Heroes 3.08 Villains
Nov. 13th, 2008 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakFlashback time! *settles down with the popcorn*
My, but I do love the flashback episodes. Even though the timelines tend to be headache-inducing, and certain aspects definitely do not make me happy, but there is so much else that does. So, let's see, about those three plot threads:
1) Meredith. I've been withholding judgment on the disconnect of Meredith suddenly having Company training because I assumed we would get an explanation sooner or later, and now we do. In fact, we get the most character stuff on Meredith - an enigmatic character since she's been introduced, whom we saw never from her on point of view but of Claire's and briefly Nathan's - we have so far. These flashbacks finally connect living-in-a-trailer Meredith to Company Agent!Meredith, and completely work for me, including the Unexpected!Brother. (Claire really is related to everyone on this show.) (Not that Flint would ever have posed problems to shippers.) An ongoing question ever since the last season - did or didn't Meredith know that Claire survived the fire, did or didn't she make a bargain with the Company - was cleared up. So, current status of Meredith's backstory: grows up poor with dumb brother, has George and Lennie relationship with same, has affair with Nathan which produces Claire, break-up with Nathan, Company catches up with her, fire, Meredith runs assuming Claire is dead, is still running and a small-time thief together with Flint when Thompson catches up with her again. Thompson, the least interesting of the Company Men so far, gains a layer here, though I'd argue his letting Meredith go at the end is less altruistic than it looks when you take into account that he has just seen a demonstration of how Meredith reacts when finding out the Company intends to use a family member as well, and that at this point they're all waiting for Claire to activate so they can bring her in. If Meredith had still been around by then, the result would have been obvious. In any case - I liked that Meredith is willing to work for the Company despite her loathing for it as long as it's just herself, and that she's good at it (and without much sympathy for the Vietnam Veteran version of Peter Rasputin, aka Colossus); she's not a saint (hello, scamming Nathan and Claire re: money), but not a villain, either. And I liked the unsentimental but matter of fact way she took care ofLenny Flint. Who all of a sudden has become interesting as well.
Lastly: as opposed to the crosscutting between HRG and Elle to Mohinder and Peter later, the cutting from Meredith and Thompson to Claire and the train wreck was a knock-out and a genuinenly awesome retcon. Loved it. Both on a visual and thematic level.
2) Still on the Company subject: the part of the Sylar plot thread I'm happy with is the depiction of Noah Bennet. Including his watching Sylar kill on the monitor like he was watching a lion eat a zebra. Because that fits with the HRG characterisation throughout three seasons; he basically doesn't think of the specials as humans, and it's his love for Claire that made the difference, not a moral realisation about the wrongness of his deeds. And he hasn't changed. His attempted use of Stephen, wanting him to kill Sylar with no regard to Stephen not wanting to be a killer, is basically the same thing we see here, only now Claire has witnessed it instead of Elle. And while the characterisation of Elle is somewhat questionable, Noah having worked with her before makes sense and underlines what I've always said; no, he didn't want Elle's fate for Claire, but that didn't mean any compassion for Elle, and he would have done exactly the same thing to Claire if she hadn't been his adopted daughter.
Now, about Elle: being undercover, she displays more social skills than through the entire second season, which is my problem with her characterisation. Though I can fanwank that with her playing a role, I suppose, acting the girl next door like she has seen it on tv. I'm going back and thro as to whether Eden would have been a far better choice; it would have made her determination to kill Sylar and killing herself before he could get her power even more an attempt to atone. But otoh, given Eden's power, she could have simply told Gabriel to stop if she had wanted him to, plus it makes no sense he wouldn't have killed her earlier than their encounter in the PrimaTech cells once he got into the killling swing if he had known her. (And there is the on screen dialogue that proves he had no idea Eden had a power before she demonstrated it in s1.) Lastly, Eden would not have been as poignant a Claire alter ego as Elle is here, and thus the counterpoint to the Claire-Steven-HRG scene in this season wouldn't have been as strong.
Sylar.... sigh. You know, it's not that I don't buy he could have felt guilt after his first murder; this actually ties to all those "sin" scrawlings on the wall Mohinder and Eden find in the pilot. (The Doylist reason for that was that Sylar before Zachary Quinto was cast was originally conceived as a character like Kevin Spacey's killer in Seven, but that doesn't preclude a Watsonian retcon.) But all this talk about his soul really makes me conclude we're supposed to see him as the Heroes version of either Spike or Angel, and either way - no. Just no.
3) "My king, my queen": well, Emperor and Empress wouldn't have had the same ring to it, though the Julian-Claudian overtones were stronger than ever in this episode, and anyway, nice phrasing, Daniel Linderman. Who, like that other s1 villain, Thompson, is given the chance to display "some traces of morality" by choosing his queen (and her son, thanks, Dan) over his king. See, this is why I wanted to see Elder interaction; it's a whole new dynamic, compared to how they interact with the younger generation, with Linderman instead of being the puppet player in the background being the beta dog, and Angela's faithful knight. It occurs to me that this is the exact reverse to the Godfather model, where you have the mafia don and his consigliere the lawyer; here, Las Vegas crime boss Linderman is actually the consigliere, and the lawyer pretending to be that is really the power in the background. Which also fits with Arthur telling Maury to play Head!Linderman with Nathan in the present, and Nathan in the past blaming Linderman for the Petrelli crime involvement, seeing him as the one corrupting his parents. And it fits with an older theory of mine: that originally Arthur was supposed to be the one to become President, not Nathan; Nathan got the assignment in Plan New York once Arthur "died". (It doesn't matter whether or not Isaac had already painted his picture, because the physical resemblance between Arthur and Nathan is strong enough for it to be either man in the Oval Office painting - and I'm ignoring here it was actually Sylar-as-Nathan, I know.) It's certainly what Arthur thinks will happen. (As a side issue, since he's ready to kill Nathan rather than let an investigation drag all kind of things to the surface, including who really has the power and is responsible for Linderman's empire, I guess that means Peter got promoted from spare to heir in his mind. If he thought about heirs at all.)
The Petrelli flashbacks are very allusive; Arthur in the garden pruning flowers recalls Don Corleone doing this with tomatoes in The Godfather, Angela asking Arthur to tell her he didn't order the hit on their son and apologizing after she gets her reassurance, saying "I love you", is almost literally Kay having this dialogue with Michael near the end of The Godfather about his brother-in-law, and of course, the men are lying in both cases and the women are about to find out. Only Angela is no Kay; she's Italian. So instead of a divorce, Arthur gets poison, and Angela sipping wine, as Livia does in I, Claudius, while it works. And having her monologue about just what the truth of their marriage is, as Livia has with Augustus in Augustus' actual death scene (which is a different one from the wine scene). The Angela and Arthur scenes finally make sense of a sentence of Peter's in the pilot - "I know you feel free to speak your mind since dad died" - which one couldn't understand before, because did Angela give you the impression of being one to hold back in the show? And they make her repeat insistance to Peter that Nathan doesn't love him or that "love is overrated" look as something more than manipulation; not that she's not also deliberately button-pushing, but now it also looks like a reflection of her feelings for Arthur, the way he betrayed her, which Linderman, no champion of morality, calls the worst possible. (It's also the way Noah betrayed Sandra. There are parallels between Arthur and Noah in this episode that that make me suspect I'm dead-on in my comment to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
47_trek_47 two weeks ago about Nathan seeing Arthur as fandom sees Noah. With the difference between both, and the reason why Sandra so far found it in herself to forgive Noah, being that Noah really would not be capable of killing Claire and does believe he's protecting her, whereas Arthur stopped using reasons other than "because I want to" in the end.) It makes the relationship between Angela and Nathan even more screwed up, too; in a way, she killed Arthur for him, hasn't stopped projecting Arthur into Nathan since and goes wildly between using him and needing him.
Petrelli trivia observations: I love the family interaction now we see all four on screen at the same time, which we never did before, with tidbits like Peter after Arthur's speech telling Nathan "told you he wouldn't be able to say 'nurse'" and Angela telling Nathan re: Arthur still refusing to come to the graduation party "I tried, he won't" before Nathan gets more than a word out make the dynamics feel very real in an every day way, while the screwed-upness goes to the heavens if you are aware of what is actually going on in those scenes. Also, if I were Heidi, I'd have been immensely insulted because guess what photo in addition to one showing the four Petrellis Arthur keeps on his desk? That's right, the wedding photo, making its first appearance this season. The wedding photo showing Peter and Nathan, that is. We've yet to see one that shows Nathan and Heidi. Sidenote: as if to make up for the lack of touching in the present, Nathan and Peter spend every single scene they're in together just a milimeter or so apart and constantly touching, which to me proves I was right that the present day behaviour is a deliberate choice on the part of the show reflecting on certain assassination attempts.) And then there's Arthur saying what he believes to be a final goodbye to his older son. He doesn't kiss him the way Michael Corleone does Fredo when going through a similar internal condemming-to-death moment, but he does say: "You look good in a suit, Nathan." Oh, Petrellis.
(Puts the fact there was a suit in Nathan's hospital room in yet another light. Other than it being needed for the tv appearance.)
More trivia: several bits of Petrelli fanon are shot to hell as Angela cooks (which a lot of stories have assumed she'd be too patrician to do), a scene that comes complete with a call back to Linderman's encounter with Nathan in his kitchen. More seriously, there is the part where Nathan actually thinks Arthur dies from a heart attack. And no, what this destroys is fanon, not canon. (Though it is fanon I loved and have used in several stories myself.) All that's said on screen on the show in s1 is that Nathan by the time Peter is out of the hospital and on a rooftop again is aware of Angela's suicide story, i.e. he says in reply to Peter's "you know about Dad?" "Yes". And of course an episode later he uses the suicide story himself for political gain. But that's six months after Arthur's not-death, which means Angela could have given Nathan the suicide explanation at any point between their waiting in the hospital for news about Arthur and Peter's own hospital stint after his jump in the pilot. In fact, wouldn't it be like Angela to react to a lie on Nathan's part - about why Peter jumped from the rooftop, because he lied to her as well and didn't mention the flying - with a lie of her own, telling Nathan "oh, this reminds me to tell you what REALLY happened to your father"?
Lastly: Izzie? Did I hear right and the dog (hated by Arthur) was called "Izzie"?
PS: loved the detail of Hiro nearly snapping out of his trance when worrying about Nathan. Aww. I can't help it, platonic Hiro 'n Nathan is my favourite friendship in that 'verse. Flying Man & Teleporter Guy Forever! Also, not worried about Hiro, because clearly, Ando will come to the rescue, probably taking a leaf from Usutu's book and hitting Arthur from behind with a shovel. Usutu being dead, though? Not cool, show. Not cool. This makes the Haitian the only current black character, since Monica hasn't been back on screen yet.
My, but I do love the flashback episodes. Even though the timelines tend to be headache-inducing, and certain aspects definitely do not make me happy, but there is so much else that does. So, let's see, about those three plot threads:
1) Meredith. I've been withholding judgment on the disconnect of Meredith suddenly having Company training because I assumed we would get an explanation sooner or later, and now we do. In fact, we get the most character stuff on Meredith - an enigmatic character since she's been introduced, whom we saw never from her on point of view but of Claire's and briefly Nathan's - we have so far. These flashbacks finally connect living-in-a-trailer Meredith to Company Agent!Meredith, and completely work for me, including the Unexpected!Brother. (Claire really is related to everyone on this show.) (Not that Flint would ever have posed problems to shippers.) An ongoing question ever since the last season - did or didn't Meredith know that Claire survived the fire, did or didn't she make a bargain with the Company - was cleared up. So, current status of Meredith's backstory: grows up poor with dumb brother, has George and Lennie relationship with same, has affair with Nathan which produces Claire, break-up with Nathan, Company catches up with her, fire, Meredith runs assuming Claire is dead, is still running and a small-time thief together with Flint when Thompson catches up with her again. Thompson, the least interesting of the Company Men so far, gains a layer here, though I'd argue his letting Meredith go at the end is less altruistic than it looks when you take into account that he has just seen a demonstration of how Meredith reacts when finding out the Company intends to use a family member as well, and that at this point they're all waiting for Claire to activate so they can bring her in. If Meredith had still been around by then, the result would have been obvious. In any case - I liked that Meredith is willing to work for the Company despite her loathing for it as long as it's just herself, and that she's good at it (and without much sympathy for the Vietnam Veteran version of Peter Rasputin, aka Colossus); she's not a saint (hello, scamming Nathan and Claire re: money), but not a villain, either. And I liked the unsentimental but matter of fact way she took care of
Lastly: as opposed to the crosscutting between HRG and Elle to Mohinder and Peter later, the cutting from Meredith and Thompson to Claire and the train wreck was a knock-out and a genuinenly awesome retcon. Loved it. Both on a visual and thematic level.
2) Still on the Company subject: the part of the Sylar plot thread I'm happy with is the depiction of Noah Bennet. Including his watching Sylar kill on the monitor like he was watching a lion eat a zebra. Because that fits with the HRG characterisation throughout three seasons; he basically doesn't think of the specials as humans, and it's his love for Claire that made the difference, not a moral realisation about the wrongness of his deeds. And he hasn't changed. His attempted use of Stephen, wanting him to kill Sylar with no regard to Stephen not wanting to be a killer, is basically the same thing we see here, only now Claire has witnessed it instead of Elle. And while the characterisation of Elle is somewhat questionable, Noah having worked with her before makes sense and underlines what I've always said; no, he didn't want Elle's fate for Claire, but that didn't mean any compassion for Elle, and he would have done exactly the same thing to Claire if she hadn't been his adopted daughter.
Now, about Elle: being undercover, she displays more social skills than through the entire second season, which is my problem with her characterisation. Though I can fanwank that with her playing a role, I suppose, acting the girl next door like she has seen it on tv. I'm going back and thro as to whether Eden would have been a far better choice; it would have made her determination to kill Sylar and killing herself before he could get her power even more an attempt to atone. But otoh, given Eden's power, she could have simply told Gabriel to stop if she had wanted him to, plus it makes no sense he wouldn't have killed her earlier than their encounter in the PrimaTech cells once he got into the killling swing if he had known her. (And there is the on screen dialogue that proves he had no idea Eden had a power before she demonstrated it in s1.) Lastly, Eden would not have been as poignant a Claire alter ego as Elle is here, and thus the counterpoint to the Claire-Steven-HRG scene in this season wouldn't have been as strong.
Sylar.... sigh. You know, it's not that I don't buy he could have felt guilt after his first murder; this actually ties to all those "sin" scrawlings on the wall Mohinder and Eden find in the pilot. (The Doylist reason for that was that Sylar before Zachary Quinto was cast was originally conceived as a character like Kevin Spacey's killer in Seven, but that doesn't preclude a Watsonian retcon.) But all this talk about his soul really makes me conclude we're supposed to see him as the Heroes version of either Spike or Angel, and either way - no. Just no.
3) "My king, my queen": well, Emperor and Empress wouldn't have had the same ring to it, though the Julian-Claudian overtones were stronger than ever in this episode, and anyway, nice phrasing, Daniel Linderman. Who, like that other s1 villain, Thompson, is given the chance to display "some traces of morality" by choosing his queen (and her son, thanks, Dan) over his king. See, this is why I wanted to see Elder interaction; it's a whole new dynamic, compared to how they interact with the younger generation, with Linderman instead of being the puppet player in the background being the beta dog, and Angela's faithful knight. It occurs to me that this is the exact reverse to the Godfather model, where you have the mafia don and his consigliere the lawyer; here, Las Vegas crime boss Linderman is actually the consigliere, and the lawyer pretending to be that is really the power in the background. Which also fits with Arthur telling Maury to play Head!Linderman with Nathan in the present, and Nathan in the past blaming Linderman for the Petrelli crime involvement, seeing him as the one corrupting his parents. And it fits with an older theory of mine: that originally Arthur was supposed to be the one to become President, not Nathan; Nathan got the assignment in Plan New York once Arthur "died". (It doesn't matter whether or not Isaac had already painted his picture, because the physical resemblance between Arthur and Nathan is strong enough for it to be either man in the Oval Office painting - and I'm ignoring here it was actually Sylar-as-Nathan, I know.) It's certainly what Arthur thinks will happen. (As a side issue, since he's ready to kill Nathan rather than let an investigation drag all kind of things to the surface, including who really has the power and is responsible for Linderman's empire, I guess that means Peter got promoted from spare to heir in his mind. If he thought about heirs at all.)
The Petrelli flashbacks are very allusive; Arthur in the garden pruning flowers recalls Don Corleone doing this with tomatoes in The Godfather, Angela asking Arthur to tell her he didn't order the hit on their son and apologizing after she gets her reassurance, saying "I love you", is almost literally Kay having this dialogue with Michael near the end of The Godfather about his brother-in-law, and of course, the men are lying in both cases and the women are about to find out. Only Angela is no Kay; she's Italian. So instead of a divorce, Arthur gets poison, and Angela sipping wine, as Livia does in I, Claudius, while it works. And having her monologue about just what the truth of their marriage is, as Livia has with Augustus in Augustus' actual death scene (which is a different one from the wine scene). The Angela and Arthur scenes finally make sense of a sentence of Peter's in the pilot - "I know you feel free to speak your mind since dad died" - which one couldn't understand before, because did Angela give you the impression of being one to hold back in the show? And they make her repeat insistance to Peter that Nathan doesn't love him or that "love is overrated" look as something more than manipulation; not that she's not also deliberately button-pushing, but now it also looks like a reflection of her feelings for Arthur, the way he betrayed her, which Linderman, no champion of morality, calls the worst possible. (It's also the way Noah betrayed Sandra. There are parallels between Arthur and Noah in this episode that that make me suspect I'm dead-on in my comment to
47_trek_47 two weeks ago about Nathan seeing Arthur as fandom sees Noah. With the difference between both, and the reason why Sandra so far found it in herself to forgive Noah, being that Noah really would not be capable of killing Claire and does believe he's protecting her, whereas Arthur stopped using reasons other than "because I want to" in the end.) It makes the relationship between Angela and Nathan even more screwed up, too; in a way, she killed Arthur for him, hasn't stopped projecting Arthur into Nathan since and goes wildly between using him and needing him. Petrelli trivia observations: I love the family interaction now we see all four on screen at the same time, which we never did before, with tidbits like Peter after Arthur's speech telling Nathan "told you he wouldn't be able to say 'nurse'" and Angela telling Nathan re: Arthur still refusing to come to the graduation party "I tried, he won't" before Nathan gets more than a word out make the dynamics feel very real in an every day way, while the screwed-upness goes to the heavens if you are aware of what is actually going on in those scenes. Also, if I were Heidi, I'd have been immensely insulted because guess what photo in addition to one showing the four Petrellis Arthur keeps on his desk? That's right, the wedding photo, making its first appearance this season. The wedding photo showing Peter and Nathan, that is. We've yet to see one that shows Nathan and Heidi. Sidenote: as if to make up for the lack of touching in the present, Nathan and Peter spend every single scene they're in together just a milimeter or so apart and constantly touching, which to me proves I was right that the present day behaviour is a deliberate choice on the part of the show reflecting on certain assassination attempts.) And then there's Arthur saying what he believes to be a final goodbye to his older son. He doesn't kiss him the way Michael Corleone does Fredo when going through a similar internal condemming-to-death moment, but he does say: "You look good in a suit, Nathan." Oh, Petrellis.
(Puts the fact there was a suit in Nathan's hospital room in yet another light. Other than it being needed for the tv appearance.)
More trivia: several bits of Petrelli fanon are shot to hell as Angela cooks (which a lot of stories have assumed she'd be too patrician to do), a scene that comes complete with a call back to Linderman's encounter with Nathan in his kitchen. More seriously, there is the part where Nathan actually thinks Arthur dies from a heart attack. And no, what this destroys is fanon, not canon. (Though it is fanon I loved and have used in several stories myself.) All that's said on screen on the show in s1 is that Nathan by the time Peter is out of the hospital and on a rooftop again is aware of Angela's suicide story, i.e. he says in reply to Peter's "you know about Dad?" "Yes". And of course an episode later he uses the suicide story himself for political gain. But that's six months after Arthur's not-death, which means Angela could have given Nathan the suicide explanation at any point between their waiting in the hospital for news about Arthur and Peter's own hospital stint after his jump in the pilot. In fact, wouldn't it be like Angela to react to a lie on Nathan's part - about why Peter jumped from the rooftop, because he lied to her as well and didn't mention the flying - with a lie of her own, telling Nathan "oh, this reminds me to tell you what REALLY happened to your father"?
Lastly: Izzie? Did I hear right and the dog (hated by Arthur) was called "Izzie"?
PS: loved the detail of Hiro nearly snapping out of his trance when worrying about Nathan. Aww. I can't help it, platonic Hiro 'n Nathan is my favourite friendship in that 'verse. Flying Man & Teleporter Guy Forever! Also, not worried about Hiro, because clearly, Ando will come to the rescue, probably taking a leaf from Usutu's book and hitting Arthur from behind with a shovel. Usutu being dead, though? Not cool, show. Not cool. This makes the Haitian the only current black character, since Monica hasn't been back on screen yet.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 01:48 pm (UTC)This makes the Haitian the only current black character, since Monica hasn't been back on screen yet.
I read an interview with the actress recently, and it seems very unlikely that she will be back. They were planning to wrap up her storyline in Episode 5, but I guess that got lost in the shuffle somehow.
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote, except that Elle's characterization was too off for me, and that while I agree that Eden wouldn't have fit here because of certain Season One moments, the storyline itself fits her a lot better than Elle, and actually is partly her storyline with both Chandra and Mohinder.
Loved Hiro almost waking up for Nathan as well. And yes, the dog was called "Izzie."
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 04:44 pm (UTC)Pity about Monica. Though I thought we wouldn't see Meredith again since she wasn't in s2, so who knows? *holds out hope*
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 01:50 pm (UTC)Loved the conversation where Angela asks Arthur if he tried to have Nathan killed. Their interaction reminded me of Peter and Nathan's too, in a way: "I need to hear you say it." followed by the lie.
I loved HRG in this episode. I thought his characterization was spot on and highly entertaining. "He actually exposes the brain!" Heh.
As for Sylar, and the way they're setting up Sylar/Elle, since they're now both at Pinehearst...SIGH. I'd much rather have had Elle spend that time with Claire and Peter. This storyline with Sylar feels forced to me. And I'm not happy with the retcon--the Hunger reminds me of the Chip with Spike, only in reverse.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 04:46 pm (UTC)You can see why Angela is projecting herself and Arthur on Peter and Nathan, in addition to the physical similarities between respective parents and children. (Best family casting ever.) Though she is ignoring that both Peter and Nathan aren't replicas but their own people in addition to being a mixture of both their parents, not just one.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 01:55 pm (UTC)Yeah, seriously. You know, I'd been sort of going along with what they were doing with Sylar's character this season. I wasn't thrilled about it, but I was going along with it. But this episode does really indicate to me that they are going for total woobification of the guy, and just... Ugh. It's such a damned shame. First-season Sylar was a mysterious, creepy, very scary bad guy, which was cool. Second season Sylar was a complex, layered bad guy, with a twisted psychology you could sort of vaguely sympathize with even while finding his actions utterly reprehensible and inexcusable... which is my very favoritest kind of bad guy. But currently they seem to be aiming to convince us that no, he's a good guy, really! He's just an innocent victim of his power, and of those meanies at the Company! And it's losing me.
Actually, a lot of things about this show are starting to lose me, to be honest...
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 01:59 pm (UTC)You know I always saw the police station scene as Angela telling Peter from experience how the world would eat him up and Nathan would do the same and as I wrote my fan fiction of Angela's life it seemed organic that it was really a woman saying "Just like your father, Nathan will do to you what he did to me" - so I'm so glad and shocked it ended up being that true. That scene really makes so much sense and I'm very impressed that they took Angela's story full circle from who she was in the pilot. Now if they would only tell us about the socks.
As for Nathan and the talk of his father's suicide, It think the show has an out. On the roof Peter asks Nathan "did you know about Dad's depression?" Not suicide. And we know from the GN Arthur came home from war depressed. He was even called crazy for saying Linderman could heal. We know it's all true and a reason for his depression, but from the outside world not so much. Nathan may have known his father's history since he followed him into the Navy etc. Also, in the speech he never says "my father's suicide" and since Angela says they wanted to keep it quite for his rep and she confesses it to Heidi as a secret I think it was meant to be that way. He says his father's death caused him to want to run and that he suffered with the illness all his life, but it can be said he never actually says "My father had an illness and he killed himself." And we do know that Angela and Nathan (even if they both didn't know it) wanted Peter to believe he was crazy. So she may have told Nathan about the lie - still that last part is a bit of a wank, I think the rest in canon works, at least for me.
I think your right and Arthur was meant to be the leader. And I think we have evidence that the elders didn't have Issac's paintings yet. Odds are they we're going off Angela's dreams and the paintings we're just an added road map. I wonder if Angela worried she would "Lose her usefulness."
I've always been under the impression Angela didn't know Peter was the bomb until later and I feel this proves it with her line "When he manifests Peter will be a great man." It would just seem in her convo with Charles he wasn't that in time to be the leader she saw Nathan as. Anyway, I wonder what you think of this. She never mentions Peter is the bomb until the finale episode of season one. And I'd think when convincing Nathan it would be a good idea to bring up. Linderman seemed to know, but after what happened with Nathan I'd think he wouldn't want to tell Angela her son was involved. And they did keep secrets from each other, no matter what he did for her, for she kept Claire a secret. I also wonder if Linderman knew she was going to kill Arthur? I can't see how he wouldn't. The only way to save Nathan was to kill him. And I know some people feel she talked about the Peter as the bomb in the roof, but they don't - they debate who will save the world, who will be the one. Charles: Peter with Love. Angela: Nathan with strength. "This bomb will go off and Nathan will be the one."
Part two
Date: 2008-11-13 01:59 pm (UTC)Also, I know some people think Angela was always like she is and Arthur made her how we saw her, but I disagree, what do you think? I think he took her memories when he needed to like Sandra, but not like some step ford wife. All those bad memories coming back at once must have been traumatic, but mostly finding out the man you trusted the man you loved had done such a thing to you and your family - my god you get why she thinks Love is overrated. He broke her heart and all of that can't have an emotional change in a person. When he says "I know you like I know my own heart" and her eyes tear up and she says "Oh, really?" It's so powerful.
And MM and Cristine have amazing chemistry. I have to say it is very telling to Angela's role in the Company when Daniel stops by and she assumes he's there for Arthur. But I always felt she wasn't as involved as people thought. Arthur seems like man who would see his wife as a wife. I think she was involved, but not like Linderman - he took over Arthur's job, but then I'm sure her role was to work on Nathan. And not to mention she ONLY took over after everyone was dead.
And yes I love that she was cooking.
So, I've gone off the deep end with this post. Angela backstory does that. :) Sorry.
Re: Part two
Date: 2008-11-13 05:02 pm (UTC)If he hadn't loved her even in these flashbacks, he wouldn't have bothered with lying to her to begin with. (The first time she asked.) In this family, people can do horrible things to each other while still feeling love. I think we're heading to a Lady of Shanghai showdown with Arthur and Angela this season - "killing you would be like killing myself, but in truth I've grown sick of both of us".
Re: Part two
Date: 2008-11-13 05:18 pm (UTC)(Yet he still wears his wedding ring and has a picture of Angela and the boys in his office.)
I bet on her birthday he fills the house with flowers - big gestures, showy, but perhaps nothing really behind it.
I do like how complicated they all are. But when it all comes down to do it Arthur won't let "sentimentally" get in the way of anything HE wants to do, so is that really love. But I was really thinking more the 1970's.
Still their relationship fascinates me, even know that I truly hate him for what he has done, as apposed to love/hate.
But I love the little details. Like this was the first time we ever saw Angela say "I love you." both to Peter and to Arthur. Writing my story and going back I found it very telling that this woman who has such acts of expressing love to her children, she never says the word "love" - yet here she did. I thinks he doesn't trust the word anyone, for it's just words - Arthur did that.
I too would love a showdown between Angela and Arthur. I hope we get it. I fear she's gonna be in that paralyzed state for a while, in protection from the writers as she is the "Nathan" of her generation - she has no defensive power, she's very vulnerable. Perhaps they can get her a body guard. They aren't done yet.
Re: Part two
Date: 2008-11-13 05:20 pm (UTC)I do love Cristine in that scene, hearing what she needs to hear. That and the Linderman scene. She's a good slapper.
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Date: 2008-11-13 04:58 pm (UTC)Angela's state of knowledge about Peter being the bomb: while I agree she definitely doesn't know yet before Arthur's death - hence the "he'll be a great man" line - I think she definitely knows before Linderman tells Nathan. Given all we know about different timelines - and what Usutu said this season about futures he saw being erased - I think you can theorize Peter wasn't the bomb in the original future Angela saw. Sylar might have been, or even Ted. Peter did become the bomb once Hiro started to jump back in time and thus started to create different timelines, and after that, Angela's visions must have changed as well. As to whether she knew already when she was talking to Charles, hm, I could see it either way. Will think about this further.
Linderman definitely knew Angela was going to kill Arthur. He doesn't strike me as suicidal, and if Arthur hadn't "died", he'd have known whom to thank for Angela's restored memory.
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Date: 2008-11-13 05:09 pm (UTC)Angela's state of knowledge about Peter being the bomb: while I agree she definitely doesn't know yet before Arthur's death - hence the "he'll be a great man" line - I think she definitely knows before Linderman tells Nathan. Given all we know about different timelines - and what Usutu said this season about futures he saw being erased - I think you can theorize Peter wasn't the bomb in the original future Angela saw. Sylar might have been, or even Ted. Peter did become the bomb once Hiro started to jump back in time and thus started to create different timelines, and after that, Angela's visions must have changed as well. As to whether she knew already when she was talking to Charles, hm, I could see it either way. Will think about this further.
Absolutely and very well thought out. When she did know is hard to pin down, but just thoughts, but I'd love to see when she did have that dream - or when she did see that someone was changing history. There is also the fact that she was sure Peter was dead when he was brought to her (that scene always gets me) As for Charles I look forward to more of your thoughts. That conversation to me is more who is set to save the world. And not just Angela's comments, but I'd think Charles would have acted much different if he knew Peter was the bomb. Still, it goes against most people's ideas she always set up Peter to be the bomb and die. Which I always felt seemed wrong. (not to mention if Meredith can breath in fire, Ted could live after "exploding") It would seem she didn't know until history changed, and that was when he got Claire's power.
Linderman definitely knew Angela was going to kill Arthur. He doesn't strike me as suicidal, and if Arthur hadn't "died", he'd have known whom to thank for Angela's restored memory.
Glad we agree. Arthur's death was the only way for Nathan to love and Linderman couldn't have not known that. And as I believe he did care about Angela, he couldn't have not known how much HE would benefit with Arthur gone. It was a coup.
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Date: 2008-11-13 02:36 pm (UTC)Also, Mohinder couldn't have been in New York yet, because this was clearly at a point in Sylar's timeline before he'd met and killed Chandra.
It also seems apparent that the current Heroes episodes are stuck back in 2007. After all, S1 was leading up to the November 2006 elections and the explosion right after, and there's complete correspondence between the events of Six Months Ago back then and events in Villains that are at most eighteen months ago. Therefore, Hiro and Ando in Africa can be no later than November 2007, a full year ago.
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Date: 2008-11-13 03:19 pm (UTC)Because it would look even more suspicious, which means he'd have to do it to everyone in the DA's office and that's too many people. That kind of mind wiping seems to work best with the least amount of people. And it could be 100's who just know a passing reference that it was going to happen. By taking out Nathan he takes out the guy who is gung ho 'Once Nathan gets something in his teeth he never lets it go" and as a personal vendetta to taking down Linderman "to take the stink off the family name" as he tells Peter.
Taking down Nathan buries that and scares the next guy (as in all Mob movies) I loved what someone said on another board, also. "If Arthur could mind control that many people he'd have taken over the world years ago." And on the deleted scene on the DVD, even Matt got a nose bleed doing the entire police station.
Still, it seemed obvious to me there are too many people involved and who knows how many other people know about it they wouldn't know about - odd temps, spouses, reporters, etc. Its like killing someone in public and then trying to get rid of all the witness as they scatter.
Of course, I guess he could have convinced him to pass the case off to someone else, as he asked, but I do think that ask was part of his ego - it's the idea that he's number one.
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Date: 2008-11-13 04:14 pm (UTC)I really don't see the argument that it takes mind controlling more than one person (Nathan) to avoid the situation as it developed.
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Date: 2008-11-13 04:20 pm (UTC)And your thoughts are valid, but the way I see it in the context of the show... and in real life there are just so many people involved in this and it brings the question again - if Arthur can mind control that many people why hasn't he taken over the world already, instead of waiting for a bomb to go off and use that fear to unit the world?
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Date: 2008-11-13 06:41 pm (UTC)So, no, it doesn't raise any questions about why Arthur hasn't taken over the world if he can control that many people, because he only has to control one.
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Date: 2008-11-16 06:17 pm (UTC)Thats... actually a very good point. This episode's has all sorts of chronological issues - Claire running into the burning train is the first episode of the first season, but Arthur's death happens in 6 Months Ago. Sylar would have committed enough murders with enough power to have the FBI chasing him with vigour (and could also freeze people by the first episode).
PJW
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Date: 2008-11-16 08:46 pm (UTC)PJW
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Date: 2008-11-13 02:54 pm (UTC)Wonder how well Dexter would have gone down as a show if he shared Sylar's culinary preferences...?
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Date: 2008-11-13 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 06:47 pm (UTC)I don't often comment, but I generally adore your reviews.
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Date: 2008-11-13 06:48 pm (UTC)And thank you, that's good to know, I enjoy writing them. Next up: Dexter!
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Date: 2008-11-14 12:27 pm (UTC)the part of the Sylar plot thread I'm happy with is the depiction of Noah Bennet. Including his watching Sylar kill on the monitor like he was watching a lion eat a zebra. Because that fits with the HRG characterisation throughout three seasons; he basically doesn't think of the specials as humans,
I loved that part for the same reasons. That's exactly what I wondered not so long ago and the scene where HRG rambles on whales and how they migrate towards each other as allegory for the specials he is observing brought that point home beautifully. He really comes across as seeing all specials as strange species, a species he is undoubtedly fascinated by but doesn't really treat as equals.
It occurs to me that this is the exact reverse to the Godfather model, where you have the mafia don and his consigliere the lawyer; here, Las Vegas crime boss Linderman is actually the consigliere, and the lawyer pretending to be that is really the power in the background.
Hah, true. But I got the feeling that the many Godfather/mafia allusions throughout the Petrelli arc were very deliberate. And you can probably imagine how much I loved that. :D
There are parallels between Arthur and Noah in this episode that that make me suspect I'm dead-on in my comment to 47_trek_47 two weeks ago about Nathan seeing Arthur as fandom sees Noah.
I immediately had to think of you after the mindwipe scene. Dead on, indeed. My only gripe with the way they depicted Arthur is that he remained very one-dimensional. Angela, Linderman, Thomposon etc. they all gained a human layer but Arthurs motivation seems very one-sided. I was hoping for more clues why Nathan idolized him and Angela was drawn to him. But with the exception of Angela's remark that he was once a great visionary we still don't know what she/they saw in him.
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Date: 2008-11-14 02:56 pm (UTC)That's exactly what I wondered not so long ago and the scene where HRG rambles on whales and how they migrate towards each other as allegory for the specials he is observing brought that point home beautifully. He really comes across as seeing all specials as strange species, a species he is undoubtedly fascinated by but doesn't really treat as equals.
Since artificial power is a theme this season: do you think he'd take the drug, if offered (and if it could be guaranteed to him doesn't end up like Flyhinder)? I think he wouldn't, despite the obvious advantages (increased possibilities to get rid of Sylar, for one), both because he's confident in his own skills and because he does not want to become alien himself.
I got the feeling that the many Godfather/mafia allusions throughout the Petrelli arc were very deliberate. And you can probably imagine how much I loved that. :D
Yes, me too. Re: Arthur, I agree that he's still one dimensional at this point, but then again, he's had only three episodes so far, and earlier season arc villains like Linderman or for that matter s1 Sylar definitely weren't layered after three episodes. (Takezo Kensei/Adam is a different case in that we saw him pre-villain state first via Hiro's time travel, but present day Adam definitely was an all out supervillain without saving graces.) And I think we did get some clues; for starters, he and Angela came across as incredibly focused on each other (and btw, since Angela says they've been married for 41 years we got, if not an exact age, at least an approximate age for Nathan). We know Angela had her affair with Kaito and I bet Arthur had affairs as as well, but I don't think either is lying or faking when they use "love of my life" type of phrases. (It's just that in this family, "l love you" can go along with "I do absolutely horrible things to you".) And that emotional intensity must have been compelling to people who crave it, which is true for both Angela and Nathan.
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Date: 2008-11-15 02:15 pm (UTC)"You look good in a suit, Nathan."
You know, I took that remark as being an implied death threat, as in "You'll look good when you're suited up in your coffin".
Massively late
Date: 2008-11-19 09:38 am (UTC)Ha, you know, I hadn't even thought about it from that angle. So that makes two uncles who have actively attacked Claire, as well as two grandparents scheming about her, and biological parents willing to use her to their own ends as long as it doesn't physically hurt her. Claire really won the lottery on terrible family dynamics, didn't she?
I'm going back and thro as to whether Eden would have been a far better choice; it would have made her determination to kill Sylar and killing herself before he could get her power even more an attempt to atone.
I was considering that as well, wondering if the part was originally intended to be Eden, and eventually decided that even though the personality they wrote on screen was Eden, it was definitely meant to be Elle. Starting to get worried that they only have a couple of "ambiguous" female types they can write -- Eden is clearly one, seeing as Daphne and Elle are both playing that part this season. Angela appears to be the other, and we'll see if Claire and Tracy can be ambiguous without falling back onto one of these basic types.
I guess that means Peter got promoted from spare to heir in his mind. If he thought about heirs at all.)
Oddly, I don't think he does. I think he's always had Adam's power in the back of his mind, and is probably responsible for Adam staying in the Company. Of all people, I don't think he would ever hand off the reins of the empire to Peter.
with a lie of her own, telling Nathan "oh, this reminds me to tell you what REALLY happened to your father"?
This is a fanwank I like and I'm going with. THANK YOU for giving me an explanation I can finally be comfortable with there, because I was just head scratching and assuming that the hospital eventually came back with a toxicology report that Angela had to explain away or face charges for, and that Nathan potentially helped her make that problem disappear.