The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season Premiere Review
Capsule Review: A not-bad opener, but the previews for coming episodes make it look like the show has plenty of promise and is well worth the investment.
So here we go with the in-depth version…
Spoilers, so get over it.
The season opener, “Samson and Delilah” brings us back right where we left off last season: with Cameron/Terminator (Summer Glau) getting medium-rared in a Jeep that had been boobie-trapped by Generic Evil Henchmen. Of course she comes back to life and proceeds to whoop ass in the house on John Connor’s (Thomas Dekker) behalf. And for a well-deserved +1 the entire scene is done set to music, mirroring the ending of season 1 when Cromartie (played by an oddly proportioned Garret Dillahunt) wallops a bunch of SWAT dudes to music. Moving on… Then she tries to kill him ‘cause her brain goes wonky. Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and John run, Cameron gives chase, and they eventually pull out her microchip brain. But not before Cameron’s all, “I love you, John, blah blah…” Long story short, Cameron turns evil, then good again at the end of the episode…. Mmmkay. I’ll get back to that in a sec.
Richard T. Jones is back as FBI special agent James Ellison, and Sarah’s almost husband Charley Dixon (Dean Winters) returns. The two of them team up for a while, but not in a Blazing Saddles kinda way. They both know they know what the OTHER knows. And of course Brian Austin Green is back as Uncle Derek.
Shirley Manson joins the cast of TSCC this season. Mmkay. A +1 though: Shirley nearly gets peed on in the men’s room, then proceeds to kill the dude who was about to give her prime-time television’s first broadcast golden shower. You see, she’s a T-1000 like Robert Patrick ala T-2 Judgment Day. I’ll have to get confirmation from my moles in the underground, but I think Robert Patrick had a “don’t you fucking dare pee on me” clause in his contract with Jim Cameron. I’ll confirm and get back to you…
Special(-Ed) Commentary: Back to Cameron’s “I’m good, no I’m evil, no I’m good again” bologna. One of the failings of many other shows, and now Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the improbability of situations created for the sake of tension. At the end of the episode, John turns on his mother and Uncle Derek for the sake of keeping Cameron around. They plan to incinerate her, chip and all, and John’s on board, initially (kinda). Then decides he’s going to resurrect her, holding his family at bay at gunpoint.
That he did this is not the problem. People doing irrational things are just fine. The problem is Derek (the man who’s so staunchly against Terminator’s he’s wanted Cameron offed from the word go) and Sarah, the mother of the man who is humanity’s salvation stand there. Just stand there. Sure, John points the gun at them. But seriously? John is going to shoot his mother or uncle for the sake of a Terminator, albeit an oddly hot one? Not buying it. And then they just stand there after he hands Cameron the gun in a test of faith to see if she’s “all better.” Had the Terminator not been “born-again” John would be dead. End of show. End of humanity.
The problem was we all knew Cameron was going to be all goodie good again, so the moment’s emotional impact is kind of lost anyway. Go through the process of having even John think she’s turned so you can see his heartbreak (cause obviously he’s in love with a robot). Then, let Cameron fight her way to him (especially through Derek and Sarah), only to have her take the gun from John’s hands and then take it apart and drop it. You can still have the characters distrust her, which is a fine, if cheap, plot point. But this way they acted naturally and in character. They acted to defend John and were overpowered by the Terminator.
I notice moments like that, and I think on a subconscious level, most of us do. There’s a voice in our collective heads saying, “Something about this moment isn’t right.” Listen to that voice. It’s always right.
So to sum up: while I have a uniquely specific problem with the episode, I do like it and have high hopes that it’s going to keep plugging along and stay entertaining. There’s a lot of great material to work with, and the build up, if executed correctly, will be fun to watch. If you haven’t watched the series yet, it’s still not too late to get invested.
