I have a confession to make: I totally forgot about Volume 4 of Heroes starting this week.

.

I know – how shocking is that? I thought that maybe it meant that I was over the show, that it wouldn’t suck me right back in – but it did.

Everyone together, on Aretha Franklin’s I will survive:

And so it’s back

From hiatus,

Peter, Nathan, all their friends

So much more messed up today

I should have turned off the TV

I should have broken the remote

But now I’m hooked

And I can’t stop watching…

While I still love the show, I’m still a little ambivalent towards Heroes at the moment. Then again, all healthy relationships go through ups and downs. Volume 1 was my romance with the show; then came the let downs of Volumes 2 & 3, interspaced with times of hope when I could sense the show was really trying to give me its all. And now comes Volume 4, which will be the chance for the show and I to recapture some of that initial, exciting romance, which, because of a newfound maturity, can bring so much more to both of us.

Who knows?

Nathan Petrelli

So the big brother is now the big villain, isn’t he? This reminds me of a comment made in another show that has nothing to do with Heroes: “You’re the worse kind of bad person because you think you’re good – but you’re not. You’re a bad person.”

And because of that, Nathan scares me; he really, really scares me. While his intentions are good – he really does want to help – his ‘hypocritical self-loathing’ (kudos for that one, Peter!) makes him walk a very dark path. And it’s all reflected in his tone… it’s so detached, almost emotionless; he even sounds borderline drone-ish. Nathan believes so deeply in his ‘mission’ that he doesn’t seem to be able to see anything else but that anymore, nor to accept the fact that he might be wrong. He has become something of a fanatic, and nothing scares me more than a fanatic.

Nathan, to Peter: I’m doing what’s necessary.

Oh wow, that’s scary. Do we need to go through the various historical and current examples of people with that kind of attitude doing ‘what’s necessary’, which turned out to be anything but?

I should take the time however to commend Nathan for providing me with a lot of material to ruminate upon, including the very interesting and very current dilemma of civil liberties versus national security. The question has been asked time and again throughout the last couple of decades: how much is too much?

Peter Petrelli

Peter used to be my favourite character, and not only because he’s played by Milo Ventimiglia; I really liked Peter. He was so full of hope, so eager to save the world, so willing to try. But now he annoys me more than anything else. I just can’t get over the self-guilt trip he lapses into so often.

Peter, after the crash victim died: I should have been stronger.

Well you know what? You weren’t. Deal with it. Do what you can with what you have, not what you used to have or what you wish you had. The fact that Peter thinks he can’t save the world anymore because he doesn’t have powers reminds me of Dean Winchester’s dilemma at the beginning of the fourth season of Supernatural, when he wonders how little old regular guy Dean could be chosen by God to do something special.

Yes, I did it – I just made a link between Supernatural and Heroes. That’s not as impressive as the link between Privileged and Heroes, and hopefully I will be able to up myself by tying in Ugly Betty.

Until then, I’m going to snigger a little more at the fact that Peter is a paramedic, attempting to get something of the thrill he felt at having superpowers. I will also keep enjoying the fact that his partner is Persian and that he said, on-air and during prime-time, something many (if not all) Persians have talked about since September 11^th: it’s getting scary to live in a country intent on labelling you as a terrorist just because of where your genes were cooked up.

Mohinder

There is (unfortunately) not much to say about Mohinder apart from the fact that you reap what you sow; after all, Mohinder is still living the consequences of his experiment, i.e. being rounded up for having a power he didn’t have at birth.

I did love the exchange he and Peter had in the cab, so reminiscent of their first exchange (ah, the way we were). It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to him as he learns to deal with the consequences of his decision to inject himself.

Hiro/Ando

Let me start by saying that Hiro is absolutely adorable and I love the relationship he has with Ando. But it’s also getting a little old. I can’t believe that after everything he has been through, Hiro doesn’t seem to have at all grown up. Come on – how can he believe that Ando, with the power that he has, will be able to do anything on his own? He’s a supercharger, which means that he needs to have someone to supercharge: Ando can only be a sidekick. It’s not only infantile in that Hiro got them a lair, a costume and a vehicle, but mostly in that the entire project Hiro has embarked on (and forced Ando on) hasn’t been thought of correctly.

Now that Ando is the one with a power, I’m hoping that Hiro will snap out of his seemingly eternal childhood without losing that youthful optimism of his. Perhaps Ando’s accusation of living though him is the first step towards that?

Noah Bennett

This review is a little long, so I’m going to keep this point short – but I will probably come back to it in the upcoming weeks.

I wonder how Noah Bennett got involved in all this, and also how he feels about what his new job. On the one hand, he used to do almost the same thing, i.e. round up people with special powers. However before, he used to focus on people who were dangerous, whereas now he is doing it indiscriminately. And, again, he technically has to turn his own daughter in.

This situation and, perhaps, this entire episode, was an excellent example of the fluidity that typically defines life, that defines relationships; things can change, and drastically so, within a short period of time, and so can relationships. Perhaps this is the real reason why I found this episode so destabilizing; it managed to be realistic even with its totally unrealistic premise.

Daphne/Matt/Usutu

Isn’t it interesting how Matt wants to be normal and yet Daphne finds it boring to be normal? Makes you wonder if that relationship isn’t meant to be.

My favourite part of this episode was the following exchange between Matt and Usutu.

Mark, to the turtle: How did you get out?

Usutu: You’re talking to a turtle again.

But the most interesting line spoken in this episode happens to have come only a few moments after.

Usutu: I’m not really here, Parkman. It’s an illusion, like… Life.

Life as an illusion – now that’s an interesting concept; it’s in direct relation to one of my favourite quotes: “This life is like unto vapour in a desert and the existence of every thing is as a mere illusion, evanescent and bound to extinction.” Makes you wonder at just how wise Usutu really is… Come on Usutu, don’t hold back on us!

Sidenotes

• The scene where the prisoners, hooded, blinded and deafened, were being loaded on the plane was particularly disturbing in the context of a certain prison that a certain country built in Cuba.
• The noise that is played when Sylar cuts open his victims’ heads? –wince–
• Sylar’s alleged father is a taxidermist. I don’t know why, but I have the impression that is going to be something important.

I had heard before that Heroes is the new X-files; I never quite understood that myself. X-files is about paranormal activity, Heroes is about one paranormal activity affecting lots of people. But this episode does have a little bit of the X-files feel in it, what with the government conspiracy and all. It seems that between Supernatural, Fringe and Heroes, I might be getting a little bit of my X-files dose… And, for those of you who like Lost, it seems like there is going to be a major dose of that injected into Heroes, too.

Let’s see what next week’s episode brings us!

PS: That comment from another show that applies to Nathan Petrelli? It comes from, believe it or not… Privileged! I really only need to weave Ugly Betty and The Office in, and all my shows will be represented.