Heroes: I Am Sam I Am Become Is Death!

October 06 2008 23:01 Filed in: Television
heroessamiambecome
Okay, that’s not really the title of the episode. This week was actually I Am Become Death. Yes, that’s the episode’s true title and not the alleged result of high junior high students promoted to high school under the “No Child Left Behind” program. The title refers to the utter flippin’ mess Peter Petrelli is making of things by flitting back and forth between the future and the present. Having chastised his future self for nearly killing Nathan by shooting him in the season 2 finale, present Peter actually does the deed for real in the future by slicing Nathan’s skull off Sylar-style.

Now that we’ve come to learn more about Sylar’s powers and have learned that his “hunger” is part of the package the character suddenly gets more interesting. And now that Peter has the power, it’s suddenly starting to at least generate something resembling intrigue again.
As much as I hate to admit it, I would have to say that I almost liked I Am Become Death. Once again, a continued improvement in the first three weeks of the program is starting to generate some hope for the program.

However, back to reality. The show is still mired in the mess that has been created with the advent of going super-power crazy. Virtually every episode since early in season two we have one or more scenes with gaping plot holes deliberately ignored because of the ability-plot-nightmare bag that’s been opened up.

Ultimately, both future Claire and future Peter are pretty uninteresting, cheesy, cardboard villains in the scope of the plot. I guess that’s okay considering they are acting more of a vision or warning of what is to come, but as soon as you start weaving them as characters into the plot they really start to fall apart and become somewhat puerile. This actually leaves future “Ward Cleaver” Sylar as perhaps the most interesting of the bunch.

In any case, we have the key moment this week with the confrontation in Sylar’s home with Evil Claire and crew tracking down Peter to kill him. Here we go. We have a stand off where Peter conveniently forgets that he has the power to bend or stop space and time. Even speedster Daphne at least slows to a crawl when Hiro attempts the trick earlier this season. This is a real bitch of a power to give one character, much less multiple characters. It looms like a giant pimple on the face of the episode when the entire critical mass of the plot hinged on the writers conveniently ignoring the fact that Peter could have ended the stand-off with no problem. This, along with suddenly-boring Mohinder “Brundlefly” Suresh and that go-nowhere sub-plot is still like a anvil weighting down this show from really making some sort of return to respectability.

I don’t think Heroes can fully recover from these issues unless the writers own pony up to these problems, address them head on and start plugging these plot holes up. If there’s any way to do this in a reasonable manner, maybe the series has some hope for at least an entertaining run for season 3.

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