TSCC 2x01: "Samson and Delilah"
Jan. 28th, 2020 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsTSCC 2x01: "Samson and Delilah"
This episode is kind of great and kind of terrible. It's also both too compressed and too stretched out. I think I liked more of it than I disliked, but I'm not sure it was actually better than it was bad.
Also, this episode should have been called Murphy's Law, I will hear no argument on the subject. If they had been saving that for another episode I might have heard that case; but if they were, they never got to it.
The basic structure here is 'The Terminator' plot, and I think I liked the chase story. A few times as Cameron was walking around I got to thinking about how the original story would have been different with a small, more vulnerable looking robot on the task. We got some of that in T2 (although as I said then, Robert Patrick seems just as deadly in a different way) and then here, but they don't have time to do a lot with it here. We don't get people trying to help or take some kind of advantage of what looks like a hurt teenage girl. Does she face any conflict over those stolen wet wipes? We don't see her fight back against anyone, well meaning or not, who tries to do something that diverts her from her mission.
But the bigger missed opportunity is doing more with how the personal connection feeds into her effectiveness as a terminator. John and Sarah talk about how Cameron knows all their tricks and plans, but I really expected her to do something like go after Charley's wife after Cameron saw him also on the Connors' trail. I expected there to be a programming conflict when she found Sarah injured, like the 'terminate John' protocol had been reactivated, but the 'protect Sarah' protocol was intact.
So that stuff was good, but it wasn't enough. On top of that, the opening is pretty bad, it feels fake artsy and is not the only time in the episode where the camera seems to cut away so they don't have to explain how some events went down.
The stuff towards the end...I don't know if it's handled as well as it should be, but it does give me a lot of ideas. Just how self-directed is Cameron? She still has the programming to terminate John, but is able to push it aside. Was her breakdown as John removed the chip genuine, or was his hasty repair work key to her recovery (for now, I expect this to come up again)? I certainly couldn't believe her in that moment, and I would have thought less of John if he'd believed her, she had never actually stopped trying to kill him before he had her at his mercy.
But I also like that John is becoming more assertive at the end. S1 John was still a bit immature, and that's allowed, but the story does need to show him growing into the man he's supposed to be. The warrior haircut might be a bit of obvious symbolism, but it was done well to show that he's growing up; he's always known he'd have to, and to some extent he might have fought against that, but much like Sarah after T1 he can't go back only forward.
Then we can check in with some side plots. I guess as an explanation for why Chromartie didn't kill Ellison, this is largely acceptable. He knew Ellison was on the Connor case so he could be useful continuing it; and since then Ellison had seen the truth of Sarah's statements (he already had, but Chromartie didn't know that), Ellison could be predicated to be even more interested in finding her for answers.
As for the Babylon story...I want to like it but I don't think I do. It may come around certainly, but my gut first reaction is to be against it. I literally just said in the s1 reflections that I thought it was a good move for the show to stay away from shape-shifting robots and I think I still feel that way. And also, on a bigger level, I don't particularly like the idea of the machines coming back and making the AI behind the machines. I don't know it's they're trying to change the future or preserve it as it is, but machines being responsible for their own creation takes away from the human frailty that's woven through the Skynet story so far. Humans are by nature inquisitive and creative, but also fearful and destructive, and all of that is behind Skynet and we are ultimately responsible for our own destruction. To say it took a machine to make it happen, removes the responsibility and need to learn and grow from the mistakes.
It could be more than that; or it could just grow on me as a story. Plus I didn't like how religious this episode got, don't do this to me show, I know it's tempting, BSG did it, but I didn't like it there either, so stop it now.
This episode is kind of great and kind of terrible. It's also both too compressed and too stretched out. I think I liked more of it than I disliked, but I'm not sure it was actually better than it was bad.
Also, this episode should have been called Murphy's Law, I will hear no argument on the subject. If they had been saving that for another episode I might have heard that case; but if they were, they never got to it.
The basic structure here is 'The Terminator' plot, and I think I liked the chase story. A few times as Cameron was walking around I got to thinking about how the original story would have been different with a small, more vulnerable looking robot on the task. We got some of that in T2 (although as I said then, Robert Patrick seems just as deadly in a different way) and then here, but they don't have time to do a lot with it here. We don't get people trying to help or take some kind of advantage of what looks like a hurt teenage girl. Does she face any conflict over those stolen wet wipes? We don't see her fight back against anyone, well meaning or not, who tries to do something that diverts her from her mission.
But the bigger missed opportunity is doing more with how the personal connection feeds into her effectiveness as a terminator. John and Sarah talk about how Cameron knows all their tricks and plans, but I really expected her to do something like go after Charley's wife after Cameron saw him also on the Connors' trail. I expected there to be a programming conflict when she found Sarah injured, like the 'terminate John' protocol had been reactivated, but the 'protect Sarah' protocol was intact.
So that stuff was good, but it wasn't enough. On top of that, the opening is pretty bad, it feels fake artsy and is not the only time in the episode where the camera seems to cut away so they don't have to explain how some events went down.
The stuff towards the end...I don't know if it's handled as well as it should be, but it does give me a lot of ideas. Just how self-directed is Cameron? She still has the programming to terminate John, but is able to push it aside. Was her breakdown as John removed the chip genuine, or was his hasty repair work key to her recovery (for now, I expect this to come up again)? I certainly couldn't believe her in that moment, and I would have thought less of John if he'd believed her, she had never actually stopped trying to kill him before he had her at his mercy.
But I also like that John is becoming more assertive at the end. S1 John was still a bit immature, and that's allowed, but the story does need to show him growing into the man he's supposed to be. The warrior haircut might be a bit of obvious symbolism, but it was done well to show that he's growing up; he's always known he'd have to, and to some extent he might have fought against that, but much like Sarah after T1 he can't go back only forward.
Then we can check in with some side plots. I guess as an explanation for why Chromartie didn't kill Ellison, this is largely acceptable. He knew Ellison was on the Connor case so he could be useful continuing it; and since then Ellison had seen the truth of Sarah's statements (he already had, but Chromartie didn't know that), Ellison could be predicated to be even more interested in finding her for answers.
As for the Babylon story...I want to like it but I don't think I do. It may come around certainly, but my gut first reaction is to be against it. I literally just said in the s1 reflections that I thought it was a good move for the show to stay away from shape-shifting robots and I think I still feel that way. And also, on a bigger level, I don't particularly like the idea of the machines coming back and making the AI behind the machines. I don't know it's they're trying to change the future or preserve it as it is, but machines being responsible for their own creation takes away from the human frailty that's woven through the Skynet story so far. Humans are by nature inquisitive and creative, but also fearful and destructive, and all of that is behind Skynet and we are ultimately responsible for our own destruction. To say it took a machine to make it happen, removes the responsibility and need to learn and grow from the mistakes.
It could be more than that; or it could just grow on me as a story. Plus I didn't like how religious this episode got, don't do this to me show, I know it's tempting, BSG did it, but I didn't like it there either, so stop it now.
