Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “Let It Bleed,” originally broadcast 1/4/2010.

Somewhere in the two hours broadcast last night was uttered the sentiment that burnt bridges can be rebuilt. No doubt, that’s the sentiment the creators are hoping for, because at this point, ‘Heroes’ has lost virtually all its good will. Certainly all its buzz, anyway. Retail stores are still convinced that it’s a hot seller, and no doubt it is, and maybe that’s the best the series can hope for at this point, that it’ll be rediscovered after its original broadcasts. It’s not like now isn’t a good time for something like that to happen, whether you consider the Internet age (which might be considered the method by which it became popular in the first place) or ordinary word of mouth (by which the show can sustain the storm of withered expectations from those same fans), which have mingled so thoroughly in this case that it’s just as possible to find someone still trying to find out what all the fuss was about without having to worry too much about the disappointment that set in when things stopped going the way those original fans expected. I’m a DVD fan who was lucky enough to convert to TV fan in what may be the show’s final days. At this point, I don’t really care. Next week will mark the longest continuous arc since the first season, and the slow build has been paying off exceptionally for the past few episodes.

Ever since Nathan was murdered in “An Invisible Thread” in the third season finale and Samuel Sullivan was introduced in “Orientation,” the fourth season premiere, a pair of inevitabilities were certain: Sylar would get his body back and Samuel would be the crux of the new arc, ‘Redemption.’ It was only a question of how all of it was going to play out. For a while, Sylar existed mostly as a disembodied mind inside Matt Parkman’s head, and Nathan continued on in Sylar’s own body. Samuel interacted mostly with his own carnival band, with the occasional visits with the main characters. Parkman struggled constantly with Sylar, and the balance between Nathan and Sylar was always precariously, almost exactly from the moment it was attempted. The rest of the cast moved on in various ways, and more characters were introduced, most interestingly Emma, the hearing-impaired acquaintance of Peter Petrelli. For much of the season, the creators kept Emma’s ultimate role close to their vest, preferring to pursue the obvious veins of the arc, which ultimately led to Sylar escaping Parkman’s mind and reclaiming his own body, not to mention the final death of Nathan Petrelli. For the first hour of the evening, “Upon This Rock,” most of that isn’t really explored. We follow Hiro as he reunites with Ando and their usual antics ensue, only there’s a real purpose evident this time. Hiro is acting all strange – because of his recovery and experiences at the carnival – but is still as motivated as ever, thanks to his need to rescue Charlie from whatever fate Samuel delivered her. The sequences are perhaps even more offbeat than usual, and employ the character to break the fourth wall more than ever before (which is strange, because the series once had a character who literally made the show into a comic book), referencing pop and literary culture to help contextualize and shorthand the pair’s escapades, the very things they’ve been doing all along, perhaps to justify to an increasingly skeptical audience that they aren’t so odd after all.

Samuel is given a new motivation for the first time, flashbacks to his quarrels with his brother, and the idea that he might also be pining for a lost love, not just driven by a need to exploit his powers, but like every other character in the series wishing he could fill a void in his life. When you hear him reiterate that he just wants to do it to give his kind a sense of family, you know that he means it, and that, yeah, he’s got ulterior motives, too. Everyone does. His happen to be somewhat selfish, or at least, don’t easily fold into the ones the main characters follow, much like Sylar.

Which makes “Let It Bleed” that much more interesting, when Sylar reappears, and returns to the carnival to confront Samuel. It’s the first time Sylar has truly met his match, someone who will be able to go toe to toe with him, completely unrestricted, nothing to lose if it comes right down to it. Samuel has his desires, sure, and so does Sylar, but they’re both so abstract that it’s a delight to watch their duel. In a way, Claire is more like them than she is the rest of the cast, which is why it’s so interesting to keep getting her involved so ambiguously in these situations. By the end of the two hours, it’s clear that once again she’s going to be pivotal, it’s just a matter of how and why. Sylar has nothing to gain from her as far as abilities – yeah, he did that already – a fact Claire still holds strongly against him. What else is there?

Emma, too, in quite the opposite way, comes into her own as a dynamic presence in the arc. She’s this season’s Exploding Man, the red herring who will serve as the excuse for the bad guy to say it’s not really his fault, but hey! Look how dangerous she is! What’s the point of her powers? Well, Samuel seems to think she’s a siren, and for a man like Samuel, that’s pretty dangerous indeed. We’re no longer talking the Company here, it’s no longer about Nathan and his ability to expose all of them. It’s the sheer danger of it again, as it was when Sylar was first introduced, the foreboding of Samuel, who might as well be this show’s Magneto. Who exactly is Professor X? HRG? Peter Petrelli? Claire? Who knows? That’s the big question. Whose philosophy will win out? Claire saves Peter’s life after a fairly extraneous hostage situation, and tells him they need his purity, the very opposite of what viewers might have been expecting after the gut punch of “The Fifth Stage.” When everyone keeps asking why Sylar gets to survive, why things have to stay in an apparent rut, it’s because at its heart, ‘Heroes’ is a show that needs to follow its best characters to the logical ends of their arcs. Nathan Petrelli could not survive the tangle he’d made of his life. What of the others?

With the addition of Elizabeth Rohm, a veteran of the Law & Order franchise, HRG finally has a partner who will make his work seem that much more relatable to casual audiences. ‘Heroes’ was never meant to feel like a typical genre show, but if there’s one criticism to be leveled over the past three seasons, it’s that viewers have been asked, increasingly, to exist only in the one reality where people have special abilities. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s also not what the show originally was. Parkman couldn’t be a regular cop after the first few episodes. Imagine if he’d been able to maintain that life a little longer. But that’s what the show’s been saying all along, too, right up to the failure of Nathan/Sylar, that pretenses are a lot harder to maintain than you think. That’s why the Haitian, as handy as he is, has never quite been able to erase every memory forever, or serve as the reason every bad guy is defeated. Life is messy. That’s what ‘Heroes’ is about, how messy lives are reconciled. That’s what this season has been attempting to explore, and why when it’s concluded, it wouldn’t be such a bad note to end on.

The episodes themselves probably weren’t going to win back a lot of viewers. “The Fifth Stage” was definitely a good episode to make them wait a month for new episodes, but even combined, “Upon This Rock” and “Let It Bleed” at best only continue an existing arc. They do, however, sustain a narrative momentum, one that the preview for next week helps justify by pumping more energy into the arc, just when it’s needed. Call this week Nathan’s wake, a moment for reflection. That’s been something I’ve admired about the show from the start, that it doesn’t worry too much about spending too much time in these characters’ heads. But it knows when business needs to pick up, too.