Heroes: .07%

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.
    Simone Weil

First, I have to start by saying I'm becoming an increasingly bigger fan of the 24 model when it comes to serial dramas: ie airing the entire season at one go, rerun free, rather than in chunks coinciding with the traditional sweeps periods. For one, we now live in an age when, more than ever, people don't need to be in front of their set on a particular day at a specific time to see an episode of a show; using a few weeks as an indicator of how popular any program is makes little sense anymore. And second, I know I had trouble recapturing the excitement and intensity I felt at the end of "Parasite" after waiting so many weeks to find out what would happen next.  I'd much rather wait longer and be able to watch all the episodes in a row than lose that visceral connection with the story being told. 

With so many different stories playing out at the same time, it's a bit difficult to know which to focus on first—especially when they're all compelling in their own right. But given the pervasive influence he's had in all our heroes' lives, Linderman's unveiling of his .07% solution for healing humanity is probably the best place to begin. And given what we found out about Linderman's endgame, I can't help but think that if series creator Tim Kring hasn't been putting us on about not being a huge reader of comic books, then we're looking at two possibilities:  1) Someone he works closely with is, or 2) There really are no truly original stories left in the universe.  Wondering what in the hell I'm smoking now?  Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time there was a man who looked at his world and saw that humanity was on the verge of self-destruction.  He was a very smart man, in addition to possessing enormous wealth and power, and felt it was up to him to save humanity from itself.  Using all of his resources and intelligence, he came up with a plan to do just that.  It took years to unfold, with the man patiently manipulating—and sacrificing—people like pawns on a chessboard,  all of his moves and countermoves made with the endgame firmly in mind:  engineering a catastrophic event that would claim the lives of half of New York City, causing the rest of the world to unite first out of fear, and then eventually in the hopes of building toward a better tomorrow for all mankind.

Sounds familiar, no?  Thing is, though, I wasn't talking about the plan Linderman revealed to Nathan in this episode of Heroes—I was summarizing the overarching story of Watchmen, Alan Moore's landmark comic book miniseries, later reprinted as a graphic novel named by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005. And when asked to explain the reasoning behind committing mass murder as a means to world peace, the character who conceived the plan says "to frighten governments into co-operation, I would convince them that earth faced imminent attack by beings from another world." Why? Because "an intractable problem can only be resolved by stepping beyond conventional solutions." Which is, in essence, a multi-syllabic way of saying "...healing one person at a time was just not enough. We needed something... something to pull it down on course, something big." (And yes, I'm deliberately being vague about who's trying to destroy NYC in Watchmen on the off chance that someone reading this review decides to try Moore's novel; I'd hate to ruin any surprises)

Comparing the two stories is very helpful in more than one regard; for starters, it draws attention to the major flaw in Linderman's grand design. In Watchmen, our puppeteer created an external threat for mankind to unite against, making it appear as if an alien was responsible for the destruction of New York City; the "us against them" mentality that arose thus placed everyone on earth in the "us" column. Linderman's plan, however, all but guaranteed that the blame will fall squarely on the shoulders of a fellow special. Meaning, as we saw in "Five Years Later," that instead of bringing humanity together Linderman really just created a new reason for people to fear and mistrust each other. 

The good news, at least for a while, is that it appears Nathan, despite his ambition, actually has a line he won't cross: he refuses to sacrifice his brother for any cause. Like Mr. Bennet, Nathan's always come across as a guy who's comfortable with morally gray—not to mention someone who'd do anything to protect his family. But while Mr. Bennet seems to be working his way towards becoming a better person, thanks in no small part to his love for his daughter, Nathan's affection for his family has, up to this point, caused him to make some dubious choices. Of course, it doesn't help that the two most important people in his life—his mother and his brother—tend to pull at him from opposite ends of the behavioral spectrum, with the empathic Peter urging him to connect with people and open up his heart and the ruthlessly pragmatic Angela counseling him to look at the big picture and leave feelings out of the equation.  Hell, I keep expecting to see the devilish Angela pop up on one shoulder and angelic Peter on the other when Nathan's faced with a particularly tough decision. 

At any rate, by episode's end it looks like Nathan is leaning toward being on Angela's side, not the side of the angels.  After all, Nathan rejected Linderman's plan to make him president almost entirely because it involved Peter exploding in the middle of the city. Now, however, Peter's likely survival once again opened up that possibility in Nathan's mind—a change of heart embodied by Nathan's using the glass shard that proved Peter's invincibility to open up the portrait of his presidential future.   Whether Nathan chooses the future that begins in blood, however, is a tale for a future installment... 

Random thoughts and observations:

—Trust this show to not even begin with one of the many cliffhangers they left us with. Nothing like delaying that gratification as long as possible, right?
—There were lots of color contrasts in this episode, including:
        —Linderman's archival room was gray and cool, as opposed to the reds and golds of the paintings and the intense purple of the orchid.
        —Mohinder's apartment was blue and dark, until Peter literally brought light and warmth in with him, if only for a moment.
        —Reds and gold were the theme of Angela Petrelli's place, which only emphasized the starkness of her black dress and dark hair.
        —Isaac's studio was also all about blues and other cooler colors, which made the red of the messenger's shirt seem all the more striking. Isaac's work itself also featured this dichotomy; every image of his impending murder was black and white, save for the vivid crimson of his painted blood.
—I thought both Hayden Panettiere and Ali Larter did a great, subtle job of portraying their characters as reimagined by Candace. Hayden's smirk as Candace shifted back to her true form was a particularly nice touch.
—Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, was Peter standing with his back to Sylar as our favorite sociopath prepped his Flying Glass Shards of Doom?tm I realize they wanted to parallel Claire's death earlier in the season, but please: nobody's that dumb.
—Continuity!Yay moment:  Mr. Bennet, Matt, and Ted dining in Charlie's place of employ, the Burnt Toast Diner. Further kudos for bringing back the same woman who told Ando about the photo of Hiro and Charlie to be the trio's waitress as well.  And I'm going to let myself go on believing that Bennet's praise for the cherry pie was a nod to Twin Peaks, just because I want to.
—Continuity!Boo moment: Where the hell did The Haitian go? Myself, I have no doubt that Malcolm McDowell pulled in a large portion of the guest star salary allotment for any given episode, and thus understand why they'd write our silent friend out of this one. But for cripes sakes, would it have been so hard to throw in a line or two acknowledging and explaining his absence?
—I liked how Parkman's and Bennet's lines overlapped as Matt relayed Bennet's words to Ted. Who looked way better without that scraggly beard, no?  
—Speaking of Matt, I thought it was interesting that the first time we see him his pose mirrors that of Sylar in "The Fix": wearing white and lying on his side as a cockroach crawls in the foreground.
—Alas, poor Isaac. We hardly knew ye, my friend, but at least you went out with an artistic flair as befitted your profession, mirroring the pose of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (with your long hair really cementing the striking resemblance). What I have to wonder, though, is this: if he truly believed he couldn't fight the future, to the point where he all but staked himself to the ground, then why bother with the cartoon? You'd think that seeing two possible outcomes to this particular tale—the mushroom cloud and Sylar's stabbing—would cause Isaac to question whether his death was an absolute certainty
—I loved how, toward the end of the episode, Isaac's paintings were used as a bridge between scenes: Nathan looking at his presidential portrait, the image of Isaac's work shifting into Sylar's bizarro version, panning to Sylar in Isaac's studio and from there to a painting of the Deveaux rooftop, to a dissolve from the painting to the real-life version of the tableau as Hiro and Ando looked upon it five years in the future. Not only was the sequence extremely cool in its own right, but it also served as a fitting bookend to the episode's opening montage as well as reinforcing Linderman's voiceover assertion that the images could tell the future.
—The best Watchmen/Heroes parallel of all?  In Watchmen, the most powerful character—indeed, the only hero who actually has a superhuman ability—is Dr. Manhattan.  But before he was Dr. Manhattan, Jon Osterman lived in Brooklyn and was fully prepared to follow in his father's footsteps... as a watch repairman.  Yes, really.

—And finally, Ando's "I'm confused."? Best line of the entire episode.

That's it from me for now.  If you haven't already, be sure to check out Erin's excellent review of "Five Years Ahead." I'll try to be back soon with my take on "The Hard Part."