Heroes: I Am Sylar

****Spoilers for last night's episode, I Am Sylar.****

I love Heroes, but in all honesty, seasons 2 and 3 are nowhere near the awesomeness that was season 1. Season 2 was messed up by the writers' strike, to be fair, but season 3 hasn't done much to redeem the series. Season 3 is just stagnant in my opinion. New episode every week, but not much has actually changed. Nathan messed up and is still messing up. People with special abilities are still being hunted by a secret sect of a government agency. Sylar continues to kill people to take their powers. Hiro and Ando are on their own random missions. Angela is still lying to her sons. The whole season drags on at a snail's pace and I don't even know if the writers know where they're heading. There's some interesting stuff, yeah, but it's mixed in with so many other things that don't matter very much. The characters keep taking action that takes them nowhere.

Peter and Sylar are the only characters I still find interesting. I like Peter because he's the unwavering hero. No matter what, he wants to do the right thing. Powers or not, support or on his own. He knows Nathan messed up big time and Peter wants to make things right. Peter is the most noble character and the fact that he always wants to do the right thing makes him predictable. I like him because he's consistent and actually cares about others enough to do what he can to help, but he doesn't do much that surprises me.

I like Sylar because he's hard to figure out. Sometimes he'll help others---even save other people---but most of the time he's just evil. He'll kill people for his own reasons, and he switches back and forth, sometimes in the same episode, between being good and evil based on his motivations and interests. I like that because it keeps me on my feet. I pay attention to what he's doing and why, and the character is still surprising.

Sylar wasn't in last week's episode very much, but last night the episode was primarily about him. Sylar killed a shape shifter a few episodes back and acquired his ability. Sylar has morphed into government agents, Danko, Noah Bennet, and others and now his identity is slipping. The shape shifting is glitching, and that's weird because as far as I remember, Sylar doesn't make mistakes with powers he takes. He sees how they work, learns how to use them, and that's it. He can always use them without hesitation or error. Except he morphed in his sleep. His eye didn't change back to brown. If he's having problems with his abilities, I take that to mean there's something wrong with Sylar--mentally, emotionally. (And okay, we know he has issues, serial killer and all. I mean he has something new that's wrong.)

About halfway through the episode, Sylar got a hold of the clothes his mother was wearing when he murdered her (connection all the way back to season 1!) and then could morph into her. Why he would want to become his own mother is weird enough, but what's weirder is he started having conversations with himself. He morphed into his mother, spoke as her, then morphed back to himself and responded. It was so creepy! We finally see how messed up he is, and it's heart-wrenching to see him break down.

Sylar is always cool and collected, motivated and calculating. He doesn't falter, and it's weird to see him weak, to actually see that he's broken. As messed up as he is, I found myself hoping he would get better, that he would find a way to overcome his issues so he could go back to being Sylar...and that technically means I want him to be Ruthless, Intense, Bad Guy again. Isn't that messed up on my part? But I think that's the point. We're supposed to be rooting for Sylar.

Micah met up with Sylar last night and Sylar helped him get away from Danko and the government agents. Micah wants to help Sylar because he's the only chance people with abilities have at fixing the mess Nathan Petrelli made. Micah understands that, and it's true. Sylar is the most powerful person in the show right now, especially since Peter has been limited to one power at a time. Sylar's the bad guy, but he's the in the best position to save the good guys.

I'm really interested to see how that's going to play out. Sylar doesn't have any motivation that I see for helping Nathan and Noah stop the hunters after people with abilities. (Although Sylar might want to go after Danko...) Sylar can go around on his own and kill people, take their abilities. He has no interest in saving them. He doesn't owe any of them anything. If Sylar does end up helping them, I wonder why he'll do it.

11:58 p.m. Close one! Phew.