Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles through the current episode, “Automatic for the People,” originally broadcast September 15, 2008.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again: this show cannot just be about terminators chasing John Connor.  It simply can’t.  The show won’t survive if every episode was like last week’s, and I was one of the people who liked last week’s premiere episode.  The second episode, while not as fluid and compact, is more like what the show needs to be like.

Skynet is concerned about John Connor.  Concerned enough to go after his mother before he was born, go after him as a kid, and continue going after him year after year as a teenager.  And any terminator sent into the past has an overriding primary mission to kill John if he’s spotted.  He’s that important.

But Skynet isn’t shortsighted, either.  Terminator 3 was actually the first of the Terminator series to introduce a relatively simple idea: if Skynet has time travel technology, why waste it with one mission?  Why not send dozens (hundreds, thousands, millions?) of terminators to the past to carry out an endless list of missions to ensure Skynet’s survival?  This episode illustrates one of those missions, and it sets up what might be the premise for this season: the Connors stopping Skynet’s secondary protocals.

But for now, let’s start at the beginning.  And I mean the very beginning: the opening narration.  Last season, the show was set up with a narration by Sarah Connor.  It made sense…since the show is called “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” – you feel like Sarah is introducing the viewer to the story of her life.  This season, however, “generic voiceover man” is doing the narration.  It’s basically the same narration from last year with some stuff about Reese added to the mix.  My question: why the change?  They didn’t change the name of the show…so why change that?  It doesn’t really fit the show in my opinion, and I hope they bring back the Sarah narrations at some point in the near future.

My major concern coming out of last week was the whole Cameron/trust factor.  After all, Cameron turned on John last week, and she proved to be just as unstoppable as previous terminators of the past (if not, with her connection to John, more dangerous).  But, at the end of last week’s story, there didn’t seem to be a lot of fear about her.  This week opened up with major concerns about Cameron, and for the most part, it continued with legitimate concerns about her.  From the “mopping scene” to the ominous music as Cameron walked back towards Sarah after the fight, the writers don’t want us to forget that Cameron’s gone rogue before…and could again.

I also like that Reese doesn’t trust her (and, really, has never trusted her).  The main problem is that Cameron is their primary weapon.  She makes their lives a million times easier on these missions, and she’s a ridiculously powerful ally.  Without her, their power plant mission would’ve been a colossal failure…so you see what Sarah and Reese are dealing with.  It should make for an interesting story…as long as they keep it up.

Now let’s talk about Riley….the female classmate introduced in this episode.  New characters are always tricky because, at least with me, the viewer is typically against the idea of new people suddenly popping into their world.  And I can’t say I really like the character from her first moments on screen, but the longer the episode went on, the more I understood Riley’s purpose on the show.  I think the scene that brings it all together is where John is simply staring at all the kids going about their business.

Because here’s the bottom line: John, while he’s humanity’s greatest hope, doesn’t really understand humans much more that Cameron does.  He’s been brought up in such a protective and defensive manner that he simply cannot lead a normal life.  I mean, he spent his birthday running for his life from his new best friend.  How can he possibly turn that off and go about the normal life of a high school student?

Riley could change that.  Aside from the obvious side-purpose (getting John’s mind off his apparent attraction to Cameron…something that almost got him killed), it brings John into that normal world.  Because while John has a lot of the charasmatic skill that makes a leader great, he still needs to learn about simple human interaction.  And he’s not going to learn that from Sarah, Reese, or Cameron.  Someone like Riley is a necessary component of his training…just as much as working with guns, bombs, or computers.  Plus, she has the same attitude problem that John has…so they work well together.

And Riley’s introduction led to a minor John/Sarah skirmish.  One of the problems with John asserting himself is the simple fact that Sarah has to lose control for John to gain any.  You can see her struggling with this when she walks back up to his room.  She knows that she can’t fight him, but she wants to do it anyway.  It’s a conflict she’s going to have to face in the (probably very near) future.

Speaking of Sarah, let’s talk a bit about the whole cancer thing.  Sarah facing her own mortality is something that should be interesting to follow as the series progresses.  After all, this is supposed to be Sarah’s show.  Because John’s the one with the certain future…he will lead mankind.  But Sarah doesn’t have a fate that we know about…she doesn’t have a role in the resistance in the future, and she’s rarely mentioned in any of the flash-forward sequence in the movies or series.  In all likelihood, she’s dead; in fact, losing her is probably John’s final challenge before he can lead humanity against the machines.  I’m sure Sarah knows this, and I’m sure it’s a struggle she doesn’t want to think about.  Because we finally saw a little bit of fear from Sarah – it’s nice to see she has some of it hidden somewhere.

Cameron’s little stunt in the bar, something for the fellas, was also a smart little move.  Sarah’s never been afraid of using her attractiveness to get information…it would make sense for Cameron to use it to her advantage as well.  I wouldn’t want to see it go over the top (think Seven of Nine), but I think it’s an interesting way to use her character in minor spots like this one.

There were also a couple of very small stories worked in.  The first involved Agent Ellison helping Charley Dixon and his wife escape from L.A.  Not reading spoilers, I don’t really know if Charley’s going to continue to pop up, but it was basically just an epilogue from last week…showing how other people are impacted by the Connor’s road of chaos.

There was also a brief almost-cameo by Catherine Weaver (the T-1000) – indicating that her company now controls the power plant.  Neither of these stories was really worth commenting on, but I thought I should at least acknowledge them.  Although I was surprised to finally recognize the actress who plays Charley’s wife.  She’s Sonya Walger, who most of you would know as Penny from LOST.  Neat little tidbit I didn’t know about until tonight.

All in all, I thought it was another solid showing.  It almost seemed more like a setup for the rest of the season, but it showed a lot about what this show needs to be about.  It needs to be about setting up John to be humanity’s greatest leader – and he’s going to need to learn a thing or two about humanity first.  It needs to be about Sarah facing her own mortality and letting her son out of her shadow.  And it should be about Skynet’s secondary missions because I think they’re much more interesting.

We’ll see, though.  Until next week.