Lots of catching up for us, this week, after a spoiler-heavy episode of Heroes was forced upon us, and we decided once again that our world didn’t have enough patriotic shootin’ n’ ‘splodin’.
Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2: 01-06
0201 – Samson And Delilah: The first season of “TSCC” ended on an explosive if largely ineffectual cliffhanger, leaving the tame terminator Cameron in a fiery explosion that was devastating but almost certainly survivable for her, and as far as I can remember showing the perpetrator of that explosion walking away from the scene.
This episode starts where the last left off, but takes events in a more alarming direction, with the men responsible for blowing the car up heading into the house to attack John and Sarah Connor in an attempt to obtain a hard-drive that… uh… I think was supposed to contain the AI thingie from the… the HD ends up being irrelevant, so forgive me if I’ve forgotten exactly what that was all about.
As expected, Cameron manages to escape the wrecked car, but doesn’t get to the mother/son team in time to help them, and they have to save themselves, in a scene that largely happens off-camera, but whose consequences ripple out through the episode, as they wrestle with the hard fact that one of them had to kill another human so that they could survive. On John’s birthday, no less!
When Cameron does arrive on the scene, she’s malfunctioning badly, her mission parameters now changed so that she believes she has to kill John, and the bulk of the episode follows Sarah and John’s flight from the female terminator, with Derek and Charley failing to catch up with them.
There’s a lot of religious imagery in this episode, with both the Connor’s chosen sanctuary of a church resonating throughout, and Agent Ellison’s faith tested by the aftermath of his team’s tragically failed assault on Cromartie in one of the year’s strongest pieces of television.
It’s a fairly strong episode, that does a rewiring job on the show. New themes are set up, most notably in the ever more complex relationship between Cameron and the Connors – understandably strained by her repeated attempts in this episode to kill them, but also by her assertion when finally back to herself that she loves John.
The name of this episode is clearly supposed to suggest the more obvious betrayal of John by Cameron that happens here, but I think it might also be referring to a broader theme that will continue through the season – that Cameron will have a more subtly detrimental effect on John, as it becomes clear that the relationship between the two has a deeper emotional element to it, and also that her flawed programming isn’t entirely fixed at story’s close.
Deeper than that, though – Cameron says at the close of this episode that “they” won’t trust John, now that he has saved her. This idea, that his choices relating to Cameron – and by extension to the machines in the future – may come to be his downfall, as other humans start to doubt his position as saviour, could be another way in which she will be Delilah to his Samson.
Another addition this season is that of Catherine Weaver, mysterious head of a corporation that is strangely interested in all things terminator – by the end of this episode, we will find out that Weaver is a shapechanging model T1000, who is particularly adept at disguising herself as a human. The idea is an intriguing one, but unfortunately the casting of Shirley Manson in the role is a bad choice – I love her as frontwoman of Garbage, but there’s no indication in these first few episodes that she can act at all, let alone in a role as complicated as that of a machine that pretends to be a human.
The showrunners haven’t quite got as good a handle on how the T1000 works best, visually, either, so the showiness of the effects scenes with the character come off as a poor man’s version of those in “T2″ – though even if they looked as smooth, the fact is we’ve moved on as an audience since that movie was released, so making a big deal of the morphing effects lacks the punch that it might. In fact, the big “reveal” in this episode comes off looking like the crew were really super impressed with the visuals they were creating, despite them being so derivative.
I’ve come to think of this as the “Torchwood” effect, though “Heroes” would work just as well – a situation in which the audience has a more advanced sense of a genre’s innovations than the creators do, so the creators present hackneyed, outdated concepts and visuals with a “Ta-DAH!” which makes them look, to be honest, a little bit daft.
(Working with technology that you know quite well, but your clients are still feeling the “wow!” factor of sometimes yields similar situations!)
0202 – Automatic For The People: This would be a fairly straightforward “mission” episode, but for the introduction of another new element to the series, the rather contrived “wall of clues” that is left for the team in the basement of the house that they have just started renting.
It’s an odd addition, for a couple of reasons. The first is that, while it might serve the show’s structure by making it easier for the Connors and co to be inserted into different situations without any pesky extra work on the part of the show writers, it is a bit too similar to ideas that have shown up in other shows like “Life” and “Prison Break”.
And the way that the wall is introduced is quite awkwardly done. The episode begins with one of John Connor’s soldiers from the future appearing, already damaged by shrapnel, and giving them a cryptic warning that of course will lead them into this episode’s main story. The man smashes through a bay window, and seems to have arrived quite urgently. But at the end of the episode, Sarah finds a blood trail that leads to the basement, and in a sequence that is never really given much explanation, we find that before rushing into the house to give his warning and promptly die, the man from the future apparently first went into the basement and wrote a bunch of clues in his own blood.
It’s a bit badly edited together, or a bit lame, or both.
Although the “a” plot is a straightforward one, there is also a continuing exploration of how increasingly erratic John’s behaviour is becoming, following both the killing of the man who broke into their house in the last episode, and Cameron’s temporary betrayal. He goes to school – and is absent throughout the main mission this episode – where he is approached by a cute and mischevious girl. Partly encouraged by Riley – the girl – and partly because he’s a bit messed up, John rebels by bringing her to their new home. It gets a complicated reaction from his mum.
There’s a little bit more of Ellison and Charley – wherein Ellison reveals their doomed future to Charley’s wife Michelle – and some more corporate intrigue as Manson as Weaver overacts her way through a few more scenes, ruining a perfectly good subplot.
0203 – The Mousetrap: Charley and his wife Michelle – played with great nuance by the now familiar Sonya Walger of “Lost” and “Tell Me You Love Me” – are trying to escape the city, when Cromartie grabs Michelle and disappears. Charley contacts Sarah in desperation, and she and Derek Reece grudgingly go and try to help.
Cromartie – once again played enigmatically by the wonderful Garret Dillahunt – holds Michelle in place, and sets into motion a devious plot that occupies the awkward foursome for a while before they eventually realise that the kidnapping is a ploy to lead Cromartie to John.
For his part, John is struggling more and more to come to terms with his situation, and he shakes Cameron off to spend some time with Riley by way of rebellion. When Cromartie catches up to him, John has to escape by himself.
The episode is well-executed, and the strong guest performances from Dillahunt and Walger add a lot of value. There are hard ethical decisions to make for Sarah Connor, and Headey plays it well. And Busy Phillips, who I know from her time on “ER”, is brought more into the fold as the heavily pregnant and sweet-natured landlady next-door.
Shirley Manson is still the only weak link in this chain, and it’s harder to take in this episode as her character Weaver attempts to employ lost FBI agent Ellison for her company Zeira Corp, involving more shaky dialogue from her then ever before!
0204 – Allison From Palmdale: See, this is the first time I’ve seen any inconsistency in how well made this show is, because there’s this extremely weird moment early on when Cameron is walking, and in a motion obviously meant to make her look more mechanical, she actually bobs like a Gerry Anderson puppet.
It’s a type of movement that comes up again, in later episodes, ordinarily when there’s a badly directed Weaver scene, but it’s strangest because ordinarily Summer Glau gets it perfectly right.
A shame, really, because this is otherwise a really interesting episode – a bit of a mythos busting/building story in which a visual trigger sets Cameron’s programming askew, and we see her believing that she is actually a girl called Allison, from a place called Palmdale.
She is seperated from John, and ends up going on a spree of misadventures, which sees a whole other side to her character emerging. We’re told, through flashbacks, that in the future, Allison is a detainee who the terminators attempt to use to teach them to infiltrate the human camps. It’s uncertain by close of episode exactly how Cameron has found herself so submerged in the Allison persona – throughout the story, she seems to be experiencing a moment of personality schism.
Once again, in one of the recurring themes this season, Cameron’s true programming is called into doubt, as she reverts once more to wanting to kill John Connor. We aren’t reassured at all about that by the climax of this episode. We also see that Cameron can lie – which we already knew was the case when it served her mission, but in this case, it’s a self-serving deceit. A new thing altogether for this strangely complex machine.
We’ve seen this with Cromartie, as well – though in his case, some of the odd quirks of personality he seems to show have ultimately always had a logical aim. The wonkiness of this episode, though, is added to by the introduction of more backstory for Weaver, or at least, for the life that the T1000 pretending to be Weaver has stolen. She introduces Ellison to her child, and he starts to question her honesty.
The problem, and you’re going to be starting to see a pattern emerging, here, is that these scenes require a consistency of performance from Manson, or from the director guiding her, and it just doesn’t happen in this one.
0205 – Goodbye To All That: A hard and fast and straightforward episode that has a decent amount of action and suspense to it, but is only really exceptional for a couple of reasons. First, it’s an episode that finally gives Derek Reese something useful to do, after him basically just standing around being surly since arriving in the series, and in the process has a couple of pretty decent effects sequences, as they take down the terminator of the week.
It’s also important because it gives Sarah Connor a chance to be an actual mum for the period of time that she has to babysit one of the potential victims of that terminator. There’s a cool thread running through the episode where Sarah is reading “The Wizard Of Oz” to the boy she is looking after, and it prompted an “Oh, of course!” moment – the sort of thing I really love in a story – because the Connors have been using the surname Baum as a disguise for the last few episodes.
There’s more for Manson to do, and it’s not great, still, but there’s finally an actual inventive use of sfx for her T1000 persona, which is pretty awesome.
0206 – The Tower Is Tall But The Fall Is Short: A very odd episode, this. There’s a point in any show – especially US shows – when the audience reactions catch up to the shooting schedule, and sometimes that show will go through some sudden changes because of it.
I don’t know if that’s what happened with this show, but there’s a definite change here to Shirley Manson’s performance, and suddenly Weaver is an interesting character! Of course, it’s a complete shift in the way her plots are running as well, and ordinarily that’d jar far too much to be acceptable, but her erratic job so far has been so disruptive to the show dynamic that the changes are welcome.
In fact, what’s bizarre is that actually, Weaver’s plotlines in this episode are the best handled thing about it. An interesting new thread is introduced via the child psychologist who both the Connors and Weaver go to – and he’s a really nicely delivered role. All of the scenes that the other characters have with the therapist are well done as well – the emotional aspect to this episode is really well done.
But the action stuff in this episode is handled badly. It’s weird, because it’s always been one of the show’s strong points, but here it’s as if the crew hadn’t ever seen any of the earlier episodes. Cameron faces off against a T1001 – remember, that’s the kick-ass model that gave Arnie so much trouble in the third movie. But Cameron, who has an understandably hard time beating terminators that are the same model as her, just knackers the other one in a few short minutes, without really skipping a beat.
There’s no sense of drama or consequence to the confrontation, and in fact, the director goes with the opposite – the fight takes place in an elevator, and there’s a moment when it stops at a floor, and both machines stop their combat and collect themselves for the couple of floors that a young family come aboard. The previously personality-less T1001 even rearranges her hair to cover a wound. This scene is already a cliche in narratives where it makes sense – like a comedy action movie where the combatants are spies or something, and are trying to maintain a cover – but when one of them is a murderous machine on a mission, and the other is the socially awkward Cameron, it is actually cringe-worthy.
It’s another one of those awful moments where the people involved clearly think they are the first to ever think of a scene, and also think that it’s AWESOME! But sadly, it’s just retarded. And not in a lovable way, like Hoffman in “Rainman”.
Still, at least they obviously got their series extension before this episode aired. So with any luck, next episode they’ll run with the good changes, and scrap the pantomime!
The Unit Season 2: 08-16
I’ve spent such a long time whinging about a bad performance of a T1000, that I haven’t left myself much energy to write about any of the other shows we watched. Course, that’s irony – Robert Patrick first came to everybody’s attention doing an awesome job of creating the first one, and he’s here doing a sterling job on “The Unit”.
As I may have mentioned before, this show is a bit of a guilty pleasure. The performances are consistently excellent, and the scripts written with precision, but the whole thing is delivered from such an earnest and morally strident viewpoint that there are a lot of moments that we wouldn’t forgive of most other shows.
Another thing that I’ve been thinking about today is the series’ slightly one-sided approach to gender politics – we’re expected to forgive an awful lot of behaviour on the part of the men in the show that the female characters wouldn’t generally get a free pass on.
0208 – Natural Selection: A bit of a filler episode, this, with a very sharp focus. Bob is stranded in the middle of a Russian wilderness with his translator, after an off-camera mission goes wrong. As he tries to rescue the pair in the face of ever worsening conditions, we see the selection process that Bob went through to get into the Unit, in flashback.
Not a complicated or outstanding episode, but perfectly serviceable, though as much as I like Bob, the show dynamic works best when the team are all together.
0209 – Report By Exception: The increasingly awkward political footing that the Unit is on is explored in this episode, as a mission that the team is on is endangered when a politician in conflict with Colonel Ryan compromises them. The emotional centre of the episode comes from Jonas having to sleep with his undercover wife to maintain the team’s cover.
Jonas is morally off the hook, of course, because it’s in the service of his country. Sigh.
0210 – Bait: Tiffy finds herself in more and more trouble after trying to help Ryan’s wife. And Jonas gets to be a badass, when he is held captive in a hostile country. It’s another episode with a narrow focus, and it works exceptionally well, with very little busy-work invented for the supporting characters.
That’s the main weakness of this show – actually of many shows with larger casts – sometimes there’s so much effort put into giving everyone a chance to play, some really naff soap-opera storylines come up.
0211 – Silver Star: Jonas and Molly attend a family party to honour his father – his nephew, a soldier, arrives with his pregnant wife, and it quickly becomes apparent that the young man is beating his wife.
Jonas’ instant reaction is convincingly abrupt and hefty, but once everything calms down, we are taken through the process of the older couple as they counsel and caution the younger.
This process is authentically handled, though the fact that the morality play on display is so much more pragmatic than we normally see in such programmes almost makes it difficult to get onside with. There are some nice hints at how difficult it may have been for Molly and Jonas themselves as they came to terms with life in the military.
At the same time, there’s an incredibly intriguing sequence of events unfolding on base, as Bob and Mack are involved in trying to assist a mysterious man – played perfectly by Ed O’Neill. Potential inter-departmental conspiracy is heavily suggested by this storyline, and it ends in tragedy. I do wonder whether they’ll pick up this thread later on – I hope so, it’s interesting.
0212 – The Broom Cupboard: The Unit are tasked with running protection detail on a US senator on a visit to Asia, but also with keeping her from interfering with US foreign policy. However, Jonas has also been called to a secret meeting with the President – a charming cameo by William H Macy – who has a secret mission for him.
It’s a twisty episode, and very well done, although it’s possible that I’ve watched this show a little too much because I’m starting to second guess the way the team work. There’s a fun bit of sleight-of-hand from Bob and crew, and Demore Barnes as Hector finally shows up again – it’s been a while.
The wives and Mack are on an errand that will end in tragedy, though it’s not an entirely unexpected turn of events, and it’s handled with a soft touch.
0213 – Sub-Conscious: A very peculiar episode, in which Kim is investigated by Ryan and co for dreaming about details of a current mission – overseen by her husband Bob – that she shouldn’t possibly know.
The mission itself is interesting, taking place as it does on a South Korean sub – I love submarines! The paranormal aspect of the story is a little weird, but handled fairly well.
0214 – Johnny B. Good: A brilliant piece of television, this one, which dissects a badly broken mission through flashbacks.
The episode works particularly well because it keeps the Unit in close proximity to their wives throughout – rather than trying to force storylines for the women, the emotional weight of the episode comes from the way in which the couples interact.
Though it’s a great, self-contained episode, the man-of-the-match prize has to go to Max Martini as Mack, for giving a nuanced performance of barely supressed rage and guilt. Though it does give way to one of those moments of moral indiscretion that I mentioned a bit ago, that the audience understands the character is off the hook for because of what he’s gone through during the episode. Summer Glau’s character Crystal Burns does not come off a sympathetically for her part in the scenes, despite the fact that she’s also in a tough spot.
0215 – The Water Is Wide: Another full-on action episode, that really exists to give the two unsung members or the team – Hector and Charles – the chance to step to centre stage – a position that both handle admirably. It’s an interesting episode that has the Unit having to deal with a mundane and domestic problem blown to massive proportions that they find themselves in the middle of while on an unrelated mission.
It also gives us a chance to see Ryan in action – which sometimes looks a little awkward, but is still kinda fun.
There is a backup storyline that sees Tiffy and Molly on an unlikely mission of their own, looking for an MIA Vietnam veteran in Vietnam, but it’s contrived and overblown – the worst sort of story this show ever sees, existing as it does solely to try and fulfill the programme’s tagline.
Also, the Mack/Crystal relationship gets more complicated, though it looks like it may fizzle out soon enough, with Mack handling it in a characteristically blunt and unflinching manner.
0216 – Games Of Chance: A very peculiar episode, in which the special forces from a number of different countries take part in a sort of secret Olympics, pitting wits against each other to try and claim the position of elitest of the elite.
It’s a fun episode, really, though while it’s not difficult to believe such contests exist, it’s hard to imagine they run as unprofessionally as this one does.
Kim gets a plot designed solely to make her realise how grateful she should be to be an army wife. It’s testament to the show’s high points that this arc doesn’t make one want to throw their shoe at the screen, frankly!
Heroes Season 2: 07-11
We’ve left it too long with these episodes, and it being “Heroes”, with it’s every growing ensemble cast, it’s tough to break everything down by episode. The distinction has always been almost arbitrary with Kring’s baby – each story gets it’s scene in each episode, much like a super-powered soap-opera, so the chapters don’t tend to have their own beginning/middle/end structure, or theme.
There are a couple of exceptions, and a few highlights, which I’ll try to break down briefly.
There’s a problem with this season, though, and it may have been there in the first season, though I didn’t notice it so much. No matter how many twists and turns and secrets the show has, too many of them are already known to the audience before the “big reveals” that occur as the characters themselves make their discoveries. It makes for some shaky, one-note storytelling.
0207 – Chapter Seven – Out Of Time: TIME TRAVEL! Yay! Peter gets closer to remembering who he is on a trip to the future, Tim Kring manages to get rid of the troublesome, awful Caitlin, and Hiro is finally betrayed by Takezo Kensei. Which then leads to the “big reveal” of Takezo Kensei in the present day as Adam Munroe.
These plot twists are ultimately underwhelming, though, because Kensei is a shallow and bland character from the off, and the twists involving him have been telegraphed since he turned up. His transformation into a villain doesn’t catch you by surprise, because he wasn’t much of a hero to begin with. And bearing in mind how pivotal the character’s actions become to the show, it’s almost embarassing that his motivation to destroy Hiro’s life down through hundreds of years comes solely from a sense of personal romantic betrayal, by a girl that he wasn’t that convincingly into in the first place!
0208 – Chapter Eight – Four Months Ago: Similar to an episode in the first season, we’re brought up to date about what happened between that season and this one. If you’re still into the continuity porn that this show ultimately is, an episode like this is vital. And it’s great fun, too.
A lot of the real questions that have been asked since the beginning of season 2 are explored in this episode, and the characters that were introduced since then are finally given roots, which makes a couple of them much more grounded in the show’s mythos.
Plus, you know, I love Kristen Bell, and her character gets a lot of development here. In fact, her character is complex enough that it’s almost like she’s from a different show.
0209 – Chapter Nine – Cautionary Tales: More Kristen Bell! Plus a little bit of fun Claire stuff. And Hiro gets some prime scenes with George Takei, as father and son.
Actually, I wonder whether this is the point at which they realised that the writer’s strike would affect the way the season played out? The circle is closed neatly on HRG’s fears at Isaac’s final predictive paintings, and I’d got the impression that that was a mystery that was going to play out till end of season.
0210 – Chapter Ten – Truth And Consequences: Things continue to come together as the show coasts toward the end of season. Sylar is finally back on form, after not really being around for a while.
There’s a bit of an odd side-plot that comes completely out of left-field, to put Micah, Monica and Niki in peril. That starts to come together a little more next episode.
0211 – Chapter Eleven – Powerless: A pretty good climax to the season – certainly better than last year’s ultimately dissapointing season closer. Though the “Heroes” creators often drop the ball, they handled the forcibly shortened season – driven by the writers’ strike – really well.
In fact, I think the show actually benefitted from this forced brevity. Scenes that should be dramatic are dramatic, revelations and events that are portentious or out of the blue actually carry some weight, and I’m actually pretty excited about what might be coming next season. Which is interesting, because for the first part of this season I wasn’t even psyched about what would be happening in the next twenty minutes.
Bones Season 4: 05
0405 – The Crank In The Shaft: After the previous episode’s curious appearance of a past character, this one is much more straightforward, though it does feature one of the best bodies yet.
Maybe I’ve just got a thing about elevators, I don’t know. Both “The Unit”, “Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles” and this story feature them prominently in this week’s post.
The mystery itself is a standard process-of-elimination procedural, and as such makes for an interesting if not particularly challenging episode.
The really important thing here is the Angela/Hodgins story – the events in the episode would have you believe that the two spend it finally coming to terms with their break-up. However, and I may just be a big romantic wuss, but I’m not buying it. I don’t think this is the end of the line for these two frustrated lovers.
It may not just be a soppy flaw in my character – as a writer, I’m struggling to believe that the showrunners have put so much work into those two as a romantic unit, only to have them fall out of love and leave it at that.