Heroes: Six Months Ago

by Erin

A Soulful Spike Society Review
www.soulfulspike.com

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Editing is often not the most appreciated of skills. (I should know; I did it for almost a decade.) Yet it is really the science of how to make all the divergent elements of a piece work together; it requires an understanding of how things tick, if you will. Why am I talking about the editorial process, you might ask? The editing organizes and informs this episode; it is the pieces of the clock that ticks us to the present day. We even start the episode with the three heroes for whom time is most important: Hiro as our Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time, Charlie, whose time is limited, and Sylar, working on timepieces.

Those are the obvious ones. As in “Seven Minutes to Midnight,” time again makes itself felt here:

Sylar, as always, is introduced with the sound of ticking in the background, like a bomb countdown.

Chandra’s watch is 2 minutes slow; a nice way of showing that Chandra is not “up to speed” with regard to Sylar’s true intentions, and Sylar knows it. Because of this, Chandra unwittingly sets Sylar’s murderous rampage into motion.

Matt, after his encounter with Eden, needs his coworker to tell him that the detective exam starts in an hour.

Niki has been sober for one year; when her father, Hal, drops in on her AA meeting, he tells her he doesn’t want “another year” to go by without seeing her. Later, at Jessica’s grave, Niki tells DL that she used to not be able to go “an hour without missing Jessica.

Sylar wants more time from Chandra to see if he’ll develop any abilities.

The Family Hour

So, what else does the past have to show us? Truthfully, the episode goes back much further than six months; six months might have represented the beginning of the change our heroes go through, but how they and their powers evolved is rooted much further back. This is quite the domestic hour of Heroes, with a special emphasis on fathers. (Has Tim Kring been watching a lot of Whedon?) Jessica was the repository for her father’s drunken rage and protector of Niki. Her death didn’t mean Niki no longer needed her. Peter and Nathan debate whether or not Nathan should prosecute their father for his ties with Lindermen. Nathan grouses to Heidi in the car of doom that it isn’t his fault that their father loved him more than Peter, and that Peter is unaware of the responsibility he carries as the oldest son. Which, then, is nicely undermined when he unwittingly flies from the car and leaves his wife to crash. Sylar’s shop is called Gray and Son, and he laments that he “had no choice” but to follow in his father’s footsteps. Mr. Bennet laments how fast Claire is growing up with Chandra, who talks about losing his daughter. Mohinder, at the end of the episode, is overjoyed to see that his father’s work bore fruit. In a lovely and subtle moment, Hal is reading The Sirens of Titan when Jessica comes calling, a book in which the main emphasis is freeing oneself from the notion of an omniscient god and creating your own destiny. The only people for whom fathers are not mentioned or alluded to are Hiro and Matt; will this be significant in the future?

Sticks and Stones

Chandra’s map is a collection of pictures and strings, guy wires that connect each of our heroes. Throughout the hour, he reaches out to those he can, to tell them they are “special.” How do his words affect their recipients? We only get a glimpse of two: Mr. Bennet and Sylar. Chandra’s revelation makes Mr. Bennet more determined to protect Claire, and sets his plan to get Claire “off the list” in motion. Sylar’s reaction is that Chandra’s words push him (a short trip, obviously) in Crazytown. In fact, it is Chandra’s words about the soul residing in the brain that give Sylar the idea of how to “steal” abilities. Not a good beginning, all told.

It doesn’t stop there; words make all the difference; they can hurt. Words keep Matt from being anything but a traffic cop; twisting and shifting on him when he needs them most. His inability to admit his dyslexia makes him vulnerable to being manipulated by words; words hold him back. To underscore this, who should be his traffic stop but Eden, who has based her life (as far as we know it) on manipulating others with her words? But, in the headlights of her stolen car is one who doesn’t speak: the Haitian. We are transported then to Odessa, where Jackie takes the word of the football team that Laurie Trammell slept with all of them. This is a most excellent callback to Laurie’s later revelation that Brody raped her and then told everyone she was a “skank.” Jackie tells Claire that they need to “commiserate” the event of Claire becoming a cheerleader; Claire corrects her, but Jackie does actually use the correct word, given what happened to Jackie in “Homecoming.” After Claire gets wounded, Mr. Bennet gets the call from Chandra, saying: “I need to speak with you about your daughter.” Hiro tries again and again to tell Charlie that she’s in danger; yet, it is only his actions that convince her. Charlie makes a wish over her birthday candles; Hiro makes a wish with 1000 cranes. Later, Charlie’s three words: “I love you” literally transport Hiro in the future. Niki introduces herself in typical AA fashion: “My name is Niki,” but then goes on to say that her life is “too much for one person.” Nathan and Peter talk about giving depositions (testimony) against their father.

Timepieces

Tick-tock: Introducing Gabriel Gray, the morally ambiguous messenger angel of evolution, delicately piecing together a timepiece wearing complicated eyewear that allows him to see the smallest details. His ability to see what’s “broken” is uncanny; perhaps it is a superpower in its own right. That is not enough of a destiny for him; that is not world-changing enough. His new name, the “change” he is so desperate for, is the name of the last watch he constructs. Of course, the main thrust of his story is how he constructs himself piece by piece. It is here that the editing assumes the importance I mentioned earlier. The scene previous to Gabriel talking with Chandra about the importance of being “special” and changing the circumstances of his life was Peter’s graduation party. Obviously, we are supposed to make the connection between Peter and Sylar, especially as Sylar’s words echo Peters in “Genesis”: “Ever get the feeling you were meant to do something extraordinary? I'm not talking about what you do, I'm talking about who you are. I'm talking about being special.”

The past, and the future. Chandra and Sylar end the episode looking forward, with Sylar telling him that “We’re the future.” Hiro returns to present-day Midland and tells Ando that he “can’t change the past.” Hiro’s correct: all we can do is continue to move forward with what the past has given us.

Other Observations

Mr. Bennet’s assertion that Eden would be “dead” in a year seems a little extreme; should she be able to talk her way out of it?

Heidi’s word choice for Peter as “empathic” seems a little strange, or convenient. Clunky writing, or is Heidi supposed to know more than we’ve seen?

More answers about Lindermen, please!

Kudos to the set dresser: in the scene where Peter watches Nathan being told that Heidi is paralyzed, there is a black wall sconce over his head that looks like a sun in eclipse.

Stay tuned for Sara’s rockin’ review of “Fallout.”

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