If Heroes has learned one important thing this season it’s that a little mystery gets you a long way. In previous seasons, secrets were blurted out as though in a state of nervous excitement, the writers throwing revelations at us like confetti. Villains seemed marked out from their first appearance onwards and within an episode or two we had a pretty good idea what they were planning.
So far, Season Four has been different. We may have been aware that Samuel could be a threat but it still isn’t entirely clear if he is the threat or whether he is misguidedly creating circumstances in which Sylar might return to his head-slicing best. Fifteen episodes have passed, the season has only a handful of episodes to go, and yet the ending still seems open and questions remain unanswered.
In ‘Close To You,’ Peter Petrelli is given a glimpse of the future in which millions are being murdered, seemingly by Emma using her Cello in the Carnival’s Hall of Mirrors. Being Peter, he takes this at face value and attempts to avert that future. Yet viewers will be aware that on the show visions are not always as they seem. We’ve seen what will happen but not the context in which it will take place.
Still, even though the season’s endgame remains somewhat vague, it is pleasing to see that we are building up to something. It should be interesting to learn in the coming weeks what causes that situation Peter sees to occur and whether he has succeeded in really changing the future (my guess is not).
As if the future wasn’t reason enough to be pleased with ‘Close To You,’ the episode also brings a thankfully swift end to the excruciating storyline in which Hiro could only speak in cult film and television references. Though the means by which this is managed is convoluted, being done through a convenient extension of a character’s powers, here the end more than makes up for the means. It is good to have Hiro making sense once again.
To my surprise the storyline in which Hiro and Ando attempt to rescue Suresh from a mental hospital turns out to be one of the best realized elements of this episode. Never pretending to be more than an excuse for a runaround and a vintage Ando blunder, it is an exercise in pure silliness and reminiscent of the pair’s misadventures in the show’s first season.
Meanwhile Noah’s desire to find the location of the Carnival leads him to California where he tries to track down a woman with links to Samuel. In doing so he decides to seek out the help of Matt Parkman.
In the process, events from earlier this season appear to have been forgotten. Clearly it is easier to rebound from your body being possessed by Sylar, carrying out a murder under his control and getting gunned down and then arrested by the Police in a standoff than I had realized. No attempt is made to rationalize how Matt has so quickly been able to get his life back on track and so it becomes something of a gaping and obvious hole in the character’s story.
At least the psychological impact of Matt’s battle with Sylar is not ignored.He spends much of the episode toying with whether he ought to be out fixing the mess he created or staying home and rebuilding his life.
This is a return to one of the show’s most recurrent themes and Greg Grunberg does a good job of portraying Matt’s hesitancy about getting involved with Noah again. I do feel as if he gives in a little too easily to Noah’s pressure early on. Still, it is nice to see Matt fully in control of his own mind again after events earlier in the season.
Perhaps more significant than these discussions though is the first appearance of Vanessa (Kate Vernon, Battlestar Galactica), a woman Samuel was once involved with and hopes to be again. We learn early on that he hopes to impress her with what he is doing and that he has been stalking her.
This unexpected revelation gives Samuel new motives and raises further questions about just what he is trying to do and what his priorities are. It also allows Robert Knepper an opportunity to show another more needy and vulnerable side to his character while Kate Vernon is intriguing casting as the woman he desires to win back, establishing an uneasy rapport with him.
It is an interesting shift in our understanding of Samuel who seems set to be the season’s villain as we enter its final stages. Samuel seems more deluded for his belief that by kidnapping Vanessa and showing her the terraformed landscape she will want to take him back. Inevitably we will wonder what he might be drawn to do, should she reject him.
‘Close To You’ takes some intriguing steps forward that could take the season in some interesting directions. However while the episode does relatively little wrong with the exception of the gaps in Parkman’s story, it also contains relatively little that might be considered thrilling.
The result is an entertaining, if not hugely memorable episode, that pushes the season in an interesting direction and demonstrates that an endgame is indeed in sight.
– Aidan Brack
