Broken Frontier

Part of what has always made Heroes a great watch is trying to ferret out who is telling the truth, who is lying, and who appears to be telling the truth or lying when we’re actually completely sure they’re not.

The hallmark of Season Two appears to be the old adage, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

Which means that there’s a whole lot more lying going on.

Delicious.

Another part of what makes each episode so enjoyable is that the writers work hard to stick to what makes good feature films so pleasing to watch: they state an overarching theme early on. This is important because it can be absorbed by the viewers and then realized through the character’s actions, and often through the actions of others, too.

In “The Line,” it is Noah Bennet who states the theme: “To bring down the Company, sometimes we have to do bad things.”

And bad things he does.

Noah has traveled to Odessa (not Texas) to find the last of Isaac Mendez’s paintings. He believes they can help him learn why various other characters have been killed, and to prevent the deaths of others (including his own). To find the paintings, this otherwise honorable man has to “do bad things” to Ivan, his former mentor within The Company. But the scenes in Odessa really move the plot forward. Watching Dark Noah operate is dramatic in the extreme.

Meanwhile, Noah’s daughter, Claire, discovers that “To bring down the Head Cheerleader, sometimes I have to do bad things.” She believes daddy is in Tulsa at a management conference. In a past episode, Claire lied to Noah about being on the cheerleading squad to cover up secret meetings with West, her new boyfriend. One hitch, the Head Cheerleader, Debbie, doesn’t let her one the squad. Sensing derailment of her budding romance, Claire and West hatch a plan to discredit Debbie. And it works, but we can feel Claire wandering away into uncharted waters. She knows she’s “doing bad things,” but she wants a boyfriend really badly … and a boyfriend who can fly is just that bit cooler.

Early on, Mohinder Suresh ascribed to the credo, “To bring down my guilt over Molly’s condition, sometimes I have to do bad things.” In this case, Bob, the benign looking but really insidiously evil (like Satan’s accountant, but a thousand times worse) has convinced Mohinder he should inject new Hero Monica with a vaccine that might neutralize her power to learn anything by viewing it once. Offering up a bit of wonderful foreshadowing, Mohinder warns that such a vaccine might jump from the Heroes population into the general population, unleashing a terrible plague. In the end, Bob comes around and keeps Mohinder and Molly onboard for future Company functions (and I don’t mean the Christmas party or picnics at the beach, either).

Cutting to the chase with Maya and Alejandro, they discover that “To get help understanding our powers, sometimes we have to do bad things.” In their case, that means killing bandits in a past episode, border guards in this episode … and almost killing Gabriel Sylar. The bubblingly malevolent stares and glares that Sylar throws Alejandro’s way are worth twice the price of this episode (two times the commercials, yippeeee!!).

Almost last, but not at all least, Hiro learns, “To return the time stream to its normal configuration, sometimes I have to do bad things.”

While that conforms to our theme, Hiro is actually fighting very hard not to do bad things, but bad things he does … because he’s Hiro, and we love him for his feelings and his faults. In this case, Hiro does the one thing he shouldn’t do … the one thing we knew all along he was bound to do. And if you don’t already know, I’m not going to tell you what he did.

Lastly, Peter, who has begun to rediscover his past and his powers, doesn’t have to do bad things. He follows one of Mendez’s paintings to Montreal. He and gal pal Caitlin wind up in a dusty curio shop, and then in a flash they’re transported to a future New York City where nearly everyone has been wiped out by … and here is where you should be hearing the “horns of foreshadowment …” a terrible plague!

And that’s where this week’s show ends.

Oh, did I forget that Nikki is back? Could she have something to do with “doing something bad?”

I think you can count on it.

See you in seven.