Writer: Toni Graphia
Director: Holly Dale
Originally Aired: 12/01/2008
Grade: A
When I first saw this episode title, a few weeks before it aired, I thought it would be a more John-centric episode, because John is, quite literally, a self-made man. Alas, the hilarious pun was not to be...
This was certainly not the best episode this season or anything. The overall story arc, about some random T who went too far back in the past and single-mindedly continued to pursue his goal to assassinate the future Governor of California, wasn’t all that interesting. There were also a few too many goofy shortcuts in service to the storytelling, like the amazing Library that Has Everything, and All Perfectly Organized, Too. Books, newspapers, old newsreels, and all easily found? Right. However… this episode was written by Toni Graphia, who wrote a pretty good Battlestar Galactica episode, and was also responsible for my other two favorite Cameron episodes, “The Demon Hand” and “Allison from Palmdale.” This episode was about Cameron, and it had Billy Lush in it, so I loved it.
Let me take a moment to talk about Billy Lush. I actually saw him as Eric in this episode before I saw him as Trombley in Generation Kill. In fact, this is the first time I ever even laid eyes on the guy, aside from maybe a trailer for The Black Donnelleys, which I never watched a single episode of. And I liked his character here right away, for reasons I cannot even fathom (maybe it was the earnestness, floppy hair, and funny teeth?). Eric is probably my favorite one-off character on the show so far. I’m kind of glad that I saw this before Generation Kill, because I think I would have been much more cautious in liking Eric and giving the actor a chance had I already seen him as Trombley, who pretty much makes my skin crawl. Says a lot about his acting skill, I suppose. Also, “I never fired a gun before” coming from the same actor who played Trombley is pretty funny. I have to wonder if it’s just a creepy coincidence, or if the line was added after he got the part. Or maybe the writer had him in mind all along. Final point: his name is Billy Lush. When I was listening to the commentaries on the Generation Kill DVD, I noticed that everyone always calls him by his full name—it’s never Billy, or even Lush, but always “Billy Lush.” And then I thought, if I knew someone named Billy Lush, I’d say it all the time, too. His name is so fucking awesome. Maybe that’s just me, though. Okay, moment taken, moving on.
This episode was so very much about Cameron and her self-image, though also about viewing her from an outsider perspective. The first scene where Eric is asking her innocent questions about her life is brilliant. We see her finding the words to be truthful and innocuous at the same time, all interwoven with flashbacks of the violence she is filtering for him. In those moments we see her as she is and as Eric sees her at the same time. Cameron asking Eric if he ever thinks about suicide because “there’s something wrong with you,” while looking at herself in the mirror, was chilling. Definitely as much about her as it was about Eric, and the same goes for her comment about “a bomb waiting to go off” inside both of them, which even ties back to her asking Sarah if she’s a bomb in 2x02. Cameron knows that she still has a “kill John Connor” order floating around in her programming and is afraid, as much as a machine can be afraid, that something will happen to set it off.
It also explains, in a bizarre way, why she told Eric that his cancer was back. She saw that they had something in common, something dangerous inside them that could wreak havoc, and she tried to fix it the best way that she knew how. It was almost like… empathy. It was also the closest thing to an act of kindness that Cameron has ever done, and it stands in stark contrast to the moment in “The Demon Hand” where she allowed the ballerina and her brother to get shot because they were unimportant to her mission (and since Toni Graphia also wrote that episode, I have to think this was a deliberate contrast rather than a happy accident). Eric had already served his purpose, but Cameron still went back to help him.
We got a bit of an outsider view of John here, as well, though in a somewhat different way. We certainly saw a bit of how his peers see him with his interactions at the party, but even Riley, in-the-know as she is, provides an outsider view because she is viewing him through the lens of the future that she comes from, rather than the present that John and Sarah are living. When I watched their scenes together, mostly what I was thinking was how weird it must be for Riley to know that in her own past, this guy is a legend, and yet she’s seeing him right in front of her, as a lonely, outcast teenage boy struggling with his burdens, trying to find a little piece of happiness, all the while knowing his destiny. Even small things, like John’s disinterest in violent video games, play into this element of his characterization.
It’s odd to me that John clearly notices Cameron’s human-like quirks—her taste in music and clothing, the way she turned Ellison over into broken glass so proudly—and yet he still dumps the laundry on her despite how unhappy she looked about it. And she did look unhappy, even a little hurt. She also looked unhappy about Eric’s cancer being back, about John staying out with Riley, and even for a split-second when she found out that Eric was gone. She told John a couple episodes ago that she can’t be happy because she’s a machine, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. She seems pretty unhappy lately, and she looked plenty happy when she was counting her pool hustling winnings in 2x02. And yet, despite the fact that she seems to be feeling something resembling emotion this season, she still blinked and moved on to the next useful target at the end of the episode.
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