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Heroes Rewatch: Episode 1.10, Six Months Ago
There are best episodes, and then there are favourite episodes. These are not necessarily the same. The best episode of Heroes, season 1, is probably Company Man, followed by Five Years Gone. And I do admire these two, a lot. But my best beloved episode of the first season is neither of those. Depending on my mood, it’s either .07% or Six Months Ago, but most of the time Six Months Ago wins out. I just adore it, can endlessly rewatch it, and it captures such a lot of the best this show has to offer.
In terms of the overall first season narrative, Six Months Ago is a transitional episode, coming after the first mini arc – “Save the cheerleader” – has ended in the previous episode, Homecoming, and before the middle period of the season, which I’d call “Revelations” (Claire finds out about her adopted father’s true profession and her biological parents, Peter finds out he will turn into a human bomb and starts to look for a way to control his powers, Nathan starts to accept the superpowers world is the real deal, looks for a way to help Peter and finds out about Claire, Hiro has to rediscover his confidence and mission, etc.; this middle period ends with Parasite, with the last mini arc being “SaveNew York the world"). It also deepens all the characters, provides the audience with background knowledge for several of them and manages to destroy some theories while creating new ones. Oh, and it also manages that rare thing, a genuinenly affecting one-episode-romance that we know is doomed before it even begins.
Up until this episode, most people must have assumed that the solar eclipse in the pilot was what triggered the powers in our various characters to activate. (As we hadn’t met characters like Claude, Linderman or for that matter Meredith yet, all of whom clearly had access to their powers for years, long before the eclipse.) Now the eclipse clearly has some kind of significance in connection with superpowers – see also: the very last image of this season – but not exactly that one. In Six Months Ago, we see at least three characters manifest for the first time (Nathan, Claire and Niki), and three more arguably (Matt, Charlie and Peter; Charlie says “lately I’ve been able to remember everything”, and “lately” is a vague term in terms of time, and we don’t know for sure Peter’s dream of Nathan and Heidi is the first time he displays precog/visionary dreaming, but it’s a reasonable assumption; Matt very briefly catches a thought, and again, it’s reasonable to guess this didn’t happen before). Then there’s Eden, who clearly had had access to her power for years, and it’s obvious that the Haitian must have had it, too. Gabriel Gray/Sylar is a special case; I’ll get to him. Anyway, from this point onwards, we know that superpowers do not activate all with the same trigger, and that some of them have been around for a while.
The most obvious red thread, or perhaps “string” is the better word, considering, connecting this episode’s events to the previous ones and leading into the rest of the season is Hiro carrying out his attempt to save Charlie from her death-by-Sylar, which we saw starting in Seven Minutes to Midnight. It’s open to debate whether this causes the first timeline split on the show, as obviously Charlie and co-workers in Seven Minutes to Midnight did not recognize Hiro (until after Hiro goes back to the past and shows up in the photo with Charlie). (Though you could speculate Charlie might have done but, given that he told her about going back to the past etc., did not show it so all happened as it was supposed to.) Ironically given that Hiro jumps back six months instead of a day by accident, he demonstrates the most versatility with his powers we see from Hiro during the entire first season here in his various attempts to convince – and court – Charlie. It’s also the first time we’re not in Hiro’s pov when he uses his powers; we’re in Charlie’s, and we see how it looks from the outside, as he stops time to bring her flowers and serve her customers, and of course in one of the most beautiful images of the show to surround her with 1000 origami cranes. (Which means Hiro must have stopped time for a day at least and be the best crane folder ever.)
Charlie appears only here and in Seven Minutes to Midnight, but manages to be endearing, charming and cute without getting over the top in sweetness. Which is important as it allows the audience to feel her loss, just as Hiro does, to want him to save her, and to not regard her as a simple plot device to give Hiro some angst. What’s more, given that this is also the episode which presents us with Sylar’s background story, the switch from Sylar going from faceless bogeyman to character within the ensemble, her humanity serves to give Sylar’s victims a face. Most of the people we see Sylar kill within the first season come across as sympathetic, but Charlie is the one with the most screen time (except, of course, for Claire in the 5YG verse, and the shot of her getting killed there is almost identical to the one of Charlie getting killed in Seven Minutes to Midnight, down to their hairstyles). If you have a semi-regular character who is a serial killer and given some screentime and character development himself, as opposed to the majority of his victims, there is always the danger of a part of the audience going, ohhhh, cool, and relegate the people said serial killer destroys to mere cyphers. (Or to go, ooohhh, woobie, he must be redeemed!, but that’s another matter.) Your mileage may vary, but I think Heroes successfully avoids this trap by making Sylar’s victims real to the audience, most of all Charlie.
The revelation that caps the Charlie/Hiro storyline – that she is doomed to die in any case because of a blood clot in her brain – reminds me of an old show of mine, Highlander, and the Methos/Alexa storyline there. To the audience, it’s poignant; to Hiro, it’s a devastating blow. It also poses some interesting questions about the inevitability of fate in the Heroes verse that become central later on, in the last third of the season. Certain events – Charlie dying, someone exploding in New York – seem to be inevitable. However, the circumstances surrounding these events are not, and that in turn changes and influences other events. Charlie always dies, but through Hiro jumping back in time, her last months became different to her: “ Before you got here, I'd decided to give up. But you have made me feel more alive, and more full of joy than I could have ever imagined.” Similarly, the explosion happens in all the timelines we see in this show, but in the last one, because Nathan made a different decision than in the other ones, it does not happen on ground and thus doesn’t result in thousands of deaths and ensuing dystopia.
Six Months Ago is the first episode to present us with two characters we only got brief glimpses of before, the late Chandra Suresh and Gabriel Gray, aka Sylar. Their subplot is a dark mirror of the calling-of-the-hero archetype: Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, if you like. Young man in modest circumstances with a longing for better things meets older man (thought to be crazy by his peers) who calls him to a new, exciting world with special powers and heroic destiny, early set back, then success? All check. But oh, in what a twisted way. There is the even more obvious mirroring between Peter Petrelli and Gabriel Gray, both with comics-typical alliterative names, both so eager to hop on the special destiny/superpowers train, both reacting with frustration and fury when it appears to be out of reach and when the first superpowered person they’re in contact with (Nathan and the unfortunate Brian Davis, respectively) does not value what they have at all, both with dead fathers whom they didn’t get along with too well, taking to older mentor types offering to teach them access to their powers like ducks to water. Note that Gabriel/Sylar, after committing his first murder and having his first power, returns to Chandra Suresh (and won’t kill him for some months more); because Chandra has the map and the list, sure, but he also appears to want to show off in front of Suresh the Elder, wants Chandra to approve of him again, and with the whole season in mind, you get the sense that the Sylar/Mohinder road trip of doom was a pretty faithful recreation of what the dynamic with Chandra must have been like. As villains go, Linderman has a thing for Petrellis; Sylar has a thing for Sureshs.
In another mirroring and contrast, Chandra/Gabriel are contrasted with another mentor/protegé pair, to wit, Noah Bennet and Eden. And a fun contrast it is. Gabriel, when meeting Chandra, is harmless (though I think he’d have become a serial killer anyway, just with another trigger, but I concede that’s open to debate); Chandra is a harmless researcher on a quest, too. Meanwhile, Eden is a messed up and amoral menace, as evidenced by her scene with Matt, and our Mr. Bennet, of course, is a dedicated Company Man doing his usual job of abducting, tagging and blackmailing people. But Bennet gets through to Eden with his crisp “you need a purpose, or you’ll end up dead”, and she becomes someone who will kill herself rather than allow Sylar to damage more people by taking her gift; and Chandra, shall we say, blows it with Gabriel, not through malevolence but through the apparantly Suresh-inherent gift of misreading signals and losing patience early on. (Mohinder in Hiros, anyone?) Gabriel, of course, becomes Sylar and embarks on a career of serial killing.
So, what is his inherent gift, the one he didn’t have to steal? To know how things work, apparantly, which is why he is aware Chandra’s watch is a bit late and how to fix it, and how he can use every gift he steals so quickly and effortlessly, as opposed to Peter who has a hell of a time mastering them. Which means that the stealing of powers is not part of said inherent talent; Chandra speculating in front of Gabriel that the brain is the seat of everything apparantly gave him the idea that the eating of same will enable him to access those powers, too.
Speaking of mirroring and contrasts: Six Months Ago was also the episode that explained a lot about Niki. Starting with the revelation that there once was a real Jessica, her twin sister, who died at age 11 ( according to the gravestone). Parents in the Heroes verse usually are of the shady variety, especially the older generation, but Hal Sanders takes the price for most obviously evil, though not in an over the top was; no moustache twirling here – the fact he shows up to ease his conscience with some money rings pathetically real. Indeed, the one problem I have with the way the Hal and Niki/Jessica scenes play out is that Hal showing some irritated anger when seeing Micah has taken his expensive computer apart doesn’t actually warrant Niki’s and DL’s reaction (I’d have been irritated, too!), but I can fanwank that by declaring any anger displayed by Hal would have triggered the repressed memories in Niki, and that DL knew Hal was bad news to begin with. Given that Niki claims not to remember – as opposed to Jessica – DL’s awareness of this is interesting; note that in .07%, the one remark of his that really hits home with Jessica and makes her reconsider is when he says “hurting people for the fun of it – you didn’t turn into Jessica, you turned to your old man”.
So, what do we know of Hal and his daughters? He killed Jessica; he must have been physically abusive to both of them, because though Niki-as-Jessica claims she took every blow for Niki, Hal specifically speaks of “what I did to you” (i.e. Niki) in the earlier scenes. Was there also sexual abuse? The one thing you can interpret as a hint to this is the way Jessica shoves him on a bed and stuffs his cheque into his mouth, but alternatively, it doesn’t have to mean there was; physical violence strong enough to kill one of the girls is trauma enough for the multiple personality disorder in Niki to develop. Be it as it may, given that Hal has money – and Niki and DL don’t – I doubt it ever came to court; there must have been some hush up, though presumably Linderman found out. Speaking of Linderman, Niki initially deciding to invite Hal over because he could pay for Micah’s school is resonant of Linderman saying about Jessica that as “all women who have been abused by men, all she wants is money and security”; but both Hal and Linderman get their money rejected in a bloody way when it comes down to it.
Poor Matt is stuck with the least interesting storyline, again; indeed, the first of his scenes is more about Eden than it is about him. The second and third one do offer some character stuff for Matt – the fact that the reason he can’t pass his exams is because he doesn’t want to admit to his dylexia – but given with the meaty scenes everyone else gets, it’s not much. Still, it emphasizes both his desperate desire to make something of himself, the resentment of his postion in life and the vulnerability he has to other people’s regard; if you like, another seed for 5YG Parkman.
Of course, ambition to become a someone is something nearly all of these characters share in various degrees. Claire, in her scenes, might be aware that Jackie is something of a bitch about the unfortunate Lori Trammel, and dislike this in her (at this stage) friend. (Nice bit of continuity: this is the girl Brody badmouthed after date-raping her, as we found out earlier this season.) But she still wants that cheerleader position, she wants to be popular, she worked hard for it and at this point, she’s not above disregarding the outsiders in high school life – Lori and Zach, whom she hasn’t spoken with for years after being friends in their younger days. If this reminds you of a certain other character she turns out to be related to, you’re not wrong. Other Claire and Nathan parallels would be their initial attitude towards their powers – hide and repress.
“Hide and repress” takes on another meaning once you’ve seen just how Nathan manifested in Six Months Ago, of course. The Petrelli scenes in this episode are character and backstory gold, starting with the party at Peter’s apartment to celebrate his graduation from nursing school. (BTW, given Peter’s age, this means he probably studied something else first and then changed his mind.) There is an obvious contrast between Peter and Nathan as we meet them here and as we see them in the pilot of the show. For one thing, Peter is in high spirits; no one could accuse him of emo-ness here. He takes the shoes Nathan gives him as a joke between siblings, not an insult, he takes his mother’s excuse for his father’s absence in stride. It’s Nathan who is brooding about something, and the way Heidi and Peter respectively react says something about these relationships pre-accident, pre-guilt and pre-superpowers. Heidi goes for the good natured laughing him out of it approach, which he responds to, it works on the surfaces, but it also keeps the situation from being solved; Peter gets Nathan to tell him what is actually troubling him.
Then there are the implications about the family dynamics before Petrelli Senior dies we get from this same scene and the ensuing ones with the Petrellis. Angela makes an excuse for her husband not showing up at Peter’s party (he’s in Atlantic City with Linderman – incidentally, if true, this might mean he still was there by the time the “accident” happened and could have heard about it this way, which in turn could have been one reason for his death) but doesn’t deny he didn’t really try to come, simultanously demonstrating her own claim on Peter (“I always wanted a nurse in the family”). After Nathan confesses to Peter what is up with him – that the DA wants him to prosecute Linderman – Peter reacts with “you do that, Dad goes down, too”, but does not object to this course of action for that reason. His big objection is something else altogether: “You go after him, you're never going to forgive yourself. Ever.”
The fascinating thing is that speaking in terms of expectation and cliché, this isn’t what you think Peter will say; he’s the “good one” in this family, after all, and should encourage Nathan to do his duty as an ADA, put the greater good ahead of personal feelings, go after the mobster. In fact, given Nathan’s talk with Heidi later, I think this is what Nathan expected Peter to say, which is another indication that Nathan treats Peter as his external conscience. But instead, Peter discourages him, not so much because of what this will do to their father, but because of what he thinks this will do to Nathan.
(Incidentally, I think he’s right with his prediction here, because Nathan’s attitude towards his father once the man is dead – things like saying “Pa would have me committed for even considering this insanity” to Linderman (this would be the same father who was in cahoots with Linderman for years) – speak of a rosy-coloured view fed by guilt.)
Nathan’s response to what Peter does there – the kiss and the long, lingering look once he’s dancing with Heidi – is one of those Petrelli body language things open to endless interpretion fun. (No, not that way.) (Well, that way, too, if you’re so inclined.) (But I actually mean something else right now.) As I said, I think he expected Peter to tell him in no uncertain terms that going after Linderman and Dad was the right thing to do, and Peter doesn’t because he cares about Nathan too much. For which Nathan is simultanously grateful and resentful. Which leads us to the “accident” scene, and the conversation preceeding it. This is where it really pays off to watch the entire episode, instead of fast forwarding through one’s favourite scenes, as I confess I occasionally am prone to as much as anyone, because if you watch it entirely, the daytime scenes with Niki at Jessica’s grave and Hiro at the Burnt Toast Diner make it clear that at least a day passes between Peter’s party and Heidi and Nathan driving in nightly New York; they’re not returning from the party. (As wee_warrior pointed out to me, they are wearing different clothing, too.) Still, even given the day between, at first glance Nathan’s remarks about Peter do not seem to compute with the conversation he and Peter actually had.
HEIDI: He's selfless and empathic ...
NATHAN: He's self-centered and righteous. Self-righteous.
HEIDI: He's a hell of a lot nicer than you.
NATHAN: He can afford to be. He hasn't been under as much scrutiny. My dad did what he had to do to take care of this family and that's something that Peter is never gonna understand.
What Heidi doesn’t know – but we, the viewers, do – is that Peter actually hadn’t been either righteous or self righteous regarding his father and his mobster client. It had been Nathan who had said prosecuting Linderman – and thus going after their father, too – would “take the stink of the family name”, not Peter. Which brings me back to my earlier stated suspicion that Nathan’s reaction is based on the fact Peter was supposed to encourage him to do the right thing and be his external conscience, in other words, be righteous. There is a lot of projection going on here, both because Nathan is left with the sole responsibility for his conscience and the decision he knows he’ll have to make – going after their father –, and because of the way he sees himself as his father’s son. (So condemming his father is also condemming himself.)
Then, of course, the “accident” happens. Given that Linderman is later shown to have some investment in keeping Nathan alive, I doubt it was meant as more as a strong, though risky intimidation routine. (Alternatively, it could be that this was before Isaac painted Nathan-as-President, and for all we know the plan could have been for Petrelli Senior to go to the White House instead.) What it turns into, though, is Nathan’s power to fly manifesting for the first time and leading directly to the car crash that cripples his wife. In Nothing to Hide there were strong hints Nathan feels responsible for the accident, but at that point, the more obvious guess was the one the reporter makes – that he does because he was driving. What actually happens goes a long way to explaining the, to put it mildly, hostile reaction Nathan has throughout the pilot any time Peter brings up the word “flying”. I don’t think Nathan completely acknowledged to himself that was what happened later on; he probably spent the next six months telling himself he was misremembering because of the trauma of the accident, but wasn’t quite able to believe that, and in any event, that rationalization broke down when he watched Peter fall.
Again, symmetry and contrast: the first time Nathan flies, he’s flying away from someone he loves and thus inadvertendly contributes to her doom; the second time, he’s flying towards someone he loves and able to save him. The same gesture – the outstretched arm and hand – highlighted in both cases. And of course we see Peter echoing the same gesture directly when waking up from his dream.
(Sidenote about Peter dreaming: this opens up the vexed question as to from whom Peter absorbed this power from, with Charles Deveaux and Angela Petrelli as the two most popular guesses. Charles has the dream of ep.7 going for him, but against him that Peter doesn’t know him yet at this point in his life – the scene in How to stop an exploding man is clearly set shortly after Peter met both Deveaux for the first time; and we simply don’t know yet whether or not Angela has a power because she was so enigmatic when Claire asked her.)
The ensuing hospital scene between Nathan and Peter is another case of complicated Petrelli co-dependency. It’s one of the very few times on this show we see Nathan’s self control and restrained almost gone – almost, but not completely. He’s not able to tell Peter about the flying, obviously; he does tell him about the other car when Peter brings it up, point blank, but note this transition:
PETER: Nathan. (Peter puts his hands on Nathan’s shoulders.) Wasn't there?
NATHAN: Yeah. It was Linderman's guys. Must've found out about the DA's plans. It's my fault for even considering it, --
PETER: Hey! Look at me.
NATHAN: --taking them on.
PETER: This is—this is not your fault. This is Dad's fault, okay? And you know, you know that this is not gonna end.
NATHAN: If ... If I agree to take the DA's case, will you give a deposition?
(Peter puts his arms on Nathan’s shoulders.)
PETER: Yeah.
NATHAN: Against your father?
At which point the surgeon interrupts them, pulls Nathan aside to give him news about Heidi, presumably that the surgery saved her life but leaves her crippled, Nathan knocks the surgeon’s arm away when the man attempts a gesture and keeps looking at Peter through the glass separating them. So, what went on there earlier? First you have Peter changing his position on the prosecuting Linderman matter. Not necessarily because It Is The Right Thing To Do, but because of what just happened, which as far as they both know was an assassination attempt. Second, you have Nathan responding to this not just by declaring he’ll do it, but by asking Peter to be part of this. Leaving aside something I still have no idea of – why Peter giving a deposition would be of use in a case against Linderman and/or their father, unless Peter witnessed far more of the shady goings-on chez Petrelli than I think he could have done – the psychology of it makes sense for Nathan. If he’s about to break one loyalty (the one to his father), he wants confirmation of the other (between him and Peter). Given that the phrase “stab him in the back” is later used, allow me the Shakespearean excursion and let me point to the scene where Brutus after Caesar is dead in Julius Caesar makes everyone dip their hands in Caesar’s blood. Something like that. I don’t think Peter sees it that way, but imo Nathan sees what they are doing as metaphorical patricide, especially given that when Mr. Petrelli dies a short time later, he knows, but Peter does not until six months later, that it was suicide, not a heart attack.
In a way, it’s this which causes a shift to the state the relationship of the brothers is in at the point we meet them in Genesis. Flying and the true cause of Petrelli Senior’s death are just two of the secrets Nathan keeps from Peter from this point onwards; he also, as we later find out, went to the FBI, offering to take Linderman down, and didn’t tell this to Peter, either, which means he must have told Peter something else about going from intending to prosecute Linderman to accepting campaign contributions from him. Their father as an authority is gone; they’re no longer allies, they’re older brother and younger brother, divided by secrets and a lot of unresolved guilt. While the co-dependency continues and eventually pulls them back together; Peter can’t not push for Nathan sharing again, and Nathan can’t not respond.
Footnote: Quotes from the episode courtesy of this site.
In terms of the overall first season narrative, Six Months Ago is a transitional episode, coming after the first mini arc – “Save the cheerleader” – has ended in the previous episode, Homecoming, and before the middle period of the season, which I’d call “Revelations” (Claire finds out about her adopted father’s true profession and her biological parents, Peter finds out he will turn into a human bomb and starts to look for a way to control his powers, Nathan starts to accept the superpowers world is the real deal, looks for a way to help Peter and finds out about Claire, Hiro has to rediscover his confidence and mission, etc.; this middle period ends with Parasite, with the last mini arc being “Save
Up until this episode, most people must have assumed that the solar eclipse in the pilot was what triggered the powers in our various characters to activate. (As we hadn’t met characters like Claude, Linderman or for that matter Meredith yet, all of whom clearly had access to their powers for years, long before the eclipse.) Now the eclipse clearly has some kind of significance in connection with superpowers – see also: the very last image of this season – but not exactly that one. In Six Months Ago, we see at least three characters manifest for the first time (Nathan, Claire and Niki), and three more arguably (Matt, Charlie and Peter; Charlie says “lately I’ve been able to remember everything”, and “lately” is a vague term in terms of time, and we don’t know for sure Peter’s dream of Nathan and Heidi is the first time he displays precog/visionary dreaming, but it’s a reasonable assumption; Matt very briefly catches a thought, and again, it’s reasonable to guess this didn’t happen before). Then there’s Eden, who clearly had had access to her power for years, and it’s obvious that the Haitian must have had it, too. Gabriel Gray/Sylar is a special case; I’ll get to him. Anyway, from this point onwards, we know that superpowers do not activate all with the same trigger, and that some of them have been around for a while.
The most obvious red thread, or perhaps “string” is the better word, considering, connecting this episode’s events to the previous ones and leading into the rest of the season is Hiro carrying out his attempt to save Charlie from her death-by-Sylar, which we saw starting in Seven Minutes to Midnight. It’s open to debate whether this causes the first timeline split on the show, as obviously Charlie and co-workers in Seven Minutes to Midnight did not recognize Hiro (until after Hiro goes back to the past and shows up in the photo with Charlie). (Though you could speculate Charlie might have done but, given that he told her about going back to the past etc., did not show it so all happened as it was supposed to.) Ironically given that Hiro jumps back six months instead of a day by accident, he demonstrates the most versatility with his powers we see from Hiro during the entire first season here in his various attempts to convince – and court – Charlie. It’s also the first time we’re not in Hiro’s pov when he uses his powers; we’re in Charlie’s, and we see how it looks from the outside, as he stops time to bring her flowers and serve her customers, and of course in one of the most beautiful images of the show to surround her with 1000 origami cranes. (Which means Hiro must have stopped time for a day at least and be the best crane folder ever.)
Charlie appears only here and in Seven Minutes to Midnight, but manages to be endearing, charming and cute without getting over the top in sweetness. Which is important as it allows the audience to feel her loss, just as Hiro does, to want him to save her, and to not regard her as a simple plot device to give Hiro some angst. What’s more, given that this is also the episode which presents us with Sylar’s background story, the switch from Sylar going from faceless bogeyman to character within the ensemble, her humanity serves to give Sylar’s victims a face. Most of the people we see Sylar kill within the first season come across as sympathetic, but Charlie is the one with the most screen time (except, of course, for Claire in the 5YG verse, and the shot of her getting killed there is almost identical to the one of Charlie getting killed in Seven Minutes to Midnight, down to their hairstyles). If you have a semi-regular character who is a serial killer and given some screentime and character development himself, as opposed to the majority of his victims, there is always the danger of a part of the audience going, ohhhh, cool, and relegate the people said serial killer destroys to mere cyphers. (Or to go, ooohhh, woobie, he must be redeemed!, but that’s another matter.) Your mileage may vary, but I think Heroes successfully avoids this trap by making Sylar’s victims real to the audience, most of all Charlie.
The revelation that caps the Charlie/Hiro storyline – that she is doomed to die in any case because of a blood clot in her brain – reminds me of an old show of mine, Highlander, and the Methos/Alexa storyline there. To the audience, it’s poignant; to Hiro, it’s a devastating blow. It also poses some interesting questions about the inevitability of fate in the Heroes verse that become central later on, in the last third of the season. Certain events – Charlie dying, someone exploding in New York – seem to be inevitable. However, the circumstances surrounding these events are not, and that in turn changes and influences other events. Charlie always dies, but through Hiro jumping back in time, her last months became different to her: “ Before you got here, I'd decided to give up. But you have made me feel more alive, and more full of joy than I could have ever imagined.” Similarly, the explosion happens in all the timelines we see in this show, but in the last one, because Nathan made a different decision than in the other ones, it does not happen on ground and thus doesn’t result in thousands of deaths and ensuing dystopia.
Six Months Ago is the first episode to present us with two characters we only got brief glimpses of before, the late Chandra Suresh and Gabriel Gray, aka Sylar. Their subplot is a dark mirror of the calling-of-the-hero archetype: Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, if you like. Young man in modest circumstances with a longing for better things meets older man (thought to be crazy by his peers) who calls him to a new, exciting world with special powers and heroic destiny, early set back, then success? All check. But oh, in what a twisted way. There is the even more obvious mirroring between Peter Petrelli and Gabriel Gray, both with comics-typical alliterative names, both so eager to hop on the special destiny/superpowers train, both reacting with frustration and fury when it appears to be out of reach and when the first superpowered person they’re in contact with (Nathan and the unfortunate Brian Davis, respectively) does not value what they have at all, both with dead fathers whom they didn’t get along with too well, taking to older mentor types offering to teach them access to their powers like ducks to water. Note that Gabriel/Sylar, after committing his first murder and having his first power, returns to Chandra Suresh (and won’t kill him for some months more); because Chandra has the map and the list, sure, but he also appears to want to show off in front of Suresh the Elder, wants Chandra to approve of him again, and with the whole season in mind, you get the sense that the Sylar/Mohinder road trip of doom was a pretty faithful recreation of what the dynamic with Chandra must have been like. As villains go, Linderman has a thing for Petrellis; Sylar has a thing for Sureshs.
In another mirroring and contrast, Chandra/Gabriel are contrasted with another mentor/protegé pair, to wit, Noah Bennet and Eden. And a fun contrast it is. Gabriel, when meeting Chandra, is harmless (though I think he’d have become a serial killer anyway, just with another trigger, but I concede that’s open to debate); Chandra is a harmless researcher on a quest, too. Meanwhile, Eden is a messed up and amoral menace, as evidenced by her scene with Matt, and our Mr. Bennet, of course, is a dedicated Company Man doing his usual job of abducting, tagging and blackmailing people. But Bennet gets through to Eden with his crisp “you need a purpose, or you’ll end up dead”, and she becomes someone who will kill herself rather than allow Sylar to damage more people by taking her gift; and Chandra, shall we say, blows it with Gabriel, not through malevolence but through the apparantly Suresh-inherent gift of misreading signals and losing patience early on. (Mohinder in Hiros, anyone?) Gabriel, of course, becomes Sylar and embarks on a career of serial killing.
So, what is his inherent gift, the one he didn’t have to steal? To know how things work, apparantly, which is why he is aware Chandra’s watch is a bit late and how to fix it, and how he can use every gift he steals so quickly and effortlessly, as opposed to Peter who has a hell of a time mastering them. Which means that the stealing of powers is not part of said inherent talent; Chandra speculating in front of Gabriel that the brain is the seat of everything apparantly gave him the idea that the eating of same will enable him to access those powers, too.
Speaking of mirroring and contrasts: Six Months Ago was also the episode that explained a lot about Niki. Starting with the revelation that there once was a real Jessica, her twin sister, who died at age 11 ( according to the gravestone). Parents in the Heroes verse usually are of the shady variety, especially the older generation, but Hal Sanders takes the price for most obviously evil, though not in an over the top was; no moustache twirling here – the fact he shows up to ease his conscience with some money rings pathetically real. Indeed, the one problem I have with the way the Hal and Niki/Jessica scenes play out is that Hal showing some irritated anger when seeing Micah has taken his expensive computer apart doesn’t actually warrant Niki’s and DL’s reaction (I’d have been irritated, too!), but I can fanwank that by declaring any anger displayed by Hal would have triggered the repressed memories in Niki, and that DL knew Hal was bad news to begin with. Given that Niki claims not to remember – as opposed to Jessica – DL’s awareness of this is interesting; note that in .07%, the one remark of his that really hits home with Jessica and makes her reconsider is when he says “hurting people for the fun of it – you didn’t turn into Jessica, you turned to your old man”.
So, what do we know of Hal and his daughters? He killed Jessica; he must have been physically abusive to both of them, because though Niki-as-Jessica claims she took every blow for Niki, Hal specifically speaks of “what I did to you” (i.e. Niki) in the earlier scenes. Was there also sexual abuse? The one thing you can interpret as a hint to this is the way Jessica shoves him on a bed and stuffs his cheque into his mouth, but alternatively, it doesn’t have to mean there was; physical violence strong enough to kill one of the girls is trauma enough for the multiple personality disorder in Niki to develop. Be it as it may, given that Hal has money – and Niki and DL don’t – I doubt it ever came to court; there must have been some hush up, though presumably Linderman found out. Speaking of Linderman, Niki initially deciding to invite Hal over because he could pay for Micah’s school is resonant of Linderman saying about Jessica that as “all women who have been abused by men, all she wants is money and security”; but both Hal and Linderman get their money rejected in a bloody way when it comes down to it.
Poor Matt is stuck with the least interesting storyline, again; indeed, the first of his scenes is more about Eden than it is about him. The second and third one do offer some character stuff for Matt – the fact that the reason he can’t pass his exams is because he doesn’t want to admit to his dylexia – but given with the meaty scenes everyone else gets, it’s not much. Still, it emphasizes both his desperate desire to make something of himself, the resentment of his postion in life and the vulnerability he has to other people’s regard; if you like, another seed for 5YG Parkman.
Of course, ambition to become a someone is something nearly all of these characters share in various degrees. Claire, in her scenes, might be aware that Jackie is something of a bitch about the unfortunate Lori Trammel, and dislike this in her (at this stage) friend. (Nice bit of continuity: this is the girl Brody badmouthed after date-raping her, as we found out earlier this season.) But she still wants that cheerleader position, she wants to be popular, she worked hard for it and at this point, she’s not above disregarding the outsiders in high school life – Lori and Zach, whom she hasn’t spoken with for years after being friends in their younger days. If this reminds you of a certain other character she turns out to be related to, you’re not wrong. Other Claire and Nathan parallels would be their initial attitude towards their powers – hide and repress.
“Hide and repress” takes on another meaning once you’ve seen just how Nathan manifested in Six Months Ago, of course. The Petrelli scenes in this episode are character and backstory gold, starting with the party at Peter’s apartment to celebrate his graduation from nursing school. (BTW, given Peter’s age, this means he probably studied something else first and then changed his mind.) There is an obvious contrast between Peter and Nathan as we meet them here and as we see them in the pilot of the show. For one thing, Peter is in high spirits; no one could accuse him of emo-ness here. He takes the shoes Nathan gives him as a joke between siblings, not an insult, he takes his mother’s excuse for his father’s absence in stride. It’s Nathan who is brooding about something, and the way Heidi and Peter respectively react says something about these relationships pre-accident, pre-guilt and pre-superpowers. Heidi goes for the good natured laughing him out of it approach, which he responds to, it works on the surfaces, but it also keeps the situation from being solved; Peter gets Nathan to tell him what is actually troubling him.
Then there are the implications about the family dynamics before Petrelli Senior dies we get from this same scene and the ensuing ones with the Petrellis. Angela makes an excuse for her husband not showing up at Peter’s party (he’s in Atlantic City with Linderman – incidentally, if true, this might mean he still was there by the time the “accident” happened and could have heard about it this way, which in turn could have been one reason for his death) but doesn’t deny he didn’t really try to come, simultanously demonstrating her own claim on Peter (“I always wanted a nurse in the family”). After Nathan confesses to Peter what is up with him – that the DA wants him to prosecute Linderman – Peter reacts with “you do that, Dad goes down, too”, but does not object to this course of action for that reason. His big objection is something else altogether: “You go after him, you're never going to forgive yourself. Ever.”
The fascinating thing is that speaking in terms of expectation and cliché, this isn’t what you think Peter will say; he’s the “good one” in this family, after all, and should encourage Nathan to do his duty as an ADA, put the greater good ahead of personal feelings, go after the mobster. In fact, given Nathan’s talk with Heidi later, I think this is what Nathan expected Peter to say, which is another indication that Nathan treats Peter as his external conscience. But instead, Peter discourages him, not so much because of what this will do to their father, but because of what he thinks this will do to Nathan.
(Incidentally, I think he’s right with his prediction here, because Nathan’s attitude towards his father once the man is dead – things like saying “Pa would have me committed for even considering this insanity” to Linderman (this would be the same father who was in cahoots with Linderman for years) – speak of a rosy-coloured view fed by guilt.)
Nathan’s response to what Peter does there – the kiss and the long, lingering look once he’s dancing with Heidi – is one of those Petrelli body language things open to endless interpretion fun. (No, not that way.) (Well, that way, too, if you’re so inclined.) (But I actually mean something else right now.) As I said, I think he expected Peter to tell him in no uncertain terms that going after Linderman and Dad was the right thing to do, and Peter doesn’t because he cares about Nathan too much. For which Nathan is simultanously grateful and resentful. Which leads us to the “accident” scene, and the conversation preceeding it. This is where it really pays off to watch the entire episode, instead of fast forwarding through one’s favourite scenes, as I confess I occasionally am prone to as much as anyone, because if you watch it entirely, the daytime scenes with Niki at Jessica’s grave and Hiro at the Burnt Toast Diner make it clear that at least a day passes between Peter’s party and Heidi and Nathan driving in nightly New York; they’re not returning from the party. (As wee_warrior pointed out to me, they are wearing different clothing, too.) Still, even given the day between, at first glance Nathan’s remarks about Peter do not seem to compute with the conversation he and Peter actually had.
HEIDI: He's selfless and empathic ...
NATHAN: He's self-centered and righteous. Self-righteous.
HEIDI: He's a hell of a lot nicer than you.
NATHAN: He can afford to be. He hasn't been under as much scrutiny. My dad did what he had to do to take care of this family and that's something that Peter is never gonna understand.
What Heidi doesn’t know – but we, the viewers, do – is that Peter actually hadn’t been either righteous or self righteous regarding his father and his mobster client. It had been Nathan who had said prosecuting Linderman – and thus going after their father, too – would “take the stink of the family name”, not Peter. Which brings me back to my earlier stated suspicion that Nathan’s reaction is based on the fact Peter was supposed to encourage him to do the right thing and be his external conscience, in other words, be righteous. There is a lot of projection going on here, both because Nathan is left with the sole responsibility for his conscience and the decision he knows he’ll have to make – going after their father –, and because of the way he sees himself as his father’s son. (So condemming his father is also condemming himself.)
Then, of course, the “accident” happens. Given that Linderman is later shown to have some investment in keeping Nathan alive, I doubt it was meant as more as a strong, though risky intimidation routine. (Alternatively, it could be that this was before Isaac painted Nathan-as-President, and for all we know the plan could have been for Petrelli Senior to go to the White House instead.) What it turns into, though, is Nathan’s power to fly manifesting for the first time and leading directly to the car crash that cripples his wife. In Nothing to Hide there were strong hints Nathan feels responsible for the accident, but at that point, the more obvious guess was the one the reporter makes – that he does because he was driving. What actually happens goes a long way to explaining the, to put it mildly, hostile reaction Nathan has throughout the pilot any time Peter brings up the word “flying”. I don’t think Nathan completely acknowledged to himself that was what happened later on; he probably spent the next six months telling himself he was misremembering because of the trauma of the accident, but wasn’t quite able to believe that, and in any event, that rationalization broke down when he watched Peter fall.
Again, symmetry and contrast: the first time Nathan flies, he’s flying away from someone he loves and thus inadvertendly contributes to her doom; the second time, he’s flying towards someone he loves and able to save him. The same gesture – the outstretched arm and hand – highlighted in both cases. And of course we see Peter echoing the same gesture directly when waking up from his dream.
(Sidenote about Peter dreaming: this opens up the vexed question as to from whom Peter absorbed this power from, with Charles Deveaux and Angela Petrelli as the two most popular guesses. Charles has the dream of ep.7 going for him, but against him that Peter doesn’t know him yet at this point in his life – the scene in How to stop an exploding man is clearly set shortly after Peter met both Deveaux for the first time; and we simply don’t know yet whether or not Angela has a power because she was so enigmatic when Claire asked her.)
The ensuing hospital scene between Nathan and Peter is another case of complicated Petrelli co-dependency. It’s one of the very few times on this show we see Nathan’s self control and restrained almost gone – almost, but not completely. He’s not able to tell Peter about the flying, obviously; he does tell him about the other car when Peter brings it up, point blank, but note this transition:
PETER: Nathan. (Peter puts his hands on Nathan’s shoulders.) Wasn't there?
NATHAN: Yeah. It was Linderman's guys. Must've found out about the DA's plans. It's my fault for even considering it, --
PETER: Hey! Look at me.
NATHAN: --taking them on.
PETER: This is—this is not your fault. This is Dad's fault, okay? And you know, you know that this is not gonna end.
NATHAN: If ... If I agree to take the DA's case, will you give a deposition?
(Peter puts his arms on Nathan’s shoulders.)
PETER: Yeah.
NATHAN: Against your father?
At which point the surgeon interrupts them, pulls Nathan aside to give him news about Heidi, presumably that the surgery saved her life but leaves her crippled, Nathan knocks the surgeon’s arm away when the man attempts a gesture and keeps looking at Peter through the glass separating them. So, what went on there earlier? First you have Peter changing his position on the prosecuting Linderman matter. Not necessarily because It Is The Right Thing To Do, but because of what just happened, which as far as they both know was an assassination attempt. Second, you have Nathan responding to this not just by declaring he’ll do it, but by asking Peter to be part of this. Leaving aside something I still have no idea of – why Peter giving a deposition would be of use in a case against Linderman and/or their father, unless Peter witnessed far more of the shady goings-on chez Petrelli than I think he could have done – the psychology of it makes sense for Nathan. If he’s about to break one loyalty (the one to his father), he wants confirmation of the other (between him and Peter). Given that the phrase “stab him in the back” is later used, allow me the Shakespearean excursion and let me point to the scene where Brutus after Caesar is dead in Julius Caesar makes everyone dip their hands in Caesar’s blood. Something like that. I don’t think Peter sees it that way, but imo Nathan sees what they are doing as metaphorical patricide, especially given that when Mr. Petrelli dies a short time later, he knows, but Peter does not until six months later, that it was suicide, not a heart attack.
In a way, it’s this which causes a shift to the state the relationship of the brothers is in at the point we meet them in Genesis. Flying and the true cause of Petrelli Senior’s death are just two of the secrets Nathan keeps from Peter from this point onwards; he also, as we later find out, went to the FBI, offering to take Linderman down, and didn’t tell this to Peter, either, which means he must have told Peter something else about going from intending to prosecute Linderman to accepting campaign contributions from him. Their father as an authority is gone; they’re no longer allies, they’re older brother and younger brother, divided by secrets and a lot of unresolved guilt. While the co-dependency continues and eventually pulls them back together; Peter can’t not push for Nathan sharing again, and Nathan can’t not respond.
Footnote: Quotes from the episode courtesy of this site.
Part One
[Completely Random Aside]For me, it's between Hiros and Parasite, because I am nothing if not desperately obvious. The latter especially is an episode I bow down to, since it is not only well-directed, well-acted, and basically all about Nathan, it is also the very first filmed script of the writer, who was Kring's assistant before this. So. much. envy. [/Completely Random Aside]
Oh, and it also manages that rare thing, a genuinenly affecting one-episode-romance that we know is doomed before it even begins.
I'm not particularly attune to on-screen romances, but this one was very well done and just sweet enough without ever being sappy. Adding to that Charlie was just a genuinely likable character, without becoming too unrealistic. And while her death was very meaningful for Hiro's development as a character, it never felt gratuitous.
(Though you could speculate Charlie might have done but, given that he told her about going back to the past etc., did not show it so all happened as it was supposed to.)
That still wouldn't explain why the diner's owner didn't recognize him, and after all she would have hired him (and she later told Ando that he had suddenly "disappeared" a while ago when he found the photo). Then again the way the show deals with time travel and Hiro in relation to time travel specifically definitely makes my brain hurt.
Your mileage may vary, but I think Heroes successfully avoids this trap by making Sylar’s victims real to the audience, most of all Charlie.
I think they might do it a little too well, actually. I liked all of his victims, right down to poor Brian Davis and Zane Taylor, and especially Dale - these definitely were the "ordinary people with extraordinary powers" the show usually boasts to be about (and clearly, it's not - it's about drama show characters reacting to the fact that they have superpowers. Not that that is a bad thing by any stretch, on the contrary. :) ) and the fact that Sylar killed them makes him pretty much irredeemable in my eyes, no matter how bad his childhood may have been.
I think a lot of this has to do with authorial intention clearly - I can emphasize with Dexter Morgan to a pretty large degree and I felt comparatively sorry for Brian, as well - without excusing what he did, or not feeling horrible when he attacked Angel, for instance - but I think the Code and the fact that most of Dexter's victims are killers themselves is a very necessary crutch for the show to achieve this. Of course, Dexter is much more ambiguous in its exploration of the characters to begin with, while Sylar is very much a horrorfilm villain of black-and-white colouring.
It also poses some interesting questions about the inevitability of fate in the Heroes verse that become central later on, in the last third of the season. Certain events – Charlie dying, someone exploding in New York – seem to be inevitable.
Makes you wonder what is, and what isn't inevitable, doesn't it? We know for certain that Isaac's paintings don't depict "the future," because he always painted the explosion on ground level - as did Sylar. Does that mean that Sylar will become President either way, or that Nathan will stand in the Oval Office, folding his arms in an uncomfortable position, at some point? Or doesn't that matter either way, because like the explosion on the ground, it was only a possible outcome of Isaac's timeline?
Same goes for deaths: while Charlie's death was inevitable, Ando's wasn't, and apparently, the same goes for Micah. Does that mean Hiro could effectively save Charlie if he got her to a brain surgeon in 2005?
Re: Part One
And while her death was very meaningful for Hiro's development as a character, it never felt gratuitous.
Yes. In that sense, I thought it worked far better than Simone's death. (Which arguably was redundant regarding Peter, though it was crucial for making Isaac give up on life. In either case, it had nothing to do with Simone herself.)
I think a lot of this has to do with authorial intention clearly - I can emphasize with Dexter Morgan to a pretty large degree and I felt comparatively sorry for Brian, as well - without excusing what he did, or not feeling horrible when he attacked Angel, for instance - but I think the Code and the fact that most of Dexter's victims are killers themselves is a very necessary crutch for the show to achieve this. Of course, Dexter is much more ambiguous in its exploration of the characters to begin with, while Sylar is very much a horrorfilm villain of black-and-white colouring.
True. I think the show - Dexter, that is - is very aware of this; if, for example, Dexter would have killed Paul - who was a threat/rival, but not a murderer - it would have taken that step of making murder the easy way out and disregarding the impact. Also agreed on Brian/Rudy; one feels sorry for the child he was, but given we're far more invested in not only Angel but Deb, and his one surviving and amputated victim Tony is presented as extremely likeable, we never lose sight of what he is, or do not want him stopped in one way or the other.
Same goes for deaths: while Charlie's death was inevitable, Ando's wasn't, and apparently, the same goes for Micah. Does that mean Hiro could effectively save Charlie if he got her to a brain surgeon in 2005?
Possible, and I've seen fanfic playing with that concept, but I'd like to play devil's advocate and say we don't know yet whether the Reaper won't come for Micah and Ando anyway, in another form. (I don't think so, but we don't know yet.)
Re: Part One
...of course, we then consequently have to assume that by the end of Season 5, all of the characters except for Sylar, Peter and Niki are dead. On the other hand, we can't be sure that the time of death has any real meaning, since Jackie presumably stayed alive in the first timeline.
I do agree with you that we don't know yet, but I think the beauty is - we can't be sure. (Leaving meta firmly aside, because I am reasonably sure they won't kill an eleven-year-old kid.)