(no subject)

[danceswithwords]

TSCC 2.21 - "Adam Raised a Cain"

This episode was so dense and heartbreaking and wonderful. In no particular order:

• The episode title seems to point even more strongly to a division in the machines: Adam parented a favorite son and someone who turned on his own family, just as humans go on to create the machines that destroy them, and possibly, it seems, the machines that try to save them. John Henry is perceptive to wonder whether he's the Cain or the Abel, even if he doesn't know what the future holds in store for them all. Unless she was lying to Ellison--and I don't think she was, at least not about everything--Catherine Weaver does know, and has her own plans to affect what happens, and the metal is now trying to stop her.


• On a related note, I wonder if it's significant that the metal is coming after Catherine Weaver's family now, when she's been in the present, working quietly behind the scenes, for three or four years. Could it be that Sarah's arrest exposes her too, so that the metal of the future now knows where she is and what she's doing?


• On another related note, I don't know how I feel about Charlie Jade coming back from the future to kill Savannah, and possibly John Connor. It's weird!


• I think Catherine Weaver continues to struggle with connections. She says John Henry is vital to the survival of Savannah and Ellison, and by implication to humanity as a whole. But Savannah and Ellison seem to be key to John Henry's development in a way she doesn't get. It's not all one-sided.


• The show has done an excellent job of showing John grow into the leadership he is now assuming, one hard experience at a time. He's the glue that pulled them all back together at the beginning of the episode, over Kyle Reese's potter's grave. He was the one who decided that Savannah was significant; he was the one who led the rescue. He threw Derek's words back in his face: you all die for me. And then Derek did. And in the end, watching his mother on the news--in the spotlight, so public, so impossible to rescue not only for logistical reasons but for reasons of exposure--you could see that he's going to have to face another decision about how to complete the mission: to save himself, no matter what it costs those around him.


• On a related note, DEREK!!!!!! Noooooooooo! I can't imagine a magical do-over, and I know Brian Austin Green was recently cast in a pilot, and there had been some speculation about what that meant of the show's chances for a third season. But now it seems that it might be irrelevant. Oh Derek. You followed John Connor to the end, and when it came, it was at least quick.


• John Henry is so wonderfully likeable. His friendship with Savannah, his curiosity and his willingness to teach in return, are adorable. Savannah clearly means something to him. And because of that, I think it will also mean something to him that he couldn't save her, and that John Connor did. His struggles to understand what he is, what it means that he's both an individual and the member of some kind of family, that there's something out there that might process data in the same ways he does, makes him seem so human. He makes interesting distinctions, too: he's latched on to the idea of a brother in a way that he hasn't latched on to the fact that Catherine Weaver is also a machine; he's fascninated now by Cameron. And, more ominously, he's frustrated both by the imperfection of his own brain--the cord in the back of his head, the stacks of CPUs he requires to be him--and of the human brain, which is so much more efficient and powerful, but which can't be downloaded after death. I am excited that he knows about the Connors now, and that he has Ellison's input as he tries to understand what they're doing. (On the other hand, I fully believe that Sarah won't take any chances with John Henry; that she'll blow that basement to pieces if she gets a chance.)


• John was also oddly charming with Savannah, but there was a constant edge to his interactions with her, of what she meant, of what she could tell him. It wasn't at all cold, but it was calculated; another sign of what he's already becoming.


• I don't know how representative Savannah's classroom is of today's schools (or perhaps today's most pricey private schools), but I really liked the way that scene showed the children learning from computers, with the human teacher there as a facilitator. In some ways, the future is now.


• There was a lot in this episode about lying and secret-keeping. Sarah starts out throwing Derek's secret-keeping back in his face; she won't have a chance to take it back before he's killed. John Henry's been keeping a secret from Ellison; and he keeps a secret from Catherine Weaver, at Ellison's request, now. He could keep Catherine's secret by omission, but in order to keep Ellison's, he has to learn how to lie. And that's something Cameron has already learned how to do; it's hard to say if she's telling the truth about Sarah's health or trying to drive a wedge between her and John, but Cameron is certainly lying when she tells Sarah that she's never just killed to kill, because what about the pigeons? In the end, too, John thinks Ellison lied to them, betrayed them.


• I don't know what scares me more, the fact that Sarah's been arrested or the way it exposes them all--to the newscasts, and therefore to the historical record, and therefore to visibility in the future. It's their worst nightmare.

How is this show so good?!? *waves incense and makes incantations in the direction of FOX programming executives*