So, what'd you think?
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
I can't believe they ended on a cliffhanger. The episode ended with more loose ends than it started with!
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
It wasn't supposed to be the series finale, from what I understand. Just the end of a story arc. But the writers' strike caused a lot of shows to end prematurely.
Posted by 0Megabyte (Member # 8624) on :
Series or season?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Man that finale finally (ironic use of the word finally I know) convinced me that they can do cool things with this show.
The SWAT guys falling into the pool to the sounds of Johnny Cash was a nice touch, though I think they overplayed the image. I have to believe that a paramedic seeing a bunch of guys floating in a pool would immediately start pulling them out of the water and attempt to resuscitate them.
John's birthday was also a nice concept. I really liked that Reese took him to meet his younger self and Kyle.
Were they to go into a season two it looks like Cameron is going to have to stay out of sight until she can heal, although that explosion couldn't have destroyed her, her flesh is probably a mess.
Why didn't the terminator kill agent Ellison? He can't get the files from him now, Ellison is the only one who knows what he looks like and who he is presumably.
Why wouldn't Cameron tell John what she is doing. She sees Kester and saves John, (why the Terminator didn't recognize John's voice is something else I wondered about.) and when he asks her what she is doing she just shrugs and says nothing. She does the exact same thing when she starts trying to intercept the Asian guy she ultimately kills.
And Chris, it would be nice if YOU posted some of your own thoughts since this is your thread.
edited: To fix some spellings.
[ March 04, 2008, 11:57 PM: Message edited by: BlackBlade ]
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Sorry, season. ALthough I haven't heard for sure if it's been picked up for next season yet...
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Sorry, ducked in to get this started and caught up on everything I hadn't been doing for the last two hours.
I liked it. I assumed Ellison was spared because he's still Kester's best lead to John. I smiled a lot, laughed several times, was pleasantly surprised once or twice, and only yelled at the screen twice ("Why the hell are you broadcasting details of the FBI bust over a radio?" "Why aren't you calling this in? Someone in the pool could be alive, call it in! FBI guy, call it in! Somebody!")
And how creepy-cool-creepy was Cameron asking about how to soothe humans? "He touched her lips."
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Sorry, ducked in to get this started and caught up on everything I hadn't been doing for the last two hours.
I liked it. I assumed Ellison was spared because he's still Kester's best lead to John. I smiled a lot, laughed several times, was pleasantly surprised once or twice, and only yelled at the screen twice ("Why the hell are you broadcasting details of the FBI bust over a radio?" "Why aren't you calling this in? Someone in the pool could be alive, call it in! FBI guy, call it in! Somebody!")
And how creepy-cool-creepy was Cameron asking about how to soothe humans? "He touched her lips."
Indeed! And then right afterwards winking at John as she walked away. It was a disconcerting combination of creepy and hotness.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
I really enjoyed it...and it made me ready for the next season (they had better pick up the show).
I liked how they mad Cameron start trying to learn how to be more human.
I do wonder how long it will take her to recover from the blast. I doubt the show writers will want to mess with Summer's hotness for long.
I also wonder what will happen with Ellison. Being the only agent to survive the raid will raise questions from within the FBI, and will give him a heavy guilt trip.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
They blew up Summer! You bastards!
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
It was interesting when Cameron was lying on the bed as John carefully operated to remove her CPU, and to reassure him, she said, "We've done this before." Apparently in the future. On one level, of course, it was just a little mechanical work. On another level, though, it seemed awfully intimate--especially when John brushed a lock of her hair with his finger just before she rebooted after having her CPU re-installed.
I am a little concerned about Cameron being in the carbomb. We know that mechanically she will survive--but will all her (beautiful, cute) skin be blown off? Bummer. of course, the other terminator showed it was possible for his skin to be remade, and his face remodeled by a good plastic surgeon. This might be a necessary thing, if the series is continued, and they can't get Summer Glau to play the part for some reason.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Ooh, I hadn't thought of that. Sneaky.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: It was interesting when Cameron was lying on the bed as John carefully operated to remove her CPU, and to reassure him, she said, "We've done this before." Apparently in the future.
I thought at first that she's referring to the new footage on the "Special Edition" cut of T2, where Sarah and John remove Arnie's CPU, which was never in the original theater release and most people don't know about it unless they see the new DVD.
Did she say "we" or "you", though?
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Why didn't the terminator kill agent Allison?
That's Ellison. As in the guy Cameron stole the idea of the Terminator from.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
I've been wondering for weeks where Derek and Kyle are. It was obvious, based on John's age, that they're living now. But even knowing that, I still cried when Derek gave John that birthday present.
Posted by MEC (Member # 2968) on :
I just finished watching this on Hulu.
I was absolutely sickened with the scene with the little girl, I wanted to vomit.
When Derek and John went to the park, I saw the camera focus on the two kids playing ball and I thought 'Hey, that's John and Derek. Why would Derek take him to see him and his brother? Unless he knows!' Then he said it anyway.
I also called the car exploding as soon as I saw Cameron walking to it, and was extremely glad it was her who exploded rather than someone else. (As she wouldn't be killed from it.)
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
MEC--yeah, at least it's a good thing it was not the little girl's father she saw killed right before her. But still--talk about being scarred for life! And Derek is coming off more and more as being just about as cold-blooded and ruthless as any terminator. In fact, at times, Cameron seems more human! And yet, Derek did give that truly thoughtful "birthday present" to John. You have to admit, these characters are not just one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. They are complex! Good writing.
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
I don't think it matters much that she's scarred for life, what with judgment day coming...
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by MEC: I was absolutely sickened with the scene with the little girl, I wanted to vomit.
Why?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Lisa, good guys are not supposed to do stuff like that--grab a little girl and use her as a hostage to demand that a thug lower his weapon.
Elmer's Glue, since Judgment Day did not come on the day it originally did, who's to say it will ever come? They may yet succeed in postponing it indefinitely.
A few episodes ago, when they showed a backflash in the future (crazy concept, that) Derek was being held captive along with a guy who said he was Andy Goodman, and that Judgment Day was all his fault, because he allowed his computer, the Turk, to become psychologically damaged, and that is what caused Skynet to be schizoid-phobic about humans. This makes great sense, because logically a super-advanced AI should not have any reason to automatically decide to wipe out the human race. While the Connors and their associates are trying to prevent Judgment Day by preventing the technology that produced Skynet to be developed, they need to find out what was really responsible for Skynet having such an anti-human bias. Derek needs to tell the Connors about what Goodman said to him. But he probably does not know the significance. By killing Goodman, Derek probably produced the psychosis-initiating event that turned the Turk bad. In the previous timeline, it must have been something else; but now Judgment Day will all be Derek's fault. Their only hope now is to prevent the Turk from becoming integrated into Skynet.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Lisa, good guys are not supposed to do stuff like that--grab a little girl and use her as a hostage to demand that a thug lower his weapon.
They thought she was his daughter. Tit for tat. Sarah wouldn't have done it. John wouldn't have done it. Derek lived through Armegeddon and survived the camps. From his POV, that little girl is liable to be dead in 4 years anyway if they don't do something.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
I think the point is that Derek is not supposed to be the "good guy" in the way we see people. He is a man that lived through hell, and it left its mark on him. He is willing to do things that Sarah and John wouldn't dream of doing. Of course, there is also the point that Lisa mentioned...that he saw the girl as someone who would soon be dead anyway.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Who knows what happened to him in the basement too, he could pull a Manchurian candidate or something.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Lisa, we'll all be dead someday, barring divine intervention. Does that make all of us expendable? And the time of the original Judgment Day had already passed. That day when Derek took John to the park to see his father as a child, was the day when originally the missiles flew. No one knows when Judgment Day will come this time. Many changes have already been made. Andy Goodman is dead.
I think that Derek is being portrayed as a partisan who has become a fanatic, casting aside all moral constraints. Cameron is more human than he is, and Cameron has problems with compassion.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
Goode, not Goodman.
It's a lot like the question of whether you would kill Hitler when he was an innocent child. Similarly, suppose there was one man who was responsible for defeating Hitler. What would you do to save him? Then add the fact that he's the only son of your only brother.
Note that he didn't kill the girl. He made a threat.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:He is willing to do things that Sarah and John wouldn't dream of doing.
I haven't watched much of the show, so take this for what it's worth, but Sarah Conner from T2 would have done this no problem.
Posted by msquared (Member # 4484) on :
Ron
I think you are wrong.
In the first flash back of Kyle and Derek, it was 2011. Both boys were older and Kyle was trying to learn how to bat in their front yard. In the second scene, where Derek takes John to the park where Kyle is throwing the ball to Derek, both boys are 4 years younger.
The baseball was the early clue as to the boys identities.
msquared
Posted by MEC (Member # 2968) on :
I was sickened for many reasons:
1) The possibility that the girl was the blackmailer's child. She would have seen her father die, been confused and alone, all because this bastard of a father takes his daughter with him when he performs illegal operations, let alone the fact that he does them when he has someone dependent on him.
But that was not the case, but I was still sickened by the possibility.
2) The fact that Derek did what he did, especially given that John had tried to protect her earlier and she would have been even more freaked out because of it.
3) How it turned out and that her father was some douche-bag playing video games while leaving his daughter in some closet in a back room. It wouldn't be so bad if he kept her with him at this tournament, but to leave her alone in a public place like that?
4) I was also sickened by the fact that the writers used this device. I know it's "realistic" and whatever else you might want to say about it. But that doesn't make it any less abhorrent to watch.
Posted by msquared (Member # 4484) on :
MEC I think the father was the bar keep out front. That was the impression I got.
Still creepy thing to do.
msquared
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Lisa, right you are, his name was Andy Goode.
As for that old bromide about killing Hitler when he was a baby: The hypothetical situation is created by assuming two impossibilities, that you can travel back in time to when Hitler was a child, and that when you are living when Hitler was a child you would know the future, that he would grow up to be one of the greatest villains of all time.
Even assuming time travel, how do you know you could not simply change Hitler without killing him? Since at that point, even with your advance knowledge, the future outcome about Hitler would not be certain, therefore that future outcome can no longer be used as justification for committing the heinous crime of infanticide.
By the way, I forgot who wrote it, but there was a cool sf story where a time traveler kidnapped Adolph Hitler when he was a baby, and so he would not be missed, switched him for the baby of a poor woman. But that bogus Adolph is the one who grew up and become the arch villain! If the time traveler had not made the switch, then the Holocaust would not have happened. So who actually was to blame for the Holocaust now?
Oh, the joy you can have, the mental descent into recursive chaos, when you toy with time travel!
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
Judgment day is inevitable. Don't act like Derek is a horrible monster. What he did worked. He had to save John, and his plan worked. Also, he did cover her eyes. The barkeep, the little girl's dad, is Sarkissian. The person who blew up Cameron and has the Turk.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Hmm. I did not catch that. I recorded the whole series. I'll have to go rewatch that last episode.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:He is willing to do things that Sarah and John wouldn't dream of doing.
I haven't watched much of the show, so take this for what it's worth, but Sarah Conner from T2 would have done this no problem.
She was desperate and would do anything to see her son, so at first... yes, she probably would.
I see her as having changed a lot due to her being with John. It's made her more motherly. "We have to go destroy SkyNet using heavy artillery and high explosives, but first... Pancakes!"
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
One thing that really annoyed me about the series was the idea that Skynet was originally developed as a chess playing computer. Chess AI was probably one of the worst choices they could have chosen as the basis for skynet because it is almost always implemented as a brute force search. Create a function to rate the strength of a board position (hard part) and then look at all possible move combinations up to a certain depth and choose the best one. I'm not exaggerating. That is the core of every single chess AI I've heard of.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk:
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:He is willing to do things that Sarah and John wouldn't dream of doing.
I haven't watched much of the show, so take this for what it's worth, but Sarah Conner from T2 would have done this no problem.
She was desperate and would do anything to see her son, so at first... yes, she probably would.
I see her as having changed a lot due to her being with John. It's made her more motherly. "We have to go destroy SkyNet using heavy artillery and high explosives, but first... Pancakes!"
I'm not so sure. She tried to kill Stypes in T2 and didn't, only because she missed and was then stopped my Arnold.
She also threatened the orderly with a syringe full of cleaner.
But you are right in that she balked when tasked with executing a guy who was inadvertently creating Sky Net with The Turk.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
Threads, they have developed some computers that use "positional understanding", but they don't perform ANYWHERE close to as well as the brute force ones.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
So where does this leave Skynet?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Telperion the Silver: So where does this leave Skynet?
Depends, on the one hand The Turk is still around. But I think as long as the military wants to computerize more and more of it's operations the threat of Skynet will always exist. It's sorta like the Time Machine dilemma where all attempts to modify that particular point of the timeline never work permanently.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Nighthawk, I watched the last three episodes again, and Cameron did say "We've done this before" when she was lying on the bed and John was about to remove her CPU chip. You were probably thinking of a little earlier, when John was asked if he could hack the other cyborg's CPU chip, and John was not sure. Then Cameron told him, "You've done it before." (But of course she meant in the future.)
Elmer's Glue, Oh, you mean the real Sarkissian, not the man they thought was Sarkissian when Derek shot him, while he held John at gunpoint. They showed the man who must be the real Sarkissian walking away from the Conners' house looking back over his shoulder, suspiciously, shortly before the car bomb exploded with Cameron inside.
That explosion looked a little funny. It did not fill the car with flame--looked to me like the explosion was mainly under and around the car. And you know, the military version of the Humvee does sometimes come with an armor plate on the bottom to protect against road mines. That is surely what Sarah Conner would have obtained, if she could. So maybe Cameron won't have her face blown off.
Or maybe it is half blown off, so they have to throw a blanket over her as they make their escape. Then I can imagine the writers, just for the fun of it, having them cross paths with the friend of John's who has the hots for Cameron and asked her to the prom. She removes the blanket, so he can see her half-human, half-robotic face, and she says, "I'm afraid our prom date is off." It's just the kind of thing these writers would do. I'd love to see it. Assuming, of course, that more episodes in the series are produced. (Please, please!)
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