Oh I don’t know why I occasionally feel compelled to stick up for the old firm. If nothing else, I suck at defending it. Because yes, yes, I give - those points are fair, it IS just annoying.
Sylar was going through a crowd on the dance floor and getting bumped and poked by everyone in his path, that’d do it; and yes, ‘Danko’ shaking Sandra’s hand was Sylar-he left Noah and Sandra in the hall, then immediately went to the men’s room to freak Danko out.
This could all well be elaborated upon in the next episode or two. I’m rather glad that they don’t feel they have to diagram and footnote every character action. They took a whole episode to reveal that Peter could only hold one ability at a time, patience can be rewarded sometimes 
I guess I’m one of the few here who liked the episode. I thought the Angela-Alice stuff was decent, though a lot of it did seem poorly written. Why didn’t Angela go back afterwards? Especially with Charles “I can make them all forget us anyway” Deveaux? For all the handwringing Angela does about her sister, it seems pretty amazing that she didn’t go back right after the massacre, or even any time afterwards.
For some reason, I thought they did go back and saw the results of the massacre.
I’m right there with ya. I don’t get the hate for character-development episodes. Hey, now we can see Angela Petrelli is multi-dimensional, has redeemable qualities, real reasons for what she does (beyond “I’m evil”) and is human and fallible… instead of a one-note evil-manipulative-bitch caricature.
I assume they did go back to the camp, even if they didn’t waste on-camera minutes to show that. If you sneak back, and see soldiers piling up dead bodies, are you gonna stick around to see what happens next? They sneak back to the cafe, where we see them have their little confab about never letting it happen again while they wait and hope that someone they know might show up in town before they feel like they really gotta vanish so the soldiers don’t find them.
I can only speak for me but I for one don’t hate the character development eps - the good ones are my favourite eps ever and I’m betting I’m not in the minority. For all that each week here that I turn into an angry seven year old, leaping up and howling “that would NEVER happen!” at whatever the plot twist de jour is, I do have masses of affection and goodwill for the characters. I therefore look forward to the eps that spend time exploring them further.
But if they’re going to DO such eps, it needs to tell us stuff we don’t already know. For instance, I 'm not sure whether up to now that Angela has been presented to us as a ‘one-note evil-manipulative-bitch caricature’. I think even in season one she was presented as a character who (although utterly misguided) genuinely thought she was doing the right thing in some ends-justify-the-means type way and they’ve been developing her further ever since. And I think she’s always been presented as a character for whom family is massively important. So much of my disappointment was seeing the trip down memory lane fail to (for me) really build on that - it just told us she had a family member we’ve never heard of that she cared deeply about and she lost them because she was off concentrating on some bigger picture stuff. Well to me, this is just what we see her doing (or risking doing) throughout all past seasons with Nathan and Peter in various ways.
I didn’t think the ep was bad - it was okay. I just don’t think it did justice to the character. I just thought it a shame that if they were going to give Angela her moment in the spotlight that it missed the chance to add anything substantial and that they did so in a way - looking far to the past- that meant it wasn’t plausible for Cristine Rose to be playing the role. As she’s one of the very few actors on this show with a truly impressive acting range, this was a pity for me. I can’t get enough of seeing Cristine on screen! So here we got to see the role with a younger, less experienced actress and opposite a new character we had never heard about before and are more or less told firmly as an audience we’ll never ever see again. That’s rather cheap drama. And I didn’t buy the emotional reasoning behind the socks retcon for a tiny second, either.
I agree to the extent that I think they’ve been developing Angela since the beginning (the “caricature” bit was hyperbole). However I think we did learn a great deal about where Angela’s methods come from. Up til now, yes I saw that family was important to her, but for all I could tell it was important solely as a means to power and politics – not even necessarily in a “rule the world” sense, but even just staying in control, and not falling prey to someone (else – other than Arthur) manipulating her. Let’s face it, Angela has been one cold, calculating lady, to the point where even when she’s affectionate to her sons, I got the sense that it was calculated to manipulate them, rather than because she honestly, genuinely ever felt “love” for them as an emotional response.
So we got to watch Angela’s cold, protective walls crumble, if only for an hour. Has she ever cried before – not counting crocodile tears? Now I know where her walls come from, how deeply rooted they are, why she feels a need to manipulate instead of feel, why she is the way she is. I think it gave us a lot of insight. I empathize with her in a way that I couldn’t before.
Oh, I love Christine Rose. Her tone when she said, “You’ll have to dig,” nearly broke my heart. We definitely need to see more vulnerable moments with her (which will be hard to do – Angela is all about staying in control).
I think we’re more in agreement than I thought. I agree there’s always been that tension about how much she was genuinely fond of her children and how much she regarded them as not-always-that-effective tools for shaping destiny with. I think this is more true of her with regards Nathan than Peter, by the way - I think they’ve always pinted her as being quite adoring of Peter. You asked if we have ever seen her cry before and the answer is yes. She cries buckets of private tears in season one, even flinging herself on his corpse when she believes Peter has been killed by Sylar. But yeah, Nathan - that’s a whole lot more complicated for the reasons you mention. At times she seems to outright despise and resent him, something that seems in no way lost on Nathan himself who generally looks very wary of her even if he remains overly desperate for her approval. But I never minded any of that - for me the ambiguity and mixed feelings makes her for me one of the show’s most interesting characters.
I do agree with you that she is creating the sense of a character starting to lose it, mind - her *screaming * to Noah not to follow Sylar the other week was quite shocking because she never raises her voice. And she looked so frail outside that Church with Peter a couple of eps back. I’m rather worried about the magnificent old bag - I do hope it all isn’t all signs that the Season finale-generated Angel of Death will be fluttering its wings in her direction.
Scoot yet butt over on that bench, luv.
I’ve always seen her as someone who would do what needed to be done for (what she thinks is) the greater good, while understanding that often that means doing something horrible. letting Peter blow up- she was prepared to let that happen to prevent a greater catastrophe (she thought- but just what was the worse future-I’m not sure). Lying to Sylar about being his mom and giving him a girl to kill as a gesture of trust-she cringed at doing it, but thought Sylar, if he could be rehabilitated, was too valuable an asset for Primatech to kill.
The first time we see Angela in the show is when Nathan and Peter bail her out of sock-shoplifting prison-the first impression we get of her is she’s a vulnerable and lightly potty widow. Of course she and Peter aren’t out of the police station before she was playing one kid against the other again, but she was never played as just the evil queen.
I think it just elaborated on what was merely inferred.Primatech was a defensive organization that protected the world from specials, and as it turns out, specials from the world. For me the ep answered why there was a curious lack of law enforcement or governmental interest in the specials. One of Primatech’s purposes was to shield specials from official interference.
I think she genuinely favours Peter, but her and Nathan? She loves him, but there’s a distance. It may be because they seem of similar temperament -they charm and manipulate as their primary method of dealing with people.
Noooooo! But shit, now that I think of it, she’s got tragic hero written all over her; great power, ascends to great heights/wealth, fatal flaw (desire to control and manipulate) leading to great downfall. Now all we have left is final act of redemption leading to death.
If they want to push anyone over the cliff, the one who deserves it is Matt. Has an amazing, evolving ability but rarely uses it effectively and runs around half cocked and getting himself in trouble. If he had a marble in his head he’d go to the NYPD and brain mojo his way back into his Detective Clairvoyant job. Use your powers for good, Parkman!
I think this is valuable information to have clarified, though. Up til now we’ve known the Company as an organization dedicated to stalking, capturing, recruiting, and otherwise controlling specials. Which gave us the rather obvious question of why specials would agree to participate in this, much less be the ones heading it up. Seeing where the mission started gives us a better insight into the path it took to go so far astray. Specials agreed to this because their stated mission was to protect themselves from the government. Corruption did the rest.
Duly noted on Angela crying over a Sylar-murdered Peter in S.01. That was difficult for me to get a real bead on, though… she’s sad that he died at the hands of a murderer, yet she was willing (even after that) to have him blow up (and presumably die – was there any way for her to know that he could heal from being exploded? would there be enough bits left to heal together?) in pursuit of her ultimate goals. Back then I was thinking they were crocodile tears. But maybe they weren’t, and it’s more complicated than that.
I also love how utterly complicated the Petrelli family relationships are. There’s nothing so simple as “I love you” or “I hate you.” It’s both at the same time. The dysfunction makes it very real. I really dig the exploration of that – we’ve traveled quite a distance in our understanding of their relationships from where we were in S.01.
This pretty much sums up why I loved that episode. We have the two most in-control characters in the entire series – Angela and Noah – having completely lost any semblance of control. And we get to see how much of their own sense of security and stability comes from being in control – things start spiraling away, they freak out and actually make things worse, and then completely lose it. It was great and terrible to see how far to the other end they can fall.
(And they better not kill Angela. Christine Rose is way too awesome. They can give her the redemption part of her hero’s journey by having her learn from what she’s lost and change her approach. That would be interesting to see.)
Is anyone else overjoyed that Fuller is back in the writers’ room? 
We can start a charitable organization dedicated to sending Fuller beer and cookies every week!
Her grief is I think very real - she has no audience to play to there, after all.
But it is a little more complicated and in some ways much nastier than I think even than you’re thinking. As Angela points out rather smugly later on to her, Claire’s gift means that Peter won’t die in the NYC explosion after all. This is also what brings Nathan (temporarily) on board - he initially tells Linderman to piss right off when he thinks the plan also means Peter has to die. However, once Peter has given that demonstration of healing factor gubbins, (and indeed once Nathan’s questioned him closely on just how powerful it is) you see him thinking “brilliant - best of all worlds here”.
Put me down for that - hell I’d chip in towards a pony if he continues to do good work. Unless he offs any of my favourite characters in which case: go to hell, Fuller! I’d miss Matt, Annie. If only for that hilarious stinkeye thing he does whenever he attempts the oh so subtle art of telepathy. My nomination to appease the Death Angel is Hiro. He seems stuck as a child who refuses to learn anything. I don’t hate him or anything but if it must be someone then that’s who I’m pushing.
I’d be ok with that, for the same reason why I’m ok with Matt hitting the chipper: neither of them really learn much from their experiences. Matt’s always an impetuous dork, Hiro’s still wading about in his comic book morality- this from a guy who buried an immortal alive. Pretty dark shit, but it never seemed to affect him afterwards