Heroes 2.08 Four Months Ago
Nov. 13th, 2007 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBoy, it was torture to wait for that one and remain unspoiled.
Firstly, allow me the flippant "poor old Caitlin" remark regarding the teaser of this episode. Asked to think of the person who means most to him in the world, Peter - who, let's remember, still has no memory of his old life except for the few fragments Angela gave him in his trip to the future plus the two or so weeks he spent with Caitlin, doing the urgent "never gonna leave you" declarations stick he did with Simone (oh, and Niki in the other dystopia), automatically concludes this must be the guy in the photo. No, they're not feeding the subtext friends at all.
Okay, seriously now. As if to answer the complaints that this season, we saw Nathan's devotion to Peter but nothing of Peter's devotion to Nathan, due to the amnesia, they're bringing it on big time. Most fanfic that speculated Peter would push Nathan away at the last second in order to save his life turns out to be right. My speculation about a Company deal turned out to be wrong, sort of; he made the deal to heal Nathan with Adam instead. But he did spent months in a cell on a self-loathing trip, giving the distinct impression he doesn't do that so much to protect the world from himself as to punish himself for having nearly killed Nathan, and then he breaks out as soon as Adam said the magic "I can heal your brother" word.
On that note: the relationship with Elle was nicely twisted and feeding into that. (And brought to mind![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cadesama's comments re 5YG!Peter keeping Niki's feeling of loss re: Micah and DL alive to punish himself.) More about Elle herself later. It also confirms Tim Kring secretly reads fanfic and obviously thought all the depiction of Peter as a) liking pain on the receptive end, but b) being a manipulative sub were dead-on. *g*
The price for single most dysfunctional Petrelli scene goes to Angela and Heidi, though. Again, Kring must have read fanfic and wondered: hm, is there one incest pairing they haven't thought of yet?.... I know! Heid/Angela! I'm only half kidding, you guys. I mean, obviously that scene was about manipulation and feeding into the assumption Angela's power is connected to touch, and her pushing Heidi to believe her lie re: the family crazy, but come on, playing with her hair? This is so not a mother-in-law thing to do.
(However, if Nathan got healed only three weeks ago, he must have grown the Beard Of Depression at record pace.)
(It also means, I guess, that he never moved back with Heidi and the children but moved into Peter's apartment directly.)
Using Nathan's own suicide attempt speech re: Peter (oh, and the explanation about the late Mr. Petrelli she gave Peter as early as ep 2 of s1) against him was both evil and smart of Angela. And we finally get something concrete about the Haitian's relationship with her when he tells Peter she saved his life and gave him a new one once. Given that, and the Haitian taking Peter's memories and sending him to Ireland, I think it's safe to say that Angela knew all the time Peter had survived the explosion (though presumably she thought she'd never see him again and thus had lost him in a non-lethal manner), which casts her 2.01 scene with Nathan and her accusations in an even more messed up light. Seriously, every time you think that family can't get more screwed up....
Niki's storyline finally gets a solid foundation, and kudos that it wasn't a Jessica return but a new personality manifesting, making it abundantly clear that her problem really is multiple personality disorder. The fact said personality only showed up after she gave up the medication doesn't only make ensuing events her fault in a way Jessica's existence was not (as Jessica was the creation of her childhood abuse and loss), and gives her a good motive for a) seeking a cure with the Company and b) feeling the need to atone.
Speaking of the Company, Bob continues to be way more shades of grey than I thought when this season started. Yes, he's keeping Peter and Adam prisoner, but both do pose genuine threats not just to the Company but to people in general. You think at first the medication for Niki is fake, but as I said, Gina doesn't start to manifest until after Niki has stopped taking it for some weeks, and so far what the Company did with her after she came to them seems to have stabilized her. (In their own self-interest, of course, but again, not an evil overlord thing to do.) And then there's his relationship with Elle. Given what she tells Peter about her childhood doesn't sound as if she is Bob's biological daughter, the Claire parallels are even stronger. Would Elle have become a complete sociopath if not raised within the Company? We don't know. But apparantly Bob tries to restrain her ("did you have to use the full dosage?", "he's not a toy"), he's not feeding her sadism.
Elle got a bit more fleshed out here, the amoral playful child part even more emphasized than in her debut episode, but with added background, see above. Being raised within the Company might make her a sociopathic operative, but not a match for the one thing each and every Petrelli is good at, i.e. emotional manipulation, which gives her a curious innocence.
Maya y Alejandro origin story: yes, Tim, we get your sibling thing. I will say that the sight of the dead wedding guests was suitably horrifying and brought memories of Kill Bill.
And now for the man formerly known as Kensei. If he's not lying - and that's the problem with these folk, you never know how reliable their information is - he got originally locked up by his former fanclub when he wanted to go public. Hmmmmm. You know, that could almost be the truth. After 400 years, you could be hubristic enough to do that, and of course it would be a reason why the rest of them (though disagreeing with each other in other matters) would all turn against him. (Except for Maury, it appears.) On the other hand, he could simply be lying because "I think a big catastrophe would be a really nifty thing to do" would not be something that would endear him to Peter, and he needs Peter to break out of Company custody. Guess we'll find out. He did come through with the healing of Nathan, but then again, that put Peter in his debt in an unsurpassable way.
Next week: the shit hits the fan in California, and it looks like Hiro wants to change some recent history of his own...
Firstly, allow me the flippant "poor old Caitlin" remark regarding the teaser of this episode. Asked to think of the person who means most to him in the world, Peter - who, let's remember, still has no memory of his old life except for the few fragments Angela gave him in his trip to the future plus the two or so weeks he spent with Caitlin, doing the urgent "never gonna leave you" declarations stick he did with Simone (oh, and Niki in the other dystopia), automatically concludes this must be the guy in the photo. No, they're not feeding the subtext friends at all.
Okay, seriously now. As if to answer the complaints that this season, we saw Nathan's devotion to Peter but nothing of Peter's devotion to Nathan, due to the amnesia, they're bringing it on big time. Most fanfic that speculated Peter would push Nathan away at the last second in order to save his life turns out to be right. My speculation about a Company deal turned out to be wrong, sort of; he made the deal to heal Nathan with Adam instead. But he did spent months in a cell on a self-loathing trip, giving the distinct impression he doesn't do that so much to protect the world from himself as to punish himself for having nearly killed Nathan, and then he breaks out as soon as Adam said the magic "I can heal your brother" word.
On that note: the relationship with Elle was nicely twisted and feeding into that. (And brought to mind
cadesama's comments re 5YG!Peter keeping Niki's feeling of loss re: Micah and DL alive to punish himself.) More about Elle herself later. It also confirms Tim Kring secretly reads fanfic and obviously thought all the depiction of Peter as a) liking pain on the receptive end, but b) being a manipulative sub were dead-on. *g* The price for single most dysfunctional Petrelli scene goes to Angela and Heidi, though. Again, Kring must have read fanfic and wondered: hm, is there one incest pairing they haven't thought of yet?.... I know! Heid/Angela! I'm only half kidding, you guys. I mean, obviously that scene was about manipulation and feeding into the assumption Angela's power is connected to touch, and her pushing Heidi to believe her lie re: the family crazy, but come on, playing with her hair? This is so not a mother-in-law thing to do.
(However, if Nathan got healed only three weeks ago, he must have grown the Beard Of Depression at record pace.)
(It also means, I guess, that he never moved back with Heidi and the children but moved into Peter's apartment directly.)
Using Nathan's own suicide attempt speech re: Peter (oh, and the explanation about the late Mr. Petrelli she gave Peter as early as ep 2 of s1) against him was both evil and smart of Angela. And we finally get something concrete about the Haitian's relationship with her when he tells Peter she saved his life and gave him a new one once. Given that, and the Haitian taking Peter's memories and sending him to Ireland, I think it's safe to say that Angela knew all the time Peter had survived the explosion (though presumably she thought she'd never see him again and thus had lost him in a non-lethal manner), which casts her 2.01 scene with Nathan and her accusations in an even more messed up light. Seriously, every time you think that family can't get more screwed up....
Niki's storyline finally gets a solid foundation, and kudos that it wasn't a Jessica return but a new personality manifesting, making it abundantly clear that her problem really is multiple personality disorder. The fact said personality only showed up after she gave up the medication doesn't only make ensuing events her fault in a way Jessica's existence was not (as Jessica was the creation of her childhood abuse and loss), and gives her a good motive for a) seeking a cure with the Company and b) feeling the need to atone.
Speaking of the Company, Bob continues to be way more shades of grey than I thought when this season started. Yes, he's keeping Peter and Adam prisoner, but both do pose genuine threats not just to the Company but to people in general. You think at first the medication for Niki is fake, but as I said, Gina doesn't start to manifest until after Niki has stopped taking it for some weeks, and so far what the Company did with her after she came to them seems to have stabilized her. (In their own self-interest, of course, but again, not an evil overlord thing to do.) And then there's his relationship with Elle. Given what she tells Peter about her childhood doesn't sound as if she is Bob's biological daughter, the Claire parallels are even stronger. Would Elle have become a complete sociopath if not raised within the Company? We don't know. But apparantly Bob tries to restrain her ("did you have to use the full dosage?", "he's not a toy"), he's not feeding her sadism.
Elle got a bit more fleshed out here, the amoral playful child part even more emphasized than in her debut episode, but with added background, see above. Being raised within the Company might make her a sociopathic operative, but not a match for the one thing each and every Petrelli is good at, i.e. emotional manipulation, which gives her a curious innocence.
Maya y Alejandro origin story: yes, Tim, we get your sibling thing. I will say that the sight of the dead wedding guests was suitably horrifying and brought memories of Kill Bill.
And now for the man formerly known as Kensei. If he's not lying - and that's the problem with these folk, you never know how reliable their information is - he got originally locked up by his former fanclub when he wanted to go public. Hmmmmm. You know, that could almost be the truth. After 400 years, you could be hubristic enough to do that, and of course it would be a reason why the rest of them (though disagreeing with each other in other matters) would all turn against him. (Except for Maury, it appears.) On the other hand, he could simply be lying because "I think a big catastrophe would be a really nifty thing to do" would not be something that would endear him to Peter, and he needs Peter to break out of Company custody. Guess we'll find out. He did come through with the healing of Nathan, but then again, that put Peter in his debt in an unsurpassable way.
Next week: the shit hits the fan in California, and it looks like Hiro wants to change some recent history of his own...
no subject
Date: 2007-11-13 10:46 pm (UTC)Nathan obviously has two superpowers, flying and extraordinarily speedy beard growth.
It also means, I guess, that he never moved back with Heidi and the children but moved into Peter's apartment directly
So it looks as if the only thing Nathan did to drive Heidi away was to actually tell her the truth, all the rest is down to dear old mom. Angela obviously took the Empress Livia as her role model and is trying to outdo her. I'm undecided as to how much she knows about Peter's situation but as it's Angela until I see concrete proof that she doesn't know I'm going to presume she does.
I had been presuming a much longer period of time for Nathan's slide into depression and alcoholism and, beard jokes aside, I still think a period of three weeks is a little short. On the other hand I really hadn't considered that he might have been in hospital in terrible pain for two months.
Bob continues to be way more shades of grey than I thought when this season started.
Yes, there are times when I think that he may possibly be right about some things and from his point of view locking Peter up when he can't control his powers must seem very sensible. I can now actually see why Claude was working for the Company and why he went to the lengths he did to try and get Peter to learn control. He and the Company seemed a bad fit before, but now they don't. It's all very interesting.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 05:58 am (UTC)Well, you could argue that if he had told her the truth earlier - say, after Linderman healed her at the latest, when he could have demonstrated the flying thing without a sweat -, she wouldn't have believed Angela, but yes. Presumably that means Nathan thinks Heidi left him because she was horrified about the superpowers/plan to blow up New York/all other secrets things, i.e. exactly what he was afraid of before, not because Angela told her he's crazy.
I had been presuming a much longer period of time for Nathan's slide into depression and alcoholism and, beard jokes aside, I still think a period of three weeks is a little short. On the other hand I really hadn't considered that he might have been in hospital in terrible pain for two months.
It would explain, however, why he's able to quit drinking without apparant side effects when starting his investigation with Matt. If he had drunk for several months, surely that would have been harder...
Yes, there are times when I think that he may possibly be right about some things and from his point of view locking Peter up when he can't control his powers must seem very sensible.
Yes. Of course, on the dark side of shades of grey you have him mentioning that they worked on a vaccine 30 years ago and had to stop, but re-started now, which pretty much sounds like the virus Shanti died of was an artificial creation by the Company to begin with, but he's not Ming the Merciless, and might actually believe he's working for the greater good, and not in a Linderman-at-the-end-let's-use-a-New-York-wipeout kind of way.
I can now actually see why Claude was working for the Company and why he went to the lengths he did to try and get Peter to learn control. He and the Company seemed a bad fit before, but now they don't. It's all very interesting.
That's something people often overlook, that both Bennet and Claude voluntarily joined the Company - nobody blackmailed them into it - worked for years with them before getting disillusioned, and were considered to be good operatives to hire to begin with.