How bad was season 2 of "Heroes"?It makes a decidedly subpar episode like last night's "One of Us, One of Them" look like a compelling spectacle. Not that there wasn't stuff in last night's hour to like, but an alarmingly high number of character are behaving in really stupid ways.
Let's get the stuff that didn't work out of the way first, shall we? Since Mohinder was not around in this episode (except in voice over) to make it considerably stupider, I guess Parkman had to pick up the slack. The less said about his spirit walk in the African plains, the better. Also, did we really need another white-eyed painter of the future? At least this one comes with a Walkman, which apparently helps you in painting of said future.
While Parkman's subplot was unintentionally silly, Hiro and Ando's pursuit of Daphne to a silent movie theatre in Berlin was intentionally silly, but no less stupid. I liked seeing the increasing friction between Hiro and Ando (pictured, left), and I think I spotted Hiro flirting a bit with his "nemesis" Daphne, but anyone with half a brain knew that Hiro and Ando's interference would eventually lead to the formula (which could destroy the world) falling into Daphne's hand. Hiro figured out that his and Daphne's powers weren't working because of the Haitian's presence. Still, I don't understand what he hoped to accomplish even if he got his hands on the Haitian's half of the formula, after stupidly fumbling away the half that had been entrusted to him (no doubt, he'd find a way to lose it to Daphne again).
Fortunately, Hiro and Ando got tossed into level five of the Company, where they can't do anything to stupid and a more likely to interact with more interesting characters.
One of my favorite things about last night's episode was that it gave Jack Coleman and Cristine Rose (the best two actors on the show) a chance to interact. Angela Petrelli welcomed Bennett back to the Company and partnered him with Sylar to find the escaped villains.
This turn of events just screams of something that seemed like a great idea in the writers' room, but, when you think about it, doesn't make too much sense. Unless she wanted some of the villains dead, why would Mrs. Petrelli send out Sylar, even after trying to convince him he wasn't a killer? (What if he had killed Jamie while Peter was still in there?) Also, while it's an excellent source of tension, is there any way Bennett would agree to be partnered with the man who violated his daughter? This second question wasn't as big of an issue after Bennett was reunited with the Haitian in the end and hinted that he had plans for Sylar in the future.
In the meantime, as non-sensical as it was I enjoyed watching Sylar get dressed up in his little suit and try to be a good boy. I also liked the brief moment where he and Bennett worked together, before they each (predictably) reverted to what they do.
In fact, the Bennett/Sylar team may have been a little TOO effective. I was convinced the "villains-on-the-run" storyline would play out over a long period of time. However, it just turned out to be the group robbing a bank, while the de-facto leader Knox (the scary Jamie Hector from "The Wire") waited for revenge revealed an interesting ability to feed off of people's fears. Of course, Knox was the only one of the villains to escape death (goodbye glasses guy who looked like Alton Brown) or captivity, so I'm sure we haven't heard the last of him.
Meanwhile, Future Peter showed up to remove Peter from Jamie's body and take him to the future, where I'm sure we'll see more apocalyptic landscapes and cast members with drastically different hair.
Speaking of which, Claire still had it in her mind that she was going to learn how to fight and take out villains. Helping others has been on the character's mind for a while (she wanted to use her blood to heal people last year), but, thanks to a weird intervention from biological (not real) mom Meredith in a storage container, she admitted she really wanted to hurt Sylar. The whole thing was kinda cheesy, but at least it was well-acted cheese (Hayden Panettiere is probably the most underrated member of the cast). It also furthers the question of how Claire has gone from wanting to kill Sylar to wanting to kill Peter in the future.
Finally, I continue to be surprised by how interested I am in Tracy's storyline. Whereas Nikki seemed to hate her power (with good reason, since it killed people), Tracy seems more curious, and that curiosity led her to New Orleans where she met Micah, who instantly recognized Tracy wasn't her mother. It was a surprisingly emotional scene between the two thanks to a nice job by Ali Larter and Noah Gray-Cabey, who I was happy to see hadn't had a freakish growth spurt (maybe they filmed this stuff last year).
With Micah's help, Tracy learned she'd been born on the same day as Nikki and delivered by a Dr. Zimmerman. When she visited the doctor (Tracy must have an incredible travel budget), Zimmerman seemed to welcome his creation in with open arms.
I'm interested to see what becomes of that, and I hope the show chooses wisely in which storylines it decides to develop and which storylines (and characters) it choose to drop going forward.
So what'd you think of this episode? Who was the woman in Parkman's painting? (Kinda looked a bit like Daphne to me, but that doesn't make any sense.) Where did Peter get the ability to force a person into another's consciousness? Why did Mrs. Petrelli feed that girl to Sylar in the beginning? Have we seen the last of Micah (or his cousing Monica)? Exactly how many Nikkis/Jessicas/Tracys are out there anyway? Finally, do you think Mrs. Petrelli is telling the truth about being Sylar's mom (I'm not buying it.)
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