You’re not going to believe this, but the driving force this season behind Samuel Sullivan’s quest to gather as many of our beloved(?) Heroes as possible was – a stupid decision by Mohinder Suresh!(Quick disclaimer: the following critique is directed at the way the character of Mohinder has been written, NOT Sendhil Ramamurthy. Sure, Ramamurthy is no Marlon Brando, but no actor – whether it’s Brando, Johnny Depp or Laurence Olivier - could make chicken salad out of the chicken shit material this actor has always been handed.)
This week, we got our annual “Why is this season’s bad guy doing what he’s been doing?” episode (previous installments have showcased Gabriel Gray, Adam Monroe and Arthur Petrelli). We knew Samuel Sullivan had killed Mohinder (yay!), but we needed to find out why.
One of the things this episode did really well was bring our core characters together in a meaningful way for the first time this season.
After some truly painful dialogue (“do you ever think about running away and joining a carnival?”) Tracy’s power started freaking out on her (for no apparent reason) and she went to find Noah for help. Instead, she ran into Claire who tried to calm her down and warm her up with some tea and a hot bath (Ali Larter in her underwear in T-minus 3…2…) Tracy ended up freezing Claire solid by accident and comically snapped her foot off while trying to help her. The only thing funnier was Noah’s “this is only a little weird” reaction upon seeing his daughter’s frozen, amputated foot on his coffee table when he came home. (It DOES make for an eye-catching centerpiece.) Even a little Jack Coleman is excellent.
As bad as some of the actual writing was, I liked the IDEA of Claire and Tracy putting aside their repetitive (and doomed) quests for a normal life and dish a little about their abilities. In the end, Tracy met up with Samuel and seemed to be on the verge of joining the carnival. With Gretchen seemingly out of the picture for good, can Claire be far behind?
Still, the team-up I enjoyed the most was the Petrelli Bros. reunion.
Over the last couple of years, Nathan and Peter’s relationship has been understandably strained, so it was great to see the Petrelli boys come together to help each other out as soon as they figured out their mom was up to her usual shenanigans. This was tempered only slightly by the fact that Nathan isn’t really Nathan at all, but that’s beside the point.
The Haitian tried to reveal the whole Nylar plot to Peter on the down low, but Peter brought Nathan along anyway (aww) to the creepy storage facility where they discovered – real Nathan’s body! Putting aside the fact that real Nathan’s body should have absolutely been burned or buried, this scene was very well played by both actors, especially Adrian Pasdar. (I’m not buying the whole “Angela kept Nathan’s body because she’s sentimental/emotional” explanation – the reason she kept the body in a storage facility that is easily accessible is because it was a hell of a lot more convenient for the writers to have Peter and Nylar stumble upon it. It’s stuff like this that keeps holding “Heroes” back.)
Anyway, the brothers went to find Matt Parkman after Nylar got a flash of a memory of him. Parkman was in critical condition in a hospital, but the Petrellis slipped by the INCREDIBLY distracted armed guard and into his room. After Peter healed him, Matt woke up and tried to get them to run away before Sylar jumped into his body. (If all Sylar had to do to take over Matt’s body was touch him, why did it take him so long to do it initially? Whatever!) With Sylar now in Matt’s body, he implored Nathan/Sylar to touch him so he could get his old body back. (Oy, my head hurts!) The two only grazed each other before both brothers had to flee the hospital.
Nylar (or was it Sylar? Or was it Nathan) tried to get Peter away from him, but Peter touched him and took his flying ability so he could keep up. I also wonder if Sylar didn’t take the opportunity to jump from Nylar’s body to Peter. That would explain why Nathan appeared to be in control of his own body by the end of the episode, despite clearly making contact with Mylar (Matt + Sylar)
I realize I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. However, “Heroes” so often changes the rules of its own universe that things become as muddled as my last two paragraphs. (I mean, I SAW the episode, and they don’t make sense to me!) Characters in this show don’t do things because they make sense – they do them to manufacture conflict and to keep the story chugging along.
Which brings us to Mohinder.
Apparently he had a nice life (and a pretty wife) teaching in India. Still, his father’s findings from Coyote Sands decades earlier were nagging at him and (being Mohinder) he threw everything away. He was able to construct a compass that led him from India to the Sullivan Bros. carnival where we finally met Samuel’s brother Joseph.
We got a little back story when we learned that Joseph had dedicated his life to keeping Samuel’s power in check. Mohinder warned him about Samuel’s potential to become scarily powerful, but Joseph asked him to leave. Samuel, who had overheard Mohinder, followed him and killed him after Mohinder refused to elaborate.
Except that Hiro had successfully traveled back in time to stop Mohinder’s death (boo!). Oh well, at least the time-stopping effect is ALWAYS cool. I get that Mohinder wanted to stop Samuel immediately, but if Hiro wanted to stop him from going after Samuel in the past, why didn’t he just bring him back to the present? Why did he have to lock him up in a mental institution for eight weeks (not that I’m complaining, mind you)?
Hiro was able to salvage the film detailing Chandra Suresh’s work and Samuel’s birth, but it remains to be seen if Samuel will give Hiro back the love of his life Charlie. Overall, I was a little underwhelmed by Samuel’s motives. His confrontation with Mohinder was WAY too brief and I’m not exactly sure what he thinks he’s going to learn from the film that he doesn’t already know. Maybe, we’ll eventually see what turns him from such an angry, out-of-control guy into the smooth operator with the inconsistent accent.
So what’d you think of this episode? Am I being too critical of the show? (I don’t mean to be, it’s just that these inconsistencies take me right out of the show?) Is Sylar in Peter or Nathan’s body? Why did Hiro pick a mental asylum in Florida? Finally, have we seen the last of Mohinder? (Alas, I think he’s got an episode or two more left in him)
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