Heroes: The Hard Part

[norwich36]

Ok, was anyone else laughing their ass off at the way Sylar completely literalized the metaphor "you're a special snowflake"?

That actually was a beautifully-filmed scene, and I loved the subtle shift from Sylar creating a wonder world for his mom, recreating the snowglobes she loved so much, to her horror as it goes wrong. And it perfectly encapsulated the theme of this episode, that the bad guys are human beings, just like us, but ones who hubristically misuse their powers and in doing so cause others to suffer.

Sylar was being paralleled to Nathan in interesting ways in this episode. Both of them are ambitious and driven in part by their desire to live up to their mothers' hopes and dreams for them. Both of them have mothers who are a little scary, and who try to control the world, though Sylar's mom does it symbolically through the snow globes, while Nathan's mom does it through Machiavellian schemes and political manipulation. Sylar is ultimately not strong enough to break from his mother without killing her; we can only hope that Nathan is stronger than Sylar, and resists going along with the nuclear plot. I was amused by the irony that throughout most of the episode, Sylar the serial killer was more overtly concerned with protecting New York than Nathan was--though I hope Nathan is just playing the various members of the Linderman faction.

I also loved the fact that the first person Sylar called when he realized he might explode and destroy NYC was Mohinder! They are SO ex-boyfriends, and Sylar's the stalkery kind. Good thing Mohinder had an excuse to get out of town. And for the first time in a very long time, Mohinder did not annoy me in this episode; in fact, he was so good with Molly I think he should just be confined to being charming to small children and solving scientific puzzles for the duration of the show.

I think that's another significant parallel in this episode: both Claire and Hiro are being placed in a situation where they have to kill someone to save the world, both are understandably reluctant, and it is questionable whether they will actually be able to do it. And even though killing Sylar seems like the correct choice, I actually liked the fact that Hiro was questioning it, and concerned about becoming cold like his future self. I like that he has an ethical code, even though I'm worried that what they're actually setting up is Hiro working up the determination to kill Sylar only after Sylar has killed Ando. Meanwhile, Peter is trying to get Claire to embrace her heroic destiny, which means killing him--and she's not sure she can do it either.

And yet we're not sure that either of them will have to make this sacrifice, since we still don't know who precisely is going to be the one who blows up the city. It could be Ted, Peter, or Sylar, and I love that ambiguity. I'm sure Peter's not going to blow up the city at the beginning of the next ep, with another ep to go, so that's a red herring--but we still don't know who it will be! How set in stone is the future Hiro saw? Will Sylar definitely become president if Hiro doesn't kill him? That's such a terrifying prospect--really the only upside to it would be Mama Petrelli and Linderman's realization of precisely what they've brought about with their machinations, just before he ate their brains.