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trinityvixenI think processing last night's Heroes made me more excited than watching it. I mean, dystopian visions, alternate futures, man, that shit was done before I even got to the actual X-Men comics and all I had were the Saturday morning cartoons.
But, now I think about it, I might just explode with SQUEE.
Why? See my icon. Have I mentioned enough how fucking much I love Sylar? For starters, I love that Sylar has always been a narcisisst and that the "Six Months Ago" episode didn't set him up to be a troubled kid or have a checkered past. He had a nice family (whom we will meet! hee! Momma Sylar!) and a decent upbringing; he's just a sociopath who can't be bothered to play at being human because he's disappointed he isn't more than just average. Fucking loved that. That unapologetic viewpoint--it's as close to a real sociopath as I've ever seen represented in fiction.
Then you have him becoming so much worse in "Five Years Gone," and it blows my mind. Because Sylar not only learned to fake humanity, he became the fucking President. And I loved, love love loved, the definite hint of hurt and irritation he expressed when Peter accused him of having killed all their kind while hiding himself. Point of fact, that's exactly what Sylar has always been about. He wants the powers, and he kills to get them. The slight subterfuge he engaged in to get it, though, has never succeeded for long, and he is no hypocrite. He got defensive with Peter about what he did while pretending to be Nathan because Nathan is the hypocrite. Sylar makes no pretense that he does what he does to protect anybody (least of all the people running up against him). I actually believed him (and not just I think Peter's a snot, bad-ass or not) when he said that he hadn't started the superpowered concentration camps; he'd just fallen into the ruse when he killed Nathan and took over. I really like that that makes a difference. Sylar doesn't truly give a shit about Peter, but he will not be defamed by anyone. Accuse him of the brain-eating (which I'm sure was helped along by the rounding up of the supers), fine. Accuse him of murdering his own kind for his own benefit, okay.
But accuse him of genociding supers to save normal people--SACRILEGE! Also, I think he's justifiably PISSED OFF that he got the blame for nuking New York City. Again: murders he did commit are okay, mass murders he didn't are not. It's such a funny, fussy character trait that really rounds out Sylar a lot and I appreciate the detail, even as the episode focused more on the dramatic (Peter having all the powers in the world; Mohinder's ethical dilemmas; etc.). It also says a lot about Nathan (good and bad) that he'd pin the blame on the psychotic, murdering loner to save his brother. No, Sylar's not innocent, but nor is he to blame just because it's convenient. Peter should have been way more burdened by what he'd done than he was, so maybe that makes me self-righteous about this.
Forgive me, the massive Sylar loving is all over this, I know. Mostly? I'm thrilled to nuts about his having obviously killed Candace. BITCH NEEDED TO DIE ONSCREEN, but I'll take what I can get. I'd also love to have found out what got rid of Jessica because it was pretty heartbreaking to see Niki on her own. And, once you know it's Niki pretending to be Jessica, you can really see the cracks in the performance, which is a testament to Ali Larter's skill. Because she's an entirely different person when she's Jessica, and she manages to convey one person trying to be that other person to the point where you're fooled until you're not and then you realize you weren't ever.
It makes me wonder, again, about Niki's power. She didn't seem to be super-strong without Jessica, or, at least, she didn't show it. I gather she wouldn't advertise it if she weren't, but I wonder anew if the strength isn't Jessica's alone. There was one scene in the entire series where Niki appeared to be strong (when she snapped a guard's baton at the prison), but it's actually pretty ambiguous as to whether it was her or Jessica (right before it happened, her face contorted into a superior sneer that is way more Jessica than Niki). If Jessica is the strong one, perhaps Niki's ability is more like Peter's--she created an imprint of her dead sister on her own brain, right down to the DNA that allowed Jessica to be freakishly strong. Jessica's strength and protective instinct for Niki might be all that was saved and she then used some latent ability of Niki's, but I like the idea that Niki is a carbon-copier, something more like Rogue is (Peter would be Mimic, only--and this is why he aggravates me sometimes--without Mimic's five-power limitation), and that she cannot dump the mind when she takes an impression of a person.
Mmm, I wonder?
As for the trailer for the next episode? All I can say is: see you next week, Gabriel! Really, it's incredibly hot and just as disturbing that Sylar when he's all meek and cute is a psycho Clark Kent. So hot. So wrong.
But, now I think about it, I might just explode with SQUEE.
Why? See my icon. Have I mentioned enough how fucking much I love Sylar? For starters, I love that Sylar has always been a narcisisst and that the "Six Months Ago" episode didn't set him up to be a troubled kid or have a checkered past. He had a nice family (whom we will meet! hee! Momma Sylar!) and a decent upbringing; he's just a sociopath who can't be bothered to play at being human because he's disappointed he isn't more than just average. Fucking loved that. That unapologetic viewpoint--it's as close to a real sociopath as I've ever seen represented in fiction.
Then you have him becoming so much worse in "Five Years Gone," and it blows my mind. Because Sylar not only learned to fake humanity, he became the fucking President. And I loved, love love loved, the definite hint of hurt and irritation he expressed when Peter accused him of having killed all their kind while hiding himself. Point of fact, that's exactly what Sylar has always been about. He wants the powers, and he kills to get them. The slight subterfuge he engaged in to get it, though, has never succeeded for long, and he is no hypocrite. He got defensive with Peter about what he did while pretending to be Nathan because Nathan is the hypocrite. Sylar makes no pretense that he does what he does to protect anybody (least of all the people running up against him). I actually believed him (and not just I think Peter's a snot, bad-ass or not) when he said that he hadn't started the superpowered concentration camps; he'd just fallen into the ruse when he killed Nathan and took over. I really like that that makes a difference. Sylar doesn't truly give a shit about Peter, but he will not be defamed by anyone. Accuse him of the brain-eating (which I'm sure was helped along by the rounding up of the supers), fine. Accuse him of murdering his own kind for his own benefit, okay.
But accuse him of genociding supers to save normal people--SACRILEGE! Also, I think he's justifiably PISSED OFF that he got the blame for nuking New York City. Again: murders he did commit are okay, mass murders he didn't are not. It's such a funny, fussy character trait that really rounds out Sylar a lot and I appreciate the detail, even as the episode focused more on the dramatic (Peter having all the powers in the world; Mohinder's ethical dilemmas; etc.). It also says a lot about Nathan (good and bad) that he'd pin the blame on the psychotic, murdering loner to save his brother. No, Sylar's not innocent, but nor is he to blame just because it's convenient. Peter should have been way more burdened by what he'd done than he was, so maybe that makes me self-righteous about this.
Forgive me, the massive Sylar loving is all over this, I know. Mostly? I'm thrilled to nuts about his having obviously killed Candace. BITCH NEEDED TO DIE ONSCREEN, but I'll take what I can get. I'd also love to have found out what got rid of Jessica because it was pretty heartbreaking to see Niki on her own. And, once you know it's Niki pretending to be Jessica, you can really see the cracks in the performance, which is a testament to Ali Larter's skill. Because she's an entirely different person when she's Jessica, and she manages to convey one person trying to be that other person to the point where you're fooled until you're not and then you realize you weren't ever.
It makes me wonder, again, about Niki's power. She didn't seem to be super-strong without Jessica, or, at least, she didn't show it. I gather she wouldn't advertise it if she weren't, but I wonder anew if the strength isn't Jessica's alone. There was one scene in the entire series where Niki appeared to be strong (when she snapped a guard's baton at the prison), but it's actually pretty ambiguous as to whether it was her or Jessica (right before it happened, her face contorted into a superior sneer that is way more Jessica than Niki). If Jessica is the strong one, perhaps Niki's ability is more like Peter's--she created an imprint of her dead sister on her own brain, right down to the DNA that allowed Jessica to be freakishly strong. Jessica's strength and protective instinct for Niki might be all that was saved and she then used some latent ability of Niki's, but I like the idea that Niki is a carbon-copier, something more like Rogue is (Peter would be Mimic, only--and this is why he aggravates me sometimes--without Mimic's five-power limitation), and that she cannot dump the mind when she takes an impression of a person.
Mmm, I wonder?
As for the trailer for the next episode? All I can say is: see you next week, Gabriel! Really, it's incredibly hot and just as disturbing that Sylar when he's all meek and cute is a psycho Clark Kent. So hot. So wrong.
