Heroes – “Lizards”

“Lizards”

October 1st, 2007

At the opening of this week’s episode, we gained a structure to this year’s season: A Series of Eight, Isaac Mendez’s unfulfilled prophecy paintings. The first in that series showed Hiro’s father bloodied and dead on the pavement below, and is in Mr. Bennet’s possession. The other seven? He hasn’t seen them, but intends to find them. It looks like we’ve got a Collect-a-thon ahead of us.

Except that, you know, we learn almost nothing about Isaac’s Series of Eight in this episode. The title itself refers to Claire’s biology class, and her inability to keep her mouth shut about regeneration while boy toy West watches on, chatting up Suresh Sr.’s book. I really hate to see Claire get the episode title when her storyline isn’t exactly the most compelling thing the show has going for it: a stolen car? Really? Uncool.

Peter, obviously the most intriguing storyline, spends time tied to a chair and being spongebathed by a young Irish lass. And then he saves her honour with his newfound powers: super strength, his light flash projectiles, and becoming an expert at untying fairly complex knots. Oh, and he doesn’t have a scratch on him, so perhaps the blood may not be his own. Then, whose blood is it? This is an interesting question, but when the show barely even spends any time with him it doesn’t resonate. And especially when he basically becomes a thief for hire.

And there’s the big problem with Heroes right now: each individual episode is only able to string together a series of small-scale storylines, and as a result it never feels like anything really happens in each episode. Whether it is Mohinder’s time with the Haitian, Hiro’s attempts to woo himself a princess, or Parkman’s investigation in New York, or the gruesome attack on Angela Petrelli, nothing seemed to be given any time to matter.

And I want them to matter: I want more information on Nathan’s emotional stability, and I want a fleshed out Hiro storyline that isn’t just cute and cliched. I want to actually feel like Petrelli’s attacker matters, and isn’t just a side story. And, more importantly, I want for this show to have a lead character and a lead storyline again, instead of simply hinting at a big picture at the beginning and end of each episode (Which it ever so frustratingly did).

The episode was a carbon copy of last week’s episode, but with ten less minutes to tell its story. The result was something that was just as packed but even more rushed, as none of last week’s dangling storylines were resolved in any more than a superficial fashion. Nothing concluded, everything just appeared to conclude before being hit with an unforeseen complication. Which is, you know, exactly the same as last week. And thus, my opinion remains unchanged: Heroes is still on notice.

Cultural Observations:

• Claire’s parents are infinitely more interesting than Claire, so why did we only see them being incredibly boring last week, especially her mother?
• I wish they would have at least attempted to make the back of the Irish pub look like Ireland. As it is, it could be any dive bar in any city around the world. I guess all of their budget went to setting Haiti.
• Speaking of the Irish Pub, Peter’s attractive barkeep friend looked a whole lot like Gabrielle Anwar, currently playing an Irishwoman on Burn Notice. I don’t know if her accent is better or worse.
• You’ll notice I’ve said nothing of our immigrant twins. There’s a reason: I don’t care. Even the creepy bleeding black eyes and the woman’s spontaneous death can’t make me feel as if this isn’t just Niki’s storyline all over again. What we learned: she goes crazy when he’s not there, and his tears cure the disease.
• We don’t see any sign of Niki or Sylar this week, but we should be seeing more of them a week from now.
• All of this being said about the show being a poor influence, I’m happy to see the Haitian back in action by episode’s end with Noah. I’d watch a sitcom version of “Noah and the Haitian” any day. Let’s just cut Claire out of the picture.
• You know, we went through an entire “Claire cuts herself” storyline last year, did we really need another one? She should be smarter than this, people.