Heroes: Shadowboxing

By TrinityVixen

I like to play a game when watching this show. It’s called “You haven’t got the guts.” A situation will arise wherein a difficult decision—killing off a popular character, say—could be made. If the show makes the difficult decision, it wins, and I stay sober. If the show cops out, rewrites its own history or destroys characterizations to avoid making the difficult decision, it loses, and I take a drink. To give you all an idea of the score so far: my new liver and I are very happy together.

Volume Five, Chapter Eight – “Shadowboxing”

Take Matt Parkman’s noble sacrifice. It has all the trappings of high drama—in the good way! Matt overreached with his ability when he erased Sylar’s personality and substituted Nathan’s in the same body, but he did it for the right reason. (Namely that any other personality is better than Sylar when it comes to who should command those abilities.) Still, hubris must be punished, “no good deed…” and all that. There’s also the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t question of whether or not to release Sylar back to his body. If Matt returns Sylar to his body, Sylar will pretty much stomp the entire planet. However, if Matt refuses to release him, he’ll not only ruin Matt’s life, he’ll also randomly kill just about anyone who looks at them strangely. There’s only one way to put a stop to this monster, now and forever. Sucks to be Matt Parkman, in other words, but when has it not? Matt gets to go out on a high note, having used his body while Sylar was distracted (much as Sylar did to him) to put their shared body in peril of committing suicide by police. Matt Parkman will be another unsung hero, like Nathan Petrelli. My liver is spared!

Except, of course, the preview for the next episode makes it obvious that this all going to be undone. I can already taste that hangover. Mmm, bile.

So much for getting rid of that irrepressible Sylar. It’s too bad. If Zachary Quinto is worth keeping on this show (and it’s an open question whether this is so, given his performance of late), this wouldn’t have been a terrible way to toss the old Sylar under the bus and start afresh with a powerful but subdued version, one who is constantly afraid of becoming like that old self he used to be. I’ve talked before about the Dark Phoenix overtones to this storyline, and this would continue the pattern–if you can’t control Sylar by wiping his mind, try coercing him into policing himself. It would add a touch of ambiguity to the character, something that has been sadly missing since he went soaring past over-the-top-villainy in Volume Two. Antagonists like Samuel really show up the flaws in slobbering, maniacal menaces like Sylar of old. It’s time for something more nuanced, even delicate.

Samuel, bless him, should be the model against which all other characterization is measured. He reminds me of what Mr. Bennet used to be in Volume One–devious, never showing his hand, but still recognizably human and faulty. With Rebecca’s invisible shenanigans having messed up his Claire Bennet recruitment drive, Samuel confesses to Claire that Rebecca is with him, yes, but her agenda and his are not in perfect alignment. Samuel casts Becky as psychotic, deranged by the loss of her father–who was a casualty of Mr. Bennet’s early Company days. Because no one who professes to love someone that crazy can be entirely on the side of the angels himself, Claire is understandably skeptical of this message. She stalls Samuel until Mr. Bennet can capture him. Samuel is crushed that she wasn’t seriously persuaded by his way of thinking.

Or is he? Samuel has feints within feints. He tells Claire that while Becky’s problems do not exclude her from his family, he does not approve of them, either. Claire, with her honed sense of conspiracy, balks–as well she should because it is a lie. But when Becky arrives to take her revenge on Mr. Bennet, it is Samuel who takes her down with a taser shot. This has the dual effect of making his lie seem true and making Mr. Bennet look bad for reaching for his lethal weapon first. Samuel grabs Rebecca and whisks her away from Claire, ostensibly to correct her misbehavior without abandoning her, just as he told Claire he would do. Claire now believes his lie, Mr. Bennet is in the doghouse with his daughter, and Samuel still has Rebecca on his side because he was lying and he doesn’t intend to actually stop her from getting revenge. Samuel is a tactical genius. Even when a plan goes tits up, he’s still riding high.

About the only problem Samuel seems to have is that Sylar’s body has gone flying away with Nathan’s face on it. However, Samuel shouldn’t get his bad self too worried about it. Nathan’s flying himself straight to Peter, who, with his exhaustive healing ability, is going straight to Matt Parkman to help undo the one tough decision that character ever made. So Nathan should be gone after the next episode. The only question is whether anyone else walks out of that room alive after Sylar reunites himself.

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.