WRITERS: Adam Armus & Kay Foster[SPOILERS] This is the penultimate episode of the whole season. This. No, really. An episode that did very little beyond deliver monochrome back-story for Mr. Bennet (Jack Coleman) that nobody really cares about, and tardily justified volume's "Redemption" title by forcing Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) and Sylar (Zachary Quinto) to iron out their differences in the clichéd mindscape of an empty city...
DIRECTOR: Allan Arkush
GUEST CAST: Sherri Saum, Ashley Crow, Kenneth Colom, Gregory Hoyt & Stephen Taylor
I have very little to say. I appreciate Heroes' attempt to focus more on character this season (by necessity thanks to budget cuts), but the writers always struggle to make any of their characters feel interesting or exciting now. Peter dreamed that Sylar will rescue his deaf friend Emma (Deanna Bray) from Samuel's (Robert Knepper) clutches at the carnival, but because Sylar's now trapped inside his own mind, Peter uses his leeched power from Matt to enter the psyche of his brother's killer and rescue him. Inside, Sylar's been existing in an abandoned city with every passing hour feels like a year (I feel your pain, dude). Consequently, he's had three years to reflect on his sins and his solitude has also weaned him off killing. When Peter turns up, the pair struggle to leave the "mental prison" (later symbolized by a gigantic brick wall of the title), particularly as Sylar's come to believe it's not a delusion but cosmic punishment for his crimes.
At the carnival, Samuel tries to make Claire (Hayden Panettiere) understand the kind of man her dishonest father truly is, by showing her his darkest secrets projected in the Hall Of Mirrors. It turns out Bennet was once the world's most candid used car salesman back in 1985, married to a black woman called Kate (Sherri Saum), who was murdered in their home when a delivery man with telekinesis burst in to rob them. That tragedy spurred Bennet into investigating the presence of "specials" in the world, which eventually brought him to the attention of Johnson (Eric Roberts), who recruited him into The Company and, it's inferred, helped Bennet get over his grief by pointing him in the direction of waitress Sandra (Ashley Crow).
So, Sylar's been rehabilitated (again), admittedly in a more plausible way than previously because of his long isolation and the fact he has remnants of Nathan's "goodness" still lodged in his brain. How long will his salvation last? About as long as it can, before the writers decide they need a villain again because Sylar's boring when he's not carving open people's heads (heck, he's actually quite boring even when he's doing that nowadays.)
And the writers failed to give us a worthwhile "origin story" for Bennet because his transformation from sincere salesman to bad-ass Company agent felt very sketchy and more deserving of a webisode. The episode ended with Samuel growing weary of his attempts to make Claire understand his motivations (er, that he's a petulant, immature carnie on a power trip), so he buries her deep underground with her father inside a RV, and announces his plan to transport the carnival to Central Park and raze the Big Apple to the ground. Mwahaha! That'll show those "normals" never to, y'know, visit his carnival and pay his employees to entertain them as part of a job he's actually enjoyed all his life. Oh yeah, his dead brother lied to him about his powers (with good reason) and his childhood sweetheart thinks he's a creep, so flattening NYC is reasonable payback, uh-huh.
The strange thing about "The Wall" is how much of the season's storylines went undernourished yards from the finish line, so next week's finale will either be a thrilling, lean spectacle with no fat on its bones, or a hectic mess as the writers struggle to bring the year's disparate elements to a close while servicing all the characters. I'm predicting an awkward storytelling mess with perhaps more special-effects than we've had all year as a salve for the easily pleased, what about you?
1 FEBRUARY 2010: NBC, 9/8C
