TV Review: ‘Heroes’ Episode: ‘I Am Sylar’

I'm actually Sylar from an earlier episode. I was good in this one.

After a somewhat lacking origin story the previous week, it’s good to see Heroes back on kick ass form this week. How could it not be when the title of this chapter we get to see scratched into Sylar’s arm. That’s what a lot of this episode deals with, a good old heaping of Sylar and luckily this time we don’t get a mopey Sylar in search of his father with a none too interesting kid in tow. This time we get a rather messed up Sylar who is having a few glitches you could say with his shape shifting abilities.

In an early scene we get to see a little cameo by Clint Howard, Ron Howard’s brother who you’ll recognize from any of Ron’s films as well as a myriad of other movies. My suggestion to for you to check out would be Silent Night Deadly Night 4 where he plays a psychotic hobo, truly knows how to keep up with his brother. Anyway he plays an ability owning man with the power to shake things into pieces, and he gets two bad options when he runs into Sylar. The basic problem is Sylar wants power and Dangko wants him to stay as an agent he has killed and taken the identity of. This is Sylar’s essential struggle through the whole episode and there’s actually a couple glints of hope for his character tossed in as well, but we all know Sylar must be Sylar.

We also see Matt Parkman ditching Hiro and Ando and taking his kid back to his ex-wife and leaving the two to their own devices. Their plan is to attack Building 26, “Evil Agent Headquarters†, head on and they have a nice little bit between them where they fight over how they both now have powers as well as what famous super heroes they would be more like. Ando also comes up with his own super hero name that’s kind of bad ass I think. I don’t know. Does anybody think The Crimson Arc sounds like a cool name at all? Matt Parkman again struggles over two ways to head on his adventure and again shows us how much pain it is to make a decision and that’s about as interesting as he gets.

Now I forgot to mention that this is all happening eighteen hours before the ending of the last episode where we saw Sylar impersonating Nathan on TV. So about twenty minutes before the episode ends we take off from the end of the last one and see Nathan pissed as he watches himself on TV and he’s quick to rush off and set things right. Before all this though there is a pretty creepy Norman Batesesque conversation that Sylar has when he shape shifts to look like his mother and he talks to her about all the problems he has and what he should do.

I won’t reveal what happens in the last few minutes because it is a pretty big slew of to be continued action. Let’s just say things aren’t looking good for most of the heroes and I’d say for one villain in particular as well. Now I’m pretty positive next week is supposed to be the finale and with what they’ve built themselves up with I can’t wait to see how they end it all up. I’ve got to say that this Fugitives chapter is living up to what they gave us in the first season and I hope they can sustain it into a few more seasons.