Friday, November 27, 2015

Thanksgiving “Classic” Recap: Heroes: “Thanksgiving”

“What do I have to be grateful for? I’m dead. He knows it, you know it. why don’t you tell us why? Put us all out of our misery.”
- Nathan

Sorry that this is a day late, folks! Yesterday with all the turkey and wine and fun got to me. But this year we are sharing our Thanksgiving time with a group of families I discovered over the summertime (and in preparation for one of our Summer DVR Dump series this coming summer): Heroes. Like many great sci-fi shows of the mid-2000s I missed out when it originally aired. But thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch all 4 seasons over the summer and I really enjoyed it. So I thought I would cover season 4, episode 10 “Thanksgiving” for you.

This episode focuses on three sets of families within the “Heroes” universe; The Bennetts, the Petrellis and Samuel’s camp of misfit Evos. None of them are having a particularly good Thanksgiving but we do get some movement on the bigger plot arcs of the season. Honestly, the first time I watched this episode, I was kind of hoping we would get the Petrellis and the Bennetts together because Claire technically is a Petrelli. Alas, we did not. Claire is having a rough time at school. Her best friend/roommate/possible girlfriend Gretchen has moved across campus after being pulled into the weirdness of Claire’s life. So Noah decides to host Thanksgiving at his apartment and invites his ex, Sandra and her dorky boyfriend Doug (he’s a dog breeder like Sandra) and he even ropes his old flame Lauren (those of you were Angel fans might recognize her as Detective Kate Lindsay from seasons 1 and 2) to help. He was kind of stalking her at the grocery store. They have some chemistry and it’s kind of cute how Noah keeps denying that she is his date. I honestly want Noah to be happy and sadly he never will be. He’s just drawn to sadness and messed up situations. Dinner is kind of a tense affair once Claire brings up the subject of feeling like a loner. She wants to drop out of college and she kind of loses it when Doug tries to offer advice. Claire’s solution: cut her arm open and heal in front of him. Yeah that doesn’t solve anything. But on the plus side, Gretchen comes over and she and Claire abscond with the compass that Noah got from Danko. Claire is so headstrong and she thinks she knows what she’s doing but she never does. Noah may not always do the right thing or say the right thing but his intentions are always to protect his daughter.

Nathan and Peter have just gotten back from a trip to Texas where they found a storage locker in their mother’s name with a dead body that looks a hell of a lot like Nathan in it. So when Angela comes by for Thanksgiving dinner, the boys confront her on what really happened at the end of season 3. Through some exposition that the audience already knows, she reveals that Nathan died at the hands of Sylar and Matt Parkman forced Nathan’s memories into Sylar and made him shift into Nathan. This clearly upsets Nathan who now realizes he is Sylar and it’s enough to cause a shift and allow Sylar’s consciousness to retake his body. He forces Peter and Angela to sit while he eats pretty much everything in sight (I guess being stuck in Matt’s head for the first half of the season made him hungry). But Nathan manages to fight back and saves Angela’s life just as Sylar pulls his signature cutting heads open trick. Peter vows to go after him. He wants Sylar dead but he really wants his big brother alive. Nathan has never been a particularly nice character, even to his brother so I think the hero worship is a bit much. Of all the characters on the show, Nathan was my least favorite. But I adore Peter and I hate to see him so sad and miserable. Especially on a day that is supposed to be about family.

On the Samuel front, Hiro is still his prisoner and Lydia begs him to show what happened eight weeks earlier since if he supposedly fixed the past, why isn’t Joseph back. So Hiro does take her back and we see that Samuel killed Joseph in a fit of anger over the fact that Joseph has kept Samuel’s powers in check all this time. It was not what Samuel meant to do but he’s an impulsive jerk and so it gives him the chance he needs to take over the carnival and use it for his own purpose (hence why he’s been gathering people throughout the season). Ultimately, Hiro and Lydia fill Edgar in on what they saw and Edgar accuses Samuel of the crime he committed I front of everyone. But Samuel has sway over these people and so Edgar is branded a traitor and he takes off (thanks to Hiro saving him). Unfortunately, Hiro gets his memory scrambled for his trouble (which leads to a pretty hilarious episode where he speaks in code). I think of the three storylines this episode, this one was the weakest, although it did the most to move the story forward and get pieces put in place for the last few episodes of the series. I just wish he wasn’t pulling all of our characters to him like a magnet.

Overall, none of these groups had a very successful Thanksgiving and were not particularly thankful for much of anything. They fought and argued and just were all around nasty to one another. But it moved the plot along and served its purpose. Of the Thanksgiving episodes I’ve seen it didn’t promote the feeling of togetherness and grateful emotions like some but it was still enjoyable. We here at More TV Please hope you had a lovely and safe time with your friends and loved ones this Thanksgiving. We will see you all again next year for another Classic Thanksgiving recap.

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