Heroes 2.09 Cautionary Tales
Nov. 20th, 2007 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakConsidering last winter was low on snow, I've been using the last few days to ski as much as I could. Still one of the most fun things ever.
Early on, I thought I knew how this could go; a trade of the girls followed by a dead Bob. And I felt a bit unsatisfied, not just because of my fondness for Bob, but because I thought this wasn't a good pay-off for all the building up of issues: Noah's road to helll, the enstragement between him and Claire, Claire's own mistakes and flirting with hubris, Mohinder's road to the morally grey.
What we got instead was so much better.
But before I get to the jaw-droping moment, I'll talk about the Hiro subplot. In which we saw Kimiko again, though sadly she had no lines, but stilll, good to know the show remembered Hiro isn't the only one now orphaned. We also saw the custom with the red ink on a Japanese gravestone I mentioned in Hitan, so colour me smug (despite the fact they didn't use any of the other funeral customs). Naturally, Hiro would try to save his father. Yes, he learned this doesn't work with Charlie, but if Future!Hiro from 5YG tried to change the timeline to save Ando nonetheless, it figures current day Hiro would try as much for Kaito. And Kaito repeats a line Bob said to Nathan back in Out of Time, only he says "we" not "some" and "they" and puts it more emphatically: We can't be gods. How do you do justice, Little!Hiro asks, and adult Hiro thinks he knows the answer, but does he? Finding his father's murderer, he finds what is, among other things, his own creation.
The "we create our own monsters" theme is played out with Matt's subplot as well, as he discovers his powers extending and uses this, as he sees it, in pursuit of justice. The scene with Angela, as their two previous scenes, was again superb, with the power balance shifting, and yet even while Matt obtains his objective, the name he wants, Angela lands the most devastating blow when telling him he'll be his father. We also get some intriguing new tidbits about the Elders. If Angela-under-pressure says the truth as she's made to, an important reason for them to turn against Adam thirty years ago was the discovery of his immortality. Which presumably means he didn't tell them his age to begin with. Why would the discovery that "Adam" is immortal freak them out/turn them against him? My current guess is because of what it meant in regard to Adam's plans (and Adam's position as the head of the group before the others landed a coup and locked him away).
Angela also says, but this is a bit more circumspect because it's spoken when she was not replying to Matt's direct command anymore, that the Elders did what they did for the next generation (hah! a Runaways echo! - Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways, that is, not my fanfic), which again could relate to either what happened to Adam or some of their other actions.
Of course, parents have used that justification - I did it all for you - since the beginning of time, and sometimes children have cause to doubt it. Just look at Noah Bennet and Claire. What I like about the big confrontation is that they're both right and wrong - Claire messed up (and she knows it), but this has stopped being about her and keeping her safe a good while ago, as Noah later acknowledges. It has become about himself when he saw the picture of his own death for the first time (at the latest). And note it took Sandra to stop him from carrying out the threat to tie Claire up. While we're talking of Sandra, may I say I'm eternally grateful for that one tiny moment where she pulls her hand away. Because I wanted Sandra once, just once, NOT forgive Noah immediately. (And she has more reason than anyone not to - after she forgave him the last time, he started lying to her again, and for no good reason at all, simply because it was easier and he's used to that patronizing attitude towards her.) Though of course now he's died a martyr's death (sort of), there won't be any follow-up on this once he returns out of the sheer joy he's alive again, so I suppose that was that. Still, I got it. My one moment of Sandra showing actual resentment over what Noah did. Thank you.
Noah and Claire are mirrored by Bob and Elle, and we got some more background. Elle's version of her past - which she told Peter last week - is called into doubt by what Noah tells her, though actually both versions aren't incompatible (that psychiatrist diagnosis could have come after the multiple electricity experiments she can't remember). We got as good as confirmed that Bob, like Noah, isn't the biological but the adopted father (Noah says he "brought her in" - presumably after the first two incidents she mentioned to Peter which brought her to the attention of the Company), and always assuming Noah is telling the truth instead of bending it, the fact Elle got thoroughly messed up by the initial experiments could very well have been the cause for the adoption (i.e. guilt, as duty was the initial cause of Claire's adoption by Noah). Considering Noah is completely sure Bob will trade Claire for Elle, it seems equally clear that the initial cause was superceded by genuine affection. But Bob combines admonishments to use sunscreen with training his daughter to be a good killer (as opposed to one who just does it because she loses her temper) if needs be; it's the flipside or darkside of Noah's overinsistence to keep Claire innocent of everything (as opposed to, you know, showing her that painting to begin with, for example).
Sidenote: loved Bob's eyeroll when Elle asked whether she can keep Mohinder. It's little things like that which make that paternity thing real.)
Speaking of little things, another neat detail was Mohinder in the back of the car and Bennet behind the wheel mirroring their first meeting in the pilot when HRG was freaking Mohinder out with his Matrix allusions. And might I say, Sendil R. has grown as an actor since then. He's always been pretty, but in this episode he's handed some big scenes, and he handles them magnificently. Both the near-execution by Bennet, with him kneeling (you could really feel the fear but also the resolve in Mohinder there), and the big one, the shooting and the aftermath. Of all the things I expected to happen, the one I never expected to happen was the painting playing out in literal terms, i.e. Mohinder shooting Noah, with Claire and West in the background. I was really really certain it would be Bob, Elle, and Peter. And yet, when it came, it felt completely true, because at this point Mohinder was ready to shoot Bennet, not as an assassination but as literary as an act of saving a life/several lives. He couldn't have done it earlier, the first time he pulled the gun and got easily overpowered by Noah, but at that point? Yes. Awesome scene, and awesome aftermath, with Mohinder staring at his hands. Way back when, in the Sylar situation, he got close to killing another human being, but because he needed to do the monologuing and punishing, he didn't go through with it until Sylar had regained the upper hand. This time, though, he did it, and the road to morally grey is complete.
Lastly: when Bob took the blood from Claire, I assumed that if he tested it on anyone, it would be Niki, for obvious reasons. (Btw, there has to be a reason why they don't use any Adam samples, and they must have plenty. Which makes me a little worried for Nathan. Again.) I never expected the final reveal. So, Noah: back from the dead. Again, I suspect there must be a reason why this isn't done all the time with 30 years of involuntary or voluntary Adam donations, and I presume we'll see some serious drawbacks soon. As for reasons why Bob should bring Noah back to the living? Well, as a test subject for whether Claire's blood does immunize against the virus would be one reason, though again, why not Niki? So maybe there are other considerations at large as to why a living-with-drawbacks Noah is better than a dead one as far as the Company and/or Bob is concerned.
Dark Horse factor: unless the person responsible for snatching Noah's body and injecting it with Claire's blood wasn't Bob but Elle, who wants more answers, but I don't see how she could have done it without Bob noticing.
The award for most painful bad dialogue in this episode goes to the Noah and West bonding, but as the rest of the episode was good, let us cover it with the cloak of silence, as we say in German.
Early on, I thought I knew how this could go; a trade of the girls followed by a dead Bob. And I felt a bit unsatisfied, not just because of my fondness for Bob, but because I thought this wasn't a good pay-off for all the building up of issues: Noah's road to helll, the enstragement between him and Claire, Claire's own mistakes and flirting with hubris, Mohinder's road to the morally grey.
What we got instead was so much better.
But before I get to the jaw-droping moment, I'll talk about the Hiro subplot. In which we saw Kimiko again, though sadly she had no lines, but stilll, good to know the show remembered Hiro isn't the only one now orphaned. We also saw the custom with the red ink on a Japanese gravestone I mentioned in Hitan, so colour me smug (despite the fact they didn't use any of the other funeral customs). Naturally, Hiro would try to save his father. Yes, he learned this doesn't work with Charlie, but if Future!Hiro from 5YG tried to change the timeline to save Ando nonetheless, it figures current day Hiro would try as much for Kaito. And Kaito repeats a line Bob said to Nathan back in Out of Time, only he says "we" not "some" and "they" and puts it more emphatically: We can't be gods. How do you do justice, Little!Hiro asks, and adult Hiro thinks he knows the answer, but does he? Finding his father's murderer, he finds what is, among other things, his own creation.
The "we create our own monsters" theme is played out with Matt's subplot as well, as he discovers his powers extending and uses this, as he sees it, in pursuit of justice. The scene with Angela, as their two previous scenes, was again superb, with the power balance shifting, and yet even while Matt obtains his objective, the name he wants, Angela lands the most devastating blow when telling him he'll be his father. We also get some intriguing new tidbits about the Elders. If Angela-under-pressure says the truth as she's made to, an important reason for them to turn against Adam thirty years ago was the discovery of his immortality. Which presumably means he didn't tell them his age to begin with. Why would the discovery that "Adam" is immortal freak them out/turn them against him? My current guess is because of what it meant in regard to Adam's plans (and Adam's position as the head of the group before the others landed a coup and locked him away).
Angela also says, but this is a bit more circumspect because it's spoken when she was not replying to Matt's direct command anymore, that the Elders did what they did for the next generation (hah! a Runaways echo! - Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways, that is, not my fanfic), which again could relate to either what happened to Adam or some of their other actions.
Of course, parents have used that justification - I did it all for you - since the beginning of time, and sometimes children have cause to doubt it. Just look at Noah Bennet and Claire. What I like about the big confrontation is that they're both right and wrong - Claire messed up (and she knows it), but this has stopped being about her and keeping her safe a good while ago, as Noah later acknowledges. It has become about himself when he saw the picture of his own death for the first time (at the latest). And note it took Sandra to stop him from carrying out the threat to tie Claire up. While we're talking of Sandra, may I say I'm eternally grateful for that one tiny moment where she pulls her hand away. Because I wanted Sandra once, just once, NOT forgive Noah immediately. (And she has more reason than anyone not to - after she forgave him the last time, he started lying to her again, and for no good reason at all, simply because it was easier and he's used to that patronizing attitude towards her.) Though of course now he's died a martyr's death (sort of), there won't be any follow-up on this once he returns out of the sheer joy he's alive again, so I suppose that was that. Still, I got it. My one moment of Sandra showing actual resentment over what Noah did. Thank you.
Noah and Claire are mirrored by Bob and Elle, and we got some more background. Elle's version of her past - which she told Peter last week - is called into doubt by what Noah tells her, though actually both versions aren't incompatible (that psychiatrist diagnosis could have come after the multiple electricity experiments she can't remember). We got as good as confirmed that Bob, like Noah, isn't the biological but the adopted father (Noah says he "brought her in" - presumably after the first two incidents she mentioned to Peter which brought her to the attention of the Company), and always assuming Noah is telling the truth instead of bending it, the fact Elle got thoroughly messed up by the initial experiments could very well have been the cause for the adoption (i.e. guilt, as duty was the initial cause of Claire's adoption by Noah). Considering Noah is completely sure Bob will trade Claire for Elle, it seems equally clear that the initial cause was superceded by genuine affection. But Bob combines admonishments to use sunscreen with training his daughter to be a good killer (as opposed to one who just does it because she loses her temper) if needs be; it's the flipside or darkside of Noah's overinsistence to keep Claire innocent of everything (as opposed to, you know, showing her that painting to begin with, for example).
Sidenote: loved Bob's eyeroll when Elle asked whether she can keep Mohinder. It's little things like that which make that paternity thing real.)
Speaking of little things, another neat detail was Mohinder in the back of the car and Bennet behind the wheel mirroring their first meeting in the pilot when HRG was freaking Mohinder out with his Matrix allusions. And might I say, Sendil R. has grown as an actor since then. He's always been pretty, but in this episode he's handed some big scenes, and he handles them magnificently. Both the near-execution by Bennet, with him kneeling (you could really feel the fear but also the resolve in Mohinder there), and the big one, the shooting and the aftermath. Of all the things I expected to happen, the one I never expected to happen was the painting playing out in literal terms, i.e. Mohinder shooting Noah, with Claire and West in the background. I was really really certain it would be Bob, Elle, and Peter. And yet, when it came, it felt completely true, because at this point Mohinder was ready to shoot Bennet, not as an assassination but as literary as an act of saving a life/several lives. He couldn't have done it earlier, the first time he pulled the gun and got easily overpowered by Noah, but at that point? Yes. Awesome scene, and awesome aftermath, with Mohinder staring at his hands. Way back when, in the Sylar situation, he got close to killing another human being, but because he needed to do the monologuing and punishing, he didn't go through with it until Sylar had regained the upper hand. This time, though, he did it, and the road to morally grey is complete.
Lastly: when Bob took the blood from Claire, I assumed that if he tested it on anyone, it would be Niki, for obvious reasons. (Btw, there has to be a reason why they don't use any Adam samples, and they must have plenty. Which makes me a little worried for Nathan. Again.) I never expected the final reveal. So, Noah: back from the dead. Again, I suspect there must be a reason why this isn't done all the time with 30 years of involuntary or voluntary Adam donations, and I presume we'll see some serious drawbacks soon. As for reasons why Bob should bring Noah back to the living? Well, as a test subject for whether Claire's blood does immunize against the virus would be one reason, though again, why not Niki? So maybe there are other considerations at large as to why a living-with-drawbacks Noah is better than a dead one as far as the Company and/or Bob is concerned.
Dark Horse factor: unless the person responsible for snatching Noah's body and injecting it with Claire's blood wasn't Bob but Elle, who wants more answers, but I don't see how she could have done it without Bob noticing.
The award for most painful bad dialogue in this episode goes to the Noah and West bonding, but as the rest of the episode was good, let us cover it with the cloak of silence, as we say in German.
