Well, it seems like Cameron may still be a bit broken. I fear, and I think she does too, that it may go a little deeper than her hand twitching. Summer Glau was extra robot-creepy this week. In particular, the shot of Cameron slicing her wrist open to get to her twitchy parts was quite disturbing.
It seems like Cameron’s programming is getting a little twitchy, though, not just her hand. There were several times when she asked, “what am I going to do with you?” and I think that she was honestly confused. She didn’t know how to react to the bird that she had caught or to Riley. It’s going to be interesting to see how (and if) Cameron continues to break down and whether or not John will ever have to face using his nifty little pocket watch destructo-button.
The other standout portion of this episode was the epic fight at the end between Jesse and Riley. It was a tense struggle. I figured that one of them was going to wind up dead, and the smart money was on Riley, but the unstable blonde put up quite a fight.
I need to take a moment and digress here. Am I the only one who was picking up on weird subtext between Jesse and Riley? I mean, Riley got all emotional and said that she loved Jesse. Jesse, meanwhile, had a habit of touching Riley in a seemingly more-than-just-friends way. Am I just reading into things that aren’t there? Riley always did run to Jesse for comfort, even begging to stay overnight with her on one occasion. Was it because Jesse was the only person who really knew her, or was it more? I don’t know….
I suppose it doesn’t matter much now, as Riley’s dead. I know I beat up on the character a lot early in the season, but she was annoying me a whole lot less ever since we learned she was from the future. I think at this point, though, Riley is going to better serve the story dead than alive. It will be interesting to see the fallout from her death. I can’t wait to see what happens when Sarah realizes that Jesse was the “guidance counselor,” and that Derek has been hiding her (and sleeping with her).
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Mar 07, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
This was the episode I was waiting for. Although the storytelling was traditional I was way more invested…
I probably don’t have to mention how much I love Summer Glau’s robot-acting, because who doesn’t? She was totally creepy and yet it was somehow touching…
I picked up the same vibe from Jesse and Riley, maybe we are not done with Riley yet, I think we might see her in a flash-forward soon.
And I still think Terminator: TSCC is far superior to Dollhouse. Unfortunately I don’t think Fox will carry both shows to the next season (if even one). And since “Dollhouse” is getting more buzz I fear that this lovely show will be terminated soon :(
Sarah doesn’t know about Jesse at all. What will be interesting will be when she DOES find out about her, about her self-assigned mission to keep Cameron away from John, that Riley was her active in the plot, and that Derek knows Jesse is here. And when DEREK finds out about the Riley caper.
I wonder exactly what Derek knows about Jesse and Riley. In this episode, he told Jesse to either show him progress on her operation (to manipulate and mold John) or help him with his (stop Skynet). If Derek thinks Riley is just a normal girl, what does he think Jesse has been up to all these episodes? Just snapping photographs of the Connors through a telephoto lens?
And when he inevitably tells John that Cameron killed Riley, is he knowingly perpetuating the lie, or does he believe it to be true?
Yes Bob, there was certainly more to Jesse and Riley. Didn’t Jesse say, “I took you away from her.” or somesuch. My guess would be that Jesse took Riley from a sick situation and has been exploiting Riley’s desire to feel loved by a mother. And, I was very much rooting for Riley to win the fight. I liked Riley more last night than I ever have.
Cameron! She such a sweet Terminator! I hope she does not get blamed for Riley’s death.
Sarah – I can’t believe she would use bleaching powder while wearing good jeans! Further proof she’s crazy – if you need it!
@ bsgfan2003: I think what Jesse said was, “I took you away from hell” meaning the future.
As for subtext, I kind of get what everyone is saying here, but I don’t think it was a lesbian thing (insert obligatory “not that there’s anything wrong with that” here). The way I was perceiving it was more like a maternal/big sister type relationship. Riley depended on Jesse to a pretty heavy degree. I think Jesse preyed on her exactly because she was so unstable and lonely. Jesse knew if she could make Riley believe she cared about her that Riley would do almost anything for her, including blindly putting herself into a deadly situation without ever questioning it.
Cameron gets more and more interesting. I agree that there definitely seems to be something “wrong with her programming” or maybe it’s evolving in some strange new way. Logic and her mission told her that killing Riley was the best option, but something internal stopped her from carrying it out. Either Cameron has developed actual “feelings” for John such that she knew that killing Riley would hurt John emotionally/psychologically and she put that consideration above his physical safety or she’s privy to some information that we are not aware of that told her that killing Riley would NOT be the best course of action. And that turns out to actually be true. If she had killed Riley, John most likely would have turned against her.
Jesse will now try to make it look like Cameron killed Riley. She kind of has to. It was the entire point of her mission, and if she doesn’t at least try, all her effort has been wasted.
As we saw from the future flashback, Jesse just picked the first tunnel rat urchin she found that was the right age and had a pretty face. She then said and did all the right things to make Riley believe that the older woman cared for her, when in actuality she had no feelings at all for the disposable girl. That’s violation and betrayal worthy of a terminator.
As to Cameron, there doesn’t have to be any internal evolution or feelings to explain her confusion. Sarah (or John?) told her not to kill the bird nesting in the chimney. John has repeatedly and directly told her not to kill/injure Riley. Cameron is unsure whether her directives from the future override the Connors’ commands in the present in these instances. Conversely, her killings of Enrique and the bowling alley kids surprised Sarah, and she was unable to stop Cameron in time.
I love this show and this episode was a huge improvement over the last three rather lame episodes, but it looks like this show is dead in the water… There’ll definitely be no third season and I even fear FOX could pull it before the season finale… The demo numbers this show gets are simply terrible: https://bit.ly/bKnTf
I’d been picking up on the Riley/Jesse subtext for a while. It was just another reason why the entire Riley storyline hasn’t worked for me.
I really liked this show last season, and thought it started off very well this season. However, the last several episodes have been very difficult to watch (I’m not sure that I ever finished last week’s). This one was an improvement (Riley’s death helped), but I’d like to see some of the consistency and tight storytelling we’ve seen in the past.