Summer Glau's new show: Sarah Connor Chronicles
POSTED BY: Gapsule
UPDATED: Sunday, April 20, 2008 12:50
VIEWED: 49384
PAGE 11 of 20
This show has already grown on me, I liked the premier episode but thought the second was lacking and it is just been picking up steam from the third on.
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I like the fourth episode. I thought it was funny to be trapped inside that bunker with a terminator. I just hated the fact that I have to wait 2 weeks to see it.
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Quote:
Originally posted by yinyang:Quote:
Originally posted by Muggi:
I'm also waiting for an explanation as to why Summer can be flirty and cool the first episode, and completely high-school socially inept now..
My mom floated a theory on that during the last episode. Cameron talks about the Terminators being programmed to carry out missions. Well, Cameron's first mission was probably to find John. Then, the second mission could have been something like "get close to him," which is what the flirting and acting normal were for. And, now, with that mission complete, the next mission is help John.
Maybe the future John forgot to give her orders to blend in after she found (the past) him? Or, maybe it wasn't important - that as long as Cameron doesn't draw too much attention to herself (and she hasn't yet), then her oddities are acceptable, given that she doesn't interact a whole lot with anyone beside John and Sarah anyway. And, it also frees Cameron to be herself more, instead of having to switch back and forth between personalities for an indeterminately long period of time. Maybe the future John thought that would be helpful, and that has something to do with her being a new sort of Terminator.
Or, maybe she has free will and doesn't have to stick rigidly to her mission (which is what it sort of seems like), and she doesn't consider blending in a priority.
That's possible, but honestly IMO that's a little far-fetched. Given how crappy the writing has been at certain times on the show so far, I'm much more inclined to think the writers were just sloppy.
I'm going to keep watching, I'm enjoying the show, but it's not a gem by any stretch of the word.
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Hey Windstruck! Nice to see a Pinoy (person from the Philippines) Browncoat! I see Angel Locsin in your banner, hehe.. Mabuhay ka!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Muggi:Quote:
Originally posted by yinyang:Quote:
Originally posted by Muggi:
I'm also waiting for an explanation as to why Summer can be flirty and cool the first episode, and completely high-school socially inept now..
My mom floated a theory on that during the last episode. Cameron talks about the Terminators being programmed to carry out missions. Well, Cameron's first mission was probably to find John. Then, the second mission could have been something like "get close to him," which is what the flirting and acting normal were for. And, now, with that mission complete, the next mission is help John.
Maybe the future John forgot to give her orders to blend in after she found (the past) him? Or, maybe it wasn't important - that as long as Cameron doesn't draw too much attention to herself (and she hasn't yet), then her oddities are acceptable, given that she doesn't interact a whole lot with anyone beside John and Sarah anyway. And, it also frees Cameron to be herself more, instead of having to switch back and forth between personalities for an indeterminately long period of time. Maybe the future John thought that would be helpful, and that has something to do with her being a new sort of Terminator.
Or, maybe she has free will and doesn't have to stick rigidly to her mission (which is what it sort of seems like), and she doesn't consider blending in a priority.
That's possible, but honestly IMO that's a little far-fetched. Given how crappy the writing has been at certain times on the show so far, I'm much more inclined to think the writers were just sloppy.
I'm going to keep watching, I'm enjoying the show, but it's not a gem by any stretch of the word.
I'm of the sloppy writing opinion as well, which is a shame, because I do want to like this show. (Unlike many here, I saw T:TSCC first, and found Firefly via looking up info on Summer Glau.)
What ticks me off is how freakin' simple it would be for a bit of dialog to fix this problem and end all of these questions. Just a simple exchange at high school, where John is understandably frustrated with Cameron's inability to blend in:
JOHN: You were so normal when we met. Why can't you be normal now?
CAMERON: That was 1999. This is 2007. Human social dynamics change. Speech patterns change. I had eight months to study the way humans interact in 1999. Eight months to program a script that would enable me to get close to you when we met. Now I have only variables waiting for more data.
...or some such thing.
Summer Glau is playing a convincing Cameron. Hopefully the writers will give her appropriately convincing material, so those watching the show don't have to keep coming up with excuses and explanations for things.
That's something you just don't see on Firefly boards....
mrmgraphics
(website under serious reconstruction, if not life-saving surgery)
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I thought about the crappy writing again... 'Reconstructive surgery' was super crappy. They're stretching it too much. Let's say the doctor is incredibly BRAVE, 5-6 hours of surgery, and he wouldn't even consider running? He may not go far, he knows that too, but he can always try other things to get out of there and run. Why is it that almost every doctor in this show is really ..... uhm stupid? and then they get killed?
Cromartie plot is just too dragging. Now, he's an actor.. more drag.
Anyway, I'm still looking forward to episode six when Summer does ballet. (rumor)
Is it possible for Joss to direct or write an episode of TSCC? He's back on FOX now right?
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The worst part of the writing, so far, isn't so much the plastic surgery as it is the introduction of elements to the mythology at key plot points.
Case in point: Stand-by mode with a 15-second reboot time.
I've got no problem with adding stand-by mode to the mythology, per se. What I do have a problem with is adding stand-by mode to the mythology at the very same time John needs stand-by mode to get himself out of the bunker.
It's just too deus ex machina -- a sudden revelation that saves the day, rather than John (or Sarah or Cameron) saving the day via previously-known variables.
Compare that to the magician's sleight-of-hand Joss Whedon used with River Tam's development. Now, it would have been downright silly, in BDM, after Simon got shot, if River suddenly charged into a room full of Reavers (and lived), if all we knew about her was what we saw when she emerged from the cryo-crate in the Firefly pilot. Instead, JW defly added his own "features" to River (to use "stand-by" mode terminology), piece-by-piece, in the cleverest of ways.
In Firefly, the tension between Jayne and the Tams was well-established when River suddenly slashes him with a butcher's knife. Also well-established was that River was prone to erratic mood swings. So the scene feels natural, but along the way we are learning that:
-- she's unstable
-- she can be violent
-- she's good with knives
And we alrady know River was the subject of Alliance brain experiments. Now flash forward to War Stories. It begins with River in one of her rare happy moments, playing with Kaylee. Nothig about the scene seems unnatural: River has shown bits of happiness before, and Kaylee is everyone's friend. Furthermore, when a few scenes later River has thrown up, it seems like she is regressing again, and that her playing with Kaylee really serves to show how rapidly her mental state can deteriorate from happiness to depression.
Then Kaylee is pinned down by three gunmen, terrified, and unable to hold onto her own gun. River grabs the gun and kills the three gunmen in a blink. With her eyes closed. And the sheer genius of Firefly and River's story is that River's horrifically deadly skills with a gun, in that scene, is far more believable than stand-by mode in T:TSCC. Surprising, yes -- in the scene, Kaylee is clearly just as terrified of River as she is grateful -- but believable, too. We already knew:
-- she's unstable
-- she can be violent
-- she can use weapons (butcher's knife)
-- she's Kaylee's friend
and, of course:
-- she's a genius of remarkable mental skill
So the scene flows from our previous knowledge. It's not like River just popped out of the cryo-crate and became Annie Oakley. It's no deus ex machina. It's believable, and driven by River's character. NOT by the plot (the need to save Kaylee).
Now move onto the masterpiece that is OiS. When River -- her mania getting worse -- is holding onto the gun, Kaylee is terrified. (The script reads that Kaylee looks "sh*t-scared" -- and it comes across quite clearly.). So what happened in War Stories didn't just appear out of no where and disappear back to nowhere; it comes back, Kaylee remembers it all too well, and it's then explicitely discussed by Kaylee and the crew. By then, they are also discussing River's apparent psychic abilities (shown in many an episode), and conclude that the Alliance may have been training her to be an assassin. (Perfectly reasonable conclusions, at a perfectly reasonable time.) While this is going on, River listens in from one deck below, gracefully perched, straddled and barefoot, on deck railings. She listens in and we are so intent on what she is feeling, our hearts going out to her, that we miss the obvious: She is also capable of extreme physical grace and agility. (She stands straddled on those railing, unmoving, as easily as one would stand on a deck.) We come away from this with even greater knowledge of River:
-- she's unstable
-- she can be violent
-- she can use weapons (butcher's knife)
-- she's Kaylee's friend
-- she's
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Ahem...
There is a writer's strike.
They may have been rushing to get these episodes shot before the writer's ended the run. Rewrites of badly meshed script would have heavily tasked and hampered the work, of each episode plus the rest not in the can.
So the question really is: should they have continued to create these episodes, albeit possibly flawed, or just waited til after the strike was over? Of course, look at your alternatives on network TV.
My vote is for TTSCC.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Ahem...
There is a writer's strike.
They may have been rushing to get these episodes shot before the writer's ended the run. Rewrites of badly meshed script would have heavily tasked and hampered the work, of each episode plus the rest not in the can.
So the question really is: should they have continued to create these episodes, albeit possibly flawed, or just waited til after the strike was over? Of course, look at your alternatives on network TV.
My vote is for TTSCC.
Honestly, I am watching and enjoying T:TSCC. My point is I would like to continue to do so.
See, I had a bad experience once, many years ago, with a TV show that should have been good. Interesting premise, could have had fascinating character development, and -- ironically -- it featured an artificially-intelligent robot of sorts. But the robot wasn't Summer Glau, it was a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am; the show, (the original) Knight Rider.
What could have been a fascinating blend of sci fi, action, and character became, in essence, Popular Mechanics. Every problem in every episode was solved simply by installing some new feature on KITT, with each new feature requiring even further suspension of disbelief than the one before.
It was awful, awful writing, and it made me mad because I really wanted to enjoy that show.
Now please, don't think I'm comparing T:TSCC to Knight Rider. I'm not. There's no comparison. NONE. The writing on T:TSCC is a gazillion times greater, and the acting, even more so. But I find myself already falling into "Knight Rider mode" -- making excuses for a show I want to like.
On top of that, as mentioned in my posts, I simultaneously discovered Firefly/Serenity along with T:TSCC, and Firefly/Serenity simply raised the bar (very very high) for how I view sci fi writing (or indeed, any writing).
I am tuning into T:TSCC every week, and looking forward to more. That's why I wrote what I did. I'm hoping we don't find ourselves making too many excuses or working out too many details on the show, when a truly well-written show (Firefly) makes sure all questions and details are worked out before the show airs.
And no, don't use the writer's strike for an excuse. Firefly's "The Train Job" was written in two days; the entire writing and production was under a constant cloud of fear of cancellation. The difference is simply working out the details, and seeing arcs, and planning accordingly.
Otherwise, T:TSCC is going to become "what new feature in a Terminator that we knew absolutely nothing about before will be the key to the plot in this week's episode?" And that's the last thing I want to see. Because, again, I want to enjoy this show, I loved T2 (consider it a masterpiece), and was so taken by Cameron's portrayal on T:TSCC that I wanted to find out who the heck played her, and thus ended up here!
mrmgraphics
(website under serious reconstruction, if not life-saving surgery)
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You realize of course, the Trans Am died in 2002, same year as Firefly?
And my Trans Am based Firehawk is stock, no gadgets.
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/490757
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