Spoilers. A strange episode, with no major ties to Chronicles' ongoing storylines, that instead gives us a curious look at what Cameron (Summer Glau) gets up to when everyone else is asleep. "Self Made Man" will split opinion, but it earns points for some inventive ideas and appealing performances...After Sarah (Lena Headey), John (Thomas Dekker), and presumably Derek, retire to bed, Cameron ventures out to the city library, where she's apparently a regular visitor during the night-shift of wheelchair-bound attendant Eric (Generation Kill's Billy Lush). It's here she makes a startling discovery: an old photo from 1920 showing a T-888 (Todd Stashwick) in a crowd outside a nightclub, moments after a fire inside killed 44 people.
Cameron uses the library's resources and Eric's expertise to piece together the mystery of why Skynet sent a Terminator back in time to the '20s (without telling Eric the full story, of course), and it soon becomes apparent that there was an error during the cyborg's temporal transit. Amazingly, the T-888 devised a long-term plan to eventually succeed in its mission -- becoming a bank robber to fund his transformation into wealthy constructionist Myron Stark…
A weak, rather pointless subplot finds Riley (Leven Rambin) making a distressed phone call to John, luring him to a late-night house party. There doesn't seem to be any real reason behind Riley's actions, particularly now that we know she's from the future and has a covert mission to stop John falling in love with Cameron. It's all quite silly and distracting, only worth watching to see John unleash some pent up anger on a man who claims Riley stole a cigarette lighter. Beyond that, it was difficult to care or get involved in what was clearly a story intended to break up Cameron's story.
The budget didn't quite do justice to the '20s-set flashbacks, but they got the job done well enough. The incongruous appearance of a signature "time bubble" inside a decadent speakeasy, and seeing a Terminator brandishing a tommy gun, were both enjoyable visuals for obvious reasons, and guest-star Todd Stashwick's peculiar performance as Stark was also good fun.
This was ultimately a budget-saving episode; one that gave Summer Glau more opportunities to impress. It makes sense that Cameron would use her free time constructively (well, accepting the fact she apparently leaves the Connors open to attack some nights!), and the damage to her system earlier this season has perhaps given her the spark of "life" that was previously missing. Or, at the very least, a thirst to understand and evolve beyond her own limitations. Of course, being a machine, she's still amusingly blunt and socially inept -- demonstrated here when she enquires about whether Eric (who suffers from bone cancer) ever considered suicide, and when she struggles to 't understand his bitter reaction to being told his cancer has returned.
Suspension of disbelief is required for how quickly and concisely Cameron and Eric piece together Stark's life from archive newsreels, old newspapers, microfiche, and vinyl recordings, but I didn't really mind. Stark's story was interesting and the reveal of his ultimate goal came together well. Cameron deduces that the T-888 was meant to arrive at a New Year's Eve party for 2010, held in the Pico Tower, and assassinate attendee Governor Mark Wyman -- but his unintentional arrival in the '20s altered history by killing the building's architect...
Plans to build the Pico Tower were shelves, with the architect's rich father instead planning a memorial garden to honour his son's life -- a change in history the T-888 couldn't allow to happen. So, the cyborg spent his time ruining the father's life and business plans, amassed a fortune by robbing banks, and built the Pico Tower himself -- to hibernate inside one of its walls and emerge 90 years later to assassinate Wyman! How's that for forward planning!
Okay, it's a bit tangled and doesn't really bare close scrutiny -- I mean, why couldn't the T-888 have just killed Wyman at some other time and place? Why did it have to be specifically inside the Pico Tower in 2010? But, I never let nitpicks (particularly ones regarding temporal logic) ruin the swing of a good story that was nicely told and fun to watch. It even ended in another cyborg-et-cyborg grapple that was suitably bruising and saw Cameron wield a tommy gun.
While this episode was definitely a standalone bit of fun at heart, it actually contained a few answers and set-up of an important storyline for the future. The mysterious triangular dots Sarah has been obsessing over were explained (they're celestial co-ordinates, apparently indicating the year 2010), and I'm assuming this Governor Wyman is a figure of great importance if Skynet wanted him dead. Added to an ambiguous ending (did Eric commit suicide after corroborating Cameron's diagnosis of his cancer? Was he even real?) and "Self Made Man" was a very unusual but pleasant experience. It certainly exhibits a risk-taking attitude other shows would do well to follow.
1 December 2008
Fox, 9/8c
Writer: Toni Graphia
Director: Holly Dale
Cast: Summer Glau (Cameron), Leven Rambin (Riley), Lena Headey (Sarah), Thomas Dekker (John), Billy Lush (Eric), Todd Stashwick (Myron Stark) David Michie (Police Officer), Elsie Ivy (Female Student), Ray Laska (Governor), Yolanda Lloyd Delgado (Gail Silver), Eric Callero (Will Chandler), Jody Jaress (Ruby), Justin Alston (Tom), Mary Alexandra Steifvater (Young Ruby), Branden Morgan (Rudolph Valentino), Toni Monsion (Rupert Chandler), Lou George (Fred Jeffers), Oren Dayan (Mike), & Symba Smith (Field Reporter)
