When Clarie's dumb uncle #3 said he was tripped by an invisible man, is that supposed to be Claude (who left the company way before these events ever happened), another superpowered person or just Flint being a moron?
Given all the retconning, it probably supposed to be Claude... even though he left the Company well before that point. I think. Gotta say Temis your thoughts have helped me appreciate parts of this episode. I'd forgotten the forgive me room completely. And you're right - Angela's backstory was very good. Probably the best part of the episode. Still the weakest episode so far though.
I still like this show, but it's gotten really silly now. When Elle showed up in the Sylar flashback I literally groaned aloud.
UGH... Below Average. I'm getting really tired of flashback episodes like this one. It turns out that everyone really did (or almost did) run into each other before. Yay! The incredible shrinking Heroes universe. Add in the serious amount of contradictions with previous plots and characterizations, and you have a real mess.
^ The shrinking universe has really, really annoyed me. Totally unnecessary. Other than Elle working with HRG, which is both likely and may have even been mentioned before, none of it was necessary.
I would have given this episode an average rating (as has been this entire season so far) if it weren't for the fact that it ignored any type of continuity from season one. How short of a memory do they think we have? Didn't Arthur commit suicide? Wasn't Elle isolated and groomed to be an agent ever since she was 4? And the whole season 3 conflicted Sylar rubs me wrong. I miss the season 1 sociopathic Sylar. He was a true villan: Unrepentant and power-hungry. Now, we are stuck with Arthur Petrelli who is a textbook Trekian, scenery chewing, moustache twirler. And now we're back to the eclipse. Have they figured out what its purpose is? TPTB first said that it had something to do with the abilities, then they said it was just a dramatic focal point. Now the previews are hinting otherwise to that! Which is it? Can't they get their own stories straight? Or will it be "fixed" with yet more time travel and Hatian mindwipes?
Angela TOLD Peter Arthur committed suicide, presumably (in retrospect) to keep him in doubt about his own abilities. She was trying, at the time, to prevent Peter from exploring his powers by creating a bit of self-questioning instability in him. But Arthur obviously killed himself just as much as Angela was committed to being a kleptomaniac (which is not at all).
When HRG fed the glass-shattering guy to Sylar, I'm sure we were supposed to be thinking "Oh the pathos! Oh, the irony, that later, HRG's daughter is victim to the same horrors!" but really I was thinking "Are we supposed to believe HRG just sits and watches this? He wasn't like that before..." Interesting character work for Sylar, but really inconsistent for everyone else. Having Papa Patrelli at the hospital after the accident... clever, but not clever enough to be jarring - he wasn't there last time. Trying too hard, devouring itself... this is the first episode I deliberately skipped, but I watched it online after reading the good reviews in here. Thanks for steering me wrong, people!
Sylar might have been a mustache-twirler the first two seasons but at least he was a fun and interesting one. Unlike Arthur, who is just plain boring and generic.
I went with Average. My primary complaint is that this episode did not do what the other flashback episodes did in the other seasons, which was fill in the backstory with NEW information. I swear that half of the episode was an excuse to tie in Season 3 with Season 1 (there were 5-6 direct tie-ins at minimum). I also have to agree that Elle was TOTALLY out of character. She was not the same demented person we saw last season. We still have a billion unanswered questions, including: -How did Maury Parkman escape the 'mental prison' his son put him in in Season 2? -Why did Arthur Petrelli create Pinehurst in the first place? -How did all of the different villains start working for him? We only know how a few of them were contacted. -What is Arthur's ultimate goal? I just feel like there are too many holes in the plot right now. I have been very disappointed at how one-dimensional Arthur Petrelli is. I was also hoping that his motivations and goals would be clear, but that is not the case.
Maury's got 30 years psi experience over Matt...I think he can easily break the novice's mental prison.
I think Maury Parkman will be back - why bother going to the trouble of having him back, without having him confront his son after season 2? Might be giving the writers a bit too much credit, but they set up in Maury's death episode that Matt, his son, with exactly the same powers (as said by Matt himself) could fake his death. I really enjoyed this week's episode at face value, because I like flashback episodes and I like pretty much all of the characters that were featured heavily this week. Inserting Elle into Sylar's timeline doesn't really make sense, however, and neither does making HRG and Elle the ones who 'created' Sylar in the first place. The Petrelli storyline was far and away the best bit - Ma Patrelli has always been someone who grabbed my attention, and now she has a little more substance. Christine Rose is brilliant in the role! I was expecting some sort of referral of giving birth to Sylar, or trying to drown him as per last episode. The lack of any mention just left me even more suspicious than I already was at that particular plot twist.
bleh. I wasn't expecting all those questions to be answered by this episode. I'm sure it'll come in time...