The Connor clan gatecrash the group
funeral of those who died in the warehouse explosion, looking for
answers from the relatives. Meanwhile it is the anniversary of
Lachlan Weaver's, Catherine’s husband’s, death.
So this is another episode which has
been divided into titled segments for no real reason. Each segment is
titled after the part of the funeral it is attached to and loosely
connects to what the Connors are doing. ‘Vigil’, for example,
focuses on the Connors scouting out the funeral goers at the Vigil.
The theming is an interesting idea but given that 'T:TSCC' has a lot of
themed episode why is this episode deserving of special treatment and
fancy titles? Without the title cards ‘Desert Cantos’ would have been
a completely ordinary episode, neither outstanding nor terrible. The
titles don’t take anything away from the episode but they don’t
add anything either, so why are they here?
Each of the Connors finds a different
person to get information from at the funeral. John and Cameron find
the daughter, Zoe, of one of the victims. Derek finds Weaver’s
agent Mr Walsh and Sarah finds the wife of Ed Winston, the man she
killed.
Sarah is stuck with a woman who keeps
explaining how great her husband was and how much she misses him. By
the end of the episode however, Sarah has managed to uncover that
Winston had been killing numerous people, which somewhat puts him in
the not so great category. This is a shame as Sarah doesn’t
have to face the full extent of her guilt for killing Ed. If Sarah
had to face that she had killed an innocent man who was defending
himself, that would have meant a lot more. By demonising the man
completely Sarah can far more easily move on, this destroys a lot of
dramatic storytelling potential.
John and Cameron manage to deduce that
Zoe is covering the fact that her father survived the incident,
faking his death to escape being tracked down. On following the lead
of the missing father, the Connor gang finally witness the drone which Sarah claimed to see, as it is being piloted to safety away
from them. Zoe’s father puts the drone in the back of a truck and
drives away, his true purpose in life unknown to us. I really like
that Sarah has finally been vindicated on her obsession with the
three dots; hopefully now that she is believed the storyline can move
on once again.
Away from the
Connors we get to see Catherine Weaver once again struggling to
connect to her daughter, Savannah. This is really my biggest
complaint with this episode as a whole; it feels like a remix of
previous episodes. Once again we see Weaver struggling with her
daughter’s emotions, once again Sarah befriends a woman who
immediately shares her life story with her.
This episode even uses
the recorded audio of a murder in the same way that ‘Earthlings
Welcome Here’ did. If the previous episode ‘The Good Wound’
hadn’t been so fresh and interesting I would have serious worries
about this program. ‘Desert Cantos’ isn’t bad but it
is unoriginal. Hopefully with the confirmation of the drone
conspiracy 'Terminator: TSCC' won’t have to rely on previous episodes
for plots as much.
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