Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “Pass/Fail,” originally broadcast 1/18/10.

The whole season has been called ‘Redemption,’ of course, but this would sort of be the money episode if you were looking for a single one to define it by. The fans who’ve stuck around, curious to see if there really was some redemption to be found, despite all their doubts, which’ve only continued throughout the season, might at the very least sit up and pay attention to this one.

The main players in “Pass/Fail” would be Hiro, Sylar, Claire, and Samuel. If you wanted to boil it down to a single pass/fail, you might choose Hiro, but the episode is equally important for Sylar and Samuel, the two villains of the season. Hiro’s portion is certainly dramatic, working an arc that’s been building since the end of last season, when it was first learned that he was dying from cancer caused by his frequent time-traveling. Flatlining, he finds himself in a courtroom that holds both his deceased father (George Takei) as judge and Adam Monroe (David Anders) as prosecutor. Throughout the season he’s been trying his best to deal with what seems like a fatal diagnosis, by trying to correct some of the historical mistakes of his life, including finding love for Ando with his sister and rescuing Charlie from Sylar. The court doesn’t look favorably on the explanations or ramifications of these actions, until Ando gets to cross-examine his own defendant, Hiro himself. Hiro eventually decides that he is guilty, except this leads to one last chance, a sword dual with Adam, which Hiro wins, leading him to his mother and the great beyond. But one last twist occurs when his mother decides that some things are more powerful than death, such as, well, destiny.

There will certainly be those who will say, enough already. This was another fine opportunity to kill off an original cast member, and there are moments where it seems as if it would have been perfect. But Hiro lives to fight another day. What’s left for him to do? To finally evolve past his limited sphere, perhaps, to truly “save the world” (which he’s done already, “twice”). If there’s a character who serves as the heart of this show, it isn’t Claire or Peter Petrelli, but the man who has been a hero from the start.

Perhaps more controversially, Sylar seeks his own redemption from Claire, which might be the most ludicrous suggestion yet in this series, since Claire is the last person who should offer this guy sympathy. But the episode makes a good case that Sylar and Claire are mirror figures, if not exactly bringing sympathy for Sylar, then giving him an idea of what might finally conclude his active participation in this series arc. Will the willing loss of his powers really do that? He’s lost them before, sure, but he’s never really dealt with his relationship to them, only what they’ve made him become. Is it possible to redeem the monster by taking away what made him one? That’s the big question. I would like to remind viewers/readers that we’ve seen a multitude of excuses, at the very least, that might in some way absolve Sylar from his crimes, but the shear accumulation of them, right up to Nathan’s murder and his methods in this latest effort to redeem himself, might make it a little more complicated than simply relinquishing his powers. Are we watching the run-up to Sylar’s sacrifice for the sake of Samuel’s defeat?

Speaking of Samuel, that dream girl of his rejects him for the last time, which proves to be the last straw, so that he decides the world has rejected him for the last time and so he will make the world do things his way. It provides a few perfunctory moments, and it’s a predictable arc, but Robert Knepper pulls his weight when he really needs to. This whole late-development piece of Samuel’s story seemed like it was sort of tacked on just to make sure viewers saw Samuel as a fully developed character. I saw him as pretty nuanced from the start, and the arc with his brother, had it been explored a little more, might have done the trick itself. I don’t really think it was a waste to add this extra shade to Samuel, but it’s a little like Gretchen and Claire. I don’t really care for Gretchen (though I do like Madeleine Zima), and I don’t see, if the show has such a future, much long-term potential there.

Anyway, the preview for next week, as always, looks thrilling, but I won’t get into that, lest I do spoilers…The final grade for “Pass/Fail”? Pass.