Episode 7 - Eris Quod Sum
11 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Mohinder brings Maya to Pinehearst and Arthur takes her powers. He then offers Mohinder the chance to perfect the formula and wants to use Peter as a test subject. Angela talks to Sylar in a dream and he escapes Primatech and rescues Peter. Arthur convinces him to stay but Sylar still helps Peter escape. Elle comes looking for Noah because her power is malfunctioning. Claire offers to go with her to Pinehearst to see if they can fix them both. Daphne fools Matt into thinking she has joined him after Arthur kills Maury. Hiro takes the African’s whacky paste and goes on his spirit walk.
The Good: Elle is ok here. Seeking help from Noah makes sense. Her decision to go into Pinehearst even when Peter has just been thrown out makes sense. She is in blinding pain from her malfunctioning ability and needs help. And she and Claire fly to Pinehearst! How else would one get from California to New Jersey? It’s worth asking Sylar that after his exploits in the first two episodes.
Slar saving Peter makes sense. Sylar seems to be hanging around Arthur to discover the truth. He still seems to want to be good so he had no intention of actually hurting his brother. It’s good to see that Arthur clearly knows what’s going on. He would look incredibly foolish if he didn’t. After all no one could have survived that fall and Arthur has the ability to bring Peter back in a second if he wanted to.
Hiro’s refusal to time travel is a good development after the mess he made in season two. It’s also a handy plot device to avoid having him go back in time and kill people when he feels like it.
Maya’s story seems to be over and at least the writers gave us the courtesy of seeing a proper conclusion. So many shows will forget about characters they don’t want anymore. Speaking of which what happened to Monica (from season two)?
Mohinder beating up Sylar makes perfect sense after Sylar killed his father (101) amongst others.
The Bad: Scene after scene is filled with poorly written or thought out ideas.
Mohinder’s morality needs defining badly. He claims to be doing it all for Maya but does that justify kidnapping and experimenting on people? Is this bad behaviour a result of his mutation or is that meant to be his own bad decision making? He suddenly questions Arthur’s motives but then is happy to experiment on Peter. There is no logic or explanation given for any of this. He is happy to let Maya leave and yet he was kidnapping drug dealers and even friends (in Nathan) to get what he wanted. We still don’t know why he was collecting bodies in his lab. “Building a nest, laying eggs, who the hell knows?” says Noah flippantly. Why do I get the feeling that is the writers talking? And since when is Mohinder in love with Maya? He only met her at the end of last season and in the first episode of this season he claimed to be heading back to India without a worry about her. We have seen only a few days pass and no sense that they had any real relationship aside from the one night of sex (302).
Arthur is painted with pretty unhelpful broad brush strokes. He doesn’t explain what his plan for the future is, nor does Peter tell us what he had done in the past that was so bad. Peter asks if he thinks he is better than everyone else “I am better Peter, it’s not a belief, it’s a fact.” Ok, why? In what way? We will get more details of course but in the meantime it takes all the context out of his behaviour. He kills Maury without blinking. Is a cold blooded killer or was Maury a bad person (we certainly have evidence of that)? He uses Peter as a lab rat but tells Sylar he wants to help him. Is he lying relentlessly or telling the truth? He seems very much like a bad guy but we don’t know how or why so it’s much less effective than it should be. He also fires electricity at Peter as he runs away. Why? If he was trying to stop him then why not freeze time or teleport in front of him or instruct him to come back with his mental powers or fly toward him or well, you get the idea. He seems happy to let Peter go for now but you can’t have that many powers and not use them. Presumably now that he has Peter’s ability he has just absorbed Sylar’s ability. Or does he need to unlock that as Peter had to (304)? It’s all so needlessly complicated.
I love Sylar just killing Mohinder’s lab assistant without thinking before telling Peter he is a changed man. How exactly did Sylar activate his powers in his cell? The primatech prison has never been explained but it has always been implied that the cells somehow restricted people’s powers. How else could the villains have been restrained? Yet two episodes ago Sylar used his powers in his cell to fight Peter and now he escapes it.
Matt being ready to die to save Daphne is stupid. Just because he isn’t alive doesn’t mean she won’t die when Syler blows up in the future. It’s completely illogical and worse it doesn’t fit rational behaviour. He barely knows this woman yet is willing to die for her. If we are supposed to believe in his amazing future love with her then he needs to go in depth talking about how it felt and all that nauseating stuff because otherwise he just looks like an idiot. His deception of Knox is predictable stuff but if he reads Daphne’s mind to learn about his father then why can’t he read that she’s lying to him? And why isn’t he mourning his father’s death more? Yes he hated him but that is often what causes more grief. But no it’s glossed over swiftly like a lot in this show.
The Unknown: Where did Arthur find Daphne then? Which Petrelli is telling Sylar the truth?
Best Moment: Maybe Mohinder beating Sylar’s head into the ground. That moment has been a long time coming (see 118 or 211 for example) and doesn’t mean as much as it should.
Epilogue: This was painful to sit through. Ill defined, illogical, irritating. The show just keeps twisting the story further and further until it makes no sense.
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