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selenakThanks to the gracious wychwood, I have a dreamwidth account now, so you can find me there under selenak as well.
Thinking back on the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, here are some disorderly thoughts on themes, accomplishments and the occasional misstep. Spoilers for the entire season.
A while back,artaxastra posted on two opposing ways to see history, The Great Man theory (it's the extraordinary individual who shapes historical events) and history as the product of sociological developments independent from one individual. Now, in Germany you might say we detoxed of the Great Man And His Great Goals For Wich Any Sacrifice Is Justified view by overdosing on it, and post-45 tend to regard the whole idea with extreme distrust. (This, btw, is one of the reasons why a movie like Hero comes across as extraordinarily revolting in its ideological implication.) On the other hand, as far as the realm of fiction is concerned, as astraxastra pointed out, stories in which the fates of characters are solely moved by developments outside their power to affect tend to be frustrating, and extraordinary individuals who do manage to create change are just plain interesting (as long as they're not presented as perfect).
Now, The Sarah Connor Chronicles has at its basis the canon as established by the first two Terminator movies, with a nod given to the third via Sarah's possible death by cancer still being a possibility. The very premise of the first film is that the big antagonist, the artificial intelligence Skynet, seemingly firmly suscribing to the Great Man theory of history, sends a machine back in time to kill the mother of the person it sees as its primary antagonist before this person can be born; by the end of the film the audience realises that by this very action Skynet has actually assured John Connor comes into existence, both in the technical sense (his father, Kyle Reese, would otherwise never have met Sarah Connor) and via wider implications (Sarah Connor starts out as a waitress who can't defend herself and becomes a warrior both because of Skynet's persecution and because she wants to defend her son, whom she raises in a way she never would have if her life hadn't been threatened from age 18 onwards). In the second movie, Sarah proves she believes in the Great Man theory, too, as she plans to prevent Skynet from existing via taking out its creator, Mike Dyson (only, being Sarah, she does not kill him; instead, the convinced-by-Sarah-Dyson sacrifices himself).
One of SCC's major accomplishments is that without negating this basis of its canon, it simultanously sees the flaws, uses them and presents alternate perspectives - and without simply going into the opposite direction (aka no individual matters, and nobody can change anything), either. The first season among other things shows that you can't really prevent an invention. You can't kill an idea. Because the development of robotics, of Artificial Intelligence, is something carried by not one but many people, and if it's not Dyson, it's Andy Goode, and maybe it's actually both, and others, too. The technological development that results in cybernetics, in AIs and Terminators, is not something dependent on one single being, and can't be stopped by one single being, either. In the second season, however, the show adds something else, another question, and a new answer. If sentient robotic life will come into being, no matter what, does that mean you can do nothing but fight against the results? Actually, no. You can also try to change the nature of said sentient robotic life. Not kill it, or prevent it from existing; give it a basis that allows it to want to co-exist with humans instead of annihilating them.
When Catherine Weaver, introduced in the opening season 2 episode as a new character who acquires the Turk, Andy Goode's chessgame playing AI, is revealed as a Terminator (a T-1001, of deathly fluidity), viewers naturally jumped to the conclusion that she was the new season's new antagonist, trying to create Skynet. In subsequent episodes, there were some complaints that her storyline did not intersect with the Connors, that Sarah had no idea of her existence, as opposed to the season 1 antagonist, Cromartie, who menaced the Connors from the pilot onwards. Gradually, as we saw Weaver interacting with the original Catherine's daughter Savannah, with James Ellison, when she aquired a child psychologist for the entity she was developing from the Turk and then asked Ellison to teach it ethics, speculation began that Weaver's goal might be something more complicated than simply nursing Skynet through its baby days, and the fact she didn't show the slightest interest in pursuing the Connors or sending others after them was one of the reasons for the this speculation. Her statement at the start of the season, that a computer able to exceed the sum of its programming, to even go against its programming (not to cross the road when the colour changes, to go in the other direction...) is truly extraordinary, which at the time was taken to refer to Skynet turning against its human creators, began to take on different layers. The struggle in the future, which in the movies had looked crystal clear, black and white - on the one side the human resistance, on the other side the "metal", began to look more complicated as well. We were starting out with Skynet as the only truly sentient AI, and the terminators simply as its executors (unless they were reprogrammed by future John Connor). The show in the first season gave us Cameron and her development; without ever negating how dangerous she could be, Cameron definitely was presented as a distinct individual exceeding the sum both of her programming and her reprogramming. As more than one reviewer pointed out, the most extraordinary bit about the climactic scene of the season 2 opener wasn't that she said "I love you and you love me" to stop John from taking her chip out but that she was afraid for her life, viscerally afraid, and wanted to survive. Not simply to accomplish her mission: because she wanted to live. The first mark of sentient life. What the second season then went on hinting at until it got spelled out in full was that Cameron wasn't unique in this regard among terminators, not in the future. That there were, in fact, different factions of AIs, not just the Skynet one.
Meanwhile, the future human resistance, previously seen as single-minded a group in its way as Skynet and its terminators, was also presented as splintered, something made clear via the arrival of another new character early in season 2, Jesse Flores. Now, Jesse's introduction I think was one of the few times the show did wrong in its presentation (wrong to the character, I mean; not wrong to bring in the character to begin with). Because first of all, the camera in her first two or three episodes treated Jesse differently from the other female characters, blatantly showcasing her in her bikini, and while she did briefly remark on having grown disaffected with Future John's leadership, she spent most of her screentime having love scenes with Derek. I see why the show didn't want to reveal the true reason why Jesse was here immediately, and the great two-parter focused on her late in the season gives her connection to water another layer, but I still think Jesse would have intrigued the audience far more from the get go if we had gotten less bikini and more PTSD. As it is, I think the writing for Jesse truly began to click from theToby Ziegler Richard Schiff episode onwards, which not coincidentally showcased for the first time both how damaged and how ruthless Jesse was. Soon after, of course, we got the Riley reveal, which brings me to another early season audience complaint which got retracted later.
When Riley first showed up, she was resented by two very different parts of the audience; a) hardcore John/Cameron 'shippers, and b) viewers who didn't like John himself to begin with and most certainly did not want to spend screen time on what they saw as an insignificant teenage romance. Both sets of complainers began to ebb away once it was revealed Riley wasn't the girl next door but the girl from the future, and her relationship with John hadn't been her idea but something she was told to pursue as part of a larger plan. I've been wondering whether it would have been better to reveal Riley's identity sooner, but here I think the show made the right choice, because if she had been presented as from the future from the get go, the complaints about nobody (John, Cameron or Sarah) realising this would have been even stronger than they were in her last two episodes already, before it was revealed that post-Mexico, John had in fact figured it out but had kept silent about it because he wanted her to tell him. Also, in context of the overall season John's early scenes with Riley aren't just teenage rebellion but a last grasp at (the illusion of) normalcy.
John isn't the main character of the show; Sarah is. (And I'll get to the fannish complaints about her trio of mindscape-investigating episodes mid-season.) But the show can't ignore the wole saviour-of-humanity-premise from the movies, either. What it does, though, is what does with the stop-Skynet-from existing premise as well; problematize it and put it in context without negating it (i.e. simply go on the opposite direction of "no, everyone would be BETTER off without John"). First of all, the humanity John is supposed to save (or not) isn't an anonymous mass, either in the present or in the future. This show is better than most I can think of in bringing both recurring and one shot characters to life, individualizing them, always pointing out they have their own stories in which Sarah or John or Derek just feature as guests just as they are guests on the show proper. Take the episode with the two Martin Bedells, Goodbye to all that. Early on, we get a reminder that in T1, the titular terminator killed just about any Sarah Connor he could find in Los Angeles before getting to "our" Sarah. Three, Sarah says, three Sarah Connors; she hasn't forgotten. These other Sarahs had just as much a right to live as she did. The Martin Bedell she ends up taking care of in this episode isn't the "real" Martin the terminators of the ep are after, but he's no less real, his parents are no less freaked out by Sarah abducting him for his own good; he's one of the reasons why she fights. Meanwhile, the "real" Martin isn't any more keen on military heroics (he wants to quit the academy) than John is to become the John Connor (tm), the one Derek tells him everyone dies for - and how can you possibly justify all this sacrifice? You can't, and one of the ways the show keeps present day John sane is that at no point does he think people dying for him is right in any way; in this episode, he ends up saving Martin Bedell by risking himself (which he's taught not to do) - which in turn ensures Martin Bedell will join the resistance one day. Not because of a myth of a great man, because he has seen what metal death can do, because a boy his own age risked his life for him, and because he makes that choice. When Derek, near the end of the season, qualifies his earlier "we all die for you" to John with "we're all watching you" and "humanity rises or falls on your shoulders", he invokes a different imagery than that of the fearless leader; the corner stone on which a building stands. An important stone, to be sure, but so are the other stones; they each make each other important and connected.
The humans in the future all have their own stories as well, whether they're one shot, like Richard Schiff'/Adam Busch's character (who might become a collaborator and torturer because of Derek, or could not, we don't know that for sure any more than Derek or Jesse do) or Lauren the watchful older sister, or recurring, like Jesse and Riley. Or Allison of Palmdale, on whom Cameron was modelled, who briefly came to life again when Cameron forgot what she was, and who is alive again in the last minute of the show. Whether Jesse is alive or dead, we don't know for sure. I just rewatched the Today is the Day/Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter two parter again and was struck by the great performance the actress gives, both in the flashbacks/flashforwards, going from Jesse happy, confident and mother-of-her-crew to Jesse devasted, in despair and just told she won't be anyone's mother, and in the present day, as she deals with the murder of Riley at her hands, on the one hand in possession of her wits and calculation enough to get herself an aliby for her cuts and bruises via that bar fight, on the other frozen when the swimming pool janitor asks her about "the blond girl". It's fitting that the last wee see of Jesse isn't the moment where Derek either shoots her or doesn't, but the flashback to her first meeting with Riley. Jesse isn't this season's villain any more than Catherine Weaver is - and btw, they both have gone back to the past to change John Connor and John Henry respectively - but she did commit this season's darkest act with her plan of using Riley - and the love Riley has for her - as a human sacrifice. Catherine Weaver, while not after the destruction of humanity, is absolutely willing to sacrifice individual humans to achieve her goals; but Catherine is a machine. The show has complicated ethics, but I think is firm on this: the moment you both expect people to sacrifice themselves and make that happen even if they do not want to, you cross a line.
Sarah has always tried to avoid killing other humans. In this season, she finally does kill someone (twice, of sorts) in order to save her life. One of the most controversial storytelling choices was to present three episodes investigating Sarah's state of mind and heart mid-season, in which outwardly not much happens other than said two killings. To me, that trilogy was necessary, and not just because Sarah is the heroine of the show. They're also an investigation of her past, present and future, they emphasize what I mentioned before - humanity consisting of invidiuals, all with their own stories; people who die so Sarah and her son live or just because they are otherwise in the way of a machine are never "just" redshirts with a name only revealed in the credits, and they have connections, they have families. The transsexual Sarah meets is in some ways her past self, Sarah that was, the waitress, but she/he is also their own person, and when she dies, the audience feels it; the same is true for all the people Catherine Weaver killed, plus the one Sarah hasn't killed yet, and Sarah is keenly aware of this. Retrospectively, the funeral episode mid-season also is a depiction of grief and ritual, of family and loss, in a quiet and lengthy way we pointedly do not get for Charlie and Derek near the end of the season. We can't; these end of season episodes offer a faster paced narrative which doesn't leave room for it. Is it "just" that factory workers we met only in two episodes get a funeral episode while regular Derek Reese gets a head shot early on and an anonymous burial briefly shown at the end of that episode? Not in terms of what tv has trained audience to expect, but very much so in terms of the humane ethos of the show. There is no justice in either the workers or Derek's death; they all deserve to live, Derek no more than the workers. The grief of their families isn't less important. (And, oh neat foreshadowing: in once instant, as it turns out, one of the grieved for people is not dead. Mind you, Derek being alive in one of several timelines isn't the same as faking a death, but hey.)
In the end, the show offers no certainties of happy endings. John Henry isn't Skynet, and as he is now, he's able to connect to humans, to want at least some of them alive, he tries to help. But as Murch says, John Henry will be changed by the slightest change, and however he and Cameron pulled off that download into her chip and Cromartie's body, we don't know how he'll be in that future he just escaped from. John Connor, by removing himself from the timeline via jumping forward, has ended up in a scenario that at first looks like a dream scenario: Kyle and Derek are both alive, nobody has heard of John Connor which could mean he's off the hook for the whole saviour gig, and then there is Allison, who looks like a human version of Cameron, who is not programmed to kill. But other than Kyle, Derek and Allison being alive, we have no idea how the resistance is doing in this future. Allison might look like Cameron but is not Cameron. Earlier, John, trying to guess what his future self was thinking, tells Jesse that "human beings are irreplacable; they never come back". But though he's been somewhat in denial about, this is true for AIs as well, and that is why he went to the future, assuming John Henry has Cameron's chip. Cameron's body is replacable/repairable as a human body is not, but not Cameron herself. If her chip is destroyed the way Cromartie's was, she's gone. And she very well might be anyway. I have no idea how John Henry and Cameron could co-exist in that chip, and suspect that third season would have revealed John drew the wrong conclusion from the absence of Cameron's chip and that in fact there was a switch; Cameron downloaded into John Henry's old hardware and software (i.e. she's still in the present, hence the "I'm sorry, John" on the viewscreens), he downloaded into her chip and went to the future. Plus there is still the question of whether Catherine Weaver truly wants co-existence or just a future where the machines rule without killing the humans ("humans will dissappoint you"; it occurs to me she might have come to that conclusion in the Jimmy Carter, observing them in their paranoia, when they turned against each other, were firm in their distrust of the metal and where Jesse, starting out as someone able to work with a terminator, ends up killing him for disobeying her orders, even though he just saved her life). No, the future is full of uncertainty, and it could all go horribly wrong. But, and that's the hopeful conclusion the season arrived at, it could also go right. Cameron, John Henry and Catherine Weaver were all able to exceed their programming, to make their own choices; Sarah was able to let her son go, which she never could before, and has just gained Ellison and Savannah; John might have started the season by killing a man who tried to kill his mother, but this didn't suddenly make him callous about human life, he made the choice not to kill Jesse when he could have, and now for the first time is in a period where machines aren't after him because he's John Connor but because he's human, where he is exactly like everyone else. Maybe none of them alone can change the world, but all of them together in different times and places? I think the show answers with a cautious yes.
wychwood, I have a dreamwidth account now, so you can find me there under selenak as well. Thinking back on the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, here are some disorderly thoughts on themes, accomplishments and the occasional misstep. Spoilers for the entire season.
A while back,
artaxastra posted on two opposing ways to see history, The Great Man theory (it's the extraordinary individual who shapes historical events) and history as the product of sociological developments independent from one individual. Now, in Germany you might say we detoxed of the Great Man And His Great Goals For Wich Any Sacrifice Is Justified view by overdosing on it, and post-45 tend to regard the whole idea with extreme distrust. (This, btw, is one of the reasons why a movie like Hero comes across as extraordinarily revolting in its ideological implication.) On the other hand, as far as the realm of fiction is concerned, as astraxastra pointed out, stories in which the fates of characters are solely moved by developments outside their power to affect tend to be frustrating, and extraordinary individuals who do manage to create change are just plain interesting (as long as they're not presented as perfect). Now, The Sarah Connor Chronicles has at its basis the canon as established by the first two Terminator movies, with a nod given to the third via Sarah's possible death by cancer still being a possibility. The very premise of the first film is that the big antagonist, the artificial intelligence Skynet, seemingly firmly suscribing to the Great Man theory of history, sends a machine back in time to kill the mother of the person it sees as its primary antagonist before this person can be born; by the end of the film the audience realises that by this very action Skynet has actually assured John Connor comes into existence, both in the technical sense (his father, Kyle Reese, would otherwise never have met Sarah Connor) and via wider implications (Sarah Connor starts out as a waitress who can't defend herself and becomes a warrior both because of Skynet's persecution and because she wants to defend her son, whom she raises in a way she never would have if her life hadn't been threatened from age 18 onwards). In the second movie, Sarah proves she believes in the Great Man theory, too, as she plans to prevent Skynet from existing via taking out its creator, Mike Dyson (only, being Sarah, she does not kill him; instead, the convinced-by-Sarah-Dyson sacrifices himself).
One of SCC's major accomplishments is that without negating this basis of its canon, it simultanously sees the flaws, uses them and presents alternate perspectives - and without simply going into the opposite direction (aka no individual matters, and nobody can change anything), either. The first season among other things shows that you can't really prevent an invention. You can't kill an idea. Because the development of robotics, of Artificial Intelligence, is something carried by not one but many people, and if it's not Dyson, it's Andy Goode, and maybe it's actually both, and others, too. The technological development that results in cybernetics, in AIs and Terminators, is not something dependent on one single being, and can't be stopped by one single being, either. In the second season, however, the show adds something else, another question, and a new answer. If sentient robotic life will come into being, no matter what, does that mean you can do nothing but fight against the results? Actually, no. You can also try to change the nature of said sentient robotic life. Not kill it, or prevent it from existing; give it a basis that allows it to want to co-exist with humans instead of annihilating them.
When Catherine Weaver, introduced in the opening season 2 episode as a new character who acquires the Turk, Andy Goode's chessgame playing AI, is revealed as a Terminator (a T-1001, of deathly fluidity), viewers naturally jumped to the conclusion that she was the new season's new antagonist, trying to create Skynet. In subsequent episodes, there were some complaints that her storyline did not intersect with the Connors, that Sarah had no idea of her existence, as opposed to the season 1 antagonist, Cromartie, who menaced the Connors from the pilot onwards. Gradually, as we saw Weaver interacting with the original Catherine's daughter Savannah, with James Ellison, when she aquired a child psychologist for the entity she was developing from the Turk and then asked Ellison to teach it ethics, speculation began that Weaver's goal might be something more complicated than simply nursing Skynet through its baby days, and the fact she didn't show the slightest interest in pursuing the Connors or sending others after them was one of the reasons for the this speculation. Her statement at the start of the season, that a computer able to exceed the sum of its programming, to even go against its programming (not to cross the road when the colour changes, to go in the other direction...) is truly extraordinary, which at the time was taken to refer to Skynet turning against its human creators, began to take on different layers. The struggle in the future, which in the movies had looked crystal clear, black and white - on the one side the human resistance, on the other side the "metal", began to look more complicated as well. We were starting out with Skynet as the only truly sentient AI, and the terminators simply as its executors (unless they were reprogrammed by future John Connor). The show in the first season gave us Cameron and her development; without ever negating how dangerous she could be, Cameron definitely was presented as a distinct individual exceeding the sum both of her programming and her reprogramming. As more than one reviewer pointed out, the most extraordinary bit about the climactic scene of the season 2 opener wasn't that she said "I love you and you love me" to stop John from taking her chip out but that she was afraid for her life, viscerally afraid, and wanted to survive. Not simply to accomplish her mission: because she wanted to live. The first mark of sentient life. What the second season then went on hinting at until it got spelled out in full was that Cameron wasn't unique in this regard among terminators, not in the future. That there were, in fact, different factions of AIs, not just the Skynet one.
Meanwhile, the future human resistance, previously seen as single-minded a group in its way as Skynet and its terminators, was also presented as splintered, something made clear via the arrival of another new character early in season 2, Jesse Flores. Now, Jesse's introduction I think was one of the few times the show did wrong in its presentation (wrong to the character, I mean; not wrong to bring in the character to begin with). Because first of all, the camera in her first two or three episodes treated Jesse differently from the other female characters, blatantly showcasing her in her bikini, and while she did briefly remark on having grown disaffected with Future John's leadership, she spent most of her screentime having love scenes with Derek. I see why the show didn't want to reveal the true reason why Jesse was here immediately, and the great two-parter focused on her late in the season gives her connection to water another layer, but I still think Jesse would have intrigued the audience far more from the get go if we had gotten less bikini and more PTSD. As it is, I think the writing for Jesse truly began to click from the
When Riley first showed up, she was resented by two very different parts of the audience; a) hardcore John/Cameron 'shippers, and b) viewers who didn't like John himself to begin with and most certainly did not want to spend screen time on what they saw as an insignificant teenage romance. Both sets of complainers began to ebb away once it was revealed Riley wasn't the girl next door but the girl from the future, and her relationship with John hadn't been her idea but something she was told to pursue as part of a larger plan. I've been wondering whether it would have been better to reveal Riley's identity sooner, but here I think the show made the right choice, because if she had been presented as from the future from the get go, the complaints about nobody (John, Cameron or Sarah) realising this would have been even stronger than they were in her last two episodes already, before it was revealed that post-Mexico, John had in fact figured it out but had kept silent about it because he wanted her to tell him. Also, in context of the overall season John's early scenes with Riley aren't just teenage rebellion but a last grasp at (the illusion of) normalcy.
John isn't the main character of the show; Sarah is. (And I'll get to the fannish complaints about her trio of mindscape-investigating episodes mid-season.) But the show can't ignore the wole saviour-of-humanity-premise from the movies, either. What it does, though, is what does with the stop-Skynet-from existing premise as well; problematize it and put it in context without negating it (i.e. simply go on the opposite direction of "no, everyone would be BETTER off without John"). First of all, the humanity John is supposed to save (or not) isn't an anonymous mass, either in the present or in the future. This show is better than most I can think of in bringing both recurring and one shot characters to life, individualizing them, always pointing out they have their own stories in which Sarah or John or Derek just feature as guests just as they are guests on the show proper. Take the episode with the two Martin Bedells, Goodbye to all that. Early on, we get a reminder that in T1, the titular terminator killed just about any Sarah Connor he could find in Los Angeles before getting to "our" Sarah. Three, Sarah says, three Sarah Connors; she hasn't forgotten. These other Sarahs had just as much a right to live as she did. The Martin Bedell she ends up taking care of in this episode isn't the "real" Martin the terminators of the ep are after, but he's no less real, his parents are no less freaked out by Sarah abducting him for his own good; he's one of the reasons why she fights. Meanwhile, the "real" Martin isn't any more keen on military heroics (he wants to quit the academy) than John is to become the John Connor (tm), the one Derek tells him everyone dies for - and how can you possibly justify all this sacrifice? You can't, and one of the ways the show keeps present day John sane is that at no point does he think people dying for him is right in any way; in this episode, he ends up saving Martin Bedell by risking himself (which he's taught not to do) - which in turn ensures Martin Bedell will join the resistance one day. Not because of a myth of a great man, because he has seen what metal death can do, because a boy his own age risked his life for him, and because he makes that choice. When Derek, near the end of the season, qualifies his earlier "we all die for you" to John with "we're all watching you" and "humanity rises or falls on your shoulders", he invokes a different imagery than that of the fearless leader; the corner stone on which a building stands. An important stone, to be sure, but so are the other stones; they each make each other important and connected.
The humans in the future all have their own stories as well, whether they're one shot, like Richard Schiff'/Adam Busch's character (who might become a collaborator and torturer because of Derek, or could not, we don't know that for sure any more than Derek or Jesse do) or Lauren the watchful older sister, or recurring, like Jesse and Riley. Or Allison of Palmdale, on whom Cameron was modelled, who briefly came to life again when Cameron forgot what she was, and who is alive again in the last minute of the show. Whether Jesse is alive or dead, we don't know for sure. I just rewatched the Today is the Day/Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter two parter again and was struck by the great performance the actress gives, both in the flashbacks/flashforwards, going from Jesse happy, confident and mother-of-her-crew to Jesse devasted, in despair and just told she won't be anyone's mother, and in the present day, as she deals with the murder of Riley at her hands, on the one hand in possession of her wits and calculation enough to get herself an aliby for her cuts and bruises via that bar fight, on the other frozen when the swimming pool janitor asks her about "the blond girl". It's fitting that the last wee see of Jesse isn't the moment where Derek either shoots her or doesn't, but the flashback to her first meeting with Riley. Jesse isn't this season's villain any more than Catherine Weaver is - and btw, they both have gone back to the past to change John Connor and John Henry respectively - but she did commit this season's darkest act with her plan of using Riley - and the love Riley has for her - as a human sacrifice. Catherine Weaver, while not after the destruction of humanity, is absolutely willing to sacrifice individual humans to achieve her goals; but Catherine is a machine. The show has complicated ethics, but I think is firm on this: the moment you both expect people to sacrifice themselves and make that happen even if they do not want to, you cross a line.
Sarah has always tried to avoid killing other humans. In this season, she finally does kill someone (twice, of sorts) in order to save her life. One of the most controversial storytelling choices was to present three episodes investigating Sarah's state of mind and heart mid-season, in which outwardly not much happens other than said two killings. To me, that trilogy was necessary, and not just because Sarah is the heroine of the show. They're also an investigation of her past, present and future, they emphasize what I mentioned before - humanity consisting of invidiuals, all with their own stories; people who die so Sarah and her son live or just because they are otherwise in the way of a machine are never "just" redshirts with a name only revealed in the credits, and they have connections, they have families. The transsexual Sarah meets is in some ways her past self, Sarah that was, the waitress, but she/he is also their own person, and when she dies, the audience feels it; the same is true for all the people Catherine Weaver killed, plus the one Sarah hasn't killed yet, and Sarah is keenly aware of this. Retrospectively, the funeral episode mid-season also is a depiction of grief and ritual, of family and loss, in a quiet and lengthy way we pointedly do not get for Charlie and Derek near the end of the season. We can't; these end of season episodes offer a faster paced narrative which doesn't leave room for it. Is it "just" that factory workers we met only in two episodes get a funeral episode while regular Derek Reese gets a head shot early on and an anonymous burial briefly shown at the end of that episode? Not in terms of what tv has trained audience to expect, but very much so in terms of the humane ethos of the show. There is no justice in either the workers or Derek's death; they all deserve to live, Derek no more than the workers. The grief of their families isn't less important. (And, oh neat foreshadowing: in once instant, as it turns out, one of the grieved for people is not dead. Mind you, Derek being alive in one of several timelines isn't the same as faking a death, but hey.)
In the end, the show offers no certainties of happy endings. John Henry isn't Skynet, and as he is now, he's able to connect to humans, to want at least some of them alive, he tries to help. But as Murch says, John Henry will be changed by the slightest change, and however he and Cameron pulled off that download into her chip and Cromartie's body, we don't know how he'll be in that future he just escaped from. John Connor, by removing himself from the timeline via jumping forward, has ended up in a scenario that at first looks like a dream scenario: Kyle and Derek are both alive, nobody has heard of John Connor which could mean he's off the hook for the whole saviour gig, and then there is Allison, who looks like a human version of Cameron, who is not programmed to kill. But other than Kyle, Derek and Allison being alive, we have no idea how the resistance is doing in this future. Allison might look like Cameron but is not Cameron. Earlier, John, trying to guess what his future self was thinking, tells Jesse that "human beings are irreplacable; they never come back". But though he's been somewhat in denial about, this is true for AIs as well, and that is why he went to the future, assuming John Henry has Cameron's chip. Cameron's body is replacable/repairable as a human body is not, but not Cameron herself. If her chip is destroyed the way Cromartie's was, she's gone. And she very well might be anyway. I have no idea how John Henry and Cameron could co-exist in that chip, and suspect that third season would have revealed John drew the wrong conclusion from the absence of Cameron's chip and that in fact there was a switch; Cameron downloaded into John Henry's old hardware and software (i.e. she's still in the present, hence the "I'm sorry, John" on the viewscreens), he downloaded into her chip and went to the future. Plus there is still the question of whether Catherine Weaver truly wants co-existence or just a future where the machines rule without killing the humans ("humans will dissappoint you"; it occurs to me she might have come to that conclusion in the Jimmy Carter, observing them in their paranoia, when they turned against each other, were firm in their distrust of the metal and where Jesse, starting out as someone able to work with a terminator, ends up killing him for disobeying her orders, even though he just saved her life). No, the future is full of uncertainty, and it could all go horribly wrong. But, and that's the hopeful conclusion the season arrived at, it could also go right. Cameron, John Henry and Catherine Weaver were all able to exceed their programming, to make their own choices; Sarah was able to let her son go, which she never could before, and has just gained Ellison and Savannah; John might have started the season by killing a man who tried to kill his mother, but this didn't suddenly make him callous about human life, he made the choice not to kill Jesse when he could have, and now for the first time is in a period where machines aren't after him because he's John Connor but because he's human, where he is exactly like everyone else. Maybe none of them alone can change the world, but all of them together in different times and places? I think the show answers with a cautious yes.
