Automatic for the People was the name of the latest episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which has nothing to do with the 1992 R.E.M. album according to the Fox.com blog.
Hopefully it wasn’t intended to mean Automatically Good for the Fans, because this episode left me somewhat disappointed.
There were just too many curious looks and slow-motion dramatic scenes, not to mention a few too-obvious, smack-you-across-the-face parallels which just reeked of trying too hard.
The Power Plant
The episode begins with a member of the Resistance showing up in the living room of the new Connor house, bleeding from a massive gunshot wound in his chest. Before he dies, he tell them that Greenway is going to do something at this Serrano nuclear power plant in two days.
Derek knows the place and recalls that it’s a key holding by the Resistance in the future. It’s one of their main sources of power. Apparently Skynet has put efforts in place to jeopardize that.
Back to School
In the meantime, Sarah tells John to go back to school and try to get things back to normal. I still find it hilarious that this mother of the child who will grow up to be the leader of the human race against the machines, feels it necessary for him to be in school. I don’t know anyone could focus on education when you know that Judgment Day is just around the corner.
So John goes to school and meets a blonde girl named Riley (who is the spitting image of a slightly less skinny Claire from Lost). She’s curious about this dark teenage boy who is sitting all alone in the courtyard after skipping English. They get to talking and John brings her back home.
It ticks off mom of course, which was part of the reason for John doing what he did. She’s also an interesting character and he eventually he sees more of a friend in her than he initially thought.
But here is where the ugly, in-your-face parallels begin. She asks John if he ever thinks about the future, she makes him a robot out of Legos and then gives it to him as protection.
Ugh. How about a little subtlety?
More Nuclear Stuff
Back at the plant, Sarah and Derek discover the plan of Skynet. If the saboteur succeeds, the plant will be useless for the Resistance in the future. If they fail, those in control of the plant will shut it down because of safety concerns.
It’s a lose-lose. And tack on another ‘lose’ a bit later on.
Sarah gets to know Greenwood and that helps her realize on day of the supposed event that he’s been replaced by a Terminator. The machine tries to sabotage the plant, but Cameron saves it at the last minute. The Terminator is defeated and dismantled into some nuclear canisters, which puzzles me. Why not burn it like all the others?
Closing Thoughts
All throughout the episode, Cameron is acting weird. She doesn’t trust John anymore because of his choice to save her. And she mentions “others” who will have a problem with it too, but it’s not Sarah or Derek.
She also did some “thinking” in the episode, instead of acting instantly as she normally does. What happened to her? Are the writers putting in some plot device to make her more human?
While this is going on, Charley and Ellison tell Mrs. Dixon the whole scoop and they get out of town. Certain to reappear next week.
At the end, we see a shape-shifting Catherine announce that the power plant will join a few others as they switch to a new control program called Automyte Systems. A completely human-free method of running nuclear facilities.
Ah…the third ‘lose’. A nice twist at the end which wasn’t too hard to see coming.
Two other big things took place in the episode. The first was the radiation from the plant and the idea that maybe this was the way Sarah got cancer that she dies from in the future. That doesn’t fly with me, because Cameron was sent back before the Greenwood Plant incident took place, so if Sarah died from cancer in THAT timeline, it couldn’t have been from the radiation.
Right?
The final was that the dead resistance fighters seemed to have drawn all kinds of names and places in blood down in the basement of the new house. Greenwood, Palo Alto, Alpine Fields and a host of others. What they mean is still a mystery.
What did you guys think of the episode? Disappointment or was it as good as ever?
Disappointing, though still entertaining. I wished they followed up on Cameron's “I love you!” declaration, and I hope they go into why John's new girlfriend, who is in high school, can stay the night at his house and not get a call from her parents.
Excellent point about Riley which I failed to mention.
Haven't seen this episode yet, was too busy watching one of the best MNF games ever, but it doesn't sound like I've missed much. With more new shows debuting on Monday's it looks like this one may hit the DVR graveyard.
Yup, this one was all over the place. Interesting and occasionally entertaining, but left me scratching my head and saying “huh?” a lot more than, “that's pretty cool.”
Cameron needs to get back to being Cameron and not the mixed personality she had in this episode.
The Riley girl storyline seemed forced and way too fast.
Why have another T-800 that looked exactly like Greenway come into play when it appeared the plant boss was the one who wanted to re-start the reactor. They made his character seem to be the one who would somehow find a way to get the reactor back online whether or not Greenway was in agreement.
And the producers ought to figure out a better way to get intel to the group rather than relying on sending yet another resistance fighter back to the present.
Better yet, the writers have got to stop sending humans and terminators back to the present in order to create new threats for Sarah and the gang to deal with. The show worked much better with the investigation type of theme they were doing in the first season (going after the Turk, disabling the new LA traffic computer system, etc.).
@Mike:
I assumed that because reactor was a secure facility (this is post 9/11 after all), getting a terminator exoskeleton out of the plant was going to be very difficult for Sarah and Cameron. Easier to stick it in a dumpster that would get buried deep underground and never touched again than risk trying to smuggle it out.