Heroes Report - Volume 3, Episode 12
I'm running behind on my episode reports for the last two episodes of volume three of Heroes. So, I'm trying to catch up before the premier of volume four which starts in three hours and twenty minutes (!!! \(^.^)/ <--- kind of a Hiro emoticon, right?). Behind this cut is my report for episode 12.
Chapter 12 - “Out Father”
After the previous episode I spent quite a lot of time looking up spoilers to try to figure out if Elle was actually dead and going to stay dead. This was the first time that I had done this for a Heroes episode as usually, despite my wanting to know what happened right away, I refrain from looking up spoilers and am able to just wait until next time to find out. I came across lots of interesting theories on why/how Elle wasn’t really dead or how she was going to come back, and to me anyway, several of these seemed definitely possible.
So, I wanted to see the episode begin with the Gabriel and Elle storyline, but it didn’t. However, I thought that the opening interactions with Hiro and Claire were interesting. Actually the scenes in the past (well, most of them) were my favorites this episode. More on that in a little bit.
It was disappointing that Gabriel actually did kill Elle, and from what I’ve been able to find on the internet, Elle was killed off because of scheduling conflicts, that is, Kristen Bell was going to be busy with films, etc. for a while and they didn’t know when she could come back and so they decided that this would be the “most dramatic” way to have her leave the show. I’ve got a couple of issues with this: 1. Couldn’t they just have Elle disappear for a while and then return when Kristen Bell had time? They could have had Elle do some stuff in the graphic novels and be working on something really important to the plot, or just had her be in hiding while she’s pregnant or something. Greg Beeman said in his blog that Kristen Bell and Tim Kring had talked about pregnancy for Elle, and obviously that was heavily hinted at with the glimpse of the future and poor little Noah. There are so many off camera things she could be up to. 2. This wasn’t the most dramatic way to kill her off; she could have been killed trying to save Gabriel’s life, for example, thus sending him off into his killing ways which seems to be what they wanted anyway. I think that having a heartbroken, grieving, revenging seeking angry Gabriel would have been a much more dramatic turn of events than what they went with. There was also all this speculation amongst fans studying the photo that leaked of Gabriel pouring the kerosene on Elle which centered on the fact that he had her leg, the injured leg, propped up on a branch/log and some fans were thinking that he put it up to try and help her, using the disinfecting properties of kerosene instead of using it as fuel for burning her body. Some fans also though that he hadn’t killed her at the end of the previous episode, but was trying to make her think that he had in order to push her away from him for her safety - which he had tried to do during the episode, earlier on, a couple of times. Another theory was that he did kill her, but regretted it and was going to use his blood (now with the healing blood power) to bring her back to life.
Going into the episode though, I had decided that if he did actually kill her, I wanted to see him really upset because I cannot believe that he didn’t love her. I still don’t understand why he killed her. I mean, she was probably hiding the information about his parents which she had come across in his file, and some people think that he was still upset about her involvement in the turning him into a monster thing - but he told her he forgave her, and I really do believe that he did. So that really doesn’t make sense. He did seem depressed in the scene where he was getting ready to burn her body, and the sad touching her arm and saying goodbye does show that he did care about/love her, and the irritation with the interrupting call from Arthur too, and the glazed over look in his eyes as he watched her burn, and the fact that he didn’t just leave her body there like he has done with his other victims. Though, I would have rather it had not been such a finalizing thing, I’m not sure how people on that show (so far anyway) can bring the dead back from ashes.
I loved Gabriel and Elle together. They quickly became one of my favorite fictional couples. They were so perfect for each other and understood each other in ways that I don’t think any other character could. Both of them had been so misunderstood, badly treated, and lonely, for so long, and they both seemed like they wanted to try to start over together, to be good and live the way they wanted to, not the way that other people kept trying to tell them they should. And they could have done that together, and that would have been really interesting, and seeing them as parents would have been fantastic. Little Noah seemed like a really sweet kid - and they better not decide that Elle wasn’t the mother, because she so was. That kid looked a lot like her and made expressions like her as well. I want that future to happen. It’s depressing that it won’t, most likely. Though I have been thinking, hey, maybe Gabriel could get the power to see dead people and be haunted by Elle. I mean, it seems that Matt can see Usutu somehow - NOT that I want Gabriel to kill Matt, but he could empathically get that power maybe, or maybe Molly’s power could develop into being able to communicate with the dead and Gabriel could be empathically linked to her, he seems to somewhat care about her as he has had many opportunities to kill her in the past and hasn’t tried to. Though, it’s kind of unlikely that she would be up for that since he killed her parents, though who knows what might happen in the future.
You know, at first I thought that maybe Tracy was going to be an interesting character, but I don’t really care that much about her. It’s too bad that it doesn’t seem that likely that they’ll bring Niki back. I liked Niki. And Jessica. Though Gina can stay away. Maybe they can make Tracy more interesting. Maybe.
I loved the scenes with Claire with her parents and baby Claire in the past. Her lie to Sandra about being the niece of their neighbors was surprisingly very convincing. I was proud of Claire for coming up with that. They did a good job making Mr. and Mrs. Bennet look 16 years younger. I wonder who this boy is that Claire warned baby Claire against sharing her juice with in the 5th grade? I also wonder if present day Mr. Bennet remembers meeting Claire in the past. Sandra wouldn’t because of having her memories wiped, I’m assuming. Mr. Bennet totally figured out that Claire was the teenage version of his new baby, or so it seemed by the way he kept looking between the two of them - that is, once they started talking more and moved beyond his freaking out that she was sent there by someone who wanted to take or hurt baby Claire. He also seemed glad to know that Claire would live to be a teenager. I liked that Claire suggested the nickname of Claire-bear. I’m not totally sure if it was a good or bad thing that Mr. Bennet listened to teenage Claire about not answering the phone and thereby not letting Claire become the Catalyst - that is, in terms of the overall plot. It was a good thing that he trusted and believed teenage Claire enough to not answer the phone.
Poor Hiro. I really liked the stuff with him and his parents and his young self, though it was sad. I totally had not guessed that his mother was a healer, and it’s interesting that she healed in a different way, via kissing rather than Linderman’s touch or Claire/Adam’s healing blood. I wonder how many other ways there are to heal others? Hiro’s mother seemed like such a lovely person, very caring and gentle, and it’s good that she always believed in Hiro. I bet the two of them were close. I’m glad that she and Hiro got some time alone together, and that she knew that he was her son grown up, and that she healed him so he was able to be his own age again. It was nice and heartbreaking at the same time that Hiro was given the opportunity to tell his mother about some of the things that he’s done since she died. It made me think about my own mother quite a lot. It’s too bad that there wasn’t a way to save her. I do wonder what made her so sick though. I guess there are limitations to what a healer can heal? Or maybe healers can’t heal themselves?
I really wanted Hiro to be able to keep his word to his mother and keep the light safe. Stupid Arthur had to come in and screw all that up; making it that Hiro couldn’t protect the light and thereby making him unable to carry out his mother’s final wish. Why do they have to keep adding more things to make Hiro feel regretful and increase the tragedy in his life?
Arthur is probably my least favorite character on the show. As my aunt, who is also a fan, pointed out, he makes Angela look good, and that’s really saying something. Still, I don’t like Angela particularly, but I do like her a lot better than Arthur. The only thing that I liked about him was that he pushed Gabriel to use empathy to gain powers and that he shipped Gabriel/Elle. However, I still don’t get why he did either of those things.
Back to Gabriel: I totally thought that he was not going to kill the lady with the truth detection power. I mean, why kill when he knows that he can take the power through empathy? When he locked them in the office together I was thinking, “oh, he’s going to get to know her, try to feel empathy towards her, and get the power that way”. It was disappointing that he did kill her, and even more disappointing that he then presumably killed the people who brought cake. He has said in previous episodes, starting with season 1’s “The Hard Part” that he doesn’t want to kill people. Especially not when there is no gain for him. I guess in that instance he felt he had to kill them because they were witnesses, but that doesn’t explain why he killed the woman in the first place. Also, he’s really a clever person and he could have easily and quickly told the people with the cake that he found the woman that way and was trying to help her. After all that character development this past volume, you’d think they’d let more of it stick.
I thought that the conversation Nathan had with that one marine was interesting. You could see why Nathan thought that giving him a power would be a good thing.
Liked the bonding between Peter and the Haitian. I wonder if Peter will be getting his power sometime in the future.
It was kind of fun having Daphne use her speedster power to take Ando and Matt to New York. What I don’t understand though is was the messenger guy they talked to the same guy that Isaac gave his sketchbook to? If he wasn’t, it seems really OOC for that guy to have just left the sketchbook in a storeroom when he was such a huge fan. Also, why didn’t Matt just use his power to force the guy to give them the book rather than trusting that he actually would go back there and bring it to them?
I thought that the using of the catalyst would have been more than just putting your hands on the vat of formula and using some sort of something to transfer it or whatever to the formula.
It was good that Gabriel stopped Peter from killing Arthur. Both because it prevented Peter from becoming a killer, and also because it showed that Gabriel still cares about Peter, even if he isn’t his brother. So, it additionally shows us that all is not lost with Gabriel’s development this past volume since he still was trying to do some good. Very interesting that the Haitian couldn’t hold back the powers of Arthur and Gabriel at the same time though.
By the way, even after it was found out that Arthur was not Gabriel’s real father, I still expected that Angela was really his mother. We know that Angela cheated on Arthur at some point(s?) so it wouldn’t have been that surprising that he was still her son.
Returning to the subject of Gabriel and Elle: since I was so upset by Gabriel’s seeming to have killed her at the end of the previous episode, I wrote in a question to CBR’s Behind the Eclipse. Behind the Eclipse is a feature that the Comic Book Review’s website has each week when Heroes is running new episodes (and there was some during last summer to make up for it having stopped during the writer’s strike) in which they select a few fan questions for two of the Heroes writers to answer each week. I’d never sent in a question before, but I really wanted to know if Gabriel killing Elle meant that he would be returning to being totally or would he stay on the path of being morally grey. I also wanted them to know how much I loved the redemption arc and the Gabriel/Elle relationship. Much to my surprise, they selected my question to start the week off. Take a look. My question, and another one that had to do with Elle and Gabriel got quoted then on a Zachary Quinto and Kristen Bell fansite here.
Chapter 12 - “Out Father”
After the previous episode I spent quite a lot of time looking up spoilers to try to figure out if Elle was actually dead and going to stay dead. This was the first time that I had done this for a Heroes episode as usually, despite my wanting to know what happened right away, I refrain from looking up spoilers and am able to just wait until next time to find out. I came across lots of interesting theories on why/how Elle wasn’t really dead or how she was going to come back, and to me anyway, several of these seemed definitely possible.
So, I wanted to see the episode begin with the Gabriel and Elle storyline, but it didn’t. However, I thought that the opening interactions with Hiro and Claire were interesting. Actually the scenes in the past (well, most of them) were my favorites this episode. More on that in a little bit.
It was disappointing that Gabriel actually did kill Elle, and from what I’ve been able to find on the internet, Elle was killed off because of scheduling conflicts, that is, Kristen Bell was going to be busy with films, etc. for a while and they didn’t know when she could come back and so they decided that this would be the “most dramatic” way to have her leave the show. I’ve got a couple of issues with this: 1. Couldn’t they just have Elle disappear for a while and then return when Kristen Bell had time? They could have had Elle do some stuff in the graphic novels and be working on something really important to the plot, or just had her be in hiding while she’s pregnant or something. Greg Beeman said in his blog that Kristen Bell and Tim Kring had talked about pregnancy for Elle, and obviously that was heavily hinted at with the glimpse of the future and poor little Noah. There are so many off camera things she could be up to. 2. This wasn’t the most dramatic way to kill her off; she could have been killed trying to save Gabriel’s life, for example, thus sending him off into his killing ways which seems to be what they wanted anyway. I think that having a heartbroken, grieving, revenging seeking angry Gabriel would have been a much more dramatic turn of events than what they went with. There was also all this speculation amongst fans studying the photo that leaked of Gabriel pouring the kerosene on Elle which centered on the fact that he had her leg, the injured leg, propped up on a branch/log and some fans were thinking that he put it up to try and help her, using the disinfecting properties of kerosene instead of using it as fuel for burning her body. Some fans also though that he hadn’t killed her at the end of the previous episode, but was trying to make her think that he had in order to push her away from him for her safety - which he had tried to do during the episode, earlier on, a couple of times. Another theory was that he did kill her, but regretted it and was going to use his blood (now with the healing blood power) to bring her back to life.
Going into the episode though, I had decided that if he did actually kill her, I wanted to see him really upset because I cannot believe that he didn’t love her. I still don’t understand why he killed her. I mean, she was probably hiding the information about his parents which she had come across in his file, and some people think that he was still upset about her involvement in the turning him into a monster thing - but he told her he forgave her, and I really do believe that he did. So that really doesn’t make sense. He did seem depressed in the scene where he was getting ready to burn her body, and the sad touching her arm and saying goodbye does show that he did care about/love her, and the irritation with the interrupting call from Arthur too, and the glazed over look in his eyes as he watched her burn, and the fact that he didn’t just leave her body there like he has done with his other victims. Though, I would have rather it had not been such a finalizing thing, I’m not sure how people on that show (so far anyway) can bring the dead back from ashes.
I loved Gabriel and Elle together. They quickly became one of my favorite fictional couples. They were so perfect for each other and understood each other in ways that I don’t think any other character could. Both of them had been so misunderstood, badly treated, and lonely, for so long, and they both seemed like they wanted to try to start over together, to be good and live the way they wanted to, not the way that other people kept trying to tell them they should. And they could have done that together, and that would have been really interesting, and seeing them as parents would have been fantastic. Little Noah seemed like a really sweet kid - and they better not decide that Elle wasn’t the mother, because she so was. That kid looked a lot like her and made expressions like her as well. I want that future to happen. It’s depressing that it won’t, most likely. Though I have been thinking, hey, maybe Gabriel could get the power to see dead people and be haunted by Elle. I mean, it seems that Matt can see Usutu somehow - NOT that I want Gabriel to kill Matt, but he could empathically get that power maybe, or maybe Molly’s power could develop into being able to communicate with the dead and Gabriel could be empathically linked to her, he seems to somewhat care about her as he has had many opportunities to kill her in the past and hasn’t tried to. Though, it’s kind of unlikely that she would be up for that since he killed her parents, though who knows what might happen in the future.
You know, at first I thought that maybe Tracy was going to be an interesting character, but I don’t really care that much about her. It’s too bad that it doesn’t seem that likely that they’ll bring Niki back. I liked Niki. And Jessica. Though Gina can stay away. Maybe they can make Tracy more interesting. Maybe.
I loved the scenes with Claire with her parents and baby Claire in the past. Her lie to Sandra about being the niece of their neighbors was surprisingly very convincing. I was proud of Claire for coming up with that. They did a good job making Mr. and Mrs. Bennet look 16 years younger. I wonder who this boy is that Claire warned baby Claire against sharing her juice with in the 5th grade? I also wonder if present day Mr. Bennet remembers meeting Claire in the past. Sandra wouldn’t because of having her memories wiped, I’m assuming. Mr. Bennet totally figured out that Claire was the teenage version of his new baby, or so it seemed by the way he kept looking between the two of them - that is, once they started talking more and moved beyond his freaking out that she was sent there by someone who wanted to take or hurt baby Claire. He also seemed glad to know that Claire would live to be a teenager. I liked that Claire suggested the nickname of Claire-bear. I’m not totally sure if it was a good or bad thing that Mr. Bennet listened to teenage Claire about not answering the phone and thereby not letting Claire become the Catalyst - that is, in terms of the overall plot. It was a good thing that he trusted and believed teenage Claire enough to not answer the phone.
Poor Hiro. I really liked the stuff with him and his parents and his young self, though it was sad. I totally had not guessed that his mother was a healer, and it’s interesting that she healed in a different way, via kissing rather than Linderman’s touch or Claire/Adam’s healing blood. I wonder how many other ways there are to heal others? Hiro’s mother seemed like such a lovely person, very caring and gentle, and it’s good that she always believed in Hiro. I bet the two of them were close. I’m glad that she and Hiro got some time alone together, and that she knew that he was her son grown up, and that she healed him so he was able to be his own age again. It was nice and heartbreaking at the same time that Hiro was given the opportunity to tell his mother about some of the things that he’s done since she died. It made me think about my own mother quite a lot. It’s too bad that there wasn’t a way to save her. I do wonder what made her so sick though. I guess there are limitations to what a healer can heal? Or maybe healers can’t heal themselves?
I really wanted Hiro to be able to keep his word to his mother and keep the light safe. Stupid Arthur had to come in and screw all that up; making it that Hiro couldn’t protect the light and thereby making him unable to carry out his mother’s final wish. Why do they have to keep adding more things to make Hiro feel regretful and increase the tragedy in his life?
Arthur is probably my least favorite character on the show. As my aunt, who is also a fan, pointed out, he makes Angela look good, and that’s really saying something. Still, I don’t like Angela particularly, but I do like her a lot better than Arthur. The only thing that I liked about him was that he pushed Gabriel to use empathy to gain powers and that he shipped Gabriel/Elle. However, I still don’t get why he did either of those things.
Back to Gabriel: I totally thought that he was not going to kill the lady with the truth detection power. I mean, why kill when he knows that he can take the power through empathy? When he locked them in the office together I was thinking, “oh, he’s going to get to know her, try to feel empathy towards her, and get the power that way”. It was disappointing that he did kill her, and even more disappointing that he then presumably killed the people who brought cake. He has said in previous episodes, starting with season 1’s “The Hard Part” that he doesn’t want to kill people. Especially not when there is no gain for him. I guess in that instance he felt he had to kill them because they were witnesses, but that doesn’t explain why he killed the woman in the first place. Also, he’s really a clever person and he could have easily and quickly told the people with the cake that he found the woman that way and was trying to help her. After all that character development this past volume, you’d think they’d let more of it stick.
I thought that the conversation Nathan had with that one marine was interesting. You could see why Nathan thought that giving him a power would be a good thing.
Liked the bonding between Peter and the Haitian. I wonder if Peter will be getting his power sometime in the future.
It was kind of fun having Daphne use her speedster power to take Ando and Matt to New York. What I don’t understand though is was the messenger guy they talked to the same guy that Isaac gave his sketchbook to? If he wasn’t, it seems really OOC for that guy to have just left the sketchbook in a storeroom when he was such a huge fan. Also, why didn’t Matt just use his power to force the guy to give them the book rather than trusting that he actually would go back there and bring it to them?
I thought that the using of the catalyst would have been more than just putting your hands on the vat of formula and using some sort of something to transfer it or whatever to the formula.
It was good that Gabriel stopped Peter from killing Arthur. Both because it prevented Peter from becoming a killer, and also because it showed that Gabriel still cares about Peter, even if he isn’t his brother. So, it additionally shows us that all is not lost with Gabriel’s development this past volume since he still was trying to do some good. Very interesting that the Haitian couldn’t hold back the powers of Arthur and Gabriel at the same time though.
By the way, even after it was found out that Arthur was not Gabriel’s real father, I still expected that Angela was really his mother. We know that Angela cheated on Arthur at some point(s?) so it wouldn’t have been that surprising that he was still her son.
Returning to the subject of Gabriel and Elle: since I was so upset by Gabriel’s seeming to have killed her at the end of the previous episode, I wrote in a question to CBR’s Behind the Eclipse. Behind the Eclipse is a feature that the Comic Book Review’s website has each week when Heroes is running new episodes (and there was some during last summer to make up for it having stopped during the writer’s strike) in which they select a few fan questions for two of the Heroes writers to answer each week. I’d never sent in a question before, but I really wanted to know if Gabriel killing Elle meant that he would be returning to being totally or would he stay on the path of being morally grey. I also wanted them to know how much I loved the redemption arc and the Gabriel/Elle relationship. Much to my surprise, they selected my question to start the week off. Take a look. My question, and another one that had to do with Elle and Gabriel got quoted then on a Zachary Quinto and Kristen Bell fansite here.