Heroes - season four, episode seven
Feb. 15th, 2010 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lathanyLast night's BBC 3 Heroes offering.
Details: Hiro tries to save Charlie. Samuel turns up to help him - warning him that he’s messing with a lot of important “butterflies”. At first Hiro removes Sylar from the diner; then, as her aneurysm kicked in, he gets Sylar back and asked him to cure her in exchange for information about his death. Sylar succeeds and Hiro tells him that he kills many people, then dies alone friendless. Sylar then goes back to his plan to kill the cheerleader.
Charlie is initially horrified as she feels there is no reason why she was saved and this has left Sylar to go back to the killing. However, by the end of the episode, she changes her mind and is ready to leave with Hiro. However, Samuel kidnaps her and leaves her stranded in time using the last of his own time-traveller’s powers. Samuel needs Hiro’s help to undo a mistake he made eight weeks earlier - which involves Mohinder’s death.
In other news, Noah was tempted to have an affair with a colleague (Lauren - played by the same actress as did the policewoman Kate in Angel). However, he decides not to and that family is more important to him. Lauren “goes Haitian” to forget she ever loved him (clearly she’s never seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).
General comments: We still have plot moving at a snail’s pace and we didn’t learn much of interest, aside from the last five minutes. Claire and Sylar are still in every episode when I’d much rather see the others. On the plus side, I like Hiro and Charlie together and found the latter very welcome here. Also, the changes made to the sequence seemed to work (although it’s been a while since I saw Seven Minutes to Midnight). Oh, and the Samuel stuff looks like there might be some plot (before we reached the season finale) and I like Mohinder (even if many other reviewers don’t). The bad stuff is that Noah’s subplot looked like filler of the pointless variety. Nice touches included a reference to Chrono and Marle (Chrono Trigger), the white hat/black hat moment, “going Haitian”, everyone asking where the sword was and Sylar tekeing his coffee cup (which he does in Seven Minutes to Midnight, but you can’t see his face then). I liked the Eden/Isaac scene, but it’s not new. The bad scene was Claire’s appearance - she doesn’t look that age any more (just as Molly and Micah couldn’t fake being season one again) and it just seemed a gratuitous move to put her back in the red cheerleading outfit.
Comments from other reviewers - I don’t tend to read them before writing my own review (and I always read Television Without Pity afterwards); but this week I had a quick look. In general this was rated the least worst episode of season four (up to this point) and a lot of people caustically pointed out that this was because it was a reworking of a season one episode. There was also a lack of love for Mohinder’s return (which I don’t agree with - I like Mohinder).
Character by character:
Themes: Don’t love anyone in Heroes, or they’re doomed. That’s the second girlfriend to enter lost in time and space as well.
Refer back moments: An entire episode’s worth. Given that Isaac and Eden are given title credits, I wish they’d actually brought both back to do a new scene. Nice wardrobe matches - particularly Ando’s yellow jacket (which I liked in season one). And it was good that they got the Burnt Toast Diner owner/cook for the episode.
Continuity errors and other weirds: The time travel means this no longer fits with the other (season one) episodes; such as when Hiro meets Future Hiro and when Sylar first meets Ando and Hiro; but the time travel in this show has never really worked. Also, I’m finding Samuel less and less believable in terms of having the loyalty of his group with every one of these moments. He doesn’t exactly seem to get there by winning hearts and minds - why don’t they all want to leave?
Details: Hiro tries to save Charlie. Samuel turns up to help him - warning him that he’s messing with a lot of important “butterflies”. At first Hiro removes Sylar from the diner; then, as her aneurysm kicked in, he gets Sylar back and asked him to cure her in exchange for information about his death. Sylar succeeds and Hiro tells him that he kills many people, then dies alone friendless. Sylar then goes back to his plan to kill the cheerleader.
Charlie is initially horrified as she feels there is no reason why she was saved and this has left Sylar to go back to the killing. However, by the end of the episode, she changes her mind and is ready to leave with Hiro. However, Samuel kidnaps her and leaves her stranded in time using the last of his own time-traveller’s powers. Samuel needs Hiro’s help to undo a mistake he made eight weeks earlier - which involves Mohinder’s death.
In other news, Noah was tempted to have an affair with a colleague (Lauren - played by the same actress as did the policewoman Kate in Angel). However, he decides not to and that family is more important to him. Lauren “goes Haitian” to forget she ever loved him (clearly she’s never seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).
General comments: We still have plot moving at a snail’s pace and we didn’t learn much of interest, aside from the last five minutes. Claire and Sylar are still in every episode when I’d much rather see the others. On the plus side, I like Hiro and Charlie together and found the latter very welcome here. Also, the changes made to the sequence seemed to work (although it’s been a while since I saw Seven Minutes to Midnight). Oh, and the Samuel stuff looks like there might be some plot (before we reached the season finale) and I like Mohinder (even if many other reviewers don’t). The bad stuff is that Noah’s subplot looked like filler of the pointless variety. Nice touches included a reference to Chrono and Marle (Chrono Trigger), the white hat/black hat moment, “going Haitian”, everyone asking where the sword was and Sylar tekeing his coffee cup (which he does in Seven Minutes to Midnight, but you can’t see his face then). I liked the Eden/Isaac scene, but it’s not new. The bad scene was Claire’s appearance - she doesn’t look that age any more (just as Molly and Micah couldn’t fake being season one again) and it just seemed a gratuitous move to put her back in the red cheerleading outfit.
Comments from other reviewers - I don’t tend to read them before writing my own review (and I always read Television Without Pity afterwards); but this week I had a quick look. In general this was rated the least worst episode of season four (up to this point) and a lot of people caustically pointed out that this was because it was a reworking of a season one episode. There was also a lack of love for Mohinder’s return (which I don’t agree with - I like Mohinder).
Character by character:
- Claire - Was utterly pointless.
- Noah - Despite being on screen a lot, was almost as pointless. Although his scene with Hiro was good.
- Ando - Was amusing enough not to be pointless. Particularly about Future Hiro’s lack of sword..
- Hiro - Loved the Charlie scenes. Also, he did seem changed from season one Hiro; which I felt helped a little.
- Sylar - At least this was plain old season one/two Sylar; but nothing new here.
- Samuel - How does he get such devotion from the other circuseés when he behaves like this?
- Mohinder - Welcome back!
Themes: Don’t love anyone in Heroes, or they’re doomed. That’s the second girlfriend to enter lost in time and space as well.
Refer back moments: An entire episode’s worth. Given that Isaac and Eden are given title credits, I wish they’d actually brought both back to do a new scene. Nice wardrobe matches - particularly Ando’s yellow jacket (which I liked in season one). And it was good that they got the Burnt Toast Diner owner/cook for the episode.
Continuity errors and other weirds: The time travel means this no longer fits with the other (season one) episodes; such as when Hiro meets Future Hiro and when Sylar first meets Ando and Hiro; but the time travel in this show has never really worked. Also, I’m finding Samuel less and less believable in terms of having the loyalty of his group with every one of these moments. He doesn’t exactly seem to get there by winning hearts and minds - why don’t they all want to leave?
