Heroes - "Villains"

I like episodes like this, which show you events you've already seen from a different perspective. ("9 1/2 Minutes" is one of my favorite Coupling episodes for that very reason.) Plus I've had a strong interest in the "first generation" of Heroes, what their stories were and what lead them to some of the crazy decisions they made.

I'm still kind of lukewarm on the whole "Sylar's not necessarily evil" thing. I like the idea of redemption, but man, he was so evil that it's hard to make it work. I think it will work better for me if he tries to do something to atone for what he's done. Beyond just working for the company, that is. But I digress. Here we see how he tried not to go down the road to Hell, but the "hunger" of his power and the temptation that Elle and Bennett were too much for him. Eh, I suppose. People can be frail and make mistakes, but we all make our own choices. And we're not talking about him just boffing everyone's wives, he chose to kill a hell of a lot of people and thoroughly enjoyed it. So while I guess it makes me understand him more as a character and makes his current striving for redemption more believable, it's still hard to forgive someone like that.

Maybe Tayla will kick him off a ledge.

For Arthur Patrelli, however, this is just what the story needed-- seeing how he fit into the whole scheme of things, how big a part of the previous generation of heroes he was, and what his motivation is now. And, like most things with this season, it puts his motives more into a grey area-- if he's of the mindset that they needed to remake the world to turn it into a better place, then he may be thinking what he's doing is for the betterment of mankind, and the end justifies the means.