Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 2x05, “Goodbye to All That”

Episode Title: Goodbye to All That
Writers: Ashley Miller and Josh Stentz
Director: Bryan Spicer
Originally Aired: 10/06/2008
Grade: A

I know a lot of folks loved this episode, and I can see why, but for some reason, it just… didn’t appeal to me that much. Of course, I still have plenty to say.

I did appreciate Derek trying to hammer home the point that people will, someday, die for John. And John met one of those people today. Derek’s not blind, he saw the way John was behaving at the beginning of the season, and he needed to get through to John somehow, to make sure he was going to “snap out of it.” John’s tears seem to indicate that he succeeded. Derek loves John, and I think he truly wishes that things were different, that John could just be a normal kid. But he also has firsthand experience of a horrible dystopian future in which John Connor is pretty much holding the remainder of the human race together with paper clips and old chewing gum. I didn’t see the “they all die for you” comment as being about guilt and blame, exactly, but pointing out to John that if people are going to die for him someday, maybe he doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about getting to hang out with girls and rebel against his destiny.* It’s true that Derek hammered on the “people die so you can live” part, but I think he was just really trying to make sure that John had absorbed everything that happened and that he was remembering how high the stakes are.

*For the record, I believe that John needs to actually form emotional connections with people besides his family and robot protector in order to be a good leader. However, in the first three episodes this season, he seemed to have lost sight of the end goal a bit.

We also saw John express his own frustration that everyone but John Connor is controlling John Connor’s life, which has always bothered me and is a point that needed to be made. And in most ways, I completely empathize with John’s PoV here. It is completely and utterly fucked up that almost every time he makes a decision, someone throws his destiny in his face and second-guesses him. (Actually, most of the time, they just make the decisions for him without including him in the process, which is definitely not any better.) Granted, I don’t think he’s earned the right to have his decisions go unquestioned, and given the events of the flash-forward, he probably never will. But still, how on earth is this guy going to become a leader when no one is willing to follow? And who has the authority to tell him whether he’s on the right path or not? How do they know? Was there ever a scenario in which John Connor came to be the leader of mankind completely by accident?

Another thing that really hit me after watching this episode is that the Connors have no way of knowing whether or not they’ve succeeded. They thought they’d succeeded before, when the show began, and they were still living in fear, running away every few months, etc. They can never, ever be sure that it won’t happen unless it does. Even if they succeed, they will never know because there is no possible way they could be absolutely sure. They will always be waiting for the hammer to fall. The words on the wall behind Sarah’s couch--“Enjoy Relax Dream”--are particularly poignant in light of this.

I also thought it was hysterical that Cameron seemed to have no interest in protecting Marty and his family, aside from the fact that Sarah ordered her to do so, yet she bothered to pass on his no-crust preference to Sarah.

It also occurred to me that Cameron may be studying John Connor because SkyNet wants to build their own version of him. I don’t know how that would work, exactly, it just occurred to me that she would be able to do that, given what we’ve seen of her origins.

I have to admit that I still wonder if she really was programmed by John, just because I'm operating on "if we haven't seen it, maybe it didn't happen." But Cameron knows things that she just wouldn't know unless she was someone that John talked to intimately, like the story of Sarah reading him The Wizard of Oz in Spanish.

True Blood, 1x05, “Sparks Fly Out”

Episode Title: Sparks Fly Out
Writer: Alexander Woo
Director: Daniel Minahan
Originally Aired: 10/05/2008
Grade: A

Favorite laugh of the episode: Lafayette removing his earrings before going to confront the redneck assholes about the “AIDS burger.”

Second favorite laugh of the episode: Gran taking the time to respond, “All right, same to you” to the rude caller’s “You will go to hell for this!” It was completely unnecessary to maintain the illusion of what Sookie was hearing.

Gran’s bizarre, stilted speech introducing Bill at the meeting was another highlight of the episode for me—it’s easy to just dismiss it as bad acting by Lois Smith, but I think, to her credit, that it was bad acting by Adele Stackhouse, which is perfectly in character. Gran likes her theatrics, bless her.

As for Bill, this episode is the first time I really began to care about him and feel curious about him (which was, presumably, the intent of the episode, so bravo on your success, Alexander Woo). I know it was there in earlier episodes, but for some reason, Bill’s loneliness and longing really came through to me when he was sitting in the church kitchen, alone, with his bottle or Tru Blood, listening to Sam talk about how when he heard Sookie was coming alone, he just had to offer himself as an escort. Sookie has another suitor, another option, and hers can go out in the daytime. Bill has no one else, as far as we’ve been led to believe--Sookie is his only way of having a chance at a meaningful relationship. So has Bill already fallen in love with Sookie? When did this happen? Why? She’s cute, to be sure, and she has a seemingly “magical” ability, and I suppose her brave, forced version of naïveté is charming and her sexual inexperience tempting. I guess I’m kind of convincing myself, here…

What was Bill’s motive in speaking at the meeting? He had quite a speech prepared. Was he doing it for Sookie, trying to assuage the fears she’d expressed earlier? Or did he have an even larger agenda, one that jives with the “mainstream” movement figureheaded by the blond vampire woman we saw on TV in the pilot? Why does Bill care so much about humans and mainstreaming? What makes him different from so many other vampires? Is it because he was seemingly turned because he was a good, moral person, whereas many other vampires are turned for other reasons?

Finally, Bill’s story about the boy wounded in battle didn’t work for me, because the question that brought it up was random and unplanned from an audience member, but Bill’s story sounded heavily rehearsed. I know he speaks very formally, but still, it sounded like rehearsed storytelling ala a darker version of Prairie Home Companion. If this were a different show with a different context, I’d think the whole thing was planned and that the man who asked was a plant.

Hoyt’s still near the top of my suspect list, due to more of his clueless mother bossing him around and his fascination with trying TruBlood. Really, how many stable, functional people are curious about drinking blood, synthetic or not? But dammit, I think he’s adorkably cute, so I don’t want it to be him! And if it’s not, can he please get a girlfriend or something? Surely there’s at least one cute girl on Bon Temps who would find him goofily charming…

As for Jason and Tara, I don’t know if I want them as a couple, ever, but they do have an endearing chemistry together. And as much of a dolt as Jason may be, and as weird as he is about vampires, he is still very open-minded. He knows perfectly well that Lafayette is both black and gay, and he doesn’t bat an eye about either. He doesn’t even indicate that it registers on his radar (which is another discussion unto itself: ignorance as innocence vs. the knowledge of reality). So he has no problem fucking in a pile of garbage, so what?

Sam and Sookie’s kiss was actually fine in my opinion--I thought they had nice chemistry there. But Sam once again flipping out over Sookie’s feelings for Bill just made me want to slap him, hard. Sam, she dated Bill. It happened. Get over it, because whining to Sookie about how silly she was accomplishes nothing. Have a little dignity, you whiny, opportunistic ass. Having said that, I actually like Sam, he was just really working the nerves here. I am completely on Sookie’s side with regards to that conflict.

We also learned quite a bit about V, the “life force of a vampire,” in this episode. Its allure, and the allure of becoming a vampire, is understandable. V allows humans to see that there is so much more going on in the world than they can experience in their day-to-day lives. Becoming a vampire offers a chance to live in that heightened state of awareness permanently, offers the ability to move beyond the life that you are living--to live in this same world you’re already in, but see it and feel it and believe it differently. That’s some pretty fucking powerful stuff, though if Eric’s world-weary attitude is anything to go by, even the vampire life grows stale.

I’m almost sad that we won’t be seeing much of the mayor again, because he rather endeared himself to me by presenting Bill with the tin-type of his old family, despite his own personal misgivings about vampires. He was still curious and prepared for kindness, which makes him a fabulous Christian in my book (and that’s not something I say often).

Finally, Terry hugging Bill in soldierly comradeship means Terry is, without a doubt, awesome. If he’s the killer, I will… throw something. Dammit.

Supernatural, 4x03, “In the Beginning”

Episode Title: In the Beginning
Writer: Jeremy Carver
Director: Steve Boyum
Origainlly Aired: 10/02/2008
Grade: B+

There were quite a few positives about this episode, to be sure, and much of it has to do with that fact that Jeremy Carver was a good addition to the writing team last season. This episode, in the hands of a different Supernatural writer, probably would have tanked.

The time travel gimmick was a dynamic way to reveal Sam’s demon blood to Dean, and the actress who played young Mary was quite a find. The physical resemblance to the actress who plays the older Mary was amazing, and this girl could actually act. She was believable as what and who she was.

I also loved that neither of the boys really managed to hang on to their secrets here—a nice change of pace from the cheap “Dean’s got a secret that he can’t tell Sam” tension of season 2, and the similar tension about Sam having information about Mary’s past in Season 3.

And finally, Grandpa Winchester’s compliment to Dean after the Liddy Walsh incident echoes the Season 1 scene between Dean and Azazel-possessed John, right down to asking for the Colt right afterward. This is, in fact, exactly what puts Dean’s guard up to make him say that he doesn’t let anybody else hold the Colt.

All of those things were great, but on the other hand, I feel like the episode raised too many questions, namely because it’s not completely clear whether the meddling angel established a real time loop or not, and there are flaws with either scenario. For one thing, Dean talking John into getting the Impala implies a time loop to me, because without Dean, why would he have gotten that car? Not that I can’t fanwank that the van could have died after John took it home, or that he might have changed his mind on his own before the papers were signed, but the fact that the writers even put this scene in at all implies that they wanted to suggest a time loop.

And if there’s a time loop, then why would Azazel make the deal to trade Dean’s life for John’s many years down the road if he’s already been told by Dean that he’s the one who’s going to kill him? Azazel’s apparently not big on self-preservation? I actually wanted to pop Dean in the mouth for even saying that, because he had absolutely no way of knowing how this would affect future events. For all he knew, he could’ve blinked out of existence right then and there by giving Azazel that information.

Also, unless the whole time travel thing just happened in a bubble and had no actual repercussions in the present because Castiel is just that awesome and powerful, I don’t understand how Dean going to get the Colt in the past didn’t change anything as far as the Winchesters getting it later and thus allowing Dean to kill Azazel with it. I know Dean told the hunter it belonged to (whose name I have forgotten) where it could be found if it was needed, but still, nothing changed? I don’t buy it. It just seems way too likely that something would have shifted that would lead to Azazel being alive in the present and Sam (and Dean?) having different memories of the past than what we saw on the show.

I’ve watched this episode three times, and I still just can’t make all of these pieces fit together. It was still an enjoyable episode if I completely turn off my brain, I just feel like the whole thing took place in an alternate reality and had no repercussions outside of giving Dean a little bit of insight, which seems odd for a time travel episode.