.
I like the scene with Thompson and Meredith on a mission. They meet Danny Pine, who can turn his hand to stone, which is a pretty awesome power. Meredith, because she is awesome, takes him down with some flamethrowing and taser work. Guess where we know where Claire gets the quick draw from. But then we end up back at the Company where Flint’s a prisoner who believes he’ll get to be an agent. Yeah, dude’s not exactly Company material.
The scene with Elle and Sylar is actually sort of sweet, except for how Bennet’s setting him up. They’re sort of adorably awkward with each other, because they’re both totally screwed up. (By the way, that list that Sylar has? No significant names on it. No characters we’ve already seen, no familiar names. Of course, they’re probably all dead now anyway.) It seems like Elle really could have helped Sylar control his hunger, too. He’s getting more and more tragic all the time. And here’s where it really gets bad – Bennet wants to put Sylar in a position where he’ll kill. He wants to study the kill. Sylar was still salvageable at this point – he legitimately didn’t want to hurt anybody again, then Bennet comes along and serves up some powers. Bennet created the monster. So back in Season One, it was entirely his fault that Claire was in danger. That right there, that’s a pretty good twist.
More with Arthur and Linderman – we find out that Arthur was in on the New York plan. And just maybe, Linderman wasn’t so into it. We see Arthur giving Angela a mental push, so he might have done the same to Linderman. (Remember, Linderman can only heal others. He wouldn’t have been able to fix the damage to his own brain.) Question is, where did these powers come from? He must have taken it from somebody else early on. So is there a limit on how long he keeps stolen powers? Because his powers are acting a lot like Maury Parkman’s. And the Haitian’s, come to think of it. (The Haitian causes “brain scarring” when he makes people forget.) Did he take Maury’s powers to teach him a lesson? I’m starting to think his power thievery isn’t permanent.l
The whole Meredith and Flint scene is pretty cool, especially the fight with Thompson on the train. However, the last bit where Claire runs into the train fire was a little too Super Crazy No Way College for me. It felt too much like they were shoehorning Claire into the episode just to keep her streak going. I did like that Thompson actually shows a little compassion for Meredith. He’s not all sleaze, I guess.
Linderman heals Angela’s brain, which to me indicates that he wants Arthur out of the way, but he still thinks letting New York blow up is a good plan. I am legitimately unconvinced as to which of them is more evil. Right now, Linderman seems more like a misguided believer and Arthur a vicious opportunist.
Once again, Sylar and Elle are sweet and awkward, and then Elle serves up a fat juicy brain. Now, I can’t decide if this was intentional or not, but Trevor has a lame power. He breaks things by pointing at them. True, that’s cooler than anything I can do, but considering that Sylar already has telekinesis and could do the exact same thing anyway, it’s pretty weak. But I think that was the point – we see that Sylar hungers for killing in and of itself, just as much as he hungers for power. Also, I believe this would be the first time Sylar opened up somebody’s head to kill them. (Remember, first kill was an old-fashioned bludgeoning.)
With her faculties intact, Angela finally confronts Arthur. This time with the Haitian present, so his mind-reading is useless. Not only does she confront him, she poisons his soup! So, you know, we’re back to “Shakespearean”. Nathan walks in at the worst possible time and finds his father’s body, so we’re clearly leading into the first episode here.
And in fact, this works out in the next scene. After establishing that Bennet is flat-out cold, putting Sylar back in the evil game and then dismissing it with “Eh, we’ll get him later.” Yeah, he’ll regret that. Anyway, he gets into Suresh’s cab as Peter leaves it, and that takes us right to the first time we saw Bennet in the very first episode.
Back at the hospital, the doctor pronounces Arthur dead. Angela wants him cremated, because she knows how dangerous that guy is. And then we see that the Doctor is either sympathetic to Arthur’s cause or is being mind-controlled, because Arthur’s alive but paralyzed. There’s a scene at Arthur’s funeral where Angela is remarkably cold, and it puts her behavior in the earliest episodes in a whole new light. Nice job!
Now for the end. Sure, Hiro wakes up, knows who the bad guy is and what to do. This would seem to be a good thing. Except that Usutu has been decapitated during the Vision Quest. Pretty gory, too. Nice long time dwelling on his neck stump. Man, people who paint the future have a hard time on this show. And then, in the part where I freaked out, Arthur Petrelli pops up and takes Hiro’s powers!
Remember, Arthur already has Hiro’s powers, from when he stole all of Peter’s accumulated powers. Heck, that’s probably how he got to Africa in the first place. What he’s doing here is making sure that Hiro doesn’t have his powers. He’s now taken out the two most powerful Heroes, and he’s got number three firmly under his control. OK, Arthur Petrelli is officially scary.
You know what? I liked that episode much better after I wrote about it. And next week, everybody is upset about an upcoming eclipse. I was just thinking it would be nice if they developed that occasional reference a little, so check that one off the wish list. I’ll see you there!
