posted
I liked this episode a lot. Riley makes a lot more sense as a plant than as a genuine girl - I always thought it dumb that she'd give John so many chances to act kinda jerkish and still remain completely optimistic about him. I thought it was bad writing, but fits a lot better now.
I'm really intrigued by what Cameron is supposed to be like in the future, and I am REALLY pissed that the upcoming movie is not going to have Summer Glau in it.
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posted
Since I expressed regret at Cromartie's passing before, I have to agree with Mucus. I'm glad he's b-a-a-a-a-ck! But he does not have his own chip--he has to be plugged into a mainframe computer. Maybe Catherine the terminator will change that, and build a new chip for him. If so, how will she program it? What will be his new primary mission? Serve her?
I still am most interested to see how Catherine will react when she discovers that John and Sarah Connor are still alive. Will her old programming reassert itself, and restore killing John as her primary mission? She seems almost like she has free will, now.
I am rooting for Cameron to develop real free will. Two such would really make it interesting.
But I am still concerned about the evident overabundance of terminators running around. Some of them must be from different futures than others, as the timeline keeps getting changed.
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posted
Ok did tonight's episode seem like a total disconnection from the series? I felt lost and left with more questions then answers. I liked the story but it just seemed totally stand alone!
Posts: 176 | Registered: Jun 2008
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posted
This episode made me really sad. I really liked the wheelchair dude character, and not only did he just die (probably never to be seen again) but it ended so abruptly. (Then again, Terminator episodes never feel long enough to me.)
I liked the answer to the unasked question "What exactly does Cameron do in her spare time?" though, and I thought the story concept was pretty clever. However, it ruins any cop-outs they might have made later when attempting to explain "So why exactly didn't Skynet just send people 100 years into the past to jumpstart the computer industry and create Skynet before anyone could have been ready?"
Previously, they could have pretended the time machine had a range of 20 years or something.
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posted
I thought it was a great ep. I think Cameron is fascinating.
I doubt the archives guy died. It'd be too fast.
And Riley kinda sucks. On the up side, though, there was no Derek and no Jessie. That's always a big plus.
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posted
I think the implication was that the archives night shift guy heeded Cameron's warning, and took time off to go and see his oncologist. The lady taking his shift did not say he was dead. She would have heard if that had happened.
I am not sure why Cameron attacked the terminator who had been hiding in the wall, waiting to assassinate someone. Why was this important to her? Who is the guy who was assassinated, as she remembered it from her future?
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posted
The one part of this episode that really bothered me was Riley's line "I'm a teenage girl, we do things like that to guys we like".
Teenage girls may indeed do things like that, but they certainly don't say things like that. I'd like to know exactly how much of her story is a lie. Do you think she is actually came back from the future with Jesse?
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posted
There was one moment when Riley seemed to be referring to an account that Jesse had given her of Judgment Day and the terminators. If Jesse had to fill her in on this, then Riley must not have come from the future. Still, it is puzzling that Riley should be so amenable to what Jesse tells her to do.
Thus far, I think that Riley is the least acceptable character in the show, second to Jesse, who has traitor written all over her.
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posted
Least acceptable in "you don't like her?" kinda way or "She is a badly written character" kinda way?
By the way, I didn't mean to actually say the wheelchair dude died, just disappeared. I find myself hoping Cameron will seek him out and make some kind of amends. They actually have a bit in common and I could see her opening up to him, perhaps claiming she has Asperger's or something (I'm pretty sure there's a mental condition out there that's almost identical to her state).
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posted
Don't like her. So I suppose you say that means her character is well-written. But I would prefer that the story line not include Riley or Jesse at all. We're getting too many subplots (especially with disagreeable characters), as well as too many terminators running around (it's practically "the terminator of the week" now).
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quote:Don't like her. So I suppose you say that means her character is well-written. But I would prefer that the story line not include Riley or Jesse at all. We're getting too many subplots (especially with disagreeable characters), as well as too many terminators running around (it's practically "the terminator of the week" now).
Well, why not Terminator of the week? I know the movies painted a picture where Terminators in the past were rare. But if Skynet has access to the time machine, why not just send back as many terminators as it can to try and kill as much of the resistance ahead of time as it can? I've always wondered that and it never entirely made sense that Skynet didn't just wage war on the past by flooding the past world with terminators to completely wipe out humanity before we were really prepared to deal with them.
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posted
If all you want is the story of the week, then the terminator of the week would be OK. But I want a series with an over-arching plot, which eventually leads to a reasonable resolution. So each week's episode should move us along toward that resolution of the whole epic story. Otherwise its just a soap opera with androids added in.
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posted
I have no issue with "terminator of the week" because it's not presented as merely "story of the week with no overarching issues." You have a random terminator once every 3 episodes or so, which reinforces the idea that A) there is a constant danger the Connors are facing and B) that they are getting better at dealing with it, hence their increasing ability to dispatch them.
But at the same time you have particularly shrewd terminators like Cromartie, Catherine and yes, Cameron. (Huh, they seem to like the letter C), which provide continuous tension and storyline progression.
Jesse comment about "She's controlling him" (referring to Cameron in the future) was extremely ominous, either showcasing Cameron's deviousness or the depths of Jesse's prejudice or both. Catherine's agenda is still mysterious. I do not doubt they have very clear ideas for how this is all going to end.
I don't particularly like Riley, but I think her presence is kinda necessary for John's development. I'm currently on the fence on whether her writing is good or not. (If she IS from the future then the things she says make a lot more sense).
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Okay, every other episode that introduces an interesting side character at least comes up with a valid reason to write said side character out of the rest of the series. This one... why the hell would that girl want to raise the baby on her own? (If someone has some kind of experience raising infants in apocalyptic situations who can shed some light on possible motives, let me know).
I found this episode an interesting take on "terminator of the week," introducing and dealing with a terminator in 45 minutes but having it technically take place over 6 months, which is pretty reasonable.
I think the series is doing a good job of keeping it episodic, so that a random newcomer can enjoy the series, while still having each episode advance the main arc. I liked the intro to Jesse - I find myself liking her more after this episode.
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posted
Amazing ep, though. And the girl who played Lauren was amazing.
I don't find myself liking Jessie any more. Maybe disliking her a trifle less, but maybe not even that.
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posted
It's not so much that I "like" her as I find her a more interesting character. Her bizarre mannerisms amuse me.
Question though: in the new present (or future? It's unclear if the show's timeline is skipping ahead the full six months) the mother says she called Roger. Didn't Cameron kill Roger?
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posted
I noticed that, too. I figured she must have just knocked him out. Though it seemed like she killed him.
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posted
Just watched the scene again. Although it certainly seems to imply he was dead it wasn't explicitly clear. Seems like a weird thing to leave ambiguous though.
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posted
The main challenge to my suspension of disbelief was how quickly the medical people came up with an injectible antidote. What did they do, just separate out Sydney's plasma from her blood and inject that? Not to mention how Derrick and Jesse started feeling better within seconds of being injected.
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posted
That did bug me a little. I think they tried to leave the whole thing vague so we aren't really sure how long they knew about the plague. Early in the episode it seems to suggest they already had the cure before Derrek rescued the sister. I wasn't quite sure how the whole think worked but honestly I'm not sure I cared.
They didn't give any indication of how long Derrick and Jesse took to heal. I don't consider that a problem at all.
Another thing that bothers me (it feels a little silly to be critiquing the show to death when it's still one of the best things on television right now, but the better something is the more apparent it is how it falls short of being perfect) - how easily people are willing to accept the Machines from the Future thing. When the family first saw the T-888 get hurt without getting hurt, it was dark and hectic and they easily could have rationalized it as their mind playing tricks on them.
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quote:uestion though: in the new present (or future? It's unclear if the show's timeline is skipping ahead the full six months) the mother says she called Roger. Didn't Cameron kill Roger?
The mother was talking to Reese, who wasn't part of the events in the cabin in the "six months ago" part of the story. We actually saw Sarah catch the mother in the act of calling Roger, and then Roger came over to the cabin and got killed.
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The girl told Derrek they were caught because she called her friend Roger, she was covering for her mom. Her mom called him again and it lead the terminator to where they were hiding.
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posted
But why would they be talking about it six months later? They were caught again, not just at the cabin.
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posted
Um, you can't deliver a 34-week baby in conditions like that and have her be totally okay (not to mention HUGE). I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, but some things make that almost impossible. I found myself running through what would have really happened and then trying to figure out a reason they said it was a 34-weeker (i.e. maybe the mother miscounted, etc.). It took me out of the show, which was annoying.
Roger was the neighbor the mother was having an affair with and the father of her baby. I assumed he went back to his life since he wasn't a target for the terminator. I'd have thought Sarah would have warned all of them that the terminator would try to track them through anyone from their past. Roger should have disappeared or, barring that, changed his phone numbers, email, etc. so that the mother couldn't contact him even if she wanted to.
I assumed that the terminator killed Roger and imitated his voice to find out where the family was hiding.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: Covering for the fact that her mom called Roger. Yes.
Calling Roger: 1, Led the terminator to the cabin and 2, resulted in Roger's death.
I don't think so. Reese wanted to know how the triple-8 had found them 6 months after they got away. The only thing said that could possibly be answer to that was that the mom had just called Roger a few days ago.
Yes, it seems stupid that Cameron hit a possible terminator so lightly that a human could survive the blow, but that seems to be what happened.
Posts: 575 | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
But Derrek was asking about why they got attacked 6 months in the future, long after the events of the cabin were old news.
EDIT: Neverind, didn't realize how many people were talking about this presently.
EDIT AGAIN: Regarding the baby, I think the main issue is you can't get a real baby that's the size that a premature baby would be to appear on TV.
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posted
I'm just copying what I ready on another forum. It may have been originally leaked and later announced or maybe the other guy was just wrong. Whatever.
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posted
Regarding the "When did the mother call Roger discussion?"
The first scene, where Derek asks the daughter "How did it find you?" He's clearly asking about how it found them in the recent past (i.e. six months in the future). There's just no reason him to be asking what happened six months ago. Sarah would have filled him in on that anyway, and it's irrelevant to the current situation, which is that they're hiding in a warehouse while a robot is hunting for them.
In addition, after the daughter says "I called Roger," she talks about how it was a stupid decision, how she broke "the rules," and then lists the number one rule "There's no such thing as normal." That's not the sort of thing she would have known six months ago before the reality of what was happening had even set in.
The scene (six months ago) when the mother is calling Roger, is not to show her calling Roger that particular time, but to demonstrate that the mother is in general unreliable and unwilling to accept the situation she's found herself in.
It is really ambiguous and doesn't really make sense either way. But in any interpretation, the mother's calling Roger 6 months ago didn't lead to the terminator coming. The terminator came in the first place by interrogating the sitter at their other house. He didn't come back until he had taken out Cameron. In no way did Roger's arrival have to do with it.
[ December 10, 2008, 11:33 PM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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posted
Huh. Not sure what I think of this episode. The whole alien convention thing seemed silly to me, and happening to run into "Abraham" there felt contrived. I cared more about what was happening with John, Cameron and Riley but that didn't get a whole lot of screen time.
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What really annoys me about this series is the Kid, John Conner. What is his purpose? I mean someone tries to kill him in every episode, and he is suppose to become the future savior of the world. If that is going to happen, shouldn't he get started?
It would only take a couple attempts on my life before I started studying weapons and tactics, martial arts, and technology/computer programming/ electronics.
I think that is why the brought Brian Austin Green into the series, because John Connor doesn't actually do anything, he is simply the McGuffin. He is the reason everything happens, but in and of himself, he servers no purpose.
They try to make this kid blend in, but by doing that, they seem to be depriving him of the very experience and knowledge he needs to become the person we know he will become. That doesn't make sense, and it spoils the series for me.
posted
First, curious: have you watched the whole series? In the first season I would have definitely agreed with you. In this season there are a few key episodes that show him accepting his future responsibility. (The biggest one was "Goodbye to all that", where he and Derrek go to protect another future resistance member and destroy another terminator in the process).
After that, they don't constantly show him drilling with weapons and what-not, but they do show him continuously studying electronics and the psychologist mentioned that he "sized up all the exits" when he entered the room. I think enough is implied to be happening in the background that they don't need to constantly show it on screen.
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posted
I don't think I liked this episode. It was too confused, too confusing and too random. It didn't really fit in with where we've already been and what we've already seen. It felt like too much of a contrived effort to end the half season on a cliff hanger. And it was a crappy cliff hanger to boot.
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posted
I have a suspicion she was not being totally truthful at that particular moment. Although it actually wouldn't surprise me if she was... she seems to go for new experiences, just for the sake of experiencing them, which would fit with an AI's programming as long as it didn't conflict with other orders.
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posted
I felt like they cut and pasted together an episode that was written and filled to end the series before the renewal happened and then rather than take the time to make a new episode, they just edited it to work as a mid-season break episode!
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posted
Lisa, I rather strongly suspect that Sarah is not really dead, or doesn't stay dead, or something. (In the jargon of The Princess Bride, she is not "entirely dead.") I mean, after all, the whole series is about her!
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posted
I don't think there was anything suggested Sarah died at all. (I mean, MAYBE if we didn't know it was a TV show, but c'mon?)
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