Heroes: Brother’s Keeper

By TrinityVixen

Damn it, show, you had totally suckered me. I stopped approaching Monday evenings with dread a few weeks ago. Look at all that happened that didn’t make me want to stick my head in an oven! Peter got a ten-episode window in which to exercise the mass of cells above his neck. Samuel danced circles around everyone without losing his footing. We met non-obnoxious new folk—Emma, Edgar, Lydia. Mohinder was MIA, so science got a few weeks free from abuse.

I should have known it wouldn’t last.

Volume Five, Chapter Nine – “Brother’s Keeper”

As Lisa has already pointed out, it’s safe to blame just about everything wrong with this episode on Mohinder. From beyond the grave, the Suresh men do their damnedest to ruin the season that I’d mostly otherwise been okay with. (Except for a) Zachary Quinto’s acting, and b) Detective Ernie Hudson being killed off.) When last we saw Mohinder, he was dead. And there was much rejoicing.

Until Samuel seemed to be recruiting Hiro to rescue him, that is. Turns out, Samuel, true to form, couldn’t care less about one less obnoxious pseudo-scientist running around. He just wanted a film reel that Mohinder had burned specifically to keep Samuel from getting it. Hiro’s job is to snatch that reel, and he still has to manage to do it without changing the direction of the future (like he did with rescuing Charlie—much good that did him).

The film reel is yet another pain-in-the-ass-that-keeps-on-giving trinket from Suresh Sr. and his time spent with the supers in the 1960s. Mohinder, unable to resist playing with Daddy’s toys, watches a film reel wherein Chandra Suresh talks about the colligative properties of supers. Every super resonates the ethers of the world, and it just so happens that there’s a super being born at the time of the filming who draws strength from the increased vibrations of being around many supers at once. That metaphor may be dirtier than I intended, but it fits, especially seeing as Samuel is the super around whom the vibrations coalesce. It makes sense. He’s easily the most magnetic character since season-one Sylar; in fact, this particular psycho-pseudo-science explains why, regardless of the threat Sylar poses, Samuel was eager to have him around.

Because Mohinder, like Peter, has the hero bug, he tracks Samuel down in order to…what? Does Mohinder ever really have a plan beyond exposing people to his “knowledge”? I don’t think even he knew what he was going to do once he found the super from the film and told them they could be more powerful if they collected super friends. All he manages to do is introduce us to debauched (not in the good way), drunk, apathetic Samuel. Nine weeks before the current season, Joseph was still around and in charge, and Samuel, though sly, hadn’t one-hundredth of his present charisma.

Joseph is an interesting figure. He, unlike his brother, is entirely on the up-and-up, presumably because he, like Peter, is an empath and thus more compassionate for his fellows. His Carnival is still a safe-haven for supers, but only just as many as he thinks he can safely collect before their humours-vibing abilities start to power Samuel beyond any control. When Mohinder shows up, Joseph entreats Mohinder to burn the film and to get lost. Joseph has kept Samuel on a short leash his whole life, proving that he can manage without Mohinder’s help. In fact, Joseph only fails to continue several decades of close monitoring of his brother because Mohinder blurts out vague hints about how Joseph is controlling Samuel—and that he has the evidence to prove it—within the latter’s earshot.

I think it’s only fair that Mohinder die for that, don’t you? In the past-that-was, that is what happened. Samuel went to Mohinder to demand he hand over the film; when he saw the film was destroyed, Samuel killed Mohinder. Thanks to Hiro monkeying with time, a substitute film reel was burned in Samuel’s sight, so he acted the same way. Past!Samuel still attacked Mohinder and sought out Hiro to fix the past while the actual film of Samuel’s birth and the musings of Chandra Suresh are preserved for Present!Samuel. However, Hiro also made sure Mohinder protected himself with a bulletproof (in this case, projectile-dirt-proof) vest so that he survived the encounter. In the past, Mohinder freaks so badly about Samuel learning the truth about his ability that Hiro deposits him in an asylum so he cannot mess up time. Should have left him dead, Hiro. It’s not like Samuel’s rushing to give you back Charlie or anything.

What does all this prove or achieve, really? Mohinder is still out of the loop, but he’s not as good as dead because he still has the chance of showing up again. (Dead would be better, as this episode has shown.) Hiro doesn’t get Charlie back. Samuel started collecting supers into the Carnival some weeks before he got the film reel, so either he suspected what was on it or he’s been unconsciously swelling the Carnival’s ranks this whole time. If it’s the former, why did he need the film so badly that he killed off his Carny pal to travel through time and blackmail Hiro into getting it? If it’s the latter, a lot of Samuel’s moxy has been transformed into blind power hunger. I think we’ve had enough of that with Sylar, thanks.

On that note, it’s time to address the inevitable: the return of Sylar. “Nathan” and Peter can’t work out how nobody missed a sitting US Senator for the week that his personality failed to control Sylar’s body. It has the smell of Mama Petrelli all over it, but it’s the Haitian who comes to explain to Peter that something dirty is afoot. But he’ll only talk to Peter, and he wigs out something fierce when “Nathan” comes near him. (For serious, this is the most emoting they’ve given Jimmy Jean-Louis ever.) The Haitian cautions Peter to examine the mystery without involving “Nathan” directly.

The transitive property of Peter’s stupidity comes into effect here, with Peter immediately doing the wrong thing as soon as he is told not to and that wrong thing dooming everybody. (A friend of mine posited that whenever Zachary Quinto finally gets himself fired, the Big Bad of the next Volume would be Peter’s stupidity. I think she’s missing the part where Peter’s stupidity is the Big Bad already.) The Haitian says to leave “Nathan” stewing, so, of course, Peter takes him along to a storage locker where—gross—Nathan’s body is on ice. “Nathan” touches the body to absorb memories from it and gets a glimpse of Matt Parkman giving Sylar (and himself) a really bad day. Peter’s presiding idiocy leads him to dismiss the corpse of his brother in favor of the strangely powerful body wearing his face. They decide to go find Matt Parkman and heal him with Peter’s ability so he can tell them what the hell happened in the last volume’s finale.

To put it lightly, this whole reveal could have been done better. We never see Peter flip out, never see him question the facts prior to Matt—frantically trying to keep “Nathan” away from him, lest Sylar get out of his head and into his real body—spelling them out. We don’t even see “Nathan” react to finding his own dead body. “Nathan” just opens the cooler, sees his corpse with his throat slashed, and goes, “Huh, that’s freaky.” I’m guessing Adrian Pasdar isn’t exactly thrilled about a development that is likely to get him permanently gone from the show, but even so, this is disappointing. An overreaction would not have worked either, but no reaction at all? Peter’s explanations ought to have been more panicked, more blindly determined not to acknowledge the possible truth. Instead, he sounds bored. It’s not Nathan, it’s a clone, a shape-shifter, it’s whatever Niki/Jessica/Tracy are, end of story, let’s go find Matt.

Worse still, the Sylar-repossesses-his-body sequence couldn’t have been less anticlimactic if they hadn’t shown it. Matt screams at Peter and “Nathan” to get away until Sylar takes over and tells them to draw near. Police break in—Matt is being monitored after last week’s suicide attempt—and in the kerfuffle, Matt and “Nathan” brush hands. This is posited to be the way that Sylar returns to his body. Not sure how that works, seeing as Matt’s power removed Sylar in the first place, and it does not work by touch.

And…that’s it. “Nathan” has some self-pitying at Matt’s bedside about how he isn’t real and might as well just be Sylar because it doesn’t matter if he’s there, too, he’s still in a murderer’s body…wah wah wah wah wah. (Also? IT TOTALLY MATTERS THAT SYLAR ISN’T IN CONTROL OF THAT BODY, “NATHAN.”) Peter, having once been in a murderer’s body himself, tries to talk “Nathan” out of giving up and makes a case for psychological eminent domain—“Nathan” has a greater need/better use for the body, so he should get it. “Nathan” mopes that even so, Peter will always look at him like he’s Sylar, and that’s not worth it. No one besides Matt—who is feverishly mind-mugging a cop to get out of the hospital—seems to notice that Sylar’s whereabouts are unknown. Matt hasn’t got him in his head, but “Nathan” is still operating at mostly normal (for “Nathan”). That’s not a big deal, is it? Oh, it is? I guess we’ll get to it next week.

Despite how dramatic this entire half of the episode isn’t, it is still light years ahead in terms of relevance than Tracy Strauss and the Claire-scapades happening elsewhere. Tracy, losing control of herself because she’s a female, goes to Mr. Bennet for help and winds up being a total girl with Claire for the whole day. They chat about how tough it is to be a super. If I were a suspicious feminist, I might find it condescending to have the only two female main characters waste their time in a pointless subplot wherein one of them explicitly cannot control her emotions long enough to keep her from hurting anybody. Where the bodily harm done to one of the women is laughed off as a joke. Where they make noise about how hard it is to make it in the real world and then giggle over how funny it is that they’re different and wouldn’t it be better if they just went away some place? If I were a suspicious feminist, I might have a problem with this message. Ahem.

The only substantial development is that Tracy confides to Claire that she’s thinking of joining Samuel at the Carnival. I didn’t think Samuel had completely won Claire over last week, but he seems to have done; Claire entirely supports Tracy’s decision to run off and join the circus. This would be a more significant development if Tracy weren’t giggling and blushing the whole time like she, not Claire, were the teenage virgin. She meets up with a very gracious Samuel at a café, which only heightens the “does she think this is a date?” vibe to their interaction. Does Tracy get it at all, or is this another in her series of flailing changes of direction? Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl!

Next week: We play everyone’s favorite game: “Where is Sylar?” The chickens come home to roost for Mama Petrelli, and it doesn’t look good for Nathan’s continued presence on this show. Don’t think of it as Adrian Pasdar leaving us behind. Think of it like he’s gone to a better place and there’s a good chance he’ll actually get some respect wherever that is.

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.

Heroes: Season 1 [Blu-ray]

Heroes (Group, Clouds) TV Poster Print - 11" X 17"

Sylar Special Edition Action Figure

Heroes (Group, Eclipse Logo) Framed TV Poster Print - 11" X 17"

Heroes