NBC Team-Up

I'm still deciding what I thought about last night's Heroes.  I think I'm going to decide that I liked it and actually, maybe having a lot to think about and discuss is a sign of high quality in a television show, in itself, no matter if the resulting thoughts and comments are mostly negative.  Maybe not.  Anyway, yeah, some problems:

-- We never got a satisfying explanation for D.L. taking the bullet for Niki, when he could have just as easily phazed her out of the path of the bullet.  I think that what really happened was that D.L. didn't have time to think of the best response to a speeding bullet and instinctively put himself in the way of the woman he kind of sort of used to love or something. 

-- Also confusing: why did Peter need Nathan to fly him out of the atmosphere?  I guess maybe he was overwhelmed by the feeling of imminent explosion and couldn't use his other powers?  It seems like someone could have said something about that. 

-- Not clear why Peter was the one who had to face off against Sylar (except dramatic potential): yeah, Peter's much more powerful than any of the other heroes, but as it turns out, the only borrowed power he used was Niki's super-ass-kicking, which he didn't even acquire until mid-fight . . . No big, CGI-laden fight between the two titans, which seems like a missed opportunity.

-- Love, hope, save the cheerleader, yada yada yada . . . So it seems like maybe Claire and Peter saved the day by guilting Nathan into sacrificing himself, thereby foiling Linderman and Angela Lansbury Petrelli's master plan?

-- No real stakes: D.L., Parkman, Ando and Bennet all still alive, despite various wounds, prophecies and dramatic opportunities; Sylar possibly alive (albeit in cockroach form?), Peter and Nathan probably alive, due to deus ex contract, which means saving the world cost everyone exactly nothing, except, assumedly, some radiation from Peter's semi-apocalyptic hissy fit.

BUT:

-- Really impressive and cool how many of the loose ends got wrapped up in 40-some minutes.

-- Big showdown at Kirby Plaza, despite anti-climactic nature, still kind of cool, especially Nathan and Peter zipping off into space.

-- Bennet promising to kill Peter, if need be. 

-- "Call me Noah." 

-- "You look badass."  "Really?"

Comments

[Melanie]

Was anyone else icked out by all the touchy touchy from Nathan's mom. Ge-ross.
The whole Peter traveling back in time thing did not work for me, it didn't exactly fit in with his storyline.

[peter]

I didn't even notice the bad touch stuff with the mother. I tuned out a little in that scene because I felt like we got it already three weeks ago or whenever, the last time Angela went all Manchurian Candidate. Sci Fi re-aired the pilot over the weekend and, weirdly, the character is completely different: she's shoplifting, because she doesn't feel "alive" and she and Peter seem really connected. It's hard to reconcile that with the non-nonsense, Emily-Gilmore-lite Angela we saw in the last chunk of episodes.

The Peter-in-the-past thing kind of worked for me and kind of didn't. I liked it in theory, but it took a long time away from the rest of the action, and it was another instance of the writers trying to shoe-horn character traits into a pretty blank character by telling rather than showing.