Episode 14 - A Clear and Present Danger
4 February 2009
Review
Synopsis: Nathan is rounding up those with powers with the help of Angela, Noah and of course the President. Claire discovers what he is up to and rushes off to warn Matt Parkman. Matt is trying to convince Daphne to live a normal life but Usutu appears to tell him that he has been chosen to be a prophet and can now draw the future. Nathan tries to convince Peter to join him but when he won’t he knocks him out and sends him off to containment with everyone else he has captured. The notable exception is Sylar who escapes capture. He finds his father the watch maker and discovers that his uncle sold him to his father when he was a baby. Nathan lets Claire go home but she sneaks onto the prisoner transport plane and wakes Peter and the other prisoners. Peter absorbs the powers of Mohinder and Tracy and accidentally causes a hole in the plane which sends it crashing to earth.
The Good: Well you can’t fault Heroes for not trying to be good. Someone went back to the drawing board and decided that a different approach was needed on all fronts and largely they deliver.
The soldiers rounding up those with powers provides a clear and exciting premise for the episode. The opening scene is particularly effective as Nathan outlines his role with Homeland Security on the television as Tracy is abducted. We establish then that two months have passed since Primatech burned down. Tracy has clearly gone back to work with the governor and that snippet of information is the start of a very encouraging trend.
I have long criticised the lack of context in the lives of the heroes. Yet here we get Claire discussing school, Peter back in a caring profession, Matt, Daphne and Mohinder all doing menial jobs to make a living. That sense that they are real people with real lives makes their scenes so much more interesting. We finally have a reason to root for Claire and Peter. With her healing power now on board she knows that Sylar is still alive and is rightly concerned that they should track him down and kill him. Then there is Peter who cares so much about helping others that he blames himself for not having power enough to save lives. Nathan reminds us that he does love Peter as he desperately tries to avoid locking him up.
Then there is Hiro who uses his vast wealth to set up his own bat cave with technology to help Ando become a hero. It makes total sense because we know Hiro will do good whether he has powers or not. So why not use his money to create a proper comic-inspired lair for them to work from. He may be jealous too but for now he seems genuinely altruistic in wanting to play Robin to Ando’s Batman and fight crime. And with characterisation being strong Ando uses his new found confidence and gear to impress the ladies. This (like Peter’s taxi ride with Mohinder) takes us back to the pilot episode and reminds us that Ando is a normal guy, with normal desires. It’s so much easier to be impressed by heroics if characters are normal people to begin with. Hiro’s GPS chips fit perfectly with his new setup and of course provide an ideal plot device to allow Ando to track him down once he has been captured.
Even the fight scenes, another frequent complaint of mine, seem better here. The multiple soldiers surrounding people and stunning them provides an interesting new dynamic and is an enjoyably logical and effective method of catching them. It’s left to Sylar to fight them off and he does so in thorough and convincing fashion. Instead of a blur of action we can see him fight each man off using his powers with the precision which should make him such an ideal villain.
Speaking of Sylar he too is well characterised. He remains ice cool as he asks his absent father where he really came from. That story follows directly on from Sylar’s desire for truth at the end of the previous volume which is good to see. And his decision not to kill his father shows the type of restraint which maybe possibly could see him win some kind of redemption one day. He has a long way to go of course and may prove an unlikely hero against Nathan’s crackdown. It’s certainly far easier to swallow than watching him follow his “parents” orders so blindly for the first half of this season.
Generally the producers deserve great credit for how the show feels. Last season I complained long and hard about how fake and comic-like the show had become. Scenes set in Pinehearst and Primatech were so bare that they added to the lack of reality in the storytelling. Here we get Tracy, Matt and Peter’s apartments looking well lived in. We get cluttered watch shops and New York streets, an eerily empty parking lot, a Tokyo strip club and a military airbase. The airbase scene is perhaps the most different feeling of all. The full on Guantanamo style uniforms for the prisoners are a great idea. Not only do they give the story a sense of political relevance but they look like effective well thought out restraints, which could genuinely keep the very dangerous subdued.
The bottom line for the first episode is a sense of purpose and of personal interest. Noah and Nathan have clear and logical motivations to want to lock up the dangerous and protect Claire. She is clearly fighting for individual rights and honesty. It may not be nuanced or as well planned as it could have been but at the end of the episode I felt like I wanted to watch the next one and I knew what the characters were fighting for. That’s a good start.
The Bad: There are one or two moments of stupidity. Angela Petrelli has always seemed one step ahead of the game yet she stands in her living room talking loudly about what Nathan needs to do to Claire. That was needlessly clumsy. As was Claire climbing aboard a moving plane from the outside. How did she manage that exactly? We know Peter can fly, so quite why he is desperate not to fall out of the plane I don’t know.
A couple of developments from the first half of the season are rather swept under the carpet. Peter greets Mohinder pretty warmly considering a couple of months ago he almost used him as a human guinea pig (307). And Hiro doesn’t seem concerned now that Ando has powers. Even though that rather fits in with the image of betrayal he saw in the future (301). I’m still amused by Matt and Daphne’s relationship. They are already living together and having domestic arguments even though they only met just over two months ago.
I’m also not pleased with Matt “becoming” a prophet in two seconds. Or with Heroes continuing to use the crutch of painting the future to be a guide for characters actions. As this episode showed, the show is better when characters make their own decisions and have to live with the consequences.
The Unknown: Why does Nathan tell Zeljko Ivanek’s (a fine choice of actor by the way) character that he should have killed Sylar? Does he have orders not to kill anyone? Where were the prisoners being taken? Peter can now absorb people’s powers by touching them. Where did that come from?
Best Moment: I could have gone for several others but Peter takes Tracy’s power and not understanding it yet he freezes a large section of the plane which promptly falls off causing the plane to fall. What is so encouraging about that is the sense that powers are dangerous, they have consequences all the time and it takes a while to learn how to use them. It’s such a logical plot twist and leads to the cliff-hanger which does a decent job of setting up the next episode where the heroes will presumably be stranded in the middle of nowhere and head off on the run.
Epilogue: It’s easy to get swept away by what an improvement this is and start heaping too much praise on Heroes. This is a valuable setup episode but it will mean nothing if it is not followed up on with proper character based stories. This is a solid and enjoyable start though.
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