What the hell happened here?
Did someone in the Alphas production team watch Heroes and think,
“Great idea! We should ALSO beat viewers over the head with sentiment! Let’s use a science project as a metaphor for the hard decisions of parenting because helping your kid with a solar system diorama is just like getting her a fake passport to evade terrorism charges. Also, Uranus.”
I wasn’t thrilled with the whole science project affair. Dr. Rosen isn’t a moron – he seems beyond such a simplistic thing. Then again, it sounds like he was a pretty $h!tty father, so maybe he really does need the responsibilities of parenthood explained to him in paper mache.
Also, Uranus.
Sorry. It never gets old. Last year, one of the Wee Cousins had a Solar System Celebration in his 2nd grade class and he presented a little booklet he’d written with “amazing facts about Uranus”. John and I were total adults for most of it, until he said this:
“Uranus is a giant ball of gas.”
Yes. Yes it is.
Meanwhile, Hicks is having his own parental struggle about whether his kid is an alpha or not. And in rides Dani, who solved it all with this super radical notion: tell the kid the truth. Also, get over yourself and share your feelings, for fcuk’s sake. Still don’t know if the kid is an alpha, but at least he and Hicks learned a valuable lesson about sharing.
Kat’s story was kinda shoved in there, but was the most interesting and developed her memory deficient character in an effective way.
It also addressed a risk unleashed by Rosen when he announced the existence of alphas to the world. Previously, the adversary has typically been terrorist organizations and/or the government. This time it was just a private citizen with an eye toward making a quick buck off the exploitation and suffering of others.
In revealing alphas to the world, Rosen also revealed them to the amoral opportunists of the world. And, as Kat and Dani show, not every alpha ability is about self-defense. Rosen created targets – now he has to figure out how to contain that.
Related Stuff:
Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
