'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' questions Cameron's loyalty
I go away for one weekend, miss one episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," and miss the moment I'd been waiting for ever since we first met Riley. I thought maybe the Terminator gods were punishing me. Well, I'm back this week, and happy to report that the show is still out of its desert doldrums, and Riley didn't magically get reanimated.
At the start of the evening, the Connors didn't even know about the death of Riley, but Sarah had already decided that it was time to pack up and move away. I have absolutely no clue what prompted that decision, it seems like it's something she could have decided about 12 times already, but once Sarah learned that Riley's corpse had been found there was no talking her out of it.
When John learned of Riley's death, he was pretty convinced that Cameron had done it and Sarah and Derek agreed. Okay, Derek had some help believing that as Jesse was jabbering in his ear about it. To me though, the Connors' logic made no sense whatsoever. It was as if Sarah, Derek, and John had no idea how a Terminator worked. If Cameron had taken Riley out, Riley's body wouldn't have been found in the water with a bullet hole in the chest. No, Riley's body wouldn't have been found at all. If Cameron were to make a person disappear, they'd stay disappeared.
John eventually figured out that Cameron didn't do it, but Sarah and Derek didn't, which made less sense because they ought to know Terminators better than John. Terminators absolutely would have done something like place the phone call Cameron placed, the one where Cameron used Riley's voice and spoke to Riley's foster family. That's how Terminators act, they don't just dump bodies with bullet holes in the chest if they're trying to be stealthy, they obfuscate, they hide.
Sarah did opt to not kill Cameron tonight, though she claimed to have thought about it. Instead, she just burned Cameron's stash of spare parts. That was a pretty logical, pretty smart move. I understand why Cameron kept the parts -- so she could replace bits and pieces and continue on her mission even if she were injured -- but it was still probably smarter to get rid of them. We can't have some well meaning individual find the fancy future metal and start down the road of building Terminators again should the Connors actually succeed in their mission, can we?
In a wholly separate plot, Weaver's daughter, Savannah, was lured into the basement tonight by none other than my favorite character, John Henry. He wanted to "play hide and seek." Savannah, being a kid, agreed. It turned out that Savannah was in fact just a pawn in a game really being played between Ellison & Weaver on one side and John Henry on the other. John Henry would come up with a thought and Ellison and Weaver would have to guess it. At that point Ellison really ought to have figured out that Weaver was metal (or at least that there was something really wrong with her) because Weaver was all for playing along.
They found Savannah eventually, and Ellison gave John Henry a good, stern, talking to, but I have to believe that Ellison's admonitions went in one ear and out the other. Talking to a child-like creation like John Henry is probably about as easy as talking to my two and a half year old when she hasn't had her afternoon nap -- you can talk till your blue in the face and they can act like they're listening and will follow your instructions, but you wait two seconds and they go straight back to what they were doing before.
Odds and ends:
- We got several flashbacks tonight about a sub mission Jesse went on in the future with a Terminator driving the boat and some secret mission for John taking place. Seems like that's going to be a big thing next week, but for now it has me scratching my head as to where they're going. Any thoughts?
- Cameron had a moment or two tonight when she (or someone else) was contemplating if she was going to go all evil Terminator and smite all the Connors. I am wholly against Cameron going evil again, because if she does John ought to destroy her (even if she then reverts back to being good), but I have no faith John will destroy her so I'd rather not see the show head down that path. And that, my friends, brings us to our first poll:
The TV and Film Guy's Reviews - we smite evil.
I've decided that I might as well just sit back, watch and enjoy the show at this point as major plot points are no longer making any sense. Sarah is shocked that Cameron did not follow her orders to destroy miscellaneous terminator components, but was never concerned on following up on what happened to the entire terminator ch***is that they buried in Mexico. Other than the other principles, the newly indoctrinated Ellison WAS THE ONLY OTHER PERSON THERE. Who else do they think took it? EfraÃn Alcaraz Montes de Oca?
As for the Ellison character, at no point in his dealings with Catherine Weaver have the writer's maintained character continuity. This is a former detective. They are naturally su****ious, untrusting and wary. The character just lost a job and suddenly a company is interested despite the way that character's final mission went down. Trying to apprehend a single suspect more then a dozen men were unusually killed. No one gets a prestigious job right after that. Then having learned the truth behind the Connor fugitives, the writers inexplicably have the character BRING THE TERMINATOR to his new good-natured boss. Huh???
Lying has been firmly established as the "de rigueur" character trait. When have you encountered a show like this?
Flashbacks to the future have increased. Will Michael J. Fox appear in the finale? I'm still down that viewers will be cliff-hangered. What are there? Four or five episodes left? Do I also ***ume correctly that these airings will occur before May sweeps? Obviously Fox has something better to establish the advertisement benchmarks. THIS IS GENERALLY AN INDICIUM OF A TERMINUS POINT.
Lastly, Jesse was sent back to our present with the memories of the sub mission, I'm going to guess that whatever's in the box identified needs something from our present to either occur or be modified. Excellent. Accentuate all the causality questions in order to featherbed this cliff-hanger!
The show is completely up its own ***. Given the shakeup at Fox TV and the atrocious ratings the last few weeks, I really wouldn't be shocked if this is the last episode that ever airs.
As far as that poll, "producers" and "smart" belong nowhere near each other. The producers have completely blown it with this show.
The people who are complaining about this show simply can't handle a show that doesn't spoonfeed the answers every week. They must never watch Galactica or Heroes either.
This episode was fine and I have an interesting guess regarding Jesse. Anyone remember the flashback episode where Cameron -- the real, flesh and blood Cameron -- met a terminator that looked just like her? And the episode last year where a terminator actually spent time married to a human and did all the things married humans do like sleep together? I'm just saying.
lol, is Heroes supposed to be an example of a good show? One of the few shows worse than T:SCC. Both have the same problem also, people aren't complaining about the shows anymore; they've turned them off.
my guess is the package has something to do with Cameron...something that explains why Jesse is so determined to get Cameron out of John's life...maybe he risks his people to get something for or to help Cameron and Jesse feels his attachment to her is unhealthy if he's willing to do that...just my guess...btw, I have found the last few eps extremely entertaining...
So it appears that Jesse is a terminator, right? She's always seemed a little off to me and in this episode with her moving the lamp a milimeter of an inch just made her seem really, really weird. She's just weird in general.
I agree with what has been said about character continuity and Sarah and Derke being so quick to ***ume Cameron killed Riley doesn't make sense considering how they know how terminators operate.
Regarding Ellison, what a patsy. His character has gone from being a hardcore, running down all leads, type of guy to a dude who sits in his office eating at his desk. While he did react somewhat to Weaver wanting to "play" with John Henry, his reaction wasn't one of recognition or su****ion that Weaver must be metal. It was more like "Boy, this woman is odd." The fact that Ellison is not wondering what the deal is with Weaver shows how the show's writers let this character down this season.
i must have missed a few episodes ( i did actually when it was on mondays against Chuck ) but when did Weaver get a daughter ??? is the daughter a Terminator too ????
@ERICinHB:
Weaver has always had a human daughter. Catherine Weaver was actually a married human with the daughter Savannah. We haven't actually seen the back-story, but there was a helicopter accident with Weaver and her husband on board and the T-1001 terminator took on the likeness of Catherine Weaver.
I think it's implied that the T-1001 killed Catherine, took her form and may have (probably?) caused the chopper accident that killed the husband in order to ***ume control of the company. I don't recall if Catherine or her husband was running the company prior to the accident.
So far she has shown no interest in hunting down resistance fighters like the Connor's and may have a different agenda than the Skynet we all know about from the films.
I re-watched last week's episode just before watching this one and upon second viewing, I'm actually more impressed with many aspects on this show. The overall production value is very good. From the set designs, to the lighting, to the camera work, this is a well set and shot TV series. For the most part, the acting is also superb. It's the writing that's a bit of a weak link.
No TV series is perfect. Even more so a TV series in this genre.
If this show were on the Sci Fi channel instead of a major network, there would be far less complaining about the slow pacing and writing/continuity errors (see BSG). Viewers would sit back and just enjoy the show for what it is and praise the good versus criticizing the bad.
Last night was the best episode in months. The submarine scenes reminded me how dreadfully claustrophobic Alien felt.
The women on the show are all really beautiful.The show is often creepy, sad, and wonderful.