The three dot plot conundrum
I’m not a writer nor do I pretend to understand the
intricacies of TV storytelling, but I believe I’m old enough and wise enough to
recognise a logic gap when I see it.
Of course in TV shows this happens all the time without
bothering us, and the reason why we forgive these small transgressions is
wholly dependent on a variety of things, how invested we are in the story, or
how quickly the error happens, or if the outcome is so awesome we forget the
problem was even there.
But what happens when a logic gap is made into a plot point
itself, when the story is driven by a faulty assertion so absurd it takes you
out of the moment?
I suppose it depends on how you like your story told and how
you think it should be structured; My understanding of story is that it should
be broken down into three acts with the first act being something that happens
that throws our hero’s off balance, a surprise that shifts the story in a new
direction.
The second act should be about the hero’s emotional journey,
their inner and outer conflicts, challenges they need to overcome as the stakes
are continually raised with possible unexpectant turns and reversals of
fortunes.
The last act is the resolution, when the story reaches its
climax and we the audience get our payoff.
And that’s where I’ll start, at the beginning; welcome to
Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles three dot plot!
The episode is called Complications, it starts off with
Sarah and company returning from Mexico after narrowly avoiding death at the
hands of the very persistent Terminator Chromartie; Sarah is sick with some
sort of food poising or stomach flu, and throughout the episode she lapse in
and out of vivid dreams/nightmares, some of which references three items or
dots.
What do they mean? Sarah is haunted by them and in the end
the answer is in the basement on the wall written in blood by a dying resistance
fighter from the future.
This wall has many names of people and places even numbers,
including some marks, one of which is the three dots and another three vertical
lines under them.
I don’t know if this information was put in any particular
order of importance but if the three dots where that important, being on the
far right I wouldn’t have given them much meaning.
Now for some reason Sarah has a hard on for what they mean,
and because she’s a borderline obsessive compulsive who’s nightmares motivate
her, it’s full throttle to decode their meaning.
Which brings us to the next episode in the three dot plot
saga, Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point; as episodes go this is very
good, Sarah with John’s help finds a tech start-up company developing AI which it’s
hoping to secure an Air force contract, and its corporate logo is three dots.
The weakness of why Sarah would focus on such a patently
weak clue as three dots is forgotten as it seems to have paid off.
I won’t give a blow by blow description of the episode, but
by the episodes end it turns out it had nothing to do with skynet, as the poor
CEO blurts out at Sarah when she’s beating the crap out of him, “It’s only a
fucking logo you crazy bitch!”
As a character study of Sarah this episodes works very well,
it show just how tightly wound she is and the folly of her obsessions, and if
the three dot plot had ended there we could have all been happy, but no, we’re
not finished yet, for the usual rules no longer apply.
The third episode in the three dot plot is called Earthlings
Welcome Here.
Sarah love affair with random symbols has now brought her to
a UFO convention and a recent sighting of a strange craft whose changeable
configuration can resemble three dots, if you happen to be directly under it
and it is facing the right direction.
While Strange Things was a fake out, Earthlings is the real
deal, Sarah has stumbled on Kailba, otherwise known as skynet or we are at
least are to suppose it is.
Unlike Strange Things, this episode is a mess of ideas, too
many stories happening and the main one just doesn’t work with the worst
dialogue spoken in the entire series, and if you’ve seen it you know the line
I’m talking about.
It has woman actor playing a male role who is pretending to
be a woman, Riley finally implodes and try’s to commit suicide, and Ellison
starts to teach the puppet John Henry to understand the Ten Commandments.
That probably sums up the meaningless nature of the three
dots plot, a random mark brings our heroin to a UFO convention, a haunt for the
patently insane, to meet a drag queen with all the answers while girlfriends
die and strange things fly and John Henry studies his fingers.
I would have forgiven the three dots if there had been some
sort of logical underpinning for Sarah to pursue them and if the ending was
awesome, but I feel let down; well at least that’s the end of the three dots
and we don’t have to ponder any more.
Unfortunately, there’s one more outing for the three dots
which in retrospect make them the worst idea anyone has ever thought of.
Born To Run, the final chapter in the series and quite a
good episode, and again I’m not going to give a summary of what happens, but in
the end Sarah spots the Turk, the computer that Andy Goode made and the basis
for John Henry, and low and behold it has some LED’s lit up in the three dot
symbol.
So this reveal is to tell us the three dots were the Turk all
along?
The problem is this; if Sarah had seen the three dots on the
Turk prior to it being stolen, then even if she hadn’t consciously remembered seeing
them it would have been enough to give her subconscious ammunition for the
symbol’s meaning and to purse it.
But they were already looking for the Turk anyway, and knowing
it has three glowing lights in a triangle configuration is about as helpful as
saying the Turk’s power socket has three pins in a triangle configuration, it
doesn’t get them any closer so as a clue it was never going to succeed.
Also it invalidates how Sarah found Kailba, because if it
was supposed to represent the Turk it should never have brought her to Kailba
anyway, in the same way looking for the South Pole shouldn’t have you ending up
at the North Pole.
The three dots were a poorly thought out idea right from the
start in that the more airtime they got the shakier they become; when a plot
point starts to bleed logic then the logical thing to do is tie a tourniquet
around it and hope it heals, not bleed it more!
But the real sad thing is it could have been awesome, and
Strange Things set up how perfectly they could have figured into the story.
In an alternative development of the three dots they could
have meant nothing, they could have been a sign of Sarah starting to crack
under the strain, by the end of Strange Things Sarah’s leadership could have
been challenged by Derek, John even Cameron.
We could have seen her question herself and the role she
plays and John could have shown some growth in leadership ability.
The family dynamic could have remoulded and remoulded again
and ended with a new Sarah rising from the ashes to reclaim the throne for the
time being.
This could have been a seminal moment, but instead it fell
into a mess of unlikely happenstance and non-connected logic, not only was the
three dots to turn into a train wreck, they made sure it was done in slow
motion so we could see in perfect detail just how bad it really was.
TSCC was one of the best written shows on TV at the time and
since, there are few episodes that suck and even then they do have redeemable qualities,
the three dot plot isn’t one of them.