Episode 19 - Brave New World
14 February 2010
Synopsis: Samuel sets up the carnival in Central Park and Doyle forced Emma to play cello and draw a crowd. Tracy rescues Noah and Claire from the ground and Lauren helicopters them to New York. Hiro is about to leave hospital when he meets Charlie. Samuel had her taken to 1944 and she has now lived a full life. Sylar knock Eli out and asks Matt to look inside his head to see if he has changed. Matt instructs Eli to return to the carnival and tell the truth. Claire confronts Samuel and with help from Edgar, Noah and Eli convinces everyone to abandon the carnival and leave Samuel powerless. Hiro and Ando transport the carnies away leaving Samuel with no power as he battles Peter. Sylar stops Doyle and rescues Emma. When it is all over and Lauren is feeding lies to the police, Claire decides to tell the truth. She climbs to the top of the Ferris wheel and jumps off, outing those with abilities to the world.
The Good: If this is the end of Heroes then it is an appropriate one. Claire has always wanted a normal life and now decides that the way to achieve that is to “out” those with powers once and for all. The final shot seems very fitting, the story has been told from the realisation of powers to showing them to the wider world.
Samuel is also exposed and defeated by the grand coalition which seemed would inevitably coalesce at the last moment. Everyone plays their part with Hiro and Ando getting everyone to safety, Peter tackling Samuel, Sylar defeating Doyle, Matt changing Eli’s mind and Noah and Lauren handling the cover up. Even Tracy’s early season bonding with Noah pays off as she rescues him and Claire from their dirt prison. The writers finally consummate their love affair with Sylar by having him claim that he is now a hero.
Charlie gets a happy ending and in a way that was better than seeing her end up with Hiro. The casting of the older Charlie was excellent, finding an actress with the same wide eyed smile. It allowed Hiro to make another heroic sacrifice, not disturbing the timeline and leaving her new life in tact.
I liked Noah’s explanation to Claire for why he had always tried so hard to protect her – that human nature would lead to persecution for those who are different. I also liked that she wasn’t willing to live in the shadows her whole life. Both a selfish desire and about the only realistic long term solution since bagging, tagging, imprisoning and ignoring have all failed.
The Bad: But looking back this has been a long and dull season. It was a never ending slow build and this was not a finale which could make up for the tedium. I still can’t get over how the producers managed to make a super hero story so boring. Even here we don’t see Eli fighting Sylar and get a very brief battle between Samuel and Peter.
Worse than that though is the long view. We suffered through seventeen episodes of unconvincing struggle for Sylar and then he repented and reformed in one episode. Anyone could tell you that that structure is way off balance. We also spent nineteen episodes building up the story of the carnival yet what do we know about Edgar? His turn on Samuel here was meant to be a key moment but the reality is he was the most generic of characters who received almost no attention beyond his basic positioning in relation to Samuel.
Surely all the heroes could have come together in a more entertaining manner than they end up doing here? Peter flies in to attack Samuel raising the question of where he nicked that power from. Did he really have time to call West and have him fly out there just to slap hands? It’s also worth asking how Doyle knew how to play the cello. Now maybe he genuinely knew how to play but I doubt the writers gave it a second thought despite the obvious logic hole if he did not. I also think Claire should die if she is deprived of oxygen. Her lungs can only regenerate if her brain is receiving oxygen surely? Ando’s super charge power has been a contrived plot device all along and no more evidently than here.
The Unknown: Will the show go on?
Best Moment: Claire’s final decision to reveal her powers to the world. She finally stops arguing with her Dad and does something about it.
Epilogue: I waited patiently all season long but nothing ever happened. The writers and producers of Heroes don’t understand what makes good television. They don’t know how to develop characters or build up intriguing confrontations. And their attention to detail borders on the offensive.
Here they have contrived to create an ending which feels vaguely appropriate. If I were in charge I would cut my losses there and put the show to rest.
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