Better HalvesFirst of all, let me do a little celebration dance of "I knew it, I knew it." I knew Eden (up until now only know as cute neighbor girl) was a plant, sent to spy on Mohinder. I knew it, I knew it. But it does make me wonder--how much of her attraction to Mohinder and her romancing him is an act and how much of it is real? And will that cause problems for her later when Horned Rimmed Glasses Guy (HRGG) asks her to betray him? Because you know he will at some point.
One thing I find interesting about this show is how we're still not quite sure who the heroes and villians are. It's not quite
Battlestar Galactica shades of gray but there are still some nuances to it. For example, HRGG who could come off as totally evil and almost Snidley Whiplash like but yet instead we see that at least some of what he's doing is motivated out of fatherly concern for Claire. Of course, you're left to wonder how much is fatherly concern and love and how much of it is him being the bad guy, but at least we've got that question. Also, for weeks we had some build-up to Niki's husband being a not so good guy, but when we meet him, he's anything but the personification of evil we thought he might be. And then to find out that it was evil Niki who framed him and let him take the fall. Yeah, I think they're going to need some serious counselling over in that house.
And did the husband go all Neo's hand in Trinity's chest in
The Matrix Reloaded on Niki at the end? I don't think she's dead. I'm pretty sure evil Niki wouldn't allow them to die, but you never know. One thing that's interesting is the show could possibly kill off a character this early and have it work. It would certainly be a great suprise if they did that, especially to Ali Larter's character, since Larter was one of the bigger names on the show when it launched.
I still don't necessarily buy Mohinder's chance of heart though. I know he'll be back and I figure there will some catalyst that sends him back. Perhaps sending Hiro back in time again might work becaues it seems as if Mohinder is needed as Professor X of this group of potential heroes.
As if all of that weren't enough, we had the plotline of Hiro, that just keeps being entertaining. I love it when the show acknowledges its sci-fi roots, with Hiro explaining he couldn't meet himself without destroying the space-time continuum. Now, if he'd only brought in the various conflicting theories of what might happen ala season 20 of
Doctor Who, I'd have been totally geeking out.
Oh like I don't already...you know you wanted to say it.
The one thing I think helped this week's episode the most was the focus. Part of that may be that the stories are starting to cross (I did sort of call that when D.H. says Niki got up in the night that she'd somehow be connected to what happened to Hiro and his buddy at the poker game. Also, if Hiro wants to convince them they're not cheating, why not throw a few hands? Why not have the other guys get really lucky as well once or twice to throw off suspicion?) . But the stories are now unfolding with longer scenes and scenes that are much more demanding of the attention. The scene of Niki's two halves talking to each other was great and the focus on Niki's storyline worked well.
Maybe it's all starting to come together for
Heroes. It's starting to live up to its potential. Now if it would start exceeding it like
BSG or
Lost does, we'd have yet another close to perfect show on our hands.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 10/31/2006 07:57:00 AM |
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