Terminator-215 "Desert Cantos" - Discuss/Grade <SPOILERS>

Is there anything in the world that couldn't use some more miniguns?

I didn't think so.

Also, the IGN TV reviewer gave this episode a 7.8. I thought that was a little generous.

 

damn. seems like a lot of shite gonna be going down befo0re the end of the season.

how many more eps do we get this season anyways?

 

^ The full order was 22, so it looks like we have seven left.

 

^ Yep.

216: Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep (Sarah centric)
217: Ourselves Alone (Cameron centric, Riley centric)
218: Today is the Day - Part 1 (Derek/Jesse/Riley centric, Sarah/John centric)
219: Today is the Day - Part 2 (Derek/Jesse/Riley centric, Sarah/John centric)
220: UNKNOWN
221: UNKNOWN
222: UNKNOWN (Season/Potential Series Finale)

 

Well I guess this has to be the end to the Jesse and Riley arcs that Friedman was talking about.

 

^ Not necessarily.

Spoiler: Today

The Jesse scenes take place in the Future War while she's on a mission aboard the Jimmy Carter.

BUT

Spoiler: Riley's Mission

Next week's episode (Ourselves Alone) involves Riley fearing Cameron knows the truth about her. Though it also has Cameron going back into Terminator mode.

Also looks like the Megan Fox cameo may not happen now. She broke up with BAG.

 

Who was Megan Fox going to play? Some new character from the future?

 

^ It was a cameo that was joked about. It wasn't really going to happen.

 

This was just terrible.

What had been the only cool scene from the week before suddenly turns into the mopey plot for this episode. The writing is just getting bad. The script treated an A/C & heating business like a coal mine (complete with its own town!). It's such a huge business it occupied one whole warehouse... in the middle of no where!

And oh yeah, there's some dead cows somewhere. And a candlelight vigil in the middle of the day.

The guest stars this week.. were just weak. I loved how the one widow pretty much acknowledged she was a plot contrivance rather a character ("I told you everything!"). Yeah, because otherwise how would we know what was going on? The other girl was just obnoxious.

The production itself is just getting shoddy. The opening drive is some back country lane to a suddenly clean back lot town. Along with the bad guest of the week, it feels like I'm watching some bad 1980's action show.

 

Well I still think favourably about Picket Fences and it's wierd to see that kid so huge now days.

 

Yep. One episode you didn't like and obviously the show must be going down the tubes from every aspect of production. Oh no!

 

To be fair there are still businesses that are set up like this to an extent where the people who work there live in the same neighborhoods and - from time to time - the company owns their house and they rent it from them. My Uncle used to work in Silicon Valley and they had a little community where their employees could live and work from somewhat like this in this episode (and yes they had their own police force).

 

The show's scripts have always been a little messy. They've been just good enough to ignore the semi-cheap production values. But when the stories get this dull, the other problems stand out even more.

 

I don't share the negative vibes about this episode, or the show. It was a little slow, but I like a slow episode from time to time, and I liked this one a bit better than "The Good wound", actually, partly because the Connors were working together. Weaver again was the best part of it, I liked the way she was contrasted with Sarah. Weaver tries to connect with Savannah, whose parents she killed (and she seems to do more than strictly necessary for her cover), while Sarah does something similar with the widow of the guy she shot. I also liked the twist at the end, with Zoe's father becoming a wild card. I'm not even 100% sure if the factory was Weaver's all along, or not, though it is likely as she seems to have found it quickly.

It strikes me that TSCC has very few real fans, with that I mean people who are fan of the show the way it is. Many other viewers seem to be fans of Summer Glau or of the Terminator movies or of action movies/series in general, but the slower, perhaps more subtle style of TSCC seems to have few fans. A pity, I really like TSCC (I thought "Desert Cantos", slow as it was, easily beats BSG's "Deadlock", which seemed like a bad daytime soap in comparison, in quality - talk about "messy" writing, on BSG lately). That's not to say I don't like more adrenaline pumping episodes or major revelations, but loads of that clearly are coming up in the last 6 episodes. The next episode will be the last slower, Sarah focused one, apparently. Maybe Friedman made a mistake by having so many slower episodes after one another, though I generally like his style. It just isn't accepted by the viewing public, it seems.

 

^ When people hear the name Terminator they have a very strict definition of what they expect to see. It's based on an action movie franchise and they expect the TV show to be the same. TSCC is more like BSG in many respects based on the buildup of the series.

 

That's the problem, I think. The Terminator name leads people to certain expectations, but a season-spanning TV series (with a limited budget, compared especially to blockbusters like T2) cannot be the same. I agree, TSCC is more like BSG (and is actually better at doing what BSG likes to do IMO, especially when contrasting how interesting TSCC's cyborgs are compared to BSG's Cylons), but BSG seems to get praise for pretty much anything it does, while the same people who praise TSCC only seem to view it as a subpar action series. IMO this series is sold short, perhaps because of the association with the namle, at least by the Nielsens and in general on online forums.

What would James Cameron think about TSCC? I hope he likes it. Has he ever said anything about TSCC or T4?

 

Cameron hasn't commented on TSCC

He said that he refuses to give Salvation his blessing. He has seen the CGI less completed film though.