Heroes Volume Three, Chapters 8 and 9
I was on vacation last week (more about that later), so I'm a little behind againon my episode reports for Heroes, but after I post this I'll get to work on my report about tonight's episode and will hopefully post that in a little while.
Chapter 8 - Villains
I love Gabriel and Elle. They are extremely sweet together, and they seem good for one another. They seem like they can relate to one another. Elle is so the mother of Noah Grey.
Poor Gabriel feeling so much guilt and so not in control of his abilities at that point, I felt so bad for him. His suicide attempt was so sad, and I am very glad that Elle showed up in time to save him. The way that she was talking to him afterwards really sounds like the sort of things that a person who has been in therapy for a while (and probably been suicidal themselves) would tell someone suicidal. It sounded like how I’ve talked to suicidal friends. That was so sweet that he called her an angel too. I don’t know if there is a name for their ship, but calling it Angel Shipping seems appropriate since they’d both been likened to angels. I’m glad that she held him too, he seemed like he could use a hug then.
Gabriel/Elle completely win my favoritism for ships with both of them. Despite my liking Gabriel/Maya, I like Gabriel/Elle much better.
His favorite pie is peach, that’s really adorable - as was his blushing when talking to Elle and his getting rid of the lists of people with powers and really trying hard to just start over. It was interesting to note that Elle treated Gabriel in a way quite different to how she treated others that she seemed to have feelings for, like Peter. Her feeling towards Gabriel seemed deeper and more honest somehow, even though she was being put up to this by the Company. Her feelings were totally authentic though, in my opinion, from the moment they met. And obviously he seemed to care about her a lot. She probably went into things thinking about just getting her job done, but that changed. I would’ve liked her to have just gone with being a waitress or whatever, like Mr. Bennet suggested. Though, given her want to make her dad proud, that wasn’t going to happen.
Arthur Petrelli wins the award for worst father on Heroes, and that’s really something given how many bad fathers there are on this show. Previously I would have given that title to Maury, but after his admitting to having cared about Matt (which is still weird to me) and having tried to protect him (or something?) I have to saw that Arthur is worse. I mean trying to have your son killed? I don’t believe that the people who chased after Nathan and Heidi were sent by Linderman. I think that was all Arthur’s doing. I felt bad for Angela having her memory so damaged by Arthur. After the way she acted in this episode I think that her favorite son really is Nathan.
It was awesome that Linderman mentioned his famous pot pies again in this episode. Loved that reference.
I’m wondering if Angela’s poisoning of the soup was a nod to the poisoned gazpacho in “Two Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”?
It is not that surprising that Flint is Meredith’s brother. Makes me wonder if siblings often have related powers. I know the writers have said that the powers of the parents don’t determine the power of the child, but it does seem like the siblings we know on the show (that both have powers) do have related abilities. Flint and Meredith with the fire; Peter and Gabriel with the taking on the abilities of others (Nathan doesn’t figure into things as his power was the result of genetic modification); if Alejandro had a power it may have been something that helped to control Maya’s right? I feel like there are others, but I don’t remember who they are at the moment.
That look that Meredith gave after her first tazering looked so much like Claire after she attacked Stephen.
I wonder when Claire will learn that Flint is her uncle? Or if he even knows that he has a niece somewhere?
What a crappy dad Meredith and Flint must have had, though his famous line about God not giving Flint a brain and instead giving him a big sister was funny.
Loved how they worked in that the train accident caused by Meredith was the one that Claire rescued that man from. They were brilliant in this episode with working in shots from the first season and tying things together with such nice continuity.
Elle and Gabriel making baked ziti together was so cute. Everytime I see ziti on a menu now I think of them. They seemed to happy together; it’s too bad that that Trevor guy showed up. I wonder what Elle must have said to him when she called him to invite him? The repeated use of “special” when she was talking about Trevor to Gabriel was sad in you know how much that bothers him and how Elle so did not want to be forcing him to kill again, but at the same time I found myself laughing because she was really finding every possible opportunity to use that word. But I felt horrible for both Elle and Gabriel in the outcome of that evening. What a sad turn of events.
Why do the precogs always have to die? I mean the ones that are authentically precogs, not those who have taken on the ability by other means? And how come they seem so willing to die? Like with Isaac having painted his own death and then just figuring that’s how things are supposed to happen, and then with Usutu, he also seemed like he knew he was going to die when he left Hiro and Ando in the tent. It’s too bad that he got killed though. I liked him, and I was hoping that he’d get to have more fun scenes with Matt.
Chapter 9 -
So I’m glad that Hiro didn’t loose his abilities, but I don’t understand this plot twist of his thinking he is 10 years old. Did they want to give Ando a bigger/more important part, or perhaps give Ando more of a mature and responsible part? Did they feel like Hiro needed to have more comedic stuff to do? Was it, as my brother suggested, that they needed something for Hiro to do while the Hero/Villain fights were going on since they killed off Adam and therefore had no particular villain for Hiro to go up against?
Also, how is it that Hiro is suddenly 28? He was 24 or 25 when the series started, and the chronology of the story only places the events of volume three about one year after the start of the show, so this doesn’t make sense to me. I figured that Ando was slightly older than Hiro, so he could possibly be 28, excepting that now it seems like Hiro and Ando knew each other as little kids and probably were in the same year of school.
I had read that this volume we would somehow see Yaeko in the present day. My brother commented that he hopes that Hiro, thinking he is 10 years old, doesn’t go back to the past and bring Yaeko here on some kind of whim.
I hope that this storyline doesn’t last much longer. I want regular Hiro back.
Isn’t it great how Peter and Nathan have unrealistic ideas of what they’re capable of? Nathan thinking that he can go kick his dad’s ass despite his not having any fighting skills and only having the ability to fly, and now powerless Peter thinking that he can either defend himself or help protect Claire? Well, he did actually help out Claire with the trick with the pipes but otherwise, I don’t think he would do very well in a fight without his powers.
Yay for Peter and Claire having more interactions with one another though. It was sweet how Peter was trying to stop Claire from becoming a killer, and how she wants to protect him.
Poor mutated biker guy. Is he another person that Mohinder deemed as “bad” and therefore brought in as a test subject, similar to the guy who was beating his wife and the drug dealer? Or was he someone that Pinehurst just supplied Mohinder with?
Glad that Arthur didn’t reprimand Gabriel for saving Peter’s life. Interesting approach at bringing out Gabriel’s empathy, putting him in a room with Elle - by the way, did they just take away Elle’s jacket and lock her up in that room as soon as she walked in the doors? I’m sure that’s not what she was expecting when she went in there looking for help.
Can I say again how much I love Gabriel and Elle? The scenes with them together have been my favorites of the last two episodes. They are so completely well matched for one another.
Gabriel was so good with Elle when she was distraught over her father’s murder and she kept trying to kill him. He was patient and soothing in a way, and really helped her work through the want for vengeance. She really did need someone to tell her that she could be forgiven and that she wasn’t a monster. They both seem to understand what the other is going through, they seem to relate really well. Their connecting on the immense pressure and feelings of inadequacy that their parents (well, her dad and his mom) put on them resonated with me with regard to my dad.
That was so touching when Gabriel was able to heal Elle’s out of control abilities, and gain her ability without hurting her. The realization of what had just happened, and Gabriel’s tears, that almost got me crying as well.
I really like that both of them have realized that they are good people and that they don’t have to keep doing the bad things that they have been doing. I’m glad that they’ve found one another - and are on good terms again. I really didn’t know how they would get back to that point again after Bob’s murder, but I’m glad that it’s happened.
Gabriel’s pathetic electric bolts were adorable! It was so cute how Elle was giving him lessons in how to use the power. Gabriel’s blushing during this scene was additionally adorable.
However, not adorable at all was Arthur watching all this on his creepy monitor of creepiness!! That’s just not right at all.
Back to Elle and Gabriel though, was that just fan service earlier when Gabriel’s shirt was being burned off? My brother noted that if he had been Captain Kirk there would have been like one little zap and the entire shirt would have been blasted away.
I will be very surprised if Elle is not the mother of Noah.
How did Usutu appear to Matt? Does his spirit still have some sort of connection to Matt or something? In any case, I’m glad that Daphne authentically cares for Matt, and that was really sweet with her entering into Matt and Angela’s thoughts and telling Matt that she loves him. Was Angela right that she and Arthur once really did love each other? It’s hard to imagine that. Do we know how Arthur can enter people’s dreams/thoughts? And also, doesn’t it really seem like Angela has a persuasive voice in addition to the dream power? There are so many things that she has done throughout the three volumes that point to that - or maybe she is just persuasive without having any special ability for that.
Going back to an earlier scene with Arthur, that was great how Nathan kept on shaking his hand off his shoulder and not giving him a hug. I figured that had Nathan been in Peter’s position a few episodes back, he so would not have hugged their dad. However, I don’t get Tracey. Is she just power hungry and doesn’t really care about anyone? Or is she pretending to go for Arthur’s plan in order to help Nathan? Somehow I think that it’s the first bet and it turns out it’s her in the premonitory dream Angela had of the villains earlier this season. But if that’s the case, are we going to meet Barbara this volume? Or ever? I had kinda figured that Barbara would turn out to be the villainous one.
So who’s putting out the Japanese 9th Wonder comics? Are they just left over issues of Isaac’s work? Or is there a Japanese precog that we haven’t met yet? Or some other explanation? In any case, it was fun to have Hiro looking around a comic shop.
Claire is the catalyst? I guess maybe we’re going to have a variation on “Save the cheerleader, save the world” then. I’m not sure if Arthur has realized this, or if he just sent Knox and Flint after her because he wants his granddaughter on his side. Or maybe he was thinking that the catalyst had to be a Petrelli and he had checked out his three sons (sitcom potential!) and none of them were the catalyst, so he thought it must be someone else. Though, I’m not sure if he knows about Claire being his granddaughter. Maybe he knew that Kaito was involved in being the hander-off of Claire and so he thought he might have injected Claire or done whatever it was to turn her into the catalyst?
It seems we now have our “teams” of heroes and villains now. However, it seems really weird to have Angela on a team of heroes, and obviously Gabriel and Elle are not villains, so things are not clear-cut - which is good. I don’t want things to be clearly defined as good/evil. It makes things far less interesting.
BTW, Elle looked completely adorable when she peaked her head into the room of villains. I cannot express how much I love her and Gabriel together. Honestly, they’re just so freakin sweet together!
This episode I watched on demand, and it is so strange seeing an episode 1. Without any commercials (though for some of volume 1 I watched that way, via iTunes or G4) and 2. without a preview at the end (I’ve done that a couple times too when I’ve watched with iTunes or on G4m). Of course in rewatchings through on demand, G4, or DVDs you don’t get those things either, but it’s somehow more fun to watch when you do have those commercial breaks to add suspense and talk about what’s been going on, as well as have the preview afterwards to speculate about for the next week. But of course the show is still awesome and suspenseful and fun to talk/think about between episodes anyway.
Chapter 8 - Villains
I love Gabriel and Elle. They are extremely sweet together, and they seem good for one another. They seem like they can relate to one another. Elle is so the mother of Noah Grey.
Poor Gabriel feeling so much guilt and so not in control of his abilities at that point, I felt so bad for him. His suicide attempt was so sad, and I am very glad that Elle showed up in time to save him. The way that she was talking to him afterwards really sounds like the sort of things that a person who has been in therapy for a while (and probably been suicidal themselves) would tell someone suicidal. It sounded like how I’ve talked to suicidal friends. That was so sweet that he called her an angel too. I don’t know if there is a name for their ship, but calling it Angel Shipping seems appropriate since they’d both been likened to angels. I’m glad that she held him too, he seemed like he could use a hug then.
Gabriel/Elle completely win my favoritism for ships with both of them. Despite my liking Gabriel/Maya, I like Gabriel/Elle much better.
His favorite pie is peach, that’s really adorable - as was his blushing when talking to Elle and his getting rid of the lists of people with powers and really trying hard to just start over. It was interesting to note that Elle treated Gabriel in a way quite different to how she treated others that she seemed to have feelings for, like Peter. Her feeling towards Gabriel seemed deeper and more honest somehow, even though she was being put up to this by the Company. Her feelings were totally authentic though, in my opinion, from the moment they met. And obviously he seemed to care about her a lot. She probably went into things thinking about just getting her job done, but that changed. I would’ve liked her to have just gone with being a waitress or whatever, like Mr. Bennet suggested. Though, given her want to make her dad proud, that wasn’t going to happen.
Arthur Petrelli wins the award for worst father on Heroes, and that’s really something given how many bad fathers there are on this show. Previously I would have given that title to Maury, but after his admitting to having cared about Matt (which is still weird to me) and having tried to protect him (or something?) I have to saw that Arthur is worse. I mean trying to have your son killed? I don’t believe that the people who chased after Nathan and Heidi were sent by Linderman. I think that was all Arthur’s doing. I felt bad for Angela having her memory so damaged by Arthur. After the way she acted in this episode I think that her favorite son really is Nathan.
It was awesome that Linderman mentioned his famous pot pies again in this episode. Loved that reference.
I’m wondering if Angela’s poisoning of the soup was a nod to the poisoned gazpacho in “Two Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”?
It is not that surprising that Flint is Meredith’s brother. Makes me wonder if siblings often have related powers. I know the writers have said that the powers of the parents don’t determine the power of the child, but it does seem like the siblings we know on the show (that both have powers) do have related abilities. Flint and Meredith with the fire; Peter and Gabriel with the taking on the abilities of others (Nathan doesn’t figure into things as his power was the result of genetic modification); if Alejandro had a power it may have been something that helped to control Maya’s right? I feel like there are others, but I don’t remember who they are at the moment.
That look that Meredith gave after her first tazering looked so much like Claire after she attacked Stephen.
I wonder when Claire will learn that Flint is her uncle? Or if he even knows that he has a niece somewhere?
What a crappy dad Meredith and Flint must have had, though his famous line about God not giving Flint a brain and instead giving him a big sister was funny.
Loved how they worked in that the train accident caused by Meredith was the one that Claire rescued that man from. They were brilliant in this episode with working in shots from the first season and tying things together with such nice continuity.
Elle and Gabriel making baked ziti together was so cute. Everytime I see ziti on a menu now I think of them. They seemed to happy together; it’s too bad that that Trevor guy showed up. I wonder what Elle must have said to him when she called him to invite him? The repeated use of “special” when she was talking about Trevor to Gabriel was sad in you know how much that bothers him and how Elle so did not want to be forcing him to kill again, but at the same time I found myself laughing because she was really finding every possible opportunity to use that word. But I felt horrible for both Elle and Gabriel in the outcome of that evening. What a sad turn of events.
Why do the precogs always have to die? I mean the ones that are authentically precogs, not those who have taken on the ability by other means? And how come they seem so willing to die? Like with Isaac having painted his own death and then just figuring that’s how things are supposed to happen, and then with Usutu, he also seemed like he knew he was going to die when he left Hiro and Ando in the tent. It’s too bad that he got killed though. I liked him, and I was hoping that he’d get to have more fun scenes with Matt.
Chapter 9 -
So I’m glad that Hiro didn’t loose his abilities, but I don’t understand this plot twist of his thinking he is 10 years old. Did they want to give Ando a bigger/more important part, or perhaps give Ando more of a mature and responsible part? Did they feel like Hiro needed to have more comedic stuff to do? Was it, as my brother suggested, that they needed something for Hiro to do while the Hero/Villain fights were going on since they killed off Adam and therefore had no particular villain for Hiro to go up against?
Also, how is it that Hiro is suddenly 28? He was 24 or 25 when the series started, and the chronology of the story only places the events of volume three about one year after the start of the show, so this doesn’t make sense to me. I figured that Ando was slightly older than Hiro, so he could possibly be 28, excepting that now it seems like Hiro and Ando knew each other as little kids and probably were in the same year of school.
I had read that this volume we would somehow see Yaeko in the present day. My brother commented that he hopes that Hiro, thinking he is 10 years old, doesn’t go back to the past and bring Yaeko here on some kind of whim.
I hope that this storyline doesn’t last much longer. I want regular Hiro back.
Isn’t it great how Peter and Nathan have unrealistic ideas of what they’re capable of? Nathan thinking that he can go kick his dad’s ass despite his not having any fighting skills and only having the ability to fly, and now powerless Peter thinking that he can either defend himself or help protect Claire? Well, he did actually help out Claire with the trick with the pipes but otherwise, I don’t think he would do very well in a fight without his powers.
Yay for Peter and Claire having more interactions with one another though. It was sweet how Peter was trying to stop Claire from becoming a killer, and how she wants to protect him.
Poor mutated biker guy. Is he another person that Mohinder deemed as “bad” and therefore brought in as a test subject, similar to the guy who was beating his wife and the drug dealer? Or was he someone that Pinehurst just supplied Mohinder with?
Glad that Arthur didn’t reprimand Gabriel for saving Peter’s life. Interesting approach at bringing out Gabriel’s empathy, putting him in a room with Elle - by the way, did they just take away Elle’s jacket and lock her up in that room as soon as she walked in the doors? I’m sure that’s not what she was expecting when she went in there looking for help.
Can I say again how much I love Gabriel and Elle? The scenes with them together have been my favorites of the last two episodes. They are so completely well matched for one another.
Gabriel was so good with Elle when she was distraught over her father’s murder and she kept trying to kill him. He was patient and soothing in a way, and really helped her work through the want for vengeance. She really did need someone to tell her that she could be forgiven and that she wasn’t a monster. They both seem to understand what the other is going through, they seem to relate really well. Their connecting on the immense pressure and feelings of inadequacy that their parents (well, her dad and his mom) put on them resonated with me with regard to my dad.
That was so touching when Gabriel was able to heal Elle’s out of control abilities, and gain her ability without hurting her. The realization of what had just happened, and Gabriel’s tears, that almost got me crying as well.
I really like that both of them have realized that they are good people and that they don’t have to keep doing the bad things that they have been doing. I’m glad that they’ve found one another - and are on good terms again. I really didn’t know how they would get back to that point again after Bob’s murder, but I’m glad that it’s happened.
Gabriel’s pathetic electric bolts were adorable! It was so cute how Elle was giving him lessons in how to use the power. Gabriel’s blushing during this scene was additionally adorable.
However, not adorable at all was Arthur watching all this on his creepy monitor of creepiness!! That’s just not right at all.
Back to Elle and Gabriel though, was that just fan service earlier when Gabriel’s shirt was being burned off? My brother noted that if he had been Captain Kirk there would have been like one little zap and the entire shirt would have been blasted away.
I will be very surprised if Elle is not the mother of Noah.
How did Usutu appear to Matt? Does his spirit still have some sort of connection to Matt or something? In any case, I’m glad that Daphne authentically cares for Matt, and that was really sweet with her entering into Matt and Angela’s thoughts and telling Matt that she loves him. Was Angela right that she and Arthur once really did love each other? It’s hard to imagine that. Do we know how Arthur can enter people’s dreams/thoughts? And also, doesn’t it really seem like Angela has a persuasive voice in addition to the dream power? There are so many things that she has done throughout the three volumes that point to that - or maybe she is just persuasive without having any special ability for that.
Going back to an earlier scene with Arthur, that was great how Nathan kept on shaking his hand off his shoulder and not giving him a hug. I figured that had Nathan been in Peter’s position a few episodes back, he so would not have hugged their dad. However, I don’t get Tracey. Is she just power hungry and doesn’t really care about anyone? Or is she pretending to go for Arthur’s plan in order to help Nathan? Somehow I think that it’s the first bet and it turns out it’s her in the premonitory dream Angela had of the villains earlier this season. But if that’s the case, are we going to meet Barbara this volume? Or ever? I had kinda figured that Barbara would turn out to be the villainous one.
So who’s putting out the Japanese 9th Wonder comics? Are they just left over issues of Isaac’s work? Or is there a Japanese precog that we haven’t met yet? Or some other explanation? In any case, it was fun to have Hiro looking around a comic shop.
Claire is the catalyst? I guess maybe we’re going to have a variation on “Save the cheerleader, save the world” then. I’m not sure if Arthur has realized this, or if he just sent Knox and Flint after her because he wants his granddaughter on his side. Or maybe he was thinking that the catalyst had to be a Petrelli and he had checked out his three sons (sitcom potential!) and none of them were the catalyst, so he thought it must be someone else. Though, I’m not sure if he knows about Claire being his granddaughter. Maybe he knew that Kaito was involved in being the hander-off of Claire and so he thought he might have injected Claire or done whatever it was to turn her into the catalyst?
It seems we now have our “teams” of heroes and villains now. However, it seems really weird to have Angela on a team of heroes, and obviously Gabriel and Elle are not villains, so things are not clear-cut - which is good. I don’t want things to be clearly defined as good/evil. It makes things far less interesting.
BTW, Elle looked completely adorable when she peaked her head into the room of villains. I cannot express how much I love her and Gabriel together. Honestly, they’re just so freakin sweet together!
This episode I watched on demand, and it is so strange seeing an episode 1. Without any commercials (though for some of volume 1 I watched that way, via iTunes or G4) and 2. without a preview at the end (I’ve done that a couple times too when I’ve watched with iTunes or on G4m). Of course in rewatchings through on demand, G4, or DVDs you don’t get those things either, but it’s somehow more fun to watch when you do have those commercial breaks to add suspense and talk about what’s been going on, as well as have the preview afterwards to speculate about for the next week. But of course the show is still awesome and suspenseful and fun to talk/think about between episodes anyway.