The Sarah Connor Chronicles, whatever episode number we are on right now.
So. As I said in my last post, I spent all of last weekend tearing through all the Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes since last December, and ever since then, I've been trying to get my thoughts organized enough to post them. It's been harder than I expected, because every little thing I say about this show makes me want to go off on about 10 different tangents, and one things leads to the other, and it goes downhill from there, until all I'm left with is incoherent babbling with lots of unfinished sentences and expressive hand gestures.
... Yeah. I guess this show is just too awesome for its own good, sometimes. *g*
But I'm going to try and keep to just the one or two things I've been thinking about the most, so that I can actually finish this post sometime before the next episode airs. (And OMG, it's thursday already! I've got to hurry up and post this! Gah!)
So, here are some thoughts I've had about some of the latest storylines in the show:
(Warning: big spoilers up through the latest aired episode.)
I loved, loved, loved the revelation that John had known about Riley for a while, and just kept his counsel and never let on what he knew, while he carefully learned all the facts and made his decision about what to do. That might be the first time that I could truly see Future!John in the John of the present - the brilliance that will someday get people to follow him and be willing to die for him, but also his creepier side that will one day allow him to send his own father back in time to certain death - and it was disturbing as hell, but also awesome!
See, I think that John was absolutely right about the fact that he holds a big share of the responsibility for Riley's death. But I've also been thinking a lot about John's treatment of Riley and why it felt so... off to me all along, and I realized something that I think is very significant. John was treating Riley exactly the same way as he usually treats Cameron. Just as he does with Cameron, he was letting Riley and everyone else think that he trusted her (to the extent that anyone would believe that he'd trust her), while at the same time keeping his real thoughts hidden and continually testing Riley in various ways to see how she would react to different stimuli.
Over the course of the series, John has increasingly been isolated from humanity, mostly interacting only with Cameron and two traumatized, exhausted, and emotionally stunted warriors who do everything they can to hide and deny their human emotions. The only actual direct subordinate John has had so far has been Cameron, who is a machine, not a human. John has been training himself so hard to ignore his own emotions and focus only on what needs to be done that he has forgotten about the fact that the people he will be leading will be humans, not machines, and that there is a difference between leading humans, and getting machines like Cameron to work with him.
And that is why, while I obviously completely disagree with Jesse's methods, I think that she was actually right about John needing a reminder about the difference between humans and machines. She was just wrong about why that reminder was so important. Jesse thinks that just because she didn't get John to reject Cameron, that means that she failed in teaching John anything. But she's wrong about that. She did teach John something, and it was something he needed to learn, and provided that he remembers this lesson, it actually might help prevent the tragedy aboard the Jimmy Carter from happening, in a way that getting John to reject Cameron in the present probably wouldn't have. (Not that this makes Riley's death worth it, in any way, of course, and Jesse was wrong to think that it would.)
See, Jesse blames what happened on the Jimmy Carter on the machines, but it's also clear from actually watching the events unfold that it was not the machines, but the intense knee-jerk distrust the human resistance fighters felt for the machines that was the reason that the mission failed the way it did. And just like Riley's death, the responsibility for that falls directly on Future!John's shoulders - not for deciding to work with the machines in the first place, the way Jesse and the crew of the Jimmy Carter clearly thought (although Jesse doesn't realize it, it's pretty clear from her flashbacks that Future!John has come to the same conclusion as a lot of the viewers of the show, which is that the only possible way to end the war with any humans still alive and free is to make peace with the machine, and that pretty much requires finding a way to work with them), but for taking it for granted that the human crew of the Jimmy Carter would automatically follow Future!John's and their machine captain's orders without question, just because that's what the machines John reprogrammed would do.
Like the John of the present, Future!John has gotten so used to working with machines that he had forgotten to take human nature into account. He had assumed that the machines were the only obstacle he had to overcome in order to get humans and machines to make peace - that just because he had made sure that the cyborg he sent was ready to work with humans, then that automatically meant that the humans were ready to work with the cyborg. Riley's death taught him to never take that for granted again, to never forget that the humans, and their very natural, human fears and dreams, are at least as important to ending this war as the machines are. And if Future!John remembers that lesson when he sends the Jimmy Carter out all those years later, then maybe he'll be able to make sure that the humans he sends out do trust their cyborg captain enough for their mission to succeed without anybody getting hurt.
And in an weird way, this explains why, while John is obviously important to the story, this show really isn't about John. It's about all the other humans out there, humans like Sarah, and Derek, and Jesse, and Riley, and James Ellison, who all have their own reasons to instinctively want to destroy the machines, and who haven't yet figured out that working side by side with the machines doesn't have to be the same thing as surrendering to them. It's about the two leaders of the two different sides of this conflict - both John Connor and John Henry, and their immediate followers - needing to figure out how to get all those other people to finally understand that the only way for everybody to survive is to set their anger and fear and distrust aside and make peace. But it's those other people who are driving the action, not just John Connor. And John needed to learn that.
Yeah. This show really is awesome. :D
... And, OK, there were a lot of other things I wanted to talk about, like all the many parallels between John Connor's followers and John Henry's - the three-person family unit of Sarah, John and Cameron vs the family unit of Catherine Weaver, John Henry and Savannah (kernezelda mentioned that one to me, and now I can't stop thinking about it!), the mother-daughter relationship of Sarah Connor and Cameron vs the relationship between Catherine Weaver and her "daughter" Savannah (OMG, that little girl, with all those mannerisms and body language from her mother!); the relationship of John Connor with Cameron vs the relationship of John Henry with James Ellison (It's like Catherine Weaver is using James Ellison to see if John Henry can learn to "reprogram" humans to work with him, the way John Connor is learning to reprogram the machines! Plus, the explosive in Cameron's brain vs the files hidden inside Weaver's computer that give her plausible deniability if she ever needs to kill Ellison (please, please don't let her kill Ellison!), and it's all so cool, OMG!), and of course, Sarah Connor with John vs Catherine Weaver with John Henry (Sarah's "I'm not supposed to protect myself - I'm supposed to protect you, John" vs Catherine Weaver's "Everything I do, I do for your benefit, John Henry").
And then there is John Connor's view of humans and machines, vs Catherine Weaver's, vs James Ellison's, and why it's very important that Ellison is the one to work with John Henry, and not, say, John Connor, or Sarah, or anyone else. (And I keep getting sidetracked to what John said to Jesse about humans being important because they are each different and unique and can't just be replaced or fixed, and the way John couldn't fix Cameron, either, and also what Catherine Weaver said the very first time we saw her with the Turk about how humans are replaceable and predictable, and the Turk is important and unique and can't just be replaced because it can think for itself (and heh, you see how my mind keeps going off on tangents? I need charts, OMG!) )
And then of course there is the time travel, and all the different timelines, and I can't even hope to keep track of them all, but they still keep teasing the edges of my brain, and making my head spin (Derek Reese and Andy Goode, and Reese and Jesse and her baby, and Jesse was never Reese's Jesse, and he was never her Reese, and can John Connor know things Future!John Connor doesn't know, and is Cameron from a different timeline from Derek, or was it the same one, and if Jesse is not Reese's Jesse, then is John really Derek's nephew, or is he the son of a different Kyle Reese, and does that actually matter, and gah, yeah, see, my head is spinning already).
And... I am sure there are other things I might be able to think of, but I am getting a blank right now, and I really need to stop thinking about this and get back to work, so I think I am just going to post this now, no matter how unfinished it might be.
(Heh. I think I might remember why I stopped watching this show - it takes over my brain, OMG!)
... Yeah. I guess this show is just too awesome for its own good, sometimes. *g*
But I'm going to try and keep to just the one or two things I've been thinking about the most, so that I can actually finish this post sometime before the next episode airs. (And OMG, it's thursday already! I've got to hurry up and post this! Gah!)
So, here are some thoughts I've had about some of the latest storylines in the show:
(Warning: big spoilers up through the latest aired episode.)
I loved, loved, loved the revelation that John had known about Riley for a while, and just kept his counsel and never let on what he knew, while he carefully learned all the facts and made his decision about what to do. That might be the first time that I could truly see Future!John in the John of the present - the brilliance that will someday get people to follow him and be willing to die for him, but also his creepier side that will one day allow him to send his own father back in time to certain death - and it was disturbing as hell, but also awesome!
See, I think that John was absolutely right about the fact that he holds a big share of the responsibility for Riley's death. But I've also been thinking a lot about John's treatment of Riley and why it felt so... off to me all along, and I realized something that I think is very significant. John was treating Riley exactly the same way as he usually treats Cameron. Just as he does with Cameron, he was letting Riley and everyone else think that he trusted her (to the extent that anyone would believe that he'd trust her), while at the same time keeping his real thoughts hidden and continually testing Riley in various ways to see how she would react to different stimuli.
Over the course of the series, John has increasingly been isolated from humanity, mostly interacting only with Cameron and two traumatized, exhausted, and emotionally stunted warriors who do everything they can to hide and deny their human emotions. The only actual direct subordinate John has had so far has been Cameron, who is a machine, not a human. John has been training himself so hard to ignore his own emotions and focus only on what needs to be done that he has forgotten about the fact that the people he will be leading will be humans, not machines, and that there is a difference between leading humans, and getting machines like Cameron to work with him.
And that is why, while I obviously completely disagree with Jesse's methods, I think that she was actually right about John needing a reminder about the difference between humans and machines. She was just wrong about why that reminder was so important. Jesse thinks that just because she didn't get John to reject Cameron, that means that she failed in teaching John anything. But she's wrong about that. She did teach John something, and it was something he needed to learn, and provided that he remembers this lesson, it actually might help prevent the tragedy aboard the Jimmy Carter from happening, in a way that getting John to reject Cameron in the present probably wouldn't have. (Not that this makes Riley's death worth it, in any way, of course, and Jesse was wrong to think that it would.)
See, Jesse blames what happened on the Jimmy Carter on the machines, but it's also clear from actually watching the events unfold that it was not the machines, but the intense knee-jerk distrust the human resistance fighters felt for the machines that was the reason that the mission failed the way it did. And just like Riley's death, the responsibility for that falls directly on Future!John's shoulders - not for deciding to work with the machines in the first place, the way Jesse and the crew of the Jimmy Carter clearly thought (although Jesse doesn't realize it, it's pretty clear from her flashbacks that Future!John has come to the same conclusion as a lot of the viewers of the show, which is that the only possible way to end the war with any humans still alive and free is to make peace with the machine, and that pretty much requires finding a way to work with them), but for taking it for granted that the human crew of the Jimmy Carter would automatically follow Future!John's and their machine captain's orders without question, just because that's what the machines John reprogrammed would do.
Like the John of the present, Future!John has gotten so used to working with machines that he had forgotten to take human nature into account. He had assumed that the machines were the only obstacle he had to overcome in order to get humans and machines to make peace - that just because he had made sure that the cyborg he sent was ready to work with humans, then that automatically meant that the humans were ready to work with the cyborg. Riley's death taught him to never take that for granted again, to never forget that the humans, and their very natural, human fears and dreams, are at least as important to ending this war as the machines are. And if Future!John remembers that lesson when he sends the Jimmy Carter out all those years later, then maybe he'll be able to make sure that the humans he sends out do trust their cyborg captain enough for their mission to succeed without anybody getting hurt.
And in an weird way, this explains why, while John is obviously important to the story, this show really isn't about John. It's about all the other humans out there, humans like Sarah, and Derek, and Jesse, and Riley, and James Ellison, who all have their own reasons to instinctively want to destroy the machines, and who haven't yet figured out that working side by side with the machines doesn't have to be the same thing as surrendering to them. It's about the two leaders of the two different sides of this conflict - both John Connor and John Henry, and their immediate followers - needing to figure out how to get all those other people to finally understand that the only way for everybody to survive is to set their anger and fear and distrust aside and make peace. But it's those other people who are driving the action, not just John Connor. And John needed to learn that.
Yeah. This show really is awesome. :D
... And, OK, there were a lot of other things I wanted to talk about, like all the many parallels between John Connor's followers and John Henry's - the three-person family unit of Sarah, John and Cameron vs the family unit of Catherine Weaver, John Henry and Savannah (kernezelda mentioned that one to me, and now I can't stop thinking about it!), the mother-daughter relationship of Sarah Connor and Cameron vs the relationship between Catherine Weaver and her "daughter" Savannah (OMG, that little girl, with all those mannerisms and body language from her mother!); the relationship of John Connor with Cameron vs the relationship of John Henry with James Ellison (It's like Catherine Weaver is using James Ellison to see if John Henry can learn to "reprogram" humans to work with him, the way John Connor is learning to reprogram the machines! Plus, the explosive in Cameron's brain vs the files hidden inside Weaver's computer that give her plausible deniability if she ever needs to kill Ellison (please, please don't let her kill Ellison!), and it's all so cool, OMG!), and of course, Sarah Connor with John vs Catherine Weaver with John Henry (Sarah's "I'm not supposed to protect myself - I'm supposed to protect you, John" vs Catherine Weaver's "Everything I do, I do for your benefit, John Henry").
And then there is John Connor's view of humans and machines, vs Catherine Weaver's, vs James Ellison's, and why it's very important that Ellison is the one to work with John Henry, and not, say, John Connor, or Sarah, or anyone else. (And I keep getting sidetracked to what John said to Jesse about humans being important because they are each different and unique and can't just be replaced or fixed, and the way John couldn't fix Cameron, either, and also what Catherine Weaver said the very first time we saw her with the Turk about how humans are replaceable and predictable, and the Turk is important and unique and can't just be replaced because it can think for itself (and heh, you see how my mind keeps going off on tangents? I need charts, OMG!) )
And then of course there is the time travel, and all the different timelines, and I can't even hope to keep track of them all, but they still keep teasing the edges of my brain, and making my head spin (Derek Reese and Andy Goode, and Reese and Jesse and her baby, and Jesse was never Reese's Jesse, and he was never her Reese, and can John Connor know things Future!John Connor doesn't know, and is Cameron from a different timeline from Derek, or was it the same one, and if Jesse is not Reese's Jesse, then is John really Derek's nephew, or is he the son of a different Kyle Reese, and does that actually matter, and gah, yeah, see, my head is spinning already).
And... I am sure there are other things I might be able to think of, but I am getting a blank right now, and I really need to stop thinking about this and get back to work, so I think I am just going to post this now, no matter how unfinished it might be.
(Heh. I think I might remember why I stopped watching this show - it takes over my brain, OMG!)