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hermionesviolinIs this the first episode we've had without a Mohinder voiceover at the beginning/end?
over 93% of the world's population
Okay, I was pleased to see Caitlin-in-the-future in the Previouslies, since it seemed a big plot point to leave dangling, but what's up with Peter's fiixation on rescuing Caitlin? Why is Adam the one talking about saving the world? I was fairly convinced that he was in fact still evil (though "evil" feels like an inaccurate word) so I was suspicious of his talk from the beginning of the episode, but it's at least the story he's selling, whereas Peter is totally fixated on his ostensible love interest. Okay, focusing on one person you love is easier to wrap your head around than on saving 93+% of the world's population, but still. I felt a little better when he said "She trusted me to protect her," because I can definitely buy the guilt from that, but still. Oh, and it's a little dodgy that he's her knight in shining armor, that she needs a man to protext her -- yes, he probably means that after her brother got killed she insisted on staying with him and trusted that he would keep her safe so he feels guilt since this was all kind of his fault to begin with.
I know Victoria wasn't expecting Peter to be able to read her mind, but wouldn't she be thinking something like "Please just kill me, god I hope you don't torture me, I wish I could undo what I did so many years ago, etc." rather than the actual answer to his question? And while it's not out of character for Peter to trust people knowing little about them and their potential ulterior motives, I was frustrated that he didn't at least try to read Adam's mind a little to confirm or deny Victoria's accusation that Adam was going to release the virus.
young!Victoria: "Adam had help. That's the only way he knew what to look for."
Now that I'm interested in.
And we see Victoria quit the Company after that, which really points out how problematic it is that Peter is intent on not just blaming but also punishing people for things they did long ago -- which is also what Adam's doing, though Peter doesn't know that.
I'm unclear as to how Hiro and Ando got all these Primatech boxes. Did Kaito just have them in a closet in his office or something? Surely the Company would have taken care of repossessing documents like that.
I liked Ando's "Why is saving the world always your responsibility?"
A guy's holding a ball of electricity in the palm of his hand and you charge at him with a katana? Sigh. Obviously something dramatic has to happen next episode to interrupt this fight. I was actually thinking -- in my frustration that Peter can't travel to the future and snag Caitlin back (though what up with his instantaneous teleportation thing? that was cool) -- about how Claude had said he's like a sponge, so maybe he only absorbs a finite amount of a person's powers, and he's run out of time travel, so maybe he'll run out of electricity ... plus now that he's met Hiro again he can absorb more time travel and go and get Caitlin back. I suspect it won't play out this neatly (and we may or may not do anything with the fact that if he prevents that apocalyptic future from ever happening than it won't exist for him to bring Caitlin back from it and he can have existential angst about whether she's still stuck in that future somewhere he can't access) but I like the idea.
The Bennets (and the Company)
Sandra has a gun! Yes, it's the one Noah left with her in case anything happened, but she was bold enough to actually threaten Bob with it.
I liked "Chapter Ten: Truth & Consequences" written on Noah's arm.
I liked Claire's grieving, her litany of all the things she's done to her physical body and how this hurts even worse, especially the part about how this isn't getting any better and she always got better.
When she was rummaging through the boxes, I totally thought she wanted revenge -- though I had no idea what she could be looking for. I love the windchimes.
Claire: "I should have done everything you told me to. If I hadn't been so selfish, you'd still be here."
Wow, that's not an unproblematic message at all. It's potentially undercut by Bob's speech to Elle, which is like borderline abusive -- I mean, he blames her for her injury! (I feel like they're continuing to build up for Elle to turn on Bob/The Company, which I'm not really looking forward to because I'm not really into her.) But we read Noah as a good guy and Bob as a bad guy, so it doesn't really undercut the message of "Listen to and obey the good white men," it just reminds us that there are bad white men, too.
I don't know what Claire thinks she'll accomplish by telling her secret -- how is that gonna put the Company on the defensive? plus there will still be plenty of other people eager to lock her up and cut her up like a lab rat or show her off like a freak of nature. But she's grieving (and a teenager) so I'm willing to cut her some slack for not thinking this all the way through, especially since she hasn't actually started to enact the plan yet, and I'm pleased to see her being an active participant in her own life again.
New Orleans
Our lesson here apparently is that vigilante justice will not succeed and will just get you in trouble. And possibly also that black people are greedy. I'm less upset than I could be because I feel like the storyline would have gone the exact same way if it were a white neighborhood rather than a black neighborhood.
P.S. How did Micah know no one was home? He seemed to have some handheld gadget, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
Oh, and because I'm not sure where else to put this: Mohinder did all this research and found out about Strain 138 and stuff, but nothing about the power-suppressant pills they were feeding Peter just a few months ago? Are we really never going to never again have any mention of that?
The WonderTwins and the Traveling Sociopath
Yup, Sylar is still a creepy sociopath. Nice touch with the picturesque Cook Lake, Virginia. It's about time Maya learned to control her power, but obviously I don't like that it took Sylar to make that happen. P.S. I understand why she's totally falling for him, but I kept having to look away everytime they got really close. He's just So Creepy. It's ill-making. Which is exactly how I think I'm supposed to react, so I'm not saying bad writers at all, but that doesn't mean I enjoy watching it.
I couldn't quite tell if the newspaper printout Alejandro had was in English, but he definitely says in English "I'm taking my sister."
When Sylar admitted killing his mother, I thought, "Yeah, it's easier to just admit it and then spin some plausible half-truth explanation," but wow, he totally spun a story tailor-made to resonate with Maya and make her feel even more like he knows what she's going through. Well-played, talented and scary sociopath, well-played.
I really disliked Maya's willingness to accept Sylar's statement that Alejandro hates her, 'cause she has seen no evidence that that is true. I do believe that she had strong feelings of antagonism toward his wife, and so she feels like it wasn't entirely an accident and feels guilty and like Alejandro should blame her so she's quick to believe that he does, but still.
The scene right after Victoria (one non-male) gets killed, Alejandro (one non-white) gets killed.
Edit:
In thinking about the bodycounts,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
samfeasor raises a good point:
In an earlier Sylar scene we heard that clock ticking sound. Does that mean he's gotten his power back? I am interested to know why he didn't have his power for so long. Recovery from near-death doesn't quite cut it as an explanation for me.
MOLLY! I'm not sure I've ever been so creeped out.
over 93% of the world's population
Okay, I was pleased to see Caitlin-in-the-future in the Previouslies, since it seemed a big plot point to leave dangling, but what's up with Peter's fiixation on rescuing Caitlin? Why is Adam the one talking about saving the world? I was fairly convinced that he was in fact still evil (though "evil" feels like an inaccurate word) so I was suspicious of his talk from the beginning of the episode, but it's at least the story he's selling, whereas Peter is totally fixated on his ostensible love interest. Okay, focusing on one person you love is easier to wrap your head around than on saving 93+% of the world's population, but still. I felt a little better when he said "She trusted me to protect her," because I can definitely buy the guilt from that, but still. Oh, and it's a little dodgy that he's her knight in shining armor, that she needs a man to protext her -- yes, he probably means that after her brother got killed she insisted on staying with him and trusted that he would keep her safe so he feels guilt since this was all kind of his fault to begin with.
I know Victoria wasn't expecting Peter to be able to read her mind, but wouldn't she be thinking something like "Please just kill me, god I hope you don't torture me, I wish I could undo what I did so many years ago, etc." rather than the actual answer to his question? And while it's not out of character for Peter to trust people knowing little about them and their potential ulterior motives, I was frustrated that he didn't at least try to read Adam's mind a little to confirm or deny Victoria's accusation that Adam was going to release the virus.
young!Victoria: "Adam had help. That's the only way he knew what to look for."
Now that I'm interested in.
And we see Victoria quit the Company after that, which really points out how problematic it is that Peter is intent on not just blaming but also punishing people for things they did long ago -- which is also what Adam's doing, though Peter doesn't know that.
I'm unclear as to how Hiro and Ando got all these Primatech boxes. Did Kaito just have them in a closet in his office or something? Surely the Company would have taken care of repossessing documents like that.
I liked Ando's "Why is saving the world always your responsibility?"
A guy's holding a ball of electricity in the palm of his hand and you charge at him with a katana? Sigh. Obviously something dramatic has to happen next episode to interrupt this fight. I was actually thinking -- in my frustration that Peter can't travel to the future and snag Caitlin back (though what up with his instantaneous teleportation thing? that was cool) -- about how Claude had said he's like a sponge, so maybe he only absorbs a finite amount of a person's powers, and he's run out of time travel, so maybe he'll run out of electricity ... plus now that he's met Hiro again he can absorb more time travel and go and get Caitlin back. I suspect it won't play out this neatly (and we may or may not do anything with the fact that if he prevents that apocalyptic future from ever happening than it won't exist for him to bring Caitlin back from it and he can have existential angst about whether she's still stuck in that future somewhere he can't access) but I like the idea.
The Bennets (and the Company)
Sandra has a gun! Yes, it's the one Noah left with her in case anything happened, but she was bold enough to actually threaten Bob with it.
I liked "Chapter Ten: Truth & Consequences" written on Noah's arm.
I liked Claire's grieving, her litany of all the things she's done to her physical body and how this hurts even worse, especially the part about how this isn't getting any better and she always got better.
When she was rummaging through the boxes, I totally thought she wanted revenge -- though I had no idea what she could be looking for. I love the windchimes.
Claire: "I should have done everything you told me to. If I hadn't been so selfish, you'd still be here."
Wow, that's not an unproblematic message at all. It's potentially undercut by Bob's speech to Elle, which is like borderline abusive -- I mean, he blames her for her injury! (I feel like they're continuing to build up for Elle to turn on Bob/The Company, which I'm not really looking forward to because I'm not really into her.) But we read Noah as a good guy and Bob as a bad guy, so it doesn't really undercut the message of "Listen to and obey the good white men," it just reminds us that there are bad white men, too.
I don't know what Claire thinks she'll accomplish by telling her secret -- how is that gonna put the Company on the defensive? plus there will still be plenty of other people eager to lock her up and cut her up like a lab rat or show her off like a freak of nature. But she's grieving (and a teenager) so I'm willing to cut her some slack for not thinking this all the way through, especially since she hasn't actually started to enact the plan yet, and I'm pleased to see her being an active participant in her own life again.
New Orleans
Our lesson here apparently is that vigilante justice will not succeed and will just get you in trouble. And possibly also that black people are greedy. I'm less upset than I could be because I feel like the storyline would have gone the exact same way if it were a white neighborhood rather than a black neighborhood.
P.S. How did Micah know no one was home? He seemed to have some handheld gadget, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
Oh, and because I'm not sure where else to put this: Mohinder did all this research and found out about Strain 138 and stuff, but nothing about the power-suppressant pills they were feeding Peter just a few months ago? Are we really never going to never again have any mention of that?
The WonderTwins and the Traveling Sociopath
Yup, Sylar is still a creepy sociopath. Nice touch with the picturesque Cook Lake, Virginia. It's about time Maya learned to control her power, but obviously I don't like that it took Sylar to make that happen. P.S. I understand why she's totally falling for him, but I kept having to look away everytime they got really close. He's just So Creepy. It's ill-making. Which is exactly how I think I'm supposed to react, so I'm not saying bad writers at all, but that doesn't mean I enjoy watching it.
I couldn't quite tell if the newspaper printout Alejandro had was in English, but he definitely says in English "I'm taking my sister."
When Sylar admitted killing his mother, I thought, "Yeah, it's easier to just admit it and then spin some plausible half-truth explanation," but wow, he totally spun a story tailor-made to resonate with Maya and make her feel even more like he knows what she's going through. Well-played, talented and scary sociopath, well-played.
I really disliked Maya's willingness to accept Sylar's statement that Alejandro hates her, 'cause she has seen no evidence that that is true. I do believe that she had strong feelings of antagonism toward his wife, and so she feels like it wasn't entirely an accident and feels guilty and like Alejandro should blame her so she's quick to believe that he does, but still.
The scene right after Victoria (one non-male) gets killed, Alejandro (one non-white) gets killed.
Edit:
In thinking about the bodycounts,
samfeasor raises a good point:Heroes keeps killing off people of color and white people keep surviving. Seriously. Except for, like, random one-off Sylar!Victims, every white person who's injured has some sort of miraculous recovery./edit
And I suppose we should count the bad guys, in which case Linderman and Thompson are dead. But counting the bad guys doesn't really work for me. I think it's more telling which good guys die, because bad guys have to die (or suffer greatly). Not all good guys have to be sacrificed.
In an earlier Sylar scene we heard that clock ticking sound. Does that mean he's gotten his power back? I am interested to know why he didn't have his power for so long. Recovery from near-death doesn't quite cut it as an explanation for me.
MOLLY! I'm not sure I've ever been so creeped out.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 04:37 am (UTC)This was, in my opinion, the biggest plot hole of the show thus far. Peter remembers his abilities, remembers how to use them, but doesn't think to read Adam's mind at any point? He just blindly trusts this guy? He didn't trust his brother last season. It really doesn't sit well with me.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 01:09 pm (UTC)At least we can hope that there'll be some more character deaths soon -- the cast really is a bit too crowded, still. But taking your observation into account, what white males are left? Bennett. The Petrelli brothers. Not that I'd mind Nathan finally leaving in suitably angsty fashion, but the Petrelli fangirls would scream foul.
There's Bob and Adam, but they're not "good guys", so presumably they'll get their comeuppance eventually. Although permanently killing either Adam or Sylar seems to be a difficult task...
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 02:25 pm (UTC)I actually don't feel like the cast is overcrowded, so I wouldn't mind more character development instead of more character deaths.
Someone commented a while back, though I didn't save the link, that while she felt like it was predominantly women and people of color who were getting killed off, when she thought about it she realized there aren't actually all that many white men in the cast. Thought I think a lot of people would be happy to see West get killed off. And there's Matt.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 05:31 pm (UTC)And I would be MASSIVELY saddened to see Matt go. He's an intriguing everyman and the working-class hero. Mohinder, on the other hand, seems to be written as acting too stupidly to live. Then again, he's got the Company's backing now... *eyeroll*
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 06:50 pm (UTC)This episode didn't really do much either way in terms of my liking of him, though obviously the show is continuing to view him sympathetically -- having him rather than Sandra be there when she has her little grief breakdown and be the one who tells her she doesn't really wanna forget her father.
I can't find it now, but I read an LJ entry somewhere today that mentioned the bodycount issue and commented that it looks like West gets to just leave the stage without getting killed off, despite all his shady behavior in the early episodes of this season.
I never had the Grunberg love that a lot of people did, but I don't think I ever actively disliked Matt until last week's episode. As I said in my previous comment, I don't actually want more people to die, I just want to like the people we have better.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 01:47 pm (UTC)Re: Someone helping Adam 30 years ago:
1. Someone said in an earlier episode that Linderman was Adam's protogee
2. Matt's dad was known to be Adam's lacky.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 02:32 pm (UTC)1977-Adam's line "Someone has to make the hard choice for the greater good" definitely sounded like Linderman with his 0.07%. They knew Strain 138 would basically kill everyone, though, which is a much bigger thing -- though Linderman could heal, so yeah, I could see that possibility.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 09:06 pm (UTC)young!Victoria: "Adam had help. That's the only way he knew what to look for."
Now that I'm interested in.
I doubt they're going to pursue it, though. Very few of the elders left!
I had no idea what she could be looking for. I love the windchimes.
I wondered why she was *un*packing. The windchimes were a great touch of continuity.
I hope the Haitian comes back, gets a name, and kicks some ass.