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- TV Series: Heroes
- Episode: Dual
- Starring: Hayden Panettiere, Masi Oka, Ali Larter, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Milo Ventimiglia, Jack Coleman, Leonard Roberts, Greg Grunberg, Adrian Pasdar
- Written By: Jeph Loeb
- Directed By: Greg Beeman
- Network: NBC
- Series: Heroes
TV REVIEW- HEROES: Dual
So it ends here... By
Stephen Lackey
December 18, 2008
Daphne and Ando stand by as Matt tries to save the day in his own special way in HEROES: Dual(2008).
© NBC-Universal
What a rocky volume of Heroes this has been. Looking back at this season, it has many similarities to the path of season one. The first several episodes were slow paced and often lead us on unimportant plot paths and just when you think it’s time to stop watching the series things get interesting. Characters and stories begin a fairly dramatic and suspenseful build up only to lead to an anticlimactic ending. That’s season one in a nutshell and the formula holds here too. At the same time though, the ending still featured some fantastic moments and the teaser for the next chapter was interesting even if it did feature a character that just feels out of place in the series these days.
The best thing about this episode is the game Sylar attempts to play with Noah, Claire and the rest. Sylar is back to being a monster but add to that the additional mind games that have been played on him all season long and you get a really ticked off super villain. His antics fall somewhere between Doctor Doom and a Bond villain. Angela Petrelli gets to show her true abilities again here by being more manipulative than Sylar could ever hope to be. Sure, she has powers but her mental trickery gets much more use here and it’s enjoyable. There is some weirdness here though. For example, just because you can heal and not be hurt does that mean you’re able to fling yourself through bullet proof glass? Sure, the glass had been weakened but Claire is still only made of skin and bones and if a bullet can’t break through glass, it doesn’t seem like her body would be able to break through.
Ando, Daphne, and Matt make a fun team too. The three of them work well together and were fun to watch, more so when Hiro wasn’t around. Again this time around Hiro is able to simply save the day. What’s most irritating is that he and Daphne do something that’s just so simple that they could have done it at any point throughout the adventure. The path to their final mission doesn’t make much sense. There’s no reason it should have taken so long to get too. Hiro and Peter do the same job in different time periods but they have no idea about what the other has done. At least in season one the anticlimactic finale found all of the heroes coming together for a common goal. This time around everything is just sort of spread out.
Now to the teaser for the next chapter. Again we’re in X-Men territory with the government going out to deal with the super powered individuals. This story and all of its themes have been beat to death in comics but mainstream fans of the series may not be as familiar with the story although it was touched on in the X-Men movies. The problem with the teaser is that Nathan Petrelli at the center of the plot to capture all of the heroes and lock them away. His character development this season was a mess and it doesn’t appear to be on a better path for next year. First, he’s a puppet for villainy, then he’s a hero, and suddenly for no apparent reason he switches back to the side of the villains because he suddenly believes that his father has the right idea. Now, since his father is dead, he doesn’t appear to be trying to continue his father’s work. He’s switched directions again believing that powered individuals need to be locked away, more of a company idea.
Finally, what was the catalyst and where did it come from? The answer is that it was nothing more than a plot device. The African painter appears at the end of the episode for no real reason. This episode of Heroes was much like the season as a whole. It featured some really great moments, but in the end, it’s flawed.
This was one of the better episodes. Still had the plot flaws, but headed in the right direction.
It was good to see certain matchups and situations. Even better to see a reduction in characters.