Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – Episode 2-3 Review

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Old boyfriends, old nemeses, old teenage angst; this is the checklist that the raggedy team protecting John Connor (future savior of humanity and grumpy teenager) faces this week.  Sarah’s ex Charley Dixon is dragged back again, Cromartie finally finds way back to John, and John has relapsed into the sulky teenage boy who doesn’t quite believe his crazy mother and all this talk of saving humanity.  Despite the old themes and faces, as well as some obnoxious human foibles on the part of our heroes, this week’s episode isn’t too shabby.

We begin the episode with a leisurely exit attempt on the part of Charley and his wife, Michelle.  Despite having firsthand knowledge of the destructive power of Terminators, as well as warnings from Sarah and FBI Agent James Ellison to get out of town, Charley and Michelle are moseying along like they have all the time in the world.  We are therefore unsurprised when Cromartie finds them and kidnaps Michelle to use as bait.

Cut to the current Connor residence where John has reassumed his angsty attitude, picking fights with everyone and being generally disagreeable.  Presumably this is in response to the way he was treated after revealing his weakness for Cameron, but maybe the writers just remembered that he is a teenager after all.  John receives a call from Charley who wants Sarah’s help in saving his wife.  To Charley’s credit he doesn’t immediately spill the beans to John; instead he contrives to talk to Sarah who agrees to help in oh-so-clever code (wink wink, nudge nudge).  If John wasn’t so busy sulking, he would have picked up on everything, but then Sarah would have made him stay and he would have gone back to sulking, so it’s just as well.  At any rate, Sarah sends John and Cameron away while she grabs Derek (whose role in this episode is to lurk around occasionally uttering raspy and dire comments) and rushes to the rescue.

Sarah and Derek find Charley just as he receives a phone call from Michelle.  We must pause here to give credit to Michelle for her daring in the face of her kidnapping.  She knows what these machines are capable of, and yet she finds her phone and calls her husband anyway.  You go girl!  Michelle tells Charley what she knows about her location, but her call is cut short by the return of Cromartie.  He sets an elaborate trap around her using mousetraps and what appears to be a bomb, while eerily (and in some sort of semi-British accent) explaining the history of mousetraps, and implying that Michelle is the cheese for a humantrap.

The intrepid trio quickly find their way to Michelle.  While they’re trying to figure out how to save her without killing themselves (any movement on her part would cause the trap to explode), Cromartie – that sneaky bastard – is out front disabling their truck.  Once again we should pause to applaud Michelle for being so sassy in the face of death.  Instead of complete hysterics, she snaps at Sarah and Charley for their obnoxious patronizing.  Gotta love the sass!  Once our heroes realize the car is dead, they also realize that Cromartie’s goal was to lure them away from John and strand them so that he could go kill John without them around.  Michelle’s trap is a fake, a mere distraction!  Sarah immediately and foolishly calls John (instead of a taxi) – a call which Cromartie traces.  He blows up the nearby cell tower so that Sarah can’t call John again, and then arranges to meet John using Sarah’s voice.  John has been spending the episode in guilty pleasure with his new paramour, Riley, after naughtily ditching Cameron.  Now when Cromartie calls, he is obedient instead of surly, and immediately ditches girlfriend Riley to go to the potentially fatal meeting.   What gives, John?

Upon escaping from the rubble left by the cell tower explosion Sarah, Derek, Charley, and a severely wounded Michelle make their way to the road where they carjack a van.  Barreling toward John, Michelle’s wounds worsen until Charley demands that Sarah stop and take him somewhere to help her, which Sarah does!  Fortunately this lapse in Sarah’s motherly instinct doesn’t end in John’s death.

Waiting for his mother, John spots Cromartie and starts running.  Cromartie follows in that very special Terminator stalk, that is somehow faster than running speed, until John comes to a dead end.  Cameron, who has discovered John’s whereabouts by questioning Riley, finds both John and Cromartie right as they jump from the dead-end pier into the ocean.  At last we discover a benefit of being human vs. Terminator: robots sink!  John swims to the surface leaving Cromartie behind, and joins Cameron to go meet Sarah.  Cromartie is left to walk back out of the water onto the shore, although I’m not sure why it would have taken long since they jumped from a pier, not a boat.  Details, details.

Before we wrap up the episode, there are also two brief encounters with Agent James Ellison and our favorite new terminator, Catherine Weaver.  She tries to lure him onto her payroll by using her devilish charms to play off his intense curiosity about Terminators, reminding him of the death and destruction caused by these mysterious robots and inviting him to help her find more.  However, we aren’t shown his final decision.  Instead we’re left with a “to be continued” vibe on the Ellison front.

In the end, the spunky Michelle’s spunk is not enough to help her survive her ordeal.  We close on two scenes: Charley and Agent Ellison at Michelle’s funeral, with Cromartie lurking in the distance; and the Connors at home, eating dinner.  These scenes are accompanied by a voice-over from the funeral sermon, which is a message about not losing hope in the battle for a better future, despite obstacles and loss along the way.  Go team Connor!

Susan Kearl is a university student with too much time on her hands who loves to watch TV.  She’s happy to contribute her opinions to the world of television viewers like you.

Sir Linksalot: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles