“You don’t chase a shapeshifter” – Sylar
“He’s A Better You Than You” – Sylar to Danko at the Garden of Eden club.

What can I say about this episode except that it is one of the best of this entire season and follows up last weeks episode very well. The introduction of a new hero on the lamb from the agents who has the ability to shapeshift throws a loop and adds a nice plot twist to get Danko and Sylar working together for a common (or not so common cause).

You have to admit how clever Danko is that working with Sylar they take care to make it appear as if Sylar himself was slain by the Hunter which now leaves Sylar free to move through the agency and country as anybody he wants to be. This only solidifies and amplifies his power as he continues to be the most powerful hero and continues to get more powerful.

The episode had a few nice change of hearts showing two sets of the same family coming together and attempting to settle their peace and make amends for their poor decisions, I found it quite amusing how Nathan tried to out drink some kids in Mexico only to succumb prior to winning. Claire coming in and finishing up was predictable but nice to watch nonetheless.

The aftermath of Peter saving his mother and the two of them ending up in a church almost getting captured was ironic and fitting. Peter’s attempted prayer and frustration at a higher power for both granting his powers and letting this happen to the world only shows how emotionally hurt his character is. Until he can find peace and empathy, he probably will not be able to regain his former ability to absorb powers just by being next to another “special”.

The next shocker was when Angela dreamt that Peter, Nathan, Claire and she should band together and find her sister, a character not eluded to in the past leaves us wondering what the next few episodes have in store for us. I am still curious how Ando and Hiro fit into this chapter as Hiro has some powers restored but not all, maybe baby Matt Parkman can restore Peter Petrelli’s powers as well which will help put balance and even the odds for good again?

But in this episode Sylar once again as powerful as he is reveals he is still gullible and prone to making mistakes, in addition supposedly he has the ability to have super hearing and hear lies from abilities picked up from the past, he should be able to detect people by heartbeat sounds or pulse or some other ability that he has, but he still doesn’t seem like he is making full use of his range of abilities. The question I have though is was he really in Danko’s car earlier in the episode, or was he just in Danko’s mind?

I don’t recall Sylar having the ability to teleport or telekinesis, so this power may have been picked up between episodes and I will be watching the NBC Heroes comic released this week to see if they explain this anomaly.

Overall the episode was fantastic, and I enjoy the humanistic elements of the characters, when the get more personal with the characters is when the show really shines.

-Dragon Blogger

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Watch Heroes Cold Snap Here Tomorrow

Full Review of Cold Snap:

What a fantastic episode I must say, this was by far one of the best episodes of the Season which has several unique twists, the first being that Matt Parkman’s baby has the power to activate things including the powers in other human beings. Such clever and light hearted scenes with Hiro and Ando trying to figure out what to do with the baby and who was their true person they were supposed to save. When baby Matt Parkman activates Hiro’s time stop ability, it is even funnier how Hiro has to carry Ando to safety twelve miles in a wheel barrel.

Danko continues to be the vicious hunter after each and every villain, I had thought from the previous episode that Sylar would soon dispatch Danko, but it would appear that Sylar wants to team up with him to dispose of other heroes so that he would be the sole being with powers on the planet. Danko probably will ally with him only so long as he thinks he could terminate Sylar with a bullet to the back of the head.

Angela proves resourceful for a little while in escaping the government agents and I nearly applauded to see Peter swoop down in an elevator to save his mother from capture. It is good to see Peter again after not seeing him the last few episodes.

I knew it, if you read my former posts I had predicted that “Rebel” was probably Micah and I was truly happy that it turned out to be a correct prediction. Micah has become much more adept at using his powers and actually is one of the coolest heroes on the show. It was a true display of heroism and repentance that Tracy sacrificed herself to help Micah go free and shows that despite all her “looking out for herself” attitude that she truly cared about Micah and appreciated all he tried to do for him. The scene where the entire parking garage flooded and froze over was one of the best special effects scenes of the entire show and the most creepy part of that scene was when Danko shot Tracy and she fell to the ground in frozen pieces, the chunk of her face on the ground actually blinked a tear before the scene ended.

In another unbelievable twist what we thought was Matt Parkman saving Daphne turned out to be them saying farewell to each other as Matt entered Daphne’s head to give her the world as she died in the hospital from her injuries. I was saddened and amazed at the amount of affection and love portrayed by the characters and how convincing the storyline and scenes were.

This episode was fast paced had amazing character portrayals and the previews show us even bigger and greater things are to come in the near future as the heroes team up to save themselves from the government. With Sylar now appearing to make a pact with Danko, do the heroes actually have a chance to survive this? I can just see the government rounding up the heroes to feed them to Sylar, and so we wait for next week’s episode “Into Asylum” and I am truly revved up to see what happens next.

Let me know some of your predictions for the next few episodes of Heroes.

-Dragon Blogger

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Heroes Chapter 4 is tonight and we all have been waiting patiently for two months for the new season. Season 3 had some great showdowns, conflicts and revealed Arthur as one of the most cruel and evil people ever witnessed. I miss Hiro and his powers and would like to see Hiro grow more into an adept and competent character, his bumbling accidents and mistakes are starting to get a little old and sad, though this may be faults in his own character who has a Heroes heart, but is too childlike and clumsy, or lacks wisdom which causes him to constantly be foiled in his attempts to do good.

This new season hopefully reveals more of a hunted feel to it, instead of a super uber evil bad guy and bad future maybe its more about each hero’s survival against capture and this may play better for the audience. The end of the world thing is getting old, and would be nice to see a different change of pace. The similarities between X-men and Heroes are more apparent with each season as Mutants / Heroes are interchangeable, everything from the genetic evolution take, to manipulation to the random presentation of powers depending on each person’s individual biology are all very parallel to the X-men comics.

I am still very much looking forward to tonights episode, even more than my next wine of the month wines.

-Dragon Blogger

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After seeing how Arthur Petrelli met his end at the hands of Sylar last week I was predicting that Sylar would go after the other one of his so called parents that has lied to him.  Angela Petrelli lied to Sylar just as Arthur had in claiming she was Gabriel’s parent and Sylar wants revenge for being used as a pawn in the Petrelli game.

This was the final episode of the Volume known as “Villains” and starts off with Nathan and Peter squaring off about the death of their father.  Nathan has become so twisted and dead set on giving abilities to create a super army that he directly opposes Peter’s desire to shut down and destroy the formula.  Peter again can’t bring himself to kill family and instead knocks his brother unconscious and works to destroy the formula in the lab.  Mohinder who was trying to use the formula to save himself is thwarted and held to watch as Knox and Flint assist Peter in leveling the lab.  Knox goes to subdue Nathan and meets an unfortunate end at the hands of Traci who freezes him and shatters him like glass shards.  Nathan arrives at the lab but is too late to save the formula, Flint goes berserk and starts igniting the place and Peter injects himself with the formula as the only means to escape.  He saves his brother by flying the two of them out of there, only to have Nathan reject him and say he would not have done the same.

Nathan was always a shady character since season 1 and the few glimpses of hope and good we saw in him were easily overcome by his character flaws.  Peter is on the polar opposite of the spectrum, good to a fault and incapable of making decisions to cause harm and kill that would have saved lives earlier.  Reminds me of the most recent Batman movie where Batman cannot bring himself to kill the Joker even after the joker killed the love of his life.  That pretty much is the way Peter Petrelli is as well without as much darkness in his heart as batman.

Meanwhile most of the episode was about Sylar trapping Claire, Angela, Meredith and Noah hostage in Level 5 and attempting to play some twisted game where he can convince them to kill each other in order to escape, reminds me of a lighter version of the SAW films.  One of the most clever moves was Noah releasing the other villains in an attempt to slow Sylar down, and Sylar wound up killing them all, running up against Eric Doyle the Puppet Master who temporarily held him only for a moment before Sylar overcame him.

In the end it was Sylar’s pride and overconfidence while interrogating Angela that allowed Claire to sneak up on him and deliver the glass shard through the back of his skull.  Though this should not have happened as Sylar had the “Super Hearing” power acquired in season 1 and he should have been able to hear her, though he was screaming at the time.   The building was leveled by Meredith exploding after being injected by adrenaline and unable to control her powers.

One of my favorite sequences was when Ando injected himself with the formula and attempted to determine how to use his power, Daphne had stolen a vial from Mohinder’s hands just before Peter was destroying the lab and brought it to Ando.  Ando’s power was to super charge other heroes and using this ability he enhanced Daphne so fast she can run through time to bring Hiro back to the present.  The episode wraps up the volume with Sylar being buried by rubble while being debilitated by a glass shard in the back of his skull.  Hiro ripping up the formula, Peter regaining his powers and gives the appearance that there may be order about to be established again.

The whole point of Volume 3 Villains was to try and show that there is a duality in each and every one of us and everyone has the ability to be both a hero and a villain, this is what I also believe in my personal life that there is no such thing as pure white/light or pure black/dark but everyone and everything is shades of gray to some degree.

The preview clip to Volume 4 Fugitives shows Nathan Petrelli speaking with the President of The United States played by Michael Dorn (Worf from Star Trek:  The Next Generation) which was amusing since we are about to have a black president and one is portayed on the show.  I also like the way Heroes taps into the Trek cast for guest appearances and everyone they have tapped has played a decent role although Nichelle Nichols had the shortest role in Heroes that wasn’t clearly defined much.  George Takei I thought did a fantastic job as Hira Nakamura’s strict and disciplined father and enjoyed his portal of the character very much.  Nathan is so hell bent on revenge that he convinces the president that the people who have powers should all be detained and locked up, but of course fails to declare that he has any powers of his own.  This now looks like the future of Season 1 where Nathan was president and people with abilities were hunted down and locked up in facilities.  I would hate to see the show keep going round and round in circles covering the same issues over and over.

If this volume is Fugitives and implying that all people with abilities are fugitives from the law, then the show now turns to where everyone is being hunted and constantly evades pursuers.  With PineHearst and Primatech all but left in ruins, I am not sure what the plans of the company are and if there are any at this point at all.  Since we have until February to mull this over, I am sure that NBC will release Graphic Novels weekly that will help fill in the gaps, since Volume 4 apparently takes place 3 weeks into the future.  NBC typically uses the Graphic Novels to fill in gaps of time, and they have Web Episodes which parallel the show which I should check out and review.

Overall I was disappointed with the final episode as Sylar who is supposed to have the gift of “Understanding How Things Work” ultimately played into the role of a jealous, vengeful person bent on revenge and making critical bad guy type mistakes.  Why is it all villains make the same mistakes constantly, they must spout epithets, final words, delays, pauses…etc.  Ah well, I didn’t like the twist they were putting on Sylar, and instead liked it when he only killed for the sake of stealing powers and becoming the most powerful, when he became just a standard serial killer who took pleasure in it was when they weakened the character quite a bit.  It was refreshing seeing Angela start telling the truth and we did learn that Sylar’s real parents were still not disclosed, if Sylar should return again which is very likely he could come back and seek more vengeance.  My prediction is somebody will find the charred remains of Sylar and pull the glass from the skull and he will regenerate again.

-Dragon Blogger

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