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Heroes 1:17 Company Man
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raincitygirl andstarynightshade!
Also late thoughts on the Heroes episode Company Man although I've watched up to Parasite now.
Company Man
I had high expectations of this episode going in and it lived up to all of them.
Liked that the flashbacks weren’t just retro in their sixties stylings and monochromicity but also in hinting the thematic concern of older superhero comics (particularily the X-men) with the conflicts of interest between ‘Us’ and 'Them’ paramount. Although, arguably, such issues being something the current day Heroes are written as less attuned to reflects their relative isolation from one another within the story more than a meta response to cultural shifts away from collectivism or towards greater tolerance of diversity.
Liked that everyone was smart. Bennett thinking in Japanese (and just a little smug about it, he could easily be a working class kid made good as neither Ted nor Matt did). Claire and Bennett telling Matt to shoot her (and not knowing what each other thought even though Matt and the audience did). Ted figuring out the plot when he realised Claire could heal and both she and her father would have known she could. Even Lyle remembering to call the police.
Loved Sandra being better than smart, being wise. Her faith in Noah, which seemed to be based on something deeper than any single memory the Haitian might have taken, reminded me of an article in this week’s Grauniad magazine about a musician who’d suffered a catastrophic loss of memory function due to a viral encephalitis. Retrograde amnesia back to 1965, no memory of anything much later than that and loss of short term memory so severe that he can only recall a few seconds at a time, every time he blinks the world remakes itself. There are two things left that he can remember, music (he can still play whole symphonies on the piano) and his wife (although he can’t recall what she’s done, he knows who she is and what she means to him). The theory is that episodic memory is stored differently and is more vulnerable (to viruses or the Haitian) than emotional or procedural memory. Music and love then are things that you feel or do more than think, like walking they make themselves once learned.
Loved Claire. In Buffy terms she progressed from LMPTM through Helpless to Prophecy Girl in the space of one episode. The sequence of her walking into the heart of the fire and emerging blackened but still whole was very powerful. In a quieter way the flashback of her choosing her father’s eponymous glasses equally so.
Loved HRG in all his ruthless ambiguity. The show makes a lot of use of the phrase “What they can do” about its heroes. This week showed what Mr. Bennett could do with the merely human powers of understanding and taking action. The ending was karmic, shot down and memory wiped by his own command. Easy to read the “be done to as you have done” aspects as a form of penance but Noah doesn’t necessarily see it in those terms.
raincitygirl andstarynightshade!Also late thoughts on the Heroes episode Company Man although I've watched up to Parasite now.
Company Man
I had high expectations of this episode going in and it lived up to all of them.
Liked that the flashbacks weren’t just retro in their sixties stylings and monochromicity but also in hinting the thematic concern of older superhero comics (particularily the X-men) with the conflicts of interest between ‘Us’ and 'Them’ paramount. Although, arguably, such issues being something the current day Heroes are written as less attuned to reflects their relative isolation from one another within the story more than a meta response to cultural shifts away from collectivism or towards greater tolerance of diversity.
Liked that everyone was smart. Bennett thinking in Japanese (and just a little smug about it, he could easily be a working class kid made good as neither Ted nor Matt did). Claire and Bennett telling Matt to shoot her (and not knowing what each other thought even though Matt and the audience did). Ted figuring out the plot when he realised Claire could heal and both she and her father would have known she could. Even Lyle remembering to call the police.
Loved Sandra being better than smart, being wise. Her faith in Noah, which seemed to be based on something deeper than any single memory the Haitian might have taken, reminded me of an article in this week’s Grauniad magazine about a musician who’d suffered a catastrophic loss of memory function due to a viral encephalitis. Retrograde amnesia back to 1965, no memory of anything much later than that and loss of short term memory so severe that he can only recall a few seconds at a time, every time he blinks the world remakes itself. There are two things left that he can remember, music (he can still play whole symphonies on the piano) and his wife (although he can’t recall what she’s done, he knows who she is and what she means to him). The theory is that episodic memory is stored differently and is more vulnerable (to viruses or the Haitian) than emotional or procedural memory. Music and love then are things that you feel or do more than think, like walking they make themselves once learned.
Loved Claire. In Buffy terms she progressed from LMPTM through Helpless to Prophecy Girl in the space of one episode. The sequence of her walking into the heart of the fire and emerging blackened but still whole was very powerful. In a quieter way the flashback of her choosing her father’s eponymous glasses equally so.
Loved HRG in all his ruthless ambiguity. The show makes a lot of use of the phrase “What they can do” about its heroes. This week showed what Mr. Bennett could do with the merely human powers of understanding and taking action. The ending was karmic, shot down and memory wiped by his own command. Easy to read the “be done to as you have done” aspects as a form of penance but Noah doesn’t necessarily see it in those terms.
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Liked that the flashbacks weren’t just retro in their sixties stylings and monochromicity but also in hinting the thematic concern of older superhero comics
My own thought was that it was the visualization of the "morally grey" theme which HRG in particular and the Company in general is associated with.
Bennett thinking in Japanese (and just a little smug about it, he could easily be a working class kid made good as neither Ted nor Matt did).
You're right, that background would make complete sense. (We're not told either way so far where he came from pre-Company days.) I'll have more to say on the interplay between him, Matt and Ted and the hierarchical structures at a later point in the show.
The theory is that episodic memory is stored differently and is more vulnerable (to viruses or the Haitian) than emotional or procedural memory. Music and love then are things that you feel or do more than think, like walking they make themselves once learned.
That works for me. I'm not sure whether or not it works that way within the Heroes universe because of a recent episode, but within s1, your theory holds. Regarding Sandra being wise and her strength and faith in HRG despite all new revelations: it also means the excuse that she couldn't have taken the truth either about her husband or later about Claire is gone. Clearly, she's able to deal.
Loved Claire. In Buffy terms she progressed from LMPTM through Helpless to Prophecy Girl in the space of one episode.
Great comparison, and yes, she did.
The ending was karmic, shot down and memory wiped by his own command. Easy to read the “be done to as you have done” aspects as a form of penance but Noah doesn’t necessarily see it in those terms.
At that point, it's the most efficient way to protect Claire, but the location of the shooting, which he chose - it being the very spot he shot Claude - suggests he might be thinking of at least the irony of fate, if not karmic payback. Again, I could say more on his likely belief system, but it relates to future stuff.
Were you surprised to see Kaito Nakamura (and little Hiro), or were you already spoiled for that?
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