Episode 6 - Tabula Rasa
28 March 2012
Synopsis: Samuel encourages Sylar to become a part of the carnival family. Lydia is attracted to him which makes Edgar jealous. Sylar begins to recover Nathan’s memories so Samuel shows him Sylar’s memories. He then tries to get him to kill Captain Lubbock which Sylar won’t do, but Edgar does. Sylar is welcomed into the family. Hiro tries to help Emma see her ability as a gift. He says he learnt his ability to be cheerful in the face of death from Charlie. He adds her to his list and soon jumps three years into the past to see her. Peter visits Noah to ask if he knows a healer who could help Hiro. Noah takes him to see a boy called Jeremy who can control life and death. He has accidentally killed his parents and Noah stays to help him.
The Good: This is pretty sensible stuff, as ever it raises the question of whether it will be followed up on and where it is all going.
Peter seeking a healer for Hiro makes sense and I very much appreciated the attempt to address the issue of why Claire’s blood couldn’t be used. The whole Jeremy story made a lot of sense. In the aftermath of all the big conspiracies, Hiro, Peter and now Noah have all realised that their power and knowledge should be used to help people. Noah realises that he can atone for his lack of action over the years by helping Jeremy now. Although it was predictable, the scene where he kills and then revives Peter was good storytelling. Peter’s shocked laughing upon reawakening was pretty good acting too.
Hiro has never strayed from coming across as sweet and so he is the perfect man to convince Emma that abilities are a good thing in life. She remains an interesting character, reminding us of that season one feeling when people discovered their abilities. Until the end of the episode she still sees the ability as an unwelcome intruder in her life. It is how you can imagine a person might really feel. Though quite where her story is going I still have no clue. As for Hiro remembering Charlie, well it could be very interesting, though one suspects a twist is coming. But she was a very pleasant character in season one (108, 110) and it would be fun to see her return.
Sylar’s induction into the carnie family is paced logically enough. Nathan’s memories returning makes sense though apparently one can absorb memories from the body.
The Bad: I suppose the weakness of the Sylar story is two fold. Firstly it is incredibly vague. We still don’t know who Samuel is or what his goals are. The murder of Captain Lubbock makes it clear that he is a bad guy and that there is no particular moral line he won’t cross. However is he meant to be a figure like Magneto? As in he really is only trying to protect those with powers from normal people rather than selfishly trying to gain something? The complete lack of any clue as to what he is up to makes it difficult to care whether Sylar goes with them or not.
The second problem is that we have no reason to care about this incarnation of Sylar. If he were Nathan then it might be interesting, but in his blank slate state it just feels like we are waiting around until Parkman shows up to give him back his personality. Until then all the scenes of his new personality feel dull. It doesn’t help much that we only know Samuel, Lydia and Edgar as caricatures at this stage either.
The Unknown: Who did send Emma a cello? Who keeps moving Hiro about? Was he moved away from Peter because he is meant to die? I assume that one of the carnie’s made the carnival disappear from view rather than actually physically move in the previous episode.
Best Moment: The Peter getting shot and being revived by Jeremy scene, simple but a bit different.
Epilogue: A very basic episode, both good and bad. As I always seem to say, if it builds toward something then it was decent. If it is all forgotten then it was pointless.
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