This is exactly why I started this blog

In one episode of Futurama, the main character Fry marries a mermaid but runs away after discovering she doesn't have a vagina. It's one of the off-putting things about The Little Mermaid. How do mermaids have sex? And why do they have breasts, anyway? Ariel even has a belly button. What the fuck?

However, even more disturbing than speculating about li'l Ariel's sexual organs is speculating about Ursula's.

If she were more human, there would be a vagina in the center of her tentacles. If she were more octopus, there would be a beak. Which one is there? Neither?

Both?

Eels

It's hard to take the anguish of bands like Simple Plan and Evanescence seriously when there are bands out there like Eels.

Maybe 90% of their songs are about loss, alienation and mental illness (or some combination thereof). Band frontman Mark Oliver Everett (a man called E) has seen or experienced the effects of all three. It shows. There's no whining or complaining in his songs, just a terrible, wistful sadness. Some songs have an edge of anger (a few songs on Souljacker express this, like Bus Stop Boxer or Dog Faced Boy) or even optimism and affection (PS You Rock My World).

I don't know anything about music. I did terribly in Foundations of Music (I should've taken another programming class). I can't really describe their tunes beyond "I like them." I'll just have to stick to praising the lyrics.

From Susan's House:

Here comes a girl with long brown hair
Who can't be more than 17
She sucks on a red popsicle
While she pushes a baby girl in a pink carriage
And I'm thinking that must be her sister
That must be her sister, right?

[...]

Goin' over to Susan's house
I can't be alone tonight

The speaker describes what he sees in very literal, but vivid imagery. His only description of his emotional state is in his repitition of "I can't be alone tonight."

From Grace Kelly Blues, which is possibly the saddest song I've ever heard:

The tractor-trailer driver radios:
Help me someone I'm out here all alone
Truck driving the black night away
Praying for the light of day

The kid in the mall works at hot dog on a stick
His hat is a funny shape his heart is a brick
Taking your order he will look away
He doesn't have a thing to say

I would quote Daisies of the Galaxy, but I don't think I can condense it. That song always makes me think of a boy who doesn't spend much time at home and a friend who doesn't know how to help him.

It's the same way with Goin' To Your Funeral pt 1 and Things the Grandchildren Should Know, except I can't offer any explanation for those songs that the lyrics don't give.

Basically, the songs of Eels are usually full of quiet, understated despair. The lyrics can't be appreciated until you listen to the song. E has this way of singing that's so sincere and emotionally raw. The lyrics aren't just a story he's telling. It's like he's baring his soul. That's why the Eels are my favorite band.

Philosophy

This is what I believe.

No one wants to be good. Everybody wants to take whatever they want, eat whatever they want, have sex with whatever they want. They want to hurt people who disagree with them or who they don't like. They want to do whatever they want without consequences. They want to do everything purely for the benefit it will give to themselves. Nobody wants to give to charity. Nobody wants to wait their turn.

Love is selfish. Everyone has a mother and father. Everyone has someone they care about. Many people have loved and been loved far greater than you have. Your friends and family aren't more deserving than anyone else's, no matter how important they are to you. Helping your loved ones is not bad, but it's not any more righteous than helping yourself. Humanity is not good just because lovers give each other dopey looks or parents die to protect their children.

The only reason people act good is because they want to think of themselves as good people. The only morality that humans adhere to is the guilt imposed by society for violating social mores. There may be an absolute system of ethics beyond ourselves, but each person only feels guilty for doing what they've been taught is bad.

Therefore, the only thing necessary to get people to commit the most horrendous crimes is to convince them that they don't need to feel guilty about it. That's not a human, it's a Jew. It's a fag. It's a nigger. It's a Tutsi. It's a witch. It's a criminal, a monster, a fucking animal. Torture them, rape them, shoot them, round them up for the gas chambers. You don't have to feel guilty. You're following orders. Society made you do it. You were driven to it by the circumstances. You're not a man, you're a machine, a soldier, a cog in the great machine.

It's so pathetically easy to convince people that they're not doing anything wrong. All it takes is an excuse, a rationalization, a reason why the normal rules don't apply to you or the people you're hurting. And when justice is demanded, it's so easy to explain why the killers were just bad people deep down and the genocidal maniac was not a man but a monster.

It's not true and it'll never be true. It needs to stop. Every homeless person, king, priest, investment banker, school kid, humanitarian, and murderer is just like you. You must judge them as you judge yourself and judge yourself as you would judge them.

At the end of things, at the end of all things, humankind is indivisible. There's no us and them. There's just us. We're so alone. All we have is each other.

Analogies and Computers

Recently, I purchased a book titled How Math Explains the World. It's all gone a bit over my head, but I had a fairly good grasp of the first section, which discussed a few of the unusual and fascinating properties of infinite sets. In order to explain the concepts, the author created a hypothetical hotel with an infinite amount of rooms, numbered 1-infinity, which housed various guests.

As far as I was concerned, the analogy to set up the hotel was wasted paper (although his explanation was fairly entertaining). One of my favorite parts of C++ are arrays. An array is data stored in numbered locations. The numbers start with 0.

0 1 2 3 4 5
7 8 2 4 6 6

If you wanted to access the first location? array[0]. This would give you a 7. You can also store letters, words, sentences, non-integer numbers and more.

Abstract concepts like arrays, so very alien to our ape brain of hunting and gathering, have to be grasped in order to program. You must not program a computer like you're telling a person what to do. Computers are utterly stupid--you must write explicit instructions. The slightest error in grammar or logic will confuse the poor dumb machine until it's giving you numbers like -983454. Not very useful. You have to spell everything out without making any assumptions. At the same time, while you're working on programs that start to get more complicated, there's a truly dazzling number of variations. That's why so many programming concepts make for good analogies.

Let's look at another example of how computer code can help you understand a concept that has nothing to do with computers. Most people have no idea how genetics work. The analogy used in the link is recipes. I think an even better analogy would be computer code. Copy and paste a section of code from one program to another. It could improve it--helping a program that multiplies fractions to reduce the result. It could make the program nonsensical--for example, adding a section of code that uses X as the name for a string when earlier in the program, X was defined as an integer. It could even do nothing.

It isn't just code that provides an analogy. The way our brain stores information--linking memories and knowledge by topic and bizarre, random associations--is similar to Wikipedia and its hypertext. As Max Brooks points out in his masterpiece The Zombie Survival Guide, we in the computer age are better equipped to understand zombies than any other culture. A zombie isn't like an animal. It's like a robot.

int main()
{
bool zombie=true;
while (zombie==true)
eat brains;
return 0;
}

See how simple that is? Even the output of a computer program can help you learn. The world would be a more logical place if everyone were familiar with concepts like loops and if then statements.

Plus, programming is fun. There's nothing more satisfying than looking over a long section of inscrutable gibberish and knowing that it'll perfectly calculate the product of two complex numbers because you were the one who wrote it.

Do yourself a favor. Learn the basics of at least one computer language. It's worth it.

Cassie Abuse Is Hilarious

Cassie Lang. Fifteen years old. Stature. Young Avenger. Initiative recruit. Mostly reviled due to being a turncoat pro-regger. The universe's bitch.

Wait, what?

Allow me to explain.

After a brief field trip to Wikipedia (this is another article all you non-comic-geeks should have a tab open for), I can tell you where she originated. In 1979 real world time, reformed thief Scott Lang was released for good behavior after three years in jail. He was totally devoted to his tiny daughter, Cassie Lang. Unfortunately, she got sick with a heart condition. Scott stole the Ant-Man equipment to rescue a kidnapped doctor who could save her life. Scott then got into the Avengers and had an obscure career where he fought the Taskmaster repeatedly.

Cassie spent lots of this time getting kidnapped or hanging out with superheroes. At one point, she apparently had some kind of adolescent romance with Kristoff, some kid who thought he was Doctor Doom or something. It was some weird Fantastic Four thing—not my area of expertise. Eventually, Cassie’s mom and her stepdad got full custody. Cassie snuck away to visit her dad until Scarlet Witch sicced Exploding Zombie Jack of Hearts on him after Bendis drove her crazy. Scott Lang died in a pointless, tragic death and Cassie apparently had to spend some time stalking Iron Man to get an explanation of what exactly happened.

This is where Young Avengers comes in.

Cassie had a screaming fight with her mom and stepdad and ran away from home. She saw the original Young Avengers team (Iron Lad/Young Kang, Billy, Teddy and Iron Lad) on the news, where they spectacularly failed to resolve a hostage crisis at a posh wedding. They had to be rescued by a bridesmaid, Kate Bishop, stabbing a guy with one of Eli’s random shuriken (seriously, the hell?). Cassie goes to talk to Kate at the hospital where the wedding guests were taken. The two go to the burnt-out hull of Avenger’s mansion to get Cassie’s dad’s gear. Turns out that hanging around Pym particles has mutated Cassie to the point where she can shrink or grow at will.

Some other stuff happens that I won’t get into here, but Cassie and Young Kang kiss a couple times after knowing each other for a few hours in the middle of a crisis, right before Kang leaves forever. Oh, teenagers. Cassie joins the team and they have adventures for a few issues.

Anyway, Civil War happens. Half of the superheroes decide to slavishly obey the government, put those who disagree in a hellish Negative Zone gulag after having them hunted down by brain-chipped supervillains (Bullseye once killed a church full of nuns) and create a murderous clone of Thor whose brains they scoop out and replace with robot parts. The rest decide to go into hiding and randomly pounce on supervillains and raid the Negative Zone gulag once. They make one attempt to get an interview with a reporter (Sally Floyd, dumbest bitch in the Marvel Universe, who refuses the interview on moral principles because she’s an awful, awful reporter), but otherwise don’t try to sway public opinion at all.

At first, the Young Avengers are all anti-registration. Then there’s a huge pro-reg ambush and Bill Foster, the other anti-reg giant, gets an enormous hole blown into his chest by Clone Thor. The anti-regs are about to be killed en masse and only avoid death because Sue Richards is awesome. They had to leave Bill’s body. He couldn’t be shrunk down, so he was buried in a tarp and chains and a huge hole in the ground. For some reason, Cassie defects that night.

When the rebel Avengers invade the Negative Zone gulag, Cassie fights on the pro-reg side. By the way, one of the main arguments for pro-regs is that they would keep inexperienced, vulnerable, younger heroes out of danger. No comment.

After Civil War finally ends, Avengers: The Initiative begins. This is a huge boot camp for newby supers in the same town where the supervillain supernova that started Civil War happened (Stamford). Some of the other Young Avengers are there, but there’s really no rhyme, reason or explanation for who ends up there and why. In the first issue of A:I, a recruit is accidentally killed and his death is covered up. An ex-Nazi hired by pro-regs decides to clone him. One of the clones merges with a piece of alien technology and rampages through the camp, killing and maiming many. Stamford: Where Children Go To Die. These don't have anything to do with Cassie, although she was present at the last incident. At some point before they happened (I assumed Cassie went home after the clone rampage), the following events occurred:

In Ms. Marvel, the Puppet Master started abducting women and selling them as slaves out of a compound in South America. The normal women were obviously being sold as sex slaves, but he was also selling superheroines for unnamed purposes. Cassie was one of them. She spent days, if not weeks, serving the Puppet Master and being shown off in front of potential buyers. When Ms. Marvel’s sidekick got kidnapped and Ms. Marvel went to investigate, Cassie was sent to fight her as a giant. During this fight, Cassie got a car thrown at her face. It didn’t faze her. Eventually, she was knocked out and rescued with the other women. There is absolutely no mention of anyone missing her or wondering where she went.

In an issue of A:I, Eric O’Grady, the awesomely amoral new Ant-Man, is sent to Stamford and trained by Taskmaster—remember, I mentioned that he fought Scott Lang? Taskmaster remembered too, because he asked O’Grady if he’s Scott Lang. O’Grady quickly says no and makes up some entertaining lies about Lang to get on Tasky’s good side (namely, that he wasn’t a real Avenger and would spy on women in the shower with his powers). Cassie hears this (by the way, she recognized Taskmaster and seems surprised that there were supervillains at the camp, so I guess that was the first she’d heard about the pro-reg’s questionable hiring practices). Unfortunately, this occurred just after Hank Pym had shrunk to escape an explosion and Cassie had asked him if her dad could've survived the same way, only to be told that that definitely didn't happen. Predictably, Cassie doesn't react well to the situation. In fact, she reacts very, very badly. How badly?

She yells “STOP TELLING LIES ABOUT MY DAD!” and tries to STOMP HIM WHILE GIANT-SIZED. Okay, what he said about her dead father was horrible, but… she tries to KILL HIM. She’s unsuccessful, of course, and a giant fight ensues. O’Grady distracts her by yelling “Oh, the humanity! You just stepped on Stingray!” and clobbers her in the face with a bus. I would say Vehicles 2, Cassie 0, but the fact that she doesn’t have a nose like a boxer and shrapnel scars makes me think it’s more of a tie. Anyway, Hank Pym steps in, but before we can have a three-way giant fight (and Cassie can get a hit in) Taskmaster incapacitates all three of them.

Vision’s issue of the Young Avengers miniseries involves him sneaking Cassie out of the camp by posing as Tony Stark and taking her on a date. Young Vision has nothing in common with Old Vision besides appearance, name and operating system. He’s based off of Young Kang’s brainwaves and made out of his armor. He takes the name Jonas to assert his independence. Since he’s based off of Young Kang, he has a crush on Cassie and successfully achieves boyfriend/girlfriend status in this issue. Cassie is still very pro-reg in this issue and returns to the camp after their date.

In Cassie’s issue of the Young Avengers miniseries, she’s back in New York with her mom and stepdad, so I would place it after the disaster with the clone at the camp. Tensions are high. She has another screaming fight, storms out, and promptly gets into a giant fight with the Growing Man, who falls onto her stepdad. She goes… somewhere, I think back to her house, and calls Kate in tears without explaining the situation. Kate gets there and Cassie is totally catatonic and steadily shrinking. When Kate has to get a microscope to see her, she calls Eli and Billy. Since Kate hasn’t been able to snap her out of it, Billy shrinks Eli down. Cassie tells Eli about the fight. He manages to snap her out of it (naturally by yelling, since this is a comic book) and she goes and talks to her mom. Cassie’s stepdad is in a coma and might be paralyzed when he wakes up. Cassie and her mom hug and make up and agree to work on their relationship more.

In Kate’s issue of the Young Avengers miniseries, it’s mentioned in passing that Kate and Cassie are back to being confidants and Cassie has been regularly spending time with Jonas.

In a recent (most recent?) issue of Secret Invasion, the YAs went to the human underground resistance base. One of them was knocked unconscious and woke up there. Guess who?

In summary:

• A large portion of her childhood was spent with her dad in jail. She also had a terminal illness.
• She had some kind of romance or friendship with Doom Junior (?).
• She was forcibly separated from her beloved superhero dad.
• Her dad died pointlessly. She had to stalk Tony Stark to find out why.
• She had regular screaming fights with her mom and stepdad.
• She tried to run away from home.
• She made out with the boy who would become Kang the Conqueror.
  
• She dropped out of school to become a fugitive from the law.
• She joined up with the law and was conscripted into the army (a generous estimation of her age is FIFTEEN) and had to fight her best friends (also, her mom hates superheroes, so she basically had nowhere to go for sympathy or understanding).
• She was kidnapped and enslaved by Puppetmaster and almost got sold, POSSIBLY AS A SEX SLAVE.
• She heard two guys laughing about how her dead dad sucked, TRIED TO KILL ONE OF THEM, and was humiliatingly beaten down by the two.
• She was at the camp when a clone went on a rampage and killed or maimed dozens of people
• She had even more screaming fights with her mom and stepdad
• She accidentally crippled her stepdad
• Secret Invasion. There were lots of other people on the battleground, but I still think it counts, especially since she was apparently singled out to be knocked unconscious since she was the only one who woke up in the issue I read (I didn't read the part where she got knocked out).
  

Even accounting for the fact that she apparently made up with her friends off screen, is getting regular robo-makeouts and has a better relationship with her mom, Cassie should be one huge ball of neuroses. Her life was degenerating into a horrible, sucking black hole of pain and misery. To the credit of the man who wrote her issue of the miniseries, her “epiphany therapy” isn’t portrayed as a cure-all… she and her mom don’t immediately have a perfect relationship, they just understand each other better, and her stepdad is still seriously injured.

However. If Young Avengers ever rises from the grave and has another ongoing series, I will bet you one million Internet dollars that over half the issues with her life that I listed will be dropped forever. Her GOING TO BOOT CAMP AT FIFTEEN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU MARVEL will only be mentioned as part of issues with her leaving the team for pro-regs, if at all, and the full mental and emotional implications of her GOING TO BOOT CAMP AT FIFTEEN YEARS OLD will be dropped. Her being kidnapped and enslaved by Puppet Master will never be mentioned. The fact that she TRIED TO KILL A STRANGER, albeit one who insulted her dad, will never be mentioned. The continuity issues—when was she at the camp? When did she make up with her friends? How mad were they at her? Did she go home after the Puppet Master thing or after the clone rampage thing? Did anyone care that she went missing for god knows how long?

Before she and Jonas started going out (I don't have a problem with this development), I was hoping that she and Young Kang would have this awesomely messed up, totally unhealthy relationship where they would drag each other down into immaturity and immorality. I mean, I knew it would never happen, but a geek can dream, right? I’m overcritical of every fictional relationship ever, so intentionally horrible relationships of mutual destruction make me happy.

But pipe dreams aside, let’s face it: the only issue anyone will ever remember is “Didn’t she have a dead dad? Okay, that’s her characterization, let’s call it a day.” Maybe, if we’re very lucky, they’ll remember that she turned pro-reg before any of her teammates (some of whom are still anti-reg, though fucking Marvel has never made it clear which ones). The best thing that I can imagine happening is that a) the fact that she almost killed that one dude will be addressed, possibly by explaining that without her friends or family to vent to about the ever-increasing shittiness of her life, she was resorting to violence and b) the unofficial mentor of the team, Jessica Jones, would talk to her about their shared experiences with being mind-controlled slaves (although what Jessica went through was longer, more intense and a hundred times worse than even Cassie's shit life).

Anyway, why am I so pessimistic about this? Because the minor characters get no love. Because Marvel only cares about constantly having A-list characters making drama, only to forget it for the next big event. Marvel is changing the status quo to disguise the fact that their characters don't change or grow or learn from anything. Meanwhile, minor characters like Cassie are put through the wringer and have their lives uprooted, only for it to be forgotten because they don’t have a home title and the people who want to use them as a guest-star can’t be bothered to figure out where they’re supposed to be and if they ever do get a title… seriously, are you expecting someone at Marvel to read some back issues? Really?

There are a few reasons why she's the one who gets this treatment. She's a giant and a teenager. When it comes to a fight that the writer want to look impressive without upping the power levels of all the characters involved, giants are a definite go-to. Marvel hates teenagers and regularly abuses them. Plus, nobody knows which of her teammates are registered and which aren't, so the writers are probably scared of getting jumped on for violating continuity and only feel safe writing her. I've got to give the poor guys credit for that. But still, the level of crap heaped on her is enormous. She shouldn't be fighting aliens or crime, she should be somewhere safe and quiet until she's repaired her relationship with her mom and friends to the point where she no longer gets mad enough to kill strangers.

Her teammate, Tommy, is similarly mischaracterized. He’s supposed to be mentally unstable. Did you miss the part where he had to be stopped from murdering his scientist captors and exploded some Skrulls into a fine mist, BEFORE knowing they’d regenerate?*

But there’s still a spot of optimism. Notable exceptions: Robert Kirkman often creates his own little playgrounds, where each character is lovingly crafted, given a logical arc of growth, and continuity makes perfect sense. Loners, a miniseries by Cebulski, digs into the backstories of a handful of D- and Z-listers to carry on plot points from years ago and preserve their characterization. There are others out there.

But not enough for me. The only defense mechanism is the title of this article.

I like to imagine Cassie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day That Continued For Several Months: "Woke up, gum in hair, dad still dead, friends still hate me, still being held captive in South America by Puppet Master, who forgot the dessert for my lunch because he was upset that nobody wants to a sex slave that stares at you with completely blank white eyes. Woke up, gum in hair, dad still dead, friends still hate me, still living in boot camp, forgot how to do long division because I haven't been to school since Civil War started. Woke up, gum in hair, dad still dead, apparently friends no longer hate me, stepdad still does, mother still disappointed, and now I screwed up again. I bet stuff like this never happens to me in the MC2 universe."


*Apparently Bendis did, because Secret Invasion wouldn’t exist without a Skrull dying from being STABBED IN THE CHEST.

Satan Aborts Spider-Man's Baby

Those of you who are comics-savvy will recognize the title as a reference to One More Day, a completely awful Spider-Man story, which I hope will be forever remembered as Satan aborting Spider-Man’s baby. If you don't recognize it, open a Wikipedia tab.

There’s already been reams of analysis of how absolutely terrible and ill-planned this story was by people much more talented and articulate than I, so I’ll just boil down a few of my objections to it:

• Peter is portrayed as an immature character, but from the very first comics he was thinking of marriage, money and taking care of his aunt. He now lives with his aunt and has no job to speak of. He couldn't have known that this would happen, but he knew he was giving up a wife, a future and potential children.
• This is a trend with Marvel. Look at Johnny Storm. Almost every new author gives him a “coming of age” story or just treats him like a playboy from beginning to end, completely forgetting that he was married and expecting a child at one point. Guess what happened? Lyja the Skrull conveniently disappeared (yes, she was a Skrull, but he loved her even after that revelation) and their child was retconned out of existence. Johnny was a grownup. Now his own sister calls him Paris Hilton.
• THIS IS WHY PEOPLE DON’T TAKE COMICS SERIOUSLY. Every time you spit on characterization, TWENTY YEARS of continuity and any conventions of good storytelling in favor of the almighty status quo, you demean all comics. I know comics fans. We’re prone to a bit of exaggeration. But Joe Quesada is literally and without hyperbole dragging the dignity of the superhero genre down to the level of children’s stories solely to pursue an irrational personal agenda.
• My father and mother are middle-aged comics fans. Comics are a constant presence in my life. I don’t even know what it’s like to not read comics. Whenever I talk about them with a non-fan, I have to stop for a moment to try and figure out if they’d recognize a certain character or plot. I buy issues and then I buy trades. I easily become obsessed with characters, authors (ask me about Brian K. Vaughan!) and artists (I would probably buy a Wolverine comic with a Jo Chen cover JO CHEN I LOVE YOU). One More Day (and Civil War and Secret Invasion and almost all post-Alias Bendis… I could go on) makes me want to give up superheroes forever.

One More Day is just plain dumb.

Five Reasons Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Is Actually Good

I can hear it now. "But Bradbury! Terminator is a good but fairly mindless action movie that can't possibly be translated into a coherent, enjoyable television show! This is on the same level as Flash Gordon! It doesn't even have Schwarzenegger!"

That's exactly what I thought going in. I was fully expecting campy sci-fi action with a robot-of-the-week plot mixed in with whiny, soap opera characters. You know what? I was wrong. Mostly. I'm afraid I've only seen up to the episode Heavy Metal (the fourth one), but it does seem to be slipping into the robot-of-the-week plot. Even though it hasn't slipped into a tired formula yet, it still takes the impact out of time travel and has the potential to introduce some nasty plot holes.

But even with these downsides, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is actually worth watching. I'm not claiming it's fine art, but it's one of my favorite shows right now. There are five main reasons why.

1. SARAH CONNOR

In a lot of fiction, the story begins with the main character learning that they're destined to be the king or that they have magical powers or there are robots from the future coming to attack them. They proceed to whine, bitch, and moan about it for much too long. It is annoying.

This is not how Sarah Connor works. She's a seasoned veteran who's lived with her sucky life for years now. She's used to it and has responded by becoming a paranoid badass. That's not to say that Sarah has no internal conflicts—like I said, she's paranoid and has issues with how far she can or should go to prevent the rise of the machines, plus she just found out she died of cancer in an alternate future. But she's also competent, proactive, clever, and really good with a gun.

Even without the Terminator tie-in, I'd watch this show for Sarah Connor. In one of my favorite scenes with her, the show's good Terminator, Cameron, is about to kill a police officer. Cameron was waiting outside a house with their car while Sarah meets with gang members to get fake IDs. The cop goes up to her and explains how gang members will hide their drugs in a stolen car with a guard loitering nearby. He prepares to take her in for questioning and she prepares to snap his neck like a twig. Luckily for the cop, Sarah is a great improviser and liar. She comes running up, starts ranting at her "stepdaughter" for hanging out in gang territory, and saves the day single-handedly using her powers of lying without hesitation.

The only bad thing I can think of about her is that she monologues every episode. Still, compared to Heroes' Mohinder monologues, hers are Shakespeare. They're usually relevant to the episode, are accompanied by interesting visuals and are about Oppenheimer or the original golem story instead of crap like the 10% brain myth.

2. JOHN CONNOR

John Connor isn't a warrior like his mother. He's still a teenager and he doesn't like his destiny. He goes to school and angsts about things. I think I recall him using a gun a few times, but he uses them fairly infrequently.

But even though he's not a warrior, John is more proactive than his mother in some ways. She may shoot at the Terminators, but usually while running away from them. He's the one who pushes to fight the future and keep Judgment Day from happening. In the first few episodes, he said this in a way that sounded an awful lot like "Mom, make it go away!", but he's starting to want to become the leader he's supposed to be—even if he's not sure how to do that yet.

He's an idealistic boy trying to become a hero while his two cynical companions try to keep him alive. Handled well, this arc of growth and coming of age could be truly epic.

One interesting aspect of John's story is what's going on in his high school. Mysterious murals began to appear on the walls. They're drawings of a door that gradually gained more detail, until it showed the door slightly open with blonde hair showing and a bra on the knob. Apparently, this revealed a secret that some blonde girl had. She has a breakdown in the bathroom with Cameron. Later, Cameron and John join a crowd in the parking lot and realize they're looking at her on the roof of a tall building. As Cameron holds back a horrified John, the girl jumps to her death. I was surprised the show had the guts to do it—they even had a student sarcastically yelling "Jump!" moments before her suicide.

In the next episode, John is seen thinking about it and he risks his life to strike a major blow against the Terminators. The secret of the girl and the murals is still up in the air and will clearly be a continuing subplot. I, personally, love this take on the high school hero. The events at his school are dramatic but not fantastical and they seriously impact his character without consuming the show.

3. ACTION

Apparently, one of the best ways to identify Terminators is that they don't look both ways before crossing the street. The few robots that appeared have been hit with a truly ridiculous number of vehicles in just four episodes and I love it. In one scene, Sarah steals a motorcycle, rides it towards a Terminator, and turns it sharply to the side while jumping off. The bike skids several yards towards the Terminator and hits its legs in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. The show doesn't have the relentless chases of the Terminator movies, but it's still full of gunshots, explosions, fistfights and the occasional car chase.

4. TERMINATORS ARE ACTUALLY ROBOTS

I find Cameron, who is as close to a good Terminator as Terminators can get, awkward and literal without being unbelievably naïve. In her first appearance, she had a brief conversation with John while posing as a human student. I've seen people on some forums complaining that she sounded much too human in this exchange compared to how she talks later. I disagree. In that scene and later ones, she only sounded marginally better than Alice. I'd also like to take this opportunity to share with you all a quote from one of my favorite forums:

"Rather than being like Buffy, huddled in the dank and dusty library with her trusty cohorts every day, I think it would be hilarious if Cameron inadvertently ended up becoming the Cordelia of the school: her tactlessness and thoughtlessness would probably be interpreted by high school girls as confidence and bitchiness, two qualities that any queen bee must have in abundance. After all, the loner-girl-as-superhero has pretty much become a cliche; the idea of the most popular girl in school being, in reality, a robotic assassin sent from the future to save the world--this I have not seen. And this I would like to see. If only to see John and Sarah's reactions."
--tze

But I digress. In one scene, the heroic trio were looking around an apartment inhabited by a team of humans from the future. The time travellers had been trying to find Skynet and all but one were killed by a Terminator. Cameron tries to rip open the safe, but they'd set a trap and she's knocked out. Terminators take fifteen seconds to reboot, but John and Sarah don't have that time because the Terminator that killed the hunting party is clomping up to the apartment. John starts trying to carry Cameron out to the fire escape. Sarah stops him, puts Cameron on a rolling office chair, and launches it out of the window. Whether it's moments like these, gratuitious displays of Terminator strength, awkward ways of speech, total lack of ethics or the fantastic acting of Summer Glau, Cameron is a robot from artificial skin to metal skeleton, and this show never lets you forget it.

The same goes for the villains. This show is exploring the different aspects of Terminators that the movies never got the opportunity to. What happens when a Terminator completes its mission? What if it needs to hide, but its skin was destroyed? The answer to that last question is particularly good. The main Terminator antagonist, Cromartie, loses his entire skin and his head is separated from his body. His body gets up and disguises itself from head to toe. It sticks a decapitated head on its shoulders and puts on a motorcycle helmet over it. Yes, that actually happened. Disappointingly, the head and body were shortly reunited and Cromartie went on to get his skin. He gives a formula for artificial skin and blood to a scientist who has the equipment to make it. After getting the skin, Cromartie resembles a hideously disfigured human. He kills the scientist and takes his eyes.

I've heard people complain about why he would do that to someone who would create the technology Terminators would need. I'd like to remind those people that when the scientist saw the formula, he muttered things like "[My colleague] was close… [other guy] was closer…". The scientist wasn't the best man in his field.

Anyway, Cromartie also needs to get plastic surgery to make his skin presentable. It's fascinating watching him create this new identity and serves a purpose: it creates a trail for the FBI character to follow. This show has a lot going on and it's all tied together.

5. TERMINATOR III HAS BEEN RETCONNED OUT OF EXISTENCE

That movie sucked.