"DON'T RUN, OR ELSE DADDY'S GONNA KILL YA."
Peter's turn to be MIA this week, but I thiiiiink everyone else was accounted for.
ANGELA: Angela is FIERCE. Even when she's relapsing to stealing socks. That scene between she and Danko at the restaurant won the episode, hands down. Still not sure what plan she's working or game she's playing, but whatever it is, she seems to be winning if she's the only character who can put Danko in his place with nothing but a few words and some oyster-eating.
SYLAR: LOLOLOL, THAT BUNNY. All I could think was "OH MAN, IT WOULD BE EPICALLY AWESOME IF THIS STORYLINE TURNED INTO SOMETHING OUT OF PSYCHONAUTS." I'm all for the trippy nightmare plotlines. We missed out on a plotline like that back in Cold Wars, so I'm determined to keep hoping for another one. I know I'd love a messed-up trip through Sylar's brain and childhood memories, especially if they were filled with mutant nightmare bunny rabbits, epic daddy angst, and the best resolution of DADDY ISSUEZ ever. ("Don't run, or else DADDY'S GONNA KILL YA.")
I guess Sylar's sorted out his daddy issues on his own. Kind of. In that he's met daddy, played along, got his answers, and decided that giving dad hope and then leaving him to die alone is a better revenge than anything Sylar could possibly do himself. I guess it's long past time for Sylar to get involved with the main storyline, but it's hard to tell where this whole arc has left him. So far it's looking like a repeat of last volume, in that he goes from "Daddy! Mommy!" to "Fuck it. BRAINZ, BITCHES!!" in the space of an episode. Who knows. At least he got a stuffed bunny for his trouble this time.
DADDY GRAY: I'm....pretty much half and half on Papa Gray. John Glover is awesome, and he and ZQ had great chemistry in their scenes. Their bonding over killing and stuffing a bunny amused me greatly (enough to ignore the fact that taxidermy does not work that way). I was REALLY hoping that Mr. Gray wasn't just going to be another superpowered EVILDAD (REALLY, show? REALLY? How many of them do you NEED?), and it's annoying how often subtlety gets thrown into oncoming traffic with these storylines. But I approved of Papa Gray shooting down Sylar's expectations by being all "WTF did you expect, an epic showdown? That'd be kind of hard since I'M OLD AND HAVE CANCER. Now help daddy kill this bunny, son."
So yeah, I liked Papa Gray's attitude. Appropriately dickish, even if he ended up as another entry in a long list of EVILDADS. I was okay with it right up until he flipped his psycho killer switch back to the ON position, gave Sylar exactly the justification he wanted, and didn't even turn out to be any kind of a challenge. (Sylar could have at LEAST woken up with daddy poking around in his brain before the smackdown commenced. It's not like he doesn't deserve a taste of his own brain-eating. I DEMAND GORE.) Come on, EVILDAD, you can do BETTER. Or um, not. If the flashback last week was any indication, Samson was apparently the worst dad ever, the worst brother ever, AND the worst serial killer ever. "BYE SON. I'LL JUST LEAVE YOUR MOM'S DEAD BODY HERE IN THE PARKING LOT FOR EVERYONE TO FIND. LOOK ME UP IN 30 YEARS IF YOU'RE FEELING VENGEFUL. TOODLES!"
So uh....HI PAPA GRAY? BYE PAPA GRAY? *shrug* Hard to tell if they're done with him or not. The various Meaningful Decorations in his house back in Newark (a snow globe from INDIA? I'm surprised the Mylar slashers haven't jumped on THAT one yet) makes me think they're planning to do more with him down the line. Considering Sylar practically drew him a map to Claire's front door and all, I wouldn't be surprised to see him again before the end of the season. Flesh things out a bit, add more subtlety and layers, and give him the right plotline, and I could still warm up to creepy taxidermist EVILDAD. But I haven't been holding my breath for that kind of thing, and I'm not about to start.
DANKO: Still a dick. But at least he's still an interesting one for the time being, and he's not an idiot. He was smart enough to have some leverage before calling Nathan out. I wouldn't be TOO broken up if Sylar decided to stuff and mount him like Mr. Bunny, but it should be an interesting throw-down.
NATHAN: You haven't exactly been DISCREET in the last few episodes, Nathan. Was this in any way SURPRISING to you? I'm curious what he's going to do now. You'd think he would have HAD to be prepared for the possibility of this happening from the moment he came up with his "HUNT DOWN SPECIALS" agenda. But it seems more and more like he took after daddy in assuming there was no way his plans could possibly go wrong.
The Nathan/HRG/Danko dynamic was fun while it lasted. Everyone trying to manipulate and keep secrets from everyone else because they all think their own particular ruthless agenda is the right one. Seems like the whole thing is destined to end in a giant clusterfuck, and all bets are off now.
CLAIRE AND DOYLE: Another episode that makes me wonder if anyone on the staff has set foot in a comic store in the last 15 years, and realised that girls read comics too. As a geek, comic fan, AND possessor of two X chromosomes, it rubs me the wrong way for Claire to be given a job just to be patronized, nerd-ogled eye candy. Still, part of me would have liked to see her working there for an episode or two so she'd get in the volume's metahumour quota learn a thing or two about superheroes and decide that things aren't that easy in real life. Or what Heroes likes to pass off as real life, anyway.
Claire's trying to be a hero, but if her talk with HRG is any indication, she isn't comfortable making the hard moral choices yet. Was she right in helping Doyle get away? Chances are, he's going to go back to old habits eventually. (If only because this is Heroes, and people NEVER CHANGE because NOTHING THEY DO IS THEIR FAULT, so they should NEVER TRY.) If he does go back to being evil puppet man, she'll be partly to blame. But then, if you're going to do the right thing, sometimes the people you save aren't the ones you'd pick if you had a choice. Or the ones who deserve it.
Bye, Doyle! Hope we see you again down the line. A good villan's hard to come by. Doyle's creepily good at being manipulative. Enough to be actually SYMPATHETIC, even with all the horrendously awful things he's done (quite a few of which pop up in this week's graphic novel chapter, and actually managed to squick me). It takes some damn good acting to make a character like THAT seem human and pitiable, even when you know there's a 99.99% chance he's just jerking Claire around to get her help.
I liked the final shot of Claire and Nathan floating outside the window. Aw. You're a jerk, Nathan, but you still have your moments of being a good guy.
TRACY: Not much to do in this episode except bitch out Nathan. And then decide to cover for him. I'm glad they didn't ignore the whole "YOU'RE ONE OF US!" scene. CONTINUITY! It's so nice to get it.
MATT: Er... Not much to say about Matt, really. Not blown up. Though I hope he gets to cross paths with the OTHER storyline, which would be.......
HIRO AND ANDO: You know, I knew Matt's wife was coming back and everything, and I STILL didn't figure out that the "Matt Parkman" Hiro and Ando were looking for was THIS Matt Parkman. WELL PLAYED, SHOW. Sometimes I get the sense that they're running out of ways to make Hiro and Ando relevant to the plot, but this looks like it could be a good way to do just that. We'll see. I like getting encounters between characters I never would have expected to meet, and Janice meeting Hiro and Ando is exactly that. Now if they'd just bring Audrey back...
RANDOM STUFF:
- So Mohinder's...chilling in his cell, I guess? They let him out long enough to do a voice-over, at least.
- I think what bothered me about the Papa Gray scenes was that they ended up repeating what I hated about volume 3: a promising start that just turned into another way to validate Sylar's claims that his actions aren't his fault. Fuck, THE HUNGER even managed to raise its head again. FAIL.
Also, as Papa Gray pointed out, there's no joy in life when there's no challenge. The same goes for character arcs, apparently. This is exactly why I hated the idea of Sylar getting Claire's power back at the beginning of the season, and time hasn't sweetened it. At this point, between the TK and the healing and the inexplicable +10 to his will saves, there's no challenges for Sylar except on an emotional level. Nerf him like Peter, or give him someone that can challenge him. Hell, make it daddy if John Glover's willing to stick around, so he can screw with his son some more. I'll give Papa Gray a chance to be more interesting than Papa Petrelli.
- Behind the Eclipse claims we can expect a graphic novel chapter about Luke eventually: "Absolutely. He’s such a great character that we left him in the wind for exactly that reason - so look out in the graphic novels." Makes ME happy. It'd be great to see him back later down the line if/when an appropriate storyline comes along, but I guess a comic chapter is the next best thing.
- Doyle can be an occasional guest star in our hypothetical monster-hunting spin-off road trip show for Sylar and Luke. So can Papa Gray, just because an SPN-style road trip is not complete without daddy issues.