Episode 10 - The Eclipse (1)
11 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: The eclipse comes and everyone loses their powers. Noah takes Claire to Stephen Canfield’s house to keep her out of harms way and train her. Arthur sends Sylar and Elle to retrieve her and they get beaten up by Noah as Claire takes a bullet to the shoulder. Mohinder builds himself a cocoon but when the eclipse hits he returns to normal. Arthur and Flint insist he can’t leave to go find Maya. Nathan and Peter head to Haiti to collect the Haitian. But he is trying to bring his brother to justice. Hiro and Ando follow the comic book to Matt’s apartment. Daphne is scared of Arthur and so runs home to Kansas. Hiro takes the others there and Matt tells Daphne he loves her while Hiro and Ando find a comic shop.
The Good: The eclipse removing powers is a really interesting plot device which may well set up some fun stuff in part two. It also suggests a sort of extra-terrestrial origin for people’s abilities. Or at least they can hardly be genetic abnormalities if they are so linked to the lunar cycle.
The Claire and Noah story seems promising. Finally they are alone to talk about their problems. He decides to give her what she asked for, some training and they both air their grievances. She wants to help people, he wants to protect her. It makes sense. Then they are attacked by Sylar and Elle. This should have been a much longer and more dramatic scene. The eclipse allows the ultimate juxtaposition. Suddenly Noah, by virtue of his years of training is the strongest there. He beats Sylar into the ground and dislocated his arm. But he has to leave once Claire takes a bullet to save him. Perhaps we will get to see more of the hunters becoming the hunted in part two. The use of Stephen Canfield’s (305) house is a nice touch. It gives a hint of what the company might do with the property of those they secretly imprison.
Similarly the Petrelli brothers have some time alone and air their differences. Nathan still looks at Peter as his helpless little brother (he cites how he saved him in 101 and 123). While Peter looks at Nathan as a puppet because of how he has followed his father’s path (partly because of the future he saw in 304). Its basic characterisation, but I will take what I can get.
Hiro provides the most admirable personality by returning to his childlike belief in the correct way a hero must behave. It’s a simple point but it’s made well, that Matt must be a real hero and win Daphne back without using his powers. The idea of throwing corn at Matt until he does it is so simple but fits with 10-year old Hiro’s character very neatly. The reveal that Daphne has cerebal palsy is interesting and fits with all the threats Arthur made about returning her to her former life. Again, hopefully we will learn more in part two. Daphne’s Dad asking why Matt kept turning his head sideways was kind of funny.
The Bad: Elle’s sudden desire to terrorise car rental employees feels very strange. We don’t know her character very well yet but certainly coming on the heels of her grief over her father’s death and torment of her short circuiting it seems odd. By the end of the episode it feels like she behaved that way in order to make the point that they couldn’t do that anymore now that the eclipse had come. It certainly seems odd that she doesn’t ask why they are collecting Claire or what is going to happen to her. After all, she gave Claire her sincere thanks for helping her only a few days ago (307). And as I said in the previous episode, to be making out with the man who killed her father (and she just tried to murder) is silly and rushed.
Why oh why are Seth Green and Breckin Meyer in the comic shop? Again I hate the concept that Hiro can go look at yet another comic to tell him what to do and where to go. It’s such a predestination paradox that it’s getting beyond ridiculous. And again, if Isaac Mendez had really drawn a whole year or more’s worth of the future in a comic, then shouldn’t he have told Peter to stop worrying about Sylar blowing New York up (123) and go kill his father in the hospital?
It’s nice to see some staff back at Primatech. Without a word of explanation for where they have been in the past two episodes of course. Claire is still upset about Noah leaving when she was a child? Didn’t she get the message that he was out working for the company to protect her from getting used? Didn’t he take a bullet from the Haitian in front of her to prove that (117)? The cliff hanger with Noah staring down a sniper rifle about to kill Elle and Sylar is not good. Heroes has made it painfully clear that important regular characters won’t be killed off. So we know he will miss and they will escape, it’s a sad fact of the show’s predictability.
The Unknown: Why did Mohinder cocoon himself? Did he do it by accident or on purpose? We still don’t know what that is supposed to accomplish or how it works. What is the relationship between the eclipse and people’s powers?
Best Moment: After the fight with Noah, Elle has to pop Sylar’s shoulder back into its socket. He screams in pain in a way we haven’t seen before. It’s the scream of human pain and that sense of real consequence to a fight is very refreshing. They both limp around the house suddenly looking quite pathetic. Without their powers they can no longer get their own way. Half an episode devoted to this story could have made for terrific television.
Epilogue: The eclipse is an intriguing idea. If part two can play on the sense of consequence which the absence of powers provides then it could be good to watch. Otherwise this is the usual half thought out, unexplained silliness as usual.
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