Okay, this episode may have been about moving the pieces into place, but it still rocked.

It seems to me that Sylar is not *always* evil. There was a great deconstruction of him in a fic that posited the many possible inhabitants of his rattling brain--Gabriel, Sylar, and the people he "became" for a short time, like Zane. And I think there's some truth to that--the act of changing his clothes (my god, those horrific chinos), shaving, rearranging his hair--all those are classic methodology for changing a persona, or in Sylar's case, an identity. It's notable that he didn't shift out of being more-or-less a good dude until he used his power; for Sylar, his powers are a catalyst for his evv0ltude.

When he was talking on the phone with Mohinder (and can I just say, creepy slash factor up to ELEVEN) it seemed like he was straddling the boundary between his super-evil serial killing self and something of the man he was before the powers. He didn't say he wanted to stop. He said someone needed to stop him. And his boyfriendMohinder was the guy he wanted to do it.

Can I just say, I totally called the accidental power-gleaning on the part of Peter from Ted from, oh, like eighteen episodes ago? Though it's interesting how fine-tuned Ted's powers have become. He's a far cry from the crazy dude of episodes past.

I'm curious as to which of the writers has Mommy Issues, in that Sylar's mom is the one who made him craxxy by wanting him to Be Special.

And speaking of getting info from the fandom rather than the show, i totally didn't put little Molly Walker together with the "Walker System" until reading stuff here last night after the episode. More angst for Mr. Bennet! Yay!

Not to mention Matt Parkman, who saved her in the first place.

Mommy Issues + being "special" = recipe for serial killer. In television, anyway. It's pretty tried and true.

Hey, who knew Greg Grunberg was JJ Abrams' life-long best friend? Not me until five seconds with wikipedia! No wonder he was able to balance Alias and Felicity on two different networks at the same time.

yep! it's why he has at least some small part in all of JJ's shows. it's one thing that redeems Abrams for me. a teensy bit.

To be fair, a number of the characters (probably more, really) have daddy issues -- Mohinder, Nathan, Hiro (although Hiro seems to have his basically in check, so he may not count.)

Quoth Philip Larkin:

They fuck you up
your mum and dad
they may not mean to
but they do

They fill you with
the faults they had
and add some extra
just for you

(From memory, so forgive me if the line breaks aren't exact.)

Promos notwithstanding, eh?

I just watched the latest ep online, and...

"Oh, my god, I'm feeling sorry for Sylar... what is wrong with me?"

"Wow, Claire and Peter have The Sexy Chemistry. Ack! What is wrong with me??"

"Mmmm. Mohinder pretty. What is... oh, nothing wrong with me."

Definitely a bridge episode - but a good one anyway.

Just caught up on the last two episodes (go team DVR!). The latest one was pretty good, but the 5 Years Later episode is one of the best hours of television I think I've ever seen.

Granted, I'm a sucker for dark AU episodes a la The Wish and the whole AU in Trek (especially the DS9 episodes).

how does he keep recovering from big time blows to the head, and being totured almost to death. (Maybe his TK is cushioning the blows). At any rate he has killed a lot more people than we've seen him kill, so he definitely has powers we have not seen.

Oh my god! He got Giles!

WRT Sylar's mommy issues, while we were watching, I turned to Daniel and said, "If I had a kid who could fix clockworks, I would think that was extremely cool, and be always telling him how special that is."

Sigh. The world would be a different place if I were GabrielSylar's mother.

But hey, being dead of a scissors-blow to the heart is a good reason to not go to work.