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- TV Series: Heroes
- Episode: Upon This Rock & Let it Bleed
- Starring: Hayden Panettiere, Masi Oka, Ali Larter, Milo Ventimiglia, Jack Coleman, Leonard Roberts, Greg Grunberg, Zachary Quinto
- Written By: Tim Kring
- Directed By: Ron Underwood, Jeannot Szwarc
- Network: NBC
- Series: Heroes
Heroes: Upon This Rock/Let it Bleed Review
A Two Hour Event Kicks off the Second Half of Season By
Stephen Lackey
January 05, 2010
The Heroes are Back for a Two Hour Romp
© NBC/Bob Trate
Upon this Rock
Heroes slipped back onto TV with almost no fanfare. Is this a sign of the support that NBC is going to show for the series throughout the rest of this season? Maybe it’s just me not watching much NBC. There’s not much for me to care about on the network with five hours of Jay Leno every week. Things do appear to be picking up just a little in the mid season though. Upon this Rock is an episode that not only begins to reveal more of Samuel’s plan but it also attempts to humanize him. The best villains are always the most human ones, the ones that in some way we can identify with. Doctor Doom from the Fantastic Four comics (not the weak sauce movie franchise). Yes, he was a super villain but he was also grounded by his emotions such as jealousy for Reed Richards and his love for Sue Richards. Magneto is someone that I’ve compared Samuel to before and the idea that he is a villain that features human qualities makes the comparison even more important. Samuel wants to bring all of the special people together in one place, to live together hippie style. The fact that with every special person that joins the group his power grows is just icing on the cake. Samuel is Sylar with a bit of a heart. He wants to help “his people” but he also wants his power to grow, Sylar just wants the power. The whole thing could just be a line he’s feeding people like Claire in order to convince them to stay too. Samuel could be even more like Sylar than he is willing to admit.
The majority of this episode is focused on Claire’s adventure in the carnival. Samuel tries to place himself in the position of a mentor for her but she’s not convinced and once Samuel heads out of the carnival on a mission she gets even more suspicious when she discovers some of her father’s files in Samuel’s trailer. Outside of the carnival things aren’t better for Claire as she has to attend Nathan’s (her real father) funeral. The writers are finally doing a good job of writing her as a lost soul. There’s part of her that sees the beauty in what Samuel is apparently trying to do but she does still have real ties to the “real” world that matter to her. Her wits tell her not to trust Samuel but the evolution of the rocky valley hits a chord for her. I believe she’s going to play a pivotal role in the final battle between Samuel and whichever hero, or group of heroes, which chose to stand against him. That hero will probably be Hiro whose current story arc couldn’t be more irritating. Now he’s a pop culture machine spouting all sorts of references that come together to create a puzzle that Ando has to solve in order to bring Hiro back to his senses.
The Puppet Master or Doyle as Claire knows him makes another return to the series in this episode and the scenes are fun but they also offer up one interesting bit of story that matters. Claire comments to Doyle that he gets weaker as he pins her to the trailer. In the past, he has been much stronger for much longer periods of time. Is Samuel permanently draining the power from his family a little at a time? Overall this is a solid episode. Claire gets to have some depth as a character and while some don’t care for the deaf character, I find her intriguing and there’s a sense of wonder with her that hasn’t been a part of this show since Season One.
Let it Bleed
This episode focuses on the grieving process for Peter and Claire after the death of Nathan. Claire is again mad at Noah for lying to her about what had been done to Sylar and how Nathan really died. While Peter understood the reasons for the lies more than Claire, his grief is more dangerous to him and maybe even to those around him. We’ve seen him put himself in jeopardy to play the role of a super hero in previous episodes and after losing Nathan his need to do that work becomes more important to him. The problem is that he can only have one power at a time and some powers are better for some situations and useless for others hence the reason for super groups. Where’s my Heroes version of the Avengers?
Perhaps one of the cooler scenes in the episode is the confrontation between Noah and Edgar. Edgar is a formidable opponent but Noah is seasoned and his senses kick into overdrive and the slightest possibility of a special person trailing him. He’s like Batman, minus the gadgets and cowl. So when Edgar makes his move, things don’t go the way he hopes they will. This gives Noah an excuse to contact his one time partner from the paper company again. Of course, when you get a couple of company people together dealing with a situation like the carnival, they automatically conclude that they are dealing with a cult. While they might not be wrong, they weren’t very good at pushing that agenda and gaining the trust of Edgar.
Sylar was recompiled, as it were, after Nathan died and in this episode he appears just where you’d expect him too: at the carnival. What’s weird though is that it has been made plain that you can’t get to the carnival without a compass so how did Sylar find his way home? Did Lydia help him in some way behind the scenes? Did he still have a compass and was able to hold onto it during the Nathan/Sylar dual personality stuff that was happening? At any rate, things aren’t quite all back to normal with him and that’s just disappointing. Sylar hasn’t been right for way too long. This story arc has been drug out way too long. There better be some kind of amazing pay off to make it worth it. It would have been awesome to have seen Sylar blowing through the carnival slicing heads open, even though he doesn’t have to do that to copy their powers. Like the last episode, this one offered up some great character moments but it didn’t feature those sort of stunning cliffhangers that make Heroes so much fun. It was probably a good idea to tie these two episodes together. They work well as a two hour block.
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This was a good set of episodes and i think the pacing was really good. for most of season 3 no one really dealt with anything that was happening. this season seems to be trying to get the characters to deal with the situations and the emotions that happen because of them. the whole claire, peter, nathan thing is a perfect example. they didnt rush through it, they have given peter real anguish and depth over nathans demise.
Sylar needs to make up his mind. be bad or be good. and why is it only now that he doesnt need to kill to gain peoples powers? unless i am mistaken he has had to slice and dice everytime before.
the samuel power drain thing never occured to me, but it is probably what is really happening. the question then becomes why does samuel gain the power but all the others at the carnival loose it?