The Humans Are Dead

I'm back again for some more thoughts on the only subject I know: television. Two posts in the span of eight days! That's gotta be a new record here at Paul's Superblog. (Yes, Paul's Superblog. I defy you to find evidence that anyone else writes here.)

Let's discuss The Sarah Connor Chronicles, or The Sarah Connorcles for short. It's the new Fox show that premiered this week. Lucky them, having done all of their filming but none of their airing before the strike hit, leaving them with a bunch of new episodes to show while everyone else is in reruns. Anyway, this show is based on the Terminator movies, of which I've only seen one (I think it was T2?) but have a basic knowledge of.

So, the show is actually pretty good so far. Lots of Terminator battle scenes and explosions and so forth (I'm easy to entertain). And Sarah Connor is actually an interesting lead character, unlike that ultra-bland whatshername from that awful Bionic Woman show. Plus one of the three lead characters is a cyborg, so that should hopefully cut down on the sappy, melodramatic nonsense. You can't have any tear-filled, emotional scenes when you literally don't have a heart!

My main problem right now is with John Connor, who fits that typical "dumb kid" role who does the exact wrong thing at all times. For instance:

SARAH: "John, whatever you do, don't leave this house. If you leave the house, you will be killed by cyborgs."
JOHN: "Got it."
(5 minutes later)
JOHN: "Well, guess I'll leave the house."

Also, I don't like the kid who plays John Connor. He used to be on Heroes, as Claire's friend (the one who videotaped her jumping off the bridge). Then, the actor found out that his character was going to be revealed as gay, and he raised a huge stink about it and refused to participate, to the point that the entire plot was scrapped and the producer publicly called him out. Then I saw an interview with the kid recently where he said he felt like he didn't have a connection with a single person in the Heroes cast or crew. Well...no kidding, bro. You can't act like a homophobic diva and expect to be Mr. Popularity on the set. Just look what happened to Isaiah Washington-- he got canned from a hit show, then was hired by Bionic Woman. Honestly, I'm not sure which of those was more damaging to his career.

There are still a bunch of things I don't understand about the Terminator mythology. The basic premise is that, in the future, a race of evil robots has taken over the world and wiped out almost all humans.* But a band of rebel humans-- led by John Connor-- manages to fight back and destroy most of the robots.

(*That reminds me of this video.)

So, the robots-- as a last-ditch effort-- send a Terminator back in time (oh yes, they can time-travel) to kill a young Sarah Connor before she can give birth to John. When that doesn't work, they send another Terminator back to when John is a kid, hoping to kill him. That doesn't work either. My question is-- why stop there? Why don't the future-robots keep sending Terminators further and further back in time to wipe out anyone in the Connor gene pool? For instance, they could kill Sarah's parents before she's conceived.

Granted, the Connor family seems to be rather athletic and adept at eluding robots. But if the robots go back enough generations, they're bound to find the black sheep of the family, the ultra-lazy and/or dangerously obese ancestor that they can obliterate in a second. Like, Filbert "Stumblebum" Connor, a man so fat that he can barely leave his armchair even when a Terminator shows up to kill him. Bang. The robots finish him off, and they've forever altered (or wiped out) the Connor lineage, and John Connor will never exist to destroy them in the future.

Why is it that I've figured this out so easily when the robots couldn't? When robots do take over the world, I hope they'll consider hiring me as a policy adviser. I work cheap.