'Heroes': The Butterfly Effect

The first hour of Monday night's premiere of "Heroes" -- The Second Coming -- has been reviewed and analzyed.  No need to go back into it, though it is amazing that by putting a character (namely Parkman) off-center in the frame and adding a sound effect, telepathy is born!  So simple, but I digress.  Monday night, it was all about "Heroes'" second hour, "The Butterfly Effect."

As the name implies, someone does something in the past that causes ripples into the future.  It's Peter Petrelli again, but we'll call him Future Peter.  By coming back in time and shooting his brother Nathan to avert some horrible future (yes, he was the mysterious assailant) and telling Claire not to go to Odessa, he put into motion a string of events that could lead to an even worse catastrophe.  He may even have something to do with the mysterious Linderman returning to Nathan's head. Like their own mom says, Peter's just not very smart.

Sylar finds Claire and gets her invulnerability.  If she'd been away from the house, it wouldn't have happened, Peter! The spookiness of this scene was great. A stalking Sylar, a powerful Sylar, a ... funny Sylar.  Claire: 'Are you gonna eat it?'  Sylar: 'Your brain? ... Claire, that's disgusting.' He takes her head off, grabs a bit of brain, but for some reason doesn't kill her.  Is it because he's fascinated with her immortality?  Yes, she, like Adam Monroe, will apparently live somewhere close to forever.  If your cells can constantly regenerate, how can you die or even age normally?  This thought, plus the fact that Sylar turned off her pain receptors, messes with Claire. "If you can't feel anything, do you really have a soul?"  Deep.

In covering up his identity, Future Peter also took out Matt and Present Peter.  Matt's in Africa, apparently meeting an African version of Issac Mendez. ("You're American? ... Do you know Britney Spears?"  Classic.)  This could end up being this season's "Hiro-in-Japan" storyline, so I hope it's interesting and that it wraps up quick.  Same with the "Present-Peter-in-Jesse" side story.  As a "Veronica Mars" fan, I like Francis Capra, but get Present Peter out in a few episodes and let Jesse be evil.

Speaking of Hiro, he's off again, this time with Ando in tow.  His "secret-formula" storyline may cross over with Mohinder's "powers-in-a-bottle" routine, but it's not as compelling.  Hiro's reparteé with speedster Daphne and apprehension toward best friend Ando are fun, but we'll have to see where and how far this goes.  Mohinder and Maya?  Very interesting. Maya should realize that her last relationship didn't go so well (after Sylar shot her) and tread lightly.  Mohinder is crazy.  Just plain shooting-up-strange-substances-on-the-pier crazy, and now he has Spider-Man-like powers and is shedding skin.

The main storyline and easily the most interesting is the escape of the 12 villains from Level 5 of the Company.  This is where the digestible conflict will happen and this is why many will tune in.  Angela Petrelli's future vision of all the heroes dead and the villains' triumphant was chilling, and Bob became the season's first casualty.

Time out.  The villains in the vision were led by an icy (literally) Tracy Strauss, who was Ali Larter's  Niki Sanders last season before being blown up in New Orleans.  One day, can someone please explain her powers?  It's easy to say she's a person with multiple-personality disorder where each personaiity has different abilities, but ... well, maybe that's just it.  OK, time in.

With Kristen Bell, Cristine Rose, Jack Coleman and Zachary Quinto ("Look what your daddy used to be able to do") chewing up scenes until the inevitable big get-together, the roundup will be some great stuff for the writers to play with. Too bad HRG is keeping Claire out of it, but reintroducing her biological fire-starter mom is a good touch.  Sadly, her appearance is like having the extra crewman beam down to the surface with Kirk, Spock and Bones.  We'll leave it at that.

A good start.  Getting into the villains, especially when they are as uninhibited by morality as these guys are, will be fun.  We await the return of Monica and Micah as well!

-- Jevon Phillips

P.S. = Oh yeah, Angela is Sylar's mom!?!?   We'll explore that later.

Photo credits: Associated Press / NBC.com

Comments

[Peter]

Maybe Ron Moore should take Tim Kring before a WGA arbitration board and demand a co-writing credit for last night's Hero episodes. Nathan Petrelli = Gaius Baltar. "I was saved by God, God has a mission for me, I will attain political office and I talk to someone inside my head." Worse, Moore & James Callis did it better than Kring and Adrian Pasdar.

[oakmonster]

I'm not going into details here, but Sylar taking Claire's ability scene was extra dose of creepy. It's like a rape...of the brain. Reactions included. And Claire came out of it much like what her mom was wondering, "Did he...?"

*shudder*

[C W Oberleitner]

Was it just me or were virtually all of Mohinder's scenes right out of Jeff Goldblum's "The Fly."

I found that whole sequence to be very derivative.

Additionally, aside from a few of Sylar's snarkier remarks and the intriguing bushman who saves Matt, the whole show seems every bit as flat and unimaginative as I remember it being before the strike.

[Leslie]

I'm curious to know about The Haitian. I love his mysterious character! And I can't wait to find out how Angela is Sylar's mom! I thought she may have been playing a mind game on him or something.

[Ceres]

I can't seem to get that scene with the woman being burnt to death by one of the level 5 villains out of my head. Very disturbing.

And did Sylar really take away Claire's ability to feel? I vaguely remember him exclaiming something like.."Interesting, no nerve endings..." or such when he was examining her brain.