Now after its year-end hiatus the show is back, and has show runner Tim Kring learned anything from the barrage of abuse he’s received from TV critics across the globe? One of my biggest complaints was how none of the heroes was remotely connected to reality, as in having to earn a living. And almost immediately at the start of A Clear and Present Danger (Volume Four: Fugitives) that’s what we get! Cute Daphne is working as a cycle courier, Parkman is a policeman again, Peter a medic and Clare is going back to school. Even Nathan is actually doing the sorts of things that state senators actually do, even if it’s the same twisted plot steal from X-Men where the government sees the threat of mutants and starts bagging them, starting with Tracy Strauss. The only exception to this is Hiro and Ando, which presumably based on the funding of his father’s company, has allowed Hiro to create a ‘lair’. He’s obviously been reading too many comics, which is what Ando concludes when he shows his friend the spandex outfit he’s had made for him, and the Ando-cycle. I don’t think Tim Kring likes the Hiro and Ando characters, and makes them act like ten-year-olds at the slightest opportunity. The answer, if you didn’t guess, is that he was adopted from the brother of the man he finds tending his watch repair business. Meanwhile, almost powerless Peter is getting frustrated working as a New York paramedic, knowing that with super-strength and speed he could save more road accident victims. He has his learning ability back, we assume, but without coming back into contact with more abilities, he’s not the Peter we once knew. Peter meets Nathan back at the Petrelli home; it isn’t a happy brotherly exchange as Nathan wants to know what Peter can do, so presumably his people know what to expect. Parkman is visited by Usutu who tells him that he’s been chosen to have pre-cog paint power, like he had a choice. We still have no explanation as to how he reattached his head after Arthur removed it, but you can’t have everything, I guess. The abductors get Hiro, while he’s talking to Ando, who’s hanging out at a strip joint on the Ando-cycle – holy pole dancers! These Swat-dressed blokes get around, because a minute later they turn up for Parkman just as Claire comes to warn him. The drawings he created predicting this aren’t very useful, as he’s still trying to interpret them when they tranquilise him. Peter and Nathan meet again, and it’s a trap where Peter is caught. We’re rapidly running out of free heroes! The rest of the captured mutants are experiencing the joy of ‘rendition’, with matching orange jumpsuits and an unregistered air flight to a sunny destination – Cuba, perhaps? That’s almost all of them, apart from Claire, who Nathan decides to let go, stupidly. But she escapes and stows away on the plane, helped by her extra tight fitting jumpsuit, I suspect. Her power isn’t always useful, but she’s young, pouting and gutsy with it. Gosh, this was really entertaining, something I wondered if I’d ever say about this show again. It still fell into the trap of flitting around too much, but in general, it was the best episode since the end of season one. In fact, if you’re willing to forgive the new characters since then, it could so easily have spliced onto the show at that point, and had us avoid the abyssal lows of seasons two and three so far. The symbolism of a crashing airplane is obvious to parallel; this show was going down, out of control, and now someone has taken control. It still has some work to climb back to altitude, but at least it’s no longer on fire! I can’t wait for Bryan Fuller’s influence to be felt again. We need snappy dialogue and character development to go along with the plot resurgence. Check out our review of episode 13 here. 3 February 2009
