Heroes season 3 episode 11 review

After my pretty scathing review of the rubbish that episode 10 represented, at least one person asked why I might watch a show that I no longer liked? It’s a valid question, because I haven’t actually enjoyed Heroes, possibly since season one ended. But based on what it once was, which was brilliant, and that I’ve taken the time to cover every episode so far, I’m going to carry on – to the bitter end.

Episode 11 is the continuation of The Eclipse story that began last week where all the super-people lost their powers once the moon covered the sun.

Not only does it continue the story, but it further highlights Tim Kring’s little interest in understanding this particular celestial event. Just a hint Tim, multiple people at different geographical locations can’t experience totality at the same time. And, Daphne can’t experience two total eclipses a year apart in the same location, however cute she is (…and she is super-cute; it’s her second power.)

But down to the nuts and bolts, this episode isn’t actually as bad as the previous one, although it’s very predictable and suffers from the multiple plot thread overload that’s wrecked the watchability of this and the previous season.

It starts out in the jungle of Haiti, with Peter and The Haitian running away from Baron Samedi, his brother (is that a Live and Let Die reference?). With their powers gone, they’re feeling vulnerable, but decide to go back and get Nathan who got himself caught like the dumb politician he is.

Meanwhile, Claire relapsed from the bullet wound she previously collected, so her step-mum takes her to a hospital, a medical facility where an amazing doctor makes a definitive statement about the condition of her immune system after she’s only been in there for 30 seconds. I don’t know what sort of medical insurance the Bennett’s have, but that’s the one you want!

Meanwhile, creepy ol’ Noah has watched the entire copulation of Sylar and Elle without taking a shot. But then he decides to shoot one of them, and misses. He does so because he’s a ‘dipshit’, and puts the laser marker on so they get a warning he’s aimed a high powered rifle at them! If he’s a ‘professional killer’, then I’m America’s next top model.

He then goes inside and shoots Elle in the upper thigh with his automatic pistol, before she and Sylar make good their escape.

Another person thinking of escaping is Suresh, who’s being held by Arthur to solve the puzzle of why they’ve all lost their powers. But Arthur isn’t very smart, because he gives the job of supervising Suresh to the idiot, Flint, who even Suresh thinks is a “sap”. Suresh escapes after using an expensive-looking piece of medical equipment as a source of blunt-force-trauma on Flint’s empty cranium. I laughed at this, as it was the only remotely funny scene this week.

The best elements in this continuing mess come back at the comic shop, where we left Hiro and Ando looking at 9th Wonder comics with cameo comic geeks, Seth Green and Breckin Meyer. Hiro is still ten years old mentally, so he gets something of a shock when he reads some of the nasty things that happened previously, including the death of his father.

Seth Green has a nice scene where he convinces Hiro to come out of the gents and save the world, even if his beard looks entirely fake. Parkman turns up there too, although I have no idea how he found them. But at this point he has his powers back, as the eclipse is over.

But before that happens, we have a quick jump around to the various story elements to get the last drops of ‘powerless’ plot out of each of them. Claire dies, Sylar dies when his throat is slit by Noah, and Peter captures the Baron. The moon moves on and it’s all undone. Daphne can run again, Hiro can bend space and time, everyone who was dead is alive again and The Haitian, Peter and Nathan are on the run from the immortal Baron. Yawn.

With all the powers back, we now have a power-splurge where everyone uses them to achieve what they want. The Haitian takes away his brother’s power and kills him, Sylar and Elle go after Noah, Claire goes home (although how she got out of the hospital isn’t explained), and Suresh goes back to Pinehearst knowing he can’t go anywhere else.

Hiro actually does something useful at last, and pops to get Sylar and Elle from Noah’s house just in time and deposits them on a beach, somewhere. Sylar goes ‘bad’ again, which as character development left me entirely cold, and decides to give Elle an all around side parting but stops for some reason. When he did this, I had all sorts of cool ideas about why, like a dinosaur came down the beach, or Krakatoa exploded in the distance, but these didn’t materialise, so it was probably something much less interesting. They also made Nathan flip-flop this week, as he now thinks that Arthur is doing the right thing. He’s another not-very-bright character to add to a long list of completely stupid ones.

Hiro then takes Claire to the point in time where Hiro’s father gave the Baby Claire to Noah years before. He does this because it’s noticed that they’re in a picture from an old issue of 9th Wonder doing that. Ando thinks this is how he gets his memory back, but why he might think this seems lost in this mess.

We’re also told that there are no more Isaac Mendez editions of 9th Wonder, but an urban myth is that one more story was drawn and that was given to a delivery boy on the day Sylar killed him! Nice myth, maybe a future episode might use that information?

This whole show works much better when they concentrate on a few characters rather than jump about in ever decreasing circles. The high point of this story was the stuff in the comic shop, and Hiro doing something useful for once. The worst bits were the Sylar and Noah stuff which was irritating in how poorly it was executed. There were no ‘wow’ moments, because they’d all been telegraphed three scenes before they happened. The death and then life again of Claire and Sylar was exactly that, obvious and not remotely unexpected.

If I were the TV execs, I’d stop this now before it entirely sullies the great work that season one represented.

Check out our review of episode 10 here.