Episode 3x14 - A Clear and Present Danger

Fugitives... Clear and Present Danger... I guess the producer is a Harrison Ford fan. That was a pretty good episode actually. It seemed to be going out of it's way to be very different in style to the last three volumes, which mostly worked for me. Though I thought the camera work was trying to hard to be edgy, framing people weirdly, jumping around to weird angles... it came off looking stupid to me on occasion.

* Holy shit, Claire and Peter were both smart, proactive and useful throughout the episode (except for Peter hugging his brother... does the guy not learn?). Hayden Panettiere's acting hasn't gotten any more convincing though. Also Claire's family didn't show up at all and to be honest I didn't miss them.

* Hiro's got an Ando-cave, Ando got an Ando-cycle, and Mohinder kept his super strength. Poor Peter seems to only have the power of the last person he touched though. He misses his lost super speed, strength and healing, and to be honest so do I. I appreciate that they have to power down some characters for the sake of the story though, and it's definitely better than making him an idiot again.

* HRG has joined the side of evil! Probably. It won't be a huge shock if he turns out to have a clever ulterior motive, he's more or less just continuing to do what he was doing last season, but... didn't he turn against the company because they were locking away innocent people (eg. his daughter)?

* Matt is really being a dick to Daphne, making her ride slowly on a bike must be like torture to her. I hope if she comes to rescue him, she takes the bus instead of running full speed to his side, to teach the bastard a lesson. Also now Matt's got the precog powers? Fuck, when Arthur died I thought we might finally be free of those fucking paintings of the future.

* Sylar's alive, what a fucking shock. The episode doesn't even bother to explain his survival, he just shows up on screen looking for his father. Nice to see him back though, taking out government hero hunting squads effortlessly.

* I know they like to play around with travel times for the sake of drama, but Hiro being on the plane with the American heroes was just weird. Somehow Nathan managed to kidnap him from Japan, and get him out of the country to the US in time to be on the same flight as Nikki, who was captured first. Kidnapping the head of a major Japanese corporation from his own country seems like a step beyond what Nathan should be able to do in the name of protecting US security.

IT'S STARTED?!

*starts torrenting*

And very impressed. This episode had something the last volume was missing. A sense of direction. Taking everyone out of the water again and seeing what happens. Can't wait.

RE: Sylar in EP 15


Always two there is... Master, and apprentice.


Seriously, he has needed a sidekick ever since they decided to flesh out his character. I see good things for this arc.

Yeah, Sylar junior is great. I'm surprised Sylar didn't just spontaneous learn his heat ray power by empathy considering how much they were ramming home that young Gabriel lived in a similar situation and the two of them were alike.

They actually had Peter get out of a situation in a way I didn't think of this week, which fills me with shame. In the past I'd be wondering why he didn't use one of his twenty something powers to solve his problems, in this episode it never even occurred to me that he was grabbing Nathan as a hostage to get flight powers. The guy is definitely getting smarter, and I fully endorse this.

Also, Matt's awesome mind control trick with the soldiers almost makes up for the precognitive painting bullshit and poor Nemesis getting shot. Almost.

Episode 3x16 - Building 26

Oh for fuck's sake...

* Claire and fucking HRG are having issues with secrets again. Fuck them and fuck their part of the story.

* Hiro and Ando are magically in India where Hiro must learn how to become a hero without his powers. Again. Fuck them too. Not even the punch at the end can redeem this.

* Nathan is trying to convince someone that his mission is important, but he and the Hunter clash on how to handle the situation... again. I'm giving this storyline a pass because it turns out that the chains were deliberately weakened, and Nathan blames the Hunter more than Tracy for what happened. It had a mild streak of interest to it.

* Sylar and his protégé were consistently entertaining and interesting and pretty much the only thing making it worth sitting through the episode. The kid is an annoying little shit in all the best ways, it's nice to see someone wind up Sylar in a friendly way (even the radio is on his side).

I hope this is just a slight bump on the road and not a sign of things to come because I had enough of HRG family problems, prophetic paintings, and Hiro being an arrogant asshole back in season one and now things are just getting ridiculous.

this ep wasn't as great, i admit, but i didn't mind it. it's a shame the show seems to be denying Hiro any chance of getting his powers back.

I mean, I know Tim Kring doesn't want time-travel anymore, but, :(

Episode 3x17 - Cold Wars

Damn, that was a pretty good episode. Dark and interesting, without wasting any time on useless scenes or repeating things we've seen before. Even better, there was no Claire.

* Nemesis is alive! Though people involved in the series have been strongly hinting about this so it was no big shock.

* Noah is actually working for Angela! Though that was pretty strongly implied by them too so I already knew that. I should probably be more careful with what I read.

* Peter was all awesome in that episode, flying around with his flashbangs. I'm not sure how many of those he was able to grab, but seeing as he was somehow able to pick up and fly supersonic holding Matt Parkman, I'm going to hope it was all of them and 'flashbangs out of nowhere' is going to be his new main ability. Also, he didn't take Matt's power when he grabbed him, which is interesting. And also very fortunate for the both of them, or else it'd be raining telepaths over Costa Verde.

* Not sure what Peter's plan with THE HUNTER was though. Kill the government agent in charge and the other government agents will all go home? I'm really impressed with how he found the place so quickly from an address on a piece of paper though. Maybe he bought a map or something while he was out.

* Matt and Mohinder did pretty well too. Mohinder is understandably conflicted between wanting to escape and wanting to be punished, leading to his heroic sacrifice, and Matt power has been upgraded from hearing stray thoughts, to full video memory playback (although, only in black and white so far). Not sure how the assault team could be so certain he wasn't going to make them all kill each other again though.

* The Claire scenes in this episode were predictably terrible. Actually no, there weren't any :D

* Judging by the picture on the floor in what seemed like Issac's loft (wouldn't they have that place under surveillance?), it looks like when telepathic suicide bombers blow, they blow big. With no time travellers around to change it, I guess next season we're going to get 'Volume Five: Fallout 3'...

xd

Fantastic.

Loving this season still. <3

Episode 3x18 - Exposed

I think (writer) Bryan Fuller mentioned something about the first four episodes of this volume being great, but then it losing it's way for a bit in the middle. So I was pleasantly surprised when this episode turned out to be damn good... for Heroes.

* Dual action mind stares are awesome. Though I think Greg Grunberg's better at pulling off the 'I'm taking over your MIIIIND' look than Milo Ventimiglia. He also showed off an impressive smug 'you men are now MY men' grin at that security camera.

* It was (again) nice to see Peter being intelligent. He correctly took the most useful power at the time and used it effectively. He has also finally mastered the deceptive hug technique used against him so many times. Maybe they've actually turned a corner here, maybe he's actually going to stay smart from now on. Also he released the information after the trade fell through, which is an unusual way for these things to play out I thought.

* Aww. Despite claiming that he wouldn't have saved Peter, when it came down to it Nathan couldn't help but rescue his brother. Damn, I'm almost liking the guy again. Despite all he's done, I'm sure if he grows another beard and start walking around with the shotgun again I'll be right back behind him.

* I'm sure this episode was missing a pair of comic relief characters but I can't quite remember who they'd be... Doesn't matter though, because I definitely didn't miss them.

* Claire and HRG are back, but they didn't share a scene so they're okay. All I have to do is think back to West, and suddenly the scenes with Aquaman seem bearable, even entertaining. Actually, I admit it, I liked the Claire scenes in this episode, I thought her mother's part in the story was played well, and Aquaman made his exit in a timely and inoffensive manner. Also, puppet master ending out of nowhere :o

* Speaking of cool endings, I have to admit that of all the ways they could have played out the suicide bombing picture, this is probably the best of them. I love the comic book logic behind it. 'So, people are worried we're taking away their civil liberties huh? Time to scare them into giving me all the power I need with a fake suicide bomber b'whahahaha!' Also, timely social commentary... for five years ago.

* Sylar leaves Sylar junior behind and goes off to murder his father because his father killed his mother (and sold him to his uncle) using TELEKINETIC FOREHEAD SLICING, which he witnessed as a child but forgot/repressed :o I wonder if his dad has the same ability he has, or just the tk. I'm guessing the same one, or similar (perhaps power taking, like Peter's dad). Also, was that Sylar using the power to 'read the history of an object' on his toy car?

* Trying fool a facial recognition system by taking glasses off. Trading for a video file that can be easily copied. A computer hacker hacking into a secret government computer to show someone else which file to copy instead of just taking it themselves. All these and many other stupid moments I found very easy to ignore because of how fast and interesting the rest of the episode was. Which works for me.

Episode totally rocks. Thank god Heroes is back on track.

Also, do you think it's possible that Micah Sanders is Rebel? :o

I'm under the impression that rebel is HRG, working with Mrs Patrelli.

Think about it though - all the hacking, controlling of mechanical devicies, communication via phones, fax, etc. It just seems to make some degree of sense. Guess we'll find out.

Episode 3x19 - Shades of Grey

Damn good episode in my opinion. Nothing stood out as conspicuously stupid or irritating. Claire was bearable, though it helped that they surrounded her with people more annoying than her for comic book shop scenes. Oh shit, it's just occurred to me that we're probably going to get more of them now she has a job there :o

Wait, false alarm, she's on the run now. No more fucking comic book shop.

* Aww Bennett was so so close to getting out of 'middle management' and running the show for once. I wonder at what point he and Nathan noticed the window and the security camera pointing conveniently at it, put two and two together, and thought 'oh fuck, I know where this is going'.

* I guess Claire's underground railroad's finished now. Shame, she was actually pretty successful with it. If you can call saving Creepy Puppet Guy a success. But that last scene of her and Nathan hugging was great.

* The Sylar scenes were pretty good I thought, though not entirely unpredictable. I was too distracted by Sylar playing with the stuffed rabbit to care too much about what happened though. It's like Matt and his turtle...

* Nathan and Matt's solution to the bomb situation was perfect, despite the stupidity of the bomb itself. In fact Nathan was great this episode. Plus the guy seems to have flown more this volume than the other three volumes put together.

* Matt's son is back! And he has a power! I hope it's the power to give Hiro back his powers, and perhaps some fucking humility. I loved his reaction to being given the baby though. O_O "No thank you"

* Mohinder's back with the narration! Peter sits this one out though.

NO HEROES THIS WEEK. D:<

Ahh. Justice is served.


What a great episode. Enjoyed all of it. The worst of it being Mrs Petrelli and Ninja Peter.

Episode 3x20 - Cold Snap

That was a great episode, everything about it felt like a clear step above what Heroes has managed these past couple of years. In intelligence and maturity if nothing else.

* Holy shit, the baby DID have the power to give Hiro back his power and humility! Plus Ando manages to upgrade to a hadouken, which is both awesome and a very bad omen for Hiro's future survival prospects. Then again the world was blowing up anyway, perhaps time stop+power boost = time travel?

* Angela Petrelli's escape was surprisingly tense. Considering how successful the anti-Heroes have been so far, I honestly believed she could have gotten caught. Ninja Peter's arrival was incredibly convenient, but then he could have been following her all day as a guardian angel. Plus I liked the 'it was just a dream' bit. I went from 'oh it was just a cheap dream sequence' to 'oh shit, she has prophetic dreams doesn't she?' in 2 seconds.

* At first the Matt and Daphne scenes seemed like a retread of all their scenes so far. She doesn't think their relationship is real, he geniunely loves her... etc. Then the scene in Paris got me trying to make logical sense out of what apparently seemed like a massive step back into coincidence and stupidity. Then when it turned out to be a fantasy I was left wondering why the fuck Matt thought it was a good idea to invade her mind and trick the woman he apparently loved. They totally played me. Never saw the ending coming at all.

* Obviously Micah was Rebel. Not only was he the only established character (who wasn't killed off in a comic) who had that power, but his name was in the credits at the start! Plus I knew from the previews what Tracy was going to do at the end. So this storyline was painfully predictable to me... then she started to freeze. Didn't see THAT coming. But she was just going into her new ice form, right? Right? Bang! And Tracy was dead :/

* Except she winked at the end, so she WAS still alive in a new ice form :D

Fucking outstanding... for a Heroes episode.

3x21 - Into Asylum

The wasn't a bad episode. The Sylar and Danko bits were great, the Claire and Nathan bits were watchable, and the Peter and Angela scenes were worth sitting through to find out why she's a manipulative bitch. Could have done with less of the tunes though I think, the Mexico scenes were hard to sit through with that crap playing in the background.

* Sylar has shapeshifting now, which is kind of unfair on everyone else. It's also another part of the 5 Years Gone episode that's come true, sort of, so I'm starting to get the feeling he might be impersonating Nathan at some point. Not sure how he got the power without cutting the head open though.

* I totally called that the agent was a shapeshifter in disguise though after he congratulated Danko on his speech. Didn't figure out that the shapeshifter was Sylar, not Danko at the end though. And how the hell does Sylar know so much about shapeshifters? Unless he's been trying to catch one for years and kept fucking up.

* Claire can't get drunk, at least not for long. Poor girl.

* I'm not sure Peter's really been heroic enough to start being self righteous in a church. In the past three seasons his list of heroic actions has included:

• Falling off a wall with Sylar to save Claire.
• Hiding from Sylar and getting killed with glass while trying to save Mohinder.
• Trying to take down Sylar... which caused him to overload and nearly blow up New York.
• Flying his brother to hospital after incinerating him.
• Beating the shit out of people in a bar to save a girl he likes.
• Robbing money to help out the girl's brother.
• Trapping the girl in a post apocalyptic future (then forgetting about her.)
• Helping Adam Monroe steal a virus (without once trying to scan his mind to learn if he was perhaps trying to destroy the world.)
• Robbing a bank in disguise. To make sure the people in the bank weren't harmed.
• Murdering his brother in the future to, uh, learn if he was planning to be evil or something.
• Beating up Sylar while the guy was trying to help him... which led to him losing his chance to be a good person and resuming his killing spree.
• Single handedly trying to take down Pinehearst to save his mother! And then deciding to hug his dad instead and getting his power stolen. His mother got bored waiting and eventually saved herself.
• Coming back to rescue Sylar (and failing).
• Saving Claire by setting off a gas leak in tunnels under a city. Fortunately the explosion didn't cause any death or property damage and someone probably found the fire and turned off the gas before anything serious happened.
• Heroically rescuing his brother in Haiti. Then needing to get saved himself.
• Nearly shooting his evil dad, but Sylar beat him to it.
• Destroying the drug that would give the world super powers, nearly killing Mohinder and his brother in the process.
• Releasing prisoners in a plane, then accidentally freezing a hole in it and getting some of them killed.
• Heroically leaking government information to the media.
• Rescuing his friend Matt, and his mother with emergency airlifts

He has not only failed to save both his girlfriends, but was directly responsible for their fate. In narrowly averted alternate timelines he blew up New York and killed off most of humanity with a virus, and now he has helped put the world on course for being completely destroyed in the near future. He probably saved far more people as a paramedic than he ever did with his powers.

I gotta say the ending to this season was quite satisfying.

Its great to see Syler going back to what he does best: killing people. This episode exemplifies this, too, by showing that he actually can gain powers without killing them (at least that horrible "good guy bad guy" story arc brought something to the table), but he clearly enjoys ripping people's heads open.

And most of the boring stuff that has been going on is actually some pretty decent character development. Remember, we're what, four seasons into this, and a lot of these characters are supposedly really complex without really being so (so sure Nathan is calculating and manipulative... That says nothing to the people he cares about). Development is good, especially when it only takes one episode to be done and over with (hello HRG divorce).

This was a great season, and assuming the quality is consistent, I anticipate the next one greatly.

I think we've got four more episodes of this season to go.

Also I don't know how much Sylar enjoys the head slicing now he knows where he picked it up. He seems much more in control than he used to be too. In season one and two he couldn't resist murdering everyone with abilities the first chance he got. In season three he made a real effort to resist immediately murdering his allies, but still couldn't help killing his targets and even the woman he loved. In season four though, he willingly let three people with powers survive, even though one probably had an insane amount of abilities locked inside his head.

3x22 - Turn and Face the Strange

Damn, that episode was just mean. Noah tricking Danko, Sylar tricking Noah, Noah attacking his wife, Matt ruining Danko's life, Noah shooting Sylar. None of them ended up unscathed. It wasn't much fun to watch at times though, especially the Matt plotline which quickly went downhill, and Hiro and Ando's comedy road trip.

* Sylar is now the second person to imitate Noah's wife to ruin his life. Though Sylar took it a stage further, dressing in drag and getting a sex change... and grinning about it later.

* What the fuck was up with the comedy Texan truck driver? I kept expecting the story to lead somewhere, but he just drives off.

* Matt Parkman is starting to make a habit of breaking into the houses of people that threaten him, and holding them and their loved ones hostage. Though to be fair it wasn't his idea in Company Man.

* I wonder who's going to turn up in Danko's house next. So far Noah, Peter, Nathan, Sylar, Matt and Hiro have showed up to pay him a visit. You'd think he'd have the sense to maybe move somewhere else, and maybe take his top secret operation somewhere else too while he's at it.

* Angela's a great character. She decides the best way to bring her family together is to get them all digging up skeletons in the desert. When they find a skull with a bullet hole in it, her response is just 'keep digging'.

Thought Matt handled his hostage situation poorly. Instead of threatening to shoot the woman and pussing out, couldn't he have put the thought into Danko's head that she had been shot and then fucked off all quiet like? I understand that alot of the time they're thinking on their feet, but it pisses me off when the heroes make shit use of their powers.

What the hell is Angela doing? Does she know Suresh is gonna turn up? Mohinder seems a bit like the lost frog lately... nobody wants to kiss him and turn him into the prince he was in season 1.

Nathan is getting good again.

Peter needs to lighten up.

Claire isnt as annoying any more. Hope she doesnt revert back to form because Noah is there.

Sylar is just entertaining himself.

I was thinking that about Matt too. He could do so many things to screw with Danko's head, he could trick him into thinking he has a power himself (if he doesn't), he could read his mind and steal all his secret info... fuck, he could tell him to strap a bomb to himself and go stand in front of the White House.

I think though he probably doesn't want to give Danko the satisfaction of using his power like that though. He planned to fuck up his life with a gun instead, like Danko did to him.

3x23 - 1961

I liked that episode, it was nice to see the events that made Angela and the company what they were. And to finally get an answer to the sock mystery that has been left unresolved for 3 seasons.

* All the younger versions of characters were pretty good, they looked and acted pretty much exactly how you'd expect. Though I think young Linderman was trying to trying too hard to out-creepy Malcolm McDowell. Plus every scene with young Charles Deveaux bothered me because I was sure I recognised him from something, but couldn't figure out what.

* It seems that when the company got hold of Mohinder's dad they made certain to fuck his mind up so bad that he didn't realise that there was existing cases of people manifesting abilities before Sylar, even though he brought with him to New York boxes of his own files documenting then.

* Angela having a dream that she would start a company is another case of the story telling the characters what to do (like with the damn paintings), so I choose to believe that the manipulative liar actually lied about the dream to manipulate the others into making the company. It's interesting that Adam Monroe wasn't present, I guess he and Kaito and the rest of them all joined up later.

* It seems that if you want to start up a 'company', you need someone sneaky and manipulative, a healer, someone who can make crap into money, and a powerful telepath...

* Hah, Sylar's disguised as Nathan. And he's taking over rounding up people with powers from the real Nathan. Another step closer to the Five Years Gone future. Not sure how he managed to transform into Nathan without ever meeting him though.

Yeah that episode was pretty awesome. Reminded me of Lost in its storytelling. Im hoping that one day Alice will show up to save our heroes out of the blue.

3x24 - I Am Sylar
That was really quite a splendid episode, and certainly entertaining.

* Sylar gone Psycho. Yeah he was always a psychotic serial killer, but now he's trying to one up Norman Bates. He literally physically transformed into his own mother! I mean holy fucking shit. Also he saved Micah's life, which is pretty out there for him too.

* Micah was great this week again. It's strange that there's so little focus on him when he pretty much IS the resistance against Danko, and has been all season. No one else knows what the fuck they're doing. I thought it was weird that seeing Sylar transform into him wasn't his first clue he was a shapeshifter, but then I remembered he knew Candice who did a similar trick with a totally different power.

* Sylar's immune to his only weakness now and Hiro can't even stop time with nosebleeds and headaches? That's hardly fair. Though I kinda felt they deserved it with all the shit Sylar's been putting up with all episode and Hiro betraying his friend to be captured.

* Noah, Angela, Claire, Mohinder (those damn darts again) and Nathan have all been captured. Hiro is down, Matt is stuck on the other side of the country with a child to protect. This clearly means that the final episode will be Micah, Peter, Ando and Tracy teaming up together to kick ass, fight tyranny, and save the President! Well it'd be nice if they did.

* Sylar finally uses his damn ability to read the past of an object! Only took him something like 20 episodes.

3x25 - An Invisible Thread

Nope, don't get the episode title at all. I mean, I understand that it goes with Mohinder's monologue but what did his monologue have to do with anything that actually happened in the episode? Despite that, it was a pretty good episode, though more like cartoony old Heroes than mature recent Heroes.

* Fuck yeah, I honestly didn't expect it to happen but Hiro takes out the season's villain and saves the day AGAIN. I'm going to call 'the formula' the villain of volume three and say he's got an unbroken streak. It's sad to see the guy suffering worse than ever though, he's gotta be the hero with the destiny even if it kills him.

* I like how Matt is ready to just stroll into Building 26 and end everything. He doesn't even have that deathwish any more, he's just entirely confident he can single handedly take down every last agent because he has to. But he gets side tracked, so Hiro comes in and rescues everyone instead. FINALLY.

* The plot turned out more or less as expected given all the hints, though I did not see Peter's trick in the car coming at all. Now his brain has grown back he's more powerful than even Sylar. Not sure how he managed to convince them to let him meet the President to take his shape though.

* I'm not sure I like Angela's plan, brainwashing a serial killer into thinking he's her son. Of course it's not the first time she's tried it, but this time it's just downright creepy how she wants a fake Nathan to replace the real one. Personally, my choice would have been 'give Nathan Claire's blood and save his life', but I guess we're supposed to be pretending that season two never happened. Also, her dreams are pissing me off now, it's like the paintings all over again.

* Also... 'Nathan' still has all of Sylar's powers AND NOT FLIGHT (that was TK he was using to fly in the window I assume), so what the hell is Nathan supposed to think about that? Also he has still has The Hunger (unless we're supposed to be pretending that volume three never happened.)

* The company's back, and finally Noah gets promoted out of middle management. Yay! Plus he got to say 'morally grey' or something like that in the episode, and he loves doing that.

* Tracy's return was interesting, almost the reverse of what happened to her at the start of the volume. But she's using water powers to kill agents instead of ice? Maybe she's trying to hide her 'resurrection'.