I’m having a hard enough time keeping terminators and Cylon centurions straight in my mind, and now Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles keeps muddying the waters with parallels to 80s flick War Game.

Shall we play a game? Let’s play global thermonuclear war.

Remember now? Anyway, the Turk is back. Sarah may have burned Andy Goode’s house down, but he rebuilt his chess-playing supercomputer from memory and he’s got a shady Russian partner in tow as he pits machine against Japanese machine. At stake is a generic military contract, straight from the Department of Hollywood Plot Devices. The Turk II loses, Andy ends up dead and David Silver from 90210 gets his butt whooped by a girl.

Lena Headey is far from just a girl, you say? That’s one of my problems with this show. I saw her in 300, so I know she can act. But she sometimes seems as uncomfortable in the role of mother of mankind’s last hope as Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed in that male pregnancy movie.

She delivers her grave voice-overs about chess and warfare, and I wonder if even she buys it. It’s the same uneasy feeling I get when she has a heart-to-heart with John about his homework. I get that he has to go to school to maintain his cover, but why is he studying so hard when World War III is four years off? I have to blame the writing for failing to convince me because I really want to be convinced. Or maybe it’s the set design that makes a South American jungle training camp look like the safari dining area at the city zoo.

“Queen’s Gambit”, the episode title, refers to one of the oldest opening moves in chess. I don’t know how it plays into the episode, but we do learn that John learned to play—and learned a lot of chess history—from shady mercenary types.

That David Silver—sorry, Brian Austin Green—can act, by the way. (And he’ll be around for the rest of the season, he tells TVGuide.com.) I totally bought him as Kyle Reese’s brother Derek, even if the idea that Kyle had a surviving brother is a stretch. He says he didn’t kill Andy and that he thought Sarah did.  His scene with Agent Ellison—my favorite character on the show, by the way—was pretty intense.

Second best scene? The Glaubot—didn’t coin the term, gladly stole it—in grief counseling with the guidance counselor who I know was having inappropriate relations with the cheerleader who took a header off the roof a few episodes back. She freaked that guy out with her uncanny impression of the girl, and she put him on edge when she questioned him.

For the record, Summer Glau is very easy on the eyes. That may be this show’s salvation, as far as its appeal with its target demo.

But what’s with the mysterious loner girl with the overprotective dad? They planted a seed there, like maybe he works for Skynet’s makers or something. The dopey kid from shop class was right about her, I think. What’s the point of him, by the way.

Cromartie, by the way, is hot on the trail, stopping by Liz Lemon’s ex-boyfriend’s house to ask some questions. (Can you look at him and not think of his last scene on 30 Rock?)
I didn’t think for a second that Cromartie was going to kill Charley. His wife might, if he doesn’t get over his subconscious Sarah Connor pining.

How about Sarah donning that wig and sneaking into the jail to meet Derek? She’s tough as nails. She’s cool behind the wheel of the stolen armored transport, too, even with terminators going at it hand-to-hand in the back.

At the end of it all, after Glaubot disables the terminator who was after Derek, what happens to that terminator’s body? Ellison finds a little skin in a crack in the pavement, but where’s the rest? Can’t an intact claw rebuild the whole body. That’s an inconsistency wrapped in a plot hole, if you ask me.

For all that this episode was ostensibly about chess, that seemed like a secondary plotline by the end. The action sequences once again ruled the day. That was what rocked about the original, so I guess it’s fitting. It’ll be interesting to see if Charley can save Derek, and what kind of interaction, if any, he’ll have with Sarah.

I really like, almost love this show, my weekly criticisms notwithstanding. Certain things nag at me, though, flaws that stunning female leads can’t (completely) distract me from. Maybe the strike is to blame for them.

Creator/Executive Producer Josh Friedman blogged at Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Wiki that he and fellow Ex-Prod John Wirth spent the writers strike on the picket lines, leaving Consulting Producer James Middleton in charge. All that went right was Middleton’s doing, Friedman says, taking blame for all that didn’t.

He writes…

I have assiduously avoided promoting this show during the strike but I want all of you to know it is not for lack of interest or passion. I have been lurking on your chatrooms, bookmarking your websites, reading your reviews, and otherwise acting like a dad spying on his kid during freshman orientation week at college.

(Photos: Fox Broadcsting Co.)