(Season 2, Episode 11 – “Self Made Man”)
My first thought after watching this episode is that it is clearly far more useful to be a sexy female Terminator than a big male one. Think about it: all the strength of Arnie with the added bonus of being able to seduce night clerks at the local library to do late night research. I’m thinking it’s more than just the donuts that got Cameron in the door. Although, as we saw at the end of the episode, donuts can be a powerful tool. They got Cameron back into the library when her pal Eric was MIA. Who knows, maybe I’m over estimating her feminine wiles. Anyway, onto the more important things going on ….
Wouldn’t you know it, after heaping all that praise on the show, they give me an episode that I wasn’t crazy about. Not that it was a bad episode, because it wasn’t, but I thought it was a little heavy on the John angst and way too light on Sarah. Not to mention the complete absence of Derek and Jesse.
If we didn’t know that Riley had ulterior motives for her seduction of John, I would have been really annoyed with their subplot in this episode. Maybe I’m just too old to not get annoyed by the irrational behavior of horny teenagers. I shouldn’t complain; it was a very small part of the episode.
Most of the plot focused on Cameron and her library buddy Eric researching a Terminator who was accidentally sent back way too far, to 1920. What started as a kind of boring story became an interesting case study in how the Terminators think and function. I like that they are exploring this in the series, and not just leaving the machines as mindless killers. It adds some welcome depth. The Terminator in question accidentally took out a target that prevented the construction of a building that the robot would need in the future to take out the governor, his intended target from the beginning.
I loved watching Cameron make her way to the building and discovering the lost Terminator built into the walls of the tower, just waiting for the right moment to take out the governor. Waiting around for 80 or so years? That’s what I call persistence.
On a side note, has anyone else noticed all of the Wizard of Oz references on this show? Last week, Sarah used “Gale” as an alias, this episode Cameron mentioned the movie, and earlier in the season, Sarah was seen reading from the novel. Any others that I have missed?
What did everyone else think of this episode? Looks like we’ll be getting into some meat next week if the previews hold true.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Dec 01, 2008 @ 22:31 EST5EDT
I remember reading somewhere that this episode was intended to air earlier, but was reshuffled. Now we know why. Not bad, still good – just different, and slower.
Every time we get some solid feeling in Cameron’s maybe growing humanity, they pull the rug out from under us. Good trick.
I did miss Sarah, and Derek.
Liked the episode. I actually didn’t miss Sarah, Derek or Jesse at all… And while this episode did not progress the overall story-arc that much I still was highly entertained.
The only reason for this is Summer Glau: She really has perfected her “robot-moves”… From the way she walks (she kind of stomps, doesn’t unroll from her heel), the way she moves her head, looks, speaks and reacts (always lagging a second with her answer as if she computes all the possibilities and chooses the best one). This show – for me – is all about Cameron. I don’t really care for John, Sarah or SkyNet…
This is why I found it interesting that Cameron does a little “soul”-searching… From the bathroom-cancer-wouldyoukillyourself-conversation we know that Cameron still does misfunction (I think she meant her chip when she was talking about a ticking bomb inside of her).
And then, at the end, I was wondering if Cameron was jealous when she found out about John and Riley. Because why would they show her “I love you John”-scene in the recap before this episode if it didn’t have any deeper meaning? Back then I thought it was pure strategy of Cameron, trying every angle on John not to kill her. But maybe there is more to it…
I think you’re right with the extra significance to Cameron’s “I love you John”. We learned a few episodes back that Cameron said something along the lines of “we spend time together”.
That, combined with the revelation earlier in the series that Cameron’s model was based off of resistance fighter Allison, makes me wonder if John and Allison were involved in the future, and Cameron has some leftover memories from that. Anyone want to contradict me?
I thought this was the BEST episode in the T:SCC library to-date. I was watching the show fascinated by the relationship between Cameron and Eric, and the thoroughness with which Cameron approached her job of protecting John Connor and the future.
I have loved this show for its grittiness, its superb acting, its constant focus on character development, and its straight forward storytelling. But tonight’s episode was a work of art, and I really appreciated the work the writers put into it.
Oh, and awesome set design for the library!
I agree with you 100%, loved the episode.
“I thought it was a little heavy on the John angst and way too light on Sarah. Not to mention the complete absence of Derek and Jesse.”
For those reasons mentioned above, I loved the episode! I find Cameron to be the most intriguing part of the story, because I just know that she is not like all the other terminators. She is damaged, and I cannot wait every week to see how she “behaves.”
I also NEED to see John act like a teenager. Because he IS a teenager. In a sense (and don’t get riled up; no pun intended), he is like Jesus. To expect him to just soldier on and not be interested in everything else in the world just becuase he knows his fate is to save the world is unrealistic and would make him so “super” that I would have a hard time believing it to be true. Christianity has always been like that for me; I’m a big fan of The Last Temptation of Christ. I expect John to not only be tempted to do stupid, teenagerly things, but to actually follow through on said stupidity. Maybe its just me, but that’s how I roll, baby!
One more “Wizard of Oz” reference is that John and Sarah had been (still are?) using the last name Baum as their alias for most of the series. L. Frank Baum is the author of “The Wizard of Oz” book.
Yeah… There have been Oz references from like day one on this show (Ok, I dunno about day one, but still).
Sarah = Dorothy
I really loved this episode. I’m really surprised by how this series has progressed. I loved the first couple of eps, then thought it went downhill the rest of season 1. Season 2 started off slow, but each ep has been better than the one before it and now I love this show.
I really enjoyed seeing how Cameron spends her time when everyone else is/should be asleep. Maybe it didn’t exactly move the plot forward, but it did the character. Would love to see more of cancer guy, but that was probably as far as that story will go.
I thought it was a good episode, I thought cameron’s story line was great especially having a terminator be in the wrong time, it was pretty cool
Also I’m taking votes, who thinks john and riley got it on?
and if so how could they use the fact that they did it in that car for humorous purposes?
(EX. sarah finds a bra or something of that nature when she is in the car with john)