Heroes 3.07 "Eris Quod Sum" - review

Heroes episode 3.07 “Eris Quod Sum“
Airdate: October 27, 2008

This episode comes on the heels of Entertainment Weekly’s harsh look at what is wrong with the series. But before we get to painting the big picture (or finding it), let’s first review/recap the current episode.

  Sylar to the rescue! Sylar comes to his brother’s rescue! We can all guess he took Peter’s place to get inside the company, and then slowed down his fall from the 7th floor. But I love how the episode led up to this. It seems that Angela’s powers are beyond merely dreaming or seeing the future. She can actually communicate with others in their dreams even when she’s in a coma. So she tells Sylar to wake up, get himself out of Level 5, and rescue Peter. And then to tell her new ‘favorite son’ Gabriel that he still hasn’t reached his full potential yet, that’s a revelation. I wonder what Sylar would be like if he used all his intrinsic abilities (and not the ones he took). Still, something doesn’t sit well with Gabriel’s newfound love for his mom. I can’t believe The First Evil is needy like that – “she was the first person to accept me for who I am” – as if all he needed was someone to love him! All that brain-stripping for that? Hmm. I don’t know.

It was right for daddy Arthur to insinuate that Angela is not the ideal mother that Gabriel was looking for. I’m sure there’s some truth to that! And yet, even when Gabriel stayed with his newfound dad, you can tell he wasn’t completely sold on the “Father-son world domination” either.

So what happens with the rest of the Heroes? There is more after the cut.

image used with permission: NBC/Photo Mitchell Haaseth

Mohinder’s Web. Already at the end of his line, and still not finding a cure that will remove Maya’s abilities, Mohinder Suresh brings his girlfriend to Pinehearst Industries and gets introduced to the elder Petrelli. Easy as pie, Arthur takes all traces of Maya’s powers for himself, and leaves her “cured”. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, that puts the abilities in more dangerous hands than it was in Maya’s alone. And there is no Alejandro to stop it this time… unless Sylar took Alejandro’s abilities before he killed him! I don’t know that we’ll ever know that, or if the writers are planning to use this, but I hope Sylar has that counter-power.

Mohinder has either grown desperate or greedy or monstrous, else how could he have taken the offer to work for Pinehearst? Either Arthur is too guile or Mohinder is too naive to believe he’s among friends. He has certainly gone a long way from the time when Bob Bishop forced him to develop the Shanti virus.

Call this television, but how did Mohinder develop the formula so quickly that he was able to test it on his first subject just like that? Anyway, so Peter is the guinea pig, as his power lie in being primed to accept abilities.

Elle overpowers. Poor Elle. She never really got to redeem herself, and now her powers are out of control. But there was one sequence I liked in the episode, maybe because I’m a sucker for second chances… I like that Elle went to HRG and teamed up with Claire to get answers from Pinehearst. That scene in the airplane where the pilot warned against the use of electrical devices, I thought that was ingenious! I shall never use a cell phone inside the plane anymore.

The rest of the story. Maury Parkman dropped dead. Literally, at the slap of a hand from his master Arthur, which makes me wonder again exactly the kinds of tricks Arthur Petrelli has up his sleeves.

But there is no love lost with his son Matt whose only question was why his dad stood up for him like that. Daphne got cozy with Matt, who wants to believe what he saw in the future. Now she’s a double agent, working for Pinehearst because of what Arthur Petrelli has against her if she didn’t comply to his wishes.

Nathan meets his ex-wife Meredith and that was awkward, but funny. Tracy denies she and Nathan are together, but aren’t they always together?

Hiro is asked to go back in time to fix things, but now the hero is afraid since he knows what happened the two times he went back – a still-dead Charlie and a vengeful Adam.

Maya got voted off the island. So was that it for Dania Ramirez? Her character Maya is cured of her ability, and she has no problem that Arthur Petrelli took it. Maya’s abilities are awesome and scary. Imagine it now in the hands of Arthur Petrelli or Sylar for that matter. But washing her hands clean, Maya took off just like that, into the sunset with her newly practiced American accent, cash in her hands and a suitcase. Except no taxi was waiting for her and no postlude remarks when the credits rolled… Dania Ramirez is a good actress, but I didn’t think Maya’s character was solid enough to have lasted this long. Tell me if I’m wrong.

image used with permission: NBC/Photos Mitchell Haaseth and Mike Ansell