Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep
I'm deviating from our usual summary structure for something more reflective, since the show for this week's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles does the same. I'm curious since the past two episodes have had Native American references. I notice these sorts of things since I'm mixed blood and hyperaware. Last week, Cameron began the show off with telling the rest of the group about the "Native American" belief that when someone takes your photo, the photo steals your soul. That's not quite true, but I'll put that aside for the fact that they're even making attempts at including Native content.
This week, the influences are not as subtle or brief. We are presented with a split reality--the dream world and the real world. Only, at least as far as I am concerned, both seem equally strange. In one reality, Cameron is making pancakes for John since Sarah has opted into a sleep clinic to deal with her insomnia. That's odd enough on its own. Sarah faces a thread of linear nightmares about seeing a coyote before being tazed, kidnapped, and held in the back of a truck to be interrogated and injected with something by Ed Winston, the man who shot her at the mysterious Skynet plant.
Sarah meets a suspicious nurse at the sleep clinic who she believes is doing harm to the other patients, such as her roommate Dana, who shares some of Sarah's past bad habits. Here is where the dreamcatcher appears, apparently made by a janitor named Hector with a technological coyote tattoo on the back of his neck. Is he possibly part Native? Is he the Trickster Coyote trying the subtly help Sarah cope with her situation?
This week, the influences are not as subtle or brief. We are presented with a split reality--the dream world and the real world. Only, at least as far as I am concerned, both seem equally strange. In one reality, Cameron is making pancakes for John since Sarah has opted into a sleep clinic to deal with her insomnia. That's odd enough on its own. Sarah faces a thread of linear nightmares about seeing a coyote before being tazed, kidnapped, and held in the back of a truck to be interrogated and injected with something by Ed Winston, the man who shot her at the mysterious Skynet plant. Sarah meets a suspicious nurse at the sleep clinic who she believes is doing harm to the other patients, such as her roommate Dana, who shares some of Sarah's past bad habits. Here is where the dreamcatcher appears, apparently made by a janitor named Hector with a technological coyote tattoo on the back of his neck. Is he possibly part Native? Is he the Trickster Coyote trying the subtly help Sarah cope with her situation?
Sure enough, Sarah was right to worry. Dana, who has been trying to
hide that she's still smoking, has gone up in flames in the night after
a nurse visit (where Sarah knows the nurse has been injecting something
into Dana in her sleep). Hector reappears. Sarah asks him if the
tattoo means anything "mystical." Nah, he says, he just has it because
his girlfriend thinks it's hot. A very Coyote thing to say. He also
points out that Dana got into her situation because she didn't do
anything to stop it.
And then it gets even stranger. Between all of her nightmares of situations like Winston possibly releasing her and then tricking her, what Sarah knows as reality starts to bend. Sarah, who has been injected with something, gets John to come and help with deleting her data from the clinic. The nurse comes after them--a Terminator--and kills them both.
Snap to the next reality, where Sarah is biting her wrist to slick the cuffs with blood and slip out of them to escape. She surprises Winston by stabbing him in the eye with a needle when he comes to presumably shoot her in the truck. They scuffle and she gets the upper hand long enough to shoot him.
Then she's riding off in the truck at night. But wait. There's the coyote in the road. Is this another dream after all? Or has Coyote led her out of the trap?
And then it gets even stranger. Between all of her nightmares of situations like Winston possibly releasing her and then tricking her, what Sarah knows as reality starts to bend. Sarah, who has been injected with something, gets John to come and help with deleting her data from the clinic. The nurse comes after them--a Terminator--and kills them both.
Snap to the next reality, where Sarah is biting her wrist to slick the cuffs with blood and slip out of them to escape. She surprises Winston by stabbing him in the eye with a needle when he comes to presumably shoot her in the truck. They scuffle and she gets the upper hand long enough to shoot him.
Then she's riding off in the truck at night. But wait. There's the coyote in the road. Is this another dream after all? Or has Coyote led her out of the trap?