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| Saturday, December 20, 2008 08:34 AM |
| On the Viewer - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Season 2, Episode 11, "Self Made Man") |
 by Fëanor |
Another pseudo-liveblog for you:
There's a weird, seemingly apropos nothing opening featuring a fire at a '20s New Year's party. Its connection to the show's storyline is quickly made clear: Terminators have been going back as far as the '20s! That's awesome, but... why? They're not going to do a sequence set in the past where the whole cast plays their own ancestors, like in Dark Shadows, are they?
Uh... why does Cameron have a secret midnight study buddy? That she's been telling all their secrets to?? Well, okay, not really. She's been telling him severely edited versions of their recent adventures. But, man, everybody has so many secrets!
Now we're bringing The Sheik and Valentino into it! I love the image of a Terminator as a '20s bank robber with a tommy gun.
Man, Riley really has John wrapped around her finger. She's kind of pushing it, though.
Myron Stark, the '20s Terminator, was buying up land and building real estate in the area. Paving the way for the installation of Skynet?
Riley and John: what a pair! A klepto and a maniac. She asks him if he wants to talk about his problems. He responds, "Sometimes, yes. Mostly, no." Heh.
Something I just thought of: wouldn't Riley have a number and barcode tattooed on her arm from being in a Terminator prison camp? Maybe she was never in a camp?
Cameron, explaining why she's so strong: "I work out." Heh.
Oh, this is interesting! The fire in the '20s speakeasy was started by the arrival of the Terminator, via the blue bubble of time travel. Huh. Nice reference, Cameron. "It's just like in The Wizard of Oz when the house falls on the witch." It is rather like that...
In the old picture Cameron saw him in, Myron was looking at the sky to determine the date. That's awesome. He wasn't supposed to be there, not then. The death of a particular man in the fire caused by the Terminator's arrival led to an alteration in the timeline; because he didn't live, a building was not built that was integral to the future. So the Terminator went into real estate so he could build the building and keep the timeline secure. That's fantastic. He came in on the wrong New Year's Eve. It was supposed to be New Year's Eve 2010, inside that building. As soon as he got the building built, he must have gone into hybernation, waiting for the right year to come around. He must still be in the building! Such a great idea, and I love the final fight. But his mission, to kill the Mayor: what was its purpose? Why was the Mayor important? I wonder if they'll explain that eventually, or it'll just be something that goes unexplained. After all, if Skynet wanted to do it, we know it was bad, and therefore had to be stopped. So Cameron really didn't need to know the whys and wherefores. She just needed to terminate. It's what she does, after all.
Poor Eric. Cameron's a little obvious with him about the whole "I'm a robot" thing. Luckily he didn't pick up on it, but Skynet seriously needs to do a better job on the programming that allows them to blend in with humans.
Ouch - the ending where Cameron just uses her donut trick on the next person, and doesn't worry about the fact that Eric's not there anymore. So cold and heartless. Really forces you to remember that she's just a machine.
Another excellent episode, with the fascinating search through historical records to solve an old mystery, plus a further examination of Cameron as a character, and her further examination of humanity, friendship, and emotion through her interaction with Eric. Plus the continuing transformation of John and Riley's relationship. She's getting him to spill more and more about his past. She might get him to tell her everything one of these days. I'm not sure what she'll have achieved, though, since it's clear she already knows about all that stuff. I guess it'll show that he trusts her. But that trust is going to fall apart when he inevitably finds out who she really is, which is very possibly going to drive him back to Cameron even more firmly, thus creating the future Riley and Jesse are trying to prevent. They should have perhaps planned this better... |
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