TV Review: Heroes, "Cold Wars"

"You know me, I've always been comfortable with morally grey."

From the previews last week, we were promised that tonight’s Heroes on NBC would answer the question of whether or not Noah Bennet A.K.A. HRG (Horn-Rimmed Glasses) was a hero or a villain.

Whether or not he’s a good guy is something I’ve wondered for a long time, and been frustrated with. He seems to go through spurts where he’s devious and manipulative, and other times he’s playing the part of “inside man” turning the tables in the heroes’ favor. Personally, I’ve always wanted him to be a good guy trying to stay on the inside of a bad situation so he could turn the tables as a double agent.

When we left off last week’s episode, "Building 26," Noah was in the restaurant of the hotel he’s staying in while he works out his family troubles. While there he discovers that he’s been drugged and looses consciousness. We then saw 3 of our on-the-lamb heroes, Matt Parkman, Peter Petrelli and Mohinder Suresh escort him out.

Tonight’s episode, "Cold Wars" began by skipping back a little before the three “supers” drugged Noah where we see that they weren’t all on the same page on the virtues of abducting and interrogating him. Once the abduction takes place, they spend most of their time in a seedy hotel room where Parkman uses his mind powers to probe Noah’s brain for answers about who is pursuing them and what their intentions are.

I’ll admit that Noah Bennet is one of my favorite characters on Heroes. One of the best things about this episode was that it focused primarily on his interrogation and featured many flashbacks from his memories exploring how he came to be involved in the hunt for the supers. There were echoes of what many consider to be one of the best episodes of Heroes from season one, “Company Man.” What both of these episodes have going for them is their focus on Noah and their black and white memories from Noah’s past.

What I think was lacking in this episode were the supposed-to-be tense interactions between the 3 heroes, Parkman, Petrelli and Suresh. I think the writing just isn’t up to par… or maybe it’s the direction. They’re supposed to be having this internal struggle, but to me it just sounds like they’re bickering about who are the good guys and who are the bad. In previous episodes it made sense for Hiro to call others, “heroes,” “villains” or “nemesis” because he was a geek growing up who loved comic books, but when it comes from one of the straight man-ish characters, it just doesn’t seem to fit, in the midst of this tense situation, that they'd be self aware enough to label themselves like they do.

Another thing that bothers me is that, as a viewer, I know about the powers that these heroes possess. I know that Matt Parkman can use his abilities to give those around him illusions that can change their environment and make them believe things are happening that aren’t true. So why didn’t he use his ability to get away from the small army that was coming to take him? I guess how it played-out was appropriate since the episode was trying to focus on Noah, but sometimes the writers seem to conveniently forget details if it supports their storyline.

Oh, and when is someone finally going to blurt out that Nathan can fly?? It seems like that would be one thing that would seriously undermine his efforts to hunt them all!

Tonight’s episode ended with Mohinder Suresh captured, Peter (we assume, but it could have been Nathan) rescuing Matt Parkman, and Noah Bennet finishing a conversation with Angela Petrelli that he started 5 weeks ago in his memory. It’s in this last scene that we learn that Noah is still working for Angela and he still has the same goals that he had when he was working for the company, which seem to be noble enough in that he wants to save the good people with abilities, and only lock up the dangerous ones. He admits that he’ll have to go deep under cover and do even more questionable things to convince is colleagues that he really is on their side, but I think we, as viewers, are supposed to remember this and keep rooting for him to succeed as a “good guy.”

All in all, I think tonight’s episode was satisfying. Heroes is best when the storylines aren’t getting spread too thin amongst all of the main characters. Hopefully this will be a trend revisited in the near future. But please, the final shot with another painting on the floor of a city exploding–this time Washington DC. How many times are they going to build up to an explosion that never happens? Can't they change their formula a little?