Heroes: I Am Sylar

By TrinityVixen

Why do we always want to redeem our villains? What’s wrong with them just being evil SOBs? Why can’t they just be the id unleashed (as the best villains usually are)?

Volume Four, Chapter 11 – “I Am Sylar”

Take Sylar. This is not someone we are supposed to want to succeed. We occasionally do (or I do at any rate) because he was frequently better written in terms of dialogue and motivation (barring, um, the entirety of Volume Three) than most of the heroes. So why does this show constantly try to fix what isn’t broken about him? He isn’t pathetic when we first meet him; he’s devious and focused. Can’t have that! Give me 40 ccs of Mommy Issues STAT! And let’s rape Psycho while we’re at it!

Bottom line, Heroes has never known what to do with a villain who is a) hands down more popular than just about any of the good guys; and b) ridiculously overpowered. They did their best to make Sylar detestable in The Volume That Shall Not Be Discussed, but they haven’t addressed the over-powered issue which has remained the single most problematic aspect of his character. If your villain is that powerful—especially now as he seems to be not only a healer but immune to the knife-to-the-back-of-the-skull that kills all other healers—how do you sideline him such that he doesn’t wipe the floor with anyone and everyone in his path?

Previously, the only fix the show has consistently returned to has been “give Sylar issues,” and it’s complete malarkey. Issues don’t prevent him from living forever. They don’t take away his powers which make him all-knowing (the ability Mama P gave him), all-sensing (his original ability plus the hearing he stole back in season one), and just plain all-powerful (melting metals, bursting with radioactivity, electrocuting people, telekinesis). In one minute, Sylar could absorb the entire history of a city and then level it to the ground. Even Peter, similarly overpowered from the get-go, was never so unstoppable. (He all but died after absorbing too many abilities and is currently, without explanation, unable to mimic more than one at a time.) Sylar needs a weakness, not an invisible mother spurring him onto greater and more catastrophic usurpations of power.

And they’ve decided to make him crazy out of nowhere. Crazy, I buy. It’s the “out of nowhere” part that ruins the set-up. (Heroes: creating situations they cannot resolve since 2006!) Mr. Bennet’s working theory about Sylar was that he was not-so-slowly fracturing his brain by absorbing too many powers. Unfortunately for Mr. Bennet’s thesis, Sylar suffered nary a side-effect from his subsequent plundering of abilities until just now. Containing the power of atom within your body is nothing to being able to shape-shift as far as schisming your sanity is concerned! Combine this sudden turn with the eye-rolling “villain redeems himself at the last minute” cliché as Sylar spares Micah (he, unlike Clint Howard, is far too cute to be de-brained!), and this is a cluster-frak worthy of, well, this show.

Other stuff happened, all of it equally stupid:

-Hiro and Ando let Matt take his son right back to the obviously-being-monitored-by-the-Super-Gitmo-Action-Squad home he came from. Not surprisingly, Matt got one foot in the door before overhearing the thoughts of a strike team. Alas, not before he got a chance to presume he was entitled to push himself into his son’s and Janice’s lives again (after leaving them alone to twist for two volumes) only to decide upon the nobler course of abandoning them (again) to “keep them safe.”

-Hiro and Ando went to try and stop the SGAS by invading Building 26 only to have Hiro’s time-stopping power quit pretty spectacularly on them both just as Ando realizes he is no longer affect by that same ability.

-The Petrelli clan, after spending two-three episodes trumpeting about how they need to work together, promptly let Nathan fly off all by himself to stop Sylar from impersonating him and getting close to the POTUS. Team Petrelli FAIL is only compounded when the rest are picked up by the SGAS at a road block.

Next week: We have to stop Sylar! Again. YAWN.

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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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