Television reviews: Heroes #413 'Upon This Rock' and #414 'Let It Bleed'

413: 'Upon This Rock'

Wr: Carlos Coto
Dr: Rob Underwood

Synopsis: Claire joins the carnival but begins to suspect Samuel has a secret agenda. Hiro returns to find his friend Ando, but is disoriented and has trouble communicating. Samuel seeks out Emma to help him recruit someone with the special ability he needs to make his dream of a homeland a reality.

Review: Heroes achieves the nigh on impossible this week and actually does something productive with Emma's character. After weeks of pontificating over bizarre colours, oohing and aahing at her ability to see sound but ultimately achieving nothing other than giving the cinematographers something different to do, Carlos Cota actually bothers to make her story relevant to the ongoing narrative, doing something more with her than simply pointing and exclaiming at how gosh darn cute she is. As suspected, good old Samuel was responsible for sending her the cello and while we're still unclear on how it managed to crack a hole in the wall of her apartment, at least now we're aware that Emma can do a whole lot more than just make the screen look pretty. That she is a siren should have been screamingly obvious from the earlier park scene but its underplaying did a deft job of disguising the fact. Refreshingly, Cota actually explores the possibilities inherent in her deafness too, using sign language rather than lipsynching and attempted dialogue, which feels far more natural than the conversations she's been having in her previous appearances. It makes the viewer work to appreciate the scenes and adds a potent level of believability, strengthening our investment in her character.

The other crucial development this week concerns ol' Clairebear, whose trip around Carnyville (see what I did there?) actually proves to be more than passingly interesting. It's intriguing to follow the day-to-day activities of the occupants of the place and acquire a different perspective on their way of life: Doyle's dialogue in particular gives us an opportunity to understand just how much the notion of togetherness, of community, can mean to people. Once again, David H. Lawrence XVII is tremendous as the illustrious puppet master, proving endearing and bloody freaky in equal measure. Further airtime for Lydia and Eli proves to be nothing other than a good thing too: the latter is particularly eerie in his continual observation and pursuit of the young Bennet, while the tattooist just generally fascinates, enveloping Samuel's world further in murky shades of gray and allowing someone, anyone, the opportunity to finally see a little of what T-Bag might be planning. It is never quite apparent what will happen to Claire, whether or not she will choose to stay, as developments twist and turn continuously, flipping her onto opposing sides of the decision. This lack of predictability is certainly refreshing and the fact that the choice is only stalled by Nathan's death really strengthens the storyline.

As was probably to be expected, this is treated with great sensitivity, steering clear of the mawkish and overly emotional. Petrelli's funeral is a sombre affair, with surprisingly little dialogue. Peter's speech is short and sweet, a perfect tribute to the world's most schizo brother, and the use of military procedures adds a nice lump-in-the-throat touch. The cinematography is wonderful too, all fitting greys and blues, giving everything a solemn hue. It's a rather nice decision to use it as a bookmark to the hour, having no other reference until the thirty five minute point, as it qualifies all that has gone before, adding a strong sense of perspective. The only slightly disappointing element of the episode is Hiro's descent into ridiculousness, which does threaten to veer too greatly into cringeworthy territory at times (especially as he's rescuing the 'maiden' or whatever), but given that his dialogue is effectively a fangeek's wet dream, loaded with intertextual references, we'll forgive it.

A solid return for Heroes, then, continuing the strong balancing act between character development and plot progression that the show has been pulling off so far this season. Tropes move forward, characters acquire new significance and insight and Masi Oka gets to reference Battlestar Galactica. Let's just forget about those horrible child actors and their side-splittingly awful attempts to pull off an Irish accent, shall we? 8.5

414: 'Let It Bleed'

Wr: Jim Martin
Dr: Jeannot Szwarc

Synopsis: A restored Sylar seeks out the carnival to obtain a new batch of powers, but discovers a new weakness. Meanwhile, Claire and Peter try to resolve their emotions at Nathan's wake, and Noah and Lauren capture Edgar and try to determine what he knows.

Review: While 'Let it Bleed' maintains the methodical pace established by 'Upon This Rock', the episode somehow feel less satisfactory. There is something lacking here, a missing component needed to really elevate it beyond the realms of the bog-standard. It isn't a bad hour of television by any stretch of the imagination; there just doesn't seem to be enough to sustain a suitable level of forward momentum. What we are given doesn't exactly come kicking and screaming off the page, demanding that you spend at least an hour of your following day talking about it behind the bin sheds where you go to smoke at school or work. HRG's sluggish crawl towards doing something, anything, about the Carnival picks up a little and then loses all of its gusto through the abduction, rehabilitation and subsequent frankly ludicrous loss of crazy British knife-wielder Brett Riverboat, sorry, Edgar um, whatever his name is. The execution of this is actually quite neat to begin with, allowing Jack Coleman a chance to come into his own in a few tame, but suitably impressive, torture/interrogation scenes. It's good to see the composed fella losing it a little bit and being reminded by his new found lover that he needs to maintain a level head. The dialogue between the two is once again replete with references to events that we weren't privy to during their time at the Company, which continue to add a much welcome element of verisimilitude to proceedings. If it weren't for the ridiculously telegraphed escape of the 'prisoner' (conveniently enough, along with all the information he'd written down for them about locating the Carnival! Would you believe it?), this might actually have come out smelling of roses.

It's the same story with poor old Zachary Quinto who, despite still being the best damn thing about the show, is lumbered with a frankly eye-rolling pay-off to his very brief time at the Carnival. It all begins spectacularly enough, with a delightful special effects sequence in which Samuel smites him, and then moves to pastures refreshing and interesting with the integration of Lydia and the idea that the poor boy just needs someone to love him (a decent piece of psychoanalysis, to be fair). Sadly, all of this is shot to shit by the events at hour's end, in which we find out that Sylar's big destiny is... to bother himself with the cheerleader! Well strike me down with a ten tonne hammer, that's something we've never seen before! Sylar and Claire?! Their lives intertwined?! What will they think of next, eh? And regardless of whether or not this means that he's going to try to slice open her head again, or we're going to be treated to some more pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about their similarities, it just feels like a massive cheat, an opportunity sorely wasted. We could have seen Quinto thrown together with characters he's had little exposure to, given a plot that wasn't just a complete rip off of pretty much everything he was doing for like, two seasons straight. We really don't hold out much hope for this one.

And then, of course, we have Peter and Claire's mysterious mission to the besieged office block, a highly subtle comment on young Petrelli's precarious mental condition in the wake of his brother's death. Hah. This one couldn't be more obvious if it strapped a great big banner to its head reading 'I'M SCREWED UP.' To be fair to the writing staff, this is, at the very least, an interesting place to take the character, to make him reckless enough with his life that he doesn't care enough to even acquire Claire's power when he's attempting to save the lives of the gunman's hostages. And of course, this lends itself to some nicely written and surprisingly insightful interplay between the two characters, particularly in the pay-off as Peter is about to be wheeled into the ambulance. It's just a shame that the set up is so contrived, feeling far too sudden and forced. Mind, that's a nice nod to the show's continuity in the references to West and Peter's appropriation of the boy's power is completely logical and well-handled. And then, ladies and gentlemen, that's it... the episode offers no more narrative strands, choosing instead to linger longingly on each of these rather threadbare ideas. Throw in Hiro again, give us some Mohinder... where the hell is Matt Parkman, for God's sake? There are so many things in the air, so many stories being juggled that we are just dying to find out about, that it's a bit of a shame when they choose to focus squarely on the ones that just aren't all that engaging.

'Let It Bleed' does try its hardest to be a good episode, giving us a great big wad of much welcome character development for some of the regulars, a lorry load of insightful and well written dialogue and some genuinely excellent individual sequences. It's just a shame that it seems to drop the ball to a greater or lesser extent with every plot strand on offer. By no means the worst Heroes has ever served us up, but it's hardly a three course meal, is it? 7.0