C’mon, did you really expect any other subject line?
You know, for all the talk about how Mr. Linderman’s plan to drop the bomb (so to speak) and destroy New York smacks of Ozymandius’s endgame in “Watchmen,” I dare say this week’s episode will have people saying, “Is it just me, or is this a whole lot like like a cross between the ‘Days of Future Past’ saga in ‘The Uncanny X-Men’ and the plot of ‘X-Men 3‘?” And they’ll be right. I mean, seriously, you go check out those Wikipedia entries, then come back here and tell me that I’m wrong…
Also, am I the only one who, at approximately 43 minutes into the show, uttered an obscenity under their breath? Holy mother of God, was that some shit or WHAT? But we’ll get to that…
So it’s five years in the future. What’s everybody’s story?
* Peter’s a major-league badass. Nice to finally see that scar Future Hiro spoke of so many episodes ago.
* Nikica’s a stripper AND Peter’s girlfriend. (Moral: being a badass has its benefits.) Oh, yeah, and she’s also not Nikica anymore. She’s just plain Nikki. Her husband’s gone, her son’s gone, Jessica’s gone…and we don’t really know for sure what happened to any of them, except that Micah’s demise is directly related to the explosion in New York.
* Mohinder is the advisor to the President of the United States on all things Hero-related, but despite everything that’s gone on during the last five years, it’s nice to see that he’s still naively hopeful about the chances for the future…to the point that he’s willing to commit murder to achieve it.
* Matt Parkman’s working for Homeland Security (along with Brother Voodoo), and he’s become a complete and total dick.
* HRG’s rustling cattle in Texas…okay, well, not really. But that’s the phrase Nikica used, and it made me laugh. It appears that he’s actually part of an underground movement to keep Heroes safe from the government by providing them with false identities. He’s also given up his trademark glasses! What the hell…?!?
* Claire’s a waitress who’s changed her name and her hair color and is on the verge of getting married.
* Hiro’s a fucking terrorist.
* And Ando…well, let’s not discuss Ando’s future fate. It makes me sad.
* Nathan is the President of the United States…though, of course, we knew that was coming…but did we really imagine that he’d become pro-genocide, especially given that he’s a Hero himself? Why would he do that?
Oh, wait, I know why he’d do it: because he’s SYLAR! HOLY CRAP!
There were a lot of great moments in this episode, but a very small one particularly stood out for me: how sad was that pitifully honest thought of Hiro’s that Matt caught? “I just want to be a hero.”
I also loved this exchange:
Parkman: So he’s a time traveler…?
Mohinder: Is that any different than being able to read minds?
Parkman: Uh, yeah. Yeah, it is.
Other nice moments: a newscaster’s reference to “the Linderman Act,” the way Parkman yelled “WHAT?” after Peter busted in, stopped time, and swiped Future Hiro and Ando from underneath his and his people’s noses, and the sheer depth of Parkman’s assholosity, when he thanks HRG for saving his child, then proceeds to threaten his life and go after his adopted daughter. Hey, if you’re gonna become an asshole, don’t do it in half measures, right? Which is why he goes on to kill Future Hiro before the episode’s over.
Okay, so the battle between Sylar and Peter had way too much of a Darth Vader vs. Obi-Wan Kenobi overtone to it, with the red and the blue lights. I still found myself thinking, “This is AWESOME!”
“Now, the hard part,” indeed. These three last episodes are going to be something else. I say again: there’s no other show on TV that’s as must-see as “Heroes.”
