Heroes Season 3 Halftime

We’re hearing Suresh's voice again on the show and I'm realizing that much of the talk of evolution came from him in the first 2 seasons.  His was the narrative voice that was so prevalent then and for some time was taken out.  The narrator’s voice is missing from the show.  I thought that it was a very powerful part of the show back then, even if I didn't agree with the content.  To hear him talk again as a character in this latest episode, he's preaching evolution to  a student, about techtonic plate movement.  This brings to mind: if we always identify Suresh as a vital symbol of the show's collective memory, then will the meta-story that is respresented always have that flavor, even when he's not narrating?  What I'm saying is that he seems to haunt the show's background even when he's not there at all.

As for the whole body-switching thing with Nathan, I think that plot has gone on far enough and they need to come to some conclusion and get on with another plot point.  I'm tired of the whole "hey I'm Nathan but I'm really not and part of me is in Matt Parkman" thing.  Sheesh.  Get over it. So it seems they did. Nathan took back Syler, there is no doubt.  Peter watching over him is incidental.

The deaf girl nurse thing:  Nowhere.  That’s got some surface tension, and there is some attempt there, I mean a blind attempt, at moral, at meaning,  but it’s contrived to give the show some depth I think it would otherwise lack.  It involves male/female tension and demonstrates a softer side to the gifts, but is not sustainable, or interesting.  The whole lesbian room mate thing: Nowhere.  That whole scenario is relying on tension as well, and playing to the homosexual agenda by dragging out a friendship, demonstrating that homosexual females can be very deep and loving friends, which of course they can.  But in this context, it is pandering.

All the stuff intertwining with the far past, I realize that it's bringing us back now to the very beginning with the experiments in the west at that camp, but it's all just silly prelude.  Eventually, after we get to the root of the DNA change, we're going to be left with what I've said all along, which is one of 2 things: a choice between believing that messing with DNA is ok, or we should leave it alone.  I believe, because of Suresh's narrative, we're going to be left with a strong emphasis on leaving it alone.  Contrast this: The whole camp in the west thing looked too much like a slave labor camp, or a Jewish internment camp in Nazi Germany, barren and fenced in and such.  There is a reason for these choices in the show's narrative.  Just like the diners that so many of the scene's revolve around all have a late 50s flare about them, like where Charlie waitressed.  This all seems to recall to me the era of nuclear proliferation and the cold war, and therefore a very paranoid and dark time when the brightness of the future was tainted with the fear of it as well.  It has always hung over my generation with a real effect that is more than just a philisophical outcome.  I still remember fallout shelter signs.  Contrast that with the surreal nature of the Carnival.  The wandering freedom of the Carny, lost in space and time, showing up where they want to and disappearing,  the whole thing is a travel metaphor.   Being rootless and unbound also appears to have it’s costs.   Also consider the more up to date cultural symbols of tattoos, clothing styles, earrings, etc, the Half-painted fingernails of the leader, which Hiro tells us in no uncertain terms, is an evil man, simply trying to become more powerful.  It all points to an uncontrollable element, an isotope dangerous, lawless, and unto themselves.  It is also the “home for misfits”.    This can only come out badly, from the way it’s looking.  I’m betting in the end that somehow, like the guy who put people into vortexes, that Samuel will implode, or his community will demand that he stop, by virtue of the fact that he cannot sustain the kind of vision that he is cooking up for this family of his.  He is into some kind of utopian dreaming, and that, by history’s recollection, has almost always been doomed.

If we put a doomed sociopathic figure like Samuel in the forefront, and he turns out to be as evil and uncontrollable as Syler has been, at least as unable to self-control as Syler, then we will have yet another demonstration of the danger of meddling with the DNA structure, and the reason will be seen as the inability of man to control his nature in the face of such potential; we swing to the dark side, given time.

It could possibly mean that the kind of thinking that went into the cold war must be done away with, and that only a new understanding of each other must prevail, in which case the study of DNA must happen, and with great attention to the human element.  This certainly is a much more "human" season than the other ones, what with the deaf nurse that sees colors, the college roomate thing, the Nikki Sanders thing with her needing to chillax and find a friend.  You know, it's all so "buddy buddy".   But deeper still, there is an unsettling sensation that a conniving mind, or minds,  went behind the whole genetic change, that it was orchestrated, and we’re seeing the wild and uncontrollable results that should never have happened.

I stopped trying to figure out what was going to happen with this show a long time ago, with regards to actual events.  But I've never been more sure of the meaning of the show.  The jury is still out on which way it will end up, on one side of the fence or another, but personally I’m betting it’s “don’t touch this.”  Of course, a good story will always keep you guessing so you keep watching and consuming commercials.  So the saga continues in Feb. then. 

What I’m also wondering is what has been COOKING over at Breaking Bad?  Season 3, where art thou?

Agitatus