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By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
If this second season arc does come to a close with episode 2-11, then the previous episode would have marked the natural transition from the complication phase of the arc to the resolution phase. Conflicts that have been established are now ready to be joined in full. That’s exactly how this episode plays out, specifically in terms of Mr. Bennett’s war with the Company. Other plot threads are staged for resolution as well, but that’s the main event.
Mr. Bennett’s death has been presaged for several episodes now, so the general direction of this episode was never really in doubt. Once Claire was in the blue cheerleading outfit, the clock was ticking. This leads to a growing sense of desperation for the character, and that becomes one of the more intriguing aspects of the episode. The writers have done an effective job of taking a sinister presence and making him sympathetic. As always, Mr. Bennett is doing everything for Claire’s sake; his motivations haven’t changed.
This presents an interesting parallel, one that was clearly at the heart of the script. Bob delivered his daughter into the hands of the Company, and Elle is psychologically twisted as a result. Elle’s damage gets better treatment this time around, as we get to see more of the conditioning that went into her development. Elle is a grown woman with massive gaps in her memory and a selectively reinforced ethical code. She’s used to seeing people as objects to be used, discarded, or eliminated. The child-like aspects are still annoying, but now that she sees what kind of father Bob has been, compared to Mr. Bennett, things could get very interesting.
Concurrent with the father/daughter drama is the latest turn in Mohinder’s descent. Mohinder began his alliance with Mr. Bennett in the hopes of using the Company to develop a cure for the Shanti virus before bringing it down entirely. Instead, incrementally, Mohinder has been forced to compromise his morality again and again, all thanks to Bob’s deft manipulation. This episode brings him to apparent murder, and the effects on his psyche should be staggering.
Matt is treading a similarly slippery slope, one that was foreshadowed in the season premiere. Matt has already used his abilities to his advantage for his detective exam and in the field, but now that he knows how to use his abilities to control others, he’s stepping into darker territory. His treatment of Angela Petrelli is interesting, because his decision to strip away the identity of Victoria Pratt suggests obsession, and as always, obsession can lead to some disturbing mentalities.
Hiro’s subplot was particularly poignant, considering that it was mainly a means of delaying Hiro’s realization about Kensei/Adam until the final act. It was a strong resolution to the conflict between father and son, and thus a good counterpoint to the Mr. Bennet/Claire and Bob/Elle dynamics. As with so much of the season to date, the generational theme is front and center. Hiro continues to walk the path towards heroism, and in accepting his father’s mantle in this episode, Hiro takes another huge step forward.
Most of the discussion, of course, will be on the final scene. I’ll admit to being completely shocked and more than a little perplexed. I had assumed that Claire’s ability allowed her to survive death through some subtle effect of the regeneration process. If she can bring people back from death with a little bit of her blood, even after several hours, that has enormous potential for abuse (both within the story and on the part of the writers). Mr. Bennett may soon find himself wishing he had died, considering what the Company might do to him.
By the end of the episode, I found myself wondering if the writers had re-watched the first season for inspiration. This felt like one of the best episodes of the season and quite possibly one of the better episodes of the series. The themes were well-constructed and well-explored, and the character motivations were all progressions of established behavior. There’s still a lot of ground to cover in the final two episodes of the arc, but if the writers can continue on a similar path, it should be a satisfying conclusion. |
