Quotable:

"In cooking, as in all the arts, simplicity is a sign of perfection." - Curnonsky

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Sarah Connor Chronicles: Strange Things happen at the One Two Point

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is really a great show. Week after week it proves that far from the Prison Break, this show lives in a category of its own, a category of awesome scripts where it’s not all about action, explosions and fights.

Doesn’t mean there won’t be some, as illustrated by Sarah when she kicked the ass of some CEO who conned her, but they favor introspection, complex characters and psychology of people as well as of machines, as odd as it may sound. This was another pretty awesome episode, and the complexity of everything that’s going on is really one that makes me love the show even more, even if I don’t understand everything, because it all feels right — and under control.

One thing I have know for a long time was that Jesse was up to no good, or at least that she was lying to Dereck. She’s had weird behaviors, memories of new timelines no one ever heard of before, and more importantly I knew she had been following John and Dereck for some time before they actually met. This episode, Dereck found out and asked her to explain. She did, by saying that she had been sent back in time - though I’m not quite sure by whom - to help John, because in the new future he’s losing it, influenced by Cameron — a machine.

After years of being close to one in our present, future John is letting her take over and that doesn’t seem to fly by the people willing to die for him, because he makes bad decision and get people killed for the wrong reasons. That’s what she said, but is that really the truth? It’s hard to tell, because it sounds very possible, and understandable, but it came with another big reveal : if I was wondering why Riley was sticking around so much, it’s because she’s on a mission, too.

Like the others she came from the future, alongside Jesse, working to get John to drop Cameron or something. But was it me, or did it sound for a moment like she had something else to do to John? “You can do this. You have to do this.” Those are the words Jesse said to Riley, talking about her mission with John, and I’m not exactly sure what it is Riley has to do. Was it just continue to pretend she’s an innocent happy teenage girl, or was there more to it ?

Her little breakdown was interesting though, it’ll be fun to watch how she manages to keep fooling everyone, and where she’s going with this. Somehow, since Jesse decided to keep lying to Dereck, I can’t see anything good coming up… Because Dereck continues to be fooled by his feelings for Jesse, and still trust her. But she isn’t being completely honest with him, and maybe the motivations she gave him for coming back in time weren’t the entire truth either. Either way, in the future we have two groups of human, and maybe two groups of machines as well.

One of them is Skynet, and every day it seems more and more to be growing up in Weaver’s basement. Dr Sherman was helping it grow, and he’s been killed as a reward. To take over is our friend Ellison, who also gave “John Henry” a new face, the one of Cromartie. So it’s more than just a face actually. And I always wondered whether Cromartie and Weaver were on the same side or not because at times they seemed to both have different and contradictory objectives.

Just look here : Weaver is using Ellison. He got her Cromatie’s body, and he’s now teaching “John Henry”, so she needs him. A few weeks back, Skyney (I assume) sent a Terminator to Ellison’s place to kill him and take over his life. That simply doesn’t make any sense, not if both are on the side team, working towards the same objective, does it?

Weaver has been known to use terms such as “faith”, much like Cromartie who said he “believed” Ellison would guide him to Sarah. Those sort of human emotions attached to machines just don’t sound very Skynet-like to me, but I might be dead wrong here. One thing for sure however is that Cameron continues to get more at ease with it, as she was seen this week laughing and making jokes about hair… how un-robotic of her.

Speaking of faith, Sarah has been having some issues on that area lately. She’s been obsessed with the three dots, and their possible meaning and connection to the future. She pushed things very too far, ending up on a wrong track and conned by some CEO who apparently had nothing to do with Skynet at all — unless he actually does, and, again, Weaver is on to something else completely.

Either way, Sarah is losing it, and her mention of her time locked up in a mental institution during the “fight” (well, she was beating him up, he was… taking it) wasn’t a coincidence, her mental state might not be so stable, as illustrated in the bathroom when she punched the mirror out of frustration. (I’m also thinking Riley’s earlier comment about mirrors might have a connection with this…)

This show is definitely one of the best thing around, and I’m glad Fox is sticking with it.

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