Heroes Reborn 1.09 “Sundae, Bloody Sundae”

Old habits.

I got a few. Some good, most bad. One of them is watching Heroes Reborn. Even in the face of multiple fallacies and far more bad material than good I’m still a “fan.” I just really like superpowers, and to finish what I started.

Coming off two really good episodes I was eager to see if the show would start to trend upward in quality as the season moves downhill toward its finale. My conclusion: Eh.

It’s about the same as it’s ever been: small parcels of ingenuity marred by poor characterization or plot fails. This episode was just OK but if one removes the “Heroes Handicap” it’s below average television. Tim Kring and his team could get away with this stuff eight years ago but the TV landscape has so drastically improved that the audience refuses to accept a subpar product. There are just exists too many successful blueprints for really good television to continuously give Heroes (Reborn) a pass.

The episode does a decent job of trying to combine the disparate players. Freshly returned from his trip to June 13th 2014 the immutable HRG swiftly works to find his grandchildren but is unaware that his sidekick from the first half of the season, the comical Quentin Frady, has gone all turncoat due to Noah’s tampering with past events.

While HRG has certainly been the prime focus much of this episode’s concentration moves to his grandson, Nathan, the boy formally known as Tommy Clarke. HRG drops a bucket of context confetti on the young Evo and he pretty much takes it in stride, dutifully accepting his role as apparent world savior.

Meanwhile Joanne Collins, still pursuing her hyperactive revenge kick, tracks down Nathan’s beau, Emily, in Carbondale, Illinois. In an ice cream parlor she holds the young girl and Casper the Penny Man hostage in an attempt to lure out Nathan (I think) but her plan hits a snag when her husband, new Evo Luke, and Malina, Nathan’s secret sister, show up. Nathan himself also arrives to save Emily, but not Penny Man, and manages to unlock the full scope of his time-travel powers, which had formally manifested as teleportation.

The scene as a whole is a little wonky, I mean Nathan could have teleported Joanne into a volcano with relative ease but instead he spends a few minutes looking scared because she’s holding a gun. While all this is going on Malina is lurking in the back of the restaurant being as useless as ever. I guess there were no bees or plants around to help save the day.

Nathan returns to the hospital where his foster mom is recovering and finds out that mo’ powers means mo’ problems. Quentin, along with his power dampening sister, the Shadow, betrays Noah and abducts Nathan throwing the grander plan for a loop. The Frady siblings transport Nathan to Erica Kravid’s house where she’s wishes to discuss the incoming end-times over a venison dinner.

We see how that deer got to the plate through two small scenes earlier in the episode, heavy-handed imagery of Kravid shooting then butchering the animal. We literally are shown her capability to prey on an innocent creature and a willingness to her hands dirty to shape things to her vision. Pfft. Subtlety, who needs it?

Elsewhere, her daughter Taylor changes her hair cut and color (yeah, that’ll shake ’em) and reaches out to the underground resistance group HeroTruther. Shortly, she’s abducted by them and confronted by The Haitian (whose death was apparently reversed by Noah’s time traveling) and it’s disclosed that their leader Micah Sanders is missing and presuming held by Kravid. This smoldering plotline doesn’t seem to be going places, though I’ll reserve judgment until we actually see the grown Micah in the flesh.

The remainder of “Sundae, Bloody Sundae” zeroes in Carlos Gutierrez and his attempt to rescue his nephew, Jose, and friend, Father LaCamara from the mysterious Sunstone Manor. When we last saw the Carlos before the flashback episodes he foolishly drank some serum given to him by corrupt cop/secret Evo Dearing and was passing out. When we revisit them Dearing has not beat the bloody pulp out of Carlos and is willing to work with him since El Vengador has hidden the cop’s money. Dearing is somehow extremely interesting but notoriously dull at the same time. If we could get even one throwaway line about what makes that guy tick it would give tremendous depth to a puddle of a character.

At Sunstone Manor something strange going on with the extremely agreeable residents. After knocking out a guard and impersonating him Carlos finds Jose and the Father but they are not at all interested in leaving. Both El Vengador and Dearing, respectively, are subdued and brought to the “Director.”

The following scene demonstrates the dichotomy of Heroes Reborn, how it can go from poor to above average in bat of an eyelash. When Dearing goes in front of the Director we never see his face, but it’s very clear from his abilities, physique, and especially voice, it’s fucking Matt Parkman who is running the place. He “allows” Dearing to choose his own punishment which may or not result in the dude shooting himself in the face.

Next up is Carlos who is subject to the same treatment by the Director. Greg Grunberg plays a shady Parkman well, and as I mentioned last week, it’s a bit jarring seeing one of Heroes definitive good guys go way bad, but I’ve always felt like it’d be extremely likely those powers would corrupt someone fully. I always think of Marvel’s Professor X with this in mind. He’s been repeatedly portrayed as a bleeding heart to the point that he’s emotions and compassion are the only thing from using his mutant powers to achieve his dream of world peace. Without that profound, almost debilitating, altruism he’d be as bad as Mesmero or the Purple Man or Dr. Psycho.

Director Parkman reads Carlos’ mind and puts him through the same ringer as Dearing, transporting the man back to his worst memory. The scene is actually pretty well-crafted, particularly for this show, as the audience moves with Carlos through a trippy, intense and loud warzone. His fear is palpable and even an appearance by the unshakeable Farah Nazan fails to calm him.

The previous episode ended on the evil Quentin twist that lit the fuse for this week and the finish to this one is an even more volatile stick of dynamite. Without fanfare we are transported nearly 8000 years into the future where we find Miko, the Katana Girl, sitting alone in the middle of a barren yellow landscape. She wanders around the desert a bit before finding what looks like a town in the distance. Wha?!

I do have to give it up for some of the more ambitious ideas Heroes Reborn has offered up this season. Video game characters come to life, Evo serial killers as main characters, time-travel escapades resulting in switched alliances, these are some bold ideas. Still, the landing is not yet stuck, and in fact we haven’t even deployed landing gear yet. Nonetheless, I do have to direct a nod to these big ideas because that element was absolutely lacking from nearly every Volume of Heroes.

I’m hopeful the two or three different storylines start to come together more rapidly and the good ideas eclipse the goofiness. But you know what they say about old habits.