HEROES 4.12 “The Fifth Stage” Review

HEROES 4.12 “The Fifth Stage”
Airdate November 23, 2009

What an emotional episode! I know that Adrian Pasdar was going to be cut from HEROES, but it was still heart-wrenching to see him go tonight! What a way for Nathan to go and leave Peter with such a burden to finish the work. Great writing, and emotional acting by Milo Ventimiglia and Adrian Pasdar. Especially for Adrian, who must know how difficult it is to say those goodbyes knowing they’re for real, and amidst what seemed to be controversy behind his departure.

Tonight’s episode “The Fifth Stage” was all about that last moments before death – that of accepting one’s fate and not fighting it anymore. But it was anything but that until the very end.

Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) confronted and fought with Sylar (Zachary Quinto) in hopes of getting Nathan to come out from inside Sylar’s psyche. The Haitian (whose name is Rene’ but who calls him that?!) let Peter borrow his abilities-blocking ability, so Sylar couldn’t use his powers on Peter. The brothers fought with their bare fists until Peter nail-gunned Sylar’s hands on the floor and desperately urged Nathan to come forth out of Sylar.

And yet, after all that saving, Nathan admits that he is losing the fight to Sylar. He is dead, and whatever essence of Nathan was that remains inside Sylar is nothing compared to the man who owns the body and mind. Nathan did what he thought was courageous- he jumped from the building! And as Peter tried to hold on to his brother, Nathan said his goodbyes. Nathan probably hoped that Sylar will die along with him (once he falls to the ground). Unfortunately, the moment Nathan was yards away from Peter’s abilities, Sylar’s abilities came back and he walked off from the fall, unharmed.

The fight will go on for yet another day, but this time, you almost know that Peter will fight Sylar stronger and more fierce than ever before. He’s got a brother to avenge.

But of course that’s not all that happened on HEROES. The other storylines in  “The Fifth Stage” involved with Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) and Gretchen (guest star Madeline Zima) finally checking out the Carnival. Whatever scheme Samuel (Robert Knepper) is trying to pull on Claire seems to be working. Doyle the puppeteer was there to give his “testimonial” to how great the Carnival was accepting him as a family. Samuel even used a seemingly random event – a carnival goer who was suspicious of a rig in one of the games – to get Claire to defend Samuel!

I’m still not sure how Samuel’s powers are growing – if his abilities to move earth would be globally catastrophic in the end – but his abilities to manipulate the situation, his genius at using events and people around him to unwittingly do his bidding – that’s the power that is truly terrifying.

Now tonight’s episode was the last one for 2009, and HEROES comes back next year January 4th. The episode title is still unknown, so it looks like we have some scoping to do over the holidays!

Images: NBC/Adam Taylor