||SPOILERS|| This episode opens with everyone digging pointless holes in the ground, which is exactly what "1961" felt like to watch. I'm not against flashback episodes that shed light on character, motivations and develop a show's back-story, but this episode didn't really justify the effort...Angela (Cristine Rose) has reunited her family at Coyote Sands, an old government compound where super-powered kids were taken to be experimented on by scientists led by Chandra Suresh (Ravi Kapoor). Peter (Milo Ventimiglia), Nathan (Adrian Pasdar), Claire (Hayden Panettiere) and Mr. Bennet (Jack Coleman) dig up various skeletal bodies from the ground, evidence of genocide, in a search for Angela's sister Alice (Laura Marano), whom she hasn't seen since her days spent at Coyote Sands in 1961.
It all amounts to a weak concentration camp allegory and a smattering of monochrome flashbacks to a young Angela (Alexa Nikolas), her weather-controlling sister Alice (who's obsessed with "Alice In Wonderland", natch), and teenage versions of Charles Deveaux (Edwin Hodge), Bob (H. Michael Croner), and Mr. Linderman. Only, there's little sense of threat at Coyote Sands, particularly as Chandra Suresh feels like an amendable fellow and his ghastly "experimentation" amounts to restaging the psychic card test from Ghostbusters. Considering the potential for gripping, tragic and horrific parallels to Nazi Germany with a superhero twist (see X-Men's Magneto or V For Vendetta), it was all incredibly limp and unsatisfying. The kids can even creep off and go dancing at a nearby café!In the present, Angela's entire reason for bringing her family together was just to demonstrate how history is repeating itself (Coyote Sands even had a "Building 26" to hammer that point home), and revealing that the events of 1961 led to the formation of The Company with Deveaux, Linderman, Bob and herself as its founders. So now, Angela wants their current dilemma with Danko's forces to give rise to Company 2.0, but based on family. "The Family", perhaps? It's all becoming very Godfather around here. Do the Petrelli's have Sicilian origins? Anyway, "1961" was well-intentioned to get Angela's progency back together (particularly in healing Nathan and Peter's estrangement), while providing some background to her character, but it was ultimately a whole lot of hooey that distracted from the more relevant threat of the day.
Stupidly, we learn that Angela left little Alice behind at Coyote Sands (lying to her sister that a prophetic dream told her to stay behind, so she could go flirt with Deveaux), meaning the adult Alice (Diana Scarwid) rather improbably took her sister's words to heart and spent the past 50 years living in an abandoned concrete bunker! Yes, Alice was that stupid and gullible, folks. She never once considered even leaving Canyon Sands over the half-century? Did Angela never once have a dream telling her Alice has absurdly become a hermit?Overall, "1961" was group therapy that stalled the season for a few developments that don't excite me (hey, the Petrelli's are going to save us, 'cos they patched things up), and I find Heroes' attempts to give its premise depth and intelligence by fleshing out the past usually falls flat. To end on a positive, I thought Alexa Nikolas did a good job as the Young Angela with the material she was given and looked plausible as a young Cristine Rose. The same can't be said for the boy doing a bad Malcolm McDowell impression; although he was mercifully restricted to just one line.
13 April 2009
NBC, 9/8c
Writer: Aron Eli Coleite
Director: Adam Kane
Cast: Jack Coleman (Mr. Bennet), Milo Ventimiglia (Peter), Adrian Pasdar (Nathan), Cristine Rose (Angela), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder), Hayden Panettiere (Claire), William Charlton (Cook), Jon Donahue (Young Dr. Zimmerman), H. Michael Croner (Young Robert Bishop), Edwin Hodge (Young Charles Deveaux), Laura Marano (Young Alice), Alexa Nikolas (Young Angela) & Ravi Kapoor (Young Chandra)
