“Heroes” - Out of Time
This was finally the episode that most fans have been waiting for. There was little wasted screentime, stories that paid off, season-long ideas that came to a close, the first signs of plots coming together, and a big reveal at the end, that although I saw coming, still completely made sense from a story standpoint, and had been building for the whole season. And there were no terrible effects this week, save for Nikki’s superpunch that sent Mohinder flying into the wall, but only managed to give him a bandaged nose. More after the jump…
Peter found himself in the future, where he and the Irish broad got split up, and she got stuck in the future. After meeting his mom and learning that he had to stop this from happening, he jumped back to Montreal, only to find out that the dastardly figure that Bob spoke of earlier, Adam (whom Peter was in league with before the brain wipe) is in fact Kensei. I’m mostly behind this decision, as it gives meaning to all the Hiro in Japan stuff, it allows David Anders to be the awesome villain he’s capable of being (see Alias, Sark), and now it seems we finally have a real driving force behind the season. On the other hand, I don’t think that the ancient Japan love story between Kensei and the Princess was given enough time that I could buy him being evil because of one girl for multiple centuries. Don’t you think that someone else might come along to love? What does his living for this long say about Claire? Will she continue to live forever? At what point will she stop aging? It seems kinda random that he would still be that age. Does he now have power over the weather, as Bob seemed to hint at, or does he have an underling who does that sort of thing, like Parkman’s dad?
I like that they moved forward with the Parkman’s dad stuff and the Hiro stories, as both were just bogging the story down with too many plots going on at once. Now if only they could get those wondertwins to America already. I almost wish they would’ve done more with Parkman’s dad, as the promise of the “Boogeyman” at the end of last season now seems a little disappointing, but I’m glad it’s over and they can move on to more important things.
I’m glad there’s now a point to Claire’s storyline. Now there is real conflict and real stakes for everyone involved, from Claire and HRG, to West and Mohinder. If they had this virus and they had Adam in custody a few months back, and a healer can be used to create a vaccine, why not just get it from him back then, instead of involving Mohinder?
By the by, what happened to Kristen Bell? She hasn’t been on in like three weeks. From the promos, it seems she’ll be back next week, but introducing such a dynamic new character and then leaving her out to dry for weeks at a time isn’t going to get you anywhere.
Strange that they chose the week after building such momentum and focus to take us all out of that and next week go back to a fractured story of where everyone was four months ago. Granted, they did it last year with the jump to the future episode, but that was such a dynamic hour that we all forgot about what was going on in the present. Hopefully next week doesn’t stop this forward progress.
This was the first episode this year that I wholly enjoyed, with all the payoffs and set-ups that a November sweeps episode should have, (and like I said before, not a scene was wasted showing us something we already saw or knew) I just wish the previous months’ setup would have been a little more nuanced and not as paint-by-the-numbers. And one more thing about the time travel stuff…. if Patty O’Furniture or whatever her name is, is stuck in the future, and Peter changes the present to prevent that future from happening, which there’s no doubt that he will do, what happens to the girl? Does she cease to exist with the rest of the future reality that they saw?
