That sound of merriment you hear is the cast and crew of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” doing a happy dance upon receiving the news that their season has been extended by nine more episodes. If we’re lucky – and the producers are smart – they will take whatever episode they’re working on right now and make it the most ass-kicking, sexiest episode they’ve done to date. They seem to think they have all the time in the world to tell their story. They don’t. Give up the goods, or the machines win, and you don’t live to see Season Three.
John and Sarah uncover a name on Skynet’s hit list, and when they find him, they discover that…he’s a child psychologist. Why Skynet would want him is unclear, but Catherine Weaver could sure use his help, since daughter Savannah is scared to death of her “mother.” Curiously, they put John and Catherine in the same building in this episode, which makes me wonder: if she had made eye contact with him, would her CPU have told her to kill him? Catherine hasn’t shown the slightest interest in the whereabouts of the Connors yet. Does she know of them? She must, right?
Either way, the scene of Catherine doing a photo shoot was money. “Turn your head a quarter inch.” Whizz. “Perfect. Now another half inch.” Whizz. The way her face fell after the photographer gave up on trying to get a warmer smile from her was priceless – as was the therapist’s diagnosis of Cameron as having Asperger Syndrome – and her attempts to show warmth to Savannah were great in how difficult it is for her to show emotion in a convincing manner, which made it even sweeter that her pet AI project is starting to show some human tendencies as well, ignoring its task to throw riddles at the programmers. Catherine brings the therapist on board to consult with her “child” AI project, which now makes it unclear whether they wanted to kill the therapist (since he’s trying to help both John and Sarah with their issues) or use him to get their pet project off the ground. I’m sure we won’t see him again for another month, if we see him again at all.
“You want to know why I traveled back in time? Indoor plumbing. I haven’t taken a real shower in years.”
Derek finally gets a subplot when he catches the love of his life – the future love of his life – spying on him in the park. This leads to the show’s first sex scene, and man, did they go overboard to make it as “passionate” as possible, which gave me a thought: I clearly haven’t had passionate sex yet, because it apparently involves upending furniture and generally making a mess of things. Does anyone actually have sex like that? When Derek asks her why she came back, she says that she got tired of fighting because the machines were winning and went AWOL to be with the man she loves, but we later learn that she’s spying on Derek and the Connors, though to what end game, we don’t know. I’m guessing she’s working for the machines, since there is no other way to explain how she has the money to pay for that sweet hotel room. Still, is there any deal the machines can make that would make her want to help them? If she helps them get to Connor, mankind is dead, and she’ll live to see it happen. Who wants to go out like that? Die with your boots on, missy.
So once again, “Terminator” refuses to play its hand, just throwing a few chips into the pot – this week, it was the revelation that the Terminators are coming back with self-destruct devices on their chips, making it impossible for John to reprogram them – and waiting for someone else to call them on the awesome hand they may or may not be holding. Science fiction isn’t about playing it safe, people. Now get off your duffs and give us something that James Cameron would be proud to call his own, because right now, I’m betting that he’s buying a new TV every week, having thrown a brick through the previous one after seeing what you’ve done with his baby.
