Heroes: Into Asylum

By TrinityVixen

I could be more excited about the Petrelli family coming together to fight back against the Super Gitmo Action Squad if their individual scenes weren’t overwhelmingly excruciating to watch.

Volume Four, Chapter Eight – “Into Asylum”

Take Peter and Angela. They hide out in a cathedral that supposedly exists in a warehouse district in New York City. It’s roughly the size of Notre Dame, which is totally believable. I believe I’ve expressed my horror at the Petrellis, they of the calculatingly political background, relying on God or a church for anything more than a photo-op. So naturally I am agog here as Mama Petrelli sits and prays while Peter goes and has a four-year-old’s bitch-session at God. (“Why do bad things happen to good people? Why aren’t you helping?” etc.) Because this show immediately dumps evil back on women as soon as Bryan Fuller isn’t around, Mama P also feels the need to apologize for being Lady Macbeth. Peter pretends to be supportive, but Angela insists that she’s a Bad Mom. There is no way to deny that everything is her fault. So the show doesn’t bother trying.

This church that we’ve never seen has so many memories for Mama P. She’s hoping she can get a good night’s rest and actually see a damn vision of the future that will help them out. That is the most plausible bit of this nonsense—that someone might fall asleep in church. Mr. Bennet shows up with a team, but leaves after pretending to have searched and not found the Petrellis in the confessional booth. It gives Angela enough time to have her dream. She dreamt of an angel. (Too bad it wasn’t this one, mrrrrowr.) That angel told her to go find a person we’ve never met: her sister. Auntus ex machina!

So the Petrellis aren’t really getting all back together, they’re just bonding tighter in their individual groups. Nathan and Claire open a few wounds over tequila shots in Mexico. (Where a car horn helpfully “proves” they’re in Mexico by blasting La Cucaracha.) They have no money save what they can get by pawning and p’wning. Nathan tries to bet some college schmucks that he can out-drink them; when the last guy proves to have a superior tolerance, Claire steps in and lets her ever-healing liver take care of the rest. Personally, I liked her idea about donating kidneys over and over. That’s the sort of thing the supers with healing abilities could do to make the world not hate them.

Anyway, drunken confession time—Nathan admits he dumped Claire with the assumption that he could just waltz back into her life, impress the hell out of her and be forgiven for dumping her in the first place. After repeatedly failing to be anything but an impressive ass (as if being drunk weren’t bad enough, Nathan also attempts to give up on going back home ever again), Nathan somehow wins Claire’s forgiveness anyway. They’re ready to fly back to the states and take on Danko. (Whose name I will be spelling correctly from now on. Sorry about that!)

I’m sure Danko is just quaking in his boots about the Flying Petrelli Brothers gunning for him. This guy is so cool, he isn’t afraid of Sylar when the serial killer comes a-calling. Sylar has decided to take his Dad’s advice about bringing the fight to the Super Gitmo Action Squad, but he’s not doing it the way Daddy might have intended. He has a proposition for Danko: he catches the bad supers that Danko wants dead anyway, and he gets to take their abilities. Danko agrees because he’s got to make up the shortfall in supers caught and killed; his numbers are way down this quarter. Danko proves that he knows exactly how to decimate Sylar if Sylar gets naughty, which is pretty badass. They reach a sort of agreement and go hunting.

Their quarry is a shape-shifter with a God complex that killed three of Danko’s goons and impersonated one to stay close to the operation. Like most Gods, he’s all about getting it on with the mortals. Sylar, having apparently hoovered up some genius brains since we saw him last, puts it all together in a heartbeat and ties it up with a bright red bow as a “Let’s be friends!” for Danko. (Since the present includes a severed head of one of his agents, I don’t think the bow helped all that much.)

They pursue the shape-shifter to a nightclub only to discover that he is now impersonating Danko himself. I don’t know if this is a latent second power or what, but the shape-shifter, upon seeing Danko and Sylar, switches faces around, somehow recognizing that, of the two of them, Sylar is the infinitely more powerful. Danko walks out with not-Sylar only so far as he needs to not to alarm anybody in the club when he shoots him down. Real Sylar catches up and goes right for the power, changing his approach (no beheading!) only when Danko asks. Good little homicidal maniac!

Danko and Sylar are a much more natural match than Bennet and Sylar ever were. They actually make sense out of the “One of Us, One of Them” policy: the only reason a super would ever, conscience/paranoia-free, decide to turn on his own is if he was a bit of a narcissist. (Not to mention craaaaaaa-haaaa-haaaa-zeeeee.) It helps that the shape-shifter, having died looking like Sylar gives Danko a win for taking down “Sylar.” It puts him one up on Bennet, who was on thin ice before he let Angela Petrelli escape, and Sylar has his own free pass and a brand new ability that will let him get up close and personal to all the supers he wants to take apart.

While this team will work in the short term, I have to wonder if Danko’s really thought this through. Sylar seems to have done, and if he remains as deviously observant as he was this episode, Danko will be no more a threat to him than the rain (WHICH FALLS ON EVERYONE, I HOPE YOU NOTICED THE SYMBOLISM). Of course, asking this show for consistent characterization, let alone where Sylar is concerned, is like asking them to give up on Bad Dads and trashy/useless women. But I can dream.

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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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