Overview:
Peter wakes up in hospital, draws a picture, then acts out the stick-figure sketch with Nathan. Daddy Bennet wants Claire to be his little girl forever and ever (ew!). He now knows about Claire’s attempts to kill herself, but doesn’t seem too upset about it. Meanwhile, Niki has alternate-personality issues, Mohinder meets his father’s ‘friend’ (yeah, right), and a cop becomes telepathic. A tightly-scripted episode, developing the characters at the same time as introducing new ones. It’s made spectacular by Hiro’s visit to the future and the final twist to his story. The premiere was good. This is even better.
Review:
For an episode with the title “Don’t Look Back,” there’s an awful lot of looking back going on here. Not that it hurts the show, because heck, every one of the scenes which the show recaps this week is a pleasure to watch again.
It’s just, you have to wonder whether that’s going to be one of the problems with a serialized show like this: a ten-minute ‘Previously on Heroes‘ every week.
Especially when the voice that says ‘Previously on Heroes‘ sounds like he’s aiming for something between captivating and seductive (which just does not work for me). And especially when most of you don’t need or particularly want a recap which is eating into the show’s forty minutes.
Which isn’t to say the episode suffered because of it, because if it’s possible, this turned out to be even stronger than the premiere. The pacing was tighter, several of the weaker character arcs became more compelling (particularly Claire’s and Niki’s), and the exposition turned to complication.
Then there’s the final twist to Hiro’s story. Which, at least to me, is what hammers home how astounding this show could become. I’ll get to that.
We start out with the aforementioned ‘Previously,’ which recounts the adventures of “five strangers across the globe.”
Well, hang on.
Peter: Mid-town Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Niki: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
Isaac: Lower Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Claire: Odessa, Texas, U.S.
Hiro: Tokyo, Japan.
I guess you could count Mohinder as well, but the show doesn’t: we get a montage of these five characters, four fifths of them American.
Which isn’t a big deal, I guess. It just strikes me as kind of ironic when a recap parades the fact that this is a show about individuals from across the globe at the same time as unintentionally highlighting the fact that the majority of them are NOT from across the globe. This should be a multi-cultural show with characters from across the globe. It should bring people together from every corner of the planet. It should show how mankind puts aside its differences and unites in a common goal.
Which is veering close to the Independence Day kind of crap, but you know what I mean. At least, I think a lot of you do; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the one non-American character at the center of the show immediately became the fan favorite.
Anyway, the episode moves past its recap and onto another of Mohinder’s monologues about the meaning of life. “We all imagine ourselves the agents of our destiny,” he tell us, “capable of determining our own fate.”
Oh, no. Not again. Peter’s jumping. AGAIN. Seriously, I have to ask: are we going to get this particular sequence at the start of every episode this season? We’re only two episodes in, and it’s already getting old.
Mohinder continues monologuing about whether “a force larger than ourselves” guides us, or whether evolution takes us by the hand. “Does science point our way? Or is it God who intervenes, keeping us safe?”
Depends. Is God still a cockroach?
Peter wakes up in hospital. We even get a little caption which reads, “Nathan & Peter Petrelli, Mid-town, Manhattan.” That’s really helpful, guys. Thanks for that.
Peter doesn’t remember how he ended up in hospital. Nathan is visibly relieved, and spins a story about a suicide attempt which led to Peter falling 25 feet onto a fire escape. For some reason, it seems like Nathan’s trying very hard to prevent Peter from discovering or developing his ability to fly.
If it saves us from even ONE more repeat of that rooftop sequence, I’m all for whatever story Nathan churns out.
Claire saves the guy from the train wreck. Again. Actually, that’s a lot more fun to watch than the Petrelli rooftop sequence. But that’s just because Claire’s gorgeous.
And boy, when we cut to the next shot of her eating breakfast at home, she’s looking even more gorgeous than she did in the premiere.
Hayden. Baby. Call me.
Hayden looks like she’s going to tell Daddy Evil-Trenchcoat-Guy Bennet about her ability to jump seventy-feet and run through fire without sustaining any injuries. That, or it’s what Daddy Bennet suspects: that she wants to know about her biological parents.
Daddy Bennet steps out of his Evil-Trenchcoat-Guy persona for a second and comes disturbingly close to acting like a loving dad. When he asks Claire whether she’s pregnant or doing drugs, you get a sense of how open and understanding the character might be.
That said, a lot of you seemed to just be plain creeped out at this attempt by Daddy Bennet to give Claire fatherly advice, particularly when he started laying on that “condescending” trash about making “an adult decision.” You’ll note that he says this while the background reveals Mommy Bennet’s dog show awards plastered to every wall in the house.
Come on, Mr. Muggles. Bite. BITE!
Mohinder returns to his apartment. It’s been cleaned up a fair bit since last week. (Or is it yesterday? Nathan told Peter at the hospital that it was the day after he’d jumped. There’s a weird timeline here.)
Anonymous Burly Guy’s butt is sticking out from under a table. He’s wearing a uniform and looks like he’s carrying out routine maintenance work. In a frightful predicament, Mohinder is forced to decide whether he should (1) ask Anonymous Burly Guy what kind of maintenance work he’s doing, (2) run away, as per last week with Evil Trenchcoat Guy, (3) offer health and fitness tips which keep his own Mohinder-butt in the kind of shape that makes half of you squee about how fine Sendhil Ramamurthy is, or (4) grab a valuable, ornate-looking statue of an elephant and slowly (read ‘noisily‚Äô) approach Anonymous Burly Guy.
For the sake of the plot, let’s say he chooses (4).
Anonymous Burly Man becomes Anonymous BUG Man. Bug, as in cockroach, but also as in wire-tapping. (Everyone got the religious metaphor there, right? Cockroach, God? Exterminator of cockroaches, infidels? Maybe it was just me …)
Anonymous Burly Bug Man gets tired of his charade and gets into a scuffle with Mohinder. He kicks Mohinder with such apparent force that Mohinder is sent soaring across the room.
Which would be believable … if it turned out that Anonymous Burly Bug Man was an android.
The pistol is brandished. “I suppose the cockroaches are the least of my problems,” observes Mohinder.
Well, yes, but the cockroaches are divine, no? I’m so confused.
Anonymous Burly Bug Man grabs his toolbox and runs into the corridor, fortuitously knocking over the cryptic anonymous lady friend of Daddy Suresh. Who might be more than just his friend in an ew! kind of way but who’s so one-dimensional that the show apparently didn’t even think it was worth naming her. Although according to unofficial sources, her name is Eden McCain.
She’s not the strongest actress. I mean, nothing against Nora Zehetner. Some of you saw her in Everwood and thought she did a solid job here with the dialogue she was given. It’s just, in a show where the characters aren’t sure who they can trust, Eden’s sincerity is telegraphed in so weakly that you wonder whether she might be Daddy Bennet’s insider. And I’m not sure that was the intention.
I might be wrong. It might be a deliberately ambiguous performance, in which case, further down the road, I reserve the right to retract this criticism.
Anonymous Burly Bug Man drops his gun after crashing into Eden. After she questions his gun holster, he picks what was previously Mohinder’s Option (2). Mohinder introduces himself. Eden doesn’t.
It’s Hiro’s turn to get a recap. His caption also now provides his second name, Nakamura. A week later, Hiro still rocks. You’d think the hyperactive, over-the-top charisma would get annoying. It doesn’t. If anything, Hiro becomes even more endearing. When he’s running down the street shouting “Hullo!” and “Wazzup!” and other such pleasantries, you don’t for a moment wonder why such a dork would be so loveable. You identify with the character every second he has on the screen. More than any other character, you want to see him develop his power and fulfill his dream of becoming a superhero.
Which is largely down to strong writing, but I think a lot of it is also down to Masi Oka’s performance.
The whole “9th Wonders!” story-within-a-story twist was brilliantly done. On a surface level, it’s a neat link to the comic which Micah was reading at school last week. On a deeper level, it underlines just how excellently this show translates to comic book format. And on an even deeper level, it brings up the whole theme about the destiny of the characters.
Which is a lot to get out of what’s basically a plot device designed to lead Hiro to Isaac. But that plot device is blanketed in such painstaking thought and such attention to detail that you can’t help being impressed. When Hiro stops running and stands at the theater entrance to read the comic, he adjusts his glasses with his index finger.
Bam! That’s the kind of peripheral detail which makes this show extraordinary. You could bet that most other shows wouldn’t have bothered. They’d have their characters sprint a couple of blocks and come to a stop with their glasses firmly in place.
This show isn’t like those shows.
Hiro sees illustrations of himself scrunching up his face and concentrating with all his might to turn the hands on his clock. He sees himself telling his friend how he’ll eventually be able to “teleport” [Note: without the hyphen. They fixed it!]. The locations, the story, the dialogue: everything is recreated on paper.
So, Isaac’s heroin-induced visions don’t just lead to sprawling images of bombs exploding in the heart of New York. Apparently, they also lead to comedy sketches involving two Japanese guys who like to talk about Star Trek and teleporting to the ladies’ room.
Now THAT’S artistic versatility.
Simone tends to Isaac at his bedside, telling him that his Hiroshima-like vision was “all a dream.” Which seems a little inconsistent with her telling Peter last week that she’d witnessed Isaac’s clairvoyance with her own eyes, but I guess her denial stems from fear. Tawny Cypress conveys her fear of losing both Isaac and her father with remarkable subtlety. It’s the subtlety which is missing from Nora Zehetner’s performance when she later reacts to news of Daddy Suresh’s death.
Meanwhile, at a high school somewhere in Odessa, Texas, Claire is trying to be a vacuous, simpering cheerleader. She does this by flirting with a football jock stud who likes to admire her “dainty hands.” Man, I hate this guy. That’s mostly because I’d be insanely jealous of anyone who gets to hold hands with Hayden, but the thought of Mr. Muggles scurrying past the lockers to take a chunk out of this guy’s hand immediately sprang to mind.
Anonymous Nerd becomes Zack! He derives this name from the cheerleader who’s taller and blonder than Claire but nowhere near as cute.
Zack tells Claire that he really needs to talk to her. Claire doesn’t want to leave Anonymous Jock.
“Not now!” she insists.
But you promised! You PROMISED you’d talk to him at school! And in front of other people! So, a guy who’s crazy enough to let you jump seventy feet and diligent enough to capture it on video and loyal enough to keep it a secret doesn’t even earn your pretend-friendship?
Claire’s appeal is faltering again …
Niki, on the other hand, is one of the characters who gains appeal this week. After a hazy introduction in the premiere, one which very few of you seemed to find at all compelling, her story arc gathers enough pace to become mildly intriguing.
Micah leaves a message on Niki’s answering machine again, and Niki abandons the mutilated mobsters and her not-so-identical mirror reflection to go retrieve her son. Along the way, the credits let us know that Jeph Loeb and Greg Beeman are now Co-Executive Producers on this show. The top writer and the top director from Smallville are now once again combining forces on Heroes.
Yeah, that pretty much means Smallville will go down the drain while this show flourishes.
Oh, come on. You were all thinking it.
At a traffic light, Niki opts for in-car entertainment. Nothing beats watching your alternate-personality self butcher a couple of mobsters. Sadly, there’s no picture. Only the type of screaming which accompanies horrible suffering.
Which is remarkable for the way it sets Niki apart from the other characters on the show. Up until now, Niki had been portrayed as the most desperate character; the one who was desperate to keep her son in school and desperate to stave off financial ruin. But the discovery that some part of her is a killer makes Niki a questionable heroine, one whose power overwhelms her and inadvertently makes her a murderer. That alternate personality emerges out of self-defense, sure, but it makes Niki a killer nonetheless. I’m not saying it’s a bad development to the story, because it has the potential to lead to an exploration of what it means to be a hero and what it means to use your abilities to accomplish good. It’s simply that this development now makes Niki one of the more complex characters on the show as well as the one whose life is the most rooted in everyday problems.
It’s back to Mohinder’s apartment, where he’s tinkering with Anonymous Burly Bug Man’s wire-tapping device. Eden mentions Papa Suresh.
“Papa Suresh?” asks Mohinder incredulously.
Yeah, buddy, I’m right there with you. Was there something wrong with DADDY Suresh? Was there?
Mohinder recalls The Artist Formerly Known As Evil Trenchcoat Guy (or TAFKAETG), but fails to make the connection to why someone would want to tap Papa Suresh’s phone. Maybe they’re hoping to hear more of those voice-overs which Mohinder is so good at?
Eden asks why Mohinder doesn’t just swap notes with his dad about the phone-tapping. Oops! Papa Suresh is worm food! Nora Zehetner does her best to be all, “What? Oh my God! How awful!” I want to say we feel her pain, but we really, really don’t. Like, at all. It sounds more like she’s being sarcastic. Which lends credence to the view that she’s either a spy gathering intel on Mohinder, or that she’s just being played by a really bad actress. I’m leaning towards the bad-actress theory.
Eden tells Mohinder about how she used to cook for Papa Suresh, and how Papa would then (uncharacteristically, you might say) expound on his top-secret theories. It sounds like a fun night in for both of them.
Ooh, a poetic moment.
Nine cheerleaders, all in a line,
If I could choose, which would be mine?
The one who’s a hero, graceful and fair,
The one who won’t die, my darling Claire.
Hayden? Call me. I’ll write one of those for you every day.
The sheriff, a member of the Odessa Fire Department and the high school’s headmaster all gather to identify the heroine. The not-Claire cheerleader who was earlier vying for Anonymous Jock’s attention decides to tell everyone that she pulled the man out of the train wreck. While everyone else crowds around Anonymous Cheerleader, Claire asks Anonymous Fire Department Guy how the man she saved from the wreck is faring. It’s a Heroic Moment for the reluctant heroine.
Anonymous not-Claire Cheerleader becomes Jackie. Claire’s walking along the football field when Zack shows up. Claire’s not at all pleased that Jackie has been made an Honorary Firefighter, even though she didn’t want to take the credit herself. Claire’s delightfully contradictory. It’s kind of like last week, when she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to ignore her powers or capture them on camera for all eternity.
Anonymous Jock Number 8 shows up, knocking down Claire with such force that her neck snaps and her head turns 180 degrees. See? Claire was right when she said that cheerleading could be “treacherous.”
Meanwhile, Niki drives Micah back to their home. The home where Niki just gruesomely slaughtered two mobsters, and where Linderman will likely now be sending further mobsters to find out what happened to the first two mobsters.
It makes sense. In Bizarro World.
Amid the trashed apartment, Niki expects her son to pack his most important belongings. By himself. She’s becoming an interesting character, but she’s not the best mom. Wouldn’t it have made sense to let her son stay with her friend while she removed the corpses and cleared the garage of cartilage?
By an amazing twist in the plot, it turns out that Niki’s mirror image has removed the corpses and cleared the garage for her. Mirror-Niki has also obtained a shiny new car. And left a blood-stained map.
Road trip! Niki and Mirror-Niki traverse Nevada!
Then the part which a lot of you read into very deeply. Resting at hospital, Peter draws a stick-figure sketch involving a straight line representing a rooftop, one stick-figurey guy standing on said rooftop, and another stick-figurey guy floating a few feet above the rooftop. Is Peter a conduit for everyone else’s powers? Does he fly because Nathan does? Does he produce clairvoyant images of dubious artistic merit because Isaac does? Does contact with the other heroes temporarily imbue Peter with their abilities?
More importantly, does he now possess the ability to steal socks?
Mommy Petrelli shows up to dash our chances of finding that last one out. She asks Peter to help her understand why he would jump off the roof of a fifteen-storey building. I’m waiting for Peter to throw Mommy Petrelli’s words back at her (”I just wanted to feel alive!”) but he refrains from such sarcasm. It turns out that Daddy Petrelli’s death wasn’t the result of a heart attack (as Peter had been led to believe) but in fact the result of a major depressive disorder. This condition, Peter is told, can be genetic, and involves “delusions of grandeur” and “irrational thoughts.”
The scene turns serious for a moment. Peter learns that he was always his mother’s “favorite,” and that she couldn’t bear to lose him. Mommy Petrelli turns from austere and matter-of-fact to vulnerable and unsettled. The actress playing her turns in a surprisingly strong performance, and Milo V’s game comes up a notch because of it. You can see that the guy is holding back tears, but tries to comfort his mother by not getting emotional. It’s poignant without becoming overly sentimental. Plus points for everyone involved with the scene. More of this next week, please.
Hiro locates Isaac’s apartment. Read that again. Factor in the language barrier and the fact that Hiro’s likely out of 1000-Yen notes by now, and you wonder how he got there. But anyway, Hiro cautiously enters the apartment, calling out to Meester Eeezuk Mendayz. Hiro doesn’t find Meester Eeezuk. Instead, he finds a trail of blood and a gun. In a classic (for that, read ‘cliched’) dilemma, Hiro must choose whether to (1) run away screaming hysterically, (2) examine the apartment to determine whether any further editions to “9th wonders!” exist, (3) use his apparently extensive knowledge of Brooklyn to find the nearest police station, where he’ll shout “Yatta!” and need to teleport himself from behind bars, or (4) implicate himself in a murder by picking up the gun and continuing to follow the trail of blood.
For the sake of the plot, let’s say Hiro chooses Option (4).
By some as-yet-unestablished plot detail, the cops have been tipped off to the fact that there’s an artist in his apartment with a sawn-off scalp and a brainless head. The cops come storming in and immediately suspect Hiro. Hiro, shocked by this state of affairs, faints. It’s gross, but somehow morbidly funny.
Greg Grunberg makes his dramatic entrance as the telepath, hearing the muffled cries of a frightened girl hiding under the stairs of her house while Mommy got pinned to the wall with knives and Daddy got frozen and his scalp sawn off.
The scene serves the dual purpose of introducing another character (that’s now eleven cast regulars, with a twelfth on the way next week) as well as referring back to the character whose name was inscribed on the cassette which Mohinder found last week.
Sylar apparently possesses several or all of the abilities which the rest of the heroes do, at least when it comes to mutilating bodies in ritually grotesque ways without leaving any evidence.
Matt gets surface-level characterization in these two scenes, with references to his inability to get a detective badge and his struggling marriage. It’s enough, however, to make the character sympathetic. As with Hiro, Matt seems so benevolent and so well-intentioned that you want to see the character’s story arc evolve.
Back at Papa Suresh’s Brooklyn apartment, Mohinder rambles on about mathematical theorems and human genomes and DNA migration patterns. I think I liked it better when he was spouting all of that spiritual stuff at the start of the episode. Eden has an expression that says, “Man, this is SO dull, what excuse could I use to get out of here right now?”
They listen to the messages on Papa Suresh’s answer phone. There’s a neat link to the Petrelli thread, with Nathan’s pre-recorded message urging Papa Suresh to “Vote Petrelli!”
Sylar and Papa Suresh have a conversation about “the hunger,” and how Papa Suresh made Sylar “this way.” The notion arises of the anti-hero who evolves as a result of unlocking his potential. It’s all cryptic at this point, but it’ll be interesting to see how the risk of heroes turning rogue will affect Mohinder’s motivation to search for them.
Eden isn’t really interested in any of this. She’s more interested in the reptile. Mohinder meets Lizard-Mohinder. It’s kind of like Indiana being named after the dog, only less funny. Still, you have to applaud the conviction of fans willing to admit that they thought the lizard’s acting skills in this scene exceeded Nora Zehetner’s. That comparison‚Äôs just cruel … TO THE LIZARD.
Eden finds a portable hard drive in Lizard-Mohinder’s tank. It contains some kind of algorithm to pinpoint the location of each superhero. With an intense sense of triumph, Mohinder proudly declares that THIS is why someone wanted Papa Suresh dead.
Dude, your dad’s been dead four days, and you’re acting VINDICATED for finding out why? How about a little remorse, huh?
Matt contemplates the garden pool where Anonymous Little Girl’s parents were brutally murdered. The pool contains the ‘S’ symbol with dangly bits, the same pattern which has popped up in Isaac’s apartment and on Papa Suresh’s portable hard drive, among others.
Reality kicks in. Instead of being branded a hero for saving the little girl, Matt becomes a suspect who arranged the murder in order to save the girl and look like a hero. It’s a plausible development to the story, but perhaps more importantly, it highlights how heroic actions draw attention to the person behind them, and how heroism breeds suspicion and distrust.
Niki’s road trip takes her deep into the desert. She comes to a dead end, spots a shovel in the sand, decides it must be meant for her, and starts digging. A skull turns up in the sand. Mirror-Niki seems to visit this spot on a regular basis. You know, it probably looks less scary by day. A picnic basket, some blankets over the skulls, a parasol or two? This could be a great spot to visit between mobster run-ins and online stripping.
Daddy Bennet greets ClaireBear as she returns home. He tells her that he spoke with her adoption agency and arranged for Claire’s biological parents to be contacted. Claire beams with delight and thanks him. Daddy Bennet looks less enthused, and tells her he hopes she’ll be his “little girl” for a while longer. I can’t figure out whether it’s supposed to be moving or appalling. I mean, I know he’s Evil Trenchcoat Guy and all, and that creates a fairly ominous undertone. But the appalling part comes from the ick-factor in the delivery. Daddy Bennet creates an awfully ambiguous subtext by the tone in his voice when he calls Claire his “little girl.” Horrible.
Claire sheds a single tear, leaves, and Daddy Bennet returns to his portable DVD player. It contains footage of Claire’s sixth attempt to kill herself, expertly filmed by Zack last week. Daddy Bennet doesn’t seem shocked so much as deep in thought. Meaning he’s aware of the fact that his daughter’s near-invulnerable as well as knowing about the research by Papa Suresh. But does he know about the cockroach connection? And what of Lizard-Mohinder?
We cut to another rooftop Peter Petrelli scene, this one at night. Oh, no. Please, no! Not again!
Nathan appears on the roof. Peter asks Nathan why he never told him about their father’s depression. Nathan tells Peter that everyone’s entitled to their secrets, and then, curiously, pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his nose. I didn’t think much of it until a lot of you brought it up on the message boards, but it’s the kind of detail which definitely makes you wonder at its significance. Whether it’s because Nathan was tired from climbing the stairs to the roof, or because Peter is channeling his power and draining his energy, or whether it’s simply one of those peripheral details which brings the scene to life; that’s part of what makes the show so brilliantly written. We’re not sure what’s pivotal to the plot and what isn’t. Either way, it was subtle.
Peter threatens to jump off another rooftop. Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s the only way out of this perpetual timeloop. Nathan reveals that he and Peter both flew. Peter doesn’t believe him, and ends up floating, as per the stick-figure sketch which he drew in the hospital. Nathan looks deeply disturbed by this turn of events. Peter’s all, “Hug me, brother!” It’s a moment of vindication for the character, much like Hiro turning the clock back a second. We share the character’s elation and uncertainty.
That, to me, is what this show has accomplished to an astonishing degree in two episodes. In spite of the number of characters, and in spite of the numerous story threads, we feel for these characters. We identify with them. We share their reactions to events in the story.
Hiro blurts out to a detective that he can teleport, gives the Vulcan greeting, and admits to being a member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society. How adorable.
Hiro’s anonymous friend gets a call back in Tokyo, and becomes ‘Ando.’ The blanks are finally being filled in.
Then the masterstroke: Hiro teleported himself five weeks ahead of the other characters, and he now witnesses the explosion which Isaac painted.
There’s only one word which can describe my reaction to that scene and that twist in the story: wow.
Two episodes in, this show has gone from being merely good to being excellent. If the writers can craft a story so expertly, if the actors can turn in such heartfelt and compelling performances, if the pace of the episode and the flow from one thread to the next can move as effortlessly as they did this week, this show has already guaranteed itself both cult and mainstream success.
So Hiro finds himself back in Tokyo. We get the kind of teleporting effect which I’d hoped for last week, with the background ‘melting’ from one set to the other. Mohinder provides another voice-over about “the call of destiny” and whether man will “have the courage to answer.” Hiro gets a look of steely resolution on his face. The heroic streak emerges.
“Don’t Look Back” has a couple of flaws, but it also demonstrates how quickly the people producing this show are learning. We’re introduced to a couple of new characters, but the episode also relegates several of its mains to the background in favor of developing just a few of them. It does so with a flair and panache that’s near-flawless. It brings the show‚Äôs story to a conclusion so shocking that it challenges our perception of what great television can be.
This raises the bar.
5 out of 5