TSCC - Born To Run...
Apr. 11th, 2009 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cj2017
The Good
Sarah in jail getting her snark on; “I never liked funny boys.”
John Henry rolling twenties at will.
Sarah in jail attempting to drop Ellison in the shit; “Maybe we were in this together!”
The T1 shout-outs; gun shop Terminator, jail break terminator getting all shot to hell, Sarah yelling madness at an interrogation room camera, Kyle…
The return of the Samson and Delilah priest. This show likes it when you pay attention.
The return of Chola. Now with actual lines.
Sarah; do not think of her, do not come for her, leave. I guess John took that to heart.
Fox running an advert for Prison Break over a shot of Sarah sitting forlornly in her cell. Who says the network doesn’t have a sense of humour?!
The hint that Danny Dyson is probably a Kaliba prisoner/collaborator and a new link to Skynet, which opens up a whole new angle to play with.
Sarah not falling for an interrogation switcheroo like she did in Some Must Watch… Detective I believe you now, honest didn’t push her buttons quite as well as Winston did (but then, Winston had drugged the shit out of her) and Sarah manages to maintain her protective cover for John; “my son is dead.” Who knows? He might have been an ally, but it was good to see her not taking the chance.
The fact that the self destruct Terminators are on Kaliba’s side, which probably means that Pretzel Terminator was also working for Kaliba. In which case, was Savannah the target in The Tower…?
“What’s that Bible story… the one where the locks fall off?... Yeah, that’s a good one.” Sarah’s so cool when she’s so cool.
Understatement of the episode: “I’m not 100%” The words “no” and “shit” sprang to mind.
John’s “I love you.” So out of the blue and lovely. No wonder Sarah looked stunned.
The elevator ride: pure win. And no muzak.
Sarah allowing herself a little “Ha. Told you so!” smile at the three dots. Not so crazy now huh?
The return of the Reese Boys (John’s reaction to Kyle was lovely) and Derek all alive and shiny.
The Bad
“Maybe you got nothing to lose.” Yeah Ellison. Did you not listen to what she just said? Let the lady with the history of the crazy paint a picture of what she’s been doing for the past ten years, y’know those ten years she skipped through time over with the help of a cyborg. If you want a picture painting, have the balls to get an easel out and paint it yourself. Don’t put the onus on the woman who already got abused for years in a psychiatric hospital for telling that story.
Ellison being a self-righteous prick for the ninety-twelfth episode running.
Ellison not dying in a fireball.
Why was John Henry suddenly Weaver’s parrot? It was mildly amusing first time out. Then, not so much.
Oh Ellison, talking “outside” doesn’t really work so well when you’ve got a Terminator eavesdropping. Cameron heard Sarah telling John about Riley from way outside the garage.
The whole weight loss thing makes no sense at all. Sarah explicitly denied any “unexplained weight loss” in To The Lighthouse during a scene where she had no motivation whatsoever to lie. Yet suddenly, she’s lost 11% of her body mass in 6 weeks. You’d notice that. Especially if you’re as skinny as Sarah is, hell you’d need to be walking sideways over grids if you lost that much weight. Bad continuity or lazy-assed plotting? Seeing as this show usually rocks at continuity, I’m going to plump for the latter.
Shame Water Cooler Terminator was offed so quickly. He was scary-good. Guess he knew who Weaver was, but no one had clued him into what she was.
Speaking of Weaver – anyone else take a sharp breath when she raised a finger upon meeting the Connors? “Woah, don’t be pointing that at anyone now!!”
The drone – don’t those things have lasers or something? Something a little more efficient than just arbitrarily smashing it through a window and hoping for the best? Cool shot with it approaching from the distance but still… it seemed a little daft as far as master mass-murdering plans go. Plus, Weaver’s Batfink wings: a bit silly.
Strangely over-dubbed and stilted dialogue in the stairwell after the explosion. ADR having an off-day?
The Downright Fucking Ugly…
Sarah’s prison orange. Right down to those nasty shoes.
The motel wall paper and curtains.
The fact that Cameron had told John there was no power cell leak, and then suddenly decided that she would let him go ahead and check just to shoe-horn in a totally unnecessary and utterly squicky scene to appease the Jameronians. Even the actors looked uncomfortable. And I felt like I needed a shower immediately afterwards.
Cameron’s originally dead set against a jail break, and the next minute she’s non-lethally shooting the shit out of the LAPD. And John didn’t wonder that that was a little odd? Nothing to do with Ellison’s little chat, perchance?
Derek – all alive and shiny. Don’t get me wrong, I love the shifty little bastard and I was very happy to see him, but he died awesomely just last week. Hitting reset this week… Josh, would you like cream or ice cream with that cake?
So this is what it all comes down to? John – whom the writers have tried so very hard to retcon into some semblance of a man that is destined to lead the human race – jumps through time to who knows when, with a complete stranger to save his fucking cyborg girlfriend?! And Sarah lets him? No. No. A world of no. Sarah should have fought tooth and nail to stop him being such a hormone-addled idiot and John, well, John came off even worse.
There was talk, from Dekker, that Sarah would leave her son but, in the end, her son abandoned her. In one breath he’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that his mother might be very sick, and in the next, he’s hopping into a time-bubble after his cyborg shag-piece. I can’t begin to fanwank the sense back into that. On the bright side, at least Sarah still has her head in the game; “I’ll stop it.” But ditching her with Ellison and letting John go play happy-families with his new nuclear family – they even have a cute puppy – was a smack in the face for her character. After tearing the relationship between Sarah and John apart for most of the year, the writers have worked diligently in the last few episodes to build it up again. Then in one fell swoop Friedman seems to decide, what the hell, and stomps all over it in the final minutes.
“People matter, John… they’re all that matters. Don’t ever forget that.” One carefully constructed thematic arc negated in favour of five minutes of “aren’t we cool?”ness.
I really wanted to love this one. Being something of a masochist, I wanted to cry buckets and have my heart broken. I guess it just wasn’t to be.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-11 04:05 pm (UTC)LOL! So fucking true. I sucked in a breath. And then I thought to myself, she freakin' pointed her finger and I was scared. LOL!
John's actions at the end actually work for me, mostly because of the potential for the emotional carnage they could bring, but I'll spare you those thoughts for now.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 01:41 pm (UTC)"Sarah’s prison orange. Right down to those nasty shoes."
Ugly yes. Fugly even.
I've got to hand it to the costume designer though because as fugly as the orange is...
alas it is quite realistic. Prison garb out here is orange. Egads! ;)
As for the rest of the ending... I'm still processing.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 07:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 07:20 pm (UTC)As for the ending *sigh*, I still loathe it and can't see myself rounding a corner any time soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 09:13 pm (UTC)I thought for most of the episode, John was quite the prick to Cameron. And when she's sitting in the backseat with half her face blown off, he seems pretty unconcerned.
I took his chasing after her as much more of it being the final straw. This is the one thing he can't lose. He lost Riley. He lost Charley. He lost Derek. He thinks he's losing Sarah. Cameron is fixable, and so he wants to cling more to the idea that he can be effective than to Cameron herself.
At least that's how I took it. I really didn't get a twu wuv feeling at all. (Of course, I'm admittedly indifferent to Jameron and usually Cameron as well.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 12:29 am (UTC)I still thought him making the choice to jump for love of robot was ludicrous, though. That to me was OOC and went beyond even early season 2 John stupidity.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 12:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 01:00 am (UTC)Really?
Damn. I just didn't get that. Could it be that anti-Jameron block in my brain? Quite possibly.
I just thought that he was such a prick to her for the bulk of the episode "You're not perfect, you're a machine" "You're killing my mom", etc.
I also think John was terrified he's losing Sarah. He wanted her to deny Cameron's assertions. But she didn't. So now Cameron is all he has left. I don't think that means he loves her. But I do think it means he would cling to her, both to Cameron herself, but more to what she represents. Cameron is the link to his older, wiser self. Cameron is the one who doesn't hesitate to tell him what his future self would do. Much like Riley, I see Cameron as more of a focal point for the identity crisis between teenage!John and future!John (maybe even moreso now that teenage!John just ixnayed future!John out of existence)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 02:53 am (UTC)Going into the finale, I was nervous that they'd kill off Sarah or leave her with Ellison... grrrrr.
“People matter, John… they’re all that matters. Don’t ever forget that.” One carefully constructed thematic arc negated in favour of five minutes of “aren’t we cool?”ness.
Yes. THAT. That's what I hated. I think the main problem with with john leaving (aside from it being a total jackass decision) is that it felt like a fumbled attempt to quickly pull all of his issues into one big moment (like when Sarah killed Winston). It didn't work for me at all. He put his romantic love of a cyborg ahead of people and ahead of his mom. And he walked out on being john Connor (the identity he'd just embraced in his face-off with Jesse so recently).
The main thing John has dealt with since his identity crisis ended was loss — the death of Charley and Derek. Now he thinks his mom might be dying. But, rather than be there with her until the end or be there to help her as she battles it, he fucking takes off. He wasn't running away because it would be unbearable to stick around and watch her die (that would be a chicken shit thing to do anyway, but at least it might make some kind of sense). But no, that wasn't it. He fully expected his mom to go with him.
So what it all comes down to is the culmination of his confusion over his feelings for Cameron. Apparently all it took was for her to let him feel her power supply and he was truly in love :P
Ick. Ack. Augh.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 04:49 am (UTC)He was a prick to her, but I thought that was him lashing out because he was upset about his mom getting arrested and the possibility of her dying. Normally when stuff goes wrong, he gets pissed off at mom. When she's not there, I think Cameron gets it.
Maybe you're right - that John wasn't so much following Cameron because he loves her. Maybe it was more of a fear of losing someone so important. If I look at it that way, though, it comes across as more of a choice between his mom and Cameron again. Then instead of a stupid choice, it seems heartless. Augh. Why John, why?
I have a wacky theory that Cameron's secret agenda all along was to get John to fall in love with her so when the day came that she heard from Weaver and had to jump to the future, John would be sure to follow. I don't know why John would be needed in the future, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 09:41 am (UTC)He was a prick to her. Which is why the teary "he's got her" felt so damn false at the end. I really do think we were supposed to feel that he was madly in love with her, I don't think Friedman was aiming for any other conclusion there. The fact that it worked so poorly and fell so flat was on the part of shoddy writing and backwards characterisation IMO.
Yeah, it's even worse looking at it from that angle, especially following the ?cancer reveal.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 09:52 am (UTC)I don't think I'm moving past that any time soon. They took so much effort, they risked so much ire to retcon John Baum and make him into John Connor and then Friedman destroyed all that for what? Was it a desperate ratings ploy to try and secure a season 3? To suddenly accelerate the lurve story to appease Fox and the Jameronians? Was he planning a spin-off? Those are the only conclusions I can draw, because the actions of the characters certainly weren't true to the show. Tactic seems to have worked (aside from crappy finale ratings) people are clamouring for S3 and calling the finale the best thing since sliced bread. If there are many dissenting voices, they're either keeping quiet or they've headed to their ljs!
Words cannot express how much I loathe that scene. It embarrasses me with its badness. Ugh. I'd rather sit through a never-ending rolling double-bill of Desert Cantos and Heavy Metal than ever watch that scene again!
Apparently, John was so post-coital he never noticed how manipulative Cam was in terms of breaking Sarah out of jail. So maybe Cam did have a huge ulterior plan from the get-go. Certainly wouldn't be OOC for her.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-20 07:07 pm (UTC)John's resentment of her, IMO, was always as fake as his resentment of mom earlier in the season. And I though quiet adequately portrayed by TD. He always had a strong bond with Cameron. It was always more complicated and subtle than people give it credit for (the insane Jameronian fangirls don't count).
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-21 06:42 pm (UTC)Friedman just accelerated it to an unbelievable degree for me. The Jameronian thing has always been there as UST, something in the background, enough to make Sarah uncomfortable but nothing overt. Suddenly, in one scene, we're supposed to accept that it's True Love Forever and it was a leap of faith too far for me. Plus it squicks me out hugely, but that's just my opinion!
Not sure he ever resented Cam, he got distracted by a real-live girl in Riley and the show chose to focus on that for a while (another reason why the switch back to Cam was so unbelievable.) FWIW, I thought the Sarah/John spat played out better. Sure, his reasoning was all to cock - mad at mommy cos she couldn't quite save his life when someone tied her hands behind her and attempted to throttle her - but the sulky, resentful, stroppy little teen was pretty realistic. Problem is, they then retconned John past all that, and for a couple of episodes he was finally looking like a leader. Then he jumped through time after his hormones and that was the John we were left with. Right back to John Baum. What a waste.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-13 11:15 pm (UTC)It isn't like John Connor even in the original time line was a leader over night. After the bombs fell, communications likely fell apart. He had to focus on the people around him, organize, expand, make contact, earn trust. It takes time to build the network that he did. Not sure if it was Century or some other event though, but Skynet zeroed in on him as a being a major player. What Weaver has done is essentially given John a chance to turn himself into a Fringe element: he still has the skills to effect change on mankind, but if he's smart and keeps himself on the down low, only the Terminators set back prior to his jump forward will even know who the hell John Connor is. He can go un-hunted in the past and present.
John Un-Hunted
Date: 2009-11-11 09:13 pm (UTC)I also don't think John is just following his pointer, but I do think he was manipulated into the jump past Judgement Day, and that abandoning Sarah in the past won't stand for long. Assuming we have a future...
BTR - The Downright Fucking Ugly
Date: 2009-11-11 10:55 pm (UTC)1. Why did they have explosion-proof light fixtures in a prison? (Never noticed the orange... it's standard issue).
2. The motel wall paper? I was parsing the conversation and counting the fasteners on Cameron's delicates.
3. The squicky knife scene was masterful. It WAS squicky to everyone who went in thinking *SEX* (I hope), as it should have been to John. It was a bone-toss to the Summer fetishists (she DOES have a nice back), and it was brilliantly ambiguous as to Cameron's intent.
4. I hated the sanitized jail-break nod to T1.
5. This is not the same Derek... these are the two boys who John watched playing catch. As an opportunity to explore time-cycles, this was a straight forward, respectable move.
6. I didn't like John tagging along with Weaver, chasing Cam and John Henry either, but in defense of JF, that IS where the meaningful action will be.
7. You do realize (surely), that the only reason for the dog was to positively ID Allison Young. A case of mistaken identity might have been REALLY interesting instead.
If people are really what matters, John has an opportunity to protect Derek, Kyle, and Allison, while Ellison and Sarah protect Savanah.
This is my perspective. Sometimes it changes over time... like when I rewatched Desert Compost and saw Cameron move past Derek and John in her emotional intelligence. Interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-24 02:57 pm (UTC)YOUR ONLY CHANSE
Date: 2010-02-25 12:59 pm (UTC)YOUR ONLY CHANSE
Date: 2010-02-25 03:01 pm (UTC)Ending TSCC
Date: 2010-05-31 07:40 pm (UTC)1) He’s apparently 16 (17?) years old at the time, and is therefore completely controlled by his second lower mounted brain – ie: his penis.
2) Cameron is other worldly beautiful, completely unique and generally very handy to have around. After the start of season 2, when John risked his life bringing her back online, it’s just plausible (although not that well written) that John couldn’t let Cameron leave him.
c) Anyone who says they wouldn’t for (or with) a creation that looks like Cameron is a lair.
As a writer, and a fan, I was both offended and disappointed at the lacklustre ending to TSCC. The show deserved better. Way better. It’s such a pity that in this time, with these people, FOX are in charge.
Still, all we need now to tie up all these lose ends is season 3. Yeah...right.
Re: Ending TSCC
Date: 2010-06-01 06:28 am (UTC)I hated the end of Born to Run. I think I understand what Friedman was trying to do, but I still hated it and I think it did a massive disservice to the main characters.
As for season 3... there's fic and there's the hope that we get some kind of movie follow-up. Fingers crossed.
Re: Ending TSCC
Date: 2010-06-01 11:06 am (UTC)(probably looking at at least 3-4 years, right?)
Re: Ending TSCC
Date: 2010-06-04 08:31 pm (UTC)These things take time. But, in terms of profit, it would make more sense for things to happen sooner rather than later. Thomas Dekker would have us believe that behind the scenes stuff is going on, and I would love to believe that too!
I hope it's not 3-4 years, the longer it goes without anything happening, the less likely we are to ever get a continuation. The remaining fandom is small, people are drifting on to other things, it's only going to get smaller the longer we go on without a decision being made. The second season has just finished in Japan, the DVD sales for S1 in Japan were amazing enough that the powers that be sat up and took notice. We're kinda hoping that the S2 release does similar business because that might nudge a decision our way... who knows? I wish I did!