User:Skywalkerrbf/I Am Become Death:Reviews

IGN

Season three still hasn't delivered a knockout episode, but "I Am Become Death" certainly had its share of entertaining moments. Blowing Costa Verde off the map was the first unexpected and actually surprising moment of the season. Unearthing Adam was also a nice surprise. And though there were other moments I found cool and fun, it was still hard to connect with these future actions since it's likely this doomed future will ultimately be avoided.

Present day Heroes centered on the pairings of Hiro and Ando, and Nathan and Tracey. Tracey learned from Dr. Zimmerman that her DNA was manipulated and she was given her powers. Beyond that, the doc was little help, except to hint that it was likely The Company that was behind the whole thing. A tortured Tracey resigned to kill herself, but Nathan, at Ghost Linderman's urging, literally flew in to save her. Soon the two were locking lips. Besides learning that Tracey was created, this storyline felt like the adult retread of Claire and that flying what's-his-name from last year.

No lip locking for Hiro and Ando, though that would certainly have put a twist on their tale. Instead, Hiro continued to treat Ando like the murderer he might become, further pushing Ando towards wanting to murder Hiro. Their storyline was basically filler until the very end when Angela announced that Hiro held the key to the entire mystery. (The mystery of who stole the formula, I presume.) The key is apparently Adam. I dig this character and I'm glad to see he's back in the mix. And I think his immediate reaction of grabbing Hiro by the throat and calling him a son of a bitch was the most believable action anyone has taken on this show in some time.

Four years in the future, the world is full of people with powers (mostly flying powers, it appears) because of the formula that has fallen into the wrong hands. Future Peter explained to Present Peter that he needed to get Sylar's power if he wants to stop the end of the world from happening. There were a few problems I had with these scenes. Future Peter was vague about how Sylar's power would help Present Peter, which makes little sense if he's actually trying to save the world. Sylar as a loving father was also a bit frustrating to watch, mostly because the episode gave us no real connection to it. It was just, "Here's Sylar. Ooh, he's a dad. And look, he makes waffles." Yeah, this is the exact opposite of the guy we know, but why? How? Huh? And then no sooner than being introduced to little Noah, the little guy gets crushed and killed. This is what set Sylar off and caused the Costa Verde explosion. It was a cool moment, but it would have packed more of a gut wrenching wallop if we had connected to Sylar and his son on more than just the clichéd level the episode presented.

Other twists in the future were interesting, like Claire, Daphne and Knox working together, and seeing that Daphne and Matt Parkman are a couple. They also threw in Nathan as President with Tracey as his First Lady. But it's hard to care about any of these things when it's likely this future will be averted. Peter did gain Sylar's power to understand how things work, as well as the "hunger" to learn more and more. I'm going along with this for now, but the series needs to convince me Peter actually needed this power. After all, except for that one little thing, Peter was already able to do everything Sylar could do. "I Am Become Death" continued to split the difference between interesting ideas and weak storytelling, but I was less annoyed by the weak storytelling in this episode.

7.6/10

TV squad

(S03E04) A lot of people have said in the comments that it appears as if I don't like Heroes. Believe me, that's not true. I'm actually a huge fan of the show. As a huge comic book junkie for more years and dollars than good sense will allow me to admit, the potential and general premise of this series is tremendously exciting. And the fact that it achieved such mainstream success right out of the gate was nothing short of astounding.

However, just like you'll tell your wife whom you love more than anything else that she has a piece of lettuce stuck in her teeth, I'm not going to just put on rose-colored glasses and pretend that every scene, line and moment of each episode is solid gold. If I see lettuce, I'm going to call them on it. Because the way I see it, it's just lettuce. It doesn't change how wonderful and beautiful she is in the slightest. It's just a little thing that needs to be taken care of because it's distracting me and it doesn't really fit the whole look her face is going for. Kind of like whatever's going on with Mohinder.

Nikki, Tracy and Barbara were identical triplets who were separated at birth by Dr. Zimmerman, when then proceeded to perform experiments on them. We haven't met Barbara yet, but I already find Tracy a lot more interesting than Niki/Jessica ever was. Sure, she's just as mentally unhinged but at least she seems to be more capable. But in light of what we learned tonight, does that mean Micah's gone for good?

Four Years From Now

Now a world filled with people containing abilities will destroy the world. It's always something new, isn't it? Claire and Daphne are bad guys and in cahoots with the fear-based powers guy. But they're still under the President's authority, somehow? The future is an interesting place. Lots of mysteries and unanswered questions.

Meanwhile, Sylar is living in the Bennett household and is a 1950's sitcom ... mom (you thought I was going to say dad). And we finally learned what Sylar's true ability is I finally thought about how Sylar's ability really works: understanding how things work. It works with everything, explaining why he looks at people's brains to understand how their abilities to work. It also makes it far more plausible that he and Peter are brothers, as he can do with effort what Peter does automatically. But what does that mean about Nathan? And what about Peter now that he also has "the hunger."

I did like the transition with Mohinder's tape recorder into the "Four Years Later" setting. It also gave us a sneak preview of where his transformation may be taking him. In fact, maybe Heroes should have taken a nod from Desperate Housewives and jumped the whole show ahead four years as what's happening here is a helluva lot more interesting than what's going on in the present era. Well, except for the explosion. That kinda sucked. But the time we did spend in the future really brought together the threads that have been woven thus far this season.

Heroes

   * Why do battered women always defend their abusers when someone intervenes to help them on TV?
   * Why did we repeat so much of the Parkman in Africa sequence. If you need to repeat that much of it to make the story clear then maybe save it for the next episode. It's going to turn into an episode of Extra where you have ten minutes of content and twenty minutes of blurbs about those ten minutes.
   * Future Peter has a raspy voice. He must have taken acting lessons in "badass" by Christian Bale.
   * Dania Ramirez managed to show even more boobs than usual. Is this really what she's been reduced to: a sexual object?
   * Every time someone's going to die this year, someone else swoops up to save them. Of course, Nathan would save Tracy. He's banging her. Oh, and she's important to his career.
   * It was good to see Molly again, but if that's what she looks like for real, and four years in the future, how can they possibly use her in the present era? Puberty's a bitch in shows that play with time travel. Just look what they've had to do with Walt on Lost.
   * If Parkman went to the future and saw all that we just saw, he didn't seem to be much more important to the larger arc then than he is now.
   * Having a turtle as an animal guide must suck ass. It takes forever to get anywhere!

Oh snap! Adam's back. I knew he'd come back, considering he can't die, but I never guessed that the guy who buried him in the first place would be the one to do it. And him not happy! How about you? We got a lot more information about things and I feel a lot better about where we're going this season.

UGO TV blog

After “One of us, One of Them” produced a second week that brought many despondent Heroes fans back to their feet, and shut down a lot of naysayers, “I am Become Death” is a welcome and reassuring sign that the upward trajectory of the show is sustainable. “I am Become Death” is somewhat of an antithesis of its title – “I am Become Death” is far from the embodiment of a series’ death throes, it is the strong heartbeat of a mythos that seems poised to live on to fight another season, if the fans come back that is.

“I am Become Death”, like last week’s outing, is a return to Heroes utilizing its best elements on a consistent and thought provoking level. Like some of the best episodes of the series, “I am” is a time travel centric episode with Future Peter and Present Day Peter thrust four-years into the future, where Peter with scar tries to persuade Present Pete that he needs to save the world – again.

With this bump into the future, the stakes of the Suresh side of the story begin to fade. Where we were certain that it was Suresh’s genetic monkeying around that got the world into trouble, we find out it wasn’t. In fact, those behind bringing super hero powers to the fast food generation may have even gotten their start a long time ago, but that isn’t learned in the future. In the future, what we do learn is that Suresh has become a sad, slithery and slimy shadow of himself whose experiments are collecting dust.

In the present, Tracy’s visit to the good doc reveals that her and her sister were given powers by injections given to them at birth. Suddenly the entire playing field has changed. In the future, the notion that some have powers by genetic tampering and some by natural selection has created a sort of racially charged rift, with either side claiming superiority.

Overflowing with themes of government and individual responsibility, tolerance, and the politics of choice and consequence, “I am Become Death” is a can’t miss piece of the Heroes Season 3 Chapter.