Oh boy. People are talking Biblical apocalypse and robots are learning to dance. We're doomed. We gotta be doomed if this is how it's all going down.

Man, this is a particularly grim episode -- the whole ethos of the series is pretty grim, actually. Maybe not so much on the surface, but the instant you start scratching it, it's cold and bitter and hard and oh-so cynical. Hope for the human race? Yikes. If it's with Cameron, who is learning ballet and has even convinced angry Derek that maybe she's got something like a soul (look at that look on his face when he sees her pirouetting!), we're in trouble. Because look how she just lets the Russian guy who taught the Turk and his sister die horribly -- hey, it wasn't her mission to save them, okay? It's not even like they were at risk for bringing Judgment Day: the Russian guy couldn't build another Turk or anything. And if it's with humans? Well, that little exchange between John and Kyle seems to snuff that out: "Some people never give up. Some people always fight," John says with that particular fervor of teenagers. "Fewer than you think," Derek informs him sadly. Double yikes.

What's really scary? The idea of machines from the future is turning into some kind of religious thing. Sure, maybe only for the few people who know about it -- poor Bruce Davison! He always gets to play the crazy bad guys! But still, once people think something is decreed by a deity, they start to think there's no point in resisting it. Fighting machines? Maybe we could win. Fighting God? No freakin' way.

I love this episode for how it deals with issues that science fiction -- well, TV and film sci-fi -- often avoids, or touches on only obliquely, accidentally, while stuff is blowing up. Art and religion. Beauty and faith (of the human kind, not the religious kind). There's something very eerie about Davison's shrink calling the liquid-metal T-1000 "beautiful, like a changeling," because it touches on that defeatist "What's the point in fighting God?" attitude. Also because, you know, he's right even if you believe you gotta fight, how can you not? There's something horrifically mesmerizing about these machines that we created.

(Need a more complete episode recap? Check out Fox's official site for the show.)

Random thoughts on "The Demon Hand":

Cameron is so cute and so scary in a police uniform and on a police motorcycle. Is that a little tribute to Robert Patrick's T-1000? I think maybe it is.

Okay, so John can't miss school, because then he gets noticed. So why bother with the school thing at all? The Connors and Cameron are flying below the radar, using assumed names and presumably fake social security numbers (when Sarah has to work) so who's gonna know that John isn't at school? He certainly looks old enough to pass for someone old enough not to be at school -- were, say, the neighbors to notice him hanging around the house. Isn't he more likely to get caught out in the open of school? If Sarah needs him to do the work of the future savior of the human race once in a while, wouldn't it make sense to stay away from school? I appreciate that the writers need a way to effectively remove him from the many stories possible here, which is fine, because this isn't really about him but about Sarah and Cameron. But maybe it needs a little more rationale within the context of the show...?

Lesson for the week: Don't think you can train or tame Terminators like they're pets, cuz you can't, and it'll be the last thing you think.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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