Overview:

Via flashbacks, we learn that the American government once organized a research facility for people with abilities, and that Angela’s family was brought there and studied by Chandra Suresh. After a prophetic dream about an imminent massacre at the facility, Angela escapes with Bob, Linderman and Charles Deveaux. In the present, we learn that Angela’s weather-controlling sister, Alice, has survived all these years and been living in the facility’s bomb shelter. Having learned the truth about what happened at Coyote Sands, Alice disappears, and Angela turns to creating a new Petrelli-led Company. Which will probably be complicated by the fact that Sylar has morphed into Nathan and taken his place as senator.

Review:

I need to say, before we even start this review, that I went into this episode with high hopes and a lot of expectations. We waited a long time for a flashback episode that addressed the origins of The Company, and we waited almost as long for an episode that explored Angela’s past.

On paper, this episode had everything it needed to be outstanding. We see factions of the ElderSupers coming together, we see the beginning of a covert government branch researching people with abilities, and we see Angela coming to terms with the grief of her family’s death. With all of that in mind, there’s no reason why this shouldn’t have been an exceptional flashback episode; one that — like others — surprised us, enlightened us and challenged our assumptions.

What we get instead isn’t so much surprising or enlightening as it is mystifying. The episode leaves potential for future flashback episodes to tap into, but despite some intriguing details and several exceptional performances, we’re left with an episode that’s dragged down by an inconsistent backstory and an incoherent plot.

We pick up where last week’s episode left off, with Nathan, Peter, Noah and Claire continuing to unearth skeletons at Coyote Sands and working through the night and into day. Which would say a lot about their determination to uncover the truth if there were any truth to be gleaned from it. Sadly, as Peter wonders — and as will become apparent — there’s really very little reason for them to be digging at all.

Peter approaches Angela and voices what the audience is also wondering — where her never-before-mentioned sister came from and why everyone except Angela is shoveling dirt for answers. Angela responds by recalling a vivid flashback of her arrival at Coyote Sands in 1961, and while this is somewhat insightful for us, it raises the issue of narrative perspective. It’s never clear whether any of the flashbacks offer any insight to the other characters.

Superb set work, and superb location work, to the point where I couldn’t tell whether any of this was digitally enhanced or whether the whole thing was real scenery. And despite some anachronistic portions of dialogue, there’s no denying that the episode’s visual authenticity was perfect. The 60s-era buses, the clothes, the suitcases, the hairstyles and the props were all spot on.

We meet Angela’s parents. Or at least the back of them. There’s more than enough to criticize when it comes to the show underutilizing the ElderSupers, but it would have been great to learn anything about Mama and Papa Shaw. Did they both have abilities? Were they afraid of Angela’s ability? Did they know that Alice had an ability? None of those are crucial questions, but this will likely be the only occasion we have to find out, and it’s disappointing that we learn next to nothing about Angela’s upbringing.

Less disappointing is the considerable amount of screen time devoted to Alexa Nikolas’s Young Angela, who, by all accounts, carries this episode like a pro.

Phenomenal casting, on every level. The physical resemblance is uncanny, to the point where you’re completely fooled by the likeness. It’s helped by the physical attributes; the eyes and lips are similar, the facial build is the same, and even the inquisitive stare and good-natured smile are consistent between the past and present-day scenes.

Beyond the physical attributes, the casting department deserves enormous praise for finding an actress who’s as likable and compelling to watch as Cristine Rose, and who brings the same incredible intensity and emotional depth to her scenes that Rose brings every week. As difficult to buy into as parts of the plot might be, I never for a moment doubted that this was Angela. From start to finish, Alexa Nikolas owns every scene she appears in, and she owns the character she plays.

Chandra was equally well cast, with Ravi Kapoor bringing the warm spirit and twinkle of the eye that Erick Avari brought in the first season, as well as the same expressive curiosity and endearing open-mindedness.

In this instance, it would be easier to appreciate the casting if Chandra’s role at Coyote Sands didn’t so blatantly undermine his character arc over the course of the series. It’s easy enough to buy that he was Haitian-whammied and shipped back to India after this project, but on a number of levels, this is where plotholes begin to emerge. Given that Mohinder will later uncover a Coyote Sands ID card among Chandra’s paperwork, one has to wonder how extensive the memory-wipe was, and what Chandra must have thought when he discovered this ID card. It’s also dismaying to think that what Chandra later considered to be fringe-theory research into people with abilities was in fact part of research he’d conducted decades earlier and which he had no recollection of.

As with so much of this episode, it’s not impossible, but it’s hokey. It also undermines Chandra’s nobility at the start of the series, to the point where you’re now less inclined to sympathize with him — the guy who courageously pushed forward with groundbreaking ideas — and more inclined to pity him — the fool who was retreading ground he’d unwittingly covered decades earlier.

And this is where we get bogged down with the details, because it’s not even clear what kind of ground Young Chandra is covering. Coyote Sands is ostensibly a relocation center, but its exact purpose is never established. Were people brought there to be studied? To be killed? Or to be studied and then killed? Was the research intended to harness special abilities or eliminate them?

Given the smiles on everyone’s faces when they arrive at Coyote Sands — and given Angela’s delusions about being cured of her ability — it’s not even clear whether people were brought here against their will or whether they volunteered. What’s also never made clear is who organized this project and how they contacted the research subjects. Chandra seems to be the figurehead for the operation, but the gist is that an entire branch of the government was dedicated to funding and running Coyote Sands, and that they had some way to identify at least several hundred people with abilities.

Now, here’s why all of this amounts to more than nitpicking: these are details that were rightly answered in the present-day story. We know that Chandra used the Human Genome Project to locate people with abilities. We know that Goon Squad Central uses DNA samples from a national database after exhausting the names provided by Nathan and by The Company’s files. We know what The Company’s mission statement was while it was running. We know what Željko is trying to achieve at Building 26.

The reason it’s so hard to become engrossed in this backstory is because, on a number of levels, it doesn’t make sense. Even if we can buy that Chandra was researching special abilities years before he realized it, it’s very hard to buy his involvement in a project when the project’s means and motives are unclear, and when the existence of the project itself is unclear.

Anyway, putting Zimmerman on the project was a nice nod to continuity. I didn’t see a huge resemblance between this guy and the guy we later meet, but the idea that The Company recruited the same doctors and scientists who pioneered research into their abilities is believable.

Angela and Alice are assigned a separate barrack to their parents, and at this point you’d be forgiven for wondering if their parents were even at Coyote Sands, because from hereon out Angela’s more or less taking care of Alice. Again, not a huge complaint in the grand scheme of things, but a detail that nags.

We’re introduced to several younger versions of the ElderSupers, with varying levels of success.

Papa Deveaux was another example of great casting, with Edwin Hodge exuding the same outgoing charm and sturdy confidence that emanated from Roundtree in the first season. It was surprising to see how naturally he slipped into the role of the group’s leader and decision-maker, but if you figure that Linderman only developed a clear vision after meeting Adam, and that Papa Deveaux took a back seat as his health began to deteriorate, it just about flies.

Linderman was one of the weaker casting choices. The physical resemblance between Casey Kringlen and McDowell is there, but between the woeful accent, the lack of charisma and the minimal role the character plays in the episode, I never completely bought that this was the same guy who ended up bankrolling The Company’s employees and running an empire. You could argue that, based on the graphic novels, Linderman’s experiences in Vietnam and his partnership with Arthur informed who he became. But beyond the name and the ability, I struggled to see the connection between this guy and the guy we later meet in the Corinthian.

Bob was again a great physical likeness, and the geeky awkwardness that H. Michael Kroner brings to the role is remarkably consistent with Tobolowsky’s when we meet him in Season Two. This is a similar case to Linderman, in that it’s hard to judge the likeness when the character is limited to a smattering of lines. But based on the little we saw of him, it’s easy enough to believe that this guy would become the character we know.

What’s puzzling about all of this again comes down to the plot. We know that Angela’s happy to be at Coyote Sands because she thinks her nightmares will be removed. But we never find out why anyone else is at Coyote Sands. When Deveaux reveals that he, Bob and Linderman have abilities, it seems as if Angela’s genuinely surprised. So whether everyone’s under the impression that they’re the only ones at Coyote Sands with abilities — or whether it’s simply a taboo topic which no one’s willing to discuss — is something that’s never addressed. Like many parts of the plot, it’s left to conjecture. And here you hopefully see one of my major issues with this episode, because it’s a crucial part of the premise: the characters are visiting a research facility without knowing why any of them are there.

Moving on…

One part of this episode that’s very well established is the bond between Angela and Alice.

Alice never made an impression on me one way or another. Laura Marano and Diana Scarwid both play her well, but the character essentially exists to serve Angela’s character arc, and I was never interested in Alice herself as much as the way she evokes a maternal instinct in Angela. When Angela scolds Alice for packing toys and books instead of clothes, we get an idea of the way their aloof parents have more or less left Angela to take care of Alice. Which probably says more about the parents than it does about Angela, but suggests where Angela’s self-sufficiency and resourcefulness started.

Angela: “The doctor told Mom and Dad that this place is gonna make my nightmares go away.”

Alice: “No more screaming?”

Probably something that can be conveyed through dialogue as effectively as it can on-screen, but there’s a part of this exchange that reinforces how extensively this episode cheated us. It was billed as the beginning of the story. What becomes apparent as the episode goes on is that there are vast amounts of backstory long before this: the ElderSupers we meet here have already discovered their abilities, most of them have already adjusted to their abilities, and three of them have already banded together. As intriguing as it is to watch Angela use her dreams to guide her actions, it’s disappointing that her initial shock and disbelief over her ability remains unexplored.

We return to the present day.

Angela: “I’ve been dreaming about my sister, Alice. That doesn’t make sense, but my dreams often don’t. They’re open to interpretation, they’re confusing. But I think I have to see her for myself. I have to find her body, find a piece of clothing, something — anything — to give her a proper burial.”

Functional dialogue, in the sense that it outlines why Angela wants to unearth the skeletons in the ground. Weak dialogue, in the sense that it leaves us wondering how Angela planned to identify a particular set of bones as her sister’s; it’s later established that hundreds of supers were buried here, and any number of them could have been wearing the same garments that Alice wore when she was buried.

Angela: “How do you think The Company was formed? It started here with a vow to never let this happen again. We destroyed files, erased memories. We blackmailed, we killed — anything to keep our existence secret. And it worked.”

One of the few moments that proves genuinely insightful, because it establishes that The Company’s goal — above and beyond research, protection or containment — was anonymity. Unfortunately, like much of the plot, it comes riddled with problems. Based on the files that survive and the fact that someone knows enough to name the present-day operation “Building 26,” the implication is that officials within the government are still very much aware of the superpowered population. So, in effect, the existence of people with abilities hasn’t been kept secret, and The Company’s approach hasn’t worked.

Angela: “It’s time to go back to the old methods.”

Claire: “You mean erasing people’s memories and killing?”

Angela: “It’s a necessary evil.”

Great dialogue in a great portion of the scene, because it sets up every character’s standpoint: Angela and Noah’s affinity for reprehensible actions in order to serve a greater good; Claire’s objection to methods in an organization she so recently wanted to join; and Peter’s refusal to accept any loss of life no matter what the motive.

We cut to March 1961. Linderman observes Angela’s scar from a bicycle accident and works the Be-Healed Whammy. Nice way to demonstrate his ability, and a precursor to Linderman eventually healing Angela’s memories. With hindsight, you have to wonder why Linderman didn’t use his ability to heal everyone at Coyote Sands, or at least Angela’s parents and her presumed-dead sister. But then, that would have involved returning to Coyote Sands, and it’s never even made clear whether Angela returned to be certain her family was dead.

Deveaux: “This place is one big science experiment, and we’re the rats.”

Angela: “You’re wrong. They’re going to help us.”

Bob: “She’s right. We’re freaks. They’re gonna make us normal.”

Good dialogue, because it helps to establish who these characters are. Angela’s stance is naïve and idealistic to the point of obstinacy … which is to say she’s essentially Peter before this volume. Deveaux cuts through the charade and sees the situation for what it is, putting it into its historical context and comparing it to World War II internment camps … which sets up Deveaux’s shrewd perception, and demonstrates why he could easily have become one of The Company’s leading figures. It’s also consistent with the guy who was blunt to a fault on his death bed while Peter was taking care of him.

Bob is the odd one out; the insecure nerd who wants to blend with everyone else. It’s consistent with the guy who lacked any real vision when he later took over The Company, but surprising for a guy whose ability is one of the most enviable on the show. And we don’t even get a mention of his ability in this episode.

Angela warns the ElderSupers not to trust Chandra, which is a fair warning in light of what later goes down, and one of the more plausible (and, shockingly, rewarding) details that are slipped into the backstory. Given the ElderSupers’ experience with Papa Suresh, it’s interesting to consider how Angela must have felt when Mohinder brought her Peter’s corpse in “.07%,” and how Bob must have felt about working with Mohinder throughout the second season.

Alice: “My feet are cold, Banana.”

Angela: “That’s what you get for not bringing any socks. I’ll find you some.”

Cute, funny, and an amusing nod to the sock fetish. If the reference had stopped here, it would have been delightful. If only it had stopped here.

Angela strokes Alice’s hair. It’s a nice detail in itself, but also one that ties in very elegantly with the way she stroked Peter’s hair in “Exposed.” And in an episode that butchers so many parts of the show’s continuity, it’s nice to see one moment that’s both consistent and subtly underplayed.

Beautifully shot. Sweet, heartwarming, and very much in keeping with the fairytale motif. There are moments like this that make me want to be kinder to this episode; moments that convey how much care and hard work went into crafting and realizing it. Which makes it even more saddening when you realize how disproportionate these beautiful moments are to the litany of bizarre scenarios and inconsistent plot developments.

The camera swoops behind Angela and reveals Claire in the present. Claire says she wants “some alone time” with her grandmother, and this is so hilarious …

… that it even elicits raised eyebrows from Angela. And although I’m never quite sure if Angela has a sense of humor, this is evidence that Cristine most definitely does.

Angela to Claire: “I wish I had had half of your strength. You’ve courage and self-confidence. You’ve overcome all those nagging self-doubts.”

^ ^ Actual dialogue!

Oh, Angela. If only you knew what we’ve had to endure.

Claire: “Maybe sometimes. Not always. Not ever, really. Actually, I’m a whiny brat who wanted to be an agent so badly that I nearly got my moms killed. And even though Dad came to our rescue, I told Mom what a lying scumbag he was, and she kicked him out of the house. But now I’m sick of this agent business, and I want everything to get back to normal. So everybody had better snap to it, ’cause I’m not getting any younger… or much older, come to think of it.”

OK, I might have embellished a little there. But not much.

Kidding aside, there’s something to be said for the way the relationship between Angela and Claire has grown since they met, and even since they discussed colleges at the start of the volume. In all likelihood, a lot of that’s down to Angela’s anxiety and self-flagellation for the way she abandoned Alice. But her admiration for Claire — grossly misplaced as it may be — is touching.

Alice clearly isn’t as moved, because she chooses this moment to bring a tornado to Coyote Sands.

It turns out that while this grandmother/granddaughter bonding session was taking place, Peter got enough of a lead on Nathan to fly to the Coyote Sands Café and settle down with a cup of coffee. I can’t decide if that’s because Peter’s a faster flyer or because Nathan got distracted along the way. Either way, Peter’s level stare at his brother …

… is one of a handful of moments in this volume when Milo brings his A-game. He’s working with great material, but the way this scene plays out — with Peter staring at his brother so hard that Nathan’s forced to spend the majority of the scene looking downwards — underlines how angry Peter still is. In turn, it’s what makes his willingness to forgive Nathan before the episode is over so difficult to accept.

The backstory to Nathan swindling Peter and usurping tickets to that game was nicely worked in. You have to wonder where Angela’s prophetic dreams were when Peter needed them, because if she could see Chandra quoting Einstein, I’m sure she could see whether Peter needed to pick the tickets to the playoffs or the World Series. But then, that would have robbed Peter of his inferiority complex, and we wouldn’t now be hearing him call Nathan on his cowardice for running away and telling him he’s inherently selfish. Which, in light of certain inescapable moments of selfless heroism, has got to hurt Nathan at least a little. But like most scenes between the brothers, it rings true because it’s well conceived, well written and well played.

Noah stumbles through the storm and gets thwacked over the head by a random prop. Then, as near as I can tell, the show pays tribute to every horror movie in which a victim was dragged away from the camera kicking and screaming. Given that the person getting dragged is a badass like Noah, and given that the person doing the dragging was recently a mutated bug, I’m inclined to take it as self-parody.

This, however, is not as extraneous as an entire scene in which Noah recaps everything we already knew about Coyote Sands and Angela’s connection to it, nor is it as hilarious as Noah trying to read Mohinder’s file on the Shaw sisters in the middle of a full-blown tornado. The show needed to incorporate Mohinder into the story somehow, but this seemed like a ponderous way to do it.

We flashback to Chandra asking Angela to tell him about her dreams. Realizing that her answers are being recorded, Angela wisely refrains from describing her initial nightmares of the Apocalypse. Instead, she tells Chandra he’s going to kill everyone at Coyote Sands.

Chandra brandishes a syringe the size of a small dagger and tells Angela that it “won’t hurt a bit.” Funny, if exasperating for the ambiguity, because it’s unclear whether this injection was intended for testing, for removal of an ability or for terminating the subject. Again, the problem is partly the plot itself and partly the crucial questions it raises without answering. We have no idea who Chandra was working for and what their agenda was. Consequently, our inclination to trust Chandra is based more on familiarity with the character than with a lucid storyline.

In the present, Angela disappears into the storm and leaves Coyote Sands peaceful enough for Mohinder to deliver the episode’s first Scene of Meaningful Reflection.

To be fair, Sendhil runs with it and delivers a solid performance. On the one hand, Chandra’s association with a corrupt organization makes for a dramatic reveal and a chance for Mohinder to emote. On the other hand, it undermines Chandra’s entire character arc. Instead of a pioneering scientist who endured ridicule because he was sure he was close to a breakthrough, Chandra’s been rewritten as a tool for a covert government organization whose memory was wiped so that he’d slowly retread the same ground he’d already covered in 1961. In turn, instead of an intrepid son who overcame his doubt and resolved to finish what his father began, Mohinder’s been rewritten as a tool by proxy, perpetuating his father’s attempt to discover abilities which, as we now learn, Chandra knew about nearly 50 years earlier. It’s tragic, but for the wrong reasons. We’re less inclined to sympathize with Chandra and Mohinder than we are to pity them for their cluelessness.

Noah recalls the time he and Chandra met and notes that Mohinder has no idea what Chandra’s intentions were, essentially making my point for me. Chandra comes across as very much the well-intentioned humanitarian among a covert organization, but whether that’s actually the case is debatable. Which would usually point to credible ambiguity, but in an episode in which so many questions are unanswered and where it’s hard to know who to root for, all we’re left with when it comes to Chandra is idle speculation.

We move onto Scene of Meaningful Reflection #2, in which Mohinder concludes that “we’re destined to repeat our parents’ mistakes.” Which is true insofar as Mohinder has used people as guinea pigs (most notably Nathan, although that’s never alluded to here beyond a resentful glare). But it also renders everything Noah said in the previous scene useless, making me wonder why the show bothered to include it if Mohinder was going to ignore everything Noah said.

The reference to Peter and Mohinder meeting “a long time ago” was a nice way to bring their arc full circle, but given that this camaraderie has since been plagued by Mohinder nearly injecting Peter with a lethal strain of The Formula and Peter threatening to shoot Mohinder, it doesn’t feel like a reconciliation so much as an oversimplification. Similarly, Mohinder telling Peter that he can avoid their elders’ pitfalls on account of never experiencing their fear, pain and anger seems to overlook everything Peter went through over the past three seasons: discovering his brother’s treachery, losing his girlfriend in an alternate future, watching a kid get killed and 200,000 people get nuked, discovering the full extent of his parents’ lunacy, and finally running for his life and ranting at God for His indifference. To say that Peter hasn’t experienced the same fear, pain and anger as the ElderSupers is to undermine Peter’s character arc over the course of the series.

Mohinder: “I have to believe that there is hope for redemption.”

Perhaps that should read, “I have to believe that there is hope for Redemption.” If the show ever came up with a meaningful pun, this is it.

We move onto Scene of Meaningful Reflection #3, in which Claire recalls movie night and wonders if life will ever return to normal. It’s a well-performed scene, with Hayden selling the characters’ weariness and emotional numbness with appropriate feeling.

Visually, the idea that Claire now has two fathers to turn to is nicely conveyed, and the way she expresses her longing for a life that’s long forgotten is well written. I’d point out that Claire helped to bring her old life to an end when she persuaded Sandra to kick Noah out of the house, but since this episode focuses on everyone’s regrets, it’s one of the few details that can easily be inferred.

The problem is this is the third in a series of monologues designed to evoke our sympathy, and at this point the episode begins to feel formulaic and repetitive. Individually, each of these scenes was effective. Collectively, the scenes cancel themselves out, they slow the pace of the episode down, and they underline how contrived and sentimental the episode was in places.

The show breaks out of its rut by flashing back to May 1961. The ElderSupers base their escape plan on Angela’s dreams, which is an early hint of Angela’s importance to The Company’s strategic thinking. That said, it’s also evidence of the idiocy behind the ElderSupers’ thinking, because Deveaux had no reason to think Alice would slow them down. Alice was more unhappy than anyone at Coyote Sands, she wasn’t so young that she’d tire from running, and based on what we see in this episode, it’s reasonable to think she’d provide invaluable climatic aid to help the ElderSupers escape. Angela’s decision to lie to and abandon her sister feels like it’s a necessary step for the plot instead of a logical development for the story.

Angela lies to her sister’s face, and as much as I know it should be moving when Angela hurts the sister she loves to do what she thinks is right, this is the moment I stopped sympathizing with the character. Not only does Angela lie without good reason; she exploits Alice’s naivete by telling her she dreamed that Alice needs to stay put. Which is a subtle way to hint at Angela’s emerging manipulative streak, but when it lacks coherent reasoning, it’s hard to root for the character, especially when we cut to the present day …

… and discover that Angela’s bald-faced lie has led to Alice’s self-imposed isolation for nearly 50 years.

Diana Scarwid plays the role superbly, with enough quirky innocence that you can believe the character has been trapped with a child’s mentality all her life. The idea that she’d remain on her own in a bomb shelter for several decades strains credibility, but based on her reference to stealing food and clothes, the gist seems to be that Alice wandered out to civilization when she needed supplies and that she voluntarily returned to the shelter in an effort to limit the damage she could cause. Based on Alice’s fear of her own ability, coupled with her obedience to the sister who’s to all intents and purposes a surrogate mother, the set-up was established well enough for it to almost be believable. I say almost, because however the show spins it, five decades of voluntary isolation is inevitably a tough sell.

Cristine plays the reunion with feeling, to the point where you want to overlook the premise and enjoy both the acting and the emotion behind it. This is, after all, what the rewritten backstory and contrived plot was leading up to, and this is where we’re expected to appreciate that in spite of Angela’s lifelong affinity for manipulation and deceit, she always cared for her sister and always hated herself for abandoning her. And it would be affecting if it weren’t for the fact that there was no good reason for Angela to abandon Alice in the first place.

We flashback to May 1961, when the ElderSupers convened at the same café in which Peter disparaged Nathan for his spinelessness. Angela’s failure to convince the authorities about a covert research facility was a nice touch. It reemphasizes why Angela gave up on telling the truth and resorted to lies, and it suggests why Angela lost all faith in the authorities’ ability to protect anyone.

It’s a moment on the show that should have been iconic. Members of the ElderSuper clan coming together, depending on each other and planning how they’re going to survive.

Instead, you’re left wondering where three-quarters of this faction came from, how they got here, and above all what their unofficial leader’s ability actually is.

Deveaux invites Angela to dance, observing that she loves the song on the radio and giving a cryptic smile to explain himself. Telepathy, or just a good guess? You decide.

They dance, and as strange as the circumstances leading up to it might be, it’s one of the show’s more romantic moments. No prophetic dreams and no saccharine speeches, just two actors with believable chemistry dancing, and the tragedy of historical implications bringing the moment to an abrupt conclusion.

Deveaux tells everyone in the café to “pretend like this never happened.” There’s a deep rumbling sound effect, and we’re left to speculate about whether the show just ditched our astral projection theory and turned Papa Deveaux into a Parkman-whammying mind-pusher. Which would be cool, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s called the Parkman Whammy for a reason, and if it weren’t for the fact that there’ve been two characters by the name of Parkman WITH THE EXACT SAME ABILITY.

It’s disappointing that we don’t find out for certain, but the prospect of the show giving two of the ElderSupers near-identical abilities isn’t just disappointing — it’s repetitive and unoriginal. It’s easy to imagine how useful the ability would have been under the circumstances, but when Maury and Matt already have variations of the same ability, you have to wonder why anyone on the show would think it’d be fun to assign the same ability to a third character.

We learn that Alice was about to be injected with the Giant Syringe of Unknown Intent, that she caused a freak storm at Coyote Sands and that all hell broke loose shortly after.

Chandra resorts to slapping a young girl, probably hoping to knock some sense into her but instead irrevocably vilifying himself. After this, you’re forced to consider how many times Chandra resorted to slapping Shanti, flogging Mohinder and beating his wife. And I’m not even sure I’m exaggerating here, because the ramifications to a moment as small as this are immense.

Papa Shaw resurfaces. Not long enough to get a word of dialogue, but long enough to demonstrate a deflective ability before getting shot. With hindsight, knowing that Linderman could have healed Angela’s parents and that Deveaux could have Parkman-whammied the guards into looking the other way, I can’t help thinking it’s another part of the plot that doesn’t add up. We skip from the ElderSupers at the café in 1961 to Angela and Alice at the shelter in the present, and it’s never made clear whether the group even returned to Coyote Sands to look for survivors.

Intriguing, not least because it’s an indication that the present-day operation was named by someone who knows about this initial project. Whether that’s Željko, the president or any number of officials who Deveaux failed to Parkman-whammy into forgetfulness is — like so many other details in this episode — unclear. There’s unarguably a coolness factor in seeing the sign 50 years earlier, but if you pause to ask how and why Nathan’s base of operations was given the same code, the coolness erodes and leaves a muddled concept. Was President Worf aware of this project? Was he ready for someone like Nathan to show up with information on the superpowered population? Has a covert branch of the government been researching special abilities all this time, and is Nathan just the face for an operation to apprehend the ones who are making headlines? Or is it just a detail that was inserted into the set for the sake of the coolness factor, and are we not meant to read into it at all? You decide.

We return to the present day.

Nicely performed, and a nice way to convey that the bond between the sisters transcends the years of separation and regret.

Angela tells her sister it’s time “to go home,” which seems optimistic when Angela’s on the run from agents who’ve probably got Petrelli Castle on 24-hour surveillance and are waiting to pounce on her the moment she goes near it, but OK. It’s not as bad as the show now clobbering us over the head with a sledgehammer-sized anvil to explain that, yes, ANGELA STEALS SOCKS AS A REMINDER OF HER SISTER.

This is what puzzles me more than anything about this episode; the way it introduces us to a relocation center and a covert government organization but tells us nothing about them; the way it reveals Papa Deveaux’s ability but never clarifies what that ability is; the way it indicates that Nathan’s current operation goes back decades but never expands on the idea; and the way it then, amid all of the half-baked and unexplained ideas, opts to spell out that Angela’s sock fetish is because of her sister.

Alice is incredulous, though of course for different reasons. She reassures Angela that her wasted existence in a bomb shelter isn’t her sister’s fault. Which, duh, but Angela earns herself a *PING!* Dumb As Award for failing to end the discussion there and instead insisting that it really is her fault for lying to Alice and abandoning Alice and failing to return to rescue Alice and Oh. My. God, does Angela not realize that this is only going to provoke a deranged superpowered hermit into going berserk? Apparently not.

Not content with having pissed off her sister enough, Angela decides she can calm Alice down by explaining that while she was holed up in a bomb shelter and scavenging for food, Angela was getting married and building a life and living in a mansion and creating a family and giving Alice a genetically-blessed nephew and an only-occasionally-obnoxious grandchild … and since they’re the ones who make life worth living, don’t be upset, Alice!

And … Alice responds by disappearing into the desert.

And … that’s pretty much the end of that storyline.

I guess that was about as effective a way as any to cap off such an incoherent plot.

The silver lining …

… is this haunting shot. Which, coupled with an in-joke involving a reel of footage filmed by cameraman “Lieberman,” emphasizes that in spite of an abysmal plot, the visual side of this episode was as stellar as ever.

Again, superbly shot, and an elegant way to reinforce how alone Angela feels in spite of the family she’s with.

We flashback one last time to the café, where Angela outlines their mission for the next forty-something years:

“We’re going to form a group … a company. And it’s going to protect people like us.”

You can see how, at the eleventh hour, the show is trying like hell to make this a solid episode. Between the superb visuals and Alexa Nikolas selling the heck out of Angela’s resolve, I desperately wanted to look past the episode’s flaws and appreciate what was, in the end, a heartfelt story about a group of teenagers who overcame adversity and took it upon themselves to make a difference.

But then you try to reconcile this with details from both the show’s on-screen backstory and the backstory provided by the graphic novels: how Angela would meet Arthur and marry him within three years of this tragedy; how Linderman would meet Arthur in Vietnam and then visit him without the slightest indication that he knew Angela; how they’d arbitrarily mindwipe and re-recruit Zimmerman while relegating Chandra to laughing-stock status; how eventually Adam would show up to bring these four together with Papa Sulu, Maury, Victoria and The Ones Who Were There To Look Pretty; how the leadership role would shift between members until it was impossible to tell if there was any hierarchy; and how the initial mission statement — to protect people with abilities — would morph into nuking New York and developing power-suppressing viruses and power-inducing formulas.

If the above makes sense to you, this episode was a success. If it doesn’t, this episode achieved very little besides showing us that Angela had a rough childhood and that we should feel bad for her.

Nathan approaches Angela at the café and tells her she’s “gotta let go” of her guilt.

And in spite of the character’s arc over the course of this volume, it’s delivered with a straight face.

Noah resolves to earn his family’s forgiveness.

And Claire, in spite of indirectly getting her father kicked out of the house and causing the rift in the family, couldn’t be happier to hear it.

And the guy who orchestrated the incarceration, torture and murder of numerous individuals resolves to “take ownership” for his mistakes and gives this episode’s conclusion the uplifting tone it’s trying so desperately to achieve.

Let’s eat!

Or … yeah, check please.

Sylar resembles a mechanical version of Nathan at a press conference. And I know I should point out that Sylar would have needed to make direct contact with Nathan in order to impersonate him, but after the catalogue of plotholes throughout this episode, I’m going to waive this final one and assume that Sylar either obtained a sample of Nathan’s DNA or fished one of Nathan’s coffee cups out of the garbage.

Angela couldn’t be more thrilled to see this artful deception unfolding before her. Whether that’s because she dreamed it and knows it’ll all turn out OK or because she’s just happy to see her boy on TV is debatable. The important thing is she’s happy, and after this episode, someone should be.

Heroes has demonstrated that it’s capable of crafting remarkable flashback episodes. Episodes that fill the blanks and episodes that delve deep into the character arcs. This isn’t one of those episodes. It doesn’t fill in a lot of blanks and it doesn’t delve especially deeply into the character arcs. And in the end, it’s neither insightful nor informative. It’s barely entertaining. Which is a harsh thing to say, and believe me when I say I agonized over this review, more so than any other this season. But in the end I have to go with my gut, and my gut tells me this was by far the weakest episode of the volume, and a strong contender for the weakest episode of the season. Which, when you consider that an ElderSuper flashback should have been a guaranteed win, is staggering.

There are merits if you look hard enough for them. Strong performances, particularly from Alexa Nikolas as Young Angela; beautiful set work by Ruth Ammon; outstanding photography by Charlie Lieberman; exquisite direction by Adam Kane. But ultimately, the episode fails to be memorable on account of a poorly crafted story which took extensive liberties with the show’s backstory. The ElderSupers we meet in this episode are criminally underutilized, Chandra’s history is rewritten, the agenda behind Coyote Sands and Building 26 is introduced without ever being developed, and there are plotholes running rampantly throughout the hour.

Above all, the episode that was billed as a deep exploration of Angela’s history yields very little information to change our perception of the character. We learn that she’s gone from being an optimist to a pragmatist, that she endured enormous hardship because of her ability, that she suffered a terrible loss and that it inspired the creation of The Company.

But then, to paraphrase Peter in this episode, that’s something we could have learned over a conversation. The show devoted an episode to exploring Angela’s past and the formation of The Company, and what we learn is so vague and so devoid of any logical rationale that, by the end of it, we’ve learned very little that we didn’t already know, and very little that we couldn’t have inferred.

Disappointing, and hopefully an anomaly in an otherwise outstanding volume.

2.5 out of 5

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 6:58 PM and is filed under Season 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.