More Sarah Connor

"Earthlings Welcome Here" is the finale of the current run; Sarah believes she has a lead to a company that is developing Skynet type technology, via blogger, and Riley strays from her mission somewhat.

The long and the short is: good ep. Through Riley, we get to see the effect of the transition between Skynet future and our present. Out of her environment, Riley behaves very much like someone who has been institutionalised. Her responses to the various stimuli of her life are not always appropriate and she has great difficulty fitting in. Even her interaction with John is becoming more strained and tense, which Cameron has noted. Riley, friendless and disconnected, locks herself in a bathroom and slashes her wrists. We are not reassured as to her fate.

Sarah's fate also remains unresolved, and as the widget over there --> tells us, it's 60 days until the next episode.

Crap.

It's a very low key cliffhanger. In both cases, there's genuinely something to be worried about because for both characters the future is uncertain. They have threatened two people we have grown to care for.

Riley, though a secondary character and not one I have really paid much attention to before, is really pretty good. For a while I hoped that she was representative of the normal life that John Connor wasn't going to get. As it turns out, she's a honeytrap and just there to distract him from his relationship with Cameron. Nevertheless, Riley has more to her than this simple mission and our current revelation - that she was never a soldier - is nicely portrayed by a flash-forward to her marginal life in the corners of John Connor's campaign and then a flash back to her arriving in present day California and exploring the simple pleasures of a not so upscale motel room.

Sarah, meanwhile, is chasing UFOs and UFO believers because of some drone type technology. The interesting thing here is that Sarah once more lingers over the people she was; we have images of Sarah Connor in a waitress's uniform (which is what she did for a living way back in Terminator) and a much harder version in the scrubs she wore in the mental institution, complete with spinning knife and "No Fate" carved into a tabletop.

So who is Sarah Connor? Like Riley, she's essentially alone. John is exhibiting greater and greater independance, Cameron can protect him far more efficiently than she can...is her usefulness as a parent at an end?

And are they really doing this? Come on! Surely this "children grow up and leave home and stop needing you" stuff is more suited to Gilmore Girls. Surely this is the dreaded Sope! much reviled by Doctor Who fandom?

Yeah. It really is. And it's really nicely done too. It sneaks in, it infiltrates.

There's also some stuff from Shirley Manson and teaching an AI about religion (which has got to be the worst thing to teach a computer! Do we really want a Fundamentalist AI?). It's going to be important later, you can hear this particular gun being loaded and set on the mantlepiece.

I've changed my mind since the last post about this show.
Watch this.