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Heroes 3.24: "I Am Sylar" |
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Tuesday, 21 April 2009 |
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By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
| Sylar having identity crisis thanks to the shape-shifting. Interesting physical and mental exploration of how shape-shifting might have unintentional side effects. This allows Danko to regain a bit of power over Sylar. But is this consistent? Or is this another retcon of Sylar's mental instability? His decision to go rogue again, based on some "madness", doesn't quite make sense in light of the gambit to hide in plain sight. But taken on its own, it's an interesting concept.
Sylar is still obsessed about where he came from, despite supposedly getting over it. Nice ties to the first season and Sylar's complicated relationship with his "mother". It makes a kind of twisted sense that Sylar would turn to his "mother", the woman whose approval he sought for so many years, in his attempt to find direction for his life. It's the remorse that doesn't quite ring true.
The irony is that Micah is right. Had Sylar gone down a different path, he could have been the leader of the metahumans and protected them from whatever threat humanity might pose. But given his issues, it's more likely he would turn out to be like a Magneto as opposed to a more enlightened leader. Why Sylar wouldn't take Micah's power seems a bit odd if he wasn't convinced to change his ways, however; he certainly wouldn't be squeamish about killing a child, after everything he did. It just seems designed to further Sylar's internal conflict. It is interesting to see, however, how Micah's influence pushed Sylar to take over Nathan's life.
But did it need to be the result of such a torturous path of mental instability? If Sylar was smart enough to play detective to find the shape-shifter in the first place, wouldn't he be smart enough to see the possibilities that the ability would present? One could argue that this is some attempt to rationalize the bizarre inconsistencies in Sylar's characterization since the first season, but it undercuts what could have been a more satisfying direction for the character, had his grab for power been the result of cold and clinical planning.
Similarly, Matt's journey seems a bit more complicated than it needed to be. Matt didn't need to meet with his son and consider the dream of getting back together with Janice to realize that he should be fighting beside his friends. He already had plenty of reason to do so in the first place. For that matter, has it been that long since he was head-over-heels for Daphne? Maybe a couple of days? Matt's journey in this volume has been a bit hard to track.
Hiro and Ando are ready to assault Building 26, but like so much else in this episode, the road getting there feels like stalling until the finale. And of course, the tension between them returns, just as they're about to do something important again. Ando has a good point about Hiro's attitude regarding destiny, though I'm not sure "fascist" is the term I would use for it. That implies that Hiro has a bit more power and control than he has over the situation. It might be closer to the truth to say that Hiro is self-centered, and doesn't like the idea of sharing the spotlight.
The confrontation between Nathan and Sylar is cut short just as things are about to move forward. I'm not sure why Sylar wouldn't have simply killed Danko long before now; from the look of things, the shape-shifting ability has trumped the one simple way to stop Sylar, so it could finally be coming. Hopefully, this will be only a momentary pause in Sylar's latest plan. If not, it would render much of what happens in this episode moot, and enough of it was filler in the first place. |
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