The Most Awesome Thing I Saw Last Week: Baby Touch and Go
EJ
You know, I watched Smallville for the first time in eight years this week. See, I care about Superman. A lot. And the one presented on Smallville is a total d-bag, and I don’t enjoy watching him, so I don’t. But I watched this week because I’m a dude, and this episode introduced Zatanna, the fishnet-wearing magician. Yes, I will watch bad shows just to see a hot girl. And while it was, in fact, Awesome, it really wasn’t good. Still, it was worthy of mention.
That said, the Most Awesome Thing I Saw Last Week was Heroes. Now, I cut Heroes more slack than just about anybody else, but it’s hard to deny that it can’t always recapture that Season One heat. Last week, though, Bryan Fuller came back on board. He was one of the main creative forces behind the first season, and now with the sad cancellation of Pushing Daisies, he’s come back to the Company. Previously, he wrote “Company Man”, generally considered the best episode of the series, so the pressure was on for his return script. And “Cold Snap” delivered.
For one thing, he embraced character continuity. Heroes has a bad habit of reverting most characters to their default personality at the end of every arc. (Hiro and Sylar especially suffer from this.) With this episode, we finally saw some changes stick. Just watch Hiro talking about how he had to watch his mother die all over again. Or watch Angela Petrelli’s facade finally slip, as she has to admit that she’s not in control. Nicely done, Fuller!
The episode struck a fine balance of action and emotion – two characters died, one going out in a total badass moment, and the other slipping away heartbreakingly. In addition, Sylar plowed through some storytelling dead ends (Hiro has half his powers back!), and managed to incorporate some clever humor. If you’ve been disappointed by Heroes since the second season, you really should come back now. I mean, Mohinder is still a bonehead, but some things are beyond Bryan Fuller’s power to fix.
In second place, a little bit of casting made my week. William Sanderson, one of my favorite character actors joined the cast of my favorite show. Known for Blade Runner, Newhart, and Deadwood, Sanderson brings a creepy deadpan humor to any project. And to see him the Dharma Initiative’s interrogator on Lost made me so happy, I can’t even tell you. It’s like, they know they’ve already got me. They don’t need to keep trying to woo me, and yet they did. I feel kind of special, frankly.
And just for fun, check out Lost Babies!
MYNDI
