TSCC: Jesse Flores & Derek Reese
Apr. 14th, 2010 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaMy rewatch of TSCC continues apace and I'm now just three episodes from the end and about to jump into actual vidding which I confess I find a little terrifying (WHICH IS NOT A SURRENDER, YOU KNOW WHO I'M TALKING TO!)
Anyway, I think both Jesse and Derek are pretty much nuts, which is not to say I don't like them, just they are very damaged and dangerous people. And I has Thoughts.
To break this down by points, because I'm not sure writing it in a paragraph wouldn't get horribly rambly to the point of uselessness:
1) Derek dragged 6 year old into a gunfight as collateral and blackmail material. The fact it wasn't his plan to get her hurt really isn't the issue. He went out there planning to murder the guy he thought was her father with nothing but his hands over her eyes and might well have gotten her killed.
2) Derek murdered Billy Wisher, who was like his brother, even when it was probably too late to make a difference. He didn't try to explain, or reason, he just executed him.
3) Derek has no ethical problems with Jesse killing a fence and his goons only because he was throwing her name around a little too freely. In fact he implies he was there to do exactly that when he found her and everyone dead.
4) Derek is shocked at Jesse's suggestion that anything good could come of Riley's death because she was an innocent girl.
I don't necessarily think this is dissonant, but I sure as hell think that Derek would have shot Riley or put her in danger, or dragged her out into the middle of a firefight to use as emotional blackmail material if he needed to do it to complete his mission. If it had been to safeguard his brother's memory, or Jesse's future, or John's life.
The chief difference here is perspective. Calculation. I don't think Derek's morals are actually all that different to Jesse's I just think she's a strategist and he's not. What if Riley, the exact same "good kid" who didn't deserve what she got, was someone he knew needed to die to make sure John Connor didn't end up crazy or dead? She'd get what Billy Wisher got, no second thoughts.
The only difference is this wasn't already written. This wasn't in any plan but Jesse's plan. The only difference is the personal, which everything is to Derek and everything stopped - she convinced herself stopped - being to Jesse. Everything Derek does he does for his brother, for his nephew, and for Jesse. That's how he understands the future or the lack of one. Jesse did something against his nephew and that's something he can't reconcile. I can't help but feel given what we know of Future John's characterisation, that Derek might have helped carry out plans just as sacrificial, just with the comfort of not really knowing the full ramifications of what he was doing. And with the comfort of believing John Connor must be right, as opposed to knowing Jesse Flores may very well not be.
It took me a while to understand why he was telling Jesse about killing Billy Wisher, about how he did that for her - an innocent guy sacrificed for the future. How that fit.
I think what he was trying to grapple with was how Jesse put herself in Wisher's shoes. Turned herself into someone he has to kill for the future, except now, who does he do it for? He only has her, and John who he needs so much from and trusts so little.
I think he had to try and take her out, had to convince himself that what she did was over some kind of line or he'd have to admit too much about himself, about John, about his fears.
I think he missed deliberately.
I think it was one of the few times I've found him interesting.
I think the main difference between Derek and Jesse at this point is that Derek still loves John Connor. Otherwise he wouldn't expect so much from a 16 year old. I think half Derek's attempts to push John towards Connor and away from Baum, stem from being unable to tell the difference between being a father figure and being child unable to see his father figure weak and human.
Both Derek and Jesse want to impress their vision of John Connor onto John. But Jesse must do so at a distance having had her vision of Future John destroyed and having been tricked and cast out by him in violent, destructive ways. Her plan is likewise violent and destructive. She's not an adult angry at a child, she's a child angry an adult. The reality of John Connor at 16 can't touch that rage; it doesn't matter how he is now. Until she meets him. Because she loved him (the idea of him).
It's something I really applaud the show for showing rather than telling on this point. While, as this looooong ramble shows, I have a more complex reading of Derek's outwardly somewhat hypocritical sudden respect for the lives of innocents, it would certainly be plausible to question whether the show put that there to make us more likely to believe that this honestly is a line not even Derek would cross - to really hammer home the message of how fucked up Jesse's plan was. To artificially White Knight Derek at Jesse's expense.
Something that helps me choose not to take that interpretive path is the way it's right after her least sympathetic act, killing Riley, that we see what made her this way - that we get her sympathetic story as the centrepiece of a two-parter.
Again an element of her story that was arguably not needed or overblown and gender essentialist, was the miscarriage after scuttling the Jimmy Carter. I have no strong feelings on this; I can see both sides of a possible argument, but I tentatively come down in favour of it. I would have believed Jesse would become completely disillusioned with Connor after the clusterfuck that was her mission on the Carter but I do think that adding an element that personal seals the deal. I would worry more about it being "OMGS Crazy Baby Mad Women!" but there are strong parent-child themes that run throughout this show.
Her attitude in her conversation with Cameron before she knows shows that she's really having a hard time accepting what happened, and that she's furious, (and again, just because it bears reiterating, I really love how these episodes show her going from blind faith to hurt confusion to rage with regards to John and his leadership). So I don't think it's presented as her sole motivation.
What is does, though, is provide an interesting counterpoint in her and Derek's attitudes to John.
Jesse is partially motivated by her lost child, which John Connor caused her to lose. To Derek, John Connor is the lost child. Part of his brother whom he thought he'd lost forever. Unlike Jesse, whatever he sees in John that disappoints him, it hasn't yet come to pass. This John isn't Future John and Derek has the opportunity of trying to step in and mold the kid in a way that is more socially acceptable (i.e. an uncle taking on a paternal role in place of his dead brother) rather than turning to murderous schemes to fridge girls.
And...thus is my thinking.
John Connor is all any of them have, and he's also the reason they lose everything else. That kind of thing can drive a person crazy. What do you do if you stop loving the only thing you have left?
I don't think what Jesse did was any more insane than things Derek has done. I just think that what Jesse did, for Derek to accept it, would mean having to accept more about himself than he was able.
Derek needs to believe he does these things for a reason, that there are lines he won't cross, and that John Connor will save them all.
Derek needs to believe that dying for John Connor is a good enough reason to die.
Jesse stopped believing that.
Anyway, I think both Jesse and Derek are pretty much nuts, which is not to say I don't like them, just they are very damaged and dangerous people. And I has Thoughts.
To break this down by points, because I'm not sure writing it in a paragraph wouldn't get horribly rambly to the point of uselessness:
1) Derek dragged 6 year old into a gunfight as collateral and blackmail material. The fact it wasn't his plan to get her hurt really isn't the issue. He went out there planning to murder the guy he thought was her father with nothing but his hands over her eyes and might well have gotten her killed.
2) Derek murdered Billy Wisher, who was like his brother, even when it was probably too late to make a difference. He didn't try to explain, or reason, he just executed him.
3) Derek has no ethical problems with Jesse killing a fence and his goons only because he was throwing her name around a little too freely. In fact he implies he was there to do exactly that when he found her and everyone dead.
4) Derek is shocked at Jesse's suggestion that anything good could come of Riley's death because she was an innocent girl.
I don't necessarily think this is dissonant, but I sure as hell think that Derek would have shot Riley or put her in danger, or dragged her out into the middle of a firefight to use as emotional blackmail material if he needed to do it to complete his mission. If it had been to safeguard his brother's memory, or Jesse's future, or John's life.
The chief difference here is perspective. Calculation. I don't think Derek's morals are actually all that different to Jesse's I just think she's a strategist and he's not. What if Riley, the exact same "good kid" who didn't deserve what she got, was someone he knew needed to die to make sure John Connor didn't end up crazy or dead? She'd get what Billy Wisher got, no second thoughts.
The only difference is this wasn't already written. This wasn't in any plan but Jesse's plan. The only difference is the personal, which everything is to Derek and everything stopped - she convinced herself stopped - being to Jesse. Everything Derek does he does for his brother, for his nephew, and for Jesse. That's how he understands the future or the lack of one. Jesse did something against his nephew and that's something he can't reconcile. I can't help but feel given what we know of Future John's characterisation, that Derek might have helped carry out plans just as sacrificial, just with the comfort of not really knowing the full ramifications of what he was doing. And with the comfort of believing John Connor must be right, as opposed to knowing Jesse Flores may very well not be.
It took me a while to understand why he was telling Jesse about killing Billy Wisher, about how he did that for her - an innocent guy sacrificed for the future. How that fit.
I think what he was trying to grapple with was how Jesse put herself in Wisher's shoes. Turned herself into someone he has to kill for the future, except now, who does he do it for? He only has her, and John who he needs so much from and trusts so little.
I think he had to try and take her out, had to convince himself that what she did was over some kind of line or he'd have to admit too much about himself, about John, about his fears.
I think he missed deliberately.
I think it was one of the few times I've found him interesting.
I think the main difference between Derek and Jesse at this point is that Derek still loves John Connor. Otherwise he wouldn't expect so much from a 16 year old. I think half Derek's attempts to push John towards Connor and away from Baum, stem from being unable to tell the difference between being a father figure and being child unable to see his father figure weak and human.
Both Derek and Jesse want to impress their vision of John Connor onto John. But Jesse must do so at a distance having had her vision of Future John destroyed and having been tricked and cast out by him in violent, destructive ways. Her plan is likewise violent and destructive. She's not an adult angry at a child, she's a child angry an adult. The reality of John Connor at 16 can't touch that rage; it doesn't matter how he is now. Until she meets him. Because she loved him (the idea of him).
It's something I really applaud the show for showing rather than telling on this point. While, as this looooong ramble shows, I have a more complex reading of Derek's outwardly somewhat hypocritical sudden respect for the lives of innocents, it would certainly be plausible to question whether the show put that there to make us more likely to believe that this honestly is a line not even Derek would cross - to really hammer home the message of how fucked up Jesse's plan was. To artificially White Knight Derek at Jesse's expense.
Something that helps me choose not to take that interpretive path is the way it's right after her least sympathetic act, killing Riley, that we see what made her this way - that we get her sympathetic story as the centrepiece of a two-parter.
Again an element of her story that was arguably not needed or overblown and gender essentialist, was the miscarriage after scuttling the Jimmy Carter. I have no strong feelings on this; I can see both sides of a possible argument, but I tentatively come down in favour of it. I would have believed Jesse would become completely disillusioned with Connor after the clusterfuck that was her mission on the Carter but I do think that adding an element that personal seals the deal. I would worry more about it being "OMGS Crazy Baby Mad Women!" but there are strong parent-child themes that run throughout this show.
Her attitude in her conversation with Cameron before she knows shows that she's really having a hard time accepting what happened, and that she's furious, (and again, just because it bears reiterating, I really love how these episodes show her going from blind faith to hurt confusion to rage with regards to John and his leadership). So I don't think it's presented as her sole motivation.
What is does, though, is provide an interesting counterpoint in her and Derek's attitudes to John.
Jesse is partially motivated by her lost child, which John Connor caused her to lose. To Derek, John Connor is the lost child. Part of his brother whom he thought he'd lost forever. Unlike Jesse, whatever he sees in John that disappoints him, it hasn't yet come to pass. This John isn't Future John and Derek has the opportunity of trying to step in and mold the kid in a way that is more socially acceptable (i.e. an uncle taking on a paternal role in place of his dead brother) rather than turning to murderous schemes to fridge girls.
And...thus is my thinking.
John Connor is all any of them have, and he's also the reason they lose everything else. That kind of thing can drive a person crazy. What do you do if you stop loving the only thing you have left?
I don't think what Jesse did was any more insane than things Derek has done. I just think that what Jesse did, for Derek to accept it, would mean having to accept more about himself than he was able.
Derek needs to believe he does these things for a reason, that there are lines he won't cross, and that John Connor will save them all.
Derek needs to believe that dying for John Connor is a good enough reason to die.
Jesse stopped believing that.
