Heroes Commentary 3x13: Duel
Pure. Volcanic. Rage.
But my blood pressure is good, I assure you.
This show is so weird. It contains “previous” clips that contain more actual information than the clips originally contained. Isn’t it supposed to go the other way around? Seriously show, get the net.
Golly gee, Nathan’s taking the death of his father and Peter waving a gun at him pretty damn calmly, don’t you think? I’m just saying, I don’t care if Peter claims it was Sylar, I think a threat of murder warrants a slightly more vigorous response than, say, the kind of tone you’d use when drinking a glass of warm milk.
Oh-ho, Peter gets all duplicitous and shit. Good way to make your brother take you seriously, clock him in the head. And totally not believing that Peter can KO Nathan in one punch. I will cheerfully believe Nathan can fly before I’ll believe Peter being strong enough to take him out with a single hit.
Sylar gets to pretend he’s Jigsaw with his favorites buddes. “What will you do to stay alive?” But instead of wacky death traps, we just have TK and fire.
Tell me, where did this endless parade of rent-a-cops come from at the Company facility? When Angela was in a coma, the whole place is deserted, but when the Bennetts and Sylar show up, everyone’s stumbling around bodies like they’re leaves in the fall. Don’t get it. Kinda callous to use bodies as creepy set dressing Kring. We already know Sylar’s a mass-murdering psycho with a massive inferiority complex. You don’t need to up his body count by a few dozen to drive that part home.
Sylar, believe me, I love you like a psychotic brother from another mother, but get over yourself. You’re feeling so bad about your life and Noah manipulating you into becoming a monster that you decide to drag everyone down to your own little circle of hell? Dude, it’s been done, and by scarier, bloodier movie villains than you. You could have at least tried to be original.
Then again, your opponents weren’t original either. “It’s dark and we’re locked in here with a serial killer, what are we going to do?” The Bennett/Petrelli/Gordon clan proceeds to enact every movie cliché on record. Split up? Check. Divide weapons? Check. Wander through the dark? Check. Go into places alone? Check. Assume the unmoving guy in the chair facing away from you is alive? Check.
We also learn that Claire can’t tell the different between the hand of her sixty-five year old petite grandmother and a thirty year-old muscular man. Yeah…
Oh nos, the villains didn’t make it! Loved the confrontation between Doyle the Puppetmaster and Sylar. That was the competition of the creep. Never thought you’d be so glad to see Doyle again, eh Meredith? Alas, Sylar says, “All your creep are belong to me.” Pity, Doyle was cool. Bye bye Puppetmaster!
HRG, you willingly go into a secure jail cell with a woman who clearly screams “bait?” Dumb move HRG. Good thing the glass that was shown to be impervious to Flint’s fire can be destroyed with a single application of Meredith’s flame, one bullet, and your 110lb daughter. Good thing that contrivance worked, eh?
Oh, and let’s not even get to the science FAIL #2,684,981 on Heroes, Meredith’s adrenaline rush. Let’s not talk of how that would have caused either an INSTANT flare-up/explosion, or given her immediate cardiac arrest. And no, let us not speak of how adrenaline dissipates, and how it would be LESS likely each passing second for her to explode.
No, let us talk instead of how HRG knew that little old Meredith was capable of collapsing the entire Company building from inside a Level 5 cell in the basement. From what we saw her do this episode, I think we could safely say there’d be a big fire, but Level 5 cells should have been able to contain it. Yet somehow HRG is dead certain that Meredith’s ability to throw fire will result in an explosion worth of many sticks of dynamite. He knows that… how?
Sylar tries to work out the rest of his mommy issues, and Angela leaves him with yet another fucking lead for Sylar to follow. I hope his real parents are Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, just to screw with him that much more. Sy-baby, you’re already special. How much goddamn validation do you need in your life?
Claire luckily leaves him with a boot- er, shard to the head, so we don’t have to listen to him mentally improving his penis size. Sylar, once you get yourself back together, get yourself a girlfriend. Maybe a nice blow-up doll or something, someone that hasn’t been in the endless Ferris wheel of betrayal with you before. Your character development has been all over the map. My advice to you, get a better map.
Aw, Unspecial Ando is now extra special! He got a kick-ass power too. I heart no-longer-unspecial Ando. Yay for alternative solutions to time-traveling problems! Though I shake my finger at Matt for grabbing Ando’s arm when he’s sparking red lightning. A heart attack won’t improve your looks Matt.
I’m intrigued by Matt and Daphne’s theory that what power you develop in influenced by the individual. I like it, I think it fits, but it’s totally going to piss people off. And how does Ando end up with Supercharging? He always wanted to make things better? Uh… sure, yeah, we’ll go with that.
Hiro, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth! You were saved from being skewered by your own dad, now suck it up and go find an alternative solution. At least you can no longer screw up history!
Mohinder’s nasty infection has moved to his lungs now? Then how could he do part of the voice-over this week? Whatever. And apparently a dose of the new super-serum will help. Then Peter arrives to say, “No, you cannot regain your pretty! I am the only one allowed to be pretty!” Peter’s gotten jealous, as he’s all out of powers, didn’t get his kill his dad, and his brother’s being mean to him.
The formula is FLAMMABLE?! Holy crap Mohinder, you’ve been injecting people with biological nitroglycerin? Why is the super-serum high-octane? WHY? I can guess the writers wanted to make sure that both Pinehurst and The Company facilities were reduced to rubble, but seriously, flaming super-juice? Not so much. Science FAIL, example #2,684,982 on Heroes.
Riddle me this, when did Knox and Flint learn about Peter’s plan? And why trust him? It’s just so random… And did those poor, misinformed Marine volunteers make it out of Pinehurst before it exploded? Because the wanton murder on this show has seriously gotten out of hand. Case in point, Tracy turning Knox into T-1000 kibble.
At least Nathan decides that just messed up his suit too much and fires the Ice Queen. Oh, he’s going to get it from her back in Washington…
Peter reclaims his special and save his bro, despite cold-cocking him earlier that hour. And Nathan is not amused. As a matter of fact, Nathan says he would have left Peter to die in a burning building.
And, let us be perfectly clear, Nathan also wants to president to authorize him to use the military to round up people with abilities and put them in special facilities where they can’t hurt anyone-.
WHAT THE FUCK?!
Not even leaving off the fact of having America reenact the Holocaust, or at least the WWII Japanese internment camps, as if it weren’t going to cause some kind of protest of BIBLICAL proportions, how did Nathan arrive at this idea?
How does he go from, “We’ll give abilities to good people to combat the bad people,” to “Everyone with abilities must be locked away, even thirteen-year-old kids, because they’re dangerous.”
I gave myself mental whiplash trying to understand that about-face. If I wrote that episode as a piece of fanfic and I’d have people all over my ass for out-of-character portrayals.
I feel like a missed a massive internal monologue, or like the writers are just trying to fuck with us. And you know what? I don’t like it. I’ll believe Peter knocking out Nathan in one punch before I’ll believe Nathan going against all established conventions of his character and relationship with his brother by pulling this Nazi proposal.
Screw you show.
I’ll be here next year with the rest of the addicts, damn you.