Terminator Chess

In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles season 2, episode 12, the character James Ellison plays a game of chess against a cyborg. Though we aren’t privy to the opening moves of the game, we do get to see the end of it.

The camera never really shows the board all that well, but I grabbed a couple screenshots (all from hulu.com) from which I could piece together not only the first position shown, but also the moves they made from there.

The first position we see (left — click to enlarge) reveals a few things. First, black has two bishops on the same color. This is entirely possible through pawn promotion, but it’s highly unlikely. A queen promotion, for example, would be the same but better. Second, black has mate in 6 no matter what white does. Third, ironically, the black guy is playing white and the white guy is playing black.

Initial position

Black moves first with 1. …Nxb2. This isn’t a particularly bad move, but 1. …Qxb4 is a little better, I think.

1. ...Nxb2

Ellison playing 2. d4

James Ellison does not appear to be a very skilled chess player. His next move is 2. d4?? A significantly better move is, say, 2. hxg3, but then again, a significantly better player would have resigned by this point.

It should be noted that the picture to the left is easily the clearest image of the entire game.

2. d4

The cyborg responds with 2. …Qxd4, clearly sensing mate with 3. …Qxf2#.

2. ...Qxd4

Ellison, oblivious to his fate (which he could prolong with 3. hxg3), decides to try 3. Nd5?? instead.

3. Nd5

The cyborg then plays 3 …Qxf2# and announces his victory with glee.

Cyborg playing 3. ...Qxf2#

Checkmate: 3. ...Qxf2#

Brief Analysis

Black, obviously, had this game won even before we were shown anything, but it’s surprising to me that a) he promoted a pawn to a bishop and b) that he hadn’t mated white earlier. Given that black has such a strong position and that he was able to promote at all makes me wonder how the board even ended up like this.

Tongue-in-cheekness aside, I do have to give kudos to the good people at Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles for showing a chess game of entirely legal moves, and for finishing it with an entirely valid checkmate. Hopefully, though, they’ll hire someone who could create a more realistic chess game because, to be honest, I don’t think of Ellison as such a dumb person.

It’s also worth mentioning that there is no longer any doubt that this cyborg — “John Henry” — is the one the Connors are looking for. Remember that the AI they think will take over the world is one based on a chess-playing program, so my guess is that this chess game is symbolic of the origin of the John Henry program. Of course, it was pretty obvious that this AI was important to the story, but I take this scene as a subtle confirmation of my suspicions.

Prison Break Season 4 – Second Thoughts

I was really excited for the fourth season of Prison Break. When the first two episodes came out, I reveled in the wonderful notion of watching Michael Scofield come up with clever tricks to steal things. I thought season 4 would be intense, exciting, and creative.

What I didn’t know then that I know now is what the Prison Break writers had in mind for this season: a political thriller. That’s basically all the show is now. It’s just complicated, Byzantine factions warring within the federal government. It’s not what I signed up for.

Season 1 was all about the intrigue and occassional insights into life in a prison. We got to watch Scofield’s astoundingly complex plan come together over the course of about twenty of the most exciting episodes of any show ever aired on TV. Seasons 2 and 3 tried to continue in this vein but were only moderately successful.

Now season 4. Season 4 is nothing more than a trite, uninspired so-called “thriller” that completely fails to keep me interested. It’s just like a long, bad movie. My prediction: Michael Scofield dies some heroic death at the end of the season and the show is finished. The producers must know that Prison Break has jumped the shark.

Eli Mattson Should Win America’s Got Talent

Edit (10/2): Eli Mattson did not win, Neal Boyd did. Eli Mattson got “Runner Up”

Eli Mattson should win America’s Got Talent. This is not my opinion; this is fact. Well, actually it’s not, but I so firmly support Eli Mattson that I think the rest of the world ought to agree with me. Let’s take a look at his competition:

• Nuttin’ But Stringz: Probably the actual winner of AGT, Nuttin’ But Stringz is a duo-act of violin players. I see the appeal: they’re cool, they’re energetic, and they’re entertaining. My beef with them, though, is that they don’t actually play very good music. They’re plenty talented at playing their songs, but Mozarts they are not.
• Neal E. Boyd: If Eli Mattson loses, Neal Boyd is my second pick. He has a genuine talent for opera singing, and has sounded gorgeous in each performance.
• Donald Braswell: How this man made it to the finals is beyond me. The only thing he has going for him is his mediocre stage presence. Aside from that, he’s just a bad singer and kind of a jerk.
• Queen Emily: Emily’s appeal is more apparent to me than Donald Braswell’s, but I don’t think she’s much of a singer either. She also sings music I don’t like (Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, etc.)

Eli Mattson is different from the above competition in a couple important ways. First, he is far and away the most talented: his voice and piano playing are both flawless every time he’s on stage. Also, despite the fact that he’s had some pretty rough times in his life—as the judges constantly remind us—he himself never plays this up. In contrast, Nuttin’ But Stringz reminds us all the time that they started playing on New York subways, as if this somehow makes them better. Eli Mattson doesn’t need you to feel sorry for him. He knows that he can just get on stage and blow everyone else out of the water.

Prison Break: Season 4

I’m a Prison Break addict. I watched the entire first season in the space of about 72 hours like I was a crack addict and Prison Break was a big heap of really potent crack. It’s a little strange, I think, to be addicted to such a show. Sure, the plot’s action-packed and suspensful, but the scripting is terrible. The cast deserves accolades for not sounding like complete morons onscreen. The drawback to the bad scripting is, no matter how good the actors are, the only way to say some of the lines is in an unrealistically dramatic manner. Example:

[Michael Scofield and Alexander Mahone are talking. For some reason, both are sweating profusely]

Alexander Mahone: I saw it happen

[Long pause in which both characters squint at each other]

Michael Scofield: No… You… Didn’t

[More glaring. Cut to commercial]

Spoilers Beyond This Point

So for the entire episode, the viewer is stuck with this uncomfortable feeling because everything that happens in the show is made out to be really intense. Nevertheless, I was totally psyched for season 4, which aired this past monday. I was pleasantly surprised by the first episode. No, they haven’t gotten better script-writers, and yes, it is still overly dramatic, but I like the new direction of the show. That is, I like the idea that they’ll be breaking into a place instead of out of one.

If you’ve never seen the show, this might seem like a silly and relatively negligible difference. Learned viewers, though, know that this is really the first time in the show that Michael isn’t running away from someone. This time, he’s the hunter. It reminds me, sort of, of a post by Sam Hughes at qntm.org. He suggested a TV show where people pull Ocean’s Eleven-esque heists. In Prison Break they aren’t stealing from a bank, but they are stealing.

Brian

I’m certainly familiar with the concept of “suspension of disbelief.” Almost all works of fiction, to varying extents, require it. So when I say that I find the character Brian from Family Guy to be unrealistic, don’t tear my throat out or anything.

I believe that suspension of disbelief ought to be an unconscious phenomenon. When we watch Q unveil some new invention to James Bond we don’t pause the movie and say, “Well, something like that device surely won’t be created for several decades. However, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and accept it as possible for the sake of watching the movie.” No, the fact that it’s unrealistic doesn’t even register with our conscious mind. If we took the time to think about it we would all be able to dismiss it as improbable, but we don’t.

Thus my beef with Brian. Every time I see him on screen I can’t help but notice some bizarre things about him. Interestingly, it doesn’t bother me that he’s a talking dog. What does bother me is that he’s a normal talking dog. He acts like a normal 30-ish human man might and that’s how he’s treated.

Why’s that weird? It’s weird because it makes no sense for the Griffin family to have a 30 year-old, completely unrelated human man living with them. The only way you know he’s even a dog is because he looks like one. So I have to ask: where does he come from? Why is he living with the Griffins? It certainly can’t be because they wanted a pet, because Brian would have to then exhibit some sort of pet-like behavior.

For me, though, Brian’s role in the show is fascinating. By “role in the show” I don’t mean his role within the context of the plot of the show — I’ve already discussed my confusion regarding that. Rather, I’m interested in his role within the context of Family Guy being a comedy show. Ignoring the fact that he’s a dog, Brian is the most normal character in the show.

“Normal” characters are extremely important to any successful comedy; for comedy serials they are even more important. Take an example: Michael Bluth in Arrested Development. His entire family is insane, but he is relatively normal. By constantly having a rational character on-screen with whom the rest of the characters can be contrasted, all of their idiosyncrasies become amplified. This is the role Brian plays in Family Guy. Brian is the “normal character” with whom we (presumably subconsciously) contrast all the other characters.

I won’t try to review the show Family Guy itself; this would be too tedious a task, especially because I don’t really like the show. But I would like to know some background on Brian’s character. I find it too hard to accept his character on faith.