Heroes 2.01 Four Months Later

[selenak]

wee_warrior is my hero. She knows why. Also, I was going to try at least to sleep for some hours before writing this, but never mind sleep, I'm too keyed up anyway. Oh, show o' mine. You're back.



A very good set up episode with a lot of unsolved mysteries, as befits a season start, and some answers no one in fanfic or otherwise has expected. (I.e. Claire calling Nathan. I'm going to squee about that scene later, though.) And the much critisized casting of David Anders as a Japanese hero is, indeed, as promised, a plot point. Now, the light-hearted version would be Hiro teaching Kensei how to be a hero, i.e. be the Luke Skywalker to his Han Solo, with Yaeko the swordmaster's daughter as Leia, but given Kensei's banner, the symbol of the company and the black spot, err, red symbol on the photos, I'm going to make an educated and unspoiled guess and postulate that

a) Hiro ends up becoming the "good" part of Takeo Kensei, i.e. he'll do the actual heroics before returning to the present
b) Meanwhile, David Anders' character will due to Hiro's actions in the past survive when he's supposed to die in feudal Japan and will end up as one of the original founding members of the Company, since I also think
c) His power is similar or identical to Claire's - self-healing and/or resulting immortality (unless his head gets blown off or otherwise removed). He's also the person Kaito sees at the end, and his method of killing Kaito is something he can survive.
d) This will result in a major angst fest for poor Hiro once he makes it back, and lead to Hiro's big duel of the season (as he's going to learn more sword fighting in feudal Japan, rather obviously, given there's a swordmaster's daughter and a swordmaster to be rescued around).

Hiro is his adorable self, and all the little touches - putting his glasses back on once he sees the very white and very blue eyed man supposed to be Kensei, calling him a gajin - are much appreciated. I notice his phrasing - "this is going to be much work", and all the appeals to Kensei; Hiro doesn't cast himself as the hero on a quest any longer, which he did in s1, he just wants to repair the damage. Oh, Hiro. *hugs him*

Meanwhile, Ando is on coffee bringing terms with Kaito Nakamura and being seen as a loyal friend of the family. Though I must say, I thought Kaito sending him away to get a sword made me say "Ando, I can't believe you'd fall for that" as it screamed "go so I can get killed without endangering you". Where is sensible Kimiko, I ask? Presumably leading the company (not that one) as someone has to, and she's good at it.

The Bennets undercover in suburbia: is being played for a mixture of dark humour and low key drama going on underneath, and of course Claire and Noah have already started with the bad habit of secret keeping again. (Not only am I pretty sure Noah didn't tell anyone he's still working on bringing the company down and has added Mohinder to Matt as his recruits, but I'm also 100% sure Claire didn't mention her phone calls to Nathan, either.) I'm in two minds about Sandra - the look when Noah took his phonecall is the only indication we have she is aware of the past and shares the general concern for the present; otherwise it's back to her early s1 self, which makes me wonder whether our HRG hasn't done something to her again. I mean, he wouldn't now. Would he? (That's the problem of a man mindwiping his wife, no matter what his reasons were.) Otoh, liked the grossed out look between Lyle and Claire, which was so sibling-esque. I swear, Lyle and Claire are the only functional non-angsty siblings on this show, and they of course are not biologically related, as opposed to certain other examples.

Speaking of which: so, among our newbies we have these siblings where one has a destructive power and is afraid of hurting people and the other is assuming the protective role; also, they're mistaken for a couple. I'm just saying. Okay, without kidding now, Maya and Alejandro are obvious parallels (and no, not just to Peter and Nathan, also to Niki and Jessica, in their way), though I doubt Alejandro will be with us for much longer; he looks like a redshirt designed to generate some spectacular power display of a grief-crazed Maya to me.

The other newbies: what's his name who thought he was recruiting Mohinder but was really played by Mohinder and Bennet seems to be the new face of the Company, given that Thompson is dead and HRG switched sides, and has the quiet but imposing thing down pat so far. Also, his power is indeed very useful (more than the melting thing Sylar killed the unfortunate Zane Taylor for). As for "Kensei", David Anders is great fun. I'm not actually a Sark fangirl (couldn't understand his popularity in s1, thought he was entertaining but nowhere as interesting als the First Gen spies in s2, really wished they hadn't made him a regular in s3 where there was far too much of him, and found to my amazement I actually liked him in s4 and s5 where he was used sparingly and well; also, "the beautiful man is dying" will forever make me giggle), but I knew Anders could act, and he's obviously having fun here. Good for him and us. If he's indeed being villanous in the present, I'm looking forward to finding out whether he can bring on the menace; that was something Sark was distinctly lacking in, even when killing his bio dad or torturing Vaughn.

And now back to Claire and on to my darling Petrellis, who are more dysfunctional than ever. As I said: that phonecall to Nathan? Never expected it, nor did anyone else I can recall, but loved, loved, loved it. All the time, you see Claire trying to fit in, managing to control herself better than Noah in the end (yes, it was a cool scene, but also a reckless and potentially stupid move, if he really wants to remain below the radar), playing by the rules, never mentioning last years events once (it's HRG who brings them up, not Claire)... and then she makes that call. Which is obviously not the first one, given by the way they talk, the fact he recognizes her phone number at once and the fact she has his. I loved that scene to bits for so many reasons. That she calls him. That she needs to talk, not just about Peter but about everything, the unreality of her new life. The paradox that although he's totally broken and breaks off the conversation, there is a raw reality in the way he talks to her which wasn't there in their few burdened conversations near the end of s1. I always wondered what Claire actually wanted Nathan to be for her, you know; since the father role is already occupied by Noah, and the friend role by Peter (and before him Zach). But she wants him to be something, and given both his current condition and the fact he didn't raise her and hence never got to create a father persona for her in the way he did for Monty and Simon (as mentioned to Niki), she might become the other person in addition to Peter who gets the real deal.

Meanwhile, Nathan and Angela are also fascinating to watch, only in an even darker way. Looks like .07% was a trial run for the fact that while Angela can sincerely mourn for Peter, no matter her schemes - she was alone when she was prostrate over his body in .07%, and she is obviously barely holding it together now - she is completely and utterly incapable of emotionally communicating with her older son in the same circumstance. In 0.07%, the only thing she could say to Nathan was the appeal to his inner politician - interpreting his "what do we do now?" not as "what do we do without Peter" but "what do we do with the body" and replying with her "we hide it until after the election" (to which Nathan said that the election didn't matter now, nor did anything else with Peter gone, and guess what, it doesn't look like he was kidding). Now, in Four Months Later, she can trade accusations with Nathan - and that undignified and painfully real struggle for the photograph - but she can't say anything to him that's about grief and comfort. The language of ambition, the only one she ever used with him, is gone, and she always denied he spoke another. I really hope we get a pre-Peter flashback at some point, because in a way, the relationship between Angela and Nathan is the most screwed up of the lot of Petrelli relationships, which is saying something, and yet he was her only child for a decade if not one or two years more. (My own fanfic guess for this aside, I want canon!)

Angela with Kaito was also great to see. As with her scene with Charles Deveaux in last season's finale, you get the sense of two equals, and Angela doesn't treat any of the younger ones as equals. A pity we never got to see her together with Linderman, but ah, well. Flashbacks? Also, I note that if you add the dead elders to the ones Kaito says are still alive, you have exactly twelve founding members. Niiiice, Kring. When Kaito says "how did you help your son?", which son does he mean? Doesn't matter for Angela, I suppose; she lost both of them as of now.

And Nathan. Not much of Nathan, but what we got was - wow. Incidentally, I'm suspecting just how Nathan survived is going to be a plot point the same way just how Peter ended up in Ireland with amnesia and the Haitian's necklace around his neck, and it might or might not be connected to what Nathan sees in the mirror of the bar, which is either your generic nightmare vision or himself, badly burned, as he would/should be if surviving at all. And he refuses to believe Peter is dead. "When he comes back", not "if", when. And - well. Again, see: 0.07%, Peter's temporary death and Nathan's reation, trial run theory. Not surprised that Heidi took the kids and left, because in that state he really should not be around them (and I think Nathan agrees there), not to mention that Nathan really wasn't kidding when saying sans Peter everything else is meaningless, and that's not something a wife could or should accept. It's not just that very obviously, he's not a Congressman, won election or no won election. He's living in Peter's apartment; he's given up on everything but the insistence his brother is still alive somewhere, and he's spent the last four months going on a self-destructive binge. Though for those of us keeping score on the "does Nathan have moral awareness other than what is good for his family?" question, I want to point out that without Peter, he's still very clear on the fact that the whole let millions die in New York idea was evil. Which is a term I don't think we've heard Nathan use before. (Though he was similarly without euphemisms when talking about the plan to Linderman and Angela, only then it was "this insanity" and "mass murder".)

Nathan's not the only one whose marriage fell apart; though I doubt anyone is sorry for Matt divorcing Janice. Matt and Molly are far more enjoyable and touching to watch anyway, and the idea of him co-parenting with Mohinder amuses me to no end, though we haven't seen that in action yet. I'm going to make another guess: Molly's nightmare villain, despite the symbol, is not identical with David Anders' character, though the two might be allies or one could be the tool of the other.

And in conclusion: oh, show!

Comments

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

Niki: definitely Chase, at least as far as character constellations are concerned.

Nichelle Nichols: if Dominic Keating is doomed since he is one of Peter's "dangerous, but lovable" mobsters, and she also bites it, the show is definitely less Trek friendly then we thought...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Be a Star Trek actor, sign your death warrant?

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

*g*

Well, at least this way no one can claim they're taking screentime away from regulars.