Heroes: The Fifth Stage
By TrinityVixen
Volume Five, Chapter Eleven – “The Fifth Stage”
For all that I waxed poetic about Nathan Petrelli’s last death, I confess I’ve nothing much to say about this most recent one. It wasn’t even Nathan dying, for one thing. It was “Nathan” wuss-ing out, claiming he was too tired to fight to control of Sylar’s body. How ungrateful can a guy be? So many people worked hard to evict the previous tenant from it specifically so Nathan could own it. Hell, even Sylar tried to help him have it, even if that was only temporary. There have been so many goodbyes already. Let’s just say farewell to Adrian Pasdar and pretend that last death scene wasn’t an affront to his dignity.
Onto better, snarkier things! It’s time for the Heroes mid-volume report card!
On the whole, Heroes worked a more coherent yet sufficiently mysterious through line thus far this volume with Samuel, the Carnival Barker from the Ninth Circle of Hell. All parts of the Carnival, apart from those outside influences that briefly marred it (Mohinder, mind-wiped Sylar), were exceptional. The Carnival was a perfect place to explore both the macabre and the mundane aspects of having superpowers. The Carnies were just people making a buck, scraping by, hanging onto each other because they had nothing else. There were so many fun little scenes of a family of flame-throwers, of Carnies meting out karmic justice, and of them eating, laughing, and working together. They seem more human than any of the supers we’ve ever met.
They also, you know, had superpowers and worked in a nightmare Carnival (psshaw, as if there are fluffy dream cloud carnivals in fiction). Everything is a show, except what is totally real. The duality served the show well, reminding us why superpowers are both frightening and totally awesome. And all throughout, Samuel tap-danced back and forth across that line so nimbly that even when we discovered he murdered his own brother, it’s still hard to call him an out-and-out villain. Ambitious, murderous, deceitful, but villainous? With that charming mien of his? It is almost rude to say as much. (Which is why Gretchen got nowhere trying to reason with Claire about not trusting him even though she was right.)
The new characters outside of the Carnival have yet to pay off, though they are much more sympathetic this go around. No one accidentally melted an entire wedding party’s brains, is all I’m saying. If the Carnival allowed the show to explore the simplicity of having powers, Emma’s story showed us the complexity of it. Her character being deaf could have sent the side plot into tortured levels of melodrama; instead, it served to show how someone might, reasonably, resent the intrusion of abilities into her life. Emma, already disenchanted with being different, is the perfect foil to throw-myself-off-a-building-before-I’ll-accept-being-normal Peter. Her struggle is infinitely more relatable than the histrionics of Matt, Peter, and Nathan figuring which guy has which personality floating around his head.
I save my biggest red pen marks for the whole mind-Sylar whack-a-mole plotline. “Nathan” losing control of Sylar is the problem with this volume much as losing control over Sylar has been this show’s problem since volume one. Sylar has always been a problem, but he ceased being an interesting problem four or five personality changes ago, which, it is quite obvious, was the last time writers planned on having him around. Until “Nathan” was shot and Sylar took over, there was at least some tension: would “Nathan” become more Sylar-like without anybody noticing? Would Matt Parkman? Would Peter keep Sylar’s body alive—thus providing the means for him to return someday—in order to keep Nathan alive? No, Yes, and Yes and then No. Sounds like the attitude of NBC, doesn’t it? Sylar was just the volume one baddie. No, wait, fans love him! Keep him! Wait, they don’t love him, but maybe if we tweak him a bit…oh, Zachary Quinto’s on to Star Trek, never mind. No, wait, changed our minds again…
I can stomach Gretchen far more easily than any of the Sylar-centric developments. It got so bad that I was ready to fritter away weeks on Hiro’s quest to un-fridge his ex-girlfriend, if only because the most we had to interact with Sylar was to see him in his first, best (and only, far as I’m concerned) volume one incarnation. This show needs to learn how to quit Zachary Quinto. It’s not hard. Just watch him whimper in Hysterical Blindness or throw himself around a hall of mirrors in Tabula Rasa. If you’re not convinced he needs to be on the fast train off the show behind Adrian Pasdar, you’re clearly blind and deaf and therefore can’t see or hear how bad he’s been of late and I envy you. I prayed for the swift merciful release of death during a lot of his scenes.
Other than that, what more could I complain about that this show hasn’t done, and done more often and worse, in previous volumes? Claire is indecisive! (Oh, is it Monday?) Ali Larter is naked—or mostly so! Mr. Bennet loves his family! Mama Petrelli makes her scheming face! Peter is an idiot! Mohinder screws everything up! Constantly! All of these things and more happened, but they happened less often, which makes the show surprisingly more tolerable in the long run. Oh how low they have set the bar.
Where does the show think it’s going with the back half of this volume? We’re looking at an inevitable confrontation with Samuel as he, like Sylar before him, collects the powerful to him to make himself more powerful. If the show is smart, they will not expose him as an entirely false manipulator. So much of what makes Samuel interesting is that while he is self-serving, he does maintain genuine relationships and cares about the supers in his family. This is not to say he doesn’t lose his temper (not so) occasionally, but it would be a mistake to de-evolve him to an angry, power-mad psycho. Not only would that be yet another pointless retread of Sylar’s story, it would completely destroy everything good the show has cobbled together with this truly conflicted anti-villain. (In the same way that a doing-bad-but-ultimately-good character can be an anti-hero, Samuel is a doing-good-but-ultimately-shady anti-villain.)
More than that? There is good reason to believe that the show won’t be renewed after this season, which leaves them space to be more reckless—in a good way. We might see a couple of truly difficult decisions: killing off major characters (don’t make me choose, just take Mohinder and Sylar both, please); completely redirecting in favor of new characters (just think how much better Dollhouse would have been if all episodes were like “Epitaph One”); acknowledgment of just how ridiculous the world they built has become. History does not favor the impression that they will be bold, but while hope does not spring eternal, it at least bubbles persistently.
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.
Related articles by Zemanta
- The Many Deaths Of Nathan Petrelli On ‘Heroes’ (splashpage.mtv.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8cc9bb30-471f-45db-acfd-93808f5b5c32)
Related Reading:
You are so right about "Heroes". Especially Sylar. He should have died in the season 1 finale. And they promised us an epic battle for control of Sylar's body. Huh? We got Sylar in Parkman's head, which left no doubt who would win. But then Parkman sacrifices himself to kill Sylar, but forgot that he always survives multiple gunshot wounds. Boy scout Peter comes to heal him, bringing his brother along, and now we get a real battle, Sylar vs. Nathan. But Nathan, the war hero, is too tired to fight. And we get the "shocking death" they also promised us. A character that is already dead. At least the Carnie people are interesting. I may keep watching to see what will happen there. I just hope the writers don't screw that up.
It's a shame that they booted a fabulously subtle and understated actor like Adrian Pasdar in favor of the veritable STABLE of hysterical actors that they've kept. Nathan was, once, a very complex and hard to like but hard to disagree with sort of character. Then they threw him headlong into villainy. That didn't work. So they tried to bring him back to die a hero's death. Then he wasn't dead. Now he is. Then they did the same thing to Matt Parkman. Sometimes, you DO have to kill your darlings.
I'm with you–keeping fingers crossed that they don't F up the Carnival. It has managed to wring more drama out of this tired series than anything since season one.
My biggest problem with Sylar (among many problems with him) is that he's become so powerful that the only way to deal with him permanently is to shoot him into the sun. If he's going to stay around, can he please calm down? Maybe see that he can cause more havoc as, say, the head of a bank or something instead of just waving his power dick around all the time?
Other than Samuel, Emma is easily my favorite new character this season. After so many end of the world plots, it was refreshing to see that – dare I say it? – human drama. Damn it. I said it. It highlighted that Heroes is far less about people and all about foiling plots. Sometimes, people are more interesting.
I agree with you on Emma. Rediscovering what it's like to have an ability from a viewpoint of someone who already felt special and socially ostracized, gave a refreshing tone to the series after a long time of shallow Marvel type superpower conflicts among the usual suspects. Needless to say, I'd really like to see Emma play some bigger part in the main plot in the second part of the season.