As a Matter of Fact, I Do Have a One-Track Mind

It’s Tuesday so you know I’ll be babbling about Heroes. I’m not original, but I am prolific.

“Nothing to Hide”

Mostly I have brief thoughts on last night’s episode, which overall I thought was good and if someone tuned in last night for the first time it seemed like it would have been a decent one to start with since it kind of took a half step back with each character—just enough so you would be more or less on the same page as people who’d watched from the beginning. Niki’s confession to her sister was a pretty succinct way to explain her Jessica alter ego; Peter and Nathan’s conversation revealed quite a bit about each of them; Hiro, DL and Claire all had short demonstrations of what they could do and of course Parkman had plenty of development that made it indisputably clear what his ability was. Interestingly they managed to do all that while still pushing the story ahead enough to make way for some inevitable plot thread resolution (just in time for sweeps, how convenient!).

So if you watched last night based on my urging, there are still a few characters who got little to no screentime including Isaac (reads/paints the future); Horn-Rimmed Glasses man (Claire’s adoptive father who keeps kidnapping the Heroes for unknown reasons) and HRG’s sidekick, a Haitian guy who seems to have some mental powers which allow him to block mind-readers (like Parkman) and also affect memories, wiping them out or something (incidentally, Nathan referred to HRG and the Haitian during his conversation with Peter but they got no actual screentime). And in case you’re wondering, the mobster referred to as being connected with the Petrelli campaign and who purchased the painting Peter wanted has yet to be shown on screen so you didn’t miss anything there.

Now, thoughts:

I think they’re spending too much time with the Parkman/Wife story. Parkman and the FBI agent’s pursuit of Sylar is interesting and Parkman as a character is fascinating but it just seemed too predictable for his wife to be cheating on him with his old partner. I’m not saying it can’t be salvaged as a storyline but I think the amount of screentime they’d have to devote to it to do it right would really detract from some of the other, more interesting stuff. And I really want them to get on with connecting Parkman to some of the other heroes, especially since it’s fairly clear that his ability will help get some of those unanswered questions at least asked out loud.
My other complaint is still with the Niki/DL/Micah thread. I don’t know where they’re going with Niki’s character but they need to do something other than make her utterly despicable and soon. At this point I’m hoping she turns out to be a villain because I want to see her get smacked around again. If she ends up as a hero I’m going to need something to draw on that helps me suspend that disbelief because right now she seems like she doesn’t have a heroic bone in her body.
Micah’s powers sure are interesting, however. It seems his abilities were foreshadowed way early on, perhaps the first episode (at least one of the first, when he fixed a motherboard or circuit board or something). He and DL make for an interesting story by themselves but as long as they’re still dealing with Niki I’m going to be tempted to hit the fast forward button whenever they come onscreen.
I was happy that they didn’t overdo it with the Hiro this episode. Hiro is great, don’t get me wrong, but as with any standout character on a show, the temptation to overexpose him must be pretty strong. This episode had just enough Hiro in it, and his line about wishing he had super strength, too, was classic. Especially considering that everyone seems to be in consensus that of all the powers shown on the series so far, his would be the absolute best/most useful.
The mystery of Peter continues. Some are now suggesting that he has supernatural empathic powers which may be related to his power leeching abilities (or presumed abilities I guess). I was unclear after the episode what role Peter had actually played in the passing of Simone’s father.
Speaking of Simone, I’m not sure if it’s the actress or the way she’s written, but I’m having a hard time pinpointing her approach to Peter. She seemed so ready to dismiss Isaac’s claims to powers he didn’t understand but she’s almost blindly accepting Peter’s nearly identical behavior and what most normal people would regard as delusions of grandeur. Maybe it’s because of Isaac’s drug use that she was so quick to dismiss him, but somehow it doesn’t quite sit well with me.
Am I the only one who didn’t understand Nathan’s conversation on the phone with Linderman in light of the discussion he had immediately after with Peter? It sounded from the one-sided conversation that Nathan had secured the painting from Linderman and was having it sent back to the gallery, but when he spoke to Peter about it, he said he wasn’t able to convince Linderman to give it up. What did I miss there?
Nathan’s description of HRG and the Haitian to Peter sounded important to me, like that Peter was going to have to remember that later when confronted with one or both of them. Although Nathan’s explanation of the Haitian as “Euro” was kind of weird, since most people don’t assume someone else is from Europe unless they hear them speak, which as far as I recall the Haitian never has.
Somebody on the writing staff has mother issues because two of the moms on the show are utterly abhorrent: Claire’s adoptive mom and Nathan and Peter’s mother. Both just absolutely grate on me.
Some people are postulating that because Claire is so careless about her abilities that she really wants to be found out, citing the fact that she sort of hung around while her hand healed instead of running upstairs to cover it up or something. I usually attribute this to the fact that the special effects show the healing process a bit slower than it actually occurs for the audience’s sake. I read a lot of people also whining about how Claire has had her behind trounced repeatedly and usually never says boo about it but this week she gets a staple in the hand and yelps like she had no powers at all. My thought is that she doesn’t feel pain the way most people do in that because her body knows it can heal itself, the pain receptors don’t fire the way they normally would (why bother?). However, she does experience the sensations of all her injuries which I assume are just kind of uncomfortable or bizarre feeling and not so much painful. In the case of the stapler, I think her reaction was more of surprise from unexpected sensation than pain.
The previews for next week finally start to suggest that HRG may not in fact be a bad guy. This kind of bugs me because up until now the assumption has been that he’s a bad guy not because of what he’s done (which is why some people still thought all along that he wasn’t all bad) but because the “previously on” voice over flat-out called him the “incarnation of evil” or some such. Look, it’s one thing to make his motives ambiguous and leave us guessing as to what he is, but to call him evil and then later come out and say, “oh, but is he or isn’t he?” seems very suspect to me.
It seems pretty obvious that Sprague’s comment about becoming an atomic bomb was meant to get the audience thinking along the lines of what his involvement in the imminent destruction of New York would be. But I think it is a red herring. I’m not precisely sure why I think that, but I do.
Stupid week until next Monday.