Heroes: Distractions

by Erin

A Soulful Spike Society Review
www.soulfulspike.com

 

 

“You can buy a person's hand but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.”

—Steven Covey

 

Distractions. At this very moment I should be reading Consumer Culture and Postmodernism and making notes for the next chapter of my thesis. However, it wasn’t hard to distract myself, so I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the situations we find our heroes in this week, even if their missions and distractions are a bit more action-oriented than the heady and exciting world of graduate school. Not all distractions are bad and sometimes, they are not distractions at all; just a new path you hadn’t considered before.

 

Of course, distraction suggests its opposite: goals. Of the heroes highlighted in this episode, we have Hiro trying to convince his father to let him stay on “mission”; his own, not the one for which his father has groomed him. Claire is on the hunt for her birth mother. Niki is trying to rid herself of her angry, vengeful, dead sister. Peter has adopted Claude as a mentor to help him control his power. Sylar is tracking down the Bennet family, to avenge himself on Mr. Bennet and assume Claire’s power. Simone is trying to find Peter, and reconnects with Isaac on the roof of her father’s building. All revolve around a common theme of family, whether by blood or by association.

 

Is Claude right? Is family, or connection to others, a distraction? Is being goal-oriented all that it’s cracked up to be, a “7 Habits of Highly Effective Heroes”? There is Hiro, whose father, Kaito, wants him to give up his avowed mission (“it’s a distraction”) and return to Japan to take the mantle of corporate power. Kimiko makes it cleat that the family’s fortune is in danger if Hiro continues to defy the family. On the other side of the same coin, Claude claims that Peter’s ties to his family are holding him back from being strong and in control. Claire lets nothing distract her from her mission to see her birth mother. Sylar neatly traps Mr. Bennet in his own cell and goes straight to the Bennet home. Dr Witherson makes a first (and probably last) attempt to integrate Niki and Jessica; regardless of Niki’s warnings of danger, she will not allow any of Niki’s arguments to distract her from helping, to her detriment.

 

In Hiro and Peter’s case, they share a similar problem, if you want to call it that. (Claude would, and who are we to argue with the Doctor?) Hiro, after many false starts and distractions, is on a mission to gain Kensei’s sword and regain his powers. Kaito works on his sense of responsibility to his family and Kimiko works on his guilt. Even Ando is convinced, reminding Hiro that he’s lost his powers. Yet, as much as Kaito wants his son to get back to business, he spends the majority of the episode staring out at the water, as if he’s already turned his thoughts away from his son. Claude, on the other hand, tells Peter he must sever himself from those he’s close to, that they only want to keep him down. When he tells Peter that people are more selfish and unkind and “gassy” then Peter could ever imagine, Nathan’s image looms again and again over Claude’s shoulder. In some ways, their conversation reminds me of the debate between Kendra and Buffy, about whether or not family and friends are “total assets” or “distractions.” We are supposed to sympathize here with Peter, I think (how’s that for ambiguous?) but Claude, for all his bitter sermonizing about the danger of attachments, is not incorrect in some respects. Claude says the same thing that Peter’s mom tells him in “Genesis”; that Peter wears “rose-colored glasses” with regards to his brother. By shoving him from the roof, forcing him to “fly,” Claude is helping Peter realize the goal he yelled to Nathan (also in “Genesis”): “It’s my turn to be somebody.” At the moment of decision, the fork in the road, Hiro and Peter diverge: Hiro realizes that his family doesn’t need him as much as the world does, and that his family does in fact hold him back; they want him to “consolidate” and he wants to “expand.” Peter realizes that the world is his family, and makes him strong. (Of course, the person he thinks of, with the sad little smile, is literally a blood relation.) If he cuts off that ability to connect, loses his empathy, he’s just another Sylar.

 

What about the “family” connection of Niki and Jessica? Niki had the right idea; Jessica, for all of her protection of her sister when they were children, helps Niki when and if their agendas collide. Yet, even when she was alive, she looked at Niki as the “lesser” twin, the one who made “a monkey out of Mozart.” The two of them definitely do not make beautiful music together. Since the episode is all about connections and distractions, we can see that Jessica looks on Niki as the weak distraction. Her real “twin” in this episode is Sylar, underscored by Niki’s assertion that the metronome “sounds like a bomb about to go off,” a sound most commonly associated with him. Niki’s goal is to defuse Jessica by remaining isolated. Jessica’s goal is much stronger, and here is where we see the danger of a single-minded goal. Jessica’s motivation is stronger, and allows her to give Niki the pyrrhic victory; one of them is locked away. She is second only to Sylar in goal-directed activity. Sylar, Jessica, and, to some extent, Mr. Bennet, are narrowly focused on their own agendas. Their opposite numbers: Peter, Niki, and Matt/Ted, have yet to raise the stakes enough to mount a sustained assault. The key? Distraction.

 

Which is something Claire achieves quite well. When dealing with powerful forces, even if one happens to be your father, distracting them from your purpose can make it achievable. Whatever Mr. Bennet suspects, it’s obvious he hasn’t put it together that Claire both remembers Homecoming and has sought out and met Meredith Gordon. (And she is milking the manatee project for all it’s worth.) Claire now knows why she has the ability to regenerate, and there is at least one adult connected to her that she can be open with. Significantly, Meredith gives Claire her turquoise necklace; some people believe that turquoise aids physical healing and helps people communicate. That’s definitely something that the Bennet home is in need of; the proof is the scene between Sylar and Mrs. Bennet provides it. She can reach neither her husband nor Claire. Worse, the constant tampering with her memory has left her completely vulnerable, and god knows what it is doing to her physiologically. Mr. Muggles has a better chance of survival that she does, and, as Claude tells Peter, you’ve got to “hold on” to what gives you strength, whether it’s memory or family or power, or you’re nothing but a “poodle.”

 

Finally, we come to Isaac and Simone, meeting on her father’s rooftop of significance. Isaac represents, more than anyone else, the idea of “place” as a family. He tells Simone that New York is the place where everything of significance in his life occurred: “Good, bad, you” and he feels powerless to save it. As they embrace, you can see the light of the setting sun behind them, just as it was in his painting; Peter, on the other hand, is in the blue shadows, unseen. (I have Sara to thank for making me pay attention to the spectrum here.) The coloring of Simone and Isaac’s embrace stands out here, as throughout the episode, all of the New York scenes, whether it’s Peter/Claude, Hiro and his family, or Isaac’s studio, are varying shades of blue, giving all the scenes a bit of a chill. Simone and Isaac are lit in gold; however, it’s the gold of the setting sun. Are they ending or beginning?

 

Other Observations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be sure to tune in for Sara’s brilliant review of “Run,” when she returns from the land of sun and fun and yummy cocktails!

 


______________________________________________


Please join in the discussion of this review at the Soulful Spike Society Message Board. Go there NOW!

If you enjoyed this review and are reading it from outside the Soulful Spike Society website (www.soulfulspike.com), then click the logo below to access the S3 in a new window. There you will find more great reviews, analyses, fanfiction and a link to our marvelous message board.