If Nothing Else, Epic Dysfunction

I find the new biblical framing of Heroes a little distasteful, especially since the show now seems intent on interrogating ideas of justice, good and evil. Let’s not hide behind a higher power while we call morality into question, ok?

October 13’s “Angels and Monsters” puts Claire (Hayden Panettiere) in the untenable position of being rescued by Sylar (Zachary Quinto), whose attack prompted her current vigilante streak. To make matters worse, Sylar is working with her adoptive father (Jack Coleman), aptly named Noah for his role of bringing every species of ability to the company, now known as HRG for his famous horn-rimmed glasses (you’d think by now he’d want different frames). All of which happens after she becomes convinced that Stephen Canfield (Andre Royo), the villain that she’s hunted down , is not actually evil but the victim of a tragic misunderstanding of his power to create vortexes. Talk about a confusing day.

Things get a lot worse. Noah, Sylar, and Claire track Stephen. Noah puts a gun to his head and tells him to kill Sylar for what he did to Claire. Now Claire’s a victim and an impetus for murder. Stephen refuses to become a deliberate killer and sucks himself into one of his own vortexes. Claire is now faced with the reality of her father’s complete utilitarianism. Since he was the one person she always believed in, she’s left without any kind of guiding compass. And it looks like there’s going to be another rape in the family, since her biological mother Meredith (Jessalyn Gilsig) was taken prisoner while attempting to track down the vigilante Claire by a man with the ability to control people like puppets. Claire is going to need a lot of therapy.

I read that the writers had heard the complaints of the fans and were now going to simplify the fractured plotlines of Heroes. Maybe they’re getting there, but they’re asking for an awful lot of patience. The Angela Petrelli (Cristine Rose) storyline is completely divorced from the rest of this episode. Sylar seems to be the only one who likes Mom Petrelli these days. She calmly lets Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) know that he was a science experiment from birth, and she puts Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) in a chemical coma. But maybe the writers have grown bored with the Mom angle: the once-thought-dead Daddy Petrelli is reintroduced at the end of the episode and apparently uses one of his henchmen to make Angela a prisoner in her own mind. So much for simplifying the plot, and so much for peaceful reconciliations.

The dysfunctional relationships are getting absurd and difficult to track. Unless next week’s promised clash between the heroes and villains wipes out half of the cast, it’s going to take a lot more than an hour a week to get back around to all these plot lines. In the meantime, all the back and forth is distracting from any possibility of meaningfully tackling the issues of science versus ethics that the beginning of each episode puts forth.