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| Saturday, April 11, 2009 12:55 AM |
| On the Viewer - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Season 2, Episode 20 - "To the Lighthouse") |
 by Fëanor |
The "previously on" stuff in the opening has Charlie in it! And lots of other footage from very early on in the series, through to recent events. Exciting! And hey, Sarah's narrative monologues are back. Excellent.
Flashback to very young John in the jungle. John's favorite story as a kid was one about an old man who was cursed to be forever vigilant, to forever protect. Nice metaphor, for Sarah, for John, even for Cameron.
John Henry: "I don't think there are any ducklings on the mystical island." Heh.
Savannah helps John Henry have a breakthrough. She wants to change the rules of the game to include a new element, and he realizes it is indeed possible to change the rules. This could actually be a very dangerous thing for him to learn!
Something goes horribly awry with John Henry, but luckily our quick thinking programmer friend ran in and pulled the plug.
Ellison is a little uncomfortable with the tech term "daemons." Heh.
Hmm. Somebody probed John Henry from the outside, perhaps in an attempt to kill him. Another faction??
Turns out Charlie's a lighthouse keeper now, and Sarah set up a house for him. It's crazy all the secrets these people manage to keep from each other. Charlie's happy to see John, and treats him like a son, but Sarah he's not so happy to see. And that's understandable, given the circumstances of their last meeting.
Charlie and John are talking about dealing with loss, and then John's like, "So, what kind of explosives did you rig the beach with?" Because of course Charlie has to have an escape plan, in case the machines come. So insane.
Flashback to Sarah lovingly placing sleeping young John's hand on the handle of a gun. It's a man's life with the Connors!
Sarah's found a lump in her breast. Is it the cancer that will kill her? She thinks so. She knows she's going, and she doesn't trust Cameron and Derek enough to leave John in their hands. She's come to Charlie as someone she can trust, who can take care of John when she's gone.
I have to say, I think it's just a little bit corny that Charlie is now a lighthouse keeper. I mean, we know he's lonely; they didn't have to go ahead and give him the occupation that is the very symbol of loneliness.
First thing John Henry says when he's reactivated: "My God why hast thou forsaken me?" Turns out the time he was off was like an eternity in a hell of emptiness. He experienced death, and now resurrection. Loneliness and death are definitely the themes this episode.
John Henry says, "There is another." Another Skywalker? No, another AI like himself. I guess that's what attacked him.
This show is always surprising me. The lump in Sarah's breast is not a tumor; it's a cystic mass that's formed around a transmitter that was inserted into her, during that interrogation that I thought might have been a nightmare in a previous episode. Agents have already tracked her to the hospital, and found John at the lighthouse, and Derek and Cameron in the truck. Not good! And now she's going to short the transmitter out with defibrillator paddles. She's crazy! I guess I should be thankful she's not going to try to dig the transmitter out with her teeth.
This episode has taken a tense and exciting turn.
These guys don't know what they're dealing with as far as Cameron's concerned.
Sarah defibrillates her attacker. Awesome.
John Henry's enemy and counterpart AI is also his "brother," based on the same code base. It inserted a worm into computer systems around the world so it could use them to look for John Henry. Oh crap! The programmer of the original code base they're both based on was Miles Dyson at Cyberdyne!
Weaver: "This intelligence, your brother. What does he want?"
John Henry: "He wants what we all want, Miss Weaver. To survive."
I was wrong, these guys do know how to deal with Cameron. They knew just how to disable her. They're being directed by the other AI, John Henry's brother. This is starting to come together. Henry's brother is the one behind the weird company that was making the UFOs.
They killed the dog? That's cold.
Charlie's down. John's out there on his own now. Truly alone.
Another brutal episode! They're almost rivaling Battlestar Galactica with the "everything already sucked, but now it's even worse" plot lines. But I'll definitely be sticking around to see just how bad it gets. |
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