Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles through the current episode, “Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point,” originally broadcast November 24, 2008.

One of the things that the Sarah Connor Chronicles is examining, along with the Terminator series as a whole, is how everything is connected.  Andy Goode is connected to the Turk which is connected to Weaver who is connected to Ellison who investigated the Connors is connected to Derek Reese who is connected to Andy Goode.  Full circle.  And in a sort of “4400: Season One” way, it always made sense on the show.  And then this episode happened, and I had to ask the question: why does everything have to be connected?

I’m, of course, talking about Riley.  This episode quickly makes two revelations…that Jesse is in the future to save John from Cameron…and that Riley is her accomplice from the future.  The former makes complete sense; after all, one of the themes of the season is the danger Cameron poses.  She’s malfunctioned, periodically,the season (even Cromartie noticed a couple episodes back), and she has an emotional hold on John (in addition to her obvious physical advantage).

In fact, I’d probably guess that Jesse’s mission is to literally save John from Cameron.  In other words, I’m guessing that the season ends with another malfunction.  And since Jesse apparently comes from an alternate timeline from Derek, there’s a chance she comes from a future where Cameron kills John (at one point or another).  And, in case you’re wondering, I don’t read spoilers…that’s just a guess.

The latter revelation seems odd to me.  It’s one of those TV/movie bits where I’m supposed to smile and credit the writers with a fun twist.  “Ha!” I’m supposed to think.  “John thinks he’s saving Riley from this horrible truth, but it’s really her hiding a truth from him.  That’s irony!”

But it just feels like a stupid trick, and it makes the whole season look different.  I’m sure the writers put subtle little hits since her initial appearance, but I sure didn’t pick up on any of them.  And it just brings up the question I asked at the beginning…why?

Is there a reason why Riley couldn’t just be a girl that helps John become more human?  That helps drag him from his mother’s shadow…forcing him to make his own decisions and step out on his own?  That distracts him from the very stressful life of dodging bullets fired by futuristic cyborgs that have one mission: to destroy you?

No, Riley has to be from the future.  Ellison has to be hiding Cromartie’s body.  Weaver has to be a T-1000 with a mysterious motive.  And she has to rebuild Cromartie as the new voice of “John Henry.”  But we’ll get to more of that in a minute.

That being said, if you think about the whole “reveal” – it makes a bit of sense.  If Jesse is truly there to stop Cameron, step one is to eliminate John’s emotional attachment/attraction to her.  The best way for a boy to get over a girl is to introduce another girl.  And since these people know what John’s “type” is in the future, it would be easy to find a girl he’d be attracted to…in personality and appearance.

Riley shows up at the right time, hits John in the right emotional places, and she starts to fill in the places in John’s heart where Cameron has him.  Meanwhile, Jesse’s doing her surveillance work…waiting for the perfect time to strike.

I admit it makes sense, and I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt (because, let’s face it, I have no other choice).  I just don’t really see the point.

In fact, I was sort of hoping that Riley, not Cameron, who Jesse was sent to eliminate.  That’s what I thought was going to happen when I first saw the two of them together.  And I think that would’ve been a bit more interesting…as the future takes over another part of John’s life.  It would solidify the fact that he can’t outrun his destiny, and he can’t have a normal life.

I guess this does the same thing, but it just doesn’t feel right.  At least not yet.

I did really like the scene where she broke down in front of her family.  A lot.  Because if we’re supposed to believe that Riley is from the future, that was all we really needed.  Because, if the timeline is right, Riley would’ve grown up in a post-Judgment Day world.  She sees a world she doesn’t understand (just like John doesn’t really understand the future world), and she sees that everyone is taking it for granted.  While she, Jesse, Derek, and others are dedicating their lives to stopping Skynet….modern humans are going about their business, performing trivial rituals and letting it happen.

It was over the top, but it fit perfectly.  It’s exactly what I would say and exactly what I would’ve done in her shoes.  Because as far as she’s concerned, the whole past is an illusion, and it’s just a matter of time before the curtain is finally pulled back.

The main plot of the episode deals mostly with Sarah’s pursuit of the “three dots” from last episode.  She seems convinced that they will lead her to another piece of the Skynet puzzle, and it leads her to Dakara, a small company trying to create an AI.

And, at first, things seem to point that way.  Dakara’s corporate logo is identical to the three dots, they deal with the military, they’re trying to invest in a computer chip that will change the future (the Japanese chip from the chess match with the Turk from season one…in a nice continuity bit), and Sarah can help them.

The whole episode, everyone continually tells Sarah that she’s grasping at straws.  That the dots are a figment of her imagination that don’t mean anything, and in the end, it looks like Derek and company are right.  There is no Japanese chip, the whole thing was a setup, and the three dots are just a corporate logo.

It seems obvious that Sarah’s sanity is supposed to be a running theme in the season….or at least the past few episodes.  It was obvious that finally defeating Cromartie took a huge amount of her emotional energy, and she’s been struggling to regain it.  It was one of the reasons why I hoped we wouldn’t see him ever again….but again, we’ll get to that a little later.

I think it was nice that Dakara isn’t, at least now, connected with the future.  At least something isn’t.

The rest of the episode dealt with Ellison, Weaver, and Babylon (the AI Weaver is building…later renamed John Henry).  It starts with Ellison showing up and finding Dr. Sherman (the therapist we’ve seen a couple times) dead.  And, from the outside, it seems like John Henry is to blame.  With that knowledge, Ellison goes off to investigate.

I thought it was ambitious but odd to kill off the therapist because I thought he was going to play a much bigger role.  They teased that he’d be working with the AI, and it seemed like Sarah was going to be working through her problems with him.  But, in the end, it was all just a tease.  His death, however, seems to be the catalyst that will finally get the “Babylon/Weaver” story going.

Ellison does some investigating, and it finally ends with a face-to-face confrontation with John Henry (who, like before, only speaks through images).  After some quick interrogating, Ellison discovers that John Henry understands that his actions led go Sherman’s death, but that he has little understanding of death itself.  And, after a bit, he gets to his primary question….what image does John Henry associate with Sherman’s death.

And the AI’s answer is no answer.  He doesn’t associate anything with it.

Ellison concludes that John Henry knows a lot….information, rules, and commands…but he doesn’t have any ethics.  He doesn’t value human life.  Sounds a bit like the Skynet we know and love, huh?

And here we finally are.  At the end of the episode, Weaver explains the significance of John Henry’s name.  It’s from the folktale…blah blah blah…man stops the machine…blah blah blah…but he can’t stop progress.  Cut to Cromartie, his body at least, speaking for John Henry.

Don’t say I didn’t call it last week.

Now it could be worse…Cromartie isn’t back.  It seems that Sarah destroying the chip did destroy the machine that was after her son, but we are keeping the same actor.  And it just seems like a bit of a risk.

Because, like I’ve been saying, we’ve now had two consecutive episodes with Sarah under emotional distress.  Two of the last three episodes have ended with Sarah violently attacking an inanimate object because she can’t control herself.  And all of that is because of Cromartie’s death.

It’s supposed to mean something, and it needs to stay final.  Because making Cromartie’s body the shell of John Henry keeps alive the possibility that Cromartie somehow comes back.  And I just don’t think that should happen.

But this story has gotten interesting all of the sudden.  It’s obvious that John Henry / Babylon is expanding, and you have to think that Ellison (especially after seeing Cromartie re-animated) is rethinking what he’s doing.  At some point, he has to realize that he’s helping to build the monster he’s trying to fight…he’s just too smart not to.

Either way, after a bunch of going nowhere, that storyline is starting to get really interesting, and I like that.

All in all, there were a lot of twists and turns.  For my taste, there were too many, but they all have the potential to go in positive directions.  The show certainly has found its voice, and I trust the writers to be able to make the right decisions.  And things really seem to be setting up well for the final stretch of the season.

I wanted to end with a couple small notes.  First of all, I noticed that the mother of the computer programmer (Emma…who the computer was named after) was killed in a car wreck in 1984.  It might be a long shot, but that’s the year of the first movie.  Is there a chance that Emma died as collateral damage from the first terminator’s attack?

And, secondly, I like the small little attempts at socializing Cameron tries (the hair bit was pretty funny).  But then there are times, with her speech in Japanese, that she’s able to really impress Sarah.  I like the balance they’ve struck, and there are times when I’m almost fooled by her actions.

Plus, I think Summer Glau is super-cute.  And I can’t think of a better way to end this review.