Review of Heroes 4x01: "Orientation" + 4x02: "Jump, Push, Fall"
IT'S BAAAAAACK YAY.
I'd been trying not to get too excited about Heroes coming back in case it continued to be as bad as Season 2 and a lot of S3 was, even though I've been more optimistic about it than most people. I think fans should stop expecting the show to return to exactly what it was in S1 when that's just not going to happen, especially because once they decided to scratch the idea of starting out with mostly new characters and a new overall story with every season, that made the whole concept and structure that the first season followed completely impossible to repeat.
Even if they've obviously struggled at times to keep giving all the characters they kept around enough importance and something interesting to do, I've become so attached to a lot of them I can't seem to regret that they made that choice and just don't see the series as a dead horse with no potential for improvement. In some parts of the last season I didn't even find it to be as bad as I'd been lead to believe it is. And while it's still obviously no Season 1, if this premiere is any indication of what this season will be like then I'm guessing I was right to be (cautiously) optimistic.
- At first it was concerning/bothering me a little how many different plot threads are already being brought up because this has often been a big problem that means most of the storylines don't get enough development when there's an overly huge cast of characters all sharing screentime. The scenes of some characters' stories seemed so awkwardly spaced out because there were so many different things being introduced just in the premiere. But by the second hour it wasn't bothering me so much, probably because a lot of these different threads started converging a little. By the end it actually felt like a lot had happened with every character.
- At first I was pretty upset after watching the S3 finale and then decided to reserve judgement on the whole "Nylar" thing. I can deal more easily with a character death if it's a good death that's dealt with in a way that gives the character their deserved importance (as opposed to Lupin uselessly being reduced to part of a statistically realistic body count in an undramatic "off-screen" death, for example). It was hard to judge the way Nathan got killed off without knowing yet exactly where they're going with it. I couldn't tell yet if we are really meant to consider the character dead and react accordingly by sadly trying to accept it, or if the authorial intent is that this person really is Nathan in some kind of real sense at the same time that Sylar's somewhere in there and they're exploring some potentially interesting themes of identity that maybe started to be set up in "I Am Sylar."
Just based on the few scenes with Nathan so far, I'm guessing the writing is leaning more toward the former interpretation. If the creation of Nylar was just yet another way of bringing a dead character back on this show, then I think Nathan would still be presented in a more sympathetic way. His scenes in these episodes don't have much of a sense of his perspective and Adrian's performance mostly just suggests a lot of intense confusion and dysfunction in himself rather than making him human and relatable. Maybe it's just that Nathan's death is something I've had time to kind of get over by now, but I'm still reserving judgment about it because of course it's impossible for the death to feel like it's satisfyingly been dealt with when half the people it should have the strongest impact on don't even know yet that he's gone. In a twisted way I'm actually kind of excited for seeing the shit hit the fan when Peter and Claire both find out what happened, and the writers just better not disappoint with delivering on the drama and there being huge repercussions.
It's less frustrating than I would have expected that they're only slowly starting to work toward that, but the revelation that Matt has already had to fix his mind multiple times to prevent Sylar from coming out is kind of shocking yet follows logically from what we saw in the final scene with Nylar in "An Invisible Thread." What he said about wanting to reconnect with everyone important to him certainly made me think of Claire (who, interestingly, I believe now lives closer to her biological family than any of her adoptive one), and even though HRG's making an effort to tone down his overprotectiveness I can definitely see him trying to interfere if he finds out Claire is spending much time with "her father."
- Tracy might be slowly turning into a character I'm not completely bored by, and I'm surprisingly okay with the possibility of her and HRG hooking up. Those actors did have kind of a fun chemistry when they interacted in the last season like in the dressing room scene when he pretended to be her fiancé, so it actually doesn't feel ridiculously unprecedented.
- OH HEY IT'S TED SCHMIDT. Reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, lulzzz.
- Even with how much the promos had given away, I totally didn't see it coming that Claire's nightmare of a roommate would be the person found dead on her campus. Whatever people want to say about how stupid Claire is, I liked that the writers actually came up with a practical reason for her to perform another one of her trademark jumps from something high and she wasn't just messing around with or without a camera again. LOL. Though I'm wondering now if this particular plotline is over since she concluded that it does look like Annie killed herself after all. The random appearance of the suicide note is still unexplained. It would probably be best if this incident just ended up related to the direction her character goes in this season and somehow helps Claire figure out what she wants to use her abilities for from now on.
If the rumors are true that the relationship between her and Gretchen is going in a more-than-friends direction, I'm glad it's starting out as a really subtle thing. I wasn't really down with this idea at all when I first heard it was a possibility because it sounded like a cheap and unearned way to work homosexuality into the show, but if this relationship is going to keep being developed with this kind of care then I could more than warm up to the idea.
In other news, I really like Claire's new haircut and she looks so devastatingly cute in an oversized sweater that I'm going gay for her. LOL.
- Nooooo Hiro you can't be dying! :(((
- It feels like they're finally starting to find Peter's character again. It's nice to see a bit of his lighter and funnier Season 1 self back, though I never really minded the black-clothed-and-intense Peter much myself, LOL. The Peter Petrelli from the beginning of the show was so blind to his family's faults and was the kind of person who has trouble thinking badly of people he wants to trust, and it makes a kind of sense that when he gets his eyes opened and kind of falls from innocence he would fall really hard and become pretty bitter for a while. And now it's understandable that even though he's been able to forgive Nathan and Angela (and I suppose even Noah is in this category) he's just not comfortable being around their morally ambiguous influence anymore. Besides also probably being for the purpose of protecting them as long as he's choosing the kind of life he has now, it seems like he's cut them from his life out of a need to hold onto what's left of his idealism that is such an essential strength of his.
- OH HEY IT'S SIMON THE CYLON.
- The Matt & Sylar scenes had me cracking up and pretty much stole the show. You can tell Zach must be having a lot of fun with this material. And Matt's storyline is interesting enough that it actually manages to feel like more than just an excuse to give Zach something to do while Sylar is an otherwise mostly dormant character. I'm already pretty sure that these visions have no connection to the real Sylar and are just an imagined manifestation of Matt's guilt and insecurities. If Hiro can unintentionally freeze himself with his powers, it's easy to believe Matt could unintentionally cause his own illusions with his while he has all this overwhelming baggage he's struggling to live with.
I'd been trying not to get too excited about Heroes coming back in case it continued to be as bad as Season 2 and a lot of S3 was, even though I've been more optimistic about it than most people. I think fans should stop expecting the show to return to exactly what it was in S1 when that's just not going to happen, especially because once they decided to scratch the idea of starting out with mostly new characters and a new overall story with every season, that made the whole concept and structure that the first season followed completely impossible to repeat.
Even if they've obviously struggled at times to keep giving all the characters they kept around enough importance and something interesting to do, I've become so attached to a lot of them I can't seem to regret that they made that choice and just don't see the series as a dead horse with no potential for improvement. In some parts of the last season I didn't even find it to be as bad as I'd been lead to believe it is. And while it's still obviously no Season 1, if this premiere is any indication of what this season will be like then I'm guessing I was right to be (cautiously) optimistic.
- At first it was concerning/bothering me a little how many different plot threads are already being brought up because this has often been a big problem that means most of the storylines don't get enough development when there's an overly huge cast of characters all sharing screentime. The scenes of some characters' stories seemed so awkwardly spaced out because there were so many different things being introduced just in the premiere. But by the second hour it wasn't bothering me so much, probably because a lot of these different threads started converging a little. By the end it actually felt like a lot had happened with every character.
- At first I was pretty upset after watching the S3 finale and then decided to reserve judgement on the whole "Nylar" thing. I can deal more easily with a character death if it's a good death that's dealt with in a way that gives the character their deserved importance (as opposed to Lupin uselessly being reduced to part of a statistically realistic body count in an undramatic "off-screen" death, for example). It was hard to judge the way Nathan got killed off without knowing yet exactly where they're going with it. I couldn't tell yet if we are really meant to consider the character dead and react accordingly by sadly trying to accept it, or if the authorial intent is that this person really is Nathan in some kind of real sense at the same time that Sylar's somewhere in there and they're exploring some potentially interesting themes of identity that maybe started to be set up in "I Am Sylar."
Just based on the few scenes with Nathan so far, I'm guessing the writing is leaning more toward the former interpretation. If the creation of Nylar was just yet another way of bringing a dead character back on this show, then I think Nathan would still be presented in a more sympathetic way. His scenes in these episodes don't have much of a sense of his perspective and Adrian's performance mostly just suggests a lot of intense confusion and dysfunction in himself rather than making him human and relatable. Maybe it's just that Nathan's death is something I've had time to kind of get over by now, but I'm still reserving judgment about it because of course it's impossible for the death to feel like it's satisfyingly been dealt with when half the people it should have the strongest impact on don't even know yet that he's gone. In a twisted way I'm actually kind of excited for seeing the shit hit the fan when Peter and Claire both find out what happened, and the writers just better not disappoint with delivering on the drama and there being huge repercussions.
It's less frustrating than I would have expected that they're only slowly starting to work toward that, but the revelation that Matt has already had to fix his mind multiple times to prevent Sylar from coming out is kind of shocking yet follows logically from what we saw in the final scene with Nylar in "An Invisible Thread." What he said about wanting to reconnect with everyone important to him certainly made me think of Claire (who, interestingly, I believe now lives closer to her biological family than any of her adoptive one), and even though HRG's making an effort to tone down his overprotectiveness I can definitely see him trying to interfere if he finds out Claire is spending much time with "her father."
- Tracy might be slowly turning into a character I'm not completely bored by, and I'm surprisingly okay with the possibility of her and HRG hooking up. Those actors did have kind of a fun chemistry when they interacted in the last season like in the dressing room scene when he pretended to be her fiancé, so it actually doesn't feel ridiculously unprecedented.
- OH HEY IT'S TED SCHMIDT. Reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, lulzzz.
- Even with how much the promos had given away, I totally didn't see it coming that Claire's nightmare of a roommate would be the person found dead on her campus. Whatever people want to say about how stupid Claire is, I liked that the writers actually came up with a practical reason for her to perform another one of her trademark jumps from something high and she wasn't just messing around with or without a camera again. LOL. Though I'm wondering now if this particular plotline is over since she concluded that it does look like Annie killed herself after all. The random appearance of the suicide note is still unexplained. It would probably be best if this incident just ended up related to the direction her character goes in this season and somehow helps Claire figure out what she wants to use her abilities for from now on.
If the rumors are true that the relationship between her and Gretchen is going in a more-than-friends direction, I'm glad it's starting out as a really subtle thing. I wasn't really down with this idea at all when I first heard it was a possibility because it sounded like a cheap and unearned way to work homosexuality into the show, but if this relationship is going to keep being developed with this kind of care then I could more than warm up to the idea.
In other news, I really like Claire's new haircut and she looks so devastatingly cute in an oversized sweater that I'm going gay for her. LOL.
- Nooooo Hiro you can't be dying! :(((
- It feels like they're finally starting to find Peter's character again. It's nice to see a bit of his lighter and funnier Season 1 self back, though I never really minded the black-clothed-and-intense Peter much myself, LOL. The Peter Petrelli from the beginning of the show was so blind to his family's faults and was the kind of person who has trouble thinking badly of people he wants to trust, and it makes a kind of sense that when he gets his eyes opened and kind of falls from innocence he would fall really hard and become pretty bitter for a while. And now it's understandable that even though he's been able to forgive Nathan and Angela (and I suppose even Noah is in this category) he's just not comfortable being around their morally ambiguous influence anymore. Besides also probably being for the purpose of protecting them as long as he's choosing the kind of life he has now, it seems like he's cut them from his life out of a need to hold onto what's left of his idealism that is such an essential strength of his.
- OH HEY IT'S SIMON THE CYLON.
- The Matt & Sylar scenes had me cracking up and pretty much stole the show. You can tell Zach must be having a lot of fun with this material. And Matt's storyline is interesting enough that it actually manages to feel like more than just an excuse to give Zach something to do while Sylar is an otherwise mostly dormant character. I'm already pretty sure that these visions have no connection to the real Sylar and are just an imagined manifestation of Matt's guilt and insecurities. If Hiro can unintentionally freeze himself with his powers, it's easy to believe Matt could unintentionally cause his own illusions with his while he has all this overwhelming baggage he's struggling to live with.