Now, I’ve enjoyed time travel in Heroes and it certainly has its place, but the problems come when the characters start to interact in the timezone they find themselves in, and it is that deep flaw which runs through the entirety of episode 12. My Father had more paradoxes than a temporal anomaly’s day out to the time paradox convention in time machine land, and only marginally less than the insipid Van Damme gaffe-fest that is Time Cop. Still, whilst the time travel made me want to hunt the show’s writers down, put them in some rudimentary stocks and pelt them with the rotten contents of my fridge, the episode wasn’t without it’s plus points. Sylar makes a superb return to form and after killing Elle (which is a crying shame) goes on to cherry pick more powers from people’s freshly diced brains. The thing about Sylar is that he’s so good at being bad, and throw in the macabre humour exhibited as he goes about his gruesome business and you’ve got the makings of one of my favourite moments of the season so far. The shame is, though, that the writers have wasted the opportunity to do this more consistently, as the previous 11 episodes have seen him flipflopping between hero and villain. Sadly, it is this failure to settle on any purposeful direction for the show’s cast that has overshadowed the entire series. As one reader put in their comment on last week’s article: “Heroes tries to have it both ways.”. It wants to be accessible with standalone episodes and an unchanging consistency that encourages familiarity amongst the audience; but it also wants to join in the current trend of serialised drama where characters, plot and the show’s landscape change over time. Obviously, these are conflicting approaches and inevitably what appear to be huge plot developments are undone one or two episodes down the line, leaving the audience feeling cheated, or in my case, that I’ve wasted the time and energy engaging with the events of previous episodes. Obviously, I’ve bypassed a lot of what happened including Ando, Parkman and Daphne tracking down the lost sketches for the latest 9th wonder comic. Ultimately, however, the episode doesn’t blow me away which, when it is the penultimate instalment of this volume, it really needs to. Still, next week is another opportunity for Kring to excite, or ultimately disappoint me all over again. Read Daniel’s prior review here. 19 December 2008
