3x08 - "Villains" **SPOILERS**

Overheal

Summary:

Hiro follows Arthut Petrelli into the past to find out what drove him to create Pinehearst; Following the arrival of her volatile brother, Meredith watches her new life collapse.

Overheal

Could have been better, could have been worse. It did bring back something I liked from the first season, how they find interesting ways to intertwine the people in the story.

monkeyfudge

I thought it was very good.

A less frantic pace than normal. They have a lot of very good actors on the show and this week they seemed to give them room to actually act.

Also... I miss Peter's bangs.

Nervous Wreck

Overheal wrote: »

It did bring back something I liked from the first season, how they find interesting ways to intertwine the people in the story.

I missed that yeah. It was a pretty good episode but not as good as the first time they did that kinda thing in "Six Months Ago". I didn't much like the approach they took to Sylar's (reinvented?) backstory. It seems like they just kinda fluffed that to further their new story-arch about him really being good underneath it all. Don't get me wrong, I know that was always a theme with him but it was much better played out in "The Hard Part" with Sylar's interactions with his mother. They're kinda labouring the point now...

monkeyfudge wrote: »

A less frantic pace than normal.

Defo helped to take a breather alright.

monkeyfudge wrote: »

Also... I miss Peter's bangs.

Haha, agreed!

I really really liked Usutu, I'm quite annoyed that he's dead! Also, if Hiro doesn't manage to teleport out before Arthur steals his power, it's gonna lead to the kinda buzz of 'if you kill him, all his stolen powers go back to the people he got them from' which is kinda lame....

monkeyfudge

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

I really really liked Usutu, I'm quite annoyed that he's dead! Also, if Hiro doesn't manage to teleport out before Arthur steals his power, it's gonna lead to the kinda buzz of 'if you kill him, all his stolen powers go back to the people he got them from' which is kinda lame....

I'd say there's a good chance that Hiro is still in the spirit realm or what have you and Arthur has forced his way into his mind.

newbie2

I enjoyed the episode. I'll be interested to see ghow hiro gets out of the pickle he's in. I don't think he's dreaming though. I'd say Ando 'becomes a hero' by smacking peters da over the head with a shovel or something crap like that.

tvnutz

I probably enjoyed this episode more than any of the others this season. Some good backstories on several characters and I liked how they intertwined scenes in this episode with scenes from season 1.

Sylar's backstory does seem forced for some reason,maybe because we only know him as an evil SOB and now they are trying to make him partly good,and its "the hunger" that makes him evil. I am not sure why it is feeling so forced though,because in season 1 there were scenes where they indicated Sylar had a conscience,that he regretted what he was doing. One was the episode with his mother,the other was that he didn't want to blow up New York, at first anyway. And there was also that scene in early season 1 before we Zachary Quinto was even cast where we see Sylar's apartment it is has the words "Forgive Me" written all over the walls. So there have been indications that he has a soul,but for some reason this Sylar going good arc still feels forced to me.

monkeyfudge

I think most of it can work... it's squeezing Elle into his back story that seems awkward.

It's not in keeping with how her character was when she was first introduced in the series... I'm guessing it's all really just been done so they can develop the plot with her at Pinehearst with Sylar.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

It's the fact that Bennett pretty much sacrificed someone to Sylar that doesn't sit with me. He spends half the first series telling Sylar he'll make him pay and protecting Claire, after sending some poor schmo to his death...? No, sorry.

monkeyfudge

Ikky Poo2 wrote: »

after sending some poor schmo to his death...? No, sorry.

There was a good chance he was an emo though...

Nervous Wreck

tvnutz wrote: »

Sylar's backstory does seem forced for some reason,maybe because we only know him as an evil SOB and now they are trying to make him partly good,and its "the hunger" that makes him evil. I am not sure why it is feeling so forced though,because in season 1 there were scenes where they indicated Sylar had a conscience,that he regretted what he was doing. One was the episode with his mother,the other was that he didn't want to blow up New York, at first anyway. And there was also that scene in early season 1 before we Zachary Quinto was even cast where we see Sylar's apartment it is has the words "Forgive Me" written all over the walls. So there have been indications that he has a soul,but for some reason this Sylar going good arc still feels forced to me.

Agreed. It was initially intoned in season one that the reason Sylar murdered wasn't because he was genuinely evil, but that he had wanted all his life to be special and now, given this opportunity to be 'more special' than anyone else, he would stop at nothing to realise his full potential. They hinted at him having a moral problem with his actions (as you said) with the "Forgive Me" in his apartment etc but let that take a back seat to his actions (which was quite satisfying in terms of story arc and character development). Then, later in the series they played around with his humanity when (again, as you said) he became fearful that he would blow up New York and pleaded with his mother to allow him to just be like everyone else. When she refuses and says she wants him to be special, he acquiesces to what he's let himself become and the malevolence of his character feels completely natural, and hence the character itself well-rounded. What they're now doing is reiterating all of that but throwing it all a mere couple of months into the past and (effectively) replacing his mother with Elle. It feels unnatural cos we've had this story-line before and now its just being regurgitated while throwing Elle into the mix to (as someone else said) further develop her link to Sylar so's the Pinehearst confrontation in episode 9 will hold extra drama.

Holsten

No stupid ass Claire, yay!

CodeMonkey

Holsten wrote: »

No stupid ass Claire, yay!

She was running into the fire caused by her mother....

And I actually hated in season 1 how a lot of the character's stories intertwined. It was one of the few things that annoyed me watching season 1. It's a big world, chances of all these people with powers all meeting and interacting is slim. I can overlook this if they do it once or twice but they did this way too often with almost every character.

I don't see how people can like this episode when they admit that the Sylar's back story is very forced. That's a huge part of the episode. So Elle and Noah are now responsible for pushing Sylar to kill? Christ, Sylar is really just a blameless victim then. Elle was never a nice girl like in this episode. They keep on changing the characters too much.

Is the african guy dead or is it a dream? Don't know. He can predict and out wit a time traveler and teleporter but not papa petrelli? The writers are way to inconsistent with the characters in order to tell the story. And after all this time, Hiro doesn't just freeze time and see what's happening when there's trouble? Dumb dumb dumb.[/rant]

Nervous Wreck

CodeMonkey wrote: »

Is the african guy dead or is it a dream? Don't know. He can predict and out wit a time traveler and teleporter but not papa petrelli? The writers are way to inconsistent with the characters in order to tell the story. And after all this time, Hiro doesn't just freeze time and see what's happening when there's trouble? Dumb dumb dumb.[/rant]

To be fair, we've actually no idea how far Arthur's powers stretch. Also, since stealing Peter's powers, Arthur can teleport through time/space and also freeze time... So Hiro freezing time wouldn't have done much good since (given the rules of the show) you can't freeze someone in time who has themselves the ability to manipulate time.....

CodeMonkey

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

So Hiro freezing time wouldn't have done much good since (given the rules of the show) you can't freeze someone in time who has themselves the ability to manipulate time.....

Well that's the point. If Hiro tried to freeze time then at least he wouldn't come across as so stupid. It doesn't matter if the powers have no effect on Arthur. We have heroes with powers who doesn't use their powers when they should or when I think they instinctly should. Instead we have numerous sub characters using their powers quite publicly like Meredith, his brother, guy with iron arm, emo kid who likes to show off etc.

Nervous Wreck

Ah true enough. Like when Noah is telling Stephen Cadwell to make Sylar disappear and meanwhile Sylar stands there gawking thinking 'I wonder whats going on up there.....'. YOU HAVE SUPER-HEARING YOU FOOL!!!

Ivan

It kinda felt like a clip show, without any clips.

The only way I can explain that statement, is that it was poor T.v. Either that or I have some form of brain cancer...

Hmmm

eVeNtInE

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Mr.Nice Guy

Absolutely diabolical episode. When exactly did Heroes hire the writers from Dream Team because this sh*t is getting ridiculous.

A load of revisionist claptrap trying to disguise the fact that they have been making it up as they've gone along. If I was an actor in that show I'd be embarrassed.

In the next flashback epsiode learn how Hiro and Mohinder actually went to kindergarten together and how Parkman is really another Petrelli brother. He was just sent away because he's so damn annoying.

This show is going down the toilet. THUMBS WAY DOWN.

Catsmokinpot

monkeyfudge wrote: »

I'd say there's a good chance that Hiro is still in the spirit realm or what have you and Arthur has forced his way into his mind.

Yeah i'd agree, Usutu is supposed to be nearly impossible to catch because he can see the future, so how did petrelli find him?!

Fysh

What a load of dreck. That entire episode felt like someone was sitting there saying "Hey, remember season one where everything made a kind of sense because we had a proper storyline and character arcs worked out? Yeah, wasn't that cool?". Instead it just reminded me of all the things that have been wrong with the writing in Season 2 and 3.

At this rate I don't think I'll be watching beyond the conclusion of Season 3....

Ri_Nollaig

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

In the next flashback epsiode learn how Hiro and Mohinder actually went to kindergarten together and how Parkman is really another Petrelli brother. He was just sent away because he's so damn annoying.

I didnt think the episode was that bad, but yeah the making characters related to each other is more annoying then anything, Claire now has ANOTHER uncle, its becoming abit of a joke...

also, didnt Claire's mother want nothing to do with her when she turned up, which would have only been a few months from when she was all "on no my baby..."

The Don

So it looks like Elle is the mother of Sylar's kid. I thought that the episode was good enough. But I think that I might just be shutting my brain off watching Heroes now. If the writers in season 1 had planned most of these events out like the train then bravo. If not then its only a gimic.

I think that there might have been a continuity error though. When Peter got out of Mohinders cab and Bennet gets in, thats in episode 1 right? Then Nathan finds his father dying. I thought that Peter's father was already dead before season 1? I meant to go back and check but didn't. Unless they showed the Peter Mohinder cab scene and went back further in time for the Nathan finding his father scene. If they did that then its poor storytelling .

Baldie

I wasn't too impressed to be honest.

What's the story with Pa Petrelli? What is his ability? Mind reading or taking other peoples powers? Unless, he took the mind reading ability from someone in the past, which would kind of answer that question for me.

Did anyone here Noah's comment about Sylar? "He has the ability to transfer abilities from one person to another, and that he does not yet understand the full extent of his abilities?" Maybe Sylar will transfer Peter's abilities from Arthur back into Peter and we're all "happy" again. :rolleyes: Or was I reading too much into that line??

hussey

also when the blue flame guy was arrested he said "an invisible man" got me ... assuming this is Claude, which is BS as with s1 Claude left the company a long time ago.

The quote was

the ability to transfer power from one vessel to another is extremely rare

so maybe he is like Pa ....

Fysh

The Don wrote: »

I think that there might have been a continuity error though. When Peter got out of Mohinders cab and Bennet gets in, thats in episode 1 right? Then Nathan finds his father dying. I thought that Peter's father was already dead before season 1? I meant to go back and check but didn't. Unless they showed the Peter Mohinder cab scene and went back further in time for the Nathan finding his father scene. If they did that then its poor storytelling .

Not to mention that in Season One Ma Petrelli told Peter that his father had committed suicide (after two previous failed attempts) and the whole "heart attack" angle was just to avoid negative press for Nathan's campaign. Makes no sense in the context of this episode, because here we see that Nathan would have genuinely thought Arthur Petrelli had a heart attack and died as a result of it, so why muddy the waters with talk of suicide attempts?

(Except, of course, that what we're seeing here is what's all too often seen in perpetually-ongoing comics, where you'll get a story being changed years later with what amounts to a "No, see, what really happened was..." followed by whatever the current writer thinks would be really cool...)

J-blk

Yep, it wasn't terrible, but they really created too many inconsistencies trying to blend in Season 1 events... when it was initially revealed that Cletus or whatever the flame throwing yokel is called, is Meredith's brother, I too had the feeling that this show is becoming more and more like a bad cheesy soap opera...

BTW, if Pa Petrelli had the ability in the past to project his thoughts into other peoples' heads, then why did he need Parkman Senior (who had similar powers) to do his bidding in the present time line? Maybe that power is limited to a specific range, but in Season 1 it was established that Parkman Senior could mess with people from huge distances (he could "see" Molly when she was looking for him).

monkeyfudge

The Don wrote: »

If the writers in season 1 had planned most of these events out like the train then bravo. If not then its only a gimic.

I doubt it. In the original unaired pilot there was a plot line in there that explained how the train crashed. It involved a completely different version of the guy with nuclear powers who was working with Islamic terrorists. And it was him that Parkman was helping the feds to catch instead of Sylar.

Mr.Nice Guy

Ri_Nollaig wrote: »

I didnt think the episode was that bad, but yeah the making characters related to each other is more annoying then anything, Claire now has ANOTHER uncle, its becoming abit of a joke...

also, didnt Claire's mother want nothing to do with her when she turned up, which would have only been a few months from when she was all "on no my baby..."

I thought it was appalling. So many head-wrecking inconsistencies. Elle became someone likeable whereas in Season 2 she was a dangerous and unhinged as she went after Peter and killed civilians along the way. Irish ones at that, begorrah and bejaysus!

Also we're led to believe Sylar has only killed one guy but Mohinder is shown in the episode and Mohinder comes into the show after his father is murdered - by Sylar! D'oh!

And another thing, I think The Don touched on this above, wasn't Peter and Nathan's dad dead prior to Nathan's wife being in the car wreck? Is this another confirmed mistake?

I'm amazed some people actually thought highly of that episode. It was lazy and insulting to fans of the show.

lostexpectation

what ever happened to nathan's hot wife? and kids...

How did Arthur get the ability to take other people's powers? From what we've seen of him in the past, he was a mind-reader and nothing more. And now he takes people's power.

The Gnome

Deleted User wrote: »

How did Arthur get the ability to take other people's powers? From what we've seen of him in the past, he was a mind-reader and nothing more. And now he takes people's power.

I'd assume the power stealing is his original power and he stole the mind powers from someone, that being the most obvious answer I'm sure the writers have a far more convoluted explaination.

Overheal

lostexpectation wrote: »

what ever happened to nathan's hot wife? and kids...

I think they left him in Volume 2

DirkVoodoo

I liked this one, but I agree with what a lot of people have said here that the constant tip-exxing and editing of character back stories has led to quite a lot of confusion and plot holes. A bit like real comic book series in that sense I guess.

I never liked the notion introduced this season that Sylar is inherently good but his ability causes him to "hunger" after more power. It's kind of like saying that the joker is evil because he had his hair dyed green or magneto's brain has been swiss-cheezed by all those magnetic fields: It absolves the character of any human failing, which in turn makes them less interesting. I much prefer Sylar being evil because he himself is ambitious.

Is it me or did Malcolm McDowell seem like he was just showing up on set for a paycheque? I thought some of his lines had the delivery of a junior school chirstmas play (his interactions with arthur).

Also, glad to see the bangs back too!

leninbenjamin

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

I never liked the notion introduced this season that Sylar is inherently good but his ability causes him to "hunger" after more power. It's kind of like saying that the joker is evil because he had his hair dyed green or magneto's brain has been swiss-cheezed by all those magnetic fields: It absolves the character of any human failing, which in turn makes them less interesting. I much prefer Sylar being evil because he himself is ambitious.

agreed. I've found Sylar to be a very boring character all of a sudden. the Elle story didn't make much sense either; And i'll be very disappointed if it turns out Usutu has kicked the bucket, one of the few new season 3 characters that holds some mild interest.

The Don

monkeyfudge wrote: »

I doubt it. In the original unaired pilot there was a plot line in there that explained how the train crashed. It involved a completely different version of the guy with nuclear powers who was working with Islamic terrorists. And it was him that Parkman was helping the feds to catch instead of Sylar.

I suppose it was too much to hope that writers actually plan out most of whats going to happen in subsequent series.

Overheal wrote: »

I think they left him in Volume 2

They did. Afair he went a bit psycho after he got out of the hospital. His face was all burnt from Peter going nuclear and his mother showed him it in a mirror. Then Adam's blood cured him but he kept seeing the face in the mirror (another side story that has been thrown away it seems). So he kept seeing the image and drew fruther and further away from his wife and kids. She couldn't take it any more and left him.

gazzer

The fact that we saw HRG getting into a taxi driven by Mohinder (who only arrived in America after his father was killed by Sylar) just after HRG and Elle 'turned' Sylar into a killer is such a huge plot hole that it must have been put in there for a reason. The writers cant think that we are that stupid not to realise that huge continuity error.

CodeMonkey

gazzer wrote: »

The writers cant think that we are that stupid not to realise that huge continuity error.

You see that a lot though which leads me to think that the writers have no idea about the continuity errors themselves from what I've seen. There also appears to be no editor reviewing the script for each episode to make sure there's consistency. Or if there is an editor doing that then he/she is doing a very bad job. So maybe the writers and staff are stupid instead of them thinking viewers are stupid.

TheAlmightyZeus

It was an alright episode, not great. There are too many flashbacks, people travelling back/forward in time, flashforwards and the rest IMO. With all the time travelling plotholes are common and the characters are personalties are constantly changing. Look at Sylar this season, we've seen bad guy, good guy, suicidal and dad. The writers are confusing themselves with the mangled storylines at the moment. Arthur can be a very good bad guy, dependant on how they use him.

Nalz

gazzer wrote: »

... is such a huge plot hole that it must have been put in there for a reason. The writers cant think that we are that stupid not to realise that huge continuity error.

Can somebody explain why this is such a hole, and refresh my memory here? Its been ages since i saw first series I cant bloody remember what is what!

C_Breeze

missed this on BBC last nite.

When can I catch it again?


... is there any list that shows when each episode will be shown and repeated on whatever relevant channels?

Fysh

Trilla wrote: »

Can somebody explain why this is such a hole, and refresh my memory here? Its been ages since i saw first series I cant bloody remember what is what!

In Season One, Mohinder came to the US and started working as a cabbie to try and track down his father's killer, who he discovered was Sylar from voicemail messages Sylar had left on Chandra Suresh's answer machine. By the time Suresh has arrived we already know that Sylar has been killing people for a while (because Parkman has become involved in the investigation after saving Molly, and is told by the FBI agent about Sylar's trail of killings).

This episode revises that completely so that by the time Mohinder arrives in New York to search for his father's killer, Sylar has killed either one person or two - the man he originally got his telekinesis power from for definite, and possibly Chandra Suresh since he has the list of other people with powers.

lostexpectation

Overheal wrote: »

I think they left him in Volume 2

yes but were are they, has he no interesting in them?

what time are we in anyway?

Nervous Wreck

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

And another thing, I think The Don touched on this above, wasn't Peter and Nathan's dad dead prior to Nathan's wife being in the car wreck? Is this another confirmed mistake?

Nope. Arthur's supposed death took place before the opening of Season One. We see this in the episode "Six Months Ago", where we learn that Peter is gonna help Nathan take Arthur down for all his crimes etc. but Nathan's car accident also takes place in that episode.

Nervous Wreck

gazzer wrote: »

The fact that we saw HRG getting into a taxi driven by Mohinder (who only arrived in America after his father was killed by Sylar) just after HRG and Elle 'turned' Sylar into a killer is such a huge plot hole that it must have been put in there for a reason. The writers cant think that we are that stupid not to realise that huge continuity error.

To be fair, they don't actually say that they've 'turned' him into a killer. They know he's killed before and they know he did it to steal other people's powers. HRG simply wants to see him do it to gain more information about how it's done. Sylar half being good and Elle wanting to keep him good is a recurring theme for Sylar's character (as I already talked about in my earlier post about his mother etc) and it kinda supports his whole mindset (that we see with his interactions with his mother in "The Hard Part") of "I could stop killing if only someone would love me for what I am". I can't remember now from "Villains" how many people they imply he's killed but I don't exactly remember them saying it was an especially low figure. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

Fysh

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

To be fair, they don't actually say that they've 'turned' him into a killer. They know he's killed before and they know he did it to steal other people's powers. HRG simply wants to see him do it to gain more information about how it's done. Sylar half being good and Elle wanting to keep him good is a recurring theme for Sylar's character (as I already talked about in my earlier post about his mother etc) and it kinda supports his whole mindset (that we see with his interactions with his mother in "The Hard Part") of "I could stop killing if only someone would love me for what I am". I can't remember now from "Villains" how many people they imply he's killed but I don't exactly remember them saying it was an especially low figure. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

It's a bit yes and no, to be honest. On the one hand, it's not entirely out of left field - as was mentioned earlier, at the start of season one Mohinder finds Sylar's room/apartment after he's fled and the walls are covered with messages begging forgiveness.

On the other hand, it's a bit rich to say that this clearly happened but the writers just forgot to mention it in all of season one. Sylar was compelling because during season one he was clearly struggling with his hunger for more power to be "special" and by the time he kills his mother it appears that he has lost that struggle.

Now the notion seems to be that because Zachary Quinto is popular amongst fans they have to make the character an anti-hero, so they go back to try and suggest that part of the reason he lost was because he was put under psychological pressure by the Company. This doesn't wash, partly because it was never mentioned and partly because the "pressure" involved could only have been less subtle if Elle had stared wide-eyed at EmoBoy and then hopped him right in front of Sylar.

There's also a suggestion that the break-point Sylar seemed to reach when he killed his mother can be invalidated by the "reveal" that his biological mother is Angela Petrelli (though it wouldn't surprise me if they later claim this is a bluff, tbh). This rings particularly false because the show-writers made a point of hammering home the exact opposite idea when it came to comparing Claire's biological parents to her adoptive parents.

As for the bodycount, I don't recall off the top of my head whether they explicitly stated a number, but they definitely seemed to be pushing the idea that he was repentant enough to not be a dyed-in-the-wool killer at the time, at least to start with - he was trying to kill himself at the start of the episode, presumably due to the guilt he felt for the killing/s.

Bubs101

I thought it was another enjoyable episode, think people are setting the bar far too high in terms of sense making based on what we've seen so far in season 3.

The only thing that really pissed me off was that I assumed the Emo guy was going to be the explanation for the Buzzsaw move that Sylar has but instead he just gained it by proxy or summat

Fysh

Bubs101 wrote: »

I thought it was another enjoyable episode, think people are setting the bar far too high in terms of sense making based on what we've seen so far in season 3.

I can see where you're coming from to an extent, but I don't quite get what the appeal of Heroes would be if the whole thing doesn't fit together reasonably well. I'm not necessarily asking for a Babylon-5-style series where it's one big story told over 5 seasons, but surely there has to come a point where the inconsistencies and contradictions render it impossible to actually get caught up in the story that the show's supposed to be telling?

Bubs101

Fysh wrote: »

I can see where you're coming from to an extent, but I don't quite get what the appeal of Heroes would be if the whole thing doesn't fit together reasonably well. I'm not necessarily asking for a Babylon-5-style series where it's one big story told over 5 seasons, but surely there has to come a point where the inconsistencies and contradictions render it impossible to actually get caught up in the story that the show's supposed to be telling?

Well look at it this way. Since series 3 started we've had a feck load of new characters appear, a bunch of dudes die, primary characters having their character completely 360'd (Sylar and Mohinder) and a second new evil corporation. If you were still looking to heroes for cohese and well played out storylines at this stage you're deluded. It's traded in the slow paced story telling of season 1 for highly charged fights because the slow thing derailed in season 2.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Bubs101 wrote: »

Well look at it this way. Since series 3 started we've had a feck load of new characters appear, a bunch of dudes die, primary characters having their character completely 360'd (Sylar and Mohinder) and a second new evil corporation. If you were still looking to heroes for cohese and well played out storylines at this stage you're deluded. It's traded in the slow paced story telling of season 1 for highly charged fights because the slow thing derailed in season 2.

I thought Pinehurst WAS "the company"?

eVeNtInE

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