As part of his "bucket list" to right some wrongs before he dies of a brain tumour, Hiro (Oka) travels backs in time by three years, arriving at the Burnt Toast diner in Odessa, Texas. There he intends to defeat Sylar (Zachary Levi), who famously added perky waitress Charlie (Jayma Mays) to his list of victims back when he was a brain-eating enigma with a penchant for baseball caps. As previous time-hopping adventures have proven, it proves to be a difficult temporal knot for Hiro to undo, as saving Charlie's life will forever alter the timeline (something already explored during the storyline this episode revisited), and she's destined to die of a brain aneurism anyway. It appears the only person able to perform life-saving surgery on Charlie is Sylar, the man who wants her dead so he can steal her photographic memory. Can Hiro trust Sylar to help by promising the killer knowledge of the future?Okay, it sounds like an interesting story with some fun (if overused) temporal dilemmas on paper, but it just felt too retrograde visiting the first season in this fashion. This was Heroes' own Back To The Future: Part II, in many ways; entertaining and diverting, but intrinsically parasitic. Any new information we gleamed about the characters was barley worth the effort, beyond the fact Mr. Bennet (Jack Coleman) was revealed to have been having an affair with colleague Danielle Savre (Elisabeth Röhm) -- who felt so bad about it that she had her memories erased by the Haitian, a la Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Considering the fact Bennet's separated from his wife in 2009, I assume this is a means for the writers to have Bennet resume his interest in Danielle when the plot returns to the present.
Give the episode's title, it came as no surprise that "Once Upon A Time In Texas" contained nods to Westerns -- mainly through Hiro's strange decision to disguise himself with a white cowboy stetson, an alleyway "quickdraw" duel between Hiro and Sylar (complete with a whistling soundtrack), and an embarrassing cowboy impression from the cheerful time-traveller. For all its goofiness, at least Heroes can still do goofy.
Thankfully, there was a stronger presence in Samuel (Robert Knepper) to alleviate the frivolity, who has grown impatient waiting for Hiro to join his carnival of his own accord because he needs the services of a time-traveller now. So, the Irish carnival barker was sent back in time by his own ailing master of the Space/Time continuum to warn Hiro against changing the past. Hiro was initially receptive to the advice of the "buttlerfly man" who inspired this humanitarian mission in the first place, but after Hiro succeeds in keeping Charlie alive and the timeline intact, Samuel kidnaps the redhaired waitress and hides her somewhere in Space and Time. Now, the only way for Hiro to find his true love is to help Samuel change his own personal history, as a flashback to eight weeks prior shows him standing over the dead body of... Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy)
Overall, "Once Upon A Time In Texas" washed over me for the most part, although it was nice to see the delightful Mays again and I liked how Hiro is being blackmailed into helping Samuel. The reveal that Samuel's transgressions would turn his family against him, and somehow involves Mohinder*, was also interesting and further proof that the carnival element has actually been seson 4's biggest success. It's just a shame the storylines Samuel occasionally bleeds into are fairly bland and lack a sense of urgency.I guess your response to this episode will be largely informed by your affection for Hiro/Charlie as a couple, and your tolerance for the writers brazenly basking in the afterglow of a time when Heroes was -- briefly -- the topic of conversation on everyone's lips.
2 November 2009
NBC, 9/8c
written by: Aron Eli Coleite & Aury Wallington directed by: Nate Goodman starring: Jack Coleman (Mr. Bennet), James Kyson Lee (Ando), Masi Oka (Hiro), Hayden Panettiere (Claire), Zachary Quinto (Sylar), Jayma Mays (Charlie Andrews), Robert Knepper (Samuel Sullivan), Dawn Olivieri (Lydia), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder), Elisabeth Röhm (Danielle Savre) & Candace Smith (Miss Roberts)
* I sincerely hope they have a good reason for bringing Mohinder back. It was awkward how he just vanished from the narrative with no explanation, but his character was so moribund that nobody cared. Let's just hope his return doesn't mean more pretencious voice-overs are in order...
