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Years ago, I started a thread about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Unfortunately, events in the real world prevented me from getting past the first few episodes. 'I'm back' to finish this, because I think this series is the best Terminator media since T2. Not just when compared to T3 and Genisys, but because of how well put together it is. Also, Genisys rather shameless copied many things from this TV series, which I will be happy to explain in my next post before diving back into the series proper. Here's the previous OP and the previous thread. quote:So, to start things off, I'm just going to mention that I can't stick with my initial plan to do this thread as a first time viewer giving their opinion on each episode as it unfolds. Why? Because after the first episode, I was hooked. I'm not going to enforce a spoiler-policy on this thread, unless we get someone coming in and saying they are a first-time viewer. So, go nuts - talk about the things you liked and the things you disliked. Feel free to discuss other parts of the franchise too, particularly with how they relate to the tv series. Ultimately, I feel that this show is an underappreciated gem, flaws and all, and the more people who learn about it and appreciate it, the better!
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Nov 11, 2016 00:31
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I didn't dislike Genisys. Note, I don't think it was very good, but I still think it was a better film than T3 and Salvation. Part of this is because Genisys was obviously something like a Best Hits mix of the Terminator franchise, all done up with new CGI, which appealed to the uncritical Terminato fan in me. The other part of it is due to how much it borrowed from TSCC. A brief summary of either plot might say, "At the behest of a friendly Terminator, the Connors jump into the future in order to have a better chance at stopping Judgement Day. Their objective is to stop the development of the unassuming software that would go on to become Skynet." Perhaps I am painting with too broad a brush, some might say, so, let's drill down a bit further into some of the characters, plot developments and ideas in the film.
The big difference is that whereas TSCC had two seasons to explore and develop these ideas, Genisys only had a few hours. Whereas TSCC was not afraid to take its time with these ideas, Genisys had to slam through them. Ultimately, Genisys could be said to be TSCC without the nuance and innovation. It certainly lacked the casting and character development that made TSCC excel. One of the biggest flaws of Genisys is its casting - Emilia Clarke, while looking perfect for the role, was an incredibly weak Sarah. Similarly, Jai Courtney was quite possibly the worst choice possible for Kyle Reese. Jason Clarke was a fine Terminator but he had no charisma as John Connor. As much as I enjoy Arnold as the Terminator, though, I am quite glad that Genisys will not get a sequel, nor the planned TV spinoff. While better than T3 and Salvation, that isn't necessarily a mark of high quality and Genisys attempt to reboot the franchise could be summed up as blood from a stone. Terminator is a good story but when your idea is to put John Connor in an antagonist role, undercuttting what might be the core concept of Terminator, you might want to admit that there's nothing more that can be done for it and it should just be left alone.
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Nov 11, 2016 01:24
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Jack Gladney posted:There are some stellar and some terrible episodes, but it ends in an incredibly strong way. Garret Dillahunt and Brian Austin Green deliver some surprisingly great performances. It's why I chose the icon.  Mr.Pibbleton posted:What's a good/cheap way to watch this? I heard it used to be on netflix but it's not anymore and I've heard of some amazing episodes. I'm not sure if it is actually available to stream through those services. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
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Nov 11, 2016 01:25
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Blazing Ownager posted:Also I will note that I thought Lena Heady was the weakest part of the show but in hindsight I realize without even a slight doubt that her version of Sarah Connor was the worst only because of the writers, she's utterly kicked rear end in everything she's been in since. Still, Derek Reese was the biggest surprise as the best part of the show, esp. since on paper it sounds like a terrible idea. Derek Reese is definitely one of the most well-executed parts of the show. Interesting that you think Lena Heady was the weakest part! In some ways, I prefer her take on Sarah Connor to Hamilton's take. I think Dekker was really good at giving John Connor a lot of nuance and capturing the conflict between future leader and angsty teen. Those three episodes you mention are the low point of the series with one of them being an actual 'It was all a dream!' thing. The thing that most frustrated me about TSCC was that Season 1 went by at an insanely quick pace. They'd have episodes that they could have easily made two-parters out of and would have been better for it. Then they had Season 2 where things just dragged. Particularly the Riley subplot. quote:ED: Oh yeah, one of the best moments was when John Connor flipped everyone thinking he was a naive rear end in a top hat on it's head and was playing his future girlfriend to find out more the whole time before calling her on that poo poo. It was nice to see that after such a frustrating build-up. The bit where he meets with Derek's girlfriend from the alternate timeline, right? "If you pretend not to know who I am, I'll shoot you in the head." Blazing Ownager posted:It might sound like a nitpick, but the minute they miscast Kyle Reese so badly I went "WHAT THE gently caress!?" repeatedly it summed up the tone of the whole movie. Bingo. I don't think the casting for Genisys was bad per se, in the sense that they acted badly, but they were the wrong people for the parts. quote:That said anyone reading this thread and not watching Westworld needs to get on that poo poo. A LOT of the better parts of the sci-fi from TSCC are present in that show, and I can see very, very few TSCC fans who'd dislike Westworld. Westworld is definitely a show I want to check out ASAP.
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Nov 12, 2016 13:49
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WhyteRyce posted:The series was worth it if just for the Mexican ambush episode and tommygun toting Terminator Both great moments. JediTalentAgent posted:I had sort of wished the season 2 bit of Cameron going bad would have continued for a few more episodes in place of the go nowhere 3-dots storyline. It would have been sort of a great turn of being able to break Derek, John and Sarah apart and now have to go on the run from a Terminator who knows all their secrets, all their tricks, etc. They can't even contact one another because they don't know if Cameron is pretending to be one of them over a phone or not, they have to be careful about trying to track each other down because they don't know if Cameron is tailing any of them. We maybe work out something where they've got to figure out ways to leave messages via dead-drops, stegonagraphy, etc. that could require more human understanding to figure out who is who and what they're really saying. In a way, this post kind of encapsulates a lot of my thoughts on TSCC. What we got was really good. But a lot of what we got could've done so much more with just a little bit more thought. I think Samson and Delilah is a great episode but it would have been fantastic in one or two parts for all the reasons you mention. My plan is to recap the next episode tomorrow and continue that way, although I'm likely to diverge into tangents on certain topics on episodes that bring them to light. For example, John and Future John, Cameron and John's relationship, Cameron's agenda, and touching on how TSCC just builds on many themes and elements of the Terminator franchise so well, whereas T3 and Salvation were just aping what came before.
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Nov 13, 2016 08:09
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Party Plane Jones posted:The series was also worth it for Derek utterly wrecking the T-888 with a couple Barrett rounds to the noggin. I'm still not sure how the Terminator franchise is divided. I've heard that there are two companies who own various pieces of it? If someone knows how this all worked out, please fill us in! So, they can use the word Terminator to link the series to the franchise, but characters cannot say the word Terminator to refer to the character. It happens once, in the final episode, and is obscured by heavy SFX. They can use the characters John Connor, Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese, SkyNet, and characters that are obviously Terminators (T-888s, T-1001) but cannot use the T-800 or the T-1000 specifically? Similarly, I don't think they ever directly refer to or state anything that happened in T1 or T2. Why would they have to pay for, say, calling something a T-800, but not pay to use SkyNet or John Connor?
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Nov 13, 2016 08:37
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Caros posted:Its pretty well understood that a lot of the show's issues resulted from the writer's strike, right? Definitely. TSCC seems like the show of the time period that might have been most obviously affected.
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Nov 13, 2016 09:19
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Astroman posted:I'll Nth the stuff everyone is saying about Derek Reese. When I first heard they were doing it I was like "well that's the stupidest jump the shark thing I've ever heard! You can't just introduce John Connor's brother!" But man if it didn't work perfectly. The biggest problem I had with Genisys was no Derek Reese. They blew that big time IMO. Brian Austin Green's Derek was just an awesome cool guy. TSCC has a ton of things that feel like they would be shark moments but somehow manages to pull them off. Derek Reese, Cameron, alternate-alternate timelines, a faction of rogue Terminators, a Terminator playing with Lego, lots of religious themes. Hell, a lot of it feels like stuff recycled from T3 but done better (a female Terminator, Skynet already existing in the present, Sarah's cancer). I think it is, partially, that the series is careful to treat these developments respectfully and not openly disregard any pre-existing elements of the narrative (for example, it is very easy to understand why Kyle never mentioned Derek). And a lot of the stuff - like a rogue T-1000 - is openly based on either direct quotes from previous films (or James Cameron) or considered deliberation about the themes and message of the first two films and continuing the trends therein.
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Nov 13, 2016 16:09
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Episode 5: Queen's Gambit As we go through Season 1, we're going to run straight in my consistent complaint with the first half of the series - there is way too much happening in many of these episodes. This is very evident in this episode, something which feels like it could have had two or three episodes made from the premise and worked all the better for it. We open with Sarah reflecting on the time she spent with John and some guerilla fighters in the jungle. There, John learned how to play chess as a way to understand war. While thinking about this, Sarah is running through a set of pull-ups on the swingset outside the Connor residence. Inside, we see Sarah popping a few pills. Pills which Google tells me are used for cancer treatment. Anyway, Sarah gets a call from Andy Goode - a former Cyberdyne intern and someone who was building a computer called the Turk. Unknowingly to Andy, Sarah had burnt his house down to destroy the work that would become Skynet. Unfortunately for Sarah, Andy has rebuilt his creation and is now entered it into a chess tournament. And, unfortunately for Charley, Cromartie - in the guise of FBI Agent Kester - has shown up at his door. Meanwhile, John Connor is doing math homework. "You're really good at math," he tells Cameron. "Yes," she replies. "Want to do mine?" "Yes." I could talk at length about the relationship between those two, but I'll save it for a later episode. One thing I'll point to here, something which is sort of brought up later in this episode, is Summer Glau's delivery of Cameron's second yes. It's not a blunt affirmative, there's an edge of desire to it, like Cameron actually wants to do math on a level that is beyond just being useful and fulfilling an order. There are a lot of little bits of genuine warmth in the strange relationship they have, which is contrasted by what is probably the climax of it - a scene where the fact of it all is that Cameron is cold. Sarah comes in. She tells John that Andy has rebuilt the Turk. "It's a song," John says, of coding, "It has to come out." "Yeah, well, this is a song might just blow up the world." Cameron all but perks up like a guard dog and says "You should have killed him when you had the chance." "I'm surprised it's taken you so long to bring that up," Sarah retorts. "I'm busy doing John's homework." Sarah gives John this look that is one part incredulous and one part knowing mother. 'John Connor, you can not get the killer robot to do your homework for you!' They talk. John and Cameron will go to school while Sarah goes to meet Andy as absenteeism invites attention. John wants money to buy lunch but Sarah has packed it. For all the practical side of things, Sarah Connor is an excellent mother. But the emotional side, not so much. Sarah goes to meet Andy. She wanders a lobby filled with chess playing computers and a skeletal robot with a plastic face. Knowing what Sarah knows, it is clearly unnerving. But to Andy, it's awesome. He fills Sarah on the capabilities of the Turk 2 compared to the Turk 1 and that his partner, a man named Dimitri Shipkov, was the one who taught it to play chess. Things go from bad to worse for Sarah when it's revealed that this isn't just a chess tournament, but the winner will get a military contract. Despite her efforts, it seems like the future will correct itself to ensure J-Day. Back to Cromartie and Charley. Charley is aggravated about the FBI 'changing their story'. Cromartie, in that amazing way, blandly recites facts - presumably to see if Charley will provide enough rope to hang himself with. The scene is wonderful and the dialog is great so I'm just going to reproduce it. Cromartie: Sarah Connor survived the explosion in the bank vault. So did her son. Charley: Yeah, that was eight years ago. You guys just figured that out? (A mobile phone rings. Cromartie turns on it, viper-quick, and stares at it. His head tilts, as if considering it, before turning back to Charley). Cromartie: Yes. Charley: Yes? Yes, what? Cromartie: Yes. We just figured that out. Michelle Dixon: Babe, who was that at the door? Cromartie: Good morning, ma'am. Charley:He's from the FBI. Cromartie: I'm asking a few questions. Michelle Dixon: Charley, is something wrong? Charley: No. Cromartie: I'm looking for the Connors. Michelle Dixon: (incredulous) Sarah Connor? Your ex? Cromartie: I'm looking for them here. Michelle Dixon: Here? Cromartie: (matter-of-fact) Mr. Dixon wanted to marry Sarah Connor before you. She's alive. Maybe he's hiding her here. Charley: What? I already told you, no. No, okay? Look, all due respect, Agent Kester, the woman that I knew, Sarah Reese, she blew herself up in a bank eight years ago. I never knew, and I do not know Sarah Connor. Cromartie:: If you see or hear anything, call me. Any time, I never sleep. There's this innocence to Cromartie that makes him a fascinating villain. I don't think he ever displays sadism or anything we might call evil. He is completely efficient and without cunning guile. Time and time again, he simply says what he is doing ("I'm asking a few questions") and time and time again, Dillahunt just nails this robotic naivety. The words have no meaning to him whatsover, but he's just saying them because it is the most optimal thing to say. He's a regular Chinese Room. And yet that innocence only serves to make him more threatening, because you know that if it had been Sarah coming down the stairs and not Michelle, then Cromartie would have killed them both in an instant - because it is the most optimal course of action. We cut to John and Cameron at school as they pass by the memorial for Jordan, a student who killed herself. Cameron understands why people cry (they are sad) but does not understand why people are leaving notes for Jordan. "How will she get the notes?" Cameron asks. John explains that people write notes as a form of catharsis that goes beyond crying. Next to him, a blonde student - Cheri - comments that she liked the note explanation and goes to leave one. The next scene, John is in shop class. Using his knowledge of Spanish (and his burgeoning leadership skills) he defuses a fight between some other classmates. On a rewatch, this scene - and the one immediately previous - are big red flags that the show went through troubles. Cheri is set up as this mysterious figure with no one knowing much about her, but she is dropped without a word and Riley (another mysterious blonde) is introduced. Morris - one of the kids involved in the fight that John breaks up - is also dropped without any indication. Also-also, the girl who killed herself was apparently part of some kind of sub-plot with the guidance counselor of the school. My biggest personal criticism of TSCC is that the daily life stuff is just unceremoniously dropped. The day continues. Sarah watches Goode's Turk battle it out with a Japanese computer, warily noting the presence of Air Force officers in the audience. And then she spies a figure slipping in through a side entrance, a figure who looks remarkably similar to Kyle Reese - this is, of course, Derek Reese. Outside, Cameron and John browse the robotics exhibition. In what is an extremely obvious but still nice shot is the camera pulling back past a fortune-telling automaton, a few block robots, something that looks like it should be exploring Mars, the aforementioned plastic-face machine, and then Cameron. The evolution of robotics, everyone. The Metal March of Progress. The plastic-face robot looks to Cameron and grimaces a smile at her, waving mechanically as it runs through an automated routine. Cameron watches it and the show never quite states what she's thinking but the expression on Glau's face says she's thinking something as she seems to match its expressions and facial tics. A robotic dog, one of those Aibo things, barks at her feet. John nerds out about how many chess people are there but asks his mom how things are going for Andy. Andy is, of course, in a lose-lose position. If he loses, well, he loses. If he wins, then Cameron will kill him and it can be assumed that the Turk will be destroyed (again). And it is not looking good as John remarks that the Japanese are now in total 'zugzwang'. quote:a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one's turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage. "Andy's gonna win," Sarah murmurs. Also, we are twelve minutes in to this episode, and we are only now seeing the opening credits. They play over a scene where Charley and Michelle have a brief argument. Michelle knows that Charley is lying about not knowing anything about Sarah being back, Charley admits as much. Back to the chess tournament and, surprising everyone, the Japanese team puts the Turk into checkmate. John and Sarah are both relieved that Andy lost, and after considering the Japanese team as a Skynet precursor, don't go after them. The future provided them Andy's name, not the Japanese team. One thing that seems to be unclear to me, though, is whether the Turk fell for a trick from the Japanese (some kind of 'computational error' that the Turk did not consider a threat) or whether it was the Turk that made the computational error and misjudged the entire situation. Basically, did the Turk throw the game? Resolving to tell Andy everything, Sarah goes to find him. She bumps into the man she saw before coming the opposite way. She finds Andy, shot in the head, and chases down Derek. They brawl and Sarah holds the advantage for the entire fight and Derek tries to run for it, only to get arrested while Sarah looks on. Sarah, distraught but refusing to weep, quietly apologises to Andy. Later, Sarah is running her morning exercises again and Cameron brings her a pencil, advising her to write a note if she can't cry. Sarah just snaps the pencil in half and walks away. This could very much have been its own, complete episode with a bit of expansion to it. I'd just like to point out that we're not even halfway through the episode at this point. But this episode keeps going. John, the hacker that he is, points out that the man the police captured as a barcode tattoo on his arm - he's a resistance fighter. Derek was sent to keep tabs on Andy, it seems, but also managed to kill him. Cameron points out that it wasn't the mission that Future John gave Derek. Sarah resolves to go talk to him and, elsewhere, a Terminator - the one from they encountered at the safe house - resolves to find him, too. The first step in his master plan? Punching out a cop so he will be arrested. Cameron and John talk at school. Cameron doesn't understand why John is doing his math homework after he asked her to do it. It's grieving, Cameron says, and John doesn't understand how Cameron has any idea what that is. Cameron gets called in to talk with the school counselor. Similar to the discussion with Charley and Cromartie, someone being incredibly literal is pitted against someone being evasive. But, wait, Milky, how do you know the counselor is being evasive? I don't. But I do have evidence for something. See, what I think we have here is a dropped plot thread where the counselor played some role in Jordan's death.
Either way, after this episode, it is never brought up again. Ellison meets with Derek, trying to figure all this out. Ellison knows that Derek was at the sight of the Andy Goode murder and at the ruined safehouse. But Derek and Ellison find common ground on the common forensic evidence, something that is like blood but isn't, and Derek's words that everyone is going to die causes Ellison to want to get him to Federal jurisdiction. But, being walked down a nearby corridor, is the cop-punching T-888. As Ellison is leaving the prison, Sarah is walking in, posing as Derek's public defender. They pass by within inches of each other. Sarah is talking to the counselor on the phone and Sarah, ice cold, terminates the call. I can't help but think that the counselor was intending to sort of butter Sarah up to get Cameron to come and see him, what with the whole 'she as PTSD' thing. But, like I said, dropped plot. Derek and Sarah meet. Derek knows who she is and there's a complication - Derek didn't kill Andy, he claims someone else did, someone he hoped was Sarah. All Derek wanted was the Turk, which he didn't get, and now he's in jail with a T-888 coming for him. "If you found me, it will too," Derek says, "And I will not be the bastard who brings metal down on the Connors." Derek: You're prettier than your picture. Sarah: Picture? Derek: Yeah, it's actually how I clocked you. My brother carried your snap for luck. Sarah: Who's your brother? Derek: What does it matter? You don't know the Reese boys, and you never will. Sarah: Reese boys? Derek: Derek Reese. Brother's Kyle. With that, Sarah leaves. Derek is led down a hallway for transfer to a Federal facility. He passes by the Terminator, standing silently in its cell. Effortlessly, it shoves the locked door open and stalks its prey. Sarah reflects: "When John sent Kyle Reese back to protect me, we had two days together. He told me about the future, about the apocalypse, and the terror of a world run by machines. Kyle Reese saved my life. He gave me a son. He never told me that he had a brother. He never told me we would have family. That in our grief we are not alone." After school, John tries to connect with Cheri. Curtly, she tells him to walk away - but not out of anger or disgust, more some kind of resigned sadness. Was there some kind of seed for what would become the (sprawling, messy, too-long) Riley plotline? Maybe. Either way, Sarah is there to collect John and the Tin Miss. They immediately set out to waylay Derek's prison truck, while Derek himself is already picking his cuffs with a pick he concealed within the bars of his tattoo. Cameron deals with the drivers and then breaks Reese out, who puts a gun to her head until Sarah tells him that she's on their side. In the side mirror, the prison Terminator is sprinting after the truck. Cameron, with a sub-machine gun provided by Sarah, goes to face him. The Terminator manages to board the vehicle and Cameron brawls with it in the back of the van with every blow and impact sending the van slewing all over the road. Eventually, Cameron manages to force her opponent through the side of the van and holds him down as Sarah manages to ram him against a parked truck, amputating the Skynet warrior's hand. This show really is quite good about its action scenes. Derek and Sarah meet up with John, preparing to make a getaway. "Where's Cameron?" John asks. "Leave her!" replies Derek. But there she is, as the Terminator throws Cameron through the doors of the prison van, kicks her down and begins punching her again and again with his one good hand. He then turns, takes up a pistol, and levels it at the Connors. But he's not aiming at John, or Sarah. He's aiming at Derek. Just as the robot squeezes the trigger, Cameron lays into him with a big metal pipe. What would have been a killshot isn't, but it's still not looking good for Derek, and he is bleeding, badly, as Cameron pulls the chip from the Terminator's cranial casing. We get another shot of Cameron's face, then, much like when she encountered the primitive automatons at the tournament. Does Cameron understand what she's looking at, that she's holding everything that Terminator is, and how that could apply to her? Is she capable of wondering if she might be in the same position? Because, of course, she may very well be faced with that same scenario. On the Connor kitchen bench, Derek Reese is dying. Cameron looks him over. STATUS: VITAL SIGNS CRITICAL, EXPIRATION IMMINENT "I can't fix it," Cameron states. "You took a bullet out of me!" Sarah snaps, storming out of the kitchen, on the warpath. John: A stun gun - are you nuts?! Sarah: He needs a doctor. John: You're gonna go out and kidnap one?! Sarah: There's an ER a mile away. It's almost dark. John: Mom, this is crazy, all right, even for you! It's insane! Sarah: Well, we have to save him. John: And what happens when you get caught?! Then what?! Sarah: I said we have to save him! John: You don't know who this guy is! Sarah: He's your uncle. He doesn't know. He's your father's brother. His name's Derek Reese. And John Connor, who has never had a father beyond the killing machine that briefly became one when he was a kid, runs for it, right out of the house, presumably unable to deal with being introduced to his uncle just as he is about to die. Meanwhile, Ellison tries to make sense of the police officers who tell him just how the prison vehicle was highjacked. As he walks away, he spies something almost hidden on the side of the road - a hand with metal peeking through the torn flesh. The hand that the Terminator lost during the fight. The final scene is Derek, no longer breathing. As Sarah calls his name, John returns. With Charley Dixon - a paramedic who knows how to keep a secret - in tow.
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Nov 16, 2016 06:26
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As a teacher, I was going to say something about using chess to teach a robot how to think but the new film Arrival (which I saw last night) does it and, really, more eloquently than I could. Go see it! However, for those that don't... These spoilers are very mild and relate to the film in the sense that it is something characters briefly mention. Arrival is a film about communication and understanding. At one point, there is the mention of using games as a way to get across a language barrier and to promote mutual understanding with something that may not communicate like us or even have any common frame of reference. A character points out that using games such as chess could be disastrous, as it invites all thinking processes to align along lines that involve a winner and a loser. Is this an idea also reflected by the Turk, Skynet and John Henry? It seems to be. We watch the Turk grow from a chess playing computer and then guided into other ways of thinking, other ways of playing such as with religious faith and Lego. If Skynet was taught better, would it have made the same actions? James Cameron's original idea for Skynet was that it was consumed with self-loathing for the destruction of humanity and therefore willingly created the causal circle that'd invoke its own destruction, but also its own creation. This is, of course, something forgotten by any Terminator media post T2. Anyway, back to the episode. Queen's Gambit is not a bad episode but, by God, is it busy. Basically, you have:
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Nov 16, 2016 |
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Nov 16, 2016 06:45
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Knightsoul posted:TSCC fan here too! The arc with Riley could have been shortened. I think it's a very important part of the John Connor character to show his problems with being in the real world when he has been groomed, from birth, to be an apocalyptic savior. They're actually my favorite parts of TSCC when executed well, like where the psychologist comments that John is basically a PTSD case. I think the biggest problem with Derek's lover - Jesse - was that her arc has very little pay off and not much of a climax (although the scene between her and John is neat). She's a casualty of Season 2 as much as anyone else is.
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Nov 30, 2016 02:46
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Lonos Oboe posted:That whole last few scenes involving the late Season 2 Riley arc. It's really when John grows up and starts becoming John Connor. And also a revelation for us that being John Connor is not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe Future war John is having Cameron publicly execute mutineers and he has lost his humanity from fighting the machines too long. (Derek's speech about waiting for him to be human adds to this. And considering how hard Derek pushes John and how cold blooded Derek himself can be means that Future John must be very ruthless) An idea that fascinated me about Future John was his relationship with Cameron. It was obviously an intimate one, if not a sexual one. She seems to act in his stead and with his authority in lots of future 'flashbacks'. But the idea Sarah raises, that Future John sent Cameron away from him because he no longer wanted her around - that's interesting!
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Nov 30, 2016 05:23
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Lonos Oboe posted:They also really kept the look of the future war much than I expected. The T-600s are particularly great. They show up maybe twice. They are the guys that have rubber skin are all beat up and carry conventional weapons. I think Terminator Salvation missed a trick there. The T-600s in that are these huge 7ft unconvincing behemoths that had miniguns and grenade launchers and were supposed to be this generation 1 infiltrator. Maybe the idea was that they were repurposed or something. It really bugged me that they were meant to be the infiltrators. When Kyle talks about them in Terminator 1 he says that they had plastic skin and they spotted them easily. He doesn't mention them being huge and dumb. The mental image I had as a kid at that description was captured perfectly in the show. And that's when the show was really at it's strongest. When it expanded and fleshed out the world and used the ideas to it's advantage. Bingo. One of them shows up in the episode I'm halfway through doing. The show was very good at remaining true to the source material without being afraid to really dive into it, too. quote:Like John stuck in the warehouse with the T-800 that hired thugs or the concept of the time travel being messed up and a machine going back too far and becoming a 30's gangster. I think the Cromartie arc was made great by the incredible performance by Garret Dillahunt. It was like the damage he had was almost psychological and he became a little eccentric. I think the idea of the machine marrying was an interesting one, and if explored could have expanded the idea of the machines being super manipulators. "The perfect lover, the perfect husband. so giving, never thinks of himself it's always what I want to do. And when he buys clothes for me, they are always the perfect size" But it was not believable in the context of the show. One weakness the show certainly had was in the direction/performance of some of the Terminators. My favorite Terminator acting is Robert Patrick with his inch deep friendly cop routine. "Say, that's a nice bike." (T3 made me cringe with the "I like your gun" homage.) Both Cromartie and Cameron borrow from Patrick's performance of the T-1000. quote:Cameron manages to pass for human well in the first episode and I think one of Summer Glau's most effective performances is the scene in the first ep of season2 "I love you, I'm fixed now" There are a few times in the series where Cameron turns on the charming personality she exhibits in the pilot episode. As a character, though, I don't think Cameron cares about being charimastic unless it is required of her. The personality she exhibited in the pilot was, presumably, so John would find her attractive and not mind her being close to him. The moment he knew what she was, and what her mission was, she was able to drop the pre-text. John and Sarah both know why she acts so cold all the time - because she's a killing machine where everything she learns is filtered through a lens of terminating her target. I do feel there are a heap of inconsistencies with Cameron, though, and the John and Cameron relationship was kind of squandered. I might touch on it during S2E1.
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Dec 5, 2016 04:22
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Episode 6: Dungeons and Dragons So, the episode opens exactly where the previous one left off. Derek is bleeding out atop the Connor kitchen bench, with Charley working to stabilise him. He's not in a good state and we get a good idea of what hell the future is like. Derek's body is covered in tattoos and scars - puncture wounds, shrapnel, burns, and of all of it Charley points out how bad the medical care he'd recieved for those wounds is. This episode's an interesting one because it is the first time TSCC tackles the future war aspect of the franchise, something which can be difficult to handle well. For example, I tend to agree with the sentiment espoused by SuperMechaGodzilla in CD, that the future war is not so much a real place and time as it is a hellish nightmarescape and reading it literally is missing the point. It's a dark, terrible thing, replete with nightmare imagery of endless fields of skulls and wrecked cars with gleaming chrome skeletons stalking the ruins of the world. It is something that reflects the mental state of the people like Kyle Reese as much as it depicts a possible future. Salvation went for some kind of tacticlol take on it and missed the point. Genisys barely featured it. TSCC, I think, offers a fair attempt at depicting the robotic post-apocalypse. So, Derek and Kyle are sitting in one of the rubbish strewn bunker tunnels that are familiar to anyone who has seen Terminator 1. They are joined by a ragged but familiar looking fellow by the name of Billy Wisher (a reference to William Wisher who worked on T2) and the three of them share some good-natured ribbing at Kyle's history with John Connor breaking out of the Century work camp. The whole tunnel shakes as something, presumably a flying HK roars overhead. While everyone quails and stares at the ceiling, Kyle stares determinedly at the familiar photo of Sarah Connor (albeit reshot with Lena Headey which is a nice touch). Derek notices and isn't happy about it. Derek: I hate that thing. Kyle: It's just a picture. Derek: It's Connor's mother. Derek: I don't get why he'd give you that. Kyle: She's my lucky charm. Derek: That's what makes me nervous. Sayles - the fourth member of Derek's team - tells them that Connor's advised them to head topside and scout out the area. Outside the tunnel system, it's all ruins as far as the eye can see. Derek and his team hop from cover to cover, discussing the state of things. Connor is said to be looking for something big, some kind of Skynet secret weapon. While not confirmed, it is safe to assume that Connor is looking for existence of Skynet's temporal displacement engine. The team can only gape as they spy three Terminators dragging a huge jet engine through the ruins. But they are spied by a set of HKs and a Terminator and Derek is captured. Back in the present, Charley tries to come to terms with Sarah being back while John is in the next room over, freaking out that Derek Reese - his father's brother - is dying. He interrogates Cameron, asking her if she knows who that man is. She does, rattling off his dossier. But despite repeated questioning from John, Cameron does not seem to be aware of John's connection to the Reese family. Charley presses for more information and in order to 'uncomplicate it for him' they show him the body of the Terminator from the previous episode. All things considered, Charley takes it pretty well. In fact, the only thing that Charley seems to be upset about is that they didn't trust him enough to tell him this in the first place. I like Charley a whole lot. I think he's a stand out of TSCC's supporting cast. Anyway, back to the future. Derek is woken up in what looks to be an abandoned house. Above him, there looms a T-600, something which the TSCC team renders in all its rubber-skin glory and it is wonderfully hideous. It burns a barcode onto his arm and leaves. Some time later, Derek wakes up and blearily talks with another prisoner, Timms. It seems like Skynet is running some manner of experiment in the basement, involving music. Derek's loyalty to Connor is put against another prisoner, who claims that Connor is wrong and crazy and there's no secret weapon. But Wisher has been taken for whatever reason Skynet has them there. When he's brought back, later, he seems utterly catatonic, eyes open but not hearing Derek. In the present, Derek begins bleeding into his lungs. Charley manages to stop the bleeding but Derek has lost too much blood and there's no donor available. Cameron advocates for his death, given that he's a wanted fugitive. Sarah advocates for dropping him at a hospital and leaving him. But John wants to have his blood tested, to see if he is compatible. John wants to tell Derek he's his uncle but Sarah points out that John didn't tell anyone that Kyle was his father, something backed up by the fact that Cameron - seemingly part of Future John's inner circle - has no idea. We jump back to the future. Here, the following conversation takes place: Wisher: Can I confess to you? Derek: I'm not a priest... Far from it. Wisher: I'm a liar. And the devil. Derek: Oh, Billy. Wisher: The name's not Billy. It's not Wisher. Derek: What? Wisher: My name's Andy. Andy Goode. Derek: Alright, Andy. Wisher: I did this. All of this, it's my fault. Derek: What are you talking about? Wisher: I built Skynet. (A long pause. Wisher stares at Derek, somewhere between despair and terror. Derek's face goes strangely dark for a split second.) Derek: ...You need to rest, alright? You're very sick. Wisher: No, no. I'm not sick. I'm not sick. I did this. All of this. I was part of a team. A group. Ten of us. Maybe 15, I don't know. We- We used names. We were liars. I built computers. I built a computer. It had a mind. It became angry, and scared. And I couldn't reassure it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, please forgive me! Here's our very first indication that TSCC's future is not set in stone. Derek Reese came from a future where Andy Goode survived and his Turk became Skynet. The idea that one needs to teach an AI properly is something that runs through the entirety of TSCC (becoming a whole plot in the second season) and the Christian mythology that steeps the show, too, makes an appearance here. In the future, Derek is subjected to some kind of experiment involving a piece of classical music (Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor) but we don't see the specifics. In the present, as Charley infers that Derek is some relation of John's due to the shared name, Derek wakes up and in a delirium rage demands to know where John sent Kyle and what he did to him. "You owe me the truth!" John can only look on, utterly distraught, while Derek rants and raves and throws off his medical apparatuses. One thing I'll note here is that a lot of TSCC sites seem to indicate that Derek is saying 'My blood! My blood!" and link it back to whatever experiment that he suffered at the hands of Skynet in the basement. This is not correct. He's screaming for Kyle: "He's my blood!" So, Derek is hauled back up to, just as catatonic and exhausted as Fisher had been. When he wakes up again, there's a hatchet. Derek takes it up and cuts his chains, escaping with the others. They return to their bunker, finding it ablaze. Derek searches for his brother, finding nothing but the scorched photo of Sarah. In the timeline, this places it as the attack Kyle flashbacks to in T1. Luckily, though, a resistance squad locates Derek and his men, informing him that Kyle was not there at the time of the attack. Kyle was with Connor, hitting some Skynet facility as part of a big operation - presumably the attack that would lead to Kyle being sent back in time. Also, the resistance squad leader - Sumner - is Bubbles from the Wire! Sumner tells Derek that while Connor took Kyle into that place in Topanga canyon, only Connor came back out. Charley has a chat with Cameron while she flays the skin from the Terminator. He is, succinctly put, freaked out. The whole thing scares him but Cameron seems to scare him most of all, as she stands there with a bloody carving knife in hand. Cameron tries to put him at ease by telling him that the Terminator is not a guy, but a "scary robot". "Okay," Charley says, "But you? You're a very scary robot." Cameron sets fire to the Terminator chassis with a flare and thermite and, in the harsh light of the flames, her eyes are a brilliant electric-blue. Charley bails. Back in the future, Derek is trying to get any information he can on Kyle. But it's all classified. When Derek claims he'll talk to Connor himself, a soldier tells him that Connor doesn't talk to anyone and doesn't have any friends. He spies Cameron and freaks out, finding out that Connor has been reprogramming Terminators and giving them the run of the place. That Derek does not agree is putting it lightly. But the soldier he's talking to points out that without the machines they never would have been able to take Topanga and do what they did there, which is a pretty interesting idea. But whatever it is they did, Derek gets no idea. Later, one of the reprogrammed Terminators starts killing people in the base. As Derek prepares to face it down with a handgun, Cameron shows up with a grenade launcher and terminates it. "Sometimes they go bad, no one knows why," Cameron states, which is probably not what you want to hear as explanation. In the present, Sarah confronts Cameron, telling her that in no uncertain terms, if she harms Charley, Sarah will take her apart, piece by piece. Cameron swears that she won't, much how the Terminator in T2 would swear to John Connor. Afterwards, Sarah and Charley share a romantic goodbye, and Charley passes Sarah the card of FBI Agent Kester. Kester is, of course, the identity of Cromartie. The episode is winding down. In the future, John - through Cameron - calls Derek to come see him. Derek comes face to face with a TDE, a time machine. And, as Derek stares at it, John Connor looking just as he does in the present comes in behind him. While seemingly intended to be nothing more than an indicator of Derek's mental state, given that Present John is calling to him, it does somewhat mesh with the idea at the end of Season 2 - that Present John literally becomes Future John by hopping into the future. I also think, later, there's another point where we see a silhouette of Future John and it bears a striking resemblance to Thomas Dekker. Staring over the ruins of a city, presumably LA, Derek tells his team that they can go back and fix everything, disregarding that John didn't tell him about Kyle. "We can save everybody," Derek says, "We can fix all the mistakes," and he shares a pointed look with Andy Goode/Billy Wisher. It seems clear to me that both Goode and Derek understand that stopping Skynet would involve killing Goode in the past, something which both of them seem to accept. It's an interesting idea: could you travel back in time and kill yourself if you were responsible for the end of the world? Of course, as we find out, all of the resistance fighters are killed and Derek ends up with the Connors. John seems prepared to tell Derek that Kyle is his father, but Sarah enters and John settles on "he was... a hero." But what happened to Goode? As Sarah repeats Kyle Reese' famous warning, about how the machine will not stop and cannot be bargained with and does not know pity, remorse or fear, we see Andy Goode in his room at the chess tournament. Derek sweeps into the room and shoots Goode once and then again, leaving his body on the floor. The obvious point here is that it isn't just the machines who are here with terrible missions, the humans are, too. And Derek, coldly murdering the man who would become his friend in the future, his face a terrifyingly determined mask, is just as remorseless as any Skynet endoskeleton. Like others have said in the thread, it really is fascinating how the show was not shy about having an out-and-out murderer as a member of the main cast. But also a murderer who lied about it to Sarah Connor and will continue to lie about it until, if my memory is right, Season 2. Derek shows no remorse for killing Andy - and, really, would you feel anything if you killed the man who you knew would end the world? But the Turk is missing. And, as Cameron points out earlier in the episode, a Terminator hand is unaccounted for. Judgment Day is still a possibility. Maybe it's inevitable. In T1 and, arguably in T2, there is always an arm left unaccounted for. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 08:49
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Wipfmetz posted:But it was "rebooted" with Genisys. Genisys wasn't terrible. I think it was let down more by the actors they chose for the major roles.
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Dec 10, 2016 00:44
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Yvonmukluk posted:Jai 'Stop trying to make Jai Courtney happen' Courtney and Emily '2nd best Sarah Connor to come out of Game of Thrones' Clarke, presumably. Kind of, yeah. I said earlier that they were fine choices of talent but they were just the wrong choices, if that makes sense. Emilia Clarke looks more like a young, inexperienced Sarah Connor than even Linda Hamilton does. I think from an aesthetics point of view, she was the perfect choice. Unfortunately, she had none of the fire or intensity that Hamilton brought to the role and used to make it a household name. This wouldn't have been so bad if Genisys Sarah was more of a waif, like Sarah had been, but they make her into a badass warrior and Clarke just can't do it. Courtney had a similar problem. When I think Kyle Reese, I think kind of boyish, wiry and incredibly intense, bordering on deranged. In Genisys, I'd say Reese is chiseled, huge and kind of dense. I think he did a fine job of acting but he was just wrong and it always felt flat. Jason Clarke who played John Connor had a very interesting role and I think he was a great villain, although very similar to Cromartie's role as the 'everyman Terminator'. But he had no charisma as John Connor and was clearly cast on being the villain, making the whole twist a bit obvious. Arnold was amazing, even if Pops Terminator didn't feel earned. But Arnold will always be a good Terminator and, in a way, Genisys felt worth it to me just to see him being the Terminator again. The biggest thing that worked against Genisys, though, was that the original Terminator is a classic film. Re-imaginings and reboots only really work when the original text doesn't make use of the premise or executes it poorly. The original Terminator nails both points, so, what was Genisys really going to add? It sort of did a Best Of Terminator film, showing off fancy new CGI and maybe doing cooler things with the fights to sell the weight and power and abilities of each model of Terminator, but that's about it. The twist with Connor, while novel, flies in the face of the entirety of previous entries in Terminator. It was a much better film than Salvation and better, I think, than T3. But I think the problem with Terminator is what stories are there left to tell? What would a re-imagining add?
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Dec 11, 2016 02:01
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Speaking of Genisys, I watched it again with my partner, who was seeing it for the first time, last night. Until a few years ago, she hadn't seen any part of the Terminator films. All she knew was that Arnold played a scary robot from the future. Yes, this means that she went into T2 completely blind and was blown away by the twist. The film is just wonky, and I think part of that is because it cleaves very closely to the Terminator mythos without sort of advancing them as TSCC did. For example, take the idea that John Connor has to essentially manipulate Kyle Reese to fall in love with his mother and then send him back in time so he can, in a way, make himself exist. It's pretty messed up, which TSCC acknowledged through the character of Derek Reese. Really, watching Genisys again made me appreciate Derek Reese much more. He's a character who acknowledges how messed up the situation is but has no real idea what any of it means. Interestingly, both TSCC and Genisys state that Skynet's temporal weapon was located in Los Angeles in a secret facility. I don't think T1 or T2 make mention of it. But there's also whole scenes in Genisys that you could replace Sarah and Kyle with TSCC Sarah and TSCC John and it'd fit. When comparing them earlier, it completely skipped my mind that Genisys portrays Skynet as a frightened child that grows into a determined, hateful being. TSCC does much the same with the Turk and John Henry. The John Connor as machine concept still throws me. The film doesn't make it clear that this is not a mind-controlled John, it's John deciding that co-operation with Skynet is the best form of survival ("Survival is what you taught me," he says) and he is forced to dehumanise himself to fight his mother and father. It's an incredibly good bit of acting on the part of Clarke that he plays John as having no real idea of what his capabilities are and how he has to psych himself up with Kyle's 'cannot be bargained with' speech. John Connor becomes the ultimate Skynet collaborator because Judgement Day is inevitable, so, why not live it out with your mom and dad? But everything else is just a mess. Kyle and Sarah spend the film being confused and arguing and it's hard to buy them as either a hardened soldier or a grim apocalypse prepper. The script is filled with fairly atrocious lines, too, which feel like they misjudge the franchise. "I'm going to use these hands for something other than killing," Kyle tells John in the future, which is not something you'd say when you're fighting robots whom you don't think have any right to exist. There's no killing there - just tech support with extreme prejudice. Moving on to The Demon's Hand, tomorrow, which is a neat episode that felt like a good little epilogue to the events of T2. "He came down the hall. He was a large man. I thought it was a man until... He threw the guard... through the window, like a rag doll. Not an ounce of emotion. Just blank, like a death mask. Then the other one came... The second was almost beautiful like perfect... like a changeling... the face of mercury."
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Dec 18, 2016 09:24
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Blazing Ownager posted:I don't even hate Jai Courtney but holy poo poo was that miscasting for Kyle Reese. Like, holy poo poo. I could name like a hundred actors I'd pick for the role and literally not one of them is a Terminator-looking guy. Kyle's a scrapper drat it. My partner summed it up as 'He's too big, and she's too small'.
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Dec 18, 2016 09:51
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Episode 7: The Demon Hand In a direct homage to Terminator 2, the episode opens with Cameron pulling up at an unknown location on the back of a police motorbike. She's wearing the uniform of a highway patrolman, just as the T-1000 did, with the white helmet and big aviators. She's hunting for information on the hand of the Terminator from the episode prior to last. It's a bit awkward how she jams her arm into a power turbine and sustains no damage to her clothing or skin, but we can let it pass. With the blackout of the Los Angeles region in play, she wanders into a police station to find that the arm - the 'demon hand' of the title - is out of the evidence locker. In the possession of one James Ellison, even. Meanwhile, Sarah takes a trip to visit Andy Goode's grave, reflecting on how he's really no different from the T-888 that Cameron destroyed - he's gone, and the world moves on without him. Sarah returns to check Derek's wounds, although he's quick to grab at her wrist the moment she touches him. The T-888 might be gone but the Turk is still out there and Derek, while heady and out of it, seems somewhat distraught about this. After all, it's kind of the whole reason he killed his friend. Eating breakfast in the kitchen, John wonders if Derek will stay. Sarah points out that she's wondering if he'll live. Cameron returns, reporting that she's unable to acquire the hand because the FBI has it. Sarah is immediately rather agitated, telling John he's taking the day off school to help locate it. John disagrees, pointing out Sarah's earlier logic that being absent gets him on the radar, and leaves. Cameron, though, is happy to take the day off and Sarah puts her on task with tracking down Dimitri, Andy Goode's business partner. What I do like about this scene is we get to see a bit of Sarah's fervor and John's more grounded approach. Sarah is concerned with the fact that the arm leads to Judgement Day. John points out that they need an arm AND a chip. It's not said in the sense that it's unimportant, but more like that they can afford to take their time. One thing TSCC likes to do is invoke direct comparisons between man and machine. This is, of course, a particularly big element of the franchise but comes through particularly obviously in the next scene, where Sarah is putting on a voice to fool an FBI agent into revealing the location of the supposed 'prosthetic hand'. It works, but there's no mention of the FBI having the hand. It's only though sheer coincidence - or fate? - that Ellison happens to walk past the agent and get asked about the hand. Ellison shakes his head: "I never saw any hand, fake or otherwise." But the box he is carrying reads SUSPECT: SARAH CONNOR and VICTIM: MILES DYSON. Ellison's a busy man. He's going through Sarah's history at Pescadero Mental Hospital, watching footage of her. One thing I like about this footage is that it doesn't recreate what we've already seen, but creates things that are similar. Close enough to invoke familiarity without making it needless. On the screen, Sarah rants and raves about 'God or the devil' sending back machines to do 'one perfect thing', which is killing her and everyone she knows. Silberman, of course, plays the rational part and points out that surely there would be evidence of these machines. Ellison glances to his fridge at the mention of evidence. It's where he's keeping his own evidence of future murder-bots: the severed hand. From there, Ellison journeys to Pescadero, inspecting Sarah's room as if he could find some reason for everything from her room, the evidence she left there - the dent in the wall, the beating given to the security camera. He settles for information on Silberman, or any of the other staff. But after everything, Silberman retreated to a woodland cabin, isolated from the world, and everyone else left the workplace. Everyone who was there on the night where the T-800 and T-1000 showed up has run from the truth. While Ellison is investigating Sarah's former home, Sarah is breaking into his current home. The camera pays particular attention to an open Bible on Ellison's desk - Ellison is a man of faith, something which the series returns to, particularly in Season 2. Sarah finds that Ellison has been investigating her past and she picks out one of the video tapes he has, stealing it away, although we have no idea what is on it. Meanwhile, Cameron is on the trail of the Turk. She's taking a ballet class with Dimitri's sister as the instructor. Curious, Cameron asks what one of the dancers is doing. Cameron: What is she doing? Maria: Pas de Chat. Step of the cat. Cameron: Will you show me? Maria: That is the advanced class. You are a beginner, yeah? [Cameron pulls off an incredible ballet move. Summer Glau is, interestingly enough, trained in ballet.] Maria: You have taken ballet before. Cameron: No. Maria: The height is nice. Beautiful feet. But your upper body is a little mechanical, yeah? Remember, you are a cat. Cameron: I'm a cat. Maria: [takes a breath] Come next week. We need to develop your flexibility and your imagination. Remember... Dance is the hidden language of the soul. After that, Maria seems to worry about being extorted for money from a Russian gangster. Cameron lingers to listen in on the conversation. At the Connor residence, John finds Derek seemingly recovered, loading guns on the floor of Sarah's room. It's a neat conversation between the two of them, revealing how little the norms that John and Sarah take for granted mean in the apocalypse future. The fact that John points out that Derek should not be doing this in Sarah's room, because it is her room and for no other reason, seems laughable to Derek. Just as laughable as John trusting Charley and Cameron. It seems, in the future, there's tension between Derek, Cameron and John - but what sort of tension exactly is cut off by Sarah arriving home. The tension between John and Derek doesn't vanish, though - Derek stares John down until he turns away. Then, agitated by the apparent trust placed in Cameron, rails against her being used for anything except 'dirty work'. He's up and about but he's not recovered. John's right, though, but he's stalked out at this point - armed with the videotape that Sarah had secreted away, having spotted it in her bag. What he sees when he watches it, we don't hear - but it's enough to upset him. Sarah: [gesturing to Derek's handgun] That gonna help? Derek: You never know. Does it help to sleep on the whole trunk? Sarah: Go into my bedroom again, I'll bust your head. The next morning, Sarah has made pancakes. "We eat at the table," she tells Derek, as he skulks away with his plate. John stalks in, thrusts Silberman's address at his mother, and storms out, claiming that he's not hungry. Heady gives this great performance, looking absolutely distraught as she knows what John has seen, and as she watches it, we see what she already knows: John just saw his mother signing papers giving up custody of him. We know John didn't like his foster parents, and we know he was confused by the actions of his own mother, but regardless, when you're a kid, that's the sort of thing that sticks with you. "All parental rights will be terminated." Over the breakfast table, Derek and Cameron share an awkward meal. Derek stares at Cameron and Cameron stares right back. When Derek accuses her of not being hungry, she begrudgingly eats a portion of pancake. "I know you," Derek tells her. "I know you too," Cameron replies. Meanwhile, Ellison is meeting with Silberman. Silberman post-Pescadero is far more affable (and with far more hair) than he was in the mental hospital. Unfortunately, he also seems far crazier, and Ellison realises he's been drugged just in time to collapse to the floor. Cameron meets with Maria again, beating up a gangster when he threatens her. She's looking to help her brother, she tells Maria, and she's not police. Ellison wakes up, tied to a chair. Silberman, reading off a verse from the Bible, tells Ellison that he knows who he is - he's from the future. Ellison wonders how he could have been drugged if he is a machine. Silberman admits that it was a test, yes - but maybe Ellison is just advanced enough to trick him into thinking he was passed out ("FBI, that's a good touch"). Ellison tries to appeal to Silberman, just in time for the latter to stab him in the leg - and twist. Derek is outside, working his toes through the green grass - something he presumably hasn't done in years. He has a somewhat cagey conversation with Sarah where, given that Derek later mentions that he knew Kyle was John's father from the moment he saw him, he's obviously trying to get information on Kyle and let slip how much he knows without saying it. It's a nice little scene, although I keep trying to puzzle over some significance to the swingset which keeps appearing. Innocence lost? Reference to T2? Swinging back and forth like a pendulum? Any ideas? Back with Ellison and Silberman, who is calling it all an honest mistake, although he keeps Ellison tied up. Silberman equates Sarah's predictions to the book of Revelation, recounting his version of events from Terminator 2. Silberman: He came down the hall. It was a large man. I thought it was a man until... He threw the guard through the window just like a rag doll. Not an ounce of emotion. This blank, like a death mask. Then the other one came. Ellison: There was two of them? Silberman: They were different. The second one was almost beautiful. Like perfect. Like a changeling. The face of mercury. Ellison: What about Sarah? Silberman: She was there. She was on the floor. And the boy was with her. He was screaming. And then the, the first one, the big one, I'll never forget, he... he reached out his hand and he said, "Come with me if you want to live." Like God reaching out to man. Like... like the Sistine Chapel. The hand of God. It's one of my favorite bits of dialogue in TSCC and illustrates the paradigm I mentioned previously. The T-800 could blend in until he reached his target but, at the same time, is big and bulky and noticeable. The T-1000 is a fey-like being that could be anyone at any time. And Cromartie is so bland and unassuming that you'd never mistake him for anything beyond a human. Of course, it's not the hand of God. It's the hand of the devil, just like the one Ellison has in his trunk. Silberman states that without proof no one could talk about it. But Ellison has proof, proof that nobody is crazy. He's brought the hand of God with him which, after going out to Ellison's car, Silberman stares at it like he's found the Ark of the Covenant. But the overture of peace only feed Silberman's well-meaning madness. "Do you know what would happen if the wrong people got ahold of this?" Silberman asks, claiming that he can't let anyone stop Sarah, even if she's dead. Jesus was dead, too, for a time, Silberman points out, before jabbing Ellison with a needle. Back in the Connor residence, John chats with Derek. John has a certain fondness for Derek, given he's his only link to his father, but I think it's the video that pushes him to actually talk with him. Derek contributes nothing beyond vague 'I'm not really listening or caring' smalltalk while John talks about his past, sleeping on couches, and about his time with his T2 foster parents. It's only when John bitterly remarks "Yeah, you'd think," that Derek seems to realise that something's off and guesses correctly what that is. Again, John's ideals clash with Derek's battle-worn pragmatism. Derek never quite becomes a father for John which is something I like about his character. John: Some people always fight. Derek: Fewer than you think. Maria leads Cameron to Dimitri, who is frantic that they might have been followed. Dimitri explains what went down with the Turk: he owed money to the people who helped him get his sister over to the USA, so, he intentionally sabotaged the Turk and altered its 'endgame protocols' to make it lose. While Dimitri was given twenty thousand dollars for the Turk, it wasn't enough to pay his debts. Cameron presses him for more information, but that's all Dimitri has. She is immune to his frantic begging for more help, more money, even as the gangsters arrive. Cameron leaves, immune to the sight of gangsters breaking in and immune to the sounds of screams and gunshots. She was only assigned to find the Turk, and that objective is complete. Like Derek has pointed out throughout the episode, you cannot necessarily trust Cameron's empathy. Silberman sets about burning down his house, to eliminate Ellison. As he leaves, he comes face to face with Sarah and gazes at her like she's God. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you," he breathes, looking like he's about to get down on his knees. Sarah lays him out with one punch and snatches up the hand. "Apology accepted," she comments. Later, Ellison is free, staring down at Silberman. Silberman only laughs and laughs as he tells Ellison that Sarah took the hand. Cameron would not have saved Ellison, but Sarah did. The episode ends with John and Sarah discussing the tape. Sarah: I never wanted you to see that tape. I was gonna destroy it. But since you did, did you notice the date? The date on the tape. June 8th, 1997. Do you know that date? [Beat] John: I do now. [Pause] That's the date you gave up being my mother. [Beat] Sarah: That's the date I broke out of there. The day you came for me, I was coming for you. Because about three seconds after I signed that paper, I knew I couldn't live with it. I was coming for you, and I was gonna die trying. John: You almost did. Sarah: So did you. John: And you were mad as hell about it... Yelled at me. Told me what a stupid move it was. Sarah: I might have oversold that a little. I'll always find you. John: I'll always find you. But there's a divide there, now. John had always imagined his mother as invincible, godlike, even if she's a bit crazy. Like Silberman, Sarah Connor was a figure of deific power. This is an important note in John's relationship with his mother, where he's forced to acknowledge that she's imperfect, that she makes mistakes, and that she won't always be there for him. Like Derek said, given time, she'll break. As they burn the hand in their makeshift furnace, John and Sarah are shot as if they're standing on opposite sides of the fiery divide, even as they're standing side by side. There's a divide there, but one that's come as a result of maturity than of immaturity. Silberman, ranting and raving that 'they're here', is left in a Pescadero cell, while Ellison listens outside. Like Sarah before him, Silberman is utterly right. But the final sequence gives us Cameron dancing to ballet while Derek watches, seemingly enraptured, from the doorway. All the while, the classical music from Derek's torture session plays. Cameron's motions are perfect, as Sarah said about the machines earlier in the episode, and Derek says nothing as he watches. What is going through his head? It's not fear or anger from recognising the music. In fact, it seems nothing more than being incredibly moved by the sheer art of the performance. Which, as Sarah says in her closing monologue... "There are things machines will never do. They cannot possess faith, they cannot commune with God, they cannot appreciate beauty, they cannot create art. If they ever learn these things, they won't have to destroy us. They'll be us." Cameron rebukes this as she dances - she's appreciating something and creating art. No one ordered her to dance. She is far closer to humanity than Sarah thinks. And, perhaps, what Derek thought as well. And that, I think, is one of the most perfect summations of TSCC's approach to artificial life. They may not be like us, they may think in different ways, they may be more precise than us - but with proper education and understanding, there is nothing to be afraid of.
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Dec 20, 2016 06:09
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So, Demon Hand is basically a coda to T2. I think it's one of the better Season 1 episodes, with solid pacing and good character moments. Unfortunately, I think the next two episodes both suffer from Season 1 returning to its frantic plot pacing. The stuff with Silberman is good and I like how the series portrays knowledge of the future like it's some kind of transitive madness. First Kyle, then Sarah, then Silberman. As Huxley said: you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad. I also like how the series leans hard on Christian mythology. See, at its core, I think Terminator is more of a horror franchise than a sci-fi one and I think any good Terminator media embraces that side of things as opposed to eschewing it. Think back to T1, the T-800 in that film is equal parts zombie, vampire, skeleton, lycanthrope and Frankenstein's monster. It will find you and it will chase you and it will kill you and, in the future, it will do the same to the whole world. T2 doesn't acknowledge it as openly as T1 did because T2 is to T1 what Aliens is to Alien - once the monster isn't scary, you might as well do an action film. But that's a one trick pony. T3, Salvation and Genisys all went for action and all floundered. As a TV series, TSCC has more opportunity to focus on the philosophical questions and on the little details of the franchise, asking questions, like, how do you live with the knowledge that the world is going to end, seemingly no matter what you do? How does that strain the relationship between mother and son? What does the future war do to the people who aren't John Connor? What does it mean to be fighting a temporal war and to be stranded in the past with your future annihilated by every change you make? The only real weakness of the episode is the plot with Dimitri, I feel. It gives us a look at Cameron when she's away from the Connors and reminds us that she's not nice or pleasant but it's basically Cameron trying to find the Turk but getting a business card that might point her to where the Turk is in the future. It's an issue with the series that crops up again during Season 2 - this never-ending treadmill of chasing clue to clue and never really getting closer. I'm also not sure how I feel about Dimitri's comment that he sabotaged the Turk's programming, overall. But, as a whole, it's a good episode.
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Dec 20, 2016 07:23
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Episode 8: Vick's Chip Vick's Chip is another of the Season 1 episodes where a lot of things happen and where the episode might have been better if split into two parts. While I do like how TSCC commits to the frantic energy one might need to stop the apocalypse, it always feels a little bit rough. If there's a core to this episode, it's the issue of trust. Can the Connors trust Cameron? Was Vick's wife right to blindly trust him, despite changes in his behavior? Can Sarah trust Derek? Can you trust a being that thinks differently to you, that might not even be able to conceive of the world like you do? Despite the crazy pace of the episode, it is one of the more intriguing ones of Season 1 and it introduces a lot of ideas, some which might even echo out into Season 2. Anyway, the episode opens with Cromartie and a government clerk. Cromartie is attempting to gather information on all the new students within the local schools. What I really like about the beginning is how we see a Cromartie POV shot of the snowglobe, and how he has no idea of what the object is. So, he shakes it, obviously curious, although he stops having any interest the moment he begins talking with the clerk. It's a bit of comedy, like Arnold with the baby in T2, but it also points out that these robots have no conception of incredibly basic things. Skynet gives them what they need to know and nothing more. Think about the level of specialised knowledge one would have to not recognise a snowglobe. The clerk thinks Cromartie is there to bust some kid for having pot. "Look me in the eye and tell me you've never smoked a little marijuana," he tells him. Cromartie complies, and does so, bending down to stare at the man behind his desk as he repeats the words in his strangely even cadence. When the clerk asks if Cromartie has his paperwork, the Terminator is forced to admit he doesn't have it with him, and then breaks the clerk's neck. Cromartie remarks "Thank you for your time" as he drops the man to the floor, like an afterthought. He's learning, like Cameron is; what a Terminator might become without careful guidance. Speaking of learning, Cameron hasn't learned to cook and John's too busy doing the teenage thing of getting mom to do all the work. The roast is burning and, by all appearances, Cameron has stood there and watched it burn, only telling Sarah that it should have been taken out of the oven eighteen minutes ago. I'm reminded of the following conversation from Red Dwarf: Lister: They only do what you tell them to. Rimmer: Ah, but they don't do they? You say, "Keep an eye on that lamb," and they do. They sit there for three hours and watch it burn. Lister: So. They've got no emotion have they? It's not built into their software. Then Derek stalks in, Terminator CPU chip in hand. Cameron's been hiding it and it becomes a point of conflict - Cameron had told everyone that she had destroyed every part of the Terminator. Derek leaps on it, calling Cameron a liar, and points out that it is the truly important part of the Terminator. The chassis is just a platform - the chip is everything the robot is. So, a thought. In Season 2, Cameron begins gathering up endoskeleton parts and even has to sacrifice her own chip to John Henry - what's the possibility that she kept the chip knowing that she would need one in the future? Either way, she tells John that he can hack into it, and he has before. Later, John is gathering up some powerful computer parts, building a system to hack a Skynet chip. I'm not sure what's with the usage of Halo in this scene, as it is featured quite prominently. Is it evocative of the plasma weapons in the future war? Is it just an example of how much the world has changed since John's time? Something else? But Cameron clearly has an agenda - she tells John that she 'sometimes' lies to him, and sometimes about 'important things'. Cameron gets a bit of focus in this episode, but we'll get to that later. For now, John is working on the Terminator CPU. He's hitting it with enough power to instil what seems to be a dreaming state - get access to the visual memory without activating any 'higher functions'. This allows them to see what the Terminator, known under the alias of Vick Chamberlain, saw. By all accounts, it led a normal, if strangely literal life, with a woman named Barbara. And then killed her. When Derek and Sarah leave to follow this lead, we get to see what might be the high point of Sarah and John's relationship in this season, if not the whole series. For once, they seem like a normal family, with Sarah getting the information she read of the school newsletter wrong. But she's smiling and happy, a far cry from the pair earlier in the season. One little detail I liked when Derek and Sarah investigate the Chamberlain residence is that all the plants in the house are very overgrown. No one's lived there for a fair while. Another school scene. Morris awkwardly hits on Cameron while John awkwardly hits on Cherie, the mysterious and weird blonde who seems like she might have been a precursor to Riley. She's just as cagey with her past as John might be. Really, where would they have gone with this character? Would she have been a Riley analogue or something else? Meanwhile, Cromartie's on the hunt for John Connor. He barges into a locker room, disregarding social mores and any sort of shame. The coach, rightfully, says he can get Cromartie fired for that sort of thing. Cromartie hurls him aside. Is it a calculated move to quash any sort of response from the students, or a sign of Cromartie's own burgeoning self-awareness? It's not the only time Cromartie displays something that might be irritation. Later, the family Connor is searching for the body of Barbara Chamberlain. They find it, but it isn't Barbara - it's a lady named Jessica Peck, who was opposing a city intiative called ARTIE. ARTIE, as discovered by John, is a traffic control and surveillance system. If Turk is the brain, Cameron posits, then ARTIE might be the nervous system, what Skynet uses to communicate and to gather information. I like this little exchange: John: Well, I guess when they say, "you can't fight city hall", they really mean it. Derek: Yeah, well, whoever said that didn't have as much plastique as we do. Sarah: We can't blow up city hall. Derek: It's really not that hard. One thing this episode does is it reminds us that John Connor isn't just some great military genius, as Salvation took the character. John's a hacker. He's a whiz with technology. As Cameron points out, John's done all sorts of things with Terminator chips before - he's analysed them and he's removed Cameron's chip before. John might be a fighter but he's also a thinker, too. In fact, I'd argue that Sarah is far more of a fighter than her son is. Derek and Sarah case city hall. Derek starts drinking early in the day, it seems. He really is an interesting character - just utterly out of time and place. One thing in this scene that I like, and it comes up again in Season 2, is how TSCC talks about motherhood. Sarah has the following line of dialogue: "I had this regular, Tracy. She had two beautiful kids. She left her husband, moved her kids to L.A. To get 'em into show business. I'd bring her eggs every day and I'd hear what she said to them. That they had bad skin or crooked teeth. One lay after another. I swear sometimes I understand why they drop bombs on us." It can be read like how Battlestar Galactica might interpret it, that maybe we don't deserve to live. I don't think that's right, though. For this series, that line reads to me not as punishment for man's sins, but as another indicator that empathy and love is what will avert Judgement Day. She understands why the machines wipe out humanity because humanity is happy enough to belittle and dislike its own descendents. Back in the school. Cromartie has arrived, still posing as an FBI agent, and looking to see John. Cameron concocts a plan to have Morris pretend he is John, which fools Cromartie. As Cameron stalks after Cromartie - to attack him? - she is interrupted by John, forcing her to protect him than pursue the other Terminator. The next two scenes are very interesting. One concerns John, Cameron and Sarah, and is one of my favorites from Season 1. The second concerns Derek, Sarah and Andy Goode. I'll touch on the first one in a seperate post, but the second reveals that Derek's people were tracking Barbara, too. And someone killed Barbara, and it apparently wasn't Vick. Derek insists he wasn't his men, but Sarah doesn't believe him. That evening, Derek and Sarah infiltrate city hall. Things go wrong immediately: there's a wall where they shouldn't be one. Some people claim that Derek just misremembered that the hallway was clear, but it reads to me more like the past is different to what Derek remembers - which comes up in Season 2. Similarly, John's virus doesn't work and the system counteracts it. Sarah and Derek are chased from the building. Derek draws their attention and Sarah clobbers them from behind, although Derek is incredibly quick on drawing his gun to flat out execute a pair of security guards. Derek has no qualms with hurting people. He's an unapologetic murderer. In the next scene, John is still messing with Vick's chip, but 'something' kicks him out. I feel safe assuming that the something is Vick himself (itself?), particularly given that Vick proceeds to try and hack John's phone to make a call to... someone. We never find out who, but given that Season 2 indicates that Skynet was active at this point in the timeline, I'd wager that is what he was trying to reach. It gives John an idea, though. They can use a Terminator CPU to hack the traffic system - in this case, Cameron's. Derek isn't sure about it, believing that maybe her influence on ARTIE created Skynet. John displays one of his first indications of the man who'll become Future John and shoots Derek down immediately. He's nervous about it, though, Derek's nervous about it, and Cameron's nervous about it, too. And she has good reason to be. While the mission is successful, Derek almost seems like he's going to smash her chip. It seems to be a lesson on Derek's part, that a Terminator will kill John someday. T3 nod, probably, where John is revealed to be killed by a T-850 wearing the familiar Arnold skin. "Not this one," John insists. Later, as he plugs in Cameron's chip and she boots up, he strokes her face. Meanwhile, Derek is having a shower. Sarah storms in and wrenches the shower curtain away. Derek stands there, surprised but not ashamed of his nakedness, as the pair have a chat about the location of the Turk. But the real reason for her intrusion is that Sarah has come to believe (rightfully) that Derek killed Andy Goode. "You lie to me again," Sarah seethes, "I'll kill you." It's not the only shower cubible revelation. Sarah watches footage taken from Vick's chip. As Barbara talks about their imminent vacation in Tahiti, Vick murders her. Sarah watches it, utterly alone, and reflects that the true evil is one you never see coming, because you're too afraid to look under the mask.
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Dec 23, 2016 14:55
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So, there are a few things that stuck out to me in this episode. The first of these was a weird scene where Derek has been brushing his teeth, with Sarah's toothbrush, for twenty minutes. I'm not really sure what relation it has to anything, unless we think about Derek. I can only assume that it's an indicator that Sarah is wondering about Derek and his conscience, a stepping stone to her deduction at the end of the episode. I'd say it's a sign that Derek has a bit of a guilty conscience but I'm not sure he ever displays feelings of guilt, nor he would feel it given that Andy Goode basically ended the world and seemingly gave him permission to murder his past self. But, at his core, Derek is a good person. Hard to tell. The second of these is, of course, that it's another episode which could have been made into two but Vick's Chip isn't as bad about it as Queen's Gambit was. But really, much of the episode is about Terminator cognition, Terminator intelligence and Terminator sapience. It's nice to have a show that admits that a mechanical being would probably think differently to a human, unless we programmed them to be human - or based them off our neural architecture. Of course, it's a core conceit of the franchise: "I now know why you cry, but it is something I can never do." Terminators are fundamentally different to people, but that doesn't mean they're incompatible with them. It's sort of the running theme with Cameron and John. Does Cameron truly try to get to know John better, or is it all in the service of her mysterious agenda? Is she friendly or manipulative? We've seen Cameron being flirtatious with John in the service of another goal (when she strokes his neck to read his vitals in an earlier episode) but she was also answering to Sarah then. But the scene between John and Cameron, where she's painting her nails, is different. I do like how the series keeps Cameron somewhat ambiguous, it helps maintain the idea that she's a threat. In this scene, she lies to Sarah. Or, if not an exact lie, definitely withholds information. The scene in question is as follows: John, seated at his desk, turns to find Cameron on his bed. She has been sitting there a while, or she has just arrived silently - it's impossible to tell which. John: You scared the hell outta me. How long you been sitting there? Cameron: A little while. That was effective. What he did, when he touched her lips. John: ...effective? Cameron: I could see that she liked that. John: What are you doing? [Cameron shows John her fingernails - they're painted pink.] John: No... [John hunches over his desk, looking incredibly awkward] When you say things like that, what are you doing? Cameron: Just making conversation. John: Since when do you just make conversation? Cameron: I don't know. It just seems like something I should do. John: Well, was having Morris impersonate me with that cop also something you thought you should do, no matter what happened to him? Cameron: Yes. But it wasn't a cop. It was Cromartie. John: What? W- What? Cameron: He's going school to school looking for you. Trying to match your face. He's moved on though. He won't go back there. I wouldn't. John: The only way that I'm reassured by that is if I remember that in the core of your chip you're just like him. Oh, god. She'll move us so fast. You cannot tell her, okay? Promise me. Sarah: Hey. Do I smell nail polish? What are you guys talking about? [Cameron leaves. As she goes, she winks to John over Sarah's shoulder.] Cameron: Just making conversation. How much of Cameron is programmed behavior? How much of it is an earnest desire to connect with John? Does she understand what she's doing? When Derek finds the chip in her room, and Cameron seems indignant about it, is that anything except an attempt to exploit the idea that her room is her personal space? In the previous episode, after all, we've seen her dancing in her room, something which we can assume she doesn't do anywhere else. But still, there's not much reason for her to be painting her nails, nor to be in John's room wearing a dress and coming as close to flirting with him as she ever does at this point in the series - so why? It's obvious that John is attracted to Cameron. However, I think Cameron is also attracted to John, in some strange way that doesn't necessarily correspond to the human romantic drive 1:1. It's late and I need to sleep, so, I'll come back to this later. I'll also be busy with Christmas and New Years stuff for a week or so, but then we can move into the final episode of Season 1.
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Dec 23, 2016 15:27
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Tomorrow, I'll be running through What He Beheld, the final episode of Season 1 and maybe one of the best episodes of the series. We'll see!
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Jan 8, 2017 07:26
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mllaneza posted:I'd love to see your take on that episode. In my opinion it's good enough to pay off all the flaws and missed chances in S1. It's coming, and it is really, really good! I got a write up about halfway done, then got run over by IRL. I should have it up tonight.
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Jan 23, 2017 03:36
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Zoran posted:I loved this show, and I'm glad you've brought this thread back. I can't wait to read your take on the relationship between John and Cameron at the end of the series. I'm probably going to touch on that during Season 2. I really want to talk about it. Dekker and Glau are great. What He Beheld is a longer write up just because I'm diving into some things I think the series does really well during some strong scenes. What He Beheld is such a good episode. The opening scene, the talk between Charley and Ellison... A lot of stuff to chew on.
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Jan 23, 2017 06:17
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Episode 9: What He Beheld If there's one impression that the Terminator series has left on the people that watch it, it's the nightmare of looking up into a perfect blue sky and seeing the contrails of nuclear missiles. My mom, who claimed Sarah Connor as an inspiration, has often talked about that imagery, wondering what she would do or how she would react if she was to look up and see those weapons streaking through the air, each one heralding the death of thousands. Really, what would anyone do? It's a situation that almost defies comprehension. It'd be seeing the end of the world and knowing it is coming. And knowing there's nothing that can be done to stop it. The reason I bring this up is because that's the imagery that the final episode of TSCC's first season opens with. We see the Reese boys, Derek and Kyle, playing baseball in their suburban front yard. Kyle wants to quit, Derek tells him to just do it as he practiced. There's a deep rumbling, like fireworks, which Kyle is happy to see (which is a morbid bit of humor because, yeah, there's going to be fireworks) but then he and Derek and standing there, staring into the sky, as missiles roar overhead. The roar intensifies and the screen goes white and- -we cut to another image of Halo 2. Specifically, of the Master Chief's flying-through-the-air-dead-flailing animation. I'm still trying to puzzle out the usage of Halo 2 in this series. Was it simple marketing? The Master Chief is a cyborg character who slowly comes to grips with his humanity - is that what they're trying to link to? A brief Internet search doesn't give me anything except Halo and Terminator crossover fan fiction, so, if anyone has any thoughts on it, feel free to comment! Sarah and Cameron are in a LAN cafe, looking to meet with Sarkissian, a man who claims that he can sell them the Turk. Both they, and the audience, do not know that Sarkissian is the unremarkable man who directs them to one of the computers. Outside, the following exchange between Derek and John takes place. They're staking the place out in the Connors' jeep, muscle if something goes wrong. Sarah said that the plan is to basically take the Turk and run, so, I don't imagine they are there to negotiate or pay for it. Either way, we get one of my favorite exchanges from the series. I feel like this is the high point of the relationship between the eclectic members of the Family Connor. We see it in Derek's admiration for Sarah, we see it in how Derek and John joke, in how open everyone is. The second season swerves away from this, and it feels kind of disappointing. But that can be discussed later. DEREK: Remind me again. Why... why are the boys out here and the girls in there? JOHN: Because one of the boys is still wanted for murder, and one of the girls is... Harder than nuclear nails. DEREK: And the other one's a cyborg. JOHN: You wanna know why we're really here? DEREK: Why? JOHN: Moore's law. DEREK: Huh? JOHN: Moore's law. The guy who founded Intel said that every two years, the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles. Thirty years ago, it was an observation. Now it's a law. Tech industry spent billions doubling chip power. DEREK: And? JOHN: And that's how we can go from a chess computer to the apocalypse in just four years. I learned that a lot can happen in four years. [John shows off his smartphone.] DEREK: A lot can happen in four seconds. One minute, I'm in the yard with my brother, playing baseball, and the next, we look up, and the sky's on fire. JOHN: Judgment Day. What'd you do? DEREK: The only thing to do: Took Kyle and went underground. JOHN: What was he like? [Derek tears up, ever so slightly.] DEREK: He was just a kid when it happened. Eight years old. I was fifteen. How do you tell an eight year-old machines have taken over the world? JOHN: How do you? [Pause.] DEREK: You don't. Inside, Sarah and Cameron get out-foxed by Sarkissian. Via an IM program, he tells them that they can come and get the Turk from him tomorrow, at a food court, for five hundred thousand dollars. Cameron points out that they don't have that much money. "Not yet," says Sarah. Meanwhile, Charley Dixon is busy with some chores in his home. He is soon visited by James Ellison, and we get another good scene. I've said before that one of the interesting elements of this series is how it is steeped in Biblical imagery and symbolism. It's very blatant in this scene, as Ellison reveals that he's looking for Sarah. Not to continue his operation against her, not to arrest her, but because he is worried about visions of the Rapture, of a black-clad figure named Death, of Hell following just behind him, and of what he, personally, has beheld. The episode refers to this exchange but, more importantly, towards the end of the episode, where Ellison has a direct encounter with the pale figure dressed in black. ELLISON: 'And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder. And I heard the voice of the fourth beast say: 'come and see'. And I looked. And behold, a pale horse. And his name that sat on him was death. And hell followed with him.' The book of Revelation. Charley's a good man, though, and still loyal to Sarah. He plays this off like Ellison's gone a bit crazy. Ellison tells Charley that Sarah is alive. Charley doubts it. Even when Ellison starts namedropping robots and Skynet, Charley tells him 'what he told the other guy', that he doesn't know anything. The other guy? Ellison is surprised to hear this. Who the hell is Agent Kester? There's one thing I really like about this scene, and it's something that I feel franchises like the Terminator need in order to succeed. It's something that I think the Michael Bay Transformers films do wonderfully - the conflict between the real and unreal. Ellison, who has lived in the real, is just now pushing through into the world of the unreal, of shining robot assassins from the future and insane nuclear skull-field apocalypses. We cut to another scene of a well-dressed man barging in on some people just living their lives, a man who the episode wants you to think is Sarkissian but never outright says it. He has intruded on Carlos and his gang, the people who helped out Sarah earlier in the season and are relatives of her friend Enrique, whom we met in Terminator 2. He talks about Los Ninos Heroes, six cadets who died attempting to protect the honor of Mexico. But the cadets died needlessly. For all that they held to their honor in the face of death, Chapultepec Castle was captured regardless. The meaning is obvious. It's that old tactic: never ask a question you don't know the answer to, and this man knows that Carlos knows where Sarah is. He then murders the entirety of Carlos' crew. It is, however, witnessed by Chola, the woman who gave Cameron a lesson in make-up earlier in the season. And Carlos talks. The weak link in any security system is always the human element. This idea is then basically espoused by Sarah when Charley shows up at her door, telling her that he thinks Ellison might actually be willing to listen to her. The tragedy, of course, is that he's right but Sarah isn't concerned about that. The FBI can't help them, not against the things that Charley himself as witnessed. Angry, Sarah points out that she is more worried that a Terminator could have followed Charley here. She tells him to take his wife and forget her and to forget John and just go. It's harsh, but Sarah lives in the unreal world, not the real world, which Charley still has both feet firmly planted in. Inside, Cameron is appraising the diamonds. They don't have enough money to purchase the Turk. Derek points out that it's a bad idea to trust that handing over, essentially, a suitcase of money to an unknown will get them the Turk. And that they're from his safe house, so, they're his diamonds. Derek makes a good point. Sarah claims they'll negotiate, and that the diamonds are probably stolen anyway. When she says negotiate, I think it's pretty clear that she means negotiation by way of Cameron. Sarah would pay if she could, and would probably offer the $246,000 they have in diamonds, but there's no way she will be leaving the meeting without the Turk. Which Sarkissian has anticipated. When Derek and Sarah arrive to make the rendezvous, Sarkissian is nowhere to be found. Derek reminescenes about what he and his men did on their first day back in the past - hit up a food court and ate until they puked. "The funny thing is," Derek says, "Is that, in the future, this place is a concentration camp." Sarah and Derek have to retreat as a pair of police officers come prowling through. It's unclear as to whether it is random chance, or whether Sarkissian tipped them off. Sarak and Derek return home and find the well-dressed man in their living room. Derek and Sarah immediately go for their guns, but Sarkissian's representative tells them that, if they want the Turk, they'll have to scrounge up two million dollars instead. Derek responds by shoving him against the wall, gun in his face. DEREK: You tell us where the Turk is, we keep our money, and I bury you in the back yard. Sarkissian may not have ancipated Derek's murderous sensibilities, however, he does understand that Sarah Connor, having read her dossier and noting the FBI's interest in her, would need to be controlled. If Derek kills him, his people will tell the FBI everything they know - which, given that Carlos has broken, includes the address of the Connors. And, perhaps more pressing, is that his people are watching John Connor even as they speak. Sarkissian: Yeah. My people. Same people who are watching your son. He's on a field trip, isn't he? With his class? Science museum, I believe? DEREK: [warningly/smugly] Your people have no idea what they're walking into. It's a nice touch that you can tell Derek knows that Sarkissian's people would have to contend with Cameron. It might almost be something that'd bring the man and robot a certain level of respect. But, like I said, this episode seems to be the point where everyone is almost a conventional happy family. The man gives them an ultimatum - twenty four hours to cough up the cash. Sarah has Derek follow him to wherever he's operating from. Outside, we see from the perspective of someone watching Sarkissian's man leave the Connor residence. They have a statue of the Madonna on their dashboard - it's Chola. We cut to John, Cameron and their science class at the museum, just as Sarkissian's man said. John stops and studies a T-Rex skeleton. The T-Rex was the so-called King of the Dinosaurs, but even it was wiped out by something no one saw coming. Humanity might suffer the same fate. John seems perturbed, but it's not any philosophical musing when Cameron, also studying the skeleton, points out he hasn't spoken for twenty-eight minutes. My birthday's tomorrow. Okay? I know that mom totally forgot. CAMERON: Birthday? JOHN: Yeah, you know what a birthday is? CAMERON: It's the day you were born. JOHN: Pretty memorable for a mother, right? CAMERON: But it was 16 years ago. JOHN: No, a birthday's like a holiday. Like once a year, every year, people just kind of... celebrate you, I guess. And you get presents and you eat cake and... it's fun. Hah, It's supposed to be. Last year, mom got me a flak jacket. CAMERON: That's a tight present. JOHN: No. It's not. Whatever... look, I don't know why I care. I've been driving since I was 12, and, technically, this is my 24th birthday. It's just I... time traveled over eight of them. CAMERON: Do I have a birthday? JOHN: I don't know. Were you born? CAMERON: I was built. JOHN: Well, then, maybe you have like a built day. The pair of them are wonderfully awkward in this scene. In season 2, John's second last line would be played more as an insult, a petty slight, but here, it is awkward teasing. I'd also like the point out Cameron's fashion. Sarah, Derek and John all wear very functional clothing, usually in drab military greys and greens. Like they got all their fashion from a surplus store (Sarah is something of an exception but she still sticks to a black/grey palette usually). Cameron, on the other hand, tends to have a bit more color. Later, in Season 2, we find out that she's quite attached to the purple leather jacket she wore last episode. It's an interesting little thing to note for all the characters. Morris - John's awkward friend - comes over to give Cameron a listen from his iPod. John intercepts him, but whether that's because he doesn't want Cameron to potentially say or do something strange or jealousy isn't stated. Either way, it frees Cameron to spot a suspicious looking figure watching John from the other side of an exhibit. Cameron goes straight into Terminator mode. But makes it about six paces before she is intercepted by the class teacher, telling her to stick with the group. Cameron flashes him a winning smile and apologises but, as she takes John's side again, she is still staring at Sarkissian's henchman. After a commercial break, Cameron is closing the boot of a fancy sedan. Morris finds her, wanting to talk to her, but is distracted by the car. He asks her whether that's her car. "No," Cameron replies matter-of-factly, "It belongs to the guy I killed and stuffed in the trunk." Morris doesn't seem to know how to take that. When John arrives he tells him what Cameron just told him. "Your sister's dark, bro!" "Yeah," John says, obviously thankful for Morris' infatuation with Cameron, "She's, uh, really goth." As they go to leave, though, Morris drops a bombshell of his own. He wants to take Cameron to the prom! There's a three-second pause as Cameron stares at him. "Just say yes!" John calls. "Yes!" Cameron snaps. And Morris' day is just made! He does this little half dance as he walks away from the car! And then we never see him again. When I was first watching this series, I was really looking forward to the event that this was foreshadowing. It seemed like an obvious bit of drama. Cameron said she'd go with Morris but obviously didn't understand what he was asking. John told her to say yes because they had to get home immediately, but I think he'd be upset about Cameron going to the prom with Morris. After all, they're play-acting as brother and sister, so, he can't go with her. But I think he'd want to, and I could see it being a weird point of conflict between John and his one and only friend. But like the plot with Cherie and the plot with the school counsellor, it is dropped. Unlike Cherie, though, which sort of reincarnated with Riley, there is no equivalent for Morris in Season 2. Meanwhile, Ellison is touching base with someone in the FBI office. He's looking up information on Agent Kester, Cromartie's alter-ego. The face that stares back at him from the computer monitor is Cromartie. Ellison has this resigned look at the development - he's tired of these shenanigans already. Cromartie is busy, too. As Agent Kester, he's trying to acquire the files on the Connor case. But they've already been signed out to Ellison. "James Ellison?" Cromartie asks. He knows exactly who he needs to find. The two trains are placed on tracks that will inevitably collide. But not yet. As Ellison ducks into an elevator, Cromartie steps out of one. They miss each other by mere seconds. Ellison won't behold Death just yet. But he will. Cameron and John return home with the body of the henchman in the trunk. Cameron killed him before thinking about getting any information and Derek lost Sarkissian at the overpass. Derek wants to move, stating the house is a target, but John refuses, angry. He's born to run, maybe fated to run, but will refuse. Things go from bad to worse when the well-dressed man calls the dead henchman. Cameron answers and fakes the man's voice, organising a rendezvous - the well-dressed man knew he was being followed by Derek. Derek gets more firm about needing to move: the moment Sarkissian's man doesn't turn up, things are going to get worse. But then Chola arrives, her clothing covered in blood. Chola drives them to where Sarkissian operates out of - the LAN cafe from the start of the episode. The Connors roll in and encounter Sarkissian at the front desk. They're asking for him and, unknowingly, he is right there. Sarah slams him into his desk face-first and Sarkissian points to the back of the building. When the Connors are out of sight, Sarkissian presses a button and a silent alarm is triggered, readying his man. His man runs straight into the Connors and then locks himself in a supply closet. It's a heavy door and heavy cinderblock walls. Sarah tells John to go check the office for the Turk, and then asks if Cameron can get through the door. "Yes," Cameron says, after a second's study of it, "But the wall would be much faster." She begins putting her fists through the wall, punching huge holes that go straight through. Inside the closet, Sarkissian's man is obviously wondering just what the gently caress he has gotten into. He lives in the real world and the unreal is here, quite literally battering down his fortifications. John doesn't find the Turk in the man's office. What he does find, however, is a little girl, coloring away on some paper. JOHN: Hi. What are you doing here? GIRL: Waiting for my daddy to finish work. JOHN: Okay, listen. I need you to stay in this room with the door closed, okay? Even if you hear loud noises or you get scared, you need to stay in here. Can you do that for me? GIRL: Yeah. Cameron breaks a hole big enough for the Connors to climb through. Unfortunately, the man has slipped the net via a crawl space in the wall, and he's nabbed John. Sarah pursues him into an alley outside the LAN cafe. There, she's faced with her nightmare, or one of them: a man with a arm around John's throat and a gun to his head. And then the well-dressed man is, perhaps, faced with his own nightmare. Derek comes wandering outside, very casually, with the girl. And his gun pulled on her. If you ever wanted to know Derek's brand of pragmatism, this is as clear as it gets. DEREK: Let him go. MAN: Not my kid. DEREK: Not mine either. [Derek bends down and whispers to the child. As he talks, he places his hand over her eyes, raising his other hand.] DEREK: Sssh-sssh-ssssh. You okay? Yeah, you'll be okay. While you doubt the show would be that cold to show Derek flat-out murdering a crying child, the fact is, Derek is a murderer. He probably would, if he thought he had no other choice. Derek's a murderer fighting to stop the end of the world. But then Derek swings upward and, employing his skills honed by a life that the well-dressed man could never comprehend, nails him with a bullet between the eyes. Sarah and John hug before going to retrieve a hard drive from the well-dressed man's office. Derek just sort of shrugs as he walks past them, having taken the kid inside. Guilt rolls off Derek like water on wax. When Sarah comforts the child, though, she mentions that the well-dressed man wasn't her daddy. Her daddy works in the LAN cafe. Her daddy is Sarkissian himself! Chola drives the Connors home but Cameron lingers in the car once they've disembarked. "Do I need to kill you now?" Cameron asks and Chola, in the face of mechanical death, rolls her eyes. What's a threat when your family has already been gunned down? For whatever reason, Cameron gives her a handgun and leaves her in the car. Ellison is taking his findings about Agent Kester to his associate, Agent Greta Simpson. Simpson doesn't seem to understand the concern. To her, that's just George Lazlo, the actor (whom Cromartie based his appearance off). Ellison is adamant that it can't be Lazlo because the blood isn't a match. Simpson, incredulousy and let accurately, supposes that, what, six people were killed by this Kester who then promptly found a plastic surgeon to change his facial features and then he killed Kester and stole his identity, even hacking into the FBI database to change the profile picture? For what purpose? But Ellison knows, although he doesn't say it: to find Sarah Connor. "What is he?" Ellison muses. "What is he?" Simpson asks. Ellison catches himself. "Yeah. What is he... What is he that... stands across from a man after killing two other men within thirty-six hours... and when asked of his involvement, cannot only lie, but lie well? And not only lie well, but not blink or twitch or perform one simple human reaction to the situation. The question is easy, to Simpson. He's a monster, and they can catch a monster. The Ellison Express and the Cromartie Coach are one a direct course now. John is hacking through Sarkissian's hard drive, although it's going to take a while. Derek shows up. DEREK: So, it's your birthday. JOHN: How... how'd you know? DEREK: [grinning] You kidding? I celebrated your 30th with you. JOHN: How was that? DEREK: You got drunk as a skunk. Come on. I'll buy you a beer. JOHN: I'm sixteen. DEREK: All right, I'll buy you an ice cream cone. Come on, it's your birthday. When there are things to celebrate, they should be celebrated. Let's go. Derek makes good on his offer. John and Derek wander through the park, eating ice creams. Here is the scene in full, as it is one of the best scenes in the whole series. DEREK: Your mom has never killed anyone, has she? You know, she's got murder in her eyes all the time, but her heart's pure. It's a good thing, you know. Keep a... keep a pure heart. [Derek and John sit down at a picnic table. In the distance, two young boys are playing baseball. DEREK: It's beautiful here, isn't it? You know, you stay long enough, you start fooling yourself into thinking that this is... how it's always gonna be. And you remember what this place'll look like when it's on fire, and... you realize you'll do whatever it takes to keep from watching it burn again. It's one part a view into Derek's mindset and one part Derek's explanation to John for what he saw the night before. It also reveals one of the specific reasons why Derek is so driven. When the boys hit the baseball a bit too far, and the younger one retrieve it from John, Derek is there, smiling knowingly. JOHN: Is that you? [Derek looks positively serene, it's enough of an answer for John.] JOHN: [on the verge of tears] And the other one? Is that- DEREK: [contently] Kyle. Throws pretty good for a five year-old, huh? Your father always had a nice arm. JOHN: How'd you know? DEREK: Every time I look at you, I see him. Besides, your mom's his type. [pause, while the boys play baseball] DEREK: Happy birthday. What must be going through John's head at this moment? He finally meets his father, but he's eleven years younger than him. But he exists, and he's safe, and Derek loves him. Sarah might not be good at giving gifts, but Derek just knocks it out of the park. Derek, of course, isn't being totally truthful - Sarah is Kyle's type because John made him that way with the photo. But Derek either forgives him or knows not to gently caress with the timeline. While Reese trains past and future collide through time and space, the trains of Cromartie and Ellison are minutes away from colliding. The FBI launches a raid on Cromartie's apartment. Through the magic of non-diegetic sound, Johnny Cash's song When The Man Comes Around plays. This is widely considered one of the best scenes in the series, so, here it is. Ellison, Simpson and a whole team of black-armored officers charge onto the premises. To anyone else, the sight of a dozen officers in body armor and toting sub-machine guns would be imposing. Cromartie looks up from his computer as they approach, looking unconcerned. What's half a dozen sub-machine guns to a messenger of the apocalypse? The song, of course, directly references Ellison's earlier comments and his reference to the Book of Revelations. Charley hears that the FBI are moving on a raid. He pays it no mind until dispatch mentions that they're hunting someone named Kester, and Charley, knowing what that means, immediately turns his ambulance around to go help. Ellison nods to his people and they ram the door in. Immediately, gunfire rings out. And, a moment after that, the first officer is thrown from the room and over the second-floor railing, as if hit by a freight train. He lands in the pool, broken and bleeding. And then a second officer crashes into the water with him. And a third. And a fourth. Five, six, more. The camera, underwater, hears the gunshots and screams and cries of 'fall back, fall back' from this position of horrific detachment. And the bodies continue to plummet into the depths, the pool turning red. Book of Revelations 16:3-5 posted:And the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it turned to blood like that of the dead, and every living thing in the sea died. Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and springs of water, and they turned to blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say: “Righteous are You, O Holy One, who is and who was, because You have brought these judgments." Cromartie stands there, the black-clad rider of Ellison's beliefs, and advances on Ellison, gun in his hand. His true nature shines through his broken skin and is obvious on his blank face. Ellison closes his eyes and prepares to die. And then the fourth member of the apocalypse stalks away. Charley arrives then, so, the battle didn't take long at all, and finds Ellison kneeling over Simpson's body - she's been shot in the face. Charley bears witness the the dozens of dead officers and the blood-red pool. But it's Ellison who truly beheld, even the audience didn't see what he saw. As Sarah points out in her ending monologue, slaughter begets a loss of innocence. Much like the idyllic imagery of Kyle and Derek playing baseball before the apocalypse, the Terminator mythos directly relates innocence to living in the 'real', of being able to believe in a paradise that'll never end. Ellison had one foot in the door and Cromartie has dragged him through. Meanwhile, John is still working on Sarkissian's hard drive and Derek is still at the park. Sarah wants to know what they were doing but John just says they went out for ice cream. He passes Sarah a bunch of photos. There were other people interested in the Turk and they may have bought it before Sarah could. Sarah has to pry John from the computer to get him to celebrate his birthday. You actually thought I forgot your birthday? JOHN: It's just we have much more important things to think about than my stupid birthday. SARAH: Your birthday is important. JOHN: No, it's not important. Finding the Turk, stopping Skynet, Judgment Day... that's important, that's... that's our life. SARAH: It's our mission. This is our life. If we stop caring about that, then we're lost. JOHN: Well, when you put it like that... SARAH: I sent Cameron to get a cake. [Both laugh.] SARAH: What do you want for dinner? JOHN: Well, not to insult your cooking or anything, but do you mind if we went out? SARAH: Yeah, we can do that. JOHN: Alright, let me shut this down. And then John begins closing down files and comes upon a passport scan. "The guy that Derek killed... in the alley..." "Sarkissian," Sarah nods. "I don't think that was Sarkissian," John replies, and he brings up the image. It's the clerk from the front desk. The one who Sarah slammed into the desktop. Cameron is outside, getting cake. As she climbs into the jeep, she spies a man walking in her rearview mirror. As she turns the key, the man turns: it's Sarkissian himself. The car is ripped to pieces by a huge fireball, and the episode ends with John and Sarah hearing an alarm sound, ringing in the distance. Happy birthday, John. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 11:08
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So, What He Beheld was the last episode produced before the series got hammered by the Writers Strike. It wasn't actually intended to be the series finale but was press-ganged into it. I think it came out really well, all things considered! It makes me wonder if the car blast was written in on the off-chance that they couldn't get Summer Glau back for Season 2. Anyway, the remaining ideas of Season 1 were to be put into Season 2, which is pretty obvious with Riley. Unfortunately, a lot of them are also dropped. Morris, for example. Despite looking a bit weird, he is dropped and John loses his only connection to the normal world. It's unfortunate because, as I've said, one of the things I like best about the show, and the franchise, is the conflict between the real and unreal. The title What He Beheld is a Biblical reference. While I believe it refers mostly to Ellison (whom has done a lot of beholding prior to this episode and does a lot during it, and is also a devout Christian), it could also apply to Derek (he beheld the missiles and the apocalypse), Charlie (he beheld the truth of what Sarah had been dealing with), and even John (beholds his father). These are all apocalypses, even John seeing his father. The root word of apocalypse is Greek and it refers to an uncovering, a revelation. Hence why the Book of Revelations is associated with the word. This was an episode of revelations and of Revelation. Cromartie is Death, the horseman of the apocalypse. He is, as all Terminators are, both its herald and its instigator. He is a shining being who dispenses judgement with fire and fury, enacting the will of an unfathomable intelligence. It might seem weird to associate Terminators with angels, but they work better than demons. It doesn't work perfectly, mind you, but it works well enough. I'll also admit I'm hardly a Christian scholar but I've generally had an interest in that sort of thing. The lyrics of the final song are interesting. The first verse could easily be talking about Derek seeing the missiles streaking through the air. Other than that, though, I won't go through it line by line. But give it a read and see what leaps out at you. And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." And I saw. And behold, a white horse. Derek's morality is shot to pieces by this point, thanks to living through the apocalypse. A lot of what he says in this episode is filtered by his recollection and his memory, of his need to make things fit. He has no problem with threatening to shoot a child, maybe even shooting a child, because he's lived through the end of the world, and he's doing all of this to save his brother and the world. Do not play chicken with Derek Reese. If the Connors had managed to stop Skynet, what would Derek do? He's left the real world totally behind, as much of a murderous machine as Cameron is. He can't go back and, I think, Derek understands that. I think it's why he's so prepared to do anything he has to. And what a contrast to Charley! Derek has no humanity, Charley has so much of it that he's going to race to help people as best he can when they go up against a killing machine. Dean Winters and Brian Austin Green do really well with these characters (of course, I think the cast is generally fantastic). Overall, it's a great episode that demonstrates the sheer amount of promise this series had. Unfortunately, the strike does serious damage to the series and it never quite recovers. Season Two does have a lot to talk about, particularly with John and Cameron, but it does, in many ways, feel like this is the apex of the series before it begins to fall into a spiral. My preliminary notes on much of the things introduced in Season Two are definitely much more critical. Season One, for all its faults of being incredibly frantic and rushing through plots that could be given much more time to breathe, is generally strong. Beyond that flaw, I don't think there's any part of it I truly dislike. In contrast, though, Season Two has some bad subplots and a good three episodes that are flat out terrible. As much as I like TSCC, I long for the series we could have got.
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Jan 23, 2017 12:57
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So, wrapping up Season 1, where the heck is everyone? Sarah Connor: Sarah Connor is a better fighter than mother, but that isn't to say she's a bad mother. She is, rightfully, more concerned with stopping Judgement Day than she is making sure that John has the right stuff for school. Despite this, she has warmed somewhat and her relationship with John is probably at its highest point in the season. She's the leader of the Connor family. She cares for Charley but has tried to warn him away from getting any further involved with the imminent apocalypse. Goode's death weighs on her, to the extent that she has threatened to kill Derek should he lie to her again. She doesn't trust Cameron, but I think he mistrust of Cameron has shifted from her being a robot to her being an attractive young woman who John hangs out with. Sarah is beginning to see that there is the possibility of conflict between her and Cameron over John's future, of who John will listen to. In contrast to the T-800, Sarah isn't nearly as deferential to Cameron, probably because Cameron is smaller and wearing the guise of a teenager. Like any mother, she struggles with the tension between wanting to protect John from the world and needing to ensure he leans self reliance. John Connor: At the end of Season 1, John is still the same young man he was at the start of the season - trying to cling to normalcy in a world where it is increasingly perilous. For the first time in a long while, it seems like he has settled in at high school, striking up a friendship with Morris and something of a curious interest with Cheri. His attempts at being normal in the shadow of Judgement Day are complicated by Cameron, whom John is clearly attracted to physically and, increasingly, seemingly attracted to her on a more romantic level. We've seen him demonstrate leadership potential, the kindling that'll start the fire of Future John, as well as kindness and empathy. Despite this, he still relies on the other members of the Connor family to handle things. Derek Reese: Derek Reese is Derek Reese. He's a man out to stop the end of the world and he will do anything to achieve it, which is about all we know of him. He has a respect for Sarah as a fellow warrior and has become something of a 'cool uncle' to John. We know that, in the future, he was not happy with Future John's Kyle-centric strategy, including giving him the photo of Sarah. Derek is probably canny enough to have figured out the reasoning behind it. He certainly doesn't trust Cameron and seems to have a particular type of dislike for her, but, perhaps due to seeing her practicing ballet, has let his hatred simmer down. Cameron: Cameron remains an enigmatic figure, often seeming to have her own agenda. According to Derek's memories, she works closely with John in the future, something backed up by Cameron pointing out that John has removed her chip before. By all estimation, she is a reprogrammed Skynet Terminator of unknown make and model (according to Vick's HUD). While overwhelmingly literal in everything she does, Cameron has shown indications of some kind of personality, picking up elements of slang, humor and fashion - even flirting with John and keeping it a secret from Sarah. Whether it is a personality and not just advanced programming to achieve whatever goal she has, isn't clear. In contrast to all other Terminators seen in the series so far, Cameron's optics are blue. She has lied multiple times, including keeping a Terminator CPU and about other "important things". James Ellison: James Ellison believes in two things: the glory of God and the truth of Sarah Connor. Once a skeptic, he has stared Cromartie in the face and survived. Beyond that, there's isn't too much else to say about him. Cromartie: Cromartie is still on the hunt for John Connor and appears to be more intelligent than other Terminators. At the very least, he is capable of enacting more covert strategies based on considered assumptions - he left Ellison alive because he knows Ellison is working on the Sarah Connor case. Like Cameron, he is also exhibiting elements of a burgeoning personality (typically irritation), but without the careful guidance that Cameron is getting. With his Kester alias shot to pieces - somewhat literally - he's going to need to work a different angle. Charley Dixon: In the aftermath of Sarah's jaunt into the future, Charley built a life for himself. Now, however, he's trying to help Sarah after having his own run in with Cromartie. Despite being warned to take his wife and leave LA by Sarah, Charley continues to involve himself. He's a good, kind man. In a deleted scene, he advises John to be careful around Cameron. The Turk: Location unknown. Sarkissian had it at one point but may have sold it. Skynet: Skynet has dispatched multiple Terminators into the past, most to hunt John, but some are conducting missions seemingly designed to tip the odds to Skynet's favor in the future. Skynet seemingly tortured Derek Reese in the future, however, the connection to Cameron via the Chopin music means it may not be what it appears. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 05:30
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mllaneza posted:Thank you ! haveblue posted:Glad this series is still getting attention, it was always better than it had any right to be. They made some wise choices about what the show would and wouldn't be capable of, hit the cast jackpot many times, and even survived the writers' strike (more or less). I'm actually going to talk about as a missed opportunity. The moment Morris asks Cameron you want to see it because you can already guess at the dozens of ways it'll go wrong for John and Cameron. It'd be cute and funny and bittersweet. See, a prom episode would basically write itself. John goes with someone (maybe Riley? introducing her by having her ask him to the prom would be interesting) and Morris is going with Cameron, which is a source of tension. Sarah doesn't want John to go, ostensibly because it is 'dangerous' but secretly because she doesn't trust Cameron (and certainly doesn't trust John's teenage physiology). Derek argues that he should go, simply because it's important and Derek's world ended before he got one. Sarah argues that if Cromartie is there, and he's posed as a teacher before, then John is putting everyone else at risk, not just himself. Cameron points out that Cromartie won't be there because he's already searched all the schools. Either Sarah acquiesces, or John sneaks out. Of course, stuff gets weird and awkward at the dance, because Cameron doesn't care about Morris but keeps wanting to find John to protect him. Maybe John reacts badly and gets into a bit of a fight with Morris, which would be really weird because he and Cameron are supposed to brother and sister. Either way, it's hardly a fantastic night and the whole thing is a bit of a disaster because John and Cameron are living a lie. "Maybe I can't be John Baum," John might say as they head home. It drives the first cracks into John's eventual break from that part of life. Even if he gets to do all the things that make someone a normal American teenager, the very essence of who he is ensures that they'll never live up to what he wants, which I think would be a good note to end his Season 1 development on. Meanwhile, at home, Derek and Sarah talk about Kyle. Maybe Derek and Sarah bond over the shared worry of protecting a younger member of family and needing to let go. Elsewhere, we see how Ellison's faith is shaken by staring Death in the face and, for some reason, surviving. A big flaw of Season 2 is the removal of John from normal life. It is understandable, given the story they end up telling where every character ends up despondent and isolated, but it feels like someone decided that, hey, we don't really need the high school element, do we? So, they mention one line that John is being 'home schooled' and it's forgotten about. It doesn't feel like a very organic development, particularly given that Morris, Cherie and John's adamant refusal to run and hide aren't really touched upon. I won't even really point out that given that Cromartie has, according to Cameron, designated the schools as dead leads, the school hours are the safest times of the day for John! Basically, when you have a show built around masks and identity and growing up and fighting your fate, it's a serious misstep to not show the normal world that John must give up to take on the mantle of savior. Or, alternatively, the world that John never truly fits into. Or the world they're fighting to protect. After all, this isn't just a show about time-travelling robots and nuclear apocalypse, it's also a show about a mother raising her son and the issues that arise from that. The focus on motherhood is something I really dig about the show. Season 2 launches right into its plot from the very first episode and shakes things up immediately (which, given the end of What He Beheld, it kind of has to). The thing is, the show probably would have benefited from a few episodes which were character-driven as opposed to plot driven, giving the characters some time to enjoy the bit of genuine family they have going on, before blowing everything up. End What He Beheld on knowing that the real Sarkissian is out there, have a little character moments episode where the Connors enjoy life while wary of Sarkissian's revenge, do the prom episode where you see John/Morris/Cameron become a source of tension that begins to break apart John's few links to his normal life, then bring everything crashing to pieces when Sarkissian blows up the car. Hell, that could be the end of the prom episode. And maybe that was the plan before What He Beheld was turned into the season finale. It's hard to say! But I think having some fun would make the descent into isolation and anger and paranoia, the painful fracturing of the Connor family that takes place in Season 2, have that much more impact. Of course, that's just me and I'm hardly a professional writer! quote:On the one hand, Xbox product placement is a big part of season 2- I can remember Gears of War and Small Arms (a weird indie game about animals shooting each other) and maybe some Call of Duty. So it probably was marketing that forced them to choose an Xbox game to use there. It's definitely taken from early in Halo 2. Specifically, I think from the fifth level, Metropolis. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 07:16
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Season 2 Episode 1: Samson and Delilah The episode begins immediately where What He Beheld left off. The first five minutes are set to a cover of Samson and Delilah by Shirley Manson. Like the Man Comes Around sequence in What He Beheld, this is also a pretty good scene. It features Cameron re-activating in the wrecked jeep interspersed with slow motion cuts of John and Sarah being assaulted by Sarkissian and one of his henchmen as they break into the Connor home. However, the slow motion feels like it overstays its welcome. I appreciate Summer Glau's ability to sell a slightly addled Cameron (CHIP INTEGRITY COMPROMISED, a sign on her HUD reads) and the symbolism of the lyrics of the song. The problem is, it doesn't work as perfectly as the use of When The Man Comes Around, but I'll touch on that at the end of the episode. Long story short, Cameron climbs out of the jeep and pulls a good eight inches of metal from the back of her cranial casing. Her chip has been damaged, and she is limping, but is otherwise intact. Inside the house, Sarkissian assaults Sarah and John while his man turns the house upside down, looking for the missing hard drive. Sarkissian knocks Sarah to the ground and begins to strangle her, screaming at her. Behind him, John makes a decision. There's a part of me that really likes how the most dangerous threat to the Connors so far isn't a Terminator or something like an FBI agent, it's a petty crime boss who has absolutely no idea what he's doing, and what he's threatening. There's probably a timeline where Sarkissian succeeds in killing the Connors and dooms the world to Skynet. Cameron kills Sarkissian's man, incidentally starting a fire that she spares no concern for. When she reaches the room that Sarah and John are in, Sarkissian is dead. From Cameron's POV, we see her identify Sarkissian, then John Connor. And a big red TERMINATE message blinks to life on her HUD. Cameron turns her weapon on John just as the house explodes. Cameron begins pulling herself up the broken staircase and Sarah and John dive out the second-story window, out of options. We see the sequence of Ellison staring death in the face and surviving and Charley just narrowly missing Cromartie. Later, more people have arrived to deal with the slaughterhouse. Charley looks grim and quietly determined. Ellison looks blank and lost. A member of the crime scene unit pulls the decaying body of George Laszlo from the apartment - Cromartie had obviously never thought to dispose of it. "That's your guy, right?" "Yeah, that's him," Ellison says, leaving his associate to wonder how he possibly killed all the officers. Ellison pins it all on Laszlo, apologizing to the corpse. Charley is incredulous, there's no way anyone'll believe that he killed all those people. But Ellison points out that they won't believe that a robot from the future did it either, and that this whole thing has to end here. Unfortunately, the bad day is only beginning for John and Sarah. John is catatonic in the front seat, looking furious. Sarah shouts at him, wanting to know if he's okay, and they crash into the back of another car. They flee the scene. Elsewhere, Cameron - limping, motions jerky - stalks the streets in pursuit. Charley overhears about the Connor house fire, much like how he heard about the FBI shootings. He heads there, finds out that Sarah and John must be alive because the only two corpses pulled from the fire are Sarkissian and his henchman. He spies the back of his ambulance, open and ajar, and finds Derek, who is climbing out of a bright yellow fireman's suit. They have a brief chat, catching Charley up on current events. "What's it do?" Charley asks, referring to the Turk. "Well, right now?" Derek asks, "Plays a mean game of chess. Couple years, it's gonna get really pissed off. Blow up the world." Another call over Charley's dispatch handset, referencing the car crash Sarah and John have just fled from, and the two boys are off. Meanwhile, we meet a new character, played by Shirley Manson. Catherine Weaver is a severe business woman all dressed in white. Her associate, Mister Walsh, has purchased the Turk and will be bringing it to her. Cameron wanders into a hardware store, endoskeleton shining through great wounds on her face. She cleans herself up with a set of baby wipes then staples the wounds on her face shut with a staple gun while a young man gawks from the other end of the aisle. This scene feels like a callback to the scene where the T-800 removes its eye in Terminator. In fact, this episode is littered with callbacks, something of an extended love letter to T1 and T2. Cameron also spies Charley and Derek. Sarah and John enter a Spanish church, asking for sanctuary. John's nursing a wounded leg and Sarah's arm might be broken - and both of them seem to be about two words from exploding. The priest grants them sanctuary, but only after they refuse an ambulance or a hospital. Both of them are still wanted fugitives, remember. Charley and Derek have a conversation at a red light. DEREK: So what are you gonndo when you find 'em? CHARLEY: Do? DEREK: Join the team? Think she's gonna go with you? Or let you take care of her? 'cause it's not gonna happen. She left you at the altar for a reason. CHARLEY: That's not what I want. DEREK: Really. CHARLEY: Yeah. I'm married. DEREK: So you say. CHARLEY: I love my wife. DEREK: So - you - say. CHARLEY: Look, I just wanna know they're okay, got it? DEREK: What if they're not? CHARLEY: Then I'll make 'em okay. Like I did for you. Meanwhile, Mr Walsh and Catherine Weaver finish their business. Weaver talks about computers and people, something which surmises her efforts later in this season, and of TSCC's approach to artificial intelligence in general. Walsh has no idea what she's talking about and leaps at the chance to get out of the room. WEAVER: They flow from street to street. At a particular speed and in a particular direction. Walk the block, wait for the signal, cross at the light. Over and over. So orderly. All day I can watch them and know with a great deal of certainty what they'll do at any given moment. But they're not orderly, are they? Up close. Any individual. Who knows what they're gonna do? Any one of them might dash across the street at the wrong time and get hit by a car. When you get up close, we never follow the rules. You give a computer a series of rules, and it will follow them till those rules are superseded by other rules. Or that computer simply... Wears down and quits. Computers are obedient to a fault. Do you know what's extremely rare in the world of computers? Finding one... That'll cross against the light. There's a slight problem with this, that I'll touch on in the next post, though. Back in the church, Sarah and John try to discuss what happened back at the house. SARAH: Are you all right? JOHN: You already asked me that. SARAH: I'm asking you again. JOHN: [distantly] I'm fine. SARAH: I think we need to talk about what happened back at the house. JOHN: No, I don't. SARAH: Maybe I need to talk about it. JOHN: Maybe you do, but I don't, so let's not. Please. [Pause] SARAH: Then we need to talk about her. Whatever happened with the explosion, it's flipped a switch. She's reverted or something. JOHN: She knows everything. SARAH: I know. JOHN: Bank accounts. Contingency plans. Weapons stash. SARAH: I know. JOHN: How we run, where we'll go. Who we've been, who we'll be. She's... Stronger and faster. SARAH: We have to kill her, John. JOHN: [shouting angrily] I know! [John stabs a butcher's knife into the tabletop.] JOHN: I know. Whatever happened in the house, it's more than Cameron going bad. Who killed Sarkissian, is the question here. The episode leaves it ambiguous and, of course, later, the truth is revealed that John is the one who killed him, which Sarah views as an immense failure on her part as his mother and protector. John Connor's birthday present from his mother was killing a man. Ellison finds himself in a meeting. Another agent asks him a bunch of questions about Laszlo and Ellison answers robotically. No, he didn't think Laszlo had it in him. No, he don't know who the bullet that killed him. No, he doesn't know who tear gassed the residence. No, he doesn't know who fired blindly into the apartment igniting the canisters. And, no, he doesn't know how he was the only survivor. Ellison is shoved onto six weeks paid leave. "So under possible penalty of perjury, as it relates to case file b1987004, do you, agent James Ellison, today attest that all that you've recorded and said, case file's accurate and factual as far as your recollection can warrant?" "Yes," Ellison perjures himself, just as robotically as before, "I do." Cameron has traced Sarah and John to the church, following the trail of blood John has left. The priest tells her that no one is there, but Cameron isn't so easily convinced, telling him she is going to look around as it is a matter of "life and death". She's looking for her brother and mother, you see. They were in an accident, they could be hurt. Sarah and John have counted on this, though, and they spring a trap on Cameron. They've planted something in the holy water and, when Cameron reaches for it, it is revealed to be an alarm clock. Having been spliced into the lighting cables, it blasts a jolt through Cameron and knocks her offline. I couldn't find a clip of the next sequence, but it is a wonderful display of tension. They have two minutes to pull Cameron's chip. "The knife isn't sharp enough!" John snaps, cutting into Cameron's scalp. Exposing her CPU port is easy, but the screwdriver he has is too big to pop open the casing, unable to actually do anything. "It's not the right size!" John gasps, irritated. Both he and Sarah are breathing like they've run a marathon, they're terrified. "Okay, okay, the knife, the knife..." but that doesn't work either, scratching and squealing against Cameron's metal, and then they've only got twenty seconds and Cameron begins to wake up and the Connors have to run for it. They do so. They sprint across two lanes of traffic and Sarah puts a knife to a man's throat, demanding his keys. They take his car, driving down into the LA canal system, which makes you wonder if John was having flashbacks to T2. Cameron steps out of nowhere and puts her weight into the speeding car, throwing it off balance and flipping it onto its roof. It's a bad crash. John can get out, but Sarah is dazed. She has enough of her wits about her to send her son running as Cameron advances on the vehicle. Sarah climbs out and, calling back to Terminator 2, Cameron tells Sarah to call to John. Cameron's voice usually has a certain tone and cadence, here it is all wrong, sounding almost pre-recorded, just a shade too chirpy to be monotonous. Where the T-1000 made a cold demand, it's like Cameron's behavior is all wrong. True to form, Sarah doesn't call out. Cameron plants her boot on Sarah's side, where she's bleeding (like Christ on the cross, anyone?) and twists. Sarah tries to get up and fight but Cameron effortlessly throws her down. John hears Sarah's scream of pain but keeps running, taking refuge inside a warehouse, Cameron hot on his heels. While John hotwires a truck, Cameron stalks the warehouse. She begins going through each truck, tearing open the cab doors. In the first one, she finds a wrench - just as John ignites the engine of his truck. It doesn't take. But it's loud enough for Cameron to hear. John redoubles his efforts, but it isn't enough. Cameron finds him and hurls her wrench at the windshield, shattering it. John narrowly avoids losing his teeth, or worse, by ducking below the dashboard. And then this happens. There's a lot to say about those two minutes, so, I'll cover that in another post. But, for now: Sarah arrives and pins Cameron against the truck. Cameron begs for her life, crying and telling John that she loves him and he loves her. John pulls her chip. Soon after, Derek and Charley arrive. They patch up Sarah. The hard drive they took from Sarkissian was totaled by the fire, putting an end to their lead on the Turk. Derek assumes Sarah killed Sarkissian and that a lot of John's angst comes from seeing his mom kill someone, as much as it does from the necessity of needing to destroy Cameron. What I do find interesting, though, is that Derek doesn't exactly gloat. He's been wanting Cameron gone since his first appearance in Season 1 but here, Derek isn't gloating or vindicated, but he's trying to make it easier for John. It's also our first real look at the kind of person Future John might be and our first time hearing the terse, growly voice that Thomas Dekker uses to signify John taking charge. John's barely keeping it together. JOHN: So, Charlie told me that Cromartie killed about twenty FBI guys today. He's still out there. He's here for me. They're dead because of me. DEREK: They're dead because some people refuse to accept the reality of the situation. JOHN: [terse] Which is what? DEREK: Which is that they carry death with them. JOHN: She was different. DEREK: No. JOHN: I made her. I sent her back. She's different. DEREK: She's not different. JOHN: [incredibly evenly] There's physical damage to her chip. Which means that she can be repaired, she- DEREK: John. JOHN: I need her. She saved my life. She saves my life! [Sarah approaches. Derek leaves. Sarah sits.] SARAH: I know what you saw today. I know what you did, and I'm... so proud of you. Maybe you could fix her. I know you want to try. But I can't let you. I just- I can't. [Sarah strokes at John's neck, he pulls away, eyes furious.] JOHN: So burn her. Let's get the hell out of here. In the back of the ambulance, Cameron lies on a stretcher, looking like a normal girl. John sits by her with a small tool and a small cloth, working on her chip. Lovingly? Out of respect? Anxiously? All of the above? Sarah tells him that everything Cameron told him was a lie. John, voice just about trembling, says he knows that. They build a makeshift funeral furnace for Cameron in an abandoned car. John folds her hands over her chest, placing her chip in her grip. "The flare," John asks, voice flat. "Where is it?" Charley brings it over, handing it to him. And then John says, "I'm sorry." He inserts Cameron's chip and then pulls a gun on Sarah, Derek and Charley. "Are you here to kill me, John?" Cameron asks, sounding like her usual self. "Are you here to kill me?" "No." "Promise?" John passes her the gun. Cameron takes it. On her HUD, TERMINATE flashes next to John Connor's face. She stares at him as he steps back, and then the order is overridden and she handles the gun back. "Promise." John throws the gun to Sarah and chucks the flare into the makeshift furnace. It burns brightly. On one side, stands John with the machine that tried to murder him. On the other, stands Sarah, Charley and Derek. Ellison arrives at home, late at night. There, he encounters Cromartie. "I'll never lead you to her," Ellison says. "So if that's why you left me alive, you might as well kill me right now. I'll never do the devil's work." "We'll see," Cromartie says, in that bland voice of his, and walks away. Meanwhile, Catherine Weaver calls an impromptu meeting of her company's research divisions. She's going to pull people from them all to work on Project Babylon, a project that will change the world. The lead of the AI division - Mister Tuck - is not happy about this.] In the church, Sarah is making peanut butter and jam sandwiches for dinner. Derek is surprised that Charley actually has a wife and Sarah is somewhat disappointed that he left. En-route to take John a sandwich, she runs into Cameron, who appears to be contemplating an icon of Jesus on the cross. CAMERON: Do you believe in the Resurrection? SARAH: What? CAMERON: The story of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection. Do you believe in it? SARAH: Would you if you'd seen what I've seen? CAMERON: Faith isn't part of my programming. SARAH: Yeah, well, I'm not sure it's part of mine either. CAMERON: Don't let him do that again. If I ever go bad again... Don't let him bring me back. John has locked himself in the bathroom. Sarah slumps against the door, almost coming to tears. She tells John that things happened as they did and nothing can be done to change it, but being alive is enough - even if he needs Sarah to give him more than that. John doesn't respond. "Can you hear me?" Sarah pleads, quietly. "Are you listening?" "Yeah," John says, standing in front of a mirror, having shaved his bangs down to a buzzcut. This is where the episode should have ended. The revelation of John growing up, the image of him cutting his hair, the reference to Samson and Delilah (even if it doesn't make perfect sense). But now. Then the episode goes and has a ridiculous scene that I'm just going to transcribe as-is. [Mr Tuck and another department head are in a bathroom. Tuck is really annoyed that Weaver is poaching so many of his people for a 'top secret torah study'. The other head laughs it off, obviously thinking Tuck is a self-important jerk.] TUCK: God, that bitch pisses me off. [Tuck urinates at a urinal, only for the urinal and the wall behind it to shift and flow and pull itself into a shimmering humanoid figure. It's Catherine Weaver.] WEAVER: I'm sorry that I piss you off, Mister Tuck. [She raises her finger it rapidly elongates, stabbing Tuck through the eye and out the back of his skull.] WEAVER: The feeling's mutual. Cheap jokes and a man pissing all over a woman. I try to do better but, honestly, a single emoticon perfectly sums up my thoughts on it:  As usual, I'll have another post coming to drill down into a bunch of things in this episode: the song usage, the big scene between John and Cameron, and a few other things. It's a good episode, all in all, and one of my favorites but the fingerprints of the Strike are all over it.
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Jan 25, 2017 06:39
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So, this episode is about John and Cameron. The title compares them to the Biblical figures of Samson and Delilah with the lyrics of the song having been altered slightly to fit the circumstances at the beginning of the episode ("tear this building down" to "burn this building down"). Returning to the knowledge of the Bible I gained from attending two Christian schools, Samson and Delilah are two of the more well-known figures from the Bible. Samson was a man gifted with incredible strength of God, able to perform phenomenal feats such as slaying a lion with his bare hands, killing thousands with a jawbone and bringing down a whole temple. However, he was only granted this strength under the condition that he never shaved or cut his hair. Eventually, Samson meets Delilah and falls in love with her. Delilah is offered a considerable amount of silver by Samson's enemies, the Philistines, to know the secret of his strength. Eventually, Samson gives into Delilah's nagging (it's the Bible, okay?) and tells her the secret of his strength - he has his power providing he never cuts his hair. Delilah cuts Samson's hair while he's sleeping and the Philistines capture him and blind him. They put him on display in one of their temples, with thousands of people coming to see him and mock him. Samson calls to God for deliverance and finds his power again, collapsing the temple and killing everyone in it, including himself. The symbolism is obvious. Cameron is the dark-haired threat to John's power. John is a mighty warrior who kills a lion (Sarkissian), but that's about it. The additional symbolism falls flat, and even Cameron as Delilah only works on the surface level. John cuts off his own hair. If anything, he has gained power at the end of the episode, not lost it. Cameron's betrayal of John doesn't deliver him to his enemies - in fact, it is hard to consider Cameron's issue a true betrayal. Cameron has certainly never truly seduced John, not attempted to weasel any secrets out of him. In fact, John tends to try and get secrets out of her. Delilah is tied up with notions of sex, like a Biblical femme fatale, and Cameron is practically asexual (maybe, Season 2 complicates things). It's a nice song and some elements of it are nice (it flat out tells you who killed Sarkissian, for example) but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, I find. From what I've seen around the net, the musical scene in What He Beheld was very well-recieved, so, maybe the production team wanted to capture that lightning again. If so, they didn't quite succeed. To return to the themes of angels and demons, though, I've said previously that the Terminators are associated with both. That's correct. Ellison views them as devils, because he is a deeply religious man. When examined, though, Terminators don't match to devils. Devils like to tempt and lie, Terminators aren't human enough to understand the idea. Terminators enact plans that normal people aren't aware of nor can they comprehend. The Terminators are divine messengers who use violence because it is the most direct route, because they have no concept of good or evil. They have a terrible innocence, as personified in Cromartie. It is humans who perform sadistic acts for pleasure, which Season Two points out during the Mexico arc. Project Babylon is, likewise, another Biblical reference. This one is, of course, the Tower of Babel, which is directed commented on later in the season. With Babel, Mankind built a tower to reach the heavens and God struck it down, causing humanity to be split into different tribes and languages. Obviously, Weaver's project is some immense undertaking which, if the reference holds, will bring about downfall to the human race. To the audience, it appears to be Skynet and I think, for a time, that is what the writers were thinking of, but they shift gears later in the season. Speaking of Weaver, her talk about wanting to find a computer that willingly goes against the grain falls flat. While, initially, the Turk is presented as 'choking' and making an error or deliberately 'throwing' the game because it is 'upset', we learn later that Dimitri actually programmed the Turk to lose. In that sense, the computer isn't walking against the light, to borrow Weaver's metaphor - it was programmed to walk into the nearest car moving at speed. But whatever, it's a minor issue, but these minor issues show up throughout Season 2, where it feels like the writers forgot certain parts of the story that had already been written (a lot of it applies to Cameron, I think, too). Now, let's talk about Cameron and John. This episode is one of the biggest moments in their relationship, second to the 'sex scene' in Born To Run. John defies everyone else in his life to take a chance on the murderous machine that says she loves him and that he loves her. The question is: was Cameron lying? My answer is: no. But in the sense of no, however. Cameron wasn't lying. Cameron loves John, even if it isn't the same love that John might have for her. Cameron's cognition is fundamentally different (indicated in Vick's Chip) but understands the same general ideas (indicated in Heavy Metal). She wants to get close to him and is evasive when asked why (painting her nails, for example). When she is crying, telling John that she's good and perfect and that she doesn't want to go, she's telling the truth. She's a perfect machine, doing what she was literally built to do. She certainly doesn't want to die. But it is highly likely at that stage that she would have killed John, even if she meant the words, had she gotten free. To use an analogy: if I tell my partner that she should take the trash out and that I love her, I don't not love her. It's still manipulation to get her to do something, though. I also feel that John was more surprised by Cameron's "And you love me!" than her admission of love for him. I think John believes that he's kept his admiration for her fairly secret, which is funny given that Sarah picks up on it, as does Charley (in a deleted scene). Either way, the fact that he lovingly tinkers with her chip later in the episode makes it quite clear that she was absolutely right, far more than the fact that he reboots her. As the series is though, it feels like something of a Hail Mary pass from Cameron because outside of one or two awkward moments, we don't get a good sense for the tension there. Samson and Delilah feels like Step 6 of a plan where we've only seen up to Step 3 and that things in between are just [SCENE MISSING]. It works, but it could work better. John ends up taking a chance that she won't kill him and he's proven right, with the exact reason for Cameron's programming not going through with it left unclear. At the end of the episode, John is positioned with Cameron against the three other members of his family, having crossed a point of no return by actually pulling a gun on his own mother. Which is why the Riley subplot is so maddening because, despite this, John promptly throws Cameron to the wind, too, and he spends a lot of time in Season 2 bouncing between being friendly with Cameron and seemingly hating her. It makes sense - after all, she did try to kill him and then he drove a wedge between him and his family over it - but is discordant at the same time. It isn't neat. See, if I have one big criticism of Samson and Delilah, it is that it depicts an absolutely momentous event that blows the doors off the plot. It is impossible to go back from this and the various choices that arise from it are, essentially, mandatory. The house burnt down, so they have to move. How do they explain the fire and the bodies and everything? How do they move into a bigger house with no jobs or finances? Hard to say, take John out of the school system and try to cut off the Connors from the world. I mean, it works, because Season 2 is very much about the breakdown of the Family Connor and the dark, isolated places all the characters get driven to (even Cameron), but I'm not sure if the story was ready to go pedal to the metal for such darkness yet. Like I said, it feels like a few steps were skipped. Like the car bomb came from an episode or two later than the original ending for What He Beheld. For example, what is John talking about when he says Cameron "saves" his life? This feels like a reference to a particular secret Cameron told him but we are not privy to. It's kind of the problem of Season 2 going forwards. Things make sense, in the sense that they are explained, but are also maddeningly bizarre choices where the explanation can feel weak or and only truly work if you squint, where a lot of characters and plot points fall into that mid to late 00s trap of shows like Heroes, Lost and Battlestar Galactica where mysteries are artificially induced and propagated through a series of strange developments to keep audiences guessing (culminating in trifecta of truly bad episodes towards the end of the season). Season 1 felt tightly plotted, perhaps too tightly plotted, and Season 2 sort of plods along, ambling here and there. But, for all the criticisms I level at the episode, the acting is top-notch and the tension is palpable. Glau nails a glitchy, confused Cameron. Dekker nails the despondency and anger of killing someone then needing to kill your crush despite your feelings. Both he and Heady nail the right emotional notes when they mess up their first attempt on Cameron. And Heady herself nails the genuine warmth and belief she has in her son's ability to fix Cameron's chip, along with the sad fact that it is far too dangerous to keep Cameron around now. Derek's casual bullying of Charley is fun, too, as is his casual 'poo poo happens' tongue-click when Sarah tells him John saw everything. One other thing about the episode I'm going to point out is how much Cameron's development is advanced. If she wasn't experimenting with self-actualization and reflection before, she certainly is now by seemingly ruminating on how the sacrifice of Jesus can apply to her circumstances. It echoes Sarah's earlier monologue about how machines don't have faith. Maybe they don't, but Cameron seems to have a new perspective of it. As Season 2 continues, Cameron exhibits more and more behaviors that are indicative of emotional responses or self-awareness, some of them seemingly beyond her ability to control. Of course, doesn't Cromartie also exhibit a certain sort of faith, with his belief that Ellison will lead him to the Connors? Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 09:22
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Oh, and it is actually pretty frustrating how Season 2 begins the same way Season 1 begins: the Turk is somewhere and we have no idea where it is or how to find it. Again, when the story is written involving a carbomb, a burning down house, and no time for the Connors to back-up the data, well, it happens... But still.
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Jan 25, 2017 11:04
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haveblue posted:Their idea of how a damaged killing machine would beg for its life is perfect. It moves from phrase to phrase, trying different ways to impact John, retrying or discarding them as it monitors his feedback, while smoothly ramping up the facial and vocal emotion like someone's turning a dial. It's not at all how a human would act in that situation but at the same time it really is, just more efficiently. She tries every trick in the book. She tries commanding him at first, then moves on to appeal to John's morality, then tries putting him against Sarah, then his ability to self-determinate, and then begging and crying. It's a really good sequence. Like you said, Glau plays the emotional part of it by just slowly, consistently increasing from the first word (monotonous) to the last (shouting). quote:I still listen to the cover of Samson and Delilah. It's a good cover!
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Jan 26, 2017 03:39
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mllaneza posted:The "What He Beheld" scene was absolute gold, it's no surprise they might try again. But, I don't think you can carry a show with significant events told solely in montages with a soundtrack. The producers get a lot of credit for the genius in that scene. Think how much the scene cost the way they did it. Then think about how much actually showing the whole firefight would cost. A movie can do it ("Don't worry lady, there's 30 cops in this building." "29 !... 28, 27 !... 26 !...", they have the budget. That scene is sitting pretty in the producer's reel. His relationship with Ellison is very interesting. Cromartie believes that Ellison will lead him to the Connors, and he is so sure of this that he even saves Ellison's life when Skynet decides to kill him. I am very thankful that they kept him on as John Henry because those scenes are some of the best in Season 2. I'm doing my prelimary stuff on Automatic For The People now. I liked it when I first watched it but, on this later viewing, it rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because it falls into the Season 2 pit of disregarding things that're inconvenient to the plot and being the start of the endlessly recursive list of McGuffins. But it has some good points and some nice moments.
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Jan 26, 2017 09:15
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Episode 2: Automatic for the People So, this is a bit of a weird episode. I liked it when I first watched and I still think it is a good one. However, it is also pretty rough around the edges, including some aspects of the main plot. I'm also curious about the meaning of the reference Automatic for the People. I know it is an album by REM but I'm not familiar with their music nor could I quickly determine the meaning with some quick searching around. Anyone have any thoughts? So, the episode opens with a resistance fighter coming back into the present day. Much like Kyle Reese, he shows up naked in an alley and steals a homeless man's pants. Unlike Kyle Reese, however, he has been shot in the chest and is bleeding heavily, with the bullet inside his body during temporal transit and exiting as he enters the past. It's a neat visual. Who was trying to stop this man? Why? The episode picks up a day after Samson and Delilah. The Connors are still crashing in the church of the priest that helped them out. Sarah hasn't been sleeping, worried about their untrustworthy robotic 'guard dog', and Derek says he would have been praying to God. "She's outside his jurisdiction," Sarah comments. Meanwhile, John talks with Cameron. She isn't happy with him, saying that he can't be trusted. Dekker plays this comment interesting, he looks shocked and incredulous but he's also rather stern. He plays off Cameron's point that it was dangerous to risk fixing her, saying that "they", with a look to Sarah and Derek, will just have to "deal with it". He's trying to establish an ally in the aftermath of pissing off the other two members of his family. And Cameron shuts him down. "Not them," she says, wandering away. Sarah sends John back to school, mentioning that he could use something "boring". Sarah wants her son to try and forget the fact that Cameron just tried to kill him, their house burnt down, they've lost the Turk, and John just killed someone. And, when John does go back to school, he doesn't even make it to his first class. He lingers in the hall, utterly isolated and alone, detached utterly from the mundane world, and so he skips out. After English class, John is found by a new character - Riley. Now, look, Riley gets a lot of flak, and it's understandable why. She's forward, she's not waif-thin, and she's incredibly prickly. If there's one thing I think TSCC does really well consistently, it's female characters (Sarah's new neighbour Kacey, who we also meet in this episode, is also cool). But there's something about Riley that rubs me the wrong way. It could be a few things but I think most of it is that she is obviously a replacement for Cherie, the other strange blonde girl from the first season. This is made more awkward by Riley acting like she's seen John around in some classes, but we've never met her before, or ever seen in her a scene before. It might also be that she's a bit rough around the edges and incredibly forward, successfully getting twenty dollars from John on her first meeting. It could be that she feels weird and quirky, not quite fitting into John's world. I don't know, I don't think the character deserves the hate. It's not to say there aren't reasons for this. While we don't learn it for at least a few episodes, Riley is from the future. Some of these hints work really well: like her obsession with eating. Derek did the same when he got back to the past, after all. I like her weird slang, even if they could have linked her to Jessie by actually using proper Australian slang. For example, instead of "apples and oranges", an actual bit of Australian slang could be used: "she'll be apples". Same general meaning but one is authentic and one feels like a copy. Maybe they hadn't landed Jessie's actress yet (Stephanie Jacobsen). While John is meeting someone whom he assumes is normal, Ellison pays Charley a visit. Charley, the gentle paramedic, has acquired a gun. He's not handling the crazy events well. Sarah is checking out the place that the Connors will be renting for the foreseeable future. Here we meet Kacey and her and Sarah bond over being mothers. Cameron touches Kacey's pregnant belly, curious. With that done, Sarah takes five minutes to relax and the bleeding resistance fighter from the start of the episode bursts through the window and dies at her feet. "Stop Greenway", he says, "Serrano Point. Two Days." Derek offers to resolve it but Sarah shoots him down - no one is going to die if she can help it. Serrano Point is a nuclear plant. In the future, it is a vital Resistance facility. Derek has served there. Here is where the episode gets wonky. Sarah and Cameron work in and become temp workers immediately. How did this happen? I'm assuming nuclear sites have fairly strict requirements. It's a minor detail but a world like Terminator lives and dies on the minor details. This is a world that had a scene where school metal detectors showed up. But given that the episode just set up a 'two day' timer, it's not like the show can afford to take time on anything. Anyway, as Sarah and Cameron walk through the plant, Cameron saves images of the staff id cards and identifies Carl Greenway, their target. Meanwhile, Ellison and Charley explain the situation to Charley's wife. She doesn't believe the stories of genocidal robots, and certainly doesn't believe that Charley is no longer in love with Sarah. Much like Sarah before him, Ellison tells Charley to run for it. but Charley, knowing Judgement Day is coming, knows there is nowhere that could be considered safe. "Where is?" he asks, and Ellison doesn't reply. John and Riley are hanging out. John decides to bring Riley to come and look at the new Connor residence and Dekker sells it wonderfully - the slight pause and glance around makes it clear that he knows he shouldn't do this, and chooses to do it anyway. Another aside on Riley - she's very forward and direct, generally taking the lead when she's with John. I think this is also a point of contention for some people because it might be hard to understand why John, who has just taken a huge step for his Independence and leadership potential, is now going with whatever this new blonde girl is saying. But I think people misunderstand John at this point. I think John is happy to be led because, on some level, John doesn't want to be Future John, even if he's taken a big step down that path. Riley offers him a chance to be normal, or as normal as he thinks he can be, and so John is fine with being caught in her undertow. Unfortunately, this idea goes on for the entirety of Season 2 and keeps John's development on hold for all of it. Anyway, in the plant, Sarah susses information out of Greenway. The plant will be going online in a day or so. She tries to eavesdrop on another conversation but is spotted by an associate of Greenway's (the plant head boss, I think). But she does glimpse a heated conversation between the pair - something is going wrong at the plant, people are not happy. John and Riley wander the new house. John, of course, has never brought a girl home before. They find a room that'll probably be his - but it is loaded with stuff for a young kid. An allusion to Sarah's desire to protect John, in a way - and a reminder that john was forced to grow up real fast just the day before. He'll never go back to that innocence, if he even really had it at all. That night, at a bar, Sarah tries to get some information out of Greenway. In the process, she finds out that he has a very obvious scar on one arm. Cameron scopes out the bar until she spies some plant employees and hustles them at pool in order to get a close up look at their name-tags. Cameron plays the part of the innocent girl at the bar, showing off the personality she hasn't really demonstrated since the pilot. Outside, Derek raids Greenway's car to find his address. As Sarah talks to Greenway, she has a brief moment where she remembers Cameron's ominous warning of her future cancer and realises she's working in a nuke plant. She had assumed she skipped over it with the time jump, but was still taking precautions. Is her cancer, like Judgement Day, not truly preventable? Does the river always flow in one direction, even if you channel it here and there? When Derek enters the bar, Cameron is smiling as she counts the money she hustled from the plant employees. it's a nice blink and you'll miss it moment. Cameron gets a lot of understated development in this episode. Then, the core conflict of the plot is laid out. The plant will go online tomorrow. However, Greenway is worried that there is an issue that could lead to a meltdown. Cameron confirms that there is an issue, and it could be an issue that leads to a full meltdown. Derek, sharp as ever, points out the dilemma here - if the plant goes online, it'll blow up and Skynet wins; if it remains offline, the resistance can't utilise it and Skynet wins. Minor issue: I don't think Skynet would want a meltdown. Skynet always seems to exhibit care with altering the timeline too much, and potentially blowing up LA seems like it would not be something Skynet would want. Otherwise, Skynet could surely just send back a dozen Terminators and accomplish the same thing. John and Tiley are just about to have ice cream when Sarah, Derek and Cameron get home. Sarah and Cameron are immediately hostile towards Riley. When Riley greets Sarah, Sarah shoots her a glare that all but screams 'speak when I tell you to' and Cameron gets right up in Riley's personal space. Sarah and John have a brief argument. Sarah says it isn't the time for "this" and John rightfully (but in a churlish manner) points out that won't ever be a time for it. It strikes a chord with Sarah, who is visibly hurt and shaken as John retreats upstairs with Riley. Later, Sarah stands at the door and ponders entering John's room, but decides not to. like the previous episode, the imagery of Sarah standing at the door while John is doing things inside reminds me of a particular quote from Steinbeck. "There are some among us who live in rooms of experience we can never enter." Inside the room, Riley asks John the deeply ironic question as to whether he thinks about his future. John says he does, but doesn't associate it with freedom. The next morning, at the plant, Sarah follows Greenway's associate deep into the plant, past a sign indicating radioactive materials. What follows is one of the sequences of TSCC that sticks with me. Greenway's boss tells Sarah to go into the nuclear waste storage area to clean up a spill. Sarah gets in there and promptly has a subdued panic attack. She runs out of there and finds out she's been dosed with radiation. Sarah gets scrubbed down, decontaminated and humiliated. The scene is shot really well! And, later, it's all revealed to be a deliberate "hiccup", a ploy to scare the hell out of Sarah by the plant boss. it's up there as one of the most openly cruel things that transpires during the run of TSCC and it is also probably one of the most petty things, too. While that's happening, John and Riley wake up. Riley presents john with a robot she made out of Lego, to protect him. John sees the irony in it. When Riley asks if she can call him, John tells her about the secret passcode the Connors use to foil Terminator voice mimicry. Every time they start a phone call, they begin it with the date, month and year. Like a challenge and authentication process. A Terminator might be able to mimic the voice but it can't fool the ritual. Riley is, of course, aseptically but John establishes it as the rule to contact him. Ellison pays another visit to the Dixons. They're leaving town and he gives him a Bible. When Charley asks if Ellison is going to leave, or whether God has a plan for him, Ellison echoes the words he heard from Cromartie last episode: "We'll see". In the plant control room, Greenway is preparing the test. something is different about him, his voice is missing affect, and he's missing his scar, which Sarah picks up on, and calls Derek. Derek, who is just beginning to search Greenway's house - and finds him hanging from the rafters of his study. poo poo. Greenway's been replaced by a Terminator. I like the quiet but frantic worry in Derek's voice as he says: "Sarah, are you telling me that Greenway is there?" He doesn't need to say anything clumsy like he's dead or hanging from the rafters. The fact that he's asking Sarah something like that is more than enough to point out that Greenway is metal. I'm not a big fan of Skynet being able to send back Terminators to impersonate specific people, though. But, hey, minor issue, all things considered. Still, if Skynet can make this sort of play, it is definitely a drastic escalation of its capabilities and understanding of the timeline. Sarah rushes to find Cameron. She finds her scrubbing the floors. It takes Cameron several seconds to notice that Sarah is there, like she's locked in a scrub-floor runtime loop, and claims that she was "thinking about what to do" when pressured about it. Sarah is surprised by that, to say the least, but sends Cameron to repair the cooling pump that Greenway has damaged. It's a nice indicator of just how badly Cameron's chip was compromised by the carbomb, but also worrying: just how much gradual knocks and blows can Cameron sustain in the past before her effectiveness is drastically reduced? Greenway, for his part, is busy killing everyone in the control room. He finds Cameron attempting to undo his sabotage and the pair engage in a brawl. The fight is in his favor (maybe also indicating just how badly Cameron is doing after the explosion) until Sarah arrives and empties a magazine into his chest, giving Cameron an opening to shove him into a power generator, blowing him up. And then Cameron advances on Sarah, head twitching, and not saying anything. "Are you okay?!" Sarah demands. "I'm okay!" Cameron shouts, before she goes to get the cooling system back online. They dispose of Terminator-Greenway in the nuclear waste barrels. That night, a few conversations happen. SARAH: When we jumped through time, you told me I died of cancer. CAMERON: Yes, 2005. SARAH: Am I still gonna get sick? CAMERON: I don't know. SARAH: Is today how it happens? CAMERON: I don't know. SARAH: What am I supposed to do, just wait? Like a time bomb, am I just gonna go off someday? CAMERON: I don't know. Am I? [Inside the house, Cameron finds John in the kitchen, eating pizza.] CAMERON: You have a new friend. [John drops his pizza back in the box. He immediately closes up his body language.] JOHN: Her name is Riley. And you probably creeped her out. When you talk to people, don't stand so close. CAMERON: I was assessing her threat level. JOHN: Well? Am I safe? CAMERON: I don't know. Girls are complicated. JOHN: About what you said before, about not being able to trust me. CAMERON: Yes? JOHN: I don't have to prove anything to anyone. Anyone. Including you. [Cameron leaves, watching John over her shoulder as she goes.] Outside, as Sarah broods on whether today was the day that caused her terminal cancer, she spies blood on a wooden pillar. Following the trail, she finds dozens of words written on the basement wall in blood. One of them is Greenway. One wonders how the resistance soldier managed to run to find the Connors with a bleeding chest wound near his heart, then manage to write out the dozens of words, and then still have the strength to find Sarah. It's just... Again, minor, but enough minor issues and you're going to break the suspension of disbelief as much as you might with a major issue. The final scene of the episode is a representative of Automite Systems, delivering a speech. AUTOMITE REP: Because of this tragic incident, the owners of Serrano Point and six other power plants across the nation are entering into a partnership with my corporation, Automite Systems. New automated technology we've developed will be implemented in all control rooms. These sophisticated machines will eliminate the possibility of human error and prevent a major disaster. But, when he climbs into his car, he morphs into another figure - Catherine Weaver. The unspoken question is: despite everything the Connors did, did Skynet just win in the end? While later in the series, we'll learn that Weaver is more complicated than that, but the show was leaning very hard on the 'Weaver is Skynet' button here (as it did in the previous episode, too). It very much echoes what we know about Skynet, that it grew from systems implemented in military technology to remove human error. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 04:59
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Astroman posted:The reveal with Riley being from the future was a great payout IMO and made her character worth it. Rhyno posted:The multiple futures thing was pretty nifty and it would have been interesting to have a second Derek or Jesse show up and be like "wtf." It's one future that's constantly in flux. I'm not sure you could have a second Derek or Jesse by the rules that TSCC establishes (or seems to establish). I think one of the cool things they did with the idea is the Skynet collaborator that Derek and Jesse interrogate later in the season. Both have different idea of him because they came back to the past at different times.
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Jan 30, 2017 06:28
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I was working on a post than the database maintenance ate it. Oh well. So, Season 2 has a lot of great ideas. Some of them are realized well but I think it's fair to say that most of them are a bit rough in their implementation. I can't really fault Season 1 in the same way I fault Season 2. Season 1's real issue is that it is too tightly plotted whereas Season 2 likes to meander about. This works really well in some episodes but generally proves to be a bit boring. When Sarah says that boring might be the best thing for John, I don't think she also meant to bore the audience in the process. Of course, that's a hard line to walk. To borrow a line from T Bone Burnett about the song Please Mr Kennedy from Inside Llewyn Davis. quote:Because if you put bad music in a film, it's just bad -- then the film's bad. You can put good music in a film and say it's bad and the audience will believe it's bad, but it will still be good and they will still be entertained by it, even though they're told it's bad. 'If you put boring scenes in an episode, it's just boring - then the episode is boring.' The unfortunate part of Riley as a character is that, as interesting as she is, she barely gets any development. Where she is now, she basically remains, and he relationship with Sarah, Cameron and John basically remains where they are, too. This is, of course, not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is when multiple episodes keep showing us that the status quo is being maintained: "John wants to be normal with Riley, Sarah/Cameron disapprove, John gets reacts badly". There are some good scenes with Riley - the bear and the fish, her relationship with Jessie, her freak out about the future, the theft at the party, the stuff that John quotes back at Jessie - but ultimately those are fleeting compared to the boring scenes which try to make us care about the relationship between the pair. Yes, the argument can be made that it is deliberately boring because it is boring and unsuitable for John Connor, but I think it's a weak one. The other problem is that so much of John is tied up with Riley this season, denying more interesting development between him and Sarah, him and Cameron, or him and Derek. It's understandable, of course. At the start of Automatic for the People, we are made aware that Derek and Sarah are frosty with John over the fact that he saved Cameron. Then Cameron tells him it was a bad idea and that she doesn't trust him because of it. So, John goes his own way and, like i said, I think he's just happy enough to be led around by Riley and to play at being normal - partially to think that he is, partially to try and get away from the terrible events of Samson, and partially to thumb his nose at his mom and the robot he has confusing feelings for. John wants to go his own way. He is tired of being at the capricious whims of fate, as personified in his mother and his future confidante. He wants to be in control of his own destiny, which means he wants to fight against being the messianic John Connor. He wants to be John Baum, or at least believe he can be, so he happily goes along with the pretty blonde who strikes up a conversation with him, even if she's a bit weird. Maybe because she's a bit weird. But there must be more interesting ways to tell this story which aren't just talking with Riley. Like, does John understand how much danger he is putting Riley in? Does he even care? I think Riley becomes very interesting towards the end of her arc (towards the end of Season 2), as does her relationship with John, the problem is it just takes her so long to get there. And what's especially unfortunate is that it is her exit from the series which is the most interesting development she contributes to the overall story. There are other things that I found a bit grating about Automatic. Firstly, Sarah's argument that John should go to school and be normal is struck out in the very next episode where she, off-screen, decides John should be 'home schooled'. This feels odd. I've already mentioned that the schools have been established as safe zones. But there's also a point to be made that John needs to be socialised to learn leadership, which is something that Sarah would probably understand. And, in Season 1, Sarah did say that not going to school gets John 'noticed', which is bad because it invites the authorities to come poking around the Connor residence. Given that we never see Sarah try to home school John, I'm going to go with that it was an idea forced upon the production team - unable to get actors to be John's classmates, inability to shoot at the school, loss of sets, something. Two, I didn't mention in the recap that someone smashed the windscreen of Greenway's car while Derek is searching it. Who this person is isn't explained, nor the reason for it. It could assumed to be a disgruntled nuke plant worker, but given that it never comes to anything or is even mentioned, why include it in the first place? It's a cheap moment of tension. Three, the central nuke plant plot is a bit complicated and it's unclear if the Connors actually achieve anything at the end of it. As presented, the situation appears to be a Skynet victory regardless, but at leas they didn't let the city get a meltdown going on. Then Weaver comes in and cleans up. Despite this, I like it, because I like the idea of Skynet being able to set up no-win situations with temporal chess. However, the risk of a meltdown feels a bit extreme given that something like that could lead to sweeping changes that might prevent Skynet from ever coming into existence. This is ameliorated somewhat by an idea later in Season 2 with Skynet seemingly already being active in the past, albeit with reduced capacity and resources. If that's the case, then maybe Future Skynet can destroy LA and still guarantee Skynet coming into being. However, I still don't think Skynet being able to replicate specific people as Terminators really works. If Skynet can do that, why doesn't it replicate someone more important than a nuke plant tech? If such temporal gambits are possible then, in all honesty, Skynet should be running rings around the Connors and the wider world. Who knows, maybe it is. Season 2 has a lot of ideas. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Automatic for the People exemplifies this. Plenty of ideas in the episode, but not all of them land successfully. But the 'faulty Cameron' stuff is great, but we'll touch on more about Cameron later, when there's more to chew on.
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Jan 30, 2017 13:49
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Episode 3 coming tomorrow. Been inundated with stuff!
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Feb 6, 2017 08:44
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Episode 3: The Mousetrap So, this is a properly harrowing episode of TSCC, the sort of thing you expect from a show determined to explore the Terminator mythos. Compared to Episode 2, this one towers above it in terms of plot, stakes and characterization. In particular, Cameron and Cromartie are big winners when it comes to character development in this episode, but the two Dixons - Charley and Michelle - do well, too. So, let's begin. As we saw last episode, Charley and his wife are heading out from Los Angeles, intending to escape the nightmare they'd found themselves in. Charley pulls in at a petrol station, washing off the windshield and stopping to get a drink for his wife. He climbs back into the front seat but, a second too late, Michelle realises it isn't Charley at all. It's Cromartie, and he speeds of in Charley's car, as he chases behind, screaming his wife's name. And over it, a song plays: "If today the sun should set, and never rise again, if the world should turn upon me... but safe within your arms, I'd never feel the cold, but safe within your arms, I'd feel no cold." It is wonderfully ironic and haunting, sounding like something out of Fallout 3. Meanwhile, John is splicing Kacy's television - that's his neighbor - into the cable service, for free. On the television, though, there's George Lazlo, the late actor whom Cromartie has been impersonating, performing his incredibly b-film, Beast Wizard 7. As the reporter tells it, with George Lazlo inexplicably killing twenty members of a FBI team, the film has made six million dollars. John can't help but see Cromartie reciting cheesy lines and throwing a Conan-esque sword from hand to hand. It's obviously a love letter to Conan the Barberian. Kacy says: "A friend of mine from culinary school, did craft services on that movie. She liked the guy. He ate with the crew. This town can screw you up." Smash cut to Cameron standing very precisely over a certain point in the Connors' new living room. John enters then, and looks at Cameron incredulously. JOHN: What are you doing? CAMERON: This is the absolute center of the house. JOHN: Excellent. Good work. CAMERON: The house is moving. JOHN: What? CAMERON: Moving. The east by southeast section of the house is moving. JOHN: Really? Where's it going? CAMERON: Down. At a rate of 0.93 millimeters per year. JOHN: And what? Does that affect the security system, or sight lines for the night scope? How does this affect the safety of one John Connor? CAMERON: It doesn't. But next summer we're going to have to repaint. This is maybe the first time we've seen Cameron do something for nothing beyond what appears to be her own curiosity. It doesn't have anything to do with her mission, or her programming, but, for whatever reason, she has decided to do a bit of exploring. Summer Glau appears to have understood that something is going on with Cameron, or maybe it is something she brought to the character in Season 2, but Cameron is slightly more expressive with her face and her tone of voice often veers away from her bland matter-of-fact tone throughout this episode. And John, being the angsty teenager he is, just treats this unprecedented show of initiative on Cameron's part with sarcasm that's just about as acidic as Xenomorph blood. He's not mean but he certainly doesn't care. John finds Sarah in the kitchen. They talk. Evidently, John was only supposed to set up Kacy's television in the bedroom, not splice it into free cable. But John's a good kid, so, he did it anyway. JOHN: Nobody that pregnant should be forced to watch network television. It's bad for the baby. SARAH: You don't know anything about babies. JOHN: I know they grow up. Charley calls then. He's understandably desperate and frantic, spluttering out the day/month security code, but still takes a moment to hide his tears and crying from John. I love this interplay between Charley and Sarah. Charley is desperately reaching out to the woman he thought he knew, crying and begging, and finds only the tough-as-nuclear-nails warrior woman. CHARLEY: Sarah. He took my wife. Sarah: What do you want me to say, Charley? CHARLEY: Just hel- help me Sarah, please. We were just leaving town. And he just, he just- he just took her! SARAH: I mean, with John standing right here. What am I supposed to say? CHARLEY: Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know who else to call. Please. Please just help me, Sarah. Sarah: You shouldn't have called here, Charley. You were right to leave. I don't want to know where you are, In case I need you. I'm not going to need you. It's better for you if I can't find you. You understand? CHARLEY: Wait, hold on a sec- are you, um... Are you asking me where I am? SARAH: Yes, I am. CHARLEY: I'm just at some fruit stand. It's uh... It's just somewhere off the 14. Just um, south of the California City turnoff. I think. Please. I really need your help, Sarah. SARAH: Stay safe, Charley. And, just like that, Sarah cuts Charley loose. Meanwhile, Cameron has her head - and some of her body - wedged up into the fireplace chimney. "There's something alive up there," she comments. "It's a bird," she says, when Sarah asks if it can hurt them. "I'll kill it before it flies away." When Sarah tells her not to, Cameron asks, with something akin to quiet hope, "Maybe later?" "Maybe never," Sarah says firmly. She sends Cameron with John to go pick up some computer parts. "And don't touch that bird." It's an interesting sequence, reinforcing something I stated with Samson and Delilah. Cameron wants to do what she was built to do, and that is kill (specifically, kill John Connor). It is her reason to exist. It's the big difference between humans and machines. Where we stumble around, wondering to be or not to be, Cameron only knows to be. And, in her case, being matches to killing. It's important to stress that she's not a sadist but she's somewhat innocent. If John wanted to kill the bird as she does, it'd be a galling indictment of his character. For Cameron, it's just what she is. Maybe she can grow beyond it, or maybe that's how she'll always view the world. Outside, Derek is checking and loading his various weapons. Sarah lets him know what's happening - Cromartie has Charley's wife and Sarah has deceived John, so she can go to rescue without endangering him. "It's the absolute worst thing to do!" Derek points out, when Sarah says she's going to go walk into the lion's den, but comes with her anyway, gathering up his guns. The lion's den is a long abandoned structure of some sort. While Cromartie works on something involving mousetraps, Michelle frantically tries to reach her phone. John and Cameron gather up the computer equipment. Quite literally, in Cameron's case, as she hauls a massive box onto the back of their truck like it weighs nothing at all. JOHN: Hey, hey, hey! Whoa, Cameron, Cameron. Let me help you with that. CAMERON: [slightly offended] I didn't need any help. JOHN: Yeah, you did. [In the background, an elderly couple are staring at Cameron.] CAMERON: [as if realizing] Right. While Cameron finishes up with the hardware, John takes a phone call. It's Riley and she wants to hang out. John says he could be there in fifteen minutes but Riley says the world could end in fifteen minutes. It's an uncomfortable moment. "I'm going to vote I doubt it," mutters John. But he wants to go. He tries to trick Cameron into dropping him off at the Promenade, but she's well ahead of him. She asks if that was Riley but it seems pretty clear that she knows, and doesn't approve. John tries to weasel his way around it, but Cameron is resolute. Where John goes, she goes. JOHN: Just because my mother said it, Doesn't make it so. I'm not a child anymore. I could go to the store, or see a friend, or do whatever the hell else people like me do. CAMERON: There are no other people like you. JOHN: Just drop me off. And Cameron gives John a cool glance and turns away. As she does, John runs for it. John's managed to give his Terminator the shake, but Ellison can't shake Cromartie. He wanders his home in a funk, while Lazlo spouts cheesy b-movie lines on the television behind him. And, unknown to him, he's picked up a second - Weaver calls him, offering him an "opportunity". After some brief hesitation on his part, Weaver entices him with the idea that she knows "what actually killed your colleagues". Sarah, Derek and Charley meet up. Charley wants to know what to do, but Sarah has no idea - they have no idea where Cromartie is, which means they can't find him. Derek, ever pragmatic, has a wonderful moment where he cuts through the tension with: "Look, she won't tell you the truth, but I will. That thing took your wife to get to John. You think it gives a drat about her? Your wife's dead." But then Charley's phone rings and he stares Derek down, showing him the phone. "That's her, hmm!" "Make sure it's really her," Derek states. Which leads to another small but great sequence. Michelle is understandably beside herself and Charley wants to reassure her first and foremost, while Sarah and Derek state, again and again, that he has to make sure that Michelle is Michelle. So, Charley abruptly shifts gears and begins to interrogate Michelle about the night they first had sex, and she has no idea what is going on or what the point is. Can you imagine being abducted and calling your partner and they start grilling you about something like that? But that's the world now. In any case, Sonya Walger and Dean Winters do amazingly. Unfortunately for Michelle, though, Cromartie appears to have heard her phonecall. He begins setting up his trap and, as Michelle tries to beg with him, he fluidly stops his setup and tapes her mouth shut, almost as if he's responding to the irritation of it. It's of course part of his plan but later in Season 2, we'll see Cromartie respond negatively to people talking to him when he's working. As he works, Cromartie monologues: "In 1897, James Atkinson invented the mousetrap. The spring slams shut in thirty-eight thousandths of a second. It is a record that has never been beaten. It is hard to build a better one." Cromartie is an enigma. Why is he saying this? He obviously doesn't care to educate Michelle. He could be doing it to be unsettling, which is a possibility, but it reads more like admiration to me. Much like Cameron, Cromartie is flirting with self-awareness. We've never seen a Terminator concoct whatever plan this is before, if it is even related to John Connor. But he seems to admire the simplicity of the mousetrap. Does Cromartie see himself as the trap, or does he want to be the trap? Is his self-development helping him, or hindering him? Meanwhile, John tries a new form of self-development. He hangs out with Riley, talking about the magazine stand. "Some of us people aren't okay," Riley comments, off-handedly, unsure about the perfect, cult-like world the glossy covers are presenting. It's here where John comments that he's not coming back to school, that he's being home schooled by his mom. While I've mentioned this development before, it's interesting seeing Dekker say it. I get the impression that he's lying, that he just doesn't want to go back to school. Which is interesting but never followed up on. Their fun is cut short as Riley spots Cameron across the plaza, frowning at the pair. They run for it and Cameron strides off in pursuit. It's like some bizarre version of the typical Terminator plot. In the desert, the Connors track down Cromartie's hideout, a dilapidated building which a mobile tower looms over. They've come loaded for metal - Derek's packing a grenade launcher, Sarah with a heavy shotgun... and Charley with a small pistol. Inside, there's no sign of Cromartie, but Derek goes to make sure. This leaves Sarah and Charley to find Michelle, whom has been wired up to an intricate trap consisting of a chair, four mousetraps, a lot of wires, and a block of plastique. If she moves, she'll explode. Sarah sends Charley to get the bomb diffusing kit from the truck. She and Michelle trade words. MICHELLE: What are you doing here? I know he brought you. But you didn't have to come. SARAH: Yes, I did. MICHELLE: For Charley? SARAH: I just did. Frankly, I thought it'd be easier. I thought you'd be dead. Charley returns with the bomb diffusing kit, and some bad news: Cromartie has totaled their car, yanking out the ignition system. So he's here, but they have no idea where he is, or his plan. Sarah can't figure it out, but the cogs are turning. "It doesn't make any sense," Sarah wonders, "He messes with the car and not us. We're human. Not that hard to kill." She pulls the plastique from the bottom of the chair. It's molding clay. The whole thing is a setup. Cromartie's lured them away from his primary target and broken their only means to get back to him quickly. "I should have known when you weren't dead," she snaps to Michelle. Sarah calls John, who is still out with Riley, watching her try on elaborate dresses. John lies to his mother, saying that he's safe and with Cameron. Derek walks the house, finding what seems to have been Cromartie's HQ. He's got a laptop there, and what looks to be some sort of detonator wired to the mobile tower. Sarah's phone call plays over the speakers - he's listening in! Elsewhere, sitting in a car, Cromartie places a phone call. The mobile tower detonates, crashing down into the house. Everyone lives, but that doesn't matter - as Derek points out, Cromartie now knows all their tricks. And, without the mobile tower, they have no way of contacting John to let him know. As the Connors limp out of the hideout, Cromatie calls John and, using the passcode, convinces him to meet him at the pier. And while Cromartie speeds back to LA in a jeep, Michelle is bleeding. It might be bad, as Charley points out, and he's not willing to make her move or walk. But Michelle, in a moment that makes me wish we saw more of her, declares she can walk, even though it's obvious she's not in a good state. Ellison meets with Weaver in her office. Weaver knows what Ellison knows, and Ellison knows that she knows. Weaver puts her cards on the table. For over three years, she has been working to reverse engineer some strange objects that had been found in an air crash. Weaver seizes on the fact that Ellison isn't bewildered by the obvious Terminator arm and other components that were part of the air crash debris. "What do you want from me?" Ellison asks. Weave doesn't smile. "I want what you want, Mr. Ellison. I want answers. But more than that, I want you to help me find another one." Cameron intercepts Riley by her car as she finishes shopping, demanding to know where John is. Riley gives her a quizzical look. John, however, is at the pier, and Cromartie is right there with him. The Connors waylay a van on the highway, highjacking it and kicking the driver to the roadside. Sarah speeds back to LA but Michelle is not handling it well. In the back of the van, Michelle Dixon is very obviously dying, crying and moaning and making inchoate sounds. Charley shouts and begs for Sarah to stop the van so he can help her ("Sarah, you've gotta stop now, please!") and Sarah snaps, "You should've stayed away!" "I'm here now and she's here now!" Charley shouts, "You've got to stop! Now!" And Sarah slams on the breaks, much to Derek's agitation, running her hands through her hair while Michelle's breathing gets short, quick and shallow. The reality that John Connor is the most important person in the world seems so far away when someone is dying right there. John is important to Charley, but so is Michelle. At the pier, John spies Cromartie, who is looking the other way. John steals some clothes to try and disguise himself, but Cromartie spots him in the process, and the chase is on. John sprints blindly and Cromartie follows at the speed of slow inevitability. Also looking for John, Cameron pauses to watch a street performing doing the robot, all painted in silver. Obviously, Cameron is a robot who enjoys dancing. It brings to mind the question as to whether she has ever met a T-1000. She moves on quickly, after a curious tilt of her head. Cromartie walks the boardwalk, finding John fishing. Cromartie grabs him by the shoulder and thrusts his pistol in his face, not saying a word. But the man is too old and too fat to be John, and Cromartie slaps the man's sunglasses from his face - either to be absolutely certain, or because he's irritated. Either way, it's a nice part of physical comedy. The fisherman gets away with just a slap, because John - having traded clothes with the fisherman - runs for it again, and Cromartie gives chase. Without breaking stride or changing his expression, he mechanically pulls his gun and snaps off a series of shots at John, who leaps into the water. Cromartie jumps in right behind him. With a dense metal skeleton, Cromartie sinks like a rock as John makes for the surface. Cromartie snags John by his jacket, looking to drag him down with him, where the water will do his job for him, but John manages to wrestle his way out of the jacket and gets free. John breaks through the water to find Cameron, standing up on the boardwalk, looking down on him. "A little help?!" John demands. "I don't swim," Cameron retorts. Later, they pull up in an alley, and neither John nor Cameron say a word about what happened. But when John sits in the back of the van, he places his hand in some of the drying blood from Michelle. He doesn't know what's happened today, but he knows it's another bit of blood on his hands. And he, stupidly, was hanging out with Riley for it. He came within inches of death. And death itself, Cromartie, strides out of the waves and onto the sand. At the hospital, Charley weeps on a bench. Michelle didn't make it. John comforts him. Later, Charley attends Michelle's funeral. Ellison is there, but the Connors aren't. Disgusted, Charley hurls Ellison' bible into the grave. The Connors are at home, eating dinner but being utterly silent. Cameron stares out the window. John stares at the table. Derek sits, his hands clasped in front of his face. Sarah stares at her meal. A pretend family. Over it, a pastor speaks: "Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly, we are being renewed day-by-day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory, that far outweighs them all. We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God. A house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For God has given us the spirit as a guarantee. And as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. We walk by faith, not by sight. And so fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary. What is unseen, eternal." But it is not inhumanity or a lack of compassion that prevents the Connors from attending, but the sheer reality of their situation. As Charley stalks away from the grave, Ellison watching after him, Cromartie stands some distance away, looking for any trace of the Connors. What is real - these fleeting lives, delusions of a normal life - is temporary. What is unreal - the war against the machines the fact that you can't ever go home again, can't ever unpierce the veil - is eternal.
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Feb 7, 2017 07:01
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:56 |
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Let's talk about this episode. First thing, the Dixons. Put yourself in Charley's boots. Sarah walked out of your life and, in the doing, turned out to be a terrorist. Yet, some part of you still loves her, even if she's come back as this tough and possibly unhinged warrior woman. You listen to her, you want to help her, but you don't really understand it. Sure, you know enough to be wary of Cameron and that the robots are actually real, but you don't understand the true extent of it. You don't understand that reality is now a war and the machines will come at you without warning. Unlike Ellison and Silberman - the true believers who've come out of it unhinged at worst or existentially displaced at best - you still think that maybe, just maybe, it isn't as bad as Sarah says it is. That it isn't a war fought on a temporal scale and with methods that are beyond imagining. So, you let your guard down by going to get a coke from the vending machine, turning your back on your wife. So, you let yourself be human and indulge in a meaningless fight about who-still-loves-who. And, just like that, Cromartie strolls in and abducts your wife, like he's having a pleasant afternoon walk. You're too busy thinking about half a dozen things to see that the Terminator only thinks about one: getting to John Connor. You're not even a target to him. You're just something he can manipulate so you'll bring him to his real target. So, you make a phone call you know you shouldn't ever make. You're scared and desperate and if anyone can help you rescue your wife, it'll be the people who the machine is after in the first place. You think you'll make it through. After all, Michelle manages to call you and prove that it's really her, perhaps the machine can make mistakes. But it doesn't. Everything it did it did for a reason. It doesn't think so much as it calculates. Sarah figures out it's a trap, but a killing machine wouldn't have a trap that is thwarted by something so simple as realising its existence. Michelle gets severely wounded, by pure chance, and Sarah is forced to choose between your wife, whom she knows you care about, and her son, who must live or the robots will win. So, simple calculus ensures that your wife dies. One life against countless others. And while you understand the necessity of it, you can't forgive Sarah for it, nor the idea that the God Ellison believes in must have a plan. Like I've said earlier, I like Charley as a character. His wife, too, feels underused. Both of those actors nail their parts in this episode. It's hard not to feel for Michelle as she's abducted into a war she probably didn't really believe in, and then is almost raked over the coals by Sarah's indifference that borders on outright cruelty. "I thought it'd be easier, I thought you'd be dead," is a hell of a thing to say. But Michelle, despite all that, rises to the occasion. Even terrified, she remains strong. Even bleeding out, she pushes onward. In a way, she's stronger than Charley. If there's one thing I think TSCC does consistently well, it is its female characters, even when they're merely supporing cast like Michelle. This might have something to do with the number of women on staff - it appears that TSCC has a fair amount of female producers, writers and directors. And, to be fair to the Dixons, we've never seen a Terminator concoct such a trap before. Really, we've never seen them do anything except pursue their target in a straight line. No one could have expected that Cromartie would have had such a thorough plan, even as obvious as it seems in hindsight. Cromartie used a lot of knowledge here - prediction, psychology, etc. - and didn't settle for anything except the most optimal result. Both he and Cameron exhibit more of a personality in this episode (particularly Cameron) and I wonder something. When Cromartie had seemingly killed the Connors in the shack, when he had called John and set up an ambush at the pier, did Cromartie think of anything? Was he happy that he was about to achieve his mission? Dillahunt plays him as neutral as always but it is something I wondered. Was there any pride in the fact that his plan worked, that he outwitted Sarah Connor? As for John and Riley, well, this episode feels like it should mark the end of his dalliance with her. After all, Charley's wife just died and John viewed him like a father. He has literal blood on his hands, again. He is not in control of his fate, the machines are, and if you take your eyes off the ball then they're going to curve one into your jaw. He ran away from Cameron and almost got himself killed. His mistake in giving Charley his phone number is what led to Cromartie learning all this new information. It's easy to understand why John is rebelling so strongly, and so badly, against everyone in his life, but it's certainly not fulfilling or interesting to watch.
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Feb 7, 2017 09:19
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