Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “The Wall,” originally broadcast 2/1/10.

Okay, so NBC made a few things clear last night: this season is going to be eighteen episodes long (one less than originally suggested), and that, for all intents and purposes, ‘Heroes’ isn’t quite done yet. The fans, meanwhile, have still been having their say as well: whatever this season has done, it hasn’t exactly accomplished its goal of redeeming the series. If anything, it seems to have only cemented the fact that ‘Heroes’ has quite thoroughly lost the zeitgeist. At this point, a lot of the original fans have decided more of what they want than what they’re willing to accept from the creators, which is something that has killed genre shows in the past (ironically, for instance, ‘Star Trek: Enterprise,’ which attempted a similar fan-appeasing fourth season, also managed to fail quite spectacularly, though NBC is still apparently willing to suggest ‘Heroes’ isn’t quite done yet). “The Wall,” for better or worse, demonstrates an unerring confidence on the part of the creators in their own storytelling instincts.

Since “Confidence Man” in the first season, HRG has been the source of some of the show’s best stories, and “The Wall” again turns to him with flashbacks to help, in the eleventh hour, provide some powerhouse developments. Held captive by Samuel at the carnival, HRG and Claire have another opportunity (yay!) to bond over revelations of his past. We learn some major new things about it, which I think work a lot better than some of the stuff that’s been done with Samuel in recent episodes, possibly even better than the Lauren angle the season has been working. It seems we have an entirely new origin story for HRG now, one that involves an entirely heretofore unknown family. If that bums you out already, I’d say get used to it. “Company Man” was the first and perhaps still only classic episode of the series, and perhaps for some, like the entire first season, hallowed ground for some (okay, majority of the) fans, but this is a late extension of that groundbreaking origin story. More than all the work done with the previous generation of “specials” (a term used this episode, which only emphasizes the fact that the series has never really settled on a single, unique term for what it has really been dealing with, since “hero” and “villain,” like “Superman” in ‘Smallville,’ has never been entirely appropriate) such as the Petrellis or the rest of the class of Coyote Sands, it’s Noah Bennet’s history with the Company that’s really provided the meat of the backstory, ever since the Sureshes fell out of favor with the fans (right about, oh, after the first few episodes of the series, unfortunately). Sometimes, just trying to keep him in a Company context has proven a chore.

But that history is always rich territory, as “The Wall” demonstrates. So, as I said, new revelations. Bennet had a family before Sandra and Claire and whatshisface. Turns out this family, or at least the promise of one, served as the impetus of HRG’s origin, since his wife, not long after she announces that she’s pregnant, is killed by someone with powers similar to Doyle (the Puppetmaster), which leads Bennet on a quest to track down his kind. This leads to the kind of wall map with string that’s become another of the unofficial signatures of the series (like, oh, the recently abandoned Tim Sale art that accompanied precognitive visions from characters Isaac Mendez to Matt Parkman), which HRG himself revisited earlier this season, at least with newspaper clips. Anyway, we get a real sense of what Bennet was like before he became HRG, and we see his introduction to Eric Roberts’ Thompson, who’s become a favorite to revisit most seasons, even another mention of Claude, the Invisible Man, one of the few characters never actually seen again since the first season (ah! appropriate). It’s an episode that fills in gaps in a necessary manner, a suggestion (yet another one) that even at this late game and with most of fan trust eroded to nil, the creators still know what they’re doing.

Which is nice, because “The Wall” also revisit’s the periodic attempt to show a reformed Sylar, thanks to Peter, who travels into a mind that’s been closed off almost exactly to the request of Parkman last episode. Sylar had reached the point where he willingly sought, if not a shot at redemption, then at least a chance to free himself from the impulses his powers made easy to fall prey to that ruined his life, which Parkman wickedly granted him, just at the point that Peter needed Sylar to free Emma from her own unfortunate future in the Samuel plot to assert his evil influence on the world. Most of the episode sees Peter inside Sylar’s mind as he tries to convince him to leave this bizarre exile, which we already know seems to have its own sense of time from last week. After three hours in the real world, Sylar thought he had spent five years. He’s used that time not in anger and bitter resentment, but to actually reflect and affirm his own sense of reform, and by the time Peter gets there, he’s still working on his mental atonement and isn’t ready to accept that he’s needed in the real world.

Now, there are probably fans (“probably” in this sense meaning “definitely”) fans who won’t accept Sylar in any sense as a good guy at this point, since they grew tired of him a long time ago, “grew tired” in this sense meaning “irrevocably,” the same reaction that has made it impossible this entire season to win back those jaded since the second season. Yet in its own logic, the episode works in this sense, too, the redemption of Sylar. He’s finally broken free of the influence of his powers, for the first time since Elle made him kill and effectively transformed Gabriel Gray into Sylar. He can no longer claim innocence, but if you believe in the ability of a criminal to reform (which is the idea behind prisons and correctional facilities, which, er, civilization is all about), then you have to give Sylar at least the benefit of the doubt. He and Peter spend a lot of time talking about the elephant in the room, that Sylar’s single biggest crime was the murder of Nathan Petrelli, which is still the last one he ever committed, even if you count all the torment Sylar put Parkman through this season (which can be argued, he had coming).

“The Wall” takes its name from this sequence. It also features somewhat prominently the book ‘Pillars of the Earth,’ for what it’s worth, quite a recent novel at that. If you want to look into the significance of that, it probably wouldn’t be a bad thing. Anyway, beyond HRG and Sylar, the episode also features Samuel, of course, and Eli, the multiplying man I thought might provide a goose for viewers when he was first introduced, who like Lauren is a new kind of personality template, but who hasn’t really had a chance to have a proper spotlight. Ironically, with one episode remaining, he has his biggest moment ahead, confronting Sylar and Peter before they can foil Samuel. It’s worth noting that the season finale technically still has Hiro, Mohinder, and Parkman to revisit, even though they weren’t featured in the preview.

That’s the thing about a shortened season. Things may end up sacrificed, but I’d say the show has done a lot of good with what it’s had, far more than it’s been given credit for. But being a minority voice, do I really count as far as opinions go?