[H3.2] Two days, two recaps. And, just like that, I'm caught up!
By itself this episode was pretty good. It actually holds up better upon rewatching than "The Second Coming". Of course I rewatched them about three days apart, so that might have something to do with it. It was paced better, I know that's for sure. It moved the story along without throwing three dozen things at the screen at once. Oddly, watching this one made me want to go back and rewatch some things from season one. I didn't, but it made me want to.
-----=====The Great!=====-----
Angela: Still #1. Only now, literally. With an opening at the top level of The Company, Angela finally takes her rightful place as In Charge of Everything. She's already running the family that is always at the center of trying to fix everything, why not also allow her to be in charge of the company that is believed to be causing everything that needs to be fixed? Talk about playing the ends against the middle! You thought she was powerful before?! Look out! Again she tries to convince the new guy to go home. Again, he is not trying to hear it. She calls him out on not being as smart as he thinks he is, and he calls her out on doing bad things. I like this new dynamic! Let's see if we can do something about keeping this Peter around permanently. Please. She uses his sensitivity against him by letting him him know that something bad happened to Claire and it was all his fault. Excellent parenting that. (So is it Nathan is to Peter as Claire to Future!Peter?) And that last scene? What's going on there? Is she saying she's his real mom? Is she lying to get what she wants? See how she is talking about how she is is mom, but she is touching him? That fits into the old "Angela touches you and convinces you of things" theory of old. But of that's not her power, why does she keep doing it? If it's not a power, its' just creepy.
Angela's Dream: Angela dreams of bad things, and I love it. I missed it the first time. Hiro dead by his own sword. Parkman's throat cut. Knox killed Claire (and HRG!?) Peter's dead too? Bad guys galore! Niki (or Tracy or Jessica or who-the-hell-knows!), Adam! Knox! Maury The Nightmare Man! Adam! I will gladly trade almost all of those deaths for those guys to be together and doing bad things. Seriously.
Bob: He was only alive for one scene, but he continued his quest to be Father of the Year to his weak daughter. A daughter both needy and unworthy of his trust. Why does she always let him (and herself) down? It's not fair to Bob! She needs to try harder! Well, she could.. if he was still alive. The minute she entered that room and they showed the wide shot of that chair, I was like "Noooo!!" (Of course I had read something that suggested he was dead a while back, but I had forgotten it.)
Elle: Continues to fail. Angela continues to give her the treatment she deserves. She let a dozen inmates out, and she will not get right on getting them back. Bob is dead and Elle is out! Ha! Though I am interested to know why she is to blame for Sylar killing people. I also liked how Knox was always giving her funny looks.
HRG: He trades his ball for a gun and gets back to the business of Getting Things Done.. only not really. It's hard to be serious in those lil' slippers, but that's alright. He puts eight bullets in a bad guy, becoming the newest member of the( I Shot Sylar But I Didn't Take club. Meetings the third Tuesday of Every month!) Sylar gets knocked out by Elle and HRG uses the breakout to drag his body somewhere. Quick thinking under pressure! That's what makes him so great. HRG! Hey, you see a breakout happening arond you, what do you do? Break out! I like it! What's even better is that now that he is no longer a prisoner of The Company, he is going back to being an employee of The Company. Meaning that now, HRG works for Angela! Imagine that.
The Level Five Mafia: They're free and causing trouble! So far, so good. Knox takes your fear and turns it into strength. That's gotta be useful. I mean, the more he does to someone, the more fear the produce. The more fear they produce, the more powerful he becomes. Flint is a flame thrower. That's rather generic, but not too bad. He looks more menacing than the others, so he has that going for him. The German controls magnetic energy. Sounds lame, right? Think again. Jesse's a sound manipulator, supposedly capable of doing terrible things. Together they can cause "unimaginable destruction". Yes, bring it on! Oh, they are terrible. Beating people up at a gas station? Come on! Really, I love these guys, the whole lot of them. Too bad they're stuck with Peter. He's gonna get real annoying real fast.
So far I can't decide whether my favorite is Knox or German. I came into this backing Knox, but that was just because he's played by the same dude that played Marlo. His power is excellent and he was a part of the extra evil crew in Angela's vision, but I don't know. I need to see him in actual action. On the other hand, a metal manipulator from Germany? Ask me who one of my favorite comic book figures is and you will see why this guy's intriguing. (Hint: He's a badass German who creates/manipulates magnetism.) Plus, that thing with the unlocking the car so that they could easily make a getaway? Nice!
Linderman: So he's dead, but appearing to Nathan. And Nathan has no idea. Nathan uses Nathan's new found religiousity to get him to do what he thinks he needs to do.. you know, rejoin the Senate. Is he something like Nathan's conscience? A spirit guide? An angel or something more sinister? I hope he sticks around, because he's kind of excellent.
Nathan: First off, he took a step in the right direction by taking it down a notch with all of the Jesus talk. Thank goodness.
This episode saw a lot of crazy things happen to Nathan: First he gets a visit from who he assumes to be Niki Sanders. She is trying to be All-Business, but he's rightfully confused, as the last time he saw that face he was getting his freak on in a Vegas hotel room. As soon as he said, "speaking of sin" or whatever it was, I knew he was on his way to becoming the Nathan of old. But Tracy completely no-sold his memories, further confusing poor back-from-the-dead Nathan. She wants him to be a Senator (Again, another step in the right direction! Less preachifying, more speechifying!) He has to think about it though, has to consult with a few of his people, neither of which, it turns out, is exactly what he believes them to be.
His talk with Future!Peter about returning to the Senate showed that, though he once claimed to be a shark, Nathan has doubts about his ability to be a successful leader. Citing what almost happened to NYC the last time he was in charge, he turns to his baby brother for advice. The only catch is, that's not really his brother, it's a brother from the future, one who admits to being the person who, not days ago, tried to shut Nathan up with three to the chest. Nathan takes this news in stride, not acknowledging the apology, but asking if he joins the Senate. All F!P could tell him was to do the right thing. There's a bit of a role reversal here, as it used to be Peter who always came to Nathan for advice. See why this new Peter totally trumps the old one? The look on his face when he realized that he was the only one seeing Linderman? Priceless Poor Nathan, back from the dead and looking crazy. That's going to be a bit of an obstacle once he gets out of the hospital and back into regular society.
Future!Peter: He's not as badass as last week, in fact he is slightly more Present!Peter than Future!Peter. Then again, a few encounters with Angela would probably beat anyone's resolve down. While confessing and apologizing to Nathan, he explains that everything is different now. Supposedly Nathan's speech set off a chain of events that made life hard for the specials. It must have been really hard to make him come back in time and shoot his brother like that. Later he goes to Level 5, presumably to set everyone back in their right body and return home, but he runs into a slight problem. Jesse's gone, and with him, the soul/spirit/don'tknowwhat of the Peter that actually belongs in this time. Oops! Turns out that Angela was right, and that his messing up one little thing in the present caused a chain reaction of bigger and better mess ups. Looks like he'll be staying around for a while after all!
Usutu (Random Painting Black Man Who Is Not A Turtle): History tells me I should not get too attached to him, but I can't help it. He's a future-painter! The new Isaac! And he's got a smart mouth. A smart mouthed painter? With an accent? Come on! Of course he not-lucks out and meets up with one of the lamest of the heroes, but that's okay. He's a cool painting brother with a big stick, so far so good.
Tracy: This is the first of the characters who looks just like Niki who I do not hate. In fact, I think I actually like this one. She is not even "less annoying than Niki and/or Jessica", she is not annoying at all! You know why? She actually stands up to people and says things that make sense. Perhaps that was where Niki's problems lied? Tracy, like HRG and Angela before her, gets things done. She is all about getting Nathan back in the Senate, and won't stop until she makes it happen. When her boss claims that Nathan's newfound religion would be a detriment (What? Does he not watch the news?!), she explains that the Far Right loves that kind of stuff and that if they helped Petrelli out, he'd owe them. And if there is anything we all know about politics, it's that it's not so much what you do as who you've got in your pocket. A soon as the boss hears that, he gets on board. I like how he thinks he's the one running the show. This Tracey's no Angela, but she's shaping up nicely. Of course now we have to wonder just who she is. She's not Niki, right? So who is she? A clone? A twin? Jessica come to life? I don't know, but (so far) she's a keeper!
-----=====Terrible!=====-----
Dead Bob: Noooooooooooooooooo! I repeat, Noooooooooooooooooo! Bob! This has now replaced the death of Isaac as the death that angers me the most.
Claire: When will the whinyness end? Man, was she really raised by HRG? Also, I know it's small, but the fact that her birth mom entered the room and she was all, "Mom?!" kind of annoyed me. Don't you always see adoptees explaining that the person who raised them "is my real mom" and all of that? What about HRG's wife (whose name I can't remember?) What's next, calling Nathan "Dad"? It's minor, but it's really annoying. Other than that, what's up with the no pain thing? Is that a side effect of what Sylar did to her? I call "upgrade!" Maybe he fixed her? She wants to go with HRG as his partner. Really? Every badass wants a winy teenager as their partner. Only, none of them do.
Daphne: Still lame. Quit making those stupid faces!
Hiro: He continues to act weird around Ando and Ando continues to not understand. And once he finally breaks down and tells him what's going on, Ando does not believe it. Hiro says that things can change, showing just how deep his faith in his friend runs. Ando, on the other hand, says it could be anything.. even a robot. See, that's what a real friend does. There's some stuff with freezing time and a knife to Ando's throat, and in the end it comes out that Hiro does not trust Ando. Well, at least it's out in the open now. I am positive that continuing to treat Ando badly will in no way, shape or form, lead Ando turning into the kind of person that could ever find it easy to take Hiro's life. You know, this has the potential to one day move from Terrible to Great. And if I was not so lazy, I would spilt it up into something like "Hiro and Daphne" and "Hiro And Ando", but I've been working on this long enough, I can see the end, and I don't feel like it now.
Mohinder: Sooo... creepy empowered Mohinder? This guy is weird. I mean, really, really weird. I don't know if it is a side effect of the powers or if being special has opened him up to being the man he always wanted to be, but he's weird. There is a small bit of the old, earnest, nerdy Mohinder there, but mainly he's creepy and weird. And then Mohinder's body turns on him. This makes me happier than you can believe. It is about time that his rashness gets punished. Have fun with that gross skin thing, doc! Want to see how this one ends, head on down to Blockbuster and rent The Fly.
Peter: He calls Nathan and is all "This is me" Yet he does not sound like Peter, so that kind of fails. I wonder how long he will be riding with the bad guys before they try to make him do something evil and find out that he can't. Also, can he absorb their powers now? He's still himself, just stuck in someone else's body. How does that work?
-----=====The Great!=====-----
Angela: Still #1. Only now, literally. With an opening at the top level of The Company, Angela finally takes her rightful place as In Charge of Everything. She's already running the family that is always at the center of trying to fix everything, why not also allow her to be in charge of the company that is believed to be causing everything that needs to be fixed? Talk about playing the ends against the middle! You thought she was powerful before?! Look out! Again she tries to convince the new guy to go home. Again, he is not trying to hear it. She calls him out on not being as smart as he thinks he is, and he calls her out on doing bad things. I like this new dynamic! Let's see if we can do something about keeping this Peter around permanently. Please. She uses his sensitivity against him by letting him him know that something bad happened to Claire and it was all his fault. Excellent parenting that. (So is it Nathan is to Peter as Claire to Future!Peter?) And that last scene? What's going on there? Is she saying she's his real mom? Is she lying to get what she wants? See how she is talking about how she is is mom, but she is touching him? That fits into the old "Angela touches you and convinces you of things" theory of old. But of that's not her power, why does she keep doing it? If it's not a power, its' just creepy.
Angela's Dream: Angela dreams of bad things, and I love it. I missed it the first time. Hiro dead by his own sword. Parkman's throat cut. Knox killed Claire (and HRG!?) Peter's dead too? Bad guys galore! Niki (or Tracy or Jessica or who-the-hell-knows!), Adam! Knox! Maury The Nightmare Man! Adam! I will gladly trade almost all of those deaths for those guys to be together and doing bad things. Seriously.
Bob: He was only alive for one scene, but he continued his quest to be Father of the Year to his weak daughter. A daughter both needy and unworthy of his trust. Why does she always let him (and herself) down? It's not fair to Bob! She needs to try harder! Well, she could.. if he was still alive. The minute she entered that room and they showed the wide shot of that chair, I was like "Noooo!!" (Of course I had read something that suggested he was dead a while back, but I had forgotten it.)
Elle: Continues to fail. Angela continues to give her the treatment she deserves. She let a dozen inmates out, and she will not get right on getting them back. Bob is dead and Elle is out! Ha! Though I am interested to know why she is to blame for Sylar killing people. I also liked how Knox was always giving her funny looks.
HRG: He trades his ball for a gun and gets back to the business of Getting Things Done.. only not really. It's hard to be serious in those lil' slippers, but that's alright. He puts eight bullets in a bad guy, becoming the newest member of the( I Shot Sylar But I Didn't Take club. Meetings the third Tuesday of Every month!) Sylar gets knocked out by Elle and HRG uses the breakout to drag his body somewhere. Quick thinking under pressure! That's what makes him so great. HRG! Hey, you see a breakout happening arond you, what do you do? Break out! I like it! What's even better is that now that he is no longer a prisoner of The Company, he is going back to being an employee of The Company. Meaning that now, HRG works for Angela! Imagine that.
The Level Five Mafia: They're free and causing trouble! So far, so good. Knox takes your fear and turns it into strength. That's gotta be useful. I mean, the more he does to someone, the more fear the produce. The more fear they produce, the more powerful he becomes. Flint is a flame thrower. That's rather generic, but not too bad. He looks more menacing than the others, so he has that going for him. The German controls magnetic energy. Sounds lame, right? Think again. Jesse's a sound manipulator, supposedly capable of doing terrible things. Together they can cause "unimaginable destruction". Yes, bring it on! Oh, they are terrible. Beating people up at a gas station? Come on! Really, I love these guys, the whole lot of them. Too bad they're stuck with Peter. He's gonna get real annoying real fast.
So far I can't decide whether my favorite is Knox or German. I came into this backing Knox, but that was just because he's played by the same dude that played Marlo. His power is excellent and he was a part of the extra evil crew in Angela's vision, but I don't know. I need to see him in actual action. On the other hand, a metal manipulator from Germany? Ask me who one of my favorite comic book figures is and you will see why this guy's intriguing. (Hint: He's a badass German who creates/manipulates magnetism.) Plus, that thing with the unlocking the car so that they could easily make a getaway? Nice!
Linderman: So he's dead, but appearing to Nathan. And Nathan has no idea. Nathan uses Nathan's new found religiousity to get him to do what he thinks he needs to do.. you know, rejoin the Senate. Is he something like Nathan's conscience? A spirit guide? An angel or something more sinister? I hope he sticks around, because he's kind of excellent.
Nathan: First off, he took a step in the right direction by taking it down a notch with all of the Jesus talk. Thank goodness.
This episode saw a lot of crazy things happen to Nathan: First he gets a visit from who he assumes to be Niki Sanders. She is trying to be All-Business, but he's rightfully confused, as the last time he saw that face he was getting his freak on in a Vegas hotel room. As soon as he said, "speaking of sin" or whatever it was, I knew he was on his way to becoming the Nathan of old. But Tracy completely no-sold his memories, further confusing poor back-from-the-dead Nathan. She wants him to be a Senator (Again, another step in the right direction! Less preachifying, more speechifying!) He has to think about it though, has to consult with a few of his people, neither of which, it turns out, is exactly what he believes them to be.
His talk with Future!Peter about returning to the Senate showed that, though he once claimed to be a shark, Nathan has doubts about his ability to be a successful leader. Citing what almost happened to NYC the last time he was in charge, he turns to his baby brother for advice. The only catch is, that's not really his brother, it's a brother from the future, one who admits to being the person who, not days ago, tried to shut Nathan up with three to the chest. Nathan takes this news in stride, not acknowledging the apology, but asking if he joins the Senate. All F!P could tell him was to do the right thing. There's a bit of a role reversal here, as it used to be Peter who always came to Nathan for advice. See why this new Peter totally trumps the old one? The look on his face when he realized that he was the only one seeing Linderman? Priceless Poor Nathan, back from the dead and looking crazy. That's going to be a bit of an obstacle once he gets out of the hospital and back into regular society.
Future!Peter: He's not as badass as last week, in fact he is slightly more Present!Peter than Future!Peter. Then again, a few encounters with Angela would probably beat anyone's resolve down. While confessing and apologizing to Nathan, he explains that everything is different now. Supposedly Nathan's speech set off a chain of events that made life hard for the specials. It must have been really hard to make him come back in time and shoot his brother like that. Later he goes to Level 5, presumably to set everyone back in their right body and return home, but he runs into a slight problem. Jesse's gone, and with him, the soul/spirit/don'tknowwhat of the Peter that actually belongs in this time. Oops! Turns out that Angela was right, and that his messing up one little thing in the present caused a chain reaction of bigger and better mess ups. Looks like he'll be staying around for a while after all!
Usutu (Random Painting Black Man Who Is Not A Turtle): History tells me I should not get too attached to him, but I can't help it. He's a future-painter! The new Isaac! And he's got a smart mouth. A smart mouthed painter? With an accent? Come on! Of course he not-lucks out and meets up with one of the lamest of the heroes, but that's okay. He's a cool painting brother with a big stick, so far so good.
Tracy: This is the first of the characters who looks just like Niki who I do not hate. In fact, I think I actually like this one. She is not even "less annoying than Niki and/or Jessica", she is not annoying at all! You know why? She actually stands up to people and says things that make sense. Perhaps that was where Niki's problems lied? Tracy, like HRG and Angela before her, gets things done. She is all about getting Nathan back in the Senate, and won't stop until she makes it happen. When her boss claims that Nathan's newfound religion would be a detriment (What? Does he not watch the news?!), she explains that the Far Right loves that kind of stuff and that if they helped Petrelli out, he'd owe them. And if there is anything we all know about politics, it's that it's not so much what you do as who you've got in your pocket. A soon as the boss hears that, he gets on board. I like how he thinks he's the one running the show. This Tracey's no Angela, but she's shaping up nicely. Of course now we have to wonder just who she is. She's not Niki, right? So who is she? A clone? A twin? Jessica come to life? I don't know, but (so far) she's a keeper!
-----=====Terrible!=====-----
Dead Bob: Noooooooooooooooooo! I repeat, Noooooooooooooooooo! Bob! This has now replaced the death of Isaac as the death that angers me the most.
Claire: When will the whinyness end? Man, was she really raised by HRG? Also, I know it's small, but the fact that her birth mom entered the room and she was all, "Mom?!" kind of annoyed me. Don't you always see adoptees explaining that the person who raised them "is my real mom" and all of that? What about HRG's wife (whose name I can't remember?) What's next, calling Nathan "Dad"? It's minor, but it's really annoying. Other than that, what's up with the no pain thing? Is that a side effect of what Sylar did to her? I call "upgrade!" Maybe he fixed her? She wants to go with HRG as his partner. Really? Every badass wants a winy teenager as their partner. Only, none of them do.
Daphne: Still lame. Quit making those stupid faces!
Hiro: He continues to act weird around Ando and Ando continues to not understand. And once he finally breaks down and tells him what's going on, Ando does not believe it. Hiro says that things can change, showing just how deep his faith in his friend runs. Ando, on the other hand, says it could be anything.. even a robot. See, that's what a real friend does. There's some stuff with freezing time and a knife to Ando's throat, and in the end it comes out that Hiro does not trust Ando. Well, at least it's out in the open now. I am positive that continuing to treat Ando badly will in no way, shape or form, lead Ando turning into the kind of person that could ever find it easy to take Hiro's life. You know, this has the potential to one day move from Terrible to Great. And if I was not so lazy, I would spilt it up into something like "Hiro and Daphne" and "Hiro And Ando", but I've been working on this long enough, I can see the end, and I don't feel like it now.
Mohinder: Sooo... creepy empowered Mohinder? This guy is weird. I mean, really, really weird. I don't know if it is a side effect of the powers or if being special has opened him up to being the man he always wanted to be, but he's weird. There is a small bit of the old, earnest, nerdy Mohinder there, but mainly he's creepy and weird. And then Mohinder's body turns on him. This makes me happier than you can believe. It is about time that his rashness gets punished. Have fun with that gross skin thing, doc! Want to see how this one ends, head on down to Blockbuster and rent The Fly.
Peter: He calls Nathan and is all "This is me" Yet he does not sound like Peter, so that kind of fails. I wonder how long he will be riding with the bad guys before they try to make him do something evil and find out that he can't. Also, can he absorb their powers now? He's still himself, just stuck in someone else's body. How does that work?