BIG body count on last night’s penultimate “Heroes.” If you don’t want to know, STOP READING NOW.
Click "Continue" to see who got it . . .
First we lost one of our (three?) firestarters, so now the ranks of the who-nukes-NYC contenders have thinned to Peter and Sylar, who did the evil deed to secure yet another power. Poor Ted -- we hardly knew ye.
Then there was the Vegas-folks showdown in Manhattan between the apparently evil Linderman and the sometimes-evil Niki/Jessica/D.L. duopoly, out to rescue son Micah. Two out of three seemed to go down there (although next week’s preview indicated one might make it), with that unstoppable blonde the only unscathed battler.
And the “company” hero-wrangler played by Eric Roberts got gunned down by former employee H.R.G. (aka Claire’s dad), who’s trying to take out the NYC “tracking device” we now know is actually cute-lil-girl Molly.
But as we lost a few -- and Suresh and H.R.G. were pointing guns, too, when we left them matching wits over Molly -- we gained quite a few here’s-where-we’re-going tidbits. Windy Fork, Neb., population 15, was name-dropped as a place for pursued heroes to hide out. Whatcha bet we get to visit?
They’re also moving forward with backstory. Both Hiro’s dad and Linderman again referenced an earlier generation of heroes whose ranks split, some trying to save the world, some turning to the dark side. What a coincidence! NBC just yesterday announced that to extend next season’s “Heroes” run, it will add six episodes of “Heroes: Origins,” made by a different producing team and featuring fresh characters.
The episode sure felt rushed, though, and hardly as compelling as the first couple hours after “Heroes” returned from its spring hiatus. They were clearly trying to tidy loose ends in preparation for next Monday’s season finale, cramming in all the characters to get them into position for their apocalyptic city-street showdown.
Too much felt anticlimactic. Linderman caused all that trouble just to get Micah to rig the Petrelli election’s voting machines? Like, couldn’t some local hacker have sufficed? And Matt’s mind-reading power seems spotty, at best. He hears what he wants to hear when he wants to hear, sorta like Superman’s X-ray vision. Then there’s George Takei as Hiro’s dad, who seems to know what’s going on with Hiro when he wants to know, but how? And why did Hiro immediately buy into dad’s change-of-heart and start spilling about his mission? Seems to me a little suspicion would be in order in a world where men explode, women morph and time travels.
Too much, too fast. But hey, it still makes way more sense than “24.”
[Above: Masi Oka and George Takei in NBC photo by Paul Drinkwater.]