Episode 3 - One of Us, One of Them
11 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Angela tells Sylar to work with Noah and round up the Level 5 escapees. Noah is reluctant to work with him but they do and gain access to the bank where Knox, Jesse and Flint are holding hostages. Future Peter rescues Peter from Jesse’s body before Sylar saves the day and takes Jesse’s power. Hiro and Ando follow Daphne to a German cinema where they try to steal the other half of the formula from the Haitian. Unfortunately mistrust between Hiro and Ando allows Daphne to steal the formula and escape. Tracy visits New Orleans and finds Niki’s body at her funeral. Micah helps her find the doctor who signed her birth certificate, Dr Zimmerman who claims he “created” her. Parkman’s African friend has painted most of Matt’s life and now says the future has changed. He encourages Matt to seek the truth through his hallucinogenic paste. Claire doesn’t see the point of school and so heads out with Meredith to learn how to fight. Meredith traps her and forces her to admit her real motivation is revenge on Sylar.
The Good: There are shoots of good ideas here but I suspect they will all be smothered by the bad ideas laid on top of them.
Claire’s desire to get revenge on Sylar is well explained and gives his attack on her a greater significance within the show. Her desire to help people was evident last season when she raised the idea of using her blood to help cure people. So we know that motivation is part of who she is and so it isn’t a simple lie on her part. But the admission that she was traumatised by what Sylar did to her is good writing. It shows that what he can have damaging effects even on those who he doesn’t kill and it’s important to emphasise the damaging psychological effects of such attacks. It also gives Claire a clear purpose and motivation for her actions this season.
Sylar is a cold blooded killer (see The Bad) and trying to make him into a morally grey, well rounded character is going to be difficult at this point. But in their previous attempts to humanise his behaviour (110, 121), it became clear that he had always wanted to be seen as special but his parents had smothered his ambition. So when Angela tells him that he is special we have at least something to cling to, to imagine why he would suddenly take orders from her and voluntarily return to his prison at the end of the episode. Noah also has plausible motivation to work with Sylar, because he needs someone to help him bring back the escaped prisoners. His admission that he is waiting to kill Sylar makes sense too. Not just because of his attack on Claire but because he is an unrepentant dangerous murderer (again see The Bad).
The bank robbery revenge plan makes sense. Jesse and Knox want revenge on the company and Noah in particular. The writers fill in the blanks on Knox’ power well and seeing him punch through the German and then wipe his hands on his clothes is an effective and startling visual. Similarly the tension between Hiro and Ando bubbles along nicely and seeing Ando bash the Haitian over the head is quite a surprise. It’s good to see him use such force because if the fate of the world depends on the formula then why shouldn’t he beat someone up. Their tension allowing Daphne to sneak in and get the formula is a neat plot development and hopefully their stay in Primatech prison will lead to some good stories.
It’s good to see Tracy reacting emotionally to killing the journalist and trying to find out who she is. It’s how you would expect someone to react if such a weird development occurred. It’s also good to see Niki in the coffin and have Micah give some closure to their story. It’s sad to see Micah and Niki’s story swept out of the show with little fanfare and a shame Monica has been lost too (from season two). But Micah hugging Tracy was a nice moment and acknowledgement from him that this woman was clearly connected to him somehow.
The Bad: Heroes doesn’t give its characters proper characterisation. We don’t know how and why certain characters behave the way they do and more often than not it looks like they are behaving that way to serve the plot rather than because that is who they are.
In this episode we are asked to accept that Sylar will play ball and follow Angela’s orders because she manipulates him. We see her claim she is his mother and imply he is special. He then shows remorse describing himself as just a killer. She justifies that by saying he can’t fight the hunger inside which has made him a killer. There is something there that may fit his character but it is a very abrupt change. It’s so difficult not to look at his sudden change in behaviour as incredibly contrived. It’s obviously intriguing to see him partnering Noah on a case and pretending to be the good guy but it all feels hollow. We don’t really know what he is thinking or how he feels. For so long he brutally killed people (see his crucifixion of Isaac Mendez in 119) with little seeming reluctance. He also tormented people (as with Alejandro in 206 or Claire in 301) and seemed to take great pleasure from it. It’s therefore very difficult to buy into his acquiescence to Angela’s instructions.
Worse than this abrupt change in behaviour is his way too cute FBI impersonation. Again it feels like the writers telling us that Sylar could be a nice fun guy underneath all those layers of killer. But we haven’t seen him be this smooth before. In fact he was positively creepy and awkward when he tried the same trick on Mohinder (115, 116). The supposed mind game that Noah plays by telling Sylar to stay put – “you told me that to make sure I wouldn’t” – seems really flimsy. Noah was about to be killed and his only way out was with Sylar’s help. Sylar had wanted to come into the bank so he didn’t need to trick him in order to gat his help. There’s no reason he couldn’t have walked in with Sylar and saved himself a lot of trouble. Again it feels like an attempt to show Noah “matching wits” with Sylar but instead comes off as very phoney behaviour. Finally Noah tells the Haitian that he will kill Sylar once he has found his weakness. Well doesn’t the Haitian stop powers? Can’t Noah walk in and kill him with the Haitian standing there? If the excuse is that the Haitian wouldn’t disobey Angela’s orders then why is Noah telling him his plan? Again it feels like it’s meant to be a tense cliff-hanger but instead makes the writers look foolish for not thinking things through.
No explanation is given for why Meredith decided to come back and help Claire after previously refusing to be a part of her life (115). That would have given us more reason to care about her. And why can she breathe ok once the oxygen has disappeared? If that is part of her powers then it needs to be explained. It would have been more interesting to have Jesse act as Peter, rather than have Peter frowning and looking conflicted as usual. It made it harder to empathise with Peter when we couldn’t see him trying to blend in as clearly. Again the writers try to force us to like Peter rather than let his actions make us admire him. He doesn’t find a clever way to prevent the hostages from suffering; he just behaves out of character (for Jesse) and gets caught out. When Knox finds out that he did it to help people he comments “Nobody’s that heroic.” I guess Peter must be heroic then.
Parkman’s visit to the African Isaac Mendez doesn’t interest me too much. I think it’s unwise to base characters behaviour around what they have been told will happen in the future like this. It removes their emotions and established traits from their decision making and makes the story all about what will happen in the future. Plus the new painter has not been characterised at all. While Isaac reacted to the painting with shock and turned to drugs to escape his fear, this new man hasn’t shown any human emotion over his strange abilities. And will it be explained why he is painting about some American guy. That feels very contrived as well, unless Parkman was chosen by “the Gods” to be special. And if that is the case again it removes the crux of the action away from characters and their struggles and toward some mythical higher purpose. That may work in comics where what is selling the art form has a different method. When it comes to television, if you don’t build characters people relate to then people will stop caring. Perhaps the writers have more of an explanation than this.
The Unknown: What is Parkman up to and who is the African guy? Who is the woman Parkman was with in the first painting and carrying (presumably dead) in the second? How did Dr Zimmerman “create” Tracy? Why does Angela feed Bridget to Sylar? Or rather does she give him that power for a specific reason? Who was Bridget and how can Angela justify that murder?
Best Moment: Probably Claire losing oxygen and flashing back to Sylar’s attack on her. It’s a clever effect to show us her real motivations and the trauma he inflicted on her.
Epilogue: Heroes has such a casual attitude to character development that it loses so much value from its stories. Yes it sounds cool to make Sylar a conflicted semi-good guy working with Noah. But in reality it feels contrived and jars against his established behaviour. The other stories have some good and some bad, let’s hope the good begins to outweigh the bad as this season progresses.
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