Heroes: I am Become Death

By TrinityVixen

While I love a cognitive disconnect of alternate realities as much as the next reboot-friendly geek, there’s a difference between Bizarro World and Clown Camp. Get out your red noses and rainbow wigs: we’re going to the circus. The show’s writers have cottoned onto the fact that their story makes no sense and are attempting to distract us from the fact throwing every character into an outré performance unrelated to any of their realities to date.

Volume Three, Chapter Four – “I am Become Death”

Four years in the future, Future!Peter loses his patience with Present!Peter (wow, that only took him three times as long as it took me) because Present!Peter persists in believing that people are fundamentally good and will act responsibly when given superpowers. (“People will control themselves!” Says the man who jumped off a roof to prove his dreams of flying were reality.) Not so, sayeth Future!Peter. Want proof? Future!Claire shoots him dead. She can nail Future!Peter in the sweet spot in the gray matter that will keep him from healing, but she and the Haitian can’t prevent Present-and-now-only!Peter from escaping.

Future!Peter left Peter a couple of clues as to what to do while trapped in the future: find Sylar and get his ability, make the right choices, and save the world. Good thing Future!Peter wasn’t horribly vague in his mandates. The irony of Future!Peter recognizing that his machinations in the past have screwed the pooch far as the future is concerned and yet insisting that his past self keep up the fight? Lost on both Peters. He’s just not that bright, Mama P said, and she ain’t the type to whistle Dixie.

Through Matt’s dreams of his future, we learn that he will be married to Daphne, with a baby daughter, no more a fan of her heroics than he was of Mohinder’s when they played house. Future!Daphne stops by their home only to borrow Mapquest Molly. (She’s still relevant! Really!) She, Knox, and Claire discover that Peter has gone to find Sylar. The only thing this scene proves is how cool Knox is, since he’s rolling with the shady-to-slimy bad-guy thing with more class than either of his female cohorts. New guy is already better written than the former female lead.

After a chat with Mohinder-the-Future-Gargoyle, Peter finds Sylar in Costa Verde. It’s too improbably ridiculous to even imagine. Two views through, I still can’t believe what I’m watching. Peter enters the Bennet household-as-will-be, left hand aflame and ready for a rumble. He steps into Yuppieville via Chuck E. Cheese. An adorable little boy of about three or four greets him with that authentic enthusiasm children have for relatives who usually bring them presents. “Uncle Peter” gapes as the boy runs off past him, bee-lining for Daddy’s waffles. (I love the waffle in-joke on this show, even when everything’s gone through the looking glass like this.)

Yes: Daddy. Gabriel, decked out in his hipster-nerd glasses and an apron (Hail to the Chef!), serves up some waffles to his son (he named him Noah!) and dog. (Mr. Muggles comes with the house.) When he sees Peter, he runs up to hug him. Peter is as stiff as board—more so than Milo’s usual—completely baffled as to what to do with Sylar hugging him like a long-lost, well, brother. Which Gabriel has to break to him when he realizes that Peter is out of his time. Peter’s all “Great, I have the world to save and Darth Vader is my brother.”

He rebounds quickly, as all Peters do, when he remembers that he has to save the world. Gabriel has to give Peter his ability because Future!Peter—who couldn’t save the world and is thus hardly an expert—said he needed it. Gabriel refuses. His ret-conned ability comes with a price that the reformed and happily bourgeois Gabriel wouldn’t inflict on the guy he tried to flatten with high school lockers when they first met. He wouldn’t dare make poor, striving Peter suffer…The Hunger! (I’d just as soon watch the horror movie of the same name than suffer through this, thanks.)

Peter has Gabriel paint the future so that he understands Peter’s urgency about the doomed future. Of the future. So, when Future!Peter went back, he was already in the bad future, but this is before that, or something. Future!Peter thinks the future and the future’s future is doomed because he painted it and dreamt it, but Present!Peter never did, so I’m not sure why he risked Gabriel painting the children of the world coming together and singing. What if Future!Peter had succeeded? HAH! Okay, no seriously, the world is going to blow up. Gabriel relents and teaches Peter how to have his ability.

It’s an interesting diversion from the inanity to consider this development. Peter has had only one other run-in with a super that he couldn’t steal an ability from and that was the Haitian. Gabriel defines his ability as one where he can figure out how things work. I firmly believe that Peter can’t passively absorb this one because it requires serious thinking to attain it. As a concept, I buy it, but in execution, it’s all too easy. The way to become Sylar is to fix the watch of the same name. Peter uses telekinesis to put Gabriel’s broken watch back together, and suddenly he’s hearing the clicking wheels and cogs of Sylar’s patented brand-o-crazy.

Just in time, too. The Future Badass Squad has arrived. Daphne and Knox threaten little Noah while Claire demands Peter in exchange. Gabriel sounds remorseful and protective all at once, apologetic to Claire and concerned for his son. Claire, despite the bottle of Vixen-Black Clairol hair color and other attitude adjustments, has not forgiven him for the attack on her. The fact that he’s living in what used to be her house (for the two episodes she lived in it last season) is insult to injury. Gabriel tells Peter to go—saving the world is more important—but Peter’s heroic imperatives are confused by the situation.

As ever, when confused, Peter fails to do anything and things go to pot. He takes a swing at Claire before she can shoot anyone, and Daphne super-speeds through some whoop-ass to take Peter down. That leaves Knox against Gabriel. Knox uses little Noah’s fear to power himself up until the throw-down leaves Noah dead. Daphne halts her fight with Peter in a microsecond, the caring mother in her appalled by what Knox has done. Gabriel loses his marbles and goes nuclear. Welcome to perpetually sunny Costa Verde, California. How’s that saving-the-future gig working out for you, Peter?

Knox is dead. Gabriel, too, presumably. Daphne runs away, but even she isn’t fast enough to escape. She dies in her husband’s arms, which is Matt’s last dream of his crappy future. Matt wakes in the present from his dream, determined to prevent what he’s seen. If he knows enough to know that Peter is causing all this heartache by messing around with time, shouldn’t he be really hesitant about jumping in and doing the same? No? Okay, we’re going with no. What was in that peyote stuff anyway? To get started saving the world, Parkman-style, Matt needs to find his totem animal, which will lead him on his journey. It’s a turtle. They keep coming with the metaphors for how stupid, slow, and useless Matt’s story is. This is sort of cruel, and Greg Grunberg definitely deserves better.

Back in the future, Future!Claire decides that Peter’s to blame for her goon killing Sylar’s kid and setting off the human a-bomb. She’s jonesing for a little torture and gets scalpel-happy on her shirtless uncle. (Again with the creepy Petrellis-and-pain motif.) President Nathan calls her off like the spoiled child she is to try and bring this Peter around on what he obviously couldn’t sell to his future counterpart. (As evidenced by how Future!Peter is stone cold on the slab across from Peter.) The future is super-soldiers, Nathan says, a whole of army of which would be under his god-stumping, bible-thumping command. (This must be Dick Cheney’s wet dream.) He offers up his mind for Peter’s perusal to prove that he’s doing it for the side of good.

Big mistake. The conscious mind, whatever its metaphorical connections to morality, still resides in the brain. And guess who just gave Peter an ability that is keenly focused on the brain to the exclusion of all else? Tick-tock, Peter. I have to admit that Peter performing Sylar’s decapitating move on Nathan chills me. He wakes up before he can complete it (not that the trauma of having half his skull sawed through won’t still kill Nathan) and teleports the hell out of Dodge. The Secret Service left Peter—whom they believe to be a murderer and a terrorist—alone with the President. Yeah, they’re fired.

Because a Peter isn’t a Peter unless he’s blaming someone else for his problems, Peter teleports back to the present, to Sylar’s Level Five cell. Whatever his personality abortion last week (or in the future), Sylar is pissed to have Peter up in his grill, no less so for Peter being able to throw him up against a wall. Peter summarizes the future situation. (In a word: fubar) This is, by the way, entirely Sylar’s fault. That would be the guy who said, “No, don’t take my ability, you won’t like it. This might be a mistake, it might be worse than the alternative, stop, please stop.” Peter vows not to become like Sylar. Too late, says Sylar; see you at the psycho family reunion. What with the suicidal Petrelli Sr., Mrs. Manchurian Candidate Mama, and Jesus-is-My-Wingman Nathan, the Tick-Tock Twins ought to fit right in.

Elsewhere, in the present (mostly):

Mohinder spends the entire episode denying, concealing, and then giving into his inner Hyde. He can’t fix himself. (Or Maya, but he’s the only one sweating that; even Maya thinks all is forgiven after the most excellent super-boning they got on.) According to the future, he’s on track to become the Beast, only without the hope of Disney or Linda Hamilton to come and rescue him.

The mysterious world-ending formula has been used before. Dr. Zimmerman used it on Tracy, Barbara, and Niki/Jessica/Gina because they were identical triplets, thus ideal genetic copies to examine for his experiment. Except that Niki actually had a twin named Jessica before she appropriated her identity as a multiple. (Gina? Who’s Gina?) Meaning either they were a matched foursome or the show has forgotten this. Guess where I’m putting my money? And the adoption thing to make for convenient new plot directions is really starting to grate on me.

Tracy’s a little high-strung when she discovers that she’s not a super by birth but a super by design and nearly murders Dr. Zimmerman when he can’t give her anything else to go on. (He’s been super-wiped by the Haitian.) Afraid of herself, she goes to leap off a bridge into the Potomac only to be rescued by her flying white knight: Nathan Petrelli, still on a mission from his God, still listening to his shoulder Linderman. Predictably, the mutual revelation of their powers leads to sex. In the future, they’re married as President and First Lady, so at least this latest bought of infidelity with virtually the same woman makes a play at respectability. This future also does me the courtesy of acknowledging that Nathan’s god-plays are destructive. Maybe someone should tell Peter that that’s the secret to saving the future: the separation of church and state.

Hiro and Ando spend their third episode in a row being useless, squabbling over what hasn’t gone down yet, and trying, unsuccessfully, to escape their pen. The Haitian retrieves them and brings them to Mrs. Petrelli who upbraids them for losing the Company the formula. However, there’s a key to retrieving it: Adam Monroe. Hiro digs him up (instead of teleporting him out like he teleported him in). Predictably, Adam’s a wee bit pissed at being trapped in a box for god-knows-how-long, dying over and over as his ability revives him each time asphyxiation claims him. I predict the show attempts to spin this as yet another wacky odd-couple team, a la Mr. Bennet and Sylar with about as much success.

Next week: Claire finds out her dad is working with Sylar. Yeah, let’s see you defend that one Mr. B. Nathan is another super-by-design, so who else might be? His brothers, perhaps? Were Gabriel and Peter the perfections on a theme? Look out for the surprise returning character. Odds are it’s somebody or another’s Bad Dad, if only because every other new/returning character has been.

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About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.

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