Heroes The Hard Part

[selenak]

Firstly, much Hiro love. Very much Hiro love, and the fact he noticed Future!Hiro got too used to the killing settles a minor debate as to whether or not the authorial intention last week was just for the audience to go "ooooh, cool!" on that note, or not. Hiro not wanting to kill a man who seeks forgiveness makes him the anti-Hamlet; Hamlet didn't want to off Uncle Claudius while Claudius was repenting, either, but he didn't want to because there was a chance Claudius might be genuine and, if dying in an effort at redemption, would end up in heaven and in hell. Hiro does want Sylar to redeem himself.

(Meanwhile, Ando, not surprisingly, does not want to die. Loved his objection and revelation to Hiro, too.)

Mind you, I actually was more of the Hamlet persuasion, in that I didn't want Redeemed!Sylar, either. I do like how the show played it, and the phone call to Mohinder of course was one more confirmation that the Pretty But In This Week Not So Dumb one is Sylar's grand passion after killing. Mrs. Gray was neither an angel nor Mrs. Bates, two extremes I was worried about when hearing about the Sylar-visits-his-mom plot line from the tv guide summary; and the scene where Gabriel/Sylar created a snowglobe environment for her going from beautiful to horror was perfection.

Speaking of snowglobes: Rosebud, Charles Foster Kane, a man who did in the end not become President, and whose mother was, like Mrs. Petrelli and Mrs. Gray, somewhat on the ambitious side. I love my cinematic allusions.

Sidenote: this show has it in for mothers, though. Mrs. Bennet is loving but flaky due to numerous mindwipes and MIA since Parasite, Mrs. Gray said "you're special" once too often and got matricided, and more about Angela Petrelli in a moment. Which leaves Jessica/Niki as the most positive mother of the episode. Well, except Heidi, but we only saw a brief glimpse of her, so that doesn't count.

Mohinder finally isn't a sucker for the next bad guy any more and plays along with them knowingly, and using his brain. Pairing him up with a little girl throughout the episode also helps, a lot. Question: if Molly is the new tracking system, how does this solve the problem of the old one - most of the specials (save Claire, Nathan and Peter) are already tagged?

Mr. Bennet's reunion with Claire: awwwwwwww. Wonderful.

And now for the House of Dysfunctional, because much as I like the other characters, I do love the Petrellis best (well, them and Hiro). This is so shaping up into a battle of the generations, with Peter and Claire on the one side, Angela Petrelli and Linderman (and possibly Mr. Nakamura) on the other, and Nathan as the wild card in between, which also fits with his age. It's also shaping up into a battle of "who is right about Nathan?" harking right back to the pilot, where Mrs. Petrelli gives Peter the "he doesn't love you" speech; in The Hard Part, you have Claire asking "why do you always run back to him?" and Peter giving the same answer he did then - "he's my brother". Angela being a part of the Ozymandias plan was something of a surprise, but it doesn't go against what we know, and it does fit with her idea of Nathan, which isn't a son or a person as much as the fulfilllment of ambitions. The instrument, it seems, to bring utopia, which explains why she was always so hell-bent on getting him elected despite having a frosty relationship with him at best. (Now, Peter is her son, so I want more clarity on whether she knows Peter is first candidate for the exploding man, or whether she just knows one is about to go off.) She doesn't want or need to see him as someone else, hence also her words to Nathan in the Peter-is-dead-scene in .07. Peter, on the other hand, might or might not trust his brother too much, but he sees him as someone he loves first and foremost. In addition to the clear parallelizing of the two sons told they can be Presidents by their mothers in this episode, Nathan and Sylar, you have the juxtaposition of Angela on the one and Peter on the other in, shall we say, the morality play of Nathan Petrelli's soul. Claire I'd say is the observer or jury in that one, pointing out to Peter things like Nathan talking to Thompson, but also not yet completely convinced of Nathan's position the way Angela is.

Speaking of Claire and Nathan: her watching Heidi's arrival with the two boys was heartbreaking. I'm not sure she wants Nathan to treat her like Simon and Monty - Mr. Bennet is her dad, and it's him she refers to as "Dad" throughout the episode long before their reunion at the end - but it still has to hurt to see that he can be someone's father, just not hers. On the a bit less painful side of things, Nathan's awkward remark on her bravery (for someone professionally good at smoothtalking people, Nathan is really inhibited around Claire, though I think that's actually better than if he could pretend ease that can't exist between them right now) and her earlier reaction to Peter revealing Nathan can fly were terrific little character moments.

So, at the end at the episode, we have Peter in the suit he wears in the vision, Ted, glowing hands, Claire with a gun, Sylar having had his vision of the Five Years Gone future with himself as President, Nathan about to leave his campaign headquarters - all the players assembled in New York. It's going to be a looong week.

Oh, and another thing: can we stop calling Candice a shapeshifter now? It's clear her power is creating illusions (as was evidenced when she didn't just fake being Simone but hid the real Simone's dead body in Parasite), not actually change her form, and what happens to Micah in this episode is a great illustration of that.