Back to Back Reviews of Sarah Connor and Heroes
A really tender, wrenching, revealing episode 2.4 of The Sarah Connor Chronicles tonight, as we get to meet the human being who served as the template for Cameron.
Meet Allison, alive in the future in which machines are on the verge of exterminating the human species. She's captured, and questioned.
Meanwhile, back in 2008, Cameron is still not quite herself - again - and this time she recalls Allison being questioned. In fact, she repeats what Allison is saying, as the action cuts back and forth between Cameron in our present and Allison in our future.
And Cameron seems to forget that she's a Terminator. She's showing emotions - much as she did before John saved her in the first episode this season - and she's conspicuously nonviolent.
Both parts are of course played - and very well - by Summer Glau. In our present, Cameron tells her questioner to call "her" - Allison's - mother, who is pregnant with her. Her mother doesn't (yet) know any Allison, but says she likes the name - a nice little time loop, of the future making something happen in the past, which already exists in the future.
In the end, Cameron snaps out of it - regains her "normal" personality and awareness of who she is. But is she really ok? Back in touch with her Terminator self, she says her job is to hunt down John Connor - does that mean the override has been short-circuited again?
We know, sadly, that Cameron is a killer. In the future, she kills her human model, Allison - though I'm hoping that, maybe somehow, Allison survived...
A fine mixture tonight of heroes and villains - which, as fate would have it, was also the theme of tonight's Heroes...
***
Heroes tonight - like, coincidentally, The Sarah Connor Chronicles tonight - continues to mine the rich, twisted vein in which heroes and villains coincide.
Sylar has been about as bad as it gets - literally opening up the brains of other heroes to acquire their power. Tonight the ever-dangerous Mrs. Petrelli reveals to Sylar that she is his real mother, and partners him up with HRG to round up the villains sprung from prison last week, due to bad (or, not so good) future Peter's intervention from the future. A bad son maybe turning good to help undue what a good son maybe a little bad from the future has wrought.
And Sylar does behave pretty heroically. But he can he curb his vampiric-like hunger for heroic brains? Well, maybe ... but HRG doesn't believe it.
Meanwhile, while on the subject of Claire's father, Claire herself discovers that she has a little evil in her - or, at very least, her desire to kill villains is not just selfless heroism, but an expression of understandable desire to strike back at those who have hurt her. I like her much better this way.
And as a nice counterweight to good and evil co-existing in the same hero, we discover tonight that Tracy Strauss played by Ali Larter is apparently not Niki/Jessica after all ... though, Micah senses some connection, even though he realized Tracy is not his mother, and it turns out Tracy and Niki/Jessica were "created" on the same day ... Well, I told you this episode of Heroes resonated with The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
But it's all good - and, hey, we have another hero who paints the future - and I'm looking forward to more of the future next week.
See also 2.1 Cameron's Back ... 2.2 Firing on All Cylinders ... 2.3 Who, Truly, Is Agent Ellison? and Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox
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Comments
Heroes, however I can no longer abide. I'm glad you're enjoying it, but I can't share your enthusiasm. It was derivative from the start - but what isn't... though most are more subtle about it. I stayed with it until the "big season finale" which I found the most unsatisfying end of a story arc that I can recall. It was essentially just a non-resolution that set the table for the next game. By that point I was out and I haven't had a moment's regret. I don't do soap operas. Shows like Seinfeld can be open ended because there really is no story arc. They can go for years, since they're going nowhere in particular anyway. Series like the original 24, Veronica Mars and a number of others had interesting stories to tell and did so in clever ways. Picking them up for subsequent seasons was the worst thing that could happen to them - it only dilutes any legacy they might leave. Heroes could have been brief and memorable. Instead it chose to be open ended and tedious.
Seriously, I'm glad it's successful. There are many talented people making a good living off it. But for me personally, it's week two of Thanksgiving leftovers. I really wish I could share your enthusiasm.