TSCC 2.05 "Goodbye to all that"

[hazelk]

I thought from the preview that this was going to be a big action episode but despite all its trucks and guns the overall impression was much quieter, the pace set by a woman reading a children’s story. With hindsight it was all about stories.

The story of the movie is different than the book and every time they remake the future it changes but doesn’t. The movie is one story with a beginning, a middle and an end - in the books, if I recall correctly, Dorothy has to keep returning to Oz, there’s no Kansas ever after.

I think it’s Derek who tells the most stories. Of the deer they killed and the man they saved but mostly the story of Martin Bedell, which he paces like a pro, beginning with Martin the Military adviser but keeping the Martin who died to save his brother and his brother’s son hidden until the end. Martin himself tells the story of running and not looking back and although he ends up staying it still catches up to him eventually (but he’s running to not from).

Do all the kids on the show come from dysfunctional families? Riley stays out all night and nobody cares, Jody only comes home to break into the safe. Savanah Weaver sits playing Sudoko as if to be heard and not seen were a mortal sin and there’s something almost Edwardian about her relationship to her mother. If Savannah is a real child I wonder if she’s even noticed the change in her or whether the real Catherine was an equally rare but glamorous presence in the nursery. When the T888 finds little Martin, he’s alone in his big house watching computer-generated stories and adapts remarkably well to real guns and abductions.

This week Catherine is the snake in the garden, the eel in water and the silver-tongued seductress in the most grossly literal way possible.

No one said thank you to Sarah until now.

Comments

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

Nice post.

SCC unsettles me. But I like it. I think it's the only show on TV that surprises me. These characters are multi-dimensional, unpredictable, wildly alive and mythic.

The show seems to have a great deal to say about 'the children of men'.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

It's odd I suppose. A Bildungsroman not from the point of view of the one being bilded but of his mother. And I like the way they're so shameless with the biblical and other metaphors - like if you make a lie big enough it works.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

They're really getting into the whole Buffy-s5-double-lives thing, aren't they? You've got two John Connors (John Baum and John Connor, as pointed out by Derek), you've got two good witches in Oz, you've got two Sarahs (the mother and the fighter), you've got two Camerons (the robot and Allison), Ellison finds out there are two robots, there were even two Martin Bedells here, one of whom doubles for John Connor with the "embrace your destiny" vs "follow your free will" theme. It's that old dichotomy again: the machine and the human, the lover and the fighter. Follow your programme or let everyone down.

BEDELL: So this is what I'm supposed to do? Stay here, graduate, go to West Point, like I don't know the end of the world is coming?

At the same time, we've also got continuous hints of a third option. Ellison doesn't know he's talking to a third robot (the wicked witch who melts, hmmm?) It's pointed out to us that Sarah is the third Sarah Connor if we count the two innocents who snuffed it in The Terminator (delicious continuity nod, both in the week's plot and the dialogue). There are actually three Bedells: the one who gets killed pointlessly in the opening, the one who will grow up to sacrifice himself, and the little kid whose future is open. And in the flash-forward, Bedell presents a third option: Kyle advocates going in to save the people being carted away even if it means certain death, and Derek represents the "look at the big picture" angle. ;-) Bedell is the one who actually saves them without getting everyone killed.

And also, there's the deer Derek sees in the woods. Specifically, the live deer. There are always possibilities.

DEREK: Make it stop... reconsider its life choices.

SARAH: Being at last free to do as she chose, Dorothy ran. No longer a prisoner in this strange land.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

My theory always used to be that Buffy S5 was the season of false dichotomies (http://aycheb.livejournal.com/13339.html). So I'm liking that multiple options are appearing. Maybe in threes because, like you said, Trinity but maybe more than that as time goes on and becomes more and more complicated. Like freedom is complicated.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Dorothy has to keep returning to Oz, there’s no Kansas ever after.
Oh, that's perfect! Thank you for that insight (I've never read the book).