OK, this episode mostly blew (as has the series lately) but it did have some good moments, so, hey, why not make it a
WORKRATE REPORT!
What worked:
*Full-on heel Sylar~~~!!! If nothing else, this season gave us Sylar's best kill ever. "This won't hurt a bit......You got me." Awesome! They've got his character just right, at least until the next reboot.
*Hiro's meeting with his mother was legitimately touching, and it was a rare case where they could have such an across-timeframe meeting without messing things up. Nice.
*The whole sequence of Parkman, Daphne, and Ando getting the lost copy of 9th Wonders was entertaining. It was a nice bonus that it was choreographed in such a way that the messenger guy wouldn't have any real idea of what happened; there are already too many ways that the public ought to have found out about the fact that people have powers.
*I like the way Daphne's character is going, too.
What didn't:
*There's just way too much of the Petrelli parents. Arthur is a good character, but he's not a good focus for the show. He's too powerful, and besides we just don't know him well enough to see different sides of him. Meanwhile, with Angela in charge of the good-guy side, it's hard to fully buy that it IS the good-guy side.
*Was that past-Arthur or present-Arthur who stole Hiro's powers and the catalyst? If it was present-Arthur, how did he get back in time? Having someone travel back in time to steal the ability to travel through time is obviously a bit of a plot hole. And anyway I don't know how he would have known to go there. If it was past-Arthur, why did he send Claire off to tell Angela that he had won? Arthur in that time period was still on the same side as Angela, and certainly not in conflict with her. I suppose this can be explained if we assume sufficient additional powers in Arthur (and I suppose he could have gotten some of them from Peter), but that just feeds into the problem above.
*The notion that Ando is now going to get time-traveling powers of his own. Just what we need--*another* way to hit the reset button. It already feels like nothing matters.
*Didn't there used to be a rule that there couldn't be two of the same person (through time-travel) together at the same time? ISTR that that was why Hiro had to deliver his message to Peter in the subway so quickly--he could only do it while the Hiro in that timeframe was unconscious. Am I wrong about that? I suppose it doesn't matter since this wouldn't be the first time this rule was violated, but seeing Hiro and Claire interacting with their past selves seemed wrong. Perhaps I'm just confused here, though. Claire giving herself the Claire-bear nickname was a little weird, too.
*Peter standing there giving his father time to think of a way out of being shot--even when the Haitian told him that his hold on Arthur's powers was tenuous--was stupid. Peter needs to read the Evil Overlord rules.
I know a lot of people will scream this was an anti-climatic way to kill Arthur, but this is the only logical way to do it. It probably would have been cooler to see Arthur fight all the Heroes, but he would have crushed everyone even Sylar with his powers and the fanboys would have cried on how they would eventually defeat him. There has been enough fanboy whining since season two, the show really doesn't need more. I do think the evil super soldiers will be more interesting then Arthur trying to steal everyone's powers. I don't know how they are going to Hiro out of the past unless Peter gets his powers back since he was standing next to the "light" when Arthur died.
I actually thought this was the best episode of the season BY FAR.
Arthur traveling back in time did give me pause for a second, until I remembered that he took all of Peter's abilities and Peter had Hiro's ability. He didn't take Hiro's powers to use them. He took them so Hiro couldn't use them. He essentially took out one of the most powerful players on the good side.
The only problem with remembering that Arthur has Peter's powers is that I also remember that Peter had Claire's power. Shouldn't Arthur have healed from the gunshot wound? Oh, and Arthur has Adam's power too! Maybe severe damage to the brain overrides the healing factor.
I don't think Hiro will be rescued before the next arc begins. I'm just hoping that we meet a 16-years-older version of Hiro in the present that's all pissed off about no one coming to rescue him.
I liked finding out that the Haitian (and how funny is it that people call him that while he's RIGHT THERE) has to concentrate on someone to cancel their powers. He's not like Leech from the X-Men books.
The only thing I didn't like too much was having that wonderful emotional moment between Hiro and his mother immediately undermined by Arthur's sudden appearance. Oh well, I guess that's why he's the bad guy.
Oh, and Peter continues to be written like a blithering idiot: "I wish the eclipse hadn't ended. Life would be a lot simpler without powers." Yeah, but it would be a hell of a lot more difficult WITHOUT THE SUN!
"Cake!"
(edited by SchippeWreck on 10.12.08 0626) "It's magic! We don't need to explain it!"
Arthur getting time travel is explainable -- Peter had it, Arthur tapped all of Peter's power stock, so now Arthur had it. He just didn't use it until that point.
(A lot of people on this show have a smorgasboard of powers that could've been useful in any one situation but they had to conveniently forget about them by writer fiat to make things work. See Season 2 Peter laboriously ripping a vault door open with TK instead of phasing or teleporting through it. It's kinda annoying.)
If they were going to keep Sylar a heel they shouldn't have bothered trying to redeem him. This smacks of writing by the seat of your pants, as if they have no idea what direction to take things and are going by the whimsy of audience reactions.
I'm giving Season 4 about 2-3 episodes to stop sucking, then dropping this from my viewing habits. It gets lost in its mammoth cast and has too many easily plot-ending powers that have to be ignored to keep the ball rolling, leading to moments of inexplicable or forced character stupidity (amnesia, age regression, power draining, or the characters just plain being morons).
Okay, I do know a couple answers to your concerns. One, Arthur took every ability Peter did when he grabbed his powers, so that gives him time travel. How he knew when to go back is another question all together. Two, Ando may or may not be getting abilities, but I suspect this is mostly a call back to earlier in the season where Hiro traveled to a future where an empowered Ando killed him. And three, in the first season Hiro believed that the two of the same person shouldn't shouldn't be in one place, but that was never confirmed. So, I guess it turns out there's no problem there and Hiro should never have worried about it in the first place.
Overall, I agree that not everything in the show has been working, but it's getting the story to a place it needs to be. We've been getting more Bennett, and that works for me, and Sylar should be a bad guy, even if it undoes all the substantial work they did this season trying to make him not such a bad guy. I'm still enjoying the show, but it's nowhere near as strong as season one.
Originally posted by SchippeWreckThe only problem with remembering that Arthur has Peter's powers is that I also remember that Peter had Claire's power. Shouldn't Arthur have healed from the gunshot wound? Oh, and Arthur has Adam's power too! Maybe severe damage to the brain overrides the healing factor.
It's been explained a few different times that the only way to kill the "immortal" characters is a shot to the head or causing them to lose their powers and then killing them.
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I think it was probably 2008 Arthur on the Deveaux rooftop. As others have said, he got his time travel powers from Peter who got them from Hiro. But he also got Isaac Mendez's powers from Peter, too, so he probably drew the scene and knew to go there (or, alternatively, he had a copy of 9th Wonders #1).
Originally posted by SchippeWreckThe only problem with remembering that Arthur has Peter's powers is that I also remember that Peter had Claire's power. Shouldn't Arthur have healed from the gunshot wound? Oh, and Arthur has Adam's power too! Maybe severe damage to the brain overrides the healing factor.
It's been explained a few different times that the only way to kill the "immortal" characters is a shot to the head or causing them to lose their powers and then killing them.
I'd be with you if they hadn't have killed off Claire and Sylar both just last week when neither had their powers, only to have them come back to life as soon as the power-blocking eclipse passed. Once the Haitian left the area, Arthur should have been able to heal.
Also, I seem to remember Claire being autopsied in season 1 after having a branch or something stuck through her brain. Am I wrong, or did she recover from severe brain damage there once it was removed too?
Originally posted by Tribal ProphetI'd be with you if they hadn't have killed off Claire and Sylar both just last week when neither had their powers, only to have them come back to life as soon as the power-blocking eclipse passed. Once the Haitian left the area, Arthur should have been able to heal.
Also, I seem to remember Claire being autopsied in season 1 after having a branch or something stuck through her brain. Am I wrong, or did she recover from severe brain damage there once it was removed too?
Well, Claire & Sylar last week didn't have the direct blunt brain trauma. They were using the same rules that they said applied to Adam last season. Of course, last season I was yelling about the branch that you mention, so you can't win them all.
Just when I felt like I was truly ready to quit this show, Sylar had to go and become evil again.
Why didn't Arthur take Hiro's powers in Africa, instead of making him a child?
It is the policy of the documentary crew to remain true observers and not interfere with its subjects.
If you wanna reach the Co-op, boy, you gotta get by me.
Originally posted by Tribal ProphetI'd be with you if they hadn't have killed off Claire and Sylar both just last week when neither had their powers, only to have them come back to life as soon as the power-blocking eclipse passed. Once the Haitian left the area, Arthur should have been able to heal.
Also, I seem to remember Claire being autopsied in season 1 after having a branch or something stuck through her brain. Am I wrong, or did she recover from severe brain damage there once it was removed too?
Well, Claire & Sylar last week didn't have the direct blunt brain trauma. They were using the same rules that they said applied to Adam last season. Of course, last season I was yelling about the branch that you mention, so you can't win them all.
Just when I felt like I was truly ready to quit this show, Sylar had to go and become evil again.
Why didn't Arthur take Hiro's powers in Africa, instead of making him a child?
Because he was interrupted.
I suspect that the bullet is lodged in Arthur's head. If it is removed, he will recover.
Heroes is like a good comic book. Even the best comic book has tons of continuity errors, reboots, logical gaps, and all that other annoying stuff. And even the best comic book only has a few memorable story arcs, with most stuff being filler. I figured that this is how you've got to look at Heroes. It isn't Lost.
This season has been pretty cool, with the exception of the first few episodes that seemed to be about a completely different thing. Future Peter, Angela's dream, Level 5 escapees, all that stuff seems to have absolutely no bearing on the current plot.
I was really holding out for Angela's dream to be about Arthur - with Arthur represented by 4 people (Adam, Maury, what's-her-name, and Knox) he had killed and taken powers from. I'm still kind of hoping for it, as I really doubt Arthur's dead. Then an all-out Arthur vs. Syler war could happen.
Let's see: 2008 Arthur traveled back to 1992 to steal the Catalyst from 2008 Hiro. He was able to time travel because, as others have said, he had Peter's time travel ability. He didn't have to take anything (directly) from Hiro for that.
He then came back to 2008 to use the Catalyst, had a confrontation with Peter and The Haitian (I was also laughing with a first-time viewer friend about how they call him that to his face), and was killed. Of course Arthur has healing powers from Peter, but he can't use them until the bullet is removed from his brain, which is something we have seen in the past on this show with Claire.
I fully expect that someone will find him, probably get Mohinder to remove the bullet from his brain, and bring him back to life.
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Admittedly, THIS is the show I can't help but binge. First episode was great, but episode four, Darth Lahey, had probably the best Star Wars homage I have seen.