Born to Fail - part 1

[roxybisquaint]

It's been a week now and after my fourth viewing of Born To Run, it doesn't make me miserable anymore. I guess I finally desensitized to what I disliked and that freed me up to think about the rest. I've got gripes and grievances, nits to pick and sundries to poke. But there are good moments to talk about too (and lots of speculation to be done).



I'll show you my shielded nuclear power source if you show me yours

If Cameron's power supply was damaged, wouldn't John have cancer too? Even so, if she believed it could be leaking radiation, why the hell would she let him touch it? And she really had to be laying down and he had to be on top of her to get to it? Please. That scene just didn't add up. It was either a really flimsy setup for Jameron cheers or it was a weak manipulation by Cameron that worked because the blood had left John's brain. I tend to think the latter. Since we just had the Jesse story wherein she spent all season trying to win future war by messing with John's love life, I really hope we're not going to find out Cameron was doing the same. But at this point it's looking that way.

Regardless, to try to get us to the point of John choosing to throw away everything to follow Cameron through time, we needed something like that — a moment of intimacy to push him from being unsure about his feelings for Cameron to deciding he loves her and can't live without her. So forced and awkward as it was, John checking out her breasts, climbing on top of her and slipping his fingers in her, um, sliced open chest, served a purpose.

Massive points for the not!sex cleverness of the scene, but it was disturbing on many levels. From the sadomasochistic not!foreplay with the knife to the "that's good, that's perfect" intensity of John realizing Cameron isn't the cause of mom's cancer, one thing is clear: that boy needs some therapy. I don't think John actually wants to fuck his mother, but the connection between Cameron and Sarah was clear...

In Charley's house in the pilot, Sarah was sitting on John's bed, watching him sleep. He jolts awake, tells her it's freaky when she does that and asks, "what's going on?" She tells him they have to go.

In the motel, Cameron was sitting on John's bed, watching him sleep. He jolts awake, tells her not to do that because his mom used to do it and he hates it. Then he asks, "what's going on?" Not!sex happens and she tells him it's time to go.

Aside from the squickiness of the similarity of those scenes, the other significance is that they both ultimately lead to a time jump.



The time jump

While the jump has the potential to push the story too far from its roots (and jackknife a giant puh-lease on the already congested time travel highway), it's also an interesting way to explore the what if scenario of a future war without John Connor. So I didn't mind the jump and I'm actually curious to see how it plays out. What I did mind, though — what I absolutely hated — was the way it happened:

John ditched his mother, who he believed had cancer, and bailed on trying to stop the apocalypse so he could jump to the future with some liquid metal he'd just met (whose motives were questionable at best and who was verbally bitch-slapping his mom all over the place) to pursue his one true love: a computer chip. I can't cheer that. I can't be wowed by that. I can't even pretend to enjoy that. It's fucked up and I'm not okay with it. Sarah, however, was okay with it. Um, what?

When John got aroused by touching Cameron's icy cold heart power supply, I should've known this wouldn't end well. I realize he's only 17 and doesn't always have the best judgement. He makes mistakes and acts rather impulsively and irresponsibly at times. I get that. In fact I like a flawed John Connor. I like that the show didn't present him as this perfect teenage kid that's ready to take on the role of saving the world. But we've gone through a lot with him this season and throwing away everything his life has been about felt like a major step backwards.

So we sort of circled back around to Samson & Delilah, but instead of John being unable to let Cameron go because he viewed her as a better protector than his mom, this time he was unable to let Cameron go because he loves her. The mother/lover blurring was getting thick anyway, so I'm glad it's over. I think I'm glad John finally came out of the closet as a cyborg lover and moved out of 2009. And it was fun that he moved in with dad. Check the final VO line in my faux S&D script from last August :D

I'd like to think the reason Sarah let John go is because she figures he's better off with Cameron in the future than alone in the present watching her die (just like when she took him to Charley). I'd still have a hard time with that, but at least it would carry some emotional weight. The other possibility is that Cameron's attempt to manipulate Sarah with "humans are the problem" actually sort of worked. When she was stepping out of the bubble, though, she said "John, we can't." We can't. Sarah didn't want him to go, didn't think he should go. So that pretty well cancels out any notion that she was thinking he'd be better off leaving — better off being away from her.

In "Samson & Delilah", Sarah told John "Maybe you could fix her. I know you want to try, but I can't let you." And we know how that ended up. In "Today is the Day pt1", she told Cameron she'd thought about taking her out with Derek's sniper rifle but she didn't because John would never have forgiven her. So maybe the desperation in John's voice when he said, "he's got her chip, he's got her," made Sarah realize she'd truly lost him to Cameron.

I still don't know if Sarah thought John loved Cameron or was bonded to her like family or what, but at the very least, Sarah understood that John had a powerful attachment to her and there was nothing she could do or say to come between that. So she let him go and she stayed behind to carry on the fight alone. It doesn't work for me, but that's all I can come up with so far.



Without John, your life has no purpose

The series started with Sarah telling John she'd stop Skynet and she reiterated that as he was leaving. So she still has a mission, still has a goal, still has a purpose and that's why she stepped out of the bubble. But what happens to Sarah when she doesn't have her son to fight for anymore? John has sort of been Sarah's moral compass. How could she raise him up to save humanity if she gave up her own in the process? So she's been fighting the good fight for his sake. She has "participated in the miraculous and the terrible and through it all... maintained a moral and good soul." Well, mostly.

She'll continue to battle Kaliba and work to stop judgement day, and with John gone, I think we can be sure she'll throw herself into it like never before. Cancer or no cancer, you know the woman will fight on until she collapses. But will she still be fighting for John or fighting for humanity or will she just be fighting because it's all she knows? Will she start to believe, as Ellison said, that she's got nothing left to lose? "There's always something to lose," though. I think that something is her soul.

Here's bad news...



Sarah and John failed

Sarah never did stop Skynet and John never did lead the resistance. There was no John Connor when the resistance was formed. He vanished off the face of the earth in 2009 and didn’t resurface until 2027(?). And since it's a post-apocalyptic world, we know judgment day happened. It gets worse. With John at one end of the timeline and Sarah at the other end of that same timeline, it's a closed system. The future IS set now. It's a done deal... They failed.

Assuming judgement day is still set at April 21, 2011, Sarah might spend the next two years running from the law, protecting Savannah, looking for Danny Dyson, and battling Kaliba. But whatever she does has already happened at John's end and it failed to stop the apocalypse. John not leading the resistance might not be a failure. Whoever did form it might be doing an awesome job. I really doubt that, though. I think we're likely to find out that this future is hell and the resistance is losing.

Can their failures be erased? Of course. But only if John jumps back. That would free up the path to an unknown future again. In the meantime, we'll be spending time with Sarah doing things that ultimately don't matter and we'll be spending time with John maybe learning things that won't matter until he comes back. So, cool or not, I think it's likely to be a short stay.



Cause and effect

I got deep into time travel once before and settled on multiple timelines (multiverse) in TSCC. I'm still inclined to think that's what we have going on, despite a few discrepancies in the show. Jesse and Derek established the existence of multiple futures, which I translate into multiple timelines. But it's possible the writers are using some sort of single timeline theory in which anything can happen. I hope not because that gets a little Back to the Future hokey. But I do think we've hit a point where we need to know. When you hurtle John Connor into future war, it's time to set some ground rules.

With characters at both ends of the spectrum, we'll see the result of everything that happens in between. From Sarah's perspective, anything can happen, but from John's perspective it's all history. Sarah won't know what became of John after he jumped or know the future effects of her actions. But John may learn a bit about what his mom did after he jumped away in 2009. By giving us both stories, it could be that we'll sort of get a real-time view of Sarah's impact on the future. In other words, we might get to see the cause of what John sees and the effect of what Sarah does. I don't think that's a long-lasting way to tell a story, but it could be interesting in the short term.



One possible future, I don't know tech stuff

I've seen a lot of speculation that John has jumped to a point before he became the leader of the resistance. Also that the out-of-focus teen John behind Derek in the time chamber in "Dungeons & Dragons" was an actual reveal of how old future!John really was. That's incorrect. This is an alternate future, not one that's been hinted at and not a precursor to what we already knew. Here's why:

- In "Dungeons & Dragons", Cameron told John that he spent 6 years in a Skynet work camp with Kyle from 2015-2021. We learned in "What He Beheld" that Kyle was 8 on judgement day (2011), so that would've made him 12 when he and John first got captured. Kyle in this current future is a grown man.

- In "What He Beheld", Derek told John that he celebrated his (John's) 30th birthday with him. That would mean Derek couldn't be sent back on his time travel mission for at least 13 years. And Derek is certainly not 13 years younger right now than what we knew him to be in 2007 (he'd be about 18 years old if he was).

- In "Goodbye to All that", Derek said Martin Bedell helped John form the resistance. Clearly the resistance is already formed.

As for when John is, we can use Allison as a marker. She was probably born in 2008 because her mom was pregnant when Cam called her in "Allison from Palmdale". And she's what, about 18 now? So I'd estimate John to have landed in 2026 or maybe 2027.

John could stay, join the resistance, work his way up the ranks and maybe one day lead the fight. But it would take a long time and it would absolutely be a different story than what we've heard to date. I don't see that happening. Aside from believing Sarah's story is a dead end until John returns, the biggest drawback to him staying in the future is it essentially splits the show into two separate stories: John's and Sarah's. And since she won't have any clue what he's up to, it wouldn't exactly be The Sarah Connor Chronicles anymore. Don't even start with the "it's not about the title character anyway" comments.


I've got lots more to talk about but I'm just going to stop here for now.

Comments

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

First off, can someone explain the exclamation points? (Not!Sex, Future!John?) I think I've seen them in various blogs as if it's some commonly accepted Terminator grammar. Who came up with that?

When I first watched the episode, I didn't have a problem with Sarah staying. Now that I've read a few reviews that DO have a problem I can see why, but ultimately I don't have a problem with it because it was a decision made in about 10 seconds where there were no real good choices. Sarah didn't want either of them to go. I think when she stepped out he was hoping he might follow her. By the time it was clear that he wouldn't it was either jump back in at the last second or make peace with the whole thing.

Likewise, John probably knew he was making a dumb choice but Weaver was forcing him to make a decision quickly. He's still sorting out his feelings for Cameron, but it was a choice between "never see her again" and "leave now and hope Weaver's plan doesn't suck."

Both characters may have made the wrong choice there, but I can't blame them for bad decision making given the circumstances. And I think the storytelling options that this ending opens up are so huge that I'm willing to roll with it.

Characters are largely defined by their relationships to other characters. John by himself is not John with Sarah is not John with Cameron. So far, John and Sarah have always been predominantly defined by their mother/son relationship. I think the "Without John, you are nothing" is a point they'll be directly addressing. What DOES happen to Sarah Connor when you take away her primary motivation? Is her life meaningless, or does she find something new to define herself by?

-


Random note: Lately I've felt that the proper name for this show would have been "The Connor Chronicles." A) It rolls off the tongue better, B) it fits better with the story that is really worth telling. This is not the story of a mother. It's the story of a mother's relationship with her son. It also helps with the POV character issue. I suspect the audience is loosely divided into the generation that saw Terminator when it first came out, who are now parents, and a newer generation of young adults. The former may identify better with Sarah, the latter with John.

Some other bloggers expressed frustration with Sarah's "failure." I can see how, if Sarah was your POV character this ending may have sucked royally. I'm a 22 year old male, John Connor pretty much directly represents me here, and the ending was extremely John-centric.

[motoki.livejournal.com]

re: I think the "Without John, you are nothing" is a point they'll be directly addressing. What DOES happen to Sarah Connor when you take away her primary motivation? Is her life meaningless, or does she find something new to define herself by?

**

Good point. So far Sarah has been defined by John by all of her adult life and half of her entire life, since she was that 18 year old waitress.

So what happens when you take John out of the equation? Does she have a purpose, does she exist outside of him and preparing him for the future. Well of course she does but it's been so long since Sarah outside of John has been a priority or even a thought for her I don't know how she would function. What direction she'd go in.

It seems she'd throw herself into stopping Skynet/Kaliba, because ultimately her purpose in John WAS to stop Skynet, so even without him I think she'd just find another way to get to that purpose.

I'm not so bothered by her letting him go. I think figuratively and emotionally she had already done that anyway when she brought him to the Lighthouse and then even morseo when she ended up in prison. That he broke her out if anything to me only cemented that John's an adult and will do what he wants regardless of what she says or thinks. Part of being a parent in learning to let go.

But Sarah failing? That bugs me. A lot. Because ultimately it is her story primarily, I feel.

Now if we get anymore of the show, it will be bifurcated with a John story in one time, and a Sarah story in another. And while I am curious to see where Sarah goes, I wish there was a way to do that without having it predetermined that she fails.

Is there a way the past might not be set? In some weird, crazy, quantum, multiple fluctuating realities way I actually think it could be possible, but that gets so uber complicated and mind boggling I don't think the really want to go there.

So what we're left with is Sarah connor failing. And the only simple way to fix that is John coming back. That being the case, I agree with Roxy, the stay needs to be a short one. John gets the Ghost of Christmas Future and It's a (not so) Wonderful Life and all that business, learns from it and comes back.

But I don't like that it takes John to 'fix' the track that Sarah's on. I want Sarah to fix Sarah. :-/

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I expect John's Future Oz to last about 6 episodes. But one thing that's been bothering me: sooner or later John gets to go back in time, and you'd think he'd try to go back to the moment he left. So rather than telling two parallel stories, Season 3 could begin with John coming back (but having aged several months/years), and his future journey is gradually revealed to us in flashback.

The one problem with that is it totally ruins the drama of Sarah and John's final moments together, and we lose the possibility of watching the long term consequences of Sarah's actions.

I agree it'd be a bad move to have Sarah be failing utterly and require John to come back and save her. But I'm not sure it's clear that Sarah "failed" per se. Obviously she didn't stop Skynet. That doesn't mean she couldn't have slowed it down or tilted the odds dramatically. Asides, if we're defining Sarah's success as stopping Skynet, then she ALWAYS failed. Her success so far had largely been defined by protecting and teaching her son.

Which I suppose is a little lame, from a feminist perspective. But it's also nothing new.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

I agree with all that. Having John return from months or years spent in the future would negate the impact of the finale. And I also don't want him to return at some point later to save the day.

For this set-up to work, I think we need to see Sarah's struggle with the fight against Skynet in which John is no longer her focus. in other words, she needs to find herself — find her reason for fighting beyond changing her son's fate. And I think we need for John to come back with a sense of purpose. He's always been told who he is, but he's never had any reason to choose that path for himself. Now he'll have one.

I know I've said Sarah failed because she didn't stop judgement day, but I think you're right that she doesn't end up a total failure. That's why I'm hoping that if we're going to spend some time in the future with John, that we'll actually see some positive results of her struggle. Maybe judgement day did happen later. Maybe machines are less advanced in that future. if we don't see that she accomplished something positive in his absence then it really will amount to him saving the day when he returns.

So season 3, I think, is going to be about mother and son finding their purpose independent of each other, but also finding out that they are much stronger when fighting the good fight for the sake of humanity together.

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

>>>So season 3, I think, is going to be about mother and son finding their purpose independent of each other, but also finding out that they are much stronger when fighting the good fight for the sake of humanity together

I agree, this is likely to be the theme, and it's a good one. But I'm curious exactly how "successful" Sarah'd need to be for you to feel like John wasn't coming back to save her. Is it enough for her to blow up some factory and postpone it a bit?

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

I'm curious exactly how "successful" Sarah'd need to be for you to feel like John wasn't coming back to save her. Is it enough for her to blow up some factory and postpone it a bit?

Heh. Good question. I'm not sure that's one I can even answer.

I'm mainly concerned that John could return, armed with info that significantly helps the present-day battle. From a story standpoint, it's a bit of a cheat and has the potential to dilute the struggle. In order to balance that, Sarah needs to have had enough success that John's return won't amount to something like "hey mom, I know what to do to stop Kaliba now and you've been going about it the wrong way."

John took off in the middle of the fight (Kaliba is still out there and judgement day is around the corner) on a personal quest to chase down Cameron. It can be argued that it was a brave or valiant thing to do for love, but in terms of the fight it was completely irresponsible. So I don't want to see that rewarded by having him return in such a way that it makes it seem like it was a good thing he went or that Sarah was stupid to have stayed behind.

My hope is that John's trip to the future will end up being more about personal growth — finding his purpose and understanding the importance of his role in all this. And he'll come back ready to rejoin the fight with a dedication and maturity we've not seen in him before.

[trystanknight.livejournal.com]

Josh Friedman is a realist , you can see it in the way he writes, he wants to GROUND the Terminator franchise and make it real.

Realism in writing means understanding that life isn't fair. Karma doesn't always get people in the end. For every OJ Simpson that goes to jail, another goes free. Not everybody gets theirs in the end. I'm not sure I can see your point of view on not wanting to see John rewarded for something in such a realistic show - not every bad choice has consequences, and not every good choice leads to rewards.

It was irresponsible, but he's also a teenage boy, and having formerly (we hope) been one of those, I can tell you that sometimes we think with the wrong brain, or we think with emotion instead of intellect.

And as for Cameron getting John on top of her - of COURSE she could've done that in any position she wanted, but remember, this is the same girl who knew she was wearing short-shorts and cast off her outer shirt before walking in to talk to John about how lonely he is. She's *been* manipulating him from day one. The one-and-only reason I wanted to see the Jessie Plotline resolve to completion is I DO believe that Cameron is manipulating John towards some end ,and I was hoping Jessie would figure out what was going on, or at least induce John to. But then again, if we reveal Cam's motivations too early, the show fizzles. Bleh.

BTW - Overall, I still adore reading these posts. My reactions to the scenes are different than yours, but you have a highly analytical mind and you come up with questions and answers I still fail to think of, and that's awesome. If anyone needs to know this is a good show, all they have to do is ask us how often the show has made us *Think*. That's all I ask of any show, and it's given us that in spades.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

She's *been* manipulating him from day one.

Ah, so I'm not crazy in thinking that? Good because that's what everything is really pointing to now, I think. What I've been back and forth on a lot is whether Cameron is manipulating him for good reasons or bad. I'm still undecided, but leaning towards bad.


if we reveal Cam's motivations too early, the show fizzles.

Agreed. Cameron's the key to it all and once we learn everything about her, we may be at the end of the story.

If anyone needs to know this is a good show, all they have to do is ask us how often the show has made us *Think*

God yes. This show makes me think more than any other show. It's great fun :)

[motoki.livejournal.com]

Replying to myself here :p

But on the syubject of the past NOT being fixed and Terminator, I was reminded of the S.M. Stirling post T2 trilogy that came out several years back. I'm reading through the first book, Infiltrator now. I quite like it.

Here's an excerpt of a memory that Serena Burns, an I-950 (a grown human with cybernetic implants, basically a Borg) recalls of herself communicating with Skynet with regards to her being sent back in time and why:

*****

She still heard the memories in her mind, the memories of merging with her creator:

There are temporal anomalies. Files show that I became sentient in the year 1997 and began my counterattack against my creators at that time. Files also record that this happened years later and in a different location. There are further instances of… blurring. Some are trivial details. Others are in areas of high priority. Some show that you played an important role in my creation. Others do not list an I-950 unit in times antecedent to this at all.

A part of her consciousness had remained separate even in total linkage; enough to frame a question.

What is happening? If she had been fully individuated, she would have felt disorientation, even fear. Cause-and-effect relationships were the foundation of her worldview.

There is insufficient data for definitive analysis. The highest probability is that there is a… temporal fluctuation involved. Time is malleable but not easily manipulated. It has an… —a complex mathematical formula followed, too esoteric for her to grasp—in verbal terms, it has an inertia. When artificially diverted, it seeks to resume its original path. While matters are in doubt, several alternative world-lines can coexist in a state of quantum superimposition.

Like Schrödinger's cat, she had thought/shared/communicated.

Correct. A ghostly machine analogue of irony tinged the machine's communication: find in answer to the question, which you are about to formulate, it is inherently impossible to say which alternative will become "real." That sector of our world-lines is by its nature inaccessible to us, no matter how we double back through time. It is a… potential.

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

Huh. That's an interesting way of looking at it. I don't have the background to know how much sense it actually makes, but I'd be willing to roll with it if that's the one they chose.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

I have no idea where the exclamation point thing started, but it's just a silly way to combine terms.

Both characters may have made the wrong choice there, but I can't blame them for bad decision making given the circumstances.

Even considering how little time they had in with the time jump choices, I still felt it was out of character for both. I can look back over the last quarter of season and see things that sort of lead to that, but I just didn't think they were anywhere near strong enough. I don't feel like the show is ruined or anything because of it, though. I have no doubt the drama we get as a result of their decisions will be very good and the reason they made those decisions will become even clearer.

Lately I've felt that the proper name for this show would have been "The Connor Chronicles."

Dude. Didn't I say don't go there?!!!!!!! ;)

I can see how, if Sarah was your POV character this ending may have sucked royally. I'm a 22 year old male, John Connor pretty much directly represents me here, and the ending was extremely John-centric.

The whole reason I watched this show to begin with is because it was about Sarah Connor — the story of Sarah and John told more or less from Sarah's POV. The show moved away from her POV a bit this season and ending very John-centric makes me think they'll be moving even further away from it next season. So no, that doesn't make me happy at all.

The film franchise has continued on without Sarah... T3 was about John Connor. T4 is about John Connor. So I want my freaking Sarah Connor TV show to keep her central to the story. When they get the balance right, it works for everyone. No one seemed to have any complaints about anyone getting too much focus in the first season. I think the issue with season 2 is they got too character-centric with too many episodes. So it's not that I mind John having a cool story, I just don't want it to be because they tossed Sarah aside. The season 1 approach is what I hope for in season 3.

ETA: hope you didn't just get spammed with all my edits!

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

Until recently, it didn't even occur to me that anyone was crazy in love with Season 1. I felt it got better as it went on, but there was nothing there that made be go "holy crap, this is a really thought provoking story." Oddly, one of the very things that made me feel "meh" about it was the focus on John at School. The story felt less like making a TV show about Terminator and more like making Terminator into a TV show... a stereotypical "boy-goes-to-school-with-various-supernatural-phenomenon-going-on" show.

With Season 2, almost every single episode made me go "Woah, that's intense" at the end (the only exceptions being the Kaliba episodes in the middle. I think that had less to do with their focus on Sarah and more to do with just being mediocre episodes). I actually appreciated the fact that each episode focused on different people (often people who we'd never see again) because it showed how wide the psychological ramifications of this Terminatin' business was. I loved "Goodbye to All That" specifically because it got me to think about what being a mother would be like, and how precious it is to have a "normal" relationship with your child, which Sarah doesn't get to have. I loved watching the family get torn apart in Alpine Fields, I loved trying to figure out what Cameron was actually feeling (if anything) in Self Made Man.

I loved the last 5 episodes as well, but that largely was because they were focusing on two new characters - John Henry and Savanah - who I hadn't gotten to see much of before, and who were both adorable in their own way. I don't care much whether they focus on ensemble episodes or single-character-driven ones in Season 3, but I think the show's ability to highlight the struggles of individuals is one of its strengths.

>Dude. Didn't I say don't go there?!!!!!!! ;)

I actually care more about the "it being easy to say" thing than the POV character issue. :P

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

it didn't even occur to me that anyone was crazy in love with Season 1

Oh man, I LOVED season 1. I got sucked in right from the pilot and Gnothi Seauton (2nd ep) is still my favorite episode.

With Season 2, almost every single episode made me go "Woah, that's intense" at the end (the only exceptions being the Kaliba episodes in the middle. I think that had less to do with their focus on Sarah and more to do with just being mediocre episodes).

INSOLENCE!
Of course you know my devotion to Sarah already, so it's probably no surprise that I loved the mid-season Sarah/Kalib arc. I can get way into heavy character drama. Alpine Fields was one of the weaker episodes this season, I thought. Desert Cantos was by far the weakest, though.

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

My problems with the Kaliba arc was that they started at a UFO convention, which was vaguely appropriate but a little too silly to be taken seriously (they probably could have helped that with more tongue-in-cheek humor, but they didn't). Then Sarah takes this person to a UFO "hypnotherapist" which I know are frauds.

"The Good Wound" was a good episode but I wasn't able to appreciate it at the time because I was hoping for a more all encompassing Season 2.5 pilot-ish thing to start off with a bang.

Then we had Desert Cantos... which suffers from "The Connors get to infiltrate places way easier than they should" syndrome (it's happened with Serano Point and the military school as well. People just walk up to them and tell them their life story all the time). And tried to capture the feel of a "grieving town" but focused on a character who's father wasn't really dead.

And then we finally got to Some Must Watch, which I KNEW was a good episode while I was watching it, but just could not appreciate because it was coming on the heels of an arc that had moved forward on flimsy plot points. And while I appreciate Sarah Connor, she's not favorite character to begin with and I had developed a Pavlovian response to her, associating her with mediocre episodes. And by that time I was really itching for some Cameron. After reading your analysis of it my respect for the arc has gone up, but I still think it was overall handled poorly.

I've been rewatching episodes on fox and hulu over and over and I think the middle act is growing on me, but after Season 3 is confirmed dead or alive I'm gonna need a few months of Terminator abstention, so I can finally come back, watch the whole thing at once without anything fresh in my mind.

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

By the way, what exactly impressed you about Gnothi Seauton? I'm rewatching Season 1 and that struck me as one of the most unremarkable episodes of the whole series.

[garyinla.livejournal.com]

That's actually one of my favorite episodes too, although maybe not for the same reasons as Roxy. Hard to really point to a particular reason for me actually, it's more about the "feel" of the scenes.

I loved the intense Sarah/Cameron moments after Cameron shot Enrique. Really fun fight scene with Cameron & Vick going out the window, and then Sarah confronting Cameron on the porch after the chase, learning about her death in 2005. Cameron taking the diamond in to Sarah and that subsequent conversation as well.

All wonderful scenes in my opinion, production, dialog, acting, David Nutter's directing, Bear's music. They really felt like "Terminator" to me also, with a dark feel. And some intriguing factors were introduced, resistance fighters with one still at large, Cromartie coming back, Vick on the loose.

They originally aired the Pilot and then Gnothi Seauton on successive nights, and after the second night I was completely hooked. So much so that it was ridiculous. Couldn't wait for the next one.

Incidentally I'm one who loves Sarah's voice overs, and that ending scene was just extra nice because of it.

[bobmacpharson.livejournal.com]

Huh. I agree there were a lot of nice scenes there, and I think it did help cement it as a show worth watching, but there was just no "woah" moment that really grabbed me.

The first time I felt officially like "holy crap this is a seriously good show" was in Samson and Delilah, first with the intro fight/song (which I still don't get tired of watching) and then with the John-taking-apart-Cameron-while-she's-talking-to-him thing, which managed to take a line I had personally been dreading (I knew eventually she was gonna say "I love you" and I was afraid it'd be so lame) and instead turned into an incredible tense, dramatic and utterly not-lame moment.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with everything you mentioned, Gary... The music, the directing and really just the feel of every scene. The subtext was powerful without being obvious. And we learned so much about each character throughout that episode. That 2-night airing of the pilot and Gnothi Seauton really sucked me into this series.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

I watch the show first and foremost for the character drama. I mean I love the story, love the sci-fi, love the action, but the characters (Sarah in particular of course) are what make me OMG LOVE the show. And Gnothi Seauton was just character perfection to me. The Pilot was awesome and I knew I was going to like the show once I saw that, but that second episode made me absolutely love it.

- Sarah-Cameron buddy stuff
- John getting his first taste of the advancement in computers
- John showing off skills while also acting like a teen
- Awesome mother-son interaction
- Sarah finds out about the cancer
- Enrique
- Cameron copying mute!chola
- The Wizard of Oz scene with sarah and Cameron
- Sarah shoving Cameron out the window
- Cameron vs Vick (still the best machine fight we've in the series)
- Sarah voice overs!

*LOVE*

[motoki.livejournal.com]

You know, I always liked the Sarah/Cameron buddy stuff and kind of miss it.

I think it's what also made Goodbye to All that and Brothers of Nablus so good to me.

They have a really complex relationship and an odd sort of distrust and yet respect for each other. I think they work really well as a pairing.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

Yeah we really did not get enough Sarah and Cameron scenes this season. We didn't get enough Sarah and Derek scenes either. My main regret about season 2 was that they splintered the characters apart for too much of it.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

I can see what you mean about Earthlings Welcome Here. They kept making UFO/alien references in episodes leading up to that and I remember being really worried where the hell they were taking the story. But I thought it ended up working really nicely to lead into the story about strange alloy metal and drone sightings. I also thought it was fun that they had John be very rolling of his eyes about it all to offset the seriousness.

I do, however, have one bog problem with that whole arc that I'll get into in my "Born to Fail part 2" post because it's related.

[motoki.livejournal.com]

It's perfect that LJ randomly chose the No Fate spinning knife icon pic you have for that post referencing Earthlings.

I really liked that episode. When I first saw it I was rather like WTF? Because it was completely counter to what I thought we were going to get. I was kind of expect something along the lines of Born to Run with a confrontation with Weaver. Instead we got something completely different. I didn't know what to make of it at first but I watched it several times and it ended up being one of my favorite episodes.

I like the introspective take on Sarah, the person she became and what she had to give up to do it, what she left behind and that maybe she still longs for that part of herself.

I think the UFO convention was actually perfect. Everyone thinks these people are crazy, but some of them, like Abraham, really were onto something. It makes sense that given their frame of reference they'd think aliens were involved for some technology far too advanced for our present day. I don't exactly thing time travelling robots from the future would be a natural assumption anyone would jump to.

So some of these people weren't crazy in spite of what everyone else thought, just like Sarah isn't crazy in spite of what everyone thought of her.

And now Sarah was in a position where even John was thinking she was crazy, but from her perspective the 3 dots had to mean something. She had to keep her mind open that Skynet could be anywhere or everywhere and not leave any stone unturned.

I liked the contrast with Abraham having to leave a life behind and in the sense it was even liberating to do so and how this related to Sarah and who she was. The "I'm a waitress" line confused the hell out of a lot of people, but my interpretation was that it was an auditory hallucination on Sarah's part as she was identifying with Abraham and imagining some of her own experiences in what he was relaying.

In the end Sarah's seeing the HK vindicated her in her quest because there was something there. Her relentless search did pay off and she wasn't crazy no matter what those around her thought.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

It's perfect that LJ randomly chose the No Fate spinning knife icon pic you have for that post referencing Earthlings.

If only LJ could be that clever. That was me choosing that icon though.


I think the UFO convention was actually perfect. Everyone thinks these people are crazy, but some of them, like Abraham, really were onto something. It makes sense that given their frame of reference they'd think aliens were involved for some technology far too advanced for our present day. I don't exactly thing time travelling robots from the future would be a natural assumption anyone would jump to.

Exactly. That's why I thought as bizarre as it was to send Sarah off to a UFO convention, it really did fit the story well.

The "I'm a waitress" line confused the hell out of a lot of people, but my interpretation was that it was an auditory hallucination on Sarah's part as she was identifying with Abraham and imagining some of her own experiences in what he was relaying.

That's basically how I viewed that too. I didn't really see it as an auditory hallucination, just Sarah's thoughts, but in Abraham's voice since that's the voice she'd just been listening to. And for our benefit - to continue the connection between Abraham's life and Sarah's.

Yeah, great episode. I loved that one.