Heroes 1.19, ".07 %"
Apr. 24th, 2007 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakClearly, I need a Heroes icon. This one comes from the source that's clearly the inspiration for the Linderman part of this episode. (Alan Moore's Watchmen, which anyone who hasn't read it yet needs to check out.)
Okay, that was awesome, and I'm so rewatching it as soon as I've typed my review and read what everyone else had to say, real life be dammed. I loved all the various plot threads here, though admittedly the Petrellis a bit more.
But first: Mr. Bennet shows that becoming a White Hat for the sake of his daughter has not reduced his intelligence and is so smart and capable and in charge when he's organizing his own jailbreak that I'm swooning. Also, Matt wisely recognizes that he needs to leave the planning to Bennet, and apparantly exploding the Bennet home has made Ted somewhat clearer in the head, too, so he listens to Matt and Bennet both. Yay for team jailbreak!
We didn't see the DL and Jessica scene in the previouslies before, but never mind, it was good we saw it now, because Jessica's "Im not sure" confirms my opinion that Jessica isn't actually a separate entity but that Niki, due to what happened to her and her actual twin sister at the hand of their father, did develop multiple personalities disorder. Also, Jessica standing her ground with Linderman and protecting Micah thankfully helped blurring the good/bad divide with her and Niki further, which I'm all for, and I think that now that Linderman has used Candace to get Micah, Jessica and Niki will work together voluntarily and will start to integrate.
Linderman: like I said, he clearly has read Alan Moore and thinks he's Ozymandias, or rather, that he can set up Nathan to be Ozymandias for him. Seriously, Kring and co. should consider paying Moore royalties, because the former League of Heroes with it all going sour? Check. Big catastrophe killing lots of people in NY turning out to be masterplan of former hero to achieve world peace? Check. I don't mind at all, if it's such a stylish homage. Plus of course we'll get not just one but two twists on the concept. Watchmen ends with Ozymandias having suceeded and the surviving heroes reluctantly agreeing not to expose him because otherwise everyone will have died in vain and the cold war (this comic was written in the early 80s) will be back with a vengeance.... but the last panel shows that the truth about Ozymandias will actually come out anyway. On Heroes, next week, it looks like we'll get the future where Linderman's plan did succeed, and it looks like it's the Heroes version of the Wishverse, with everyone evil or desperate or both (whoever visited a future where everyone was fine and dandy?); on the show proper, presumably something else will happen, and I can't wait to find out. Anyway, Linderman not as a I WANNA DESTROY/RULE THE WORLD type of villain but as a twisted messiah is of course far more interesting; we have Sylar already to be our psychopath. More about him in a moment, but first, Linderman and Nathan: great temptation scene. I'll get to Nathan's reaction there and later when I talk about the Petrellis, but here I want to say, the "you must bring all your first dates here" line from Nathan reminded me of how he asked Niki in Collision - after she told him her husband had left - whether it was for another woman or another man. For a presumably conservative politician, he's refreshingly non-repressed in this regard.
Linderman is now short of one painter delivering pictures, of course, and will have to show his future first dates other things. Isaac went out with dignity and courage, ordering his affairs through the episode, having meta conversations (no spoilers!) and using his abilities to the last to warn the others. Isaac, you could screw up terribly through your life, but the way you faced your imminent and cruel death was truly admirable. Rest in peace. (And was it me, or was there a hint he was satisfied that Sylar was now stuck with the precognition? Because you know, seeing the future? Not such a fun thing, as Isaac already knows and Sylar will probably find out.)
...but really, the heart and soul of this episode? OMG Petrellis and Claire. Wait, I also have to say something about Mohinder before I get to them, I guess; good for him to use the opportunity to knock out Sylar and save Peter from brain suckage, not so good for him that he's still pretty but dumb and invariably prone to trust the next villain to come along. Have fun working with the Company, Mohinder.
Sylar-Peter showdown, first round: really cool. Creative use of their various powers, and a promise of things to come.
...and now I really can't restrain myself any longer. PETRELLIS!
Angela Petrelli: got to show the whole spectrum from ruthless manipulator to wounded mother. Her argument to Claire made absolute sense and is probably true (which doesn't mean she's not using it manipulatively), and of course, oohhhhhh, such intriguing revelations. So Angela was probably in that league Linderman founded when young, along with the late Daddy Petrelli. What is her power? My current guess is shared/precognitive dreams, as that's the one Peter displays first chronologically (in the Six Months Ago flashback when Nathan and Heidi have the "accident"), before flying. And why didn't she tell either son - did she think they would never get active?
Petrelli family dysfunction observation the first: Angela, when alone with Peter, can show her grief in that beautiful breakdown moment. Later on, when Nathan has his own breakdown, she's unable to communicate with him other than through appealing to his inner politician, the ruthless survivor, and that just doesn't work there.
Claire: is quick to realize her grandmother is not a nice old lady but the Godmother herself who could teach Don Corleone a thing or two. Is so expecting rejection and breaks my heart with it, continues to be brave and smart, and you've got to love how they set up ages ago that Claire knows, but everyone else doesn't (except we the audience, of course), that something in hers or Peter's head stops the regeneration and means temporary death.
Nathan and Peter. Peter and Nathan. I was so glued on my viewscreen. During his temptation scene with Linderman, you can see that Nathan does understand where Linderman is getting at with the Watchmen plan, and even if he thinks it insane at first, he can see the potential, the rewards, he is that morally grey himself... but it all hinges on Peter dying, and that does it. It's not the 0.07 percent of the world population dying that's unacceptable, but Peter dying, and he just can't go there. So he walks out.
And then we get him finding his (temporary) dead brother, the unacceptable has happened, and everything else is pointless. That scene, with Nathan cradling Peter, it just kills me. So does the post resurrection scene, which is the physical reverse - they don't touch once, which is rare for the Petrellis, and you can see the shifting power dynamics here as well as Nathan letting his guard down verbally, with a conscious Peter. Love declarations when Peter is in a coma are one thing, but "I don't know who I am without you" when awake? And Peter, with a new zen, plays the role of walking conscience quite differently now: instead of "I want", you get "you have to, and you are".
Peter, however, is unaware that one pit of information makes a crucial difference here. "Lucky I can't die then." And there it is. Not when Linderman makes the suggestion, but THAT is when Nathan starts to fall for the Ozymandias plan. If he has the guarantee that Peter won't die, then getting to be President, new era, by the not stopping the death of 0.07 percent of the world population is acceptable.
The great thing about Nathan's characterisation is that you really can see him go both ways at this point, and like I said above, I suspect we will literaly see him go both ways on the show, first one, then (presumably, unless he dies in the finale, which I really don't want him to) the other. Whereas with all the other characters their decision would not be a question.
The symbol of the bloody shard when Nathan looks at it in the end, and uses it to open the painting Linderman send him: the shard as the cause of Peter's temporary death and the promise of his resurrection and survival both.
Nathan and Claire: I'm glad the way they're playing this, not as competition to Claire's bond to Mr. Bennet, who is her real father in all ways that count, but as something quite different, but also very interesting. He tries not to lie to her, and yet there is one big lie in what he says - not the promise of a family after the election but that what he looks at, the shard and the painting; he's not just sending her out of New York because of the reasons he gives but because of what is going to happen. I'm also reminded of his conversation with Niki about having to wear two faces, one for one's children and the real one, and the conversation Nathan and Niki had later, the day after: about wanting to be good. Not wanting to be the person in the mirror. Nathan, telling Claire he wants to be good, wants to be better than what he was, is sincere and is lying to both himself and her at the same time because at this very point he has started to believe that he can do that via first doing - or rather, permitting - something terrible.
I love this show.
Okay, that was awesome, and I'm so rewatching it as soon as I've typed my review and read what everyone else had to say, real life be dammed. I loved all the various plot threads here, though admittedly the Petrellis a bit more.
But first: Mr. Bennet shows that becoming a White Hat for the sake of his daughter has not reduced his intelligence and is so smart and capable and in charge when he's organizing his own jailbreak that I'm swooning. Also, Matt wisely recognizes that he needs to leave the planning to Bennet, and apparantly exploding the Bennet home has made Ted somewhat clearer in the head, too, so he listens to Matt and Bennet both. Yay for team jailbreak!
We didn't see the DL and Jessica scene in the previouslies before, but never mind, it was good we saw it now, because Jessica's "Im not sure" confirms my opinion that Jessica isn't actually a separate entity but that Niki, due to what happened to her and her actual twin sister at the hand of their father, did develop multiple personalities disorder. Also, Jessica standing her ground with Linderman and protecting Micah thankfully helped blurring the good/bad divide with her and Niki further, which I'm all for, and I think that now that Linderman has used Candace to get Micah, Jessica and Niki will work together voluntarily and will start to integrate.
Linderman: like I said, he clearly has read Alan Moore and thinks he's Ozymandias, or rather, that he can set up Nathan to be Ozymandias for him. Seriously, Kring and co. should consider paying Moore royalties, because the former League of Heroes with it all going sour? Check. Big catastrophe killing lots of people in NY turning out to be masterplan of former hero to achieve world peace? Check. I don't mind at all, if it's such a stylish homage. Plus of course we'll get not just one but two twists on the concept. Watchmen ends with Ozymandias having suceeded and the surviving heroes reluctantly agreeing not to expose him because otherwise everyone will have died in vain and the cold war (this comic was written in the early 80s) will be back with a vengeance.... but the last panel shows that the truth about Ozymandias will actually come out anyway. On Heroes, next week, it looks like we'll get the future where Linderman's plan did succeed, and it looks like it's the Heroes version of the Wishverse, with everyone evil or desperate or both (whoever visited a future where everyone was fine and dandy?); on the show proper, presumably something else will happen, and I can't wait to find out. Anyway, Linderman not as a I WANNA DESTROY/RULE THE WORLD type of villain but as a twisted messiah is of course far more interesting; we have Sylar already to be our psychopath. More about him in a moment, but first, Linderman and Nathan: great temptation scene. I'll get to Nathan's reaction there and later when I talk about the Petrellis, but here I want to say, the "you must bring all your first dates here" line from Nathan reminded me of how he asked Niki in Collision - after she told him her husband had left - whether it was for another woman or another man. For a presumably conservative politician, he's refreshingly non-repressed in this regard.
Linderman is now short of one painter delivering pictures, of course, and will have to show his future first dates other things. Isaac went out with dignity and courage, ordering his affairs through the episode, having meta conversations (no spoilers!) and using his abilities to the last to warn the others. Isaac, you could screw up terribly through your life, but the way you faced your imminent and cruel death was truly admirable. Rest in peace. (And was it me, or was there a hint he was satisfied that Sylar was now stuck with the precognition? Because you know, seeing the future? Not such a fun thing, as Isaac already knows and Sylar will probably find out.)
...but really, the heart and soul of this episode? OMG Petrellis and Claire. Wait, I also have to say something about Mohinder before I get to them, I guess; good for him to use the opportunity to knock out Sylar and save Peter from brain suckage, not so good for him that he's still pretty but dumb and invariably prone to trust the next villain to come along. Have fun working with the Company, Mohinder.
Sylar-Peter showdown, first round: really cool. Creative use of their various powers, and a promise of things to come.
...and now I really can't restrain myself any longer. PETRELLIS!
Angela Petrelli: got to show the whole spectrum from ruthless manipulator to wounded mother. Her argument to Claire made absolute sense and is probably true (which doesn't mean she's not using it manipulatively), and of course, oohhhhhh, such intriguing revelations. So Angela was probably in that league Linderman founded when young, along with the late Daddy Petrelli. What is her power? My current guess is shared/precognitive dreams, as that's the one Peter displays first chronologically (in the Six Months Ago flashback when Nathan and Heidi have the "accident"), before flying. And why didn't she tell either son - did she think they would never get active?
Petrelli family dysfunction observation the first: Angela, when alone with Peter, can show her grief in that beautiful breakdown moment. Later on, when Nathan has his own breakdown, she's unable to communicate with him other than through appealing to his inner politician, the ruthless survivor, and that just doesn't work there.
Claire: is quick to realize her grandmother is not a nice old lady but the Godmother herself who could teach Don Corleone a thing or two. Is so expecting rejection and breaks my heart with it, continues to be brave and smart, and you've got to love how they set up ages ago that Claire knows, but everyone else doesn't (except we the audience, of course), that something in hers or Peter's head stops the regeneration and means temporary death.
Nathan and Peter. Peter and Nathan. I was so glued on my viewscreen. During his temptation scene with Linderman, you can see that Nathan does understand where Linderman is getting at with the Watchmen plan, and even if he thinks it insane at first, he can see the potential, the rewards, he is that morally grey himself... but it all hinges on Peter dying, and that does it. It's not the 0.07 percent of the world population dying that's unacceptable, but Peter dying, and he just can't go there. So he walks out.
And then we get him finding his (temporary) dead brother, the unacceptable has happened, and everything else is pointless. That scene, with Nathan cradling Peter, it just kills me. So does the post resurrection scene, which is the physical reverse - they don't touch once, which is rare for the Petrellis, and you can see the shifting power dynamics here as well as Nathan letting his guard down verbally, with a conscious Peter. Love declarations when Peter is in a coma are one thing, but "I don't know who I am without you" when awake? And Peter, with a new zen, plays the role of walking conscience quite differently now: instead of "I want", you get "you have to, and you are".
Peter, however, is unaware that one pit of information makes a crucial difference here. "Lucky I can't die then." And there it is. Not when Linderman makes the suggestion, but THAT is when Nathan starts to fall for the Ozymandias plan. If he has the guarantee that Peter won't die, then getting to be President, new era, by the not stopping the death of 0.07 percent of the world population is acceptable.
The great thing about Nathan's characterisation is that you really can see him go both ways at this point, and like I said above, I suspect we will literaly see him go both ways on the show, first one, then (presumably, unless he dies in the finale, which I really don't want him to) the other. Whereas with all the other characters their decision would not be a question.
The symbol of the bloody shard when Nathan looks at it in the end, and uses it to open the painting Linderman send him: the shard as the cause of Peter's temporary death and the promise of his resurrection and survival both.
Nathan and Claire: I'm glad the way they're playing this, not as competition to Claire's bond to Mr. Bennet, who is her real father in all ways that count, but as something quite different, but also very interesting. He tries not to lie to her, and yet there is one big lie in what he says - not the promise of a family after the election but that what he looks at, the shard and the painting; he's not just sending her out of New York because of the reasons he gives but because of what is going to happen. I'm also reminded of his conversation with Niki about having to wear two faces, one for one's children and the real one, and the conversation Nathan and Niki had later, the day after: about wanting to be good. Not wanting to be the person in the mirror. Nathan, telling Claire he wants to be good, wants to be better than what he was, is sincere and is lying to both himself and her at the same time because at this very point he has started to believe that he can do that via first doing - or rather, permitting - something terrible.
I love this show.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 07:37 pm (UTC)Well, for one thing, we'll the the long term aftermath of the plan - in two variations, if I'm right - , which we did not see with Moore, so that is a twist already.
I'm sort of not seeing how either one of them is that unique. Next week's flash-forward AU episode seems to be the universe where Lindermann's plan works -- which isn't all that different from what happens in Watchmen. Even though it appears to be two years on, I'm having a hard time seeing what could be developed here that monumentally blows past Moore's original thesis.
And of course, eventually Hiro will jump back into our current timeline, and the cast will change the timestream so the nuclear bomb/Peter/Syler/Radiation Guy doesn't blow the world up. In which case, the Adrian/Lindermann 'blow up New York to save humanity from itself' plan is just another foiled plan by another foiled villian.
Now, what would be neat to me, is if the show just owned Moore's story out-and-out and did justice to it, by having the end of season reveal be that our Heroes don't manage to stop the nuclear attack. As opposed as I am to updating Watchmen itself (looking right at you, Zak Penn) for the 9/11 era, it would still be interesting to see it updated. And then, since the other storyline it is kind of taking from is "Days of Future Past", they could just own it by doing that and getting bleaker and bleaker until Future Hiro of the Soulpatch does his Kitty Pryde and jumps back to start the storyline. Unfortunately, that's an idea that's probably too bleak for American network TV.
I also think it's funny that we're so contra on these two fandoms, when we tend to generally agree on other things.
Random fly-by comment
Date: 2007-04-24 07:47 pm (UTC)Ahh, when X-Men was still coherent within one book and you didn't have to go broke to keep track of storylines... (I came in to X-Men at the beginning of the Proteus storyline, and spent oodles of money getting back-issues back to the start of the New X-Men -- stuck with it for a few years until they started spreading out into X-Everything and you had to buy 30 comics a month just to keep track of one storyline... These were some of my FAVOURITE books. Of course, the Byrne/Austin team didn't hurt, either!)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 08:03 pm (UTC)Zak Penn, I mean, Zack Snyder. Brain issues, obviously.But here's the thing.
Date: 2007-04-24 08:28 pm (UTC)After going through 9/11, we know now that Moore's original thesis was *wrong.* Moore assumed that Adrian's plan, though morally horrific, would *work* -- that it really would unite the world. We now know that a horrific event happening to New York City would actually cause America to start to go down the road to fascism, intensify inter-human conflicts, and give the war machine a green light to suck all the money out of human services.
*That's* the twist here. Linderman can't see the future. Hiro can. Linderman's plan won't save the world, it will destroy it -- but Linderman won't be convinced of that. And that's the important difference. Moore's sympathies were with Rorschach, but he believed that a morally horrifying disaster really could unite humanity and bring about world peace. At least here in the 21st century, that is not going to work, and I think that's going to be Tim Kring's point -- that you cannot accomplish good through evil. (Although, I *did* start to think, after Isaac's speech, that perhaps Sylar will actually be instrumental in saving the world... that *that* is the destiny Sylar is headed toward, that he'll die as a "hero". But Sylar saving the world can be part of a redemption arc -- that is, he is able to do good things *despite* the evil he has done, not because of it -- whereas Linderman totally believes that he must do something evil to accomplish good, and I think we'll find out next week that no good will come of it after all.)
Re: But here's the thing.
Date: 2007-04-24 08:46 pm (UTC)I just don't believe that Heroes has the bite to deal with those issues, and so in the final, the Heroes are going to stop New York from imploding. Which doesn't do anything for me either, since that could be any one of a number of comics written since the beginning of the 20th century. Thus why I think using the Watchmen plot is cheap -- because they're not actually doing anything real with it. So we find out that nothing good can be done through evil? Yawn.
It's probably a good move overall, because like I said: a.) network tv doesn't have that kind of muscle and b.) one Battlestar Galactica is enough for me. It just annoys me because I think that it not only stole from Moore, but then did it to misunderstand the entire point.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 10:25 pm (UTC)Witchblade did that; it annoyed the hell out of me.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 10:26 pm (UTC)