Heroes:
Seven Minutes to Midnight
by Erin
A Soulful Spike Society Review
www.soulfulspike.com
“I’m
late, I’m late, for a very important date!”
--The
White Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland
The
clock is ticking. In fact, we can hear the clock ticking any time Sylar
appears. The heroes are moving at a fast clip toward their first objective:
“Save the Cheerleader.” Isaac’s paintings give us the clue that the clock will
strike midnight for Claire at the Homecoming dance. Time is everywhere; the
word itself is repeated again and again, as well as referenced in its increments:
The Sureshs were married 33 years, Shanti was 5 years old, Hiro tells Ando to
count to five, Matt is given a 1-month suspension, Audrey asks for a few more
minutes when the FBI Agent says “time’s up,” Mr. Bennet adopted Claire 14 years
ago. A calendar hangs above Charlie’s head. Sylar is wearing a broken watch.
Isaac tries to access the future without heroin. Who is feeling time pass? Who
is looking at the past with regret or longing, the future with fear or
excitement?
In
this week’s adventure, we have a limited canvas (pun intended) of heroes.
Neither the Petrellis nor the Saunders make an appearance. Instead, we meet a
new hero with a short expiration date, learn more about the hero with the short
fuse, and delve into the past and future with the Bennets, Eden, Mohinder, Hiro
and Ando, Matt and Audrey, and Isaac.
The
only overt reference to Alice in
Wonderland is made by Audrey, when she tells Matt they only have an hour to
question Ted before “he disappears down the rabbit hole.” Of all the heroes we’ve
seen thus far, he is the one most victimized by his powers; until he went
radioactive, he had a wife and a future. He implies that he was doing well
enough at his job (selling dialysis machines, which can help prolong the lives
of patients waiting for a kidney donation) that he and his wife were
considering have children. Now his outside matches his insides; with the shaggy
hair and the wild look in his eyes, he looks like a time bomb. Yet, even with
the craziness and the limited time they have, Matt and Ted are able to connect;
both “lost time” and woke with abilities they didn’t understand; both are
alienated from human contact, to varying degrees. Matt begs Ted to “Take me
back—start from the beginning.” This is
a desire that Matt and Ted share; a do-over. Audrey is not above this nostalgia
either; she longs for the days before she “pulled the Sylar case,” when things
were straightforward.
“The earth is large. Large enough
that you think you can hide from anything.” So says Mohinder, as we watch him
release his father’s ashes into the ocean. It should be symbolic of him letting
go of everything to do with his father; he has claimed that he is abandoning
the research and prepared to let go of the past. So, of course, he spends the
majority of the episode both dreaming of it and searching for the answers to
the questions the dreams bring forth. The fact of this exposes his deep
ambivalence to everything that happened in the time leading to his father’s
death and its consequences. He felt abandoned and disgraced by Chandra, his
relationship with Mira ended badly (due to his father’s theories), and he feels
like his time in New York was fruitless. His old life waits in India to embrace
him: a job at the university, a rekindling, perhaps, of his relationship with
Mira, another opportunity working in her corporation. Yet an older question
remains: Why would his father risk everything for this? His father’s computer
puts it more succinctly: “Are you sure you want to quit?” It has been said (and
I’m sorry I can’t remember who said it), that we only truly grow up when we
lose a parent, and here we see Mohinder starting the process of becoming an
adult. (Strangely enough, with the help of a mysterious child.) He learns about
Shanti, he sees his father’s death first hand; this gives him the “key” to
unlocking his destiny. Although he doesn’t answer the question in this episode,
it’s clear that answer will be a resounding: “No.”
Texas
doesn’t seem to be the safest place to be for any of the heroes. At least in
Midland and Odessa, time is not on their side. Tick tock; the hours grow closer
to Homecoming, and Mr. Bennet is feeling the strain. The “previouslys” keep
referring to him as “the face of evil,” but I don’t think that’s been proven by
the events we’ve seen so far. Morally ambiguous? Definitely. A practitioner of
situational ethics? God yes. Yet his agenda remains shadowy except in one
respect: save Claire. To that end, he dredges up Eden’s past and manipulates
Isaac into shooting up again. Time is running out on that, too (a nice subtle
reference to as he goes into his secret lab: his employee Rufus tells him that
he needs to sign for “next month’s parking sticker”; Bennet dismisses that with
a “I’ll take care of that later”). Just as sure as if Sylar were standing next
to him, he can hear the minutes pass; he gives Isaac (and us) a glimpse into
the past that drives him: a failed collection of a past hero, a child left
alone, a couple that “had a hard time conceiving at the time.” Bad grammar, but
the double use of the word underlines his desperation. Isaac is not untouched;
he asks for another chance: “one more time without it.” Yet Mohinder’s
narration at the end lands on Mr. Bennet as he repeats his contention that the
“world is not small” but “you are.” No matter how much control he asserts over
Claire’s circumstances, it’s unlikely he’ll be the one to save her.
Over
at the Burnt Toast Diner, Hiro and Ando meet Charlie, a woman with a
supernaturally good memory. We see pictures of her last birthday party; she
talks about her future trip around the world. Hiro is well on his way to
falling in love when her life is ended by Sylar. Not only do we hear the
ticking of Sylar’s watch, but right before he kills Charlie, we see a calendar
above her head; her days are numbered. Twice now, Hiro’s time-bending ability
has not been able to save someone. Ando told him in “Better Halves” that he
could go back in time and save the men killed at the poker game. Obviously,
Hiro was listening. He puts their mission to “save the cheerleader” on hold and
goes back in time to save Charlie. Will he succeed? Or is she like burnt toast
herself, too far gone to save?
Finally,
there is Sylar. For such a shadowy character, he exerts a huge influence. It
seems to me that the logic of which characters appeared in this chapter is that
each has a direct connection to Sylar. Sylar is after Claire, so of course Mr.
Bennet and Eden are involved. Hiro has seen Sylar’s handiwork during his trip
to the future; the future in which Isaac was the victim. Now he is even more
personally affected by Sylar’s actions. Matt’s telepathy first appeared outside
a Sylar crime scene being investigated by Audrey. Mohinder, of course, lost his
father to Sylar. As Mohinder dream walks into the past, he witnesses his father’s
murder, see Sylar’s watch bang against the windows of the cab at 7 minutes to
midnight. Later, in the Burnt Toast Diner, we can see the crack and the time
are still the same. Time has broken for Sylar; it no longer moves forward. This
is significant; midnight is both the end of one day and the beginning of
another. He stops time for Charlie, for Chandra, and potentially, for Claire.
Yet he too is trapped, unable to progress to the next day.
Other
Observations
- There was another
nice parallel between Ted, Matt, and Audrey: Ted kills his wife through
proximity, Matt proximity to his wife’s thoughts kill his trust in their
marriage, Audrey avoids getting “close” to people because they will only
disappoint her.
- We also get a
parallel between Shanti and Claire; both are called “special” by one of
their parents. Will we get an answer soon on what made Shanti special?
- Confusion time: Both
Matt and Ted seem to think that the emergence of their powers date from
the time they lost time. Since we’ve seen Matt’s story, we know that they
emerged before that and that Mr. Bennet and the Haitian erased that
memory. Since we know very little about Ted, and his power is so
dangerous, did it exist before he was taken to the Best Evil Paper Company
in Texas? If not, did it emerge from something that they did to him there?
- We get two views on
America from our foreign heroes: Mohinder talks about how “lonely”
everyone is there; Hiro asks: “Who says no one in America is nice?” Both
statements say more about the speaker than anything else; Mohinder, lost
and searching, finds loneliness; Hiro reaches out to everyone. Of course,
we cut immediately to Sylar, which mocks both Hiro’s friendliness and
Charlie’s openness.
- Did we really need to
see the computer screen saying: “Are you sure you want to quit?” 4 times
to understand that Mohinder is indecisive? That was really annoying and broadly drawn.
- On the completely
opposite side, I loved that Hiro’s jacket said: “I don’t belong here” in
Japanese. It works on multiple levels: he’s a tourist, but is flummoxed
that Charlie twigs to him being a stranger in town. Hiro, we sense, feels
at home in the world. He’s in Midland when he should be in Odessa. At the
end of the episode, he is in the past with Charlie wearing that same coat;
presumably, he is also in Japan. That’s how you do it; assume your
audience can make the connections themselves.
- Lastly, is there any
reason to Sylar’s plan? If he is killing heroes to gain their powers, what
benefit would he derive from killing Charlie? Wouldn’t a superpowered
memory be a downside to a serial killer? Or was it just convenient; he
overheard her talking about her power when he just stepped in for a cup of
coffee? Also, what powers did the family he killed in episode 2 possess? Or
was he after the little girl?
Sorry
to be so rambling! Stay tuned for Sara’s insightful review of “Homecoming,”
coming soon to a website near you!
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