- Wow that was a string of half-a-dozen or so limp eps
("Complications"--"Earthlings Welcome Here"). I give it a bye because
it is the Show of My Heart and already dead (SOB) and the first
eighteen or so in a row were all a string of fucking jewels, but
yikes.
- I do not believe for one second that Cameron takes off ALL NIGHT
from her charges to research ....what? in a library. She has the
internet, for God's sake. Or she can just sit around reading the
dictionary and the Bible and John Grisham or whatever leftover books
are in that rented house. The cancer survivor librarian was cute, but
do we ever see him again? noooo. That was pure filler. (The at-rest
Terminator in his 20s clothes complete with tommy gun WALLED UP IN THE
BUILDING was also hilarious, sorry. Nobody during the retrofitting and
renovation went "Hey, there's a killer robot in here with an antique
machine gun"?).
- That might have been one of the most respectful treatments of a
transsexual I've ever seen on network TV, which was pretty great, but
sadly that was buried in a LAME story. I hate all the alien three-dots
"it was a dream" crap, it seems right out of the X-Files and not in
keeping with this show. (And of course she died! BOO. Like the black
hypnotist, and several eps ago the black therapist, dying too. Show,
you usually do so much better than that.)
- I didn't like Jesse much until Derek's backstory ep with the plague
(which was better, but still....kinda laboured) and then it was
interesting! Supply run from Perth to LA on a nuclear sub with a robot
commander! She said "it'll be apples"! Derek didn't tell us his
suicidal moment was caused by seeing a pregnant mother and her kids
dead because of a plague, GOD, the guy never tells everything to
anyone. Underlines once again how fragile human life is, even when the
machines aren't stomping it under their steel-skeleton'd feet. I like
Lauren, are we going to see her again? Noooo. Maybe some of this is
setup for the third-season-that-never-was, but show is casting its net
way too wide right now, it feels like there are too many one-offs and
dangling threads.
- I didn't like Riley much either until her little backstory ep, and
then oh God, poor girl. However this ep also burnt up all the goodwill
I now had toward Jesse. Poor Riley, she's such a pawn, and nobody cares
about her at all, except maybe John. And with John most of that is
probably hormones. Once again the show about killer robots makes
near-poetry out of the most mundane human things: one girl brushing
another's hair, the wrong nail polish colour, someone sitting on a _bed._ That actress
practically brought tears to my eyes and she didn't even get any dialogue
to do it with either. (Cameron is also hilarious: "beep beep compute
YOU'VE BEEN WITH RILEY." Worst little sister ever. And does the star
tat mean something? It should....)
- The actor who got stuck playing an expressionless serial killer
robot and is now stuck playing an expressionless innocent AI is doing
a great job of actually differentiating between them somehow. I didn't
like how it "killed" the therapist, tho, and I really don't like how
Ellison is supposed to program it from the Bible? or something. I
can't wait to see possible Oedipal drama between John Henry and Mama
Robot.
-- If I sound grumpy or overly critical it's only because the first
season and a half was so absolutely amazing. That was some of the best
TV I've ever seen.
descensus Averno facilis est