Heroes ‘Shades of Grey”
Last week Sylar ditched his sidekick, Claire and her mom became heroes to Aqualad, and Parkman literally became his own prophecy. That’s the recap, lets get on with the review.
It seems this episode was about people deciding who they are, more than anything else. From Claire deciding that she wants to be the one rescuing people, to Nathan finally deciding how he is going to fight this war. Sylar confronted his father and realized that he has lost his ambition, always going for the simple things, not the bigger things. It’s human nature to do what is easiest, and this episode saw the characters forced to do the hard things. Spoilers and the rest of the review after the jump. We start out our story with Claire and her attempts to go down the path of a savior, as opposed to the one needing saving. She is forced to face her own prejudices to transcend, and this episode does a good job by having Doyle (the puppet master) be the one she has to save. Can someone change and can they be saved in more than one way? Claire also develops a secret identity attempt, but this seems more for comedic effect as she is captured at the end of the episode, negating the need for the cover job she developed.
Nathan and the Hunter Danko continued their dance with HRG watching the moves. Danko has been suspicious of Nathan for weeks, and Nathan finally plays rough and goes over his head and gets the President to fire Danko. Danko then uses his head and forces Nathan to reveal his powers and finally join the resistance. The theme of doing the hard thing is again expressed as both the Hunter and Nathan are pushed to the wall before committing to what they would have always done. Nathan saved Parkman with the bomb threat, then turned him in; now he is on a set path. Like HRG, he was wishy-washy, and after saving Claire, he is on the path.
The last of the three stories is the story of Sylar and his dad. Sylar’s dad is dying of cancer, but the real revelation is how he thinks life is painful and not worth living because he hasn’t gone for the gold as much as he should have. He considers that Sylar’s problem as well, not going for the big fish, but the “small game.” Only after it’s revealed that the dad has the same powers as Sylar, and he sees Sylar use these powers, do we see the old ambition rise in the old man. Interesting in that we see Sylar just leave the man to die, and decide the old man was right, he wasn’t pushing himself. His first goal? Go after the Hunter. Sylar doesn’t like to start small does he?
The final part of the end was Hiro and Ando finding Matt Parkman, and a baby. If the previews for the next episode in 2 weeks is any indication, the baby is Parkman’s. Finally, we see what happened to Parkman’s family! A good episode overall, and carried its theme pretty consistently throughout the episode. Looks like Heroes really is hitting a stride of character-driven as opposed to mythology driven stories, and that’s where the series really shines. Here is hoping for more of that in the coming episodes.
-Jeff “Darkspirit82” Adams-
