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That was the best episode yet for me, though I did enjoy #5 as well. Mohinder's stretches on screen remain utterly dry, dusty, dead air... it honestly reminds me of the DVD I use sometimes to hypnotise myself to sleep. Ironically, there were scenes in The Invisibles with a similar Indian-mystic snore to them.
The great thing about the show, I think, is not so much the firming up of the powers ~ and I really, really like the way people are realising their abilities (and allowing us to realise them) so very slowly, over nine episodes. I'd say it's almost unique in superhero stories (Unbreakable might be an exception) to have metahumans taking so long to accept, test and come to terms with their abilities. Even now, they're hesitant to name them; they're very humble, apologetic, modest about them. Peter says he's pretty much nothing without being near someone else. Clare keeps shrugging that she's just a cheerleader. Zach is wryly ironic in his references to her regeneration. Micah doesn't really know how to describe Nikki's shifts into Jessica. Only the comic geek Hiro immediately embraces and names his power to warp time and space, and also enthuses immediately about Nathan as a flying man: "up, up and away." Most of the others don't even recognise what they've got. They don't have words for it. A refreshing break from the usual superhero origin, where the protagonist leaps to avoid a veering truck and narrates "My LEGS... they carried me 50 METERS thru the AIR! Like a GRASSHOPPER! And... my ears, picking up sounds from 10 BLOCKS AWAY!" before rushing home to stitch together a costume. (And that's another nice change... no capes, no tights. Clare's outfit is the closest you get.)
ANYWAY, not just the way they're handling the powers, but the slow-burning evolution of characters... and maybe the acting, too. I really think we saw something new in Clare this episode, and I think the actress really brought it, as they say in cheerleading movies. She had a new, cool, dry savvy. "It didn't take. How's your eye." OK, so a few of her scenes were metahuman Breakfast Club stuff, but that never goes out of date. And Peter, as predicted, gaining a doomed resolve... just as we watch Hiro harden into FutureHiro (with a detour between to HistoryHiro).
That password: since when do you have a password and let the letters you're typing appear on the screen, instead of having them come up *****? Even my workplace can do that, and we're not tracking top-secret superhumans.
And... cheerleader switch? Was that really a plot twist? I didn't think Clare got away because Sylar went after Jackie, mistaking the two of them. Clare was always going to run outside to the steps ~ that's in the painting.
The Haitian has appeared before, surely? In #5, he empties out the quarterback's head, and I thought he was the one person the cop couldn't read in an early episode.
Final: another kid was reading the comic about Uluru today. I wonder if that's just going to be background detail ~ the monster's featured on the 9th Wonders site alongside a host of major characters. |
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I liked the Sylar reveal very much, and being dumb (see The Prestige thread) didn't realise it was him until the giveaway shot of the watch. I think it's undeniable that this episode was a deliberate shout-out to Moore and Gibbons ~ the Dr Manhattan "watchmaker" chapter also, as I remember, involves teleporting across space and narrative jumps in time. I even thought the crystal Sylar uses as a murder weapon was reminiscent of the Mars palace in Watchmen, but perhaps that's a stretch.