Heroes Review – “The Art of Deception”

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Last week’s episode of Heroes was one of the more unique episodes we’ve seen in a while.  Hiro was put on some metaphysical trial – complete with appearances by his father and Adam Monroe – and eventually had his brain tumor healed by his mother.  Sylar picked Claire’s brain (not literally) before realizing that he needs to rid himself of his powers, and I still maintain that that doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Finally, Samuel showed what his ability can do when he’s really pissed off, creating a sinkhole large enough to swallow an entire town.

This week’s episode, “The Art of Deception,” lived up to its title.  Samuel, Noah, and Parkman were featured prominently, and each of them acted deceptively in one way or another.  Overall, it was a pretty strong episode and added some new twists to the overall story arc.  Keep reading for the full review.  As always, there will be spoilers.

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After Samuel’s little tantrum that happened to kill over 200 people, the rest of the carnival folk closed down the carnival.  Naturally, they’re scared of Samuel, but more importantly, they’ve lost respect for him, too.  The sinkhole showed up on Noah’s radar, too, so he and Lauren planned to take Samuel out once and for all.  So what’s the problem?  Well, Claire, of course.  What a shock.

Instead of going to class like Gretchen suggested, Claire went to see Noah and instead found Lauren.  After blatant product placement for Sprint (honestly, it would have been more subtle to have had Lauren tell Claire that Sprint has great service), Lauren pretty much spills the beans that her and Noah are going to assassinate Samuel.  Claire leaves before Noah can return, however, and soon runs off to ruin everything.

Claire arrives at the carnival and finds Lydia, who determines that Noah is coming simply by touching Claire.  Now, I know that Lydia can see people’s desires through touch, but since when is she able to read minds? Between her and Ando, it seems as though the writers of Heroes are taking quite a few liberties with what certain characters can and can’t do via their abilities.  Samuel’s no dummy, though, and an assassination attempt on his life is just what he needs to get back into the good graces of his fellow carnies.  He agrees to a peaceful surrender, only to have Multiple Man shoot up the place – hitting Claire and killing Lydia – and bringing in Noah as a prisoner.  Noah takes the fall and Samuel is a hero to his people. Noah is taken to the cliched House of Mirrors and isn’t killed, as Samuel insists on taking the high road.  You’re probably better off killing a guy like Noah when you have the chance, but Samuel’s status in the carnival is a somewhat valid excuse for not doing so.  What’s certain is that once again, Claire screwed up everything.  If she had just gone to class, Samuel would be dead.

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Meanwhile, Sylar propositions Matt to take his powers away so that he can be human again.  Sylar’s whole deal was wanting to be special, hence his accumulation of powers and murdering of anyone else with powers.  Now, though, through his epiphany with Claire, Sylar wants to be purged of his powers so that he can become human again avoid being lonely forever.  Realizing that Sylar could easily kill him or his wife for refusing, Matt tries a few times to somehow block Sylar’s access to his abilities but is unable to succeed.

I thought that it was interesting that Sylar has come to admire Matt for being able to live a normal life with such a powerful ability, so why didn’t Syalr just ask Matt for some help?  Purging all of his powers seems a bit drastic, but then again, Sylar seems to have figured out – using his innate ability of intuition – that only that remedy will make him human.

Sylar gets tired of Matt’s failures pretty quickly and soon threatens to kill Matt’s wife, which naturally prompts Matt to try a bit harder.  Matt doesn’t erase Sylar’s power, but instead puts them in a place where Sylar will be unable to access them.  And finally, for the first time since he forced a bunch of government soldiers to open fire on one another as revenge for shooting Daphne, Matt stops acting like a bitch and takes out some aggression on Sylar.  Knowing that his biggest fear is to be alone, Matt traps Sylar inside his own head for what should be eternity and proceeds to bury him in a wall, Cask of Amontillado style.

Knowing from his dream that Sylar may be the key to saving Emma, Peter shows up at Parkman’s, steals his telepathy, and reads Parkman’s mind to know that he’s been hiding Sylar.  Peter then goes inside Sylar’s head, which is where we leave off.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty solid episode and a vast improvement over last week.  What did you guys think?  Can we please kill Claire already?

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12 Comments

  1. Kamy – That is exactly the thought that went through my head. the one person on the show that everyone wants dead, and you can’t kill her.

    The whole carnival story arc only serves to reinforce my theory that Claire is the Kim Bauer of Heroes. Let’s see – secret government agent gets captured by the bad guy as a result of his daughter’s foolhardy stupidity? Where have I seen THAT before?

  2. Agreed. As always the weakest part of any episode is Claire. She needs to die. I am hoping Samuel dissolves her into dusyand sends her into space

    I rather liked that we saw Tracy as well. Apart from Sylar she seems like one of the few people who just might be able to stand a chance against Samuel with her being practically a living element

    I thought it was quite smart not to kill Noah. Risky but smart. If he had let the carnie kill him they would have felt too empowered. Like they could take care of themselves and it would have been the first step towards getting over their fears. But instead by appealing to the whole good side thing Samuel let them boil on the inside and be once again without direction and in fear of their lives. Naturally they would seek out Samuel to guide them again

    I also can’t help but wonder if once Sylar gets out of the nightmare he will develop an immunity against such attacks. His power might help him figure out how to block such attacks in the future making him even more powerful. And strangely enough I think it’s time for Matt to die. He pretty much finished all of his stories. The last one was the final confrontation with Sylar. I just don’t see any good future story lines for him and his death would serve better rather then leaving him happily married with a kid

  3. I’ve always given Claire the benefit of the doubt with her actions but this time I just saw her for the useless bitch she is. She steps all over Gretchen and looks absolutely mortified when she refuses to let her borrow her car to go chase after some carnie dude.

    Also I’ve noticed Peter’s inability to think things through really get him in trouble. Like when he barges into Emma’s apartment and smashes her cello without saying anything, though hilarious, not very tactful. Here Peter barges into Parkman’s house, steals his power, ignores his warnings, and gets stuck inside of sylars head all in the span of what was I swear like less than 2 minutes.

    A smarter approach would have been to take sylars powers and boom your superman again but noooooo

  4. @ Kountchocula

    I’m not as hard on Peter simply because it’s more in line with his character. He’s an empath, a guy who is bubbling with all sorts of emotions, and the emotions of others affect him to a greater degree than it would a normal person. It makes a lot of sense to me that he’d be impulsive.

    Claire is just plain dumb.

  5. I don’t think Claire was being dumb. Just think, she cares about those people, she knows there’s children and family there, and that her father will not consider that when attacking. I think it was smart that she asked for Samuel to surrender, the only problem it was Lydia who said out loud what Claire was doing there and gave Samuel time to plan something.

  6. @ Nina

    I’m not saying Claire doesn’t care, it’s that she doesn’t think about the consequences of her actions. Because she interfered, her dad is a prisoner and Lydia is dead.

  7. I really hope Tracy actually DOES something in the finale, as someone pointed out she has one of the more powerful abilities. If we had Tracy in place of Claire, or even in place of HALF of Claire’s scenes this show would be 100 percent better! And Tracy isn’t by any means the normal fan favorite!

  8. I actually hated this episode! I was screaming at the screen, wishing Claire would just F off and leave shit alone for once! Damn, the writers really need to get their shit together! Stuff like this makes me not want to watch Heroes anymore
    RANT OVER

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