WRITERS: Mark Verheiden & Misha Green[SPOILERS] I feel like I'm beginning to rate the success of Heroes purely on how much happens in an episode, how quickly, and how well it keeps me entertained. See, if I rate it on storytelling complexity or my emotional connection to events, it's still barely working at all. "The Art Of Deception" was better than last week's dross because it had more relevance to the season's storyline, and there were a few scenes I rather enjoyed, but that's about as upbeat as I can get about Heroes now, as it plods towards it finale...
DIRECTOR: SJ Clarkson
GUEST CAST: Todd Stashwick, Harry Perry, Elizabeth Lackey, Erin Allin O'Reilly, David H. Lawrence & Ray Park
This week, Samuel (Robert Knepper) has become a pariah amongst his own people for destroying an entire town (and a good few thousand people, right?), which has an uneasy similarity to what's going on in Haiti right now. Claire (Hayden Panettiere) decides to return to the carnival, after being told by Lauren (Elisabeth Röhm) that her father (Jack Coleman) has tracked down Samuel's location and they're on their way to take the carnival barker by force. As Claire persuades Samuel to give himself up, knowing her father's close by with a gun trained on him, Mr. Bennet is surprised when another gunman starts to viciously shoot members of the carnival – including Claire, Samuel, Lauren and Lydia (Dawn Olivieri). It turns out Samuel's framed Bennet as a bloodthirsty enemy of his people -- with the real shooter being his henchman Eli (Todd Stashwick) -- and has thus created a bigger villain than himself in the eyes of his people.
Quite why the carnies don't think it strange that Bennet would shoot his own daughter is a question left unmentioned. Neither Claire or Bennet offer that fact as proof he probably wasn't the gunman. Also, it felt ridiculous to me that Lydia died from her gunshot wound, considering the fact Claire has already demonstrated she can heal people by saving Peter's life from a gunshot wound only a few episodes ago. So why did Claire suddenly forget she could save Lydia's life very easily? Oh, it's because Heroes constantly fails to keep its own mythology feeling plausible, consistent or airtight. If it's dramatically necessary to have someone die, they'll die, even if viewers are left to view Claire as either very stupid, utterly heartless, or both.
The only other significant storyline involved Sylar (Zachary Quinto) turning up at the Parkman residence, pretending to be an old cop buddy of Matt's (Greg Grunberg) in front of his unsuspecting wife Janice (Lisa Lackey). Sylar was there to get his powers "mentally blocked" by Matt, which he now believes is the only way he'll ever find peace in this world. Yes, Sylar wants to turn over a new leaf again. To be honest, it's rather laughable that Sylar's character is asking to be neutered once more – it's as if the writers have forgotten the plot arc of season 3 that saw Sylar "depowered", only to crave the return of his abilities. So, why doesn't Sylar remember that having no powers won't bring him happiness? Oh, because the story demands that we go down this avenue.
Anyway, Matt eventually manages to go through with Sylar's bizarre demand, but takes the opportunity to imprison him inside his own mind, then goes to the time and trouble of bricking up Sylar's body behind a wall in his basement. No, seriously. Matt's suddenly twisted enough to let a man starve and die in his own basement, and isn't in the least bit concerned that he's acting like a creepier murderer than his own, unfortunate victim. He even went out and bought some bricks and mixed some concrete, it would seem. I worry about him.
But none of it really mattered, because Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) arrived at Matt's house to interrupt his activities (Peter must have a lot of air miles), leeches his friend's mind-reading ability, and heads down to the basement to free Sylar because he knows from a precognitive dream that Sylar will rescue his friend Emma (Deanne Bray) from Samuel's carnival in the near-future. Speaking of whom, Emma turns up at the carnival towards the end of this episode to tend to Samuel's gunshot wound, despite the fact she doesn't have a compass to let her find the way (am I wrong about that?) –- but, hey, it's what the story demands, just forget about internal logic. The writers always do.
Sure, I'm giving some nitpicks more weight than they deserve, but that's perhaps a bad sign in itself. It's now more fun to pick Heroes' threads apart, because none of the characters or storyline are interesting enough to make me give its silliness a free pass. I'm glad the carnival are united behind Samuel against "so-called normal people", because they'll at least become the awesome force of villainy they were supposed to be from the start, but that's about the only welcome development contained in this episode.
25 JANUARY 2010: NBC, 9/8c
