BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Season 4 Episode 10
“Revelations”
Written by Bradley Thompson and David Weddle
Directed by Michael Rymer
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Twelve Cylon models
Seven are known
Four live in secret
One will be revealed

So, not only was the mid-season finale a tense little motherfraker, but it also reduced me to a blubbering idiot, before pole-axing me with that punch-in-the-stomach coda.
Man, if this is what it feels like halfway through the last hurrah, the series finale will be brutal…


So D’Anna takes the lead and announces that she’ll be holding the humans hostage, till she gets the Cylons from the Fleet. Adama and Helo aren’t thrilled by that and there’s a Mexican standoff, till Roslin asks Bill to trust her.
D’Anna then says that Adama will accompany her to the Galactica, but when he says he won’t leave, Laura whispers in his ear that D’Anna cannot be allowed to take the Five, so if things should go sour, that the base ship be destroyed, regardless of who’s on board.


The base ship and Raptor jump back to the Fleet, and when D’Anna and Adama get to the Galactica, D’Anna says she’ll wait for the four Cylons in the Fleet to join them, and only then will she release the hostages.
Toaster Tory, canny little minx, says she should return with D’Anna to the base ship, purportedly so she can bring President Roslin her meds.
Which she does, but when Laura asks her to speak with D’Anna to stand down (after Tory is revealed to indeed be a Cylon), Tory says, I don’t take orders from you anymore. (B!tch.)

Suddenly changing the game plan, D’Anna jettisons a hostage out the airlock, and she threatens to execute a hostage every 15 minutes till the still Secret Cylons turn themselves over.
There’s a hurried idea to draft a rescue plan, during which the four Fleet Cylons again have a “Watchtower” moment, that leads Tigh, Sam, and the Chief, to that apparently brand new Viper Starbuck flew back to Galactica in.
Sam and the Chief are convinced there’s something different about the Viper, something important, so when Sam says Starbuck knows this ship inside and out, Tigh tells him to get her down there, then goes off to do what he knows he has to do (something he admits he should have done from the moment it happened, if only he’d been braver).
What follows is a really great scene where Tigh admits to Adama that he’s a Cylon, and that the only way to get D’Anna to stand down, is to threaten to blow him out the airlock.

But the revelation first leads to one of those scary, volcanic moments when Adama loses his cool and rages. It’s like witnessing some volatile force that makes you terrified to even breathe, lest you trigger any more outbursts that could be directed at you.
Adama then drinks himself blind and is himself a blubbering mess, as Lee lovingly tries to get him to pull himself together.
It’s an emotionally devastating scene, where we see just how important Tigh’s friendship is to Adama. The scene is then made all the more powerful by the genuine caring that Lee shows for his father.
Brokenly, Adama admits that—should it come down to it—he just can’t kill Tigh, so Lee says he’ll take care of it.


What follows is a fraktastic stand-off sequence as D’Anna threatens to execute more hostages, while Baltar tries to talk sense to her.
On board Galactica, Tigh is placed in an airlock, with Lee ready at the button that will suck the poor one-eyed skinjob into outer space.
Lee then asks Tigh who the others are.

Meanwhile, Starbuck can’t understand why Sam and the Chief think there’s something about the Viper, but Sam says, When you had a feeling you knew how to get to Earth, I trusted you, so trust our feeling on this.
The grunts then arrive to arrest Sam and the Chief, who are brought to the airlock to keep Tigh company.
Despite Baltar trying to talk sense to D’Anna, things escalate to the point where the base ship’s weaponry is targeted at the Fleet, and Tigh is alone in the airlock, Lee ready to consign his Toaster a$ into space. Even as we see Starbuck find some reading on a gauge of the Viper (probably one that points to Earth) and start running all the way to the airlock, Tigh demands of Lee, “Well, what are you waiting for?! Do it!”


Starbuck of course arrives before first blood on either side is drawn.
She shows the readings to Lee, who takes a little convincing, before he accepts that Starbuck’s probably right.
And, in a pivotal moment, Lee decides to share the information with the Cylons. There’s another great moment in the episode, as Lee and D’Anna shake on this truce, as they both agree that human and Cylon will journey to Earth, together.

Lee than has a quiet moment with Adama, who we see is clearly broken by the Tigh-is-a-Toaster revelation. When Lee asks if he’s ready to take command again, Adama says, I don’t know.
Laura arrives, asking, What don’t you know?
Laura and Adama then have a nice, tender moment, during which Laura says, I want to see you with that first fistful of Earth.
Rockface then stands to face his immense responsibilities, leaving Laura and Lee to have that Moment I’ve been waiting for.
Lee says, Well, this is the end of the shortest Presidential term in Colonial history.
And Laura responds, You made the right choices in a very difficult situation, and this Fleet will still need that sort of strong leadership in the days to come.
So the rift between the two is on its way to healing (yahoo!), and Adama emerges in his uniform, ready to roll the hard six.


What follows is a tremendously moving sequence as the Fleet and the damaged base ship make that final jump to the coordinates they believe are going to take them to Earth.
The sequence is brilliant, capturing all the hope and bittersweet emotions of this jump to what they have held out will be their salvation.
After poor Felix confirms the stellar coordinates, Adama makes a moving speech over the wireless, and we see faces across Galactica and the Fleet, even the faces of some of the Not-So-Secret-Anymore Cylons, particularly Tigh (who’s alone, getting sloshed) and the Chief, who’s with Nicky, and of course, Cally’s absence is overwhelming.
It’s a sequence both joyous and melancholy, bringing home the point that this is what the Fleet has been striving for since that horrible day the Cylons attacked, while reminding us of what this apparent victory has cost.

Then, as some ships make that Earth entry, and they’re flying through the clouds, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, thinking, Okay, we’re here. But when?
Will it be pre-history, and will the Fleet end up being the first humans to populate the planet?
Will it be 2008, and will we suddenly attack the ships, thinking it’s some kind of alien invasion, thus opening up hostilities between Earth and the Fleet, and a new, perhaps even more tragic war, begins?

But when we see Adama pick up that first fistful of earth, and we hear that Geiger counter making that terrible noise, and we see the devastated reactions of all these people we’ve come to love and hate over the course of five years, and we see what at first looks like ancient ruins around them, before it becomes apparent that what we’re looking at are the remains of a bridge, and a city in the distance, we know that the other shoe has most definitely dropped, and we are so not yet at the end of this particular road.

Gods, Moore and Eick (and Thompson and Weddle) are evil.


So, has the Fleet arrived after the planet has already been ruined by humanity’s own raging stupidity?
Or did some other Cylons somehow get to Earth before the Fleet and a war broke out?
Ooooh, where’s that second half?

Getting back to the here and now though, aside from that “jump to Earth” sequence, I think the most potent bits of this episode were those moments when we see the reactions people have to the Secret Cylon reveals.
There’s Adama, of course, but Starbuck’s reaction to Sam’s being a Cylon was also a great Moment that worked without the sturm und drang of the Tigh-is-a-Toaster plot development.
As is sometimes too often the case with BSG, it killed me that we didn’t have enough time in this episode to get a better sense of how characters were reacting to events, particularly the Cylon revelations.
Well, just some more bits to look forward to in the next half of the season. (I’m particularly looking forward to seeing how Adama and Tigh work through this curveball in their friendship.)

Onward to January 16, 2009, eh?


Parting shot: It seems, at the moment, that the series’ final episode has grown to a 2-hour finale, so I’m hereby re-calibrating the countdown.

COUNTDOWN: 11.

(Images courtesy of twitchfilm.net and ew.com.)

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Season 4 Episode 9
“The Hub”
Written by Jane Espenson
Directed by Paul Edwards
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Twelve Cylon models
Seven are known
Four live in secret
One will be revealed

So we get to see what became of the damaged base ship and all on board—particularly President Roslin—and it’s a doozy.


It turns out that the Hybrid is panicked, thus her sudden jump (merely the first of several), and it’s revealed shortly that the Hybrid is panicked since she’s detected that Natalie is no longer on-line (if that’s the correct term).
The Eight in the Hybrid’s chamber soon determines that the Hybrid is jumping towards the Resurrection Hub, so the mission still looks like a go.
During each jump though—in the interstice between points in actual physical space—Laura meets the deceased Elosha (I’ve missed her), in an apparently deserted Galactica. She’s then shown that the only people here are the Adamas and Starbuck, gathered around a cancer-ridden Laura on her deathbed.


That alone was such a heart-rending idea: of finding a dying Roslin in an empty Galactica.
Elosha tells her that she doesn’t really love anyone, that she hasn’t, in effect, opened herself up to anyone (a sentiment echoed when Baltar insists that one can communicate with the Hybrid, if one focuses on her, which Roslin seems incapable of doing).
Then, as the Hybrid continues to make repeated jumps, Laura’s tutelage at Elosha’s side unfolds over the course of the episode.


Meanwhile, Helo finds that the Eight in the Hybrid chamber, curious about Athena and her hybrid child, accessed Athena’s memories when she last downloaded. So basically, this Eight has Athena’s memories up to that point, when Helo was forced to shoot her so she could download back to the Cylons, and retrieve Hera.
Later on, there’s some tension between the Galactica pilots and the Cylon pilots, but the pseudo-Athena makes a speech about needing to rely on each other, particularly once the Hub has been destroyed, because at that point, everyone will be in the same boat in the mortality sweepstakes.


Also, Roslin gives Helo express orders to take D’Anna to her (and her alone) once she is retrieved. Helo tries to argue that this isn’t what was agreed upon, and isn’t honest, but Roslin claims that this is about the security of the human race.
Roslin says this is what the Cylons would do, in my place. And Helo counters, No, not all of them. Not the Eights.
Roslin says she can’t afford sentimentality right now, and she can’t afford Helo to be sentimental either (“Captain, you are not married to the entire production line…”).


Over at the Hub, Cavil de-boxes D’Anna himself, telling her of the civil war, and trying to convince her to help end it.
Cavil claims to be uninterested in the identities of the Final Five, as he still firmly believes they aren’t meant to know them.
D’Anna ends up killing Cavil, making Boomer run for the proverbial hills.

The attack on the Hub commences, during which, a number of events take place:

We see the jumping of the dying Pike back to the Fleet (which then of course, led to the Fleet finding the debris of this very battle).


Helo and the pseudo-Athena find D’Anna, taking her back to the base ship.
When they get on board, Helo reveals the change of plans, telling the pseudo-Athena that he may not agree with it, but he’s only following orders.
Disillusioned, pseudo-Athena lets Helo go on his way, with D’Anna.


While preaching/ranting to a Centurion, an explosion wounds Baltar severely, and he’s bleeding heavily when he’s brought to Laura, who tries to attend to his injuries.
Under the morpha haze, Baltar makes mention of his guilt, which has now been lifted from him, by the mercy and love of God. In an amazingly tense scene, Laura asks after the nature of this guilt, and Baltar admits to his culpability in the annihilation of the human race.
Mary McDonnell is amazing here, as she absorbs the shock of what she’s suspected for the longest time: that Baltar is guilty.
Baltar asks her to pray with him, but instead, she undresses the wound and allows it to bleed freely, ignoring Baltar’s pleas.


But the Hybrid jumps again, away from the battle, and Laura is taught one more lesson, as she witnesses her own death, and Adama’s heartbreaking reaction.
Elosha tells Laura that she needs to learn to love, and that even a bad man can feel guilt just as much as a good man. The moment of Laura’s conversion is astounding, as is her desperation when the jump ends and she scrambles to stop Baltar’s bleeding.


Helo arrives with D’Anna, and smartly, acknowledging that she’s the only Three left in the entire universe, uses her knowledge of the Final Five’s identities as leverage for her safety.
She says she won’t divulge the information till she’s safely been transported to the Fleet.
(Though not before a singular fake-out moment of shock as D’Anna makes Laura think that she’s one of the Five. At least, it seems to have been a fake-out. I mean, I was leaning towards Laura being the last, unrevealed Cylon. If it isn’t her, who is? One of the Adamas? Starbuck, after all?)

We then rejoin Adama, on his lone vigil, as the base ship arrives, and the beautiful reunion between Laura and Bill, where Laura finally says, “I love you,” and ol’ Rockface half-jokes, “About time.”


So, great lead-up to the midseason finale, and a big part of why this one works so well is that, unlike Baltar’s conversion, Laura’s feels more genuine, the emotions distinctly more palpable.
And, even though both were presented as arcs that moved through an entire episode, this particular arc seemed more potent, more believable.
I’ll cop to the possibility though that this one works better for me since I’m emotionally invested in Laura and her fate, whereas I still can’t be bothered to give a rat’s a$ about Baltar. (Sorry, Gaius, but as it stands, you’re in better hands with Laura than you are with me…)
And it’s not that I can’t forgive the poor schmuck, but that I still can’t feel any remorse from the sodding bastard. It still feels like he’s leading us on, the way he always has.


Now, it’s not as simple as saying Mary McDonnell is a more genuine performer than James Callis (though I feel an argument could be made for that point).
I think it’s more that Baltar doesn’t seem to be a character made to be sympathetic (at least in the beginning), unlike Laura, who is diagnosed with cancer from the miniseries’ first episode.
But then again, the events of Season 3 made me care for Tigh in a way I’d never have anticipated from BSG’s early days.
Of course, Tigh didn’t cause the deaths of untold millions…
I dunno. I guess I’m still decidedly anti-Gaius.

Oh, and it’s great to see Lucy Lawless back.

COUNTDOWN: 11.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Season 4 Episode 8
“Sine Qua Non”
Written by Michael Taylor
Directed by Rod Hardy
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Twelve Cylon models
Seven are known
Four live in secret
One will be revealed

“Because I can’t live without her…”
Aww, man, ol’ Rockface just slays me…
By the gods, if the rest of this season continues to get harder and harder to sit through, I’ll end up a quivering, blubbering, whiny puddle of emotional jello by the time the last R&D closer airs.

So the entire episode passes without us knowing what happened to the base ship after its jump, and more to the point, what happened to Roslin, Baltar, and a whole bunch of Galactica pilots, including Helo.
Meanwhile, chaos and panic ripples throughout the Fleet, with Zarek poised to take over the Presidency. A whole lot of other bits take place in this installment, so let’s take ‘em all on, one bit at a time.


Natalie’s rushed to Doc Cottle, but she expires, while having glimpses of some other, forest-y place…
Athena’s arrested, and there’s a really scary scene with Adama, as he fumes and angrily reminds her that she’s betrayed his trust. He then has her thrown in the brig, and later on, mindful of her claim that the Cylons want to take Hera away from her, has Hera sent to the brig as well, so Athena can be with her. (Not sure that thrilled Hera, though; Daddy gets taken away by a jumpy Hybrid, and I get to roost in jail with murderer Mummy. Oh, the joys of childhood.)
What I don’t get though, is why Athena just doesn’t talk to Caprica about her fears regarding Hera. At least that way, she can figure out whether she’s right about that feeling or not.
Of course, it does seem like Caprica may be the very particular Six that wants to take Hera away from her mum, so maybe Athena should just stay as far away from Caprica as Cylon-ly possible. But now that they’re both in the brig…


And speaking of Caprica Six, to try and find out where the base ship jumped to, Adama has Tigh visit her, a subplot that eventually leads to the reveal that, gasp! Caprica’s preggers! With Tigh’s baby!
Okay, I certainly didn’t see that coming. I honestly thought Tigh’s private time with Caprica was largely chatty therapy as he grappled with the whole, “Frak, I’m a toaster!” thing. Turns out Tigh was doing the nasty often enough to put a little, heh, toaster in the oven…
And doesn’t this also present a new evolutionary development as well? Hera (and Nicky) being the half-human/half-Cylon hybrid, and this baby being, what? A new kind of Cylon?
Anyway, Adama’s really ticked off about this development, and the two friends get into some nasty fisticuffs that demolishes (yet again) Adama’s model ship.
The two make peace later on though…


We are treated to some tantalizing hints as to the fates of Roslin and the missing base ship, when a damaged ship jumps back to the Fleet’s coordinates. The pilot (Pike) is dead, but they trace back the ship’s origin point, where they find the debris of a lot of Vipers, and a base ship.
So while some conjecture that, perhaps, this is the debris from the base ship the President was on, Adama would like to think otherwise.
So ol’ Rockface gets fixated on finding the President, putting the entire Fleet in danger as a result.
Adama is made to realize he’s lost his objectivity though, by Romo Lampkin, of all people. (And we’ll get to why he shows up in this installment in a teeny bit…)
And once Adama realizes that he can no longer put the Fleet at risk, but also cannot stop holding out the hope that Laura is still alive, he surrenders command of Galactica (and the Fleet), to… Toaster Tigh!
Not only that, but he also elects to stay behind in a Raptor, to await Roslin’s return to these coordinates, while the Fleet goes off on its merry way!
Both Tigh and Lee try and dissuade him from these actions, but like the man said, he can’t live without her…
And that’s how the episode ends, as Galactica and the Fleet jump off, leaving Adama in his Raptor, the damaged copy of Searider Falcon in his hands.
But there’s still one more important bit…


Even as Zarek attempts to wrest control of the Presidency, Lee sees that his father will never accept Zarek in the seat, and the whole military/government alliance will just crash and burn, taking the Fleet with it.
So Lee aspires to find another interim President, who can shepherd the Colonial government in Roslin’s absence. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?)
Lee gets Lampkin to help him run through possible candidates, and two things were fairly evident in this subplot: a) this was going to end up, however improbably, with Lee taking on the Presidency; and b) there was an undue amount of focus on Lampkin’s cat.


The first did indeed conclude with Lee ending the episode as interim President Leland Joseph Adama, while the second had a curious reveal of Lampkin’s cat actually being dead.
So Lampkin sort’a goes nutzo since the cat’s the only thing he has left of his wife, and though he’s been seeing the cat up and about (and talking to it, mind), it’s actually been dead and rotting in a bag for weeks.
At any rate, once all other candidates have been found wanting, and Lampkin has winnowed out Lee’s “repressed ambition” towards the Presidency, he also determines that Lee needs to die(!), since he would represent something hopeful for the Fleet, and Lampkin firmly believes there can no longer be any hope for the human race.
So Lampkin is holding Lee at gunpoint, but Lee manages to talk his way out of a life and death situation with a possibly certifiable lunatic, and into the office of the President.
Smooth.
Not bad for Mr. Passive-Aggressive Repressed Ambition.
Oh. Sorry. President Passive-Aggressive Repressed Ambition.
And Lee’s apparently first act as President, hand over New Caprica resistance hero Jake, into Lampkin’s possibly certifiable lunatic care.
Sure, let’s let the poor doggy guide Lampkin back towards mental stability…


Now, the bits that really worked for me had to do with Adama and his reactions and decisions in the wake of Laura’s little jaunt to gods-know-where.
The painful clarity of his love for the woman becomes the core of Bill Adama. This is, after all, the woman who taught him of hope, and faith.
So he stays, floating in the middle of nowhere space, her favourite book in his hands, while the Fleet leaves him behind, so he can wait for her to return.


The bits I’m not entirely sold on, were the ones involved in the “let’s make Lee president” subplot. The whole “Lampkin’s cat is dead” thing just seemed a bit too contrived, and like I said, Lee sliding his way into the President’s seat seemed vaguely improbable.
In the wake of it, I just didn’t get the sense that the Old Man was proud of his son’s achievement. (Then again, he was worried about Laura…)
Having said that, it does put a new spin on things, and I am curious to see where the writers take this. Will Lee turn out to be the President the whole Fleet’s been waiting for? Is this his true calling? Or will this—as we’ve seen sometimes happen before where Lee is concerned—all end in tears?
And with Tigh steering the Galactica now, well…

Having mentioned Tigh, I’m also intensely curious where the “Tigh as expectant Toaster father” subplot goes.
And what’s to happen to Hera? I really hope Athena gets to keep her. I certainly don’t condone what she did to poor Natalie, but Athena’s gone through too much to have Hera get taken from her because of some visions.

Crap. Mid-season break’s looming.

COUNTDOWN: 12.

PUSHING DAISIES
Season 2 Episode 1
“Bzzzzzzz!”
Written by Bryan Fuller
Directed by Adam Kane
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Well, this one had its moments, and a bunch of welcome guest spots: French Stewart as Wolsey Nicholls, intent on taking over Betty’s BeesTM; Autumn Reeser as the rather unlucky Number One Bee Girl of Betty’s BeesTM, Kentucky Fitts, who’s the main corpus dilecti of the episode; and Diana Scarwid (yay!) as, not just any nun, but the Mother Superior herself.


Sadly, Scarwid is part of the subplot that I’m having trouble with: for some reason best known to the show’s writers, Olive has been sent off to a nunnery by Lily, the very same nunnery where she brought Chuck to term, because of the secret she’s privy to: that Chuck is in fact, Lily’s daughter, a secret that would kill Vivian, as she was actually engaged to Chuck’s father when the affair took place.
Sure, the nun costumes are cool and kooky, and Pigby has his own certain charm, but I’m dubious about the whole thread and wondering where they plan to take it and what its raison d’etre is.


At any rate, it’s great to have Pushing Daisies back, and to see Adam Kane at the helm again.
They also at least seem to be kicking up Emerson’s lost daughter subplot, so that’s a plus, as Chi McBride rules.
I mean, Steven Harper to Emerson Cod.
Who knew?

(Images courtesy of ABC, avclub.com, and destinything.com.)

HEROES
Season 3 Episode 2
Volume Three: “Villains”
Chapter Two: “The Butterfly Effect”
Written by Tim Kring
Directed by Greg Beeman
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

“You have no idea of the fire that you’re playing with. You don’t screw with time.”
-- Mama P

Say what?! (In reaction to Mama P’s big cliffhanging reveal, and not the quote above.)
Urrrr… this better be some cockamamie scheme on Mama P’s part, ‘cause if not, why are we dipping into hackneyed soap opera territory? (Wasn’t Peter’s amnesia last season bad enough?)
And while I’m happy to see a bigger role for Mama P, given that she’s now in charge thanks to the Company’s chain of command, I am terribly disappointed that Bob has now suffered one of those thankless Heroes deaths: blink, and the character’s history. (And it happens off-screen to boot.)
And now poor Elle’s out of a job… but only after she inadvertently causes the escape of about a dozen powered lowlifes from Level 5 (when she lets out a massive electrical discharge as Sylar is cutting her head open, she causes the power grid to go down, and presto, escaped supervillains).


That escape gets Mr. B out as well, and he runs off into the night, but only after ensuring Sylar’s confinement (which Mama P looks about to rescind, thanks in part to the reveal that, gasp, he’s her son!).
Sigh.
As I said though, maybe this is Mama P trying to manipulate Sylar into doing her bidding, by giving him a mother figure by claiming to be his real mother.
Gods, I hope so.


So Mr. B heads back home, to have a brief reunion with Claire, and is set to go off again, to take down the Level 5 escapees.
But not before he brings back Claire’s pyrokinetic bio-mom Meredith, to keep his family safe.
Hurrah!
And I say that without sarcasm, as, honestly, this was one of the few high points of the episode. I just hope that Meredith is on the level here, ‘cause she did seem a tad mercenary the last time we saw her…

Oh, and one of the Level 5 escapees, Jesse Murphy (played in a little bit of stunt casting by Veronica Mars alum, Francis Capra), is where scarred Peter-from-the-future “put” the real Peter. (Does Future Boy feel like such a d!ck now, or what? Is a portion of Volume Three basically just cleaning up the idiot mess he caused by gunning down Nathan, while the other is cleaning up Hiro’s idiot mess?)
So now Capra gets to share screen time with Milo Ventimiglia in the role of supervillain on the lam (does Capra get half a paycheck then?)
Jesse’s power: sound manipulation.


And my mention of The Fly in response to Mo’s totally irresponsible “oh, I’ll inject myself with an untested compound because I am so conflicted and tortured right now” moment?
Well, what do we have here but a scene straight out of Cronenberg’s remake, where a shirtless Mo is hanging off the rafters, then does some wall-climbing? He then makes the moves on Maya, who succumbs to his shirtless charms, and ends up in bed with him.
Of course, he wakes up in the middle of the night, and, well, he seems to be… flaking. Or something.
You know, he’s looking in the mirror, very Fly-like, and there are some odd looking patches of skin on his back that are coming off.
Sigh.
So we’re raiding soap operas and sci fi remakes.


Meanwhile, Nathan’s Linderman appears to be a figment of his imagination.
Gods, Nathan is certifiable.
Either that or Linderman (who is supposed to be dead) is just invisible to everyone else, but that’s just plain silly, right?
Heh.
Nathan, by the way, takes the offer for the junior Senator seat, provided Tracy-who-looks-exactly-like-Nikki will be on his team.


Oh, and Tracy-who-looks-exactly-like-Nikki? Well, she apparently has the power to instantaneously deep freeze anyone she touches, and of course, when a human insta-popsicle falls to the ground, the body shatters, leaving itty bitty bits of bloody ice all over the place.
Ick.
(The poor sap who gets the messy death? The Greatest American Hero himself, William Katt! Stunt casting, hurrah!)

And Parkman?
‘Ported to Africa, where he meets Usutu (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), who knows Parkman’s name, and claims that he shouldn’t be there, and that this is not the future he painted.
Another Isaac?
Oh, and Usutu is apparently the one who painted that cracking globe symbol which Parkman saw in the previous episode.
(And why hasn’t anyone wondered what happened to Parkman? Has no one noticed that’s he’s gone missing?)


Hiro (I’m the idiot who’s responsible for that dangerous half-formula being stolen by some super-speedster, and can’t I see that how I’m treating Ando could very well turn him against me?) Nakamura on the other hand, has a plan to track Daphne the super-speedster and catch her before she steals the other half of the formula.
Fine, let’s see how that pans out, though why do I get the feeling that won’t work out too well either?


Claire, meanwhile, realizes that she now can feel no pain, which troubles her deeply since, despite her extraordinary regeneration, what kept her grounded and human before was the fact that she could still feel pain.
Now, while I admit that’s an interesting turn of events, the “attempt #7” scene is curiously lacking in the emotional weight department. I’m not sure if the greenscreen is totally to blame (as such shots always seem to be bereft of any genuine tension due to their artificiality), but it certainly doesn’t help any.

Meanwhile, Mama P has a disturbing (and rather comic book-y) dream where some of the heroes are shown being defeated/killed by a bunch of baddies, which include Nikki (or whatever the hell her name is) and Parkman Sr.


Well, I can’t say that that was significantly better than the first hour, and I have to say that this troubles me a bit.
After the largely slapdash and compromised affair that was Volume Two, I had hoped that this third volume would waste no time and from the opening, immediately detonate at ground zero and recapture the glory of the golden age of Heroes (back in Season 1, when Bryan Fuller was still in the house).
Sadly, that didn’t happen.
There are still too many characters running about, and worse, some of them are acting rather idiotically, apparently just to kick-start some subplots.
And then there’s that whole Sylar-as-long-lost-Petrelli-son reveal.
Urg.


Well, hope springs eternal, and there’s always next week for another shot at redemption…

Parting shot: In the lag between the time the premiere aired, I got to see it and wrote this review, and today, when I finally got to post the review, news broke regarding the “letting go” of Heroes co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander. (Details here and here.)
As much as this came as a shock, how this will affect the show is also at the forefront of my mind.
It has already been indicated that Kring will be “simplifying” the storytelling, and “refining the tone of the show.” There’s also a bit about—thank Heavens—“emphasiz[ing] character development more than plot twists.”
I imagine the exact repercussions of this sudden shake-up will become evident sometime in the second half of the current season, during Volume Four (reportedly titled “Fugitives”).
Though it does seem like Loeb and Alexander have been shafted—and who exactly did the shafting is up for debate—this does present yet another opportunity for the show to clean up its act (if Loeb and Alexander were indeed the problematic pieces in the Writers’ Room).
Like I said, hope springs eternal. Let’s see, shall we?

(Images courtesy of comicbookresources.com, gregbeeman.blogspot.com, and eonline.com.)

HEROES
Season 3 Episode 1
Volume Three: “Villains”
Chapter One: “The Second Coming”
Written by Tim Kring
Directed by Allan Arkush
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

So.
If it’s one of the things that would occasionally irk me about Heroes, it would be those scattershot episodes where so much was going on in the 40+ minute running time that the hour would end up featuring a host of headless chickens running about, and would ultimately feel unsatisfyingly choppy.
Well, despite creator Tim Kring being in the writer’s seat for this first half of the Season 3 2-hour opener, this is one of those squawking, stutter-skip chapters.


I’ll give Kring props for the reveal that the gunman who took down Nathan at Volume Two’s close is a scarred Peter from 4 years in the future, who’s about to actually be killed by that future’s Claire, before he ‘ports back and guns Nathan down.
And though that does open up a whole new can of worms, it’s still probably the best idea here…


I guess the hugest letdowns would have to be the Hiro-Mo double header of “how irritatingly stupid can you get?”
Hiro, despite being told by Papa Sulu (via pre-recorded DVD message) not to open a safe containing a secret that could destroy the world (why couldn’t it have been a nice secret?), does exactly that, because he’s bored, only to have that secret—one-half of a formula; could it be the very formula Mo uses to come up with his magic syringe? More on that later—stolen by some speedster (Brea Grant).
The annoyingly impulsive time-traveling idiot—did he not learn anything from Volume Two?—then travels to the future, to see how the formula destroys the world. And there, not only does he witness betrayal at the hands of a powered Ando, but also the apparent destruction of Tokyo.
So he returns to the present, now suspicious of Ando, and sets off on his newfound quest (a quest he’d never had to have gone on in the first place if he’d only listened to Papa Sulu) to retrieve the half-formula.
Idiot.


Mo, meanwhile, apparently having grown tired of the Two Men and a Molly sitcom, shunts Molly off to God knows where (this happens off-screen, and we’re never really told exactly where she was tossed; Maya just claims that the youngster’s unfindable and safe now).
He’s then about to go jetting back to India (gods, does this man have no conviction?) when Maya almost does him in with her bleeding eyes bit, though she calms down before anything permanent happens.
This serves up a “Eureka!” moment for Mo, and he realizes that the key to the powers are in the adrenal glands, and not the blood, as postulated by Papa Suresh.
So he tests his theories, and voila, cobbles up a serum in a syringe that he claims will give a normal human powers! (So much for trying to figure out how to take away Maya’s powers… Couldn’t he have just tweaked one of those Company serums which could take away powers, like the one they used on Nikki last season? Make one that didn’t have that nasty side-effect of a little case of death?)
And after rambling on about breakthroughs and quantum leaps in science and the advancement of the species and “if only I had powers I might have been able to save my father,” Maya realizes that Mo could be getting that Mad Doctor gleam in his eye, and tells him to destroy whatever’s in the syringe.
We see idiot Mo at the docks, torn, about to toss the syringe into the sea (where it could have ended up being washed ashore somewhere and shot up by some poor addled junkie). But of course, we all know he’ll inject himself with it, and he does.
And he’s about to get rolled by some punks, when he displays some superhuman strength (he crushes a punk’s gun), and does an athletic flip to his feet.
So now he’s got powers, despite the wholly irresponsible way in which he got them. (Did this man not see The Fly? Nothing good can come out of self-experimentation. And did he not hear a word of what Maya said?)
Idiot.


There are a number of other bits in here that are also rather annoying.
We learn that Sylar doesn’t eat his victims’ brains, but just seems to study them, looking for a particular part of the brain, and somehow absorbing his victims’ powers that way.
That in itself isn’t annoying.
Rather, it’s how exactly did Sylar find Claire in Costa Verde? Why did Claire think that doing the Halloween bit and hiding in a closet would keep Sylar out? And why the hell didn’t he just TK the damned closet doors open?
And of course, Sylar figures out his next step by rifling through some very important-looking files that Mr. Bennett left behind, which are now in a conveniently-labeled box on the kitchen counter.
Ay, madre de Dios!


At any rate, we find out that Claire is different and special, and that she may very well be immortal, as Sylar apparently now is, as well (having successfully absorbed her powers).
We also find out that Linderman is alive, and is responsible for healing Nathan (yes, Nathan doesn’t die here, just as he didn’t die as a result of Volume One’s cliffhanger).
We also find out that someone who looks exactly like Nikki/Jessica (yes, Ali Larter is still in the building), yet named Tracy, is showing interest in the revived Nathan (who’s now spouting some blather about divine intervention and being God’s angel). Naturally, we first see this Tracy person wearing some sexy bedroom thingie.
Sigh.


And we have the scarred Peter-from-the-future somehow shunting the real Peter’s consciousness into some powered goon who’s incarcerated in Primatech’s Level 5.
At least, I think that’s what happened.
But if so, where’s the real Peter’s body?
And why is Mr. B in a cell? I was led to believe that at the end of Volume Two, he returned to the Company’s fold, in his previous capacity of operative.
What gives?


I was happy to see Cristine Rose though, and Mama P reveals that her power was indeed the dream bits, which Peter inherited.
Confronting the scarred Peter-from-the-future (who gunned down Nathan because supposedly, that moment when the world was told about the existence of powered individuals, was the moment his future went to sh!t), Mama P claims that now, this is a different timeline, all thanks to scarred Peter-from-the-future’s shooting of Nathan.
Hrrmmm.

I was also happy to see Ashley Crow, though that was for the briefest of moments, as she enters with Lyle to find a bloodied Claire…
Hopefully we see more of her in the second hour.

Oh, and Parkman gets ‘ported off (by scarred Peter-from-the-future) to some out-of-the-way wilderness with an apparently new Heroes–related symbol, which appears to be a globe that’s cracking, or breaking, with stuff gushing out of it.
We also see that symbol as graffiti in the Mo-gets-powers scene.


I dunno. There’s a lot in this hour that doesn’t feel right somehow.
Part of it is the sheer number of characters battling it out for screen time, yes, but I think part of it is the writing too.
I can’t recall a single moment here that can come close to many of the truly excellent and moving bits in the Heroes pilot. The Tim Kring that wrote that chapter doesn’t seem to be the same Tim Kring who wrote this one.
And, overused as it is, I love Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” but here, it just seems like the easy, lazy way out.
Why couldn’t we have just had one of Mo’s poignant voice-overs instead? (I am aware there are some critics of those bits, though I’m generally not one of them.)

At any rate, I’m looking forward to the second half of the season opener, if only because I’m hoping things pick up considerably, and the show gets back on track…

(Images courtesy of comicbookresources.com, ew.com, latimes.com, and gregbeeman.blogspot.com.)