‘Heroes’: An odd couple and Noah/HRG
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Finding out HRG’s history, Noah Bennett’s back story, has been one of the mysteries surrounding ‘Heroes’ for three seasons now. Like Wolverine, knowing his history may not make him any less dangerous, but knowing how far he’s willing to go might make you step easy around him.
Would’ve been great to see, but we got nothing! Only five weeks back?!? Maybe it was just me, but I wanted to see more and was a bit disappointed. We keep hearing about Noah’s 20+ years of experience taking down people with powers, so it would’ve been nice to see some of that while Matt Parkman was rooting around in his head. OK, over it now.
Ex-roommates Mohinder Suresh and Matt are like a superpowered odd couple. Can’t say who’s Felix and who’s Oscar, but they fight like brothers, with Peter as the cool-headed referee. When Pete is like this, cool under pressure and totally willing to use his powers, he’s a great character. When he’s too unsure and overthinking things, he flounders.
Anyway ... good idea to kidnap Noah. You know he knows something. With all of the fuss they made, I thought it might’ve been harder for Matt to get into his head, but with or without the drugs, he plowed right through to get to the origins of Noah and Nathan’s plans. The breaking up of Primatech, Noah’s quick retirement, and his decision to join Nathan and the Hunter in hunting down the super-powered were all revealed through Matt’s mental probe.
Two semi-desperate moves from Matt, though. Sending Peter to the storage unit was fine. They needed weapons, money and info (and who thinks the 7957 lock combination means anything?). But sending Matt to nab the Hunter, alone, with Peter having only his flying ability, was not smart. Peter almost got caught, Nathan was almost outed, and it left the odd couple alone for too long.
It seemed that when Noah began speaking in another language, maybe he’d begun thinking in another language to throw Matt off. Turned out, it was just something thrown in? Weird. Matt’s last two bits of info extracted from Noah cost them, though. First, that Mohinder was contacted by Noah and knew the government would be coming. ‘I didn’t know what to do!’ Argh! Mohinder is a coward, but he did throw Matt across the room in their little skirmish. HRG escaped, Peter got him back. Then Matt got the comic book news: Daphne is still alive! Nobody dies in comics (we’ll see about Captain America), and it seems the speedster is alive and in custody after being shot multiple times. Super-fast metabolism/healing might’ve helped. Matt’s surprised and happy, but that’s when the soldiers come after tranquilizing Mohinder. They’re done for....
But in swoops Peter and his flash grenades to save Matt. We last see that HRG is still in cahoots with Angela Petrelli somehow, and mentions that he’s ‘comfortable with being morally gray.’ Don’t know what these two are up to, but that was a great line.
Can’t think of the last time that an episode focused on one storyline for the entire hour. Yes, many of the characters were in it, so it didn’t have to jump around, but it was kind of refreshing. Zeljko Ivanek as the Hunter is great, and like Jack Coleman, he plays it with so much conviction. We didn’t miss Hiro and Ando at all, or Claire and aqua guy Alex. Sylar is always missed, but we’ll live. It was all good stuff, then we got to the end.
Critics constantly talk about how ‘Heroes’ keeps the same elements, and that those don’t always work. So we end the episode with Matt Parkman surrounded by paintings of the future and a mural of Washington in flames. All too familiar as Isaac’s loft and paintings. Not saying that it won’t work in making a fun direction for our heroes, just saying that it’s been done. And within this very show. So hopefully the show shapers will be careful and throw some twists in there.
-- Jevon Phillips
