Heroes Commentary 3x12: Our Father
Truly this was the best of times, and the worst of times.
GI Joe’s a bit reluctant to be infected by Mohinder, no shit! It is said you measure a cook by his belly; you don’t want your food cooked by someone who clearly lives on celery sticks and water. Thusly, you don’t want your face-lift done by an ugly plastic surgeon, you don’t take fitness tips from a fat person, and you don’t want to get injected with an experimental formula by a man who’s clearly screwed it up already. You mean to tell me that they couldn’t get one normal nurse or someone to do the injecting?
And do tell me, how do you pick who gets what power? Does the glowing red Jell-O have different-colored sparkles for different abilities? Are people’s systems primed to develop one ability over another? Whatever.
Also, I had to wonder why, if Mohinder did pick super-strength for the first ability to dole out… why?! Mohinder has had up-close and personal experience, like throat-closing personal experience, with Niki’s ability. Doesn’t that ability come with a free split personality or uncontrollable rage? Because that could be bad.
Christ on Crutches, I hate Arthur. Hiro gets a collection of the best scenes in this season, possibly in two seasons, showing his returning maturity and acceptance of responsibility, and Arthur comes along, yet the fuck again, and takes everything away. Arthur has just been the plot-devouring monster this entire season. Every single time it looks like the heroes are going to get something accomplished, he pops in, appros of nothing, and in this particular case with no possible fucking way of knowing exactly when or where Hiro and Claire were, and destroys them.
Hiro had a chance to be redeemed and effective, and was willingly shouldering a great responsibility for the first time in a while, and he can’t blink fast enough to stop Arthur. Screw you, show. Arthur has done nothing but kill or depower cool people this entire season for a moustache-twirling villainous plot. (And yes, I’m going to put Maury Parkman and Peter Petrelli in the same group as Adam Monroe. That’s how mad I am right now.)
Writers, if you are unable to deal with a Hiro that knows how to use his abilities effectively, then you shouldn’t have written him in the first place. These contrivances to neuter him have gotten very old. Instead of hurting him over and over again, learn to embrace his abilities. Let him use them, instead of writing the plot around making him lose them.
Hiro’s mom is awesome. The first time we were introduced to someone with healing abilities, I was kind of disappointed because it was Linderman the mob boss. I know the writers were bucking the trend there, but I’m glad this healer is a kind, loving, self-sacrificing mother. She really believes in her little boy. If she’d lived longer, I think Hiro would have ended up a better, more confident person. I’m tickled to bits they were able to learn something from each other. *huggles!*
Oh Sylar. Despite you reveling in the bloodshed this episode, which negates all of your previous character development and musings of redemption, you do bring the funny. I haven’t giggled so much at wanton murder since “Shaun of the Dead.” “Cake!”
Though when he said he had a special delivery for that woman, did anyone else expect him to start up some music and begin stripping to a g-string? Why couldn’t we have had that? I was already there in my mind! Come on Sylar, sex, then murder, you already did it with Elle!
Claire, you may have actually done a good thing here in the past. No whining (or, rather, limited whining), just helping yourself, literally. And warning herself against the bad men in her life, priceless.
Glad to see Claire resisted the urge to fuck with history some more and didn’t tell Noah she was from the future. So far, Claire’s managed to be the best past-traveler on the show. I hope she’ll be more understanding of her dad now. This show badly needs one semi-normal relationship between the main characters. Sandra gets the gold star for the supporting cast, but I hope the rest of the Bennett family can follow suit.
Though I wasn’t quite as down with Sandra letting a strange girl into her apartment and allowing her to change her new baby. Yes, Sandra’s overwhelmed but, well… I could see her desperately looking around for a good babysitter post-haste. She just got the kid today; it’s not like she’s mentally prepared for motherhood. Oh, I’ll give her a pass. She acted the shit out of this scene anyway, both of them did. Sandra also looked fabulous. I honestly bought her looking at least ten years younger.
Peter, your father absorbed your whole grab-bag of abilities, plus who the hell knows how many others during the course of his life and this season. He’s the most powerful guy on the planet. You didn’t stop to think that the Haitian might have had a problem containing him? Oh wait, Peter thinking, never mind.
Besides, no, you don’t have the balls to kill him. You were able to kill Nathan in the future, but that’s only because you had Sylar’s HUNGER or something. But jawing about it while the poor Haitian’s about to collapse from strain? Uncool. You should have let him do it for you. As we’ve seen, at least the Haitian doesn’t dick around when it comes to taking care of business. And there’s a dearth of people taking care of business on this show.
Like Nathan. He spends all his time as the junior senator from New York conducting quasi-legal genetic experiments on U.S. military personnel in a facility in New Jersey. Seriously, not much New York business going on in his never-used Senate office. His inbox is going to be overflowing when he gets back.
Yay Sylar for killing Arthur dead! Double yay for him not having been Sylar not having really been a Petrelli! I can totally believe both Arthur and Angela preying on his parental issues. And I hope Arthur stays dead. Seriously. I don’t ever want to see this man on my screen again. But I have the depressing feeling I will.
This show reminds me of a soap opera more and more. Beautiful people with large chunks of time free in the middle of the day, with seemingly no responsibilities to put food in their mouths or pay their rent, doing whatever the hell they want as long as it involves complicating their relationships some more. All we need is for someone to declare, “I’m pregnant!” for this to be complete.
Ando bitches about Daphne’s mode of transport. Shut yer trap! You’re lucky she didn’t run you into a barbed-wire fence with that attitude. Though I do love that Unspecial Ando is so casual around powers that he feels he has the right to bitch about them.
Heh, Daphne is exasperated with the boys for falling for the old, “It’s in the back, let me get it for you,” trick. But why are Matt and Ando spazzing when they’re traveling with the fastest woman in the world? Relax dudes!
I just love that, of course, there’s another whole comic book in that sketchbook. I also love the fact that when the TV show stops showing the past scenes, our intrepid trio stops reading and starting talking about it. Just read to the end, for the love of love! Hasn’t this occurred to someone by now?