Sarah Connor is becoming a truly great show, but will that save it?
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- November
- 12
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles blew me away this week.
We knew since the summer that a key character would die early this season, and my money—reluctantly—was on Brian Austin Greene’s Derek Reese or Dean Winter’s Charly Dixon. Well, BAG is alive and well, and Charley is too, though he has been dispatched from the regular lineup.
Well, the somewhat bloated cast has been thinned a bit with the surprising but extremely satisfying death of Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt). I didn’t warm to him as a bad guy until lately, but his mechanical banter with his prey made him far more worth watching.
Case in point was his brief dialogue with a duct tape-bound Sarah in the backseat of his convertible. (How cool was her flip up over the back seat onto the road at full speed, by the way? Real people die from a trick like that.) He had just become a character worth exploring, even if he was only a machine with limited programming.
The way Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) kneeled as bait at that alter for Derek and Sarah to tear Cromartie apart was a thing of beauty both for its execution as well as for its well-paced, dramatic set-up, the likes of which sets this show apart. The drama feels real, particularly when Ellison is at the center of it. It’s a flaw of this show that he doesn’t get more screen time, because he makes the show stronger.
I can’t say for sure whether the varying perspectives used to unfold the plot was a gimmick or an effective storytelling device. I think it was the latter, based on the impact it had, but it could have been the former. Either way, it worked. Not once did I feel taken out of the show the way Sarah’s voice-overs or John’s (Thomas Dekker) emo-boy tirades usually make me feel. The show is improving on all fronts, those included.
There was visceral suspense in this episode. John’s venture to Mexico with Riley (Leven Rambin) felt organic, as did her probing into his past and frustration with their limited relationship. Cameron’s (Summer Glau) near-seduction of John had a creepy but fascinating vibe while capitalizing Glau’s necessarily underutilized physical attributes.
I wasn’t even annoyed with Riley in this episode, which says a lot. Instead of feeling like she’s there to lure in the 16-21 viewer demo, her character had substance and added depth to the plot. The way she ran out of that Mexican police station with bullets flying all around, you could feel her terror. And yet it still felt plausible that she didn’t want just to put 1,000 miles between her and John as fast as possible.
This episode was possibly the best so far, even without an appearance by Shirley Manson’s T-1001. If Fox pulled the plug tomorrow—and I’m not at all suggesting they should—it wouldn’t have been the worst ending for a show whose long-term plot potential feels limited. It is the Sarah Connor Chronicles, after all, and I don’t know what her shelf life is in the larger narrative.
In light of last week’s horrific news that Fox has bumped the show to the wasteland that is Fridays, you have to wonder about its long-term future. Certainly this season’s introduction of Jesse (Stephanie Jacobsen) and Catherine Weaver (Manson) offer ample latitude for intriguing plot lines that Cromartie’s pursuit never did.
The time slot move doesn’t start until Feb. 9, 2009, when it might have benefited from the return of network staple 24. On the bright side, Friday is the night of Battlestar Galactica. I’d feel better about that if anyone actually watched BSG when it aired. Even I caught it mostly thanks to Netflix.
Does this mean the death knell for the show? Probably. Will Fox do the right thing and ensure fans get some plot closure? Hopefully. Will the rest of this second season be worth following to its new time slot? I vote yes.
Photos courtesy Fox Broadcasting Co.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 12:09 pm by Brian Howard.
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