Saturday, February 21, 2009
Certainly Doesn't Put The Fun Back In Funeral
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Desert CantosSeason 2 Episode 15
Everyone hates funerals. Period. End of story. So when I tell you that the first forty-five minutes of this episode were set at a very boring funeral, don't be shocked when I say that I began to hate this episode. Not that I wanted to hate it. I wanted it and the series as a whole to be awesome. But without devolving into a "Terminator of the week" plot line, sadly we will have to suffer through slow episodes like this. I can accept slow episodes now and then, but last week was slow and it was supposed to tie up the loose ends of the mid-season finale. Except it didn't. The writers put the brakes on for another week and the languish in a funeral for people we don't know or care about for three-quarters of this episode.
The mid-season finale ended with the reveal of the Hunter-Killer drone being constructed at the facility that Sarah infiltrated(and which T-1000, Catherine Weaver eventually destroyed)before being shot. Thankfully, this thread is picked back up...in the last two minutes. Yes, it took three episodes but the entire Connor clan has now seen the H-K in person. So, Sarah isn't crazy. Well, at least not about THIS.
That was the only interesting portion of the funeral plot line. After Weaver destroyed the facility(which had a front as the most secure air conditioning company ever)all of the employees were considered dead. The mystery is whether that is true. Of course, Weaver sends an "investigator" to find the last employee who is not dead and we know that someone lived. John hooks up with a girl at the funeral who's father died at the facility. It doesn't take a genius to see that her dad isn't dead.
I do have some questions about why Weaver doesn't just assume a new identity and search for the last living employee herself. Why send a human when a robot could do the job better?
As it turns out, today is the anniversary of the original Catherine Weaver's husband's death. Agent Ellison(who I suspect is beginning to realize that Weaver isn't human) questions why Weaver's daughter isn't with her mourning. Weaver brings the girl to the office and begins to question her about her feelings on her father's death and why she misses him. This is a chilling scene. Why would a killer robot intent on the death of humanity keep the pretense of this life going? I can think of a number of ways that Weaver could kill the child and cover the death up. It makes me think more and more that Weaver isn't doing this to bring about the end of the human race.
The problem with TSCC is that it's audience is one accustomed to thrilling stories about killer robots. Slow paced episodes only work when there is a great and compelling mystery. Do I care about the missing employee of this company? Nope. Do I care why he's hiding the H-K drone at the end of the episode? Yes! That's interesting. So why take so long to reveal that this guy is tied to the main plot?
In the end, a show about Sarah Connor is seemingly at its best when every other character is at the forefront. In this case, Derek Reese and Catherine Weaver's B-Plots are much more intriguing and less obnoxious(to think that I would ever praise Brian Austin Green for being AWESOME boggles the mind), but they are. Summer Glau continues to be given little to do. And Cameron is a fairly boring robot right now. As it stands there are worse ways to spend an hour but if TSCC doesn't pick up the pace it won't matter.
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