Tagged: Terminator

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This Week’s Operation: “Goodbye To All That”

Mission Briefing
From Fox: John and Derek infiltrate a military academy in order to protect an integral member of the future resistance. Meanwhile, Weaver’s first assignment for Ellison takes an interesting turn of events when he discovers a specter from his own past.

Damage Analysis
“Goodbye To All That” marks the third episode in a row that has taken a cue from [[[Lost]]] with an emphasis on a character-centric rather than plot-driven episode. Not to say that this episode was poor necessarily, but once again, the driving story of Season Two is at a bit of a loss. There are some threads being tied together to weave some semblance of an underlying threat, such as Ellison’s building momentum and the bloody writing on the basement wall in Casa de Connor.

It’s the latter of those two that informs the main plot of this episode. A Terminator comes to town looking for Martin Bedell, a man who will grow up to become a key resistance fighter and personal ally of John’s. There are two potential targets, and the Connors divide themselves on gender lines. John and Derek pursue the Bedell currently at a military academy, which they learn of by deciphering one of the bloody messages on the wall. They then infiltrate the military school, posing as a student and as an instructor respectively. Right off the bat, there’s something inherently off about John and Derek being able to join the military school’s ranks so readily. You’d like to think that their application process for accepting students is a bit more rigorous than “Well, he’s a good kid, let’s give him a free three week trial,” but that’s what happens for John. And in Derek’s case, not much more than a “Hey, you look tough, we got an open instructor slot for a week and it’s all yours!” Kind of ridiculous.

The episode’s character-centric stuff stems from Derek, giving Brian Austin Green his first real moments to shine as an actor this season. He gets a lot of stuff to play with this round as certain sights and moments trigger memories of his from the future. There’s one particular moment that was very touching: Derek pauses in the woods while scoping out the military academy, and locks eyes with a deer. It was nice to think for a bit that the writers cared about this character enough to give this future man a moment where he’s out in nature, realizing just how much he’s lost in the war yet to come. Of course, the writers couldn’t maintain something that subtle, and later bring up that exact deer moment to say that Derek and his brother Kyle killed a deer once. Alas, such is [[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]].
 

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