Terminator, "Born to Run": Tramps like us

Spoilers for the season (and maybe series) finale of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I pick up my daughter from gymnastics...

Well-played, Josh Friedman. Well-played.

Friedman made a lot of errors this season, most of them to do with pacing (the four-episode Sarah's angst arc, that it took us the entire season for Shirley Manson to meet the Connors, etc.), but I give him full credit for coming up with a terrific finale that I think works whether or not the show gets renewed. (And I'm guessing the chances of that aren't very good, unless they believe "Terminator: Salvation" will be a huge hit that might drive more people to the TV show.)

If there's a third season, then there's tons of potential in John being stuck in a version of the future where -- because he traveled straight there without living the years in between -- no one knows he's supposed to be the savior of humanity, and where he gets to hang out with different versions of Derek and Cameron(*) than the ones he knew, not to mention his own father, while Sarah and Ellison are still working in the present-day to prevent Judgment Day from ever happening. (And there would be the added kick, in theory, that Sarah might realize preventing Judgment Day might erase John from existence, which would put her two obsessions -- protecting her son and stopping SkyNet -- at odds for the first time.)

(*) Or was that supposed to be Alison? Note that the dog was fine being around her.

And if there's not a third season, this isn't one of those cliffhanger endings that's going to leave me feeling mad that I'll never get to see the resolution. That's because there isn't a simple resolution, and at the rate this show likes to move, I know it could be years before John gets back to the present, and/or until Judgment Day gets averted once and for all. This sets up lots of possibilities, brings Derek back into the storyline without really undermining last week's stunning bullet-to-the-head moment, etc., but for once I feel like my imagination can have fun filling in some blanks if it has to.

And if this was the finale, then Friedman pulled out all the stops. Manson and the Connors finally come face to face, and Ellison finds out he's been working for metal all along (in a moment that also clarifies that the SkyNet drone wasn't her handiwork, and that she destroyed the factory to stop the building of more, not to cover things up). Cameron gets to play Arnold from the first "Terminator" movie(**) with her raid on the jail, down to the amount of physical damage she suffers (which is another reason why it was necessary to shift over to a different version of Cameron; this one was too messed-up to pass as human anymore). We revisit older characters like the Latina gangbanger and the priest from the season premiere, and we had the closest -- and creepiest -- we're ever likely to get to a John/Cameron sex scene, as it turns out her nuclear diagnostics are conveniently located inside her chest.

(**) Speaking of which, I think Jeffrey Pierce, who played the T-888 in the last two episodes, was easily the best of our guest villain Terminators. His scene at the gun store, and his reaction to Manson's non-death, both felt very much in Arnold mold while also echoing Summer Glau's work in seeming something other than human.

Assuming this is the end, I would have to say the things I admired about "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" -- the performances by Glau, Brian Austin Green and Garret Dillahunt; the commitment to showing the emotional toll of knowing the Apocalypse is coming and you're the only ones who can prevent it, some of the action -- outweigh the things I didn't (the sluggish pace, the acting and writing of Sarah and John). I'd be glad if there were more episodes, but I'd also understand why if there weren't.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Adam Raised a Cain": Family reunion

Spoilers for last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I find my trousers...

Wow.

Who ever would have thought I would be this startled -- not just startled, but sad -- about the death of a character played by Brian Austin Green? Or that a network TV show in this day and age would have the onions to bump off a significant regular character 15 minutes into an episode, with no time for heroics or big speeches or any of the other blaze-of-glory elements we expect from deaths on series television?

Instead, Derek -- who, thanks to Green and the writers, had quickly become the series' most compelling human character -- just comes around the wrong corner at the wrong time, takes a bullet between the eyes from the latest T-888 model, and that's all she wrote. There's some poetry to him winding up in an unmarked grave just like his brother Kyle -- and you could argue that the opening scene in the cemetery was Derek's real, hidden farewell scene -- but disappointed as I am that Derek won't be around anymore(*), it felt real and appropriate to the franchise to have a main character killed so easily by a Terminator. Frankly, it's amazing that John and his mom have survived as long as they have, with or without a reformed Terminator as a protector.

(*) For one episode, anyway, as it's fair to say odds of renewal are on the long side right now.

Really, the entire sequence at the Weaver house was gangbusters, from a concerned John Henry guiding Savannah away from the water delivery man (and calmly explaining that she wouldn't be going to the foyer to see her nanny) to John popping up in the garage to Cameron rolling the bad guy down a very long, steep hill to give them enough time to get away.

Last week's "To The Lighthouse" (which I never got around to reviewing) was another fairly slow, meditative outing until the last few minutes, where this one was pedal-to-the-metal from the start. The Skynet civil war became more overt as the Terminators went after Shirley Manson's "daughter," John Henry has started playing Ellison and Manson off each other (while his friendship with Savannah is doing a better job of humanizing him than anything Ellison has tried), and now Derek's dead, Sarah's in jail and John knows that someone is using Cromartie's body for a new purpose.

Josh Friedman(**) promised during the much-panned Sarah Goes Navel-Gazing arc that the season would end with a bang, and it looks like he's going to deliver on that promise.

(**) UPDATE:I contacted Toni Graphia, who wrote "Adam Raised a Cain," to ask who came up with the idea to bump off Derek in such a cold manner, and she said it was Friedman's:

As far as killing Derek, what I can tell you is that my boss Josh Friedman, whom I greatly respect for his instincts to "go against the grain" of traditional television, was the one who gave the mandate that Derek's death be true to life -- shocking, quick, with no time for tears. If I had even hinted at writing a big speech or heroic sacrifice, I would have been banned from the Warner Bros lot! LOL. Sarah's getting arrested was something I pushed for in the episode -- I was dying to see that "perp walk" and believe the fans would appreciate it too. Whenever something got cut, I would say, "as long as Sarah does the perp walk, I'm good." Killing Derek was Josh's idea and the way it was portrayed was exactly how he wanted -- the most realistic and therefore the most gut-wrenching and sad in its shocking simplicity. Yes, it's different than how deaths of main characters are usually portrayed, but to the credit of the Fox execs, they trust Josh's strong vision for the show and it has helped make Sarah Connor a unique experience.

Hell of an episode. Even if the show might end in a week, it's going out with a bang.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Today is the Day, Part 2": Never trust a captain named Queeg

Before tonight's "Chuck" review, the rest of today's blog entries are going to be very, very short, as I'm slammed at work but want to give people a chance to discuss notable programming from the weekend. First up, brief spoilers for Friday night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I go for a swim...

The story continues to inch incrementally forward, both in the present (John Henry confronts Shirley Manson about her plans) and in the future (we see John trying to forge an alliance with the T-1000's), but the show remains much stronger on the character stuff than on plot.

Best scene in the episode, by far, was John confronting Jesse about what they each did to Riley. The show has talked and talked about John needing to come into his own, but this is the first time where I've really believed he was growing up and becoming a leader. Very well-played by Thomas Dekker.

I'm hoping, but not assuming, that Derek went through with killing Jesse, just because I found her a drip of a character, and the two-part flashbacks to her time on the sub didn't change that opinion. (Though it did give Chad L. Coleman a chance to show he could convincingly play a character who's 180 degrees from Cutty on "The Wire.")

Still waiting for all the stories to start coming to a head, but the show's been much improved the last few weeks.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator & Dollhouse: Your thoughts?

As last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" was mainly set-up for next week's episode, and as last night's "Dollhouse" was the last episode before the magical sixth episode that will feed the poor, heal the sick and clothe the nude, I don't have much to say about either one. But feel free to discuss one or both in the comments. Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Ourselves Alone": A bird in the hand

Quick spoilers for Friday night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I clean my chimney...

Well, that was a step in the right direction, at least.

"Ourselves Alone" didn't move much faster than any of the previous batch of episodes, but the problem with them wasn't so much the pace as the ever-narrowing focus on the bland Sarah. This one was also a meditation, but it was a meditation on what it's like to have to put so much of your trust in the kind of machine you know is destined to enslave humanity. It gave us a lot more of Cameron and Derek than we've had in a long time (factoring in the mid-season hiatus), and it finally did some interesting things with Jesse and Riley -- albeit by killing Riley off.

(Ain't it so often the way that boring fifth-wheel TV characters only become compelling in the episode where they die? See also Tasha Yar from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," or any other examples you can feel free to name.)

We still need to get some movement on what's going on with Shirley Manson and John Henry, and whether she's working with or against the folks who built the hover ship, how many different alternate futures we're dealing with now, etc. But despite the measured pace, this was the first episode of the show in 2009 that didn't have me checking my watch. That's a start.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep": Wake me when it's over

Spoilers for Friday night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I emerge from the coma it put me into...

I want to be fair here. "Terminator" showrunner Josh Friedman, no doubt recognizing the fan discontent over the previous two episodes, and knowing that they'd likely be just as irritated with this one, promised on his blog last week that the rest of the season would be significantly more action-packed, and went so far as to venture into some spoiler territory to list all the things that would be coming up in the remaining six episodes. And people who saw the sizzle reel at today's panel at WonderCon (loads of spoilers in that link) said it looks like that isn't just talk.

But this whole "things get better X number of episodes" routine from skiffy showrunners is starting to get annoying. And even if Friedman's right, good lord were these episodes a slog. I think I must've actually dozed off for part of it, because when a friend mentioned Cameron walking around in her underwear, I had absolutely no memory of it.

Look, I don't think Friedman's wrong when he says the psychology of these characters is important. As I've said, I think the best episode of the series to date was "The Tower Is Tall But The Fall Is Short," which literally put several characters into therapy. The emotional toll of knowing the apocalypse is coming and only you have the power to stop it? That's potent material in the hands of the right writer, applied to the right character.

The problem is that they spent three episodes in a row -- four, if you want to count December's "Earthlings Welcome Here" -- on the wrong character. Some combination of actress, writing and network notes have made Sarah Connor -- a character so iconic she got her name in the title over future messiah John -- into this opaque nothing. I'm not saying she needs to be as hardcore or muscle-bound as Linda Hamilton in "T2," but they haven't given her any kind of personality to replace those traits. She's just there, and three (or four) episodes later, I still have no better understanding of her -- or interest in her -- than I did a few months ago.

I could go on for a while about specific things I disliked about this episode, but what's the point? Either Friedman's telling the truth and the show is about to take an abrupt turn for the better, or he's not and it'll be canceled soon (and I'll be gone before that happens). This was a bad, bad stretch for the show. End of story.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Desert Cantos": Burial of the plot

Brief, belated spoilers for Friday night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I put on some plaid...

My interest in "Terminator" is really waning these days, and not even the surprise appearance of the SkyNet drone (wee though it was), nor the brief glimpse of Shirley Manson trying to be a better mom to Catherine Weaver's daughter, was enough to compensate for yet another episode that dragged on forever for little purpose.

The use of the title cards (referring to different stages in the funeral process) at the start of each act implied that -- like the Mexico-set "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today" -- the production team believed they were making something more ambitious, or profound, than they actually were. I've been a fan of the episodes that have dealt with the psychological toll of time travel and knowing the apocalypse is coming, but those episodes have focused on the regular characters we know well and care about. This was largely about that burden falling on a bunch of unsuspecting new guest characters, and so it felt that we, like John and Cameron, were crashing a funeral where we had no business being. It was extremely, extremely dull.

They're clearly heading in a direction where SkyNet is now trying to establish itself years before the new Judgment Day -- and possibly one where Shirley Manson is working against them -- but they really, really, really need to get to the point already. Or, failing that, they need to give us a lot more Cameron and Derek in the weeks to come.

I did find it a nice touch that the Max Perlich character claimed to be a former cop from Baltimore, since Perlich spent a couple of seasons on the Baltimore-based "Homicide" as squad videographer J.H. Brodie. But again, not enough to make me like that hour.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "The Good Wound": Reese's pieces

Spoilers for the return of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I examine my joints...

Sigh... they were really on a nice run there for a while in the late fall, starting around the time of "The Tower Is Tall But the Fall Is Short." But between the aimless last few episodes in December, the long hiatus and now a mostly forgettable return episode, I'm having a hard time remembering how excited I briefly felt about this show.

I understand that Sarah's name is in the title, and that the last episode left off with her getting shot, but I really didn't want to spend most of our first hour back in this world watching Lena Headey and the writers continue to struggle to make her interesting, while more compelling figures like Cameron and Derek got relegated to the sidelines. And as the ghostly version of Kyle Reese, Jonathan Jackson was as toothless an approximation of Michael Biehn in the first "Terminator" as Headey is of Linda Hamilton circa "T2."

Now, the subplot with Ellison, John Henry and Shirley Manson was entertaining, if only because Garret Dillahunt and Manson are so good at playing the inhuman sides of their characters. And Shirley's rampage through the warehouse(*) was bad-ass enough that I'll forgive her quoting of Bryan Adams' love theme from "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" ("Everything I doooooo, I do it for yooooooooooou!!!!!").

(*) Once again, a character runs afoul of Weaver after going to the men's room. I smell a trend. Or maybe just a urinal.

But the series either needs to get moving in a specific plot direction or get back to doing those interesting psychological sketches of the stronger characters, or I might lose interest all together.

Also, in case you didn't read any accounts of McG's Comic-Con appearance to discuss the "Terminator: Salvation" film, one of the fans asked whether the new movie would incorporate any mythology from the TV show. He said they decided to keep the events of the film and TV franchises separate going forwards, since (to paraphrase) a TV show is an ever-evolving organism that can't really afford to get locked into decisions that are made in service of a two-hour film script. Of course, unless the ratings pick up (or stay stable) here on Friday nights, this may be a moot point.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Earthlings Welcome Here": Gender bender

Brief spoilers for the last episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" until February coming up just as soon as I take a shower...

I watched "Earthlings Welcome Here" last night, and for the better part of a day I grappled with what to write about it. Every time I got done with some other job at work, I'd load up the blog software, stare at the blinking cursor, and... nothing. I still have nothing, but it's already primetime on Tuesday and I want to let the handful of "Terminator" fans around here start talking already.

Now, there are times when I judge these kind of mid-season finale episodes differently from a regular show because it has to tide me over for several months and make me want to come back after the hiatus. But I think I would have found this one frustrating even if I knew there was another episode to follow in a week. Despite having her name in the title, Sarah remains the weakest character of the main ensemble, so an entire hour of her exploring her shifting identities with a transgendered robotics expert wasn't my idea of a riveting outing. Yes, the character could use some fleshing out the way John has gotten in recent weeks, but this didn't really work; it felt like the writers recently had a viewing of the original "Terminator" film and were so taken with the image of Sarah the meek diner waitress that they tried to build a whole episode about the transformation from her to the current version of the character.

The flashbacks to Riley's arrival in the present day were more effective. She's the first of our time travelers to have never known a world before Judgment Day; in many ways, the culture shock would be even worse than bringing ahead someone from, say, the 19th century (where at least they knew about running water). But they're taking a very long time to get to the point of her mission, and what side Shirley Manson's on, and all the other factions that have materialized in LA 2008. And because there are so many time travelers in our midst, the cliffhanger of a wounded Sarah staring up at what looked like a SkyNet hovercraft wasn't as mind-blowing as it could have been.

By all means, I'm going to be ready for the show when it comes back on February 13, but after being really strong for much of the fall, I wasn't in love with either of the last two episodes.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Getting caught up: House & Terminator

Okay, a couple of side projects have gotten in the way of my TV-watching and blogging for the past week, so I'm going to try to catch up as much as possible today. I'll hopefully have a "Pushing Daisies" double-post on the last two episodes this afternoon (still need to finish last night's episode), and, if I have a chance, will watch and write about "Life." Meanwhile, after the jump, spoilers for, in order, last night's "House" and Monday night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"...

As a sequel to one of this season's best episodes of "House" (they even gave it a similar title), "Joy to the World" didn't really live up to the original. Lisa Edelstein was outstanding again, but because the writers for once decided to serve as many characters as possible (the exceptions, as usual, being Cameron and Chase), the Cuddy/baby stuff got a little lost in the shuffle. And the other material (Wilson trying to make House's heart grow three sizes, House then using that as an excuse to invent a virgin birth, Kutner being unsurprisingly revealed as an ex-bully, etc.) wasn't so great that it was worth crowding out the A-story. And the less said about Thirteen and Foreman hooking up despite zero chemistry, the better.

"Terminator" was also fairly underwhelming, an episode that brought in bits and pieces of better episodes from this season -- a time-fractured narrative, Derek brooding over his post-Judgment Day life, civilians dealing with the weight of a future with Skynet -- and yet seemed disposable throughout. After being more than happy with the atmospheric character pieces they've been giving us for most of the season, I'm starting to get impatient for the plot to kick into gear, and we only have one more episode before the show sits on a shelf for two months, then gets banished to die on Fridays.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Self-Made Man": History lessons

Spoilers for last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I pick up someone to weigh them...

Odd little episode, that one. Of the regulars, only John, Cameron and Riley had any screentime of note (if Sarah popped in briefly, I blanked on it), and we spent much of it on Cameron involved in, as Daniel from Television Without Pity put it, the "Terminator" equivalent of a "Cold Case" plot.

I was never bored. The production team has really mastered a way to create an unsettling mood that makes even random scenes at a high school party seem like trouble's coming, and Billy Lush (Trombley from "Generation Kill") played well off the typically excellent Summer Glau.

But at some point, I'd like to start getting at least a few answers about why all these Terminators are coming back in time, how many SkyNet and human factions there are, etc. The show has been consistently entertaining on an episode-by-episode basis for most of the season such that it's not an urgent need for answers. But at some point, I would like a sign that the writers know where this is all going -- even if the ratings probably won't be strong enough to get us there.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point": Dot dot dot

Spoilers for last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I make a Duran Duran/Styx/Pink Floyd playlist...

I think I may need to write a macro for these reviews, because of late my thoughts are the same week after week: I don't really understand half the plot, am not sure how comfortable I am with the sheer number of time-travelers showing up in present-day LA, but the emotional side of the impending apocalypse is being handled so well that I've stopped worrying about plot logic. (Compare this, for the umpteenth time, to "Heroes," which makes even less sense and also has paper-thin characters I don't give a toss about.)

So while I'm somewhat puzzled about the revelation that Riley is a time traveler working with Jesse for some shady purpose, I thought the scene of Riley having to cope with the down-to-earth problems (or lack thereof) of her foster family was very nicely-done. If I understand the timeline correctly, she's too young to even remember the world before the machines rose, and I can imagine how much it would wear on her to be around relatively normal people. A lot of this stuff really reminds me of "12 Monkeys" and all the talk in that movie about how time travel does tremendous harm to your psyche, because people aren't meant to live in more than one era.

Similarly, I'm not sure what Shirley Manson's endgame is -- her desire to teach "John Henry" the computer about morality suggests that she might not be the bad guy here -- but scenes like Ellison interrogating the computer or Ellison discovering that Shirley has turned Cromartie's corpse into John Henry's voice were as creepy as intended. (And way to go on the Garret Dillahunt fakeout, people; I somehow remained unspoiled that he was still on the show.)

But really, the heart of "Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point" was in Sarah slowly cracking up over her obsession with the three dots -- and in how well Lena Headey played this side of the character, so memorable from the second movie and so noticeably absent on the show. So it's not that Headey can't play a crazy Sarah, but that the writers for whatever reason (my money remains on a network note asking that Sarah be more "relateable") haven't given her the opportunity to play it. Good as The Notorious BAG has been at playing Derek's nuttier side, I think I'd like to have a stretch here where Sarah's the crazy one and Derek has to rein her in, instead of vice versa.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Complications": Twice the Toby

Once again, busy day/week, but I was able to watch "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" while getting some other work done. No time for a full-blown post, but three observations after the jump:

1)As with "Heroes," I've given up on trying to follow the big story arcs (or, at times, even the episodic plots). But unlike "Heroes," the sense of mood that the producers and actors create is so strong that I don't even care if it makes sense.

2)Who ever thought we would live to see a day where David Silver could beat the snot out of Toby Ziegler? And that the two would be equally badass?

3)I'm surprised to realize that Ellison's probably dumber than I thought, and that the show's concept of time travel is starting to trend back towards the "Terminator 3" model that I thought the producers really hated.

Fire away. Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today": Pause, rewind, push play

Spoilers for last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I build a safe...

I enjoyed large swaths of "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today." The increasing despair of John, Sarah and Ellison were all very well-played -- with John in particular, the writers and Thomas Dekker have done a great course correction this year by showing how heavily his future crown weighs on him -- and I really dug the Spaghetti Western vibe of the final showdown with Cromarite (most notable in Cromartie's choice of shirt and Cameron's choice of boots, but also in the atmosphere and the photography and music choices). And watching Cameron strip off her jacket because she knows how John responds to her faux-body was the creepiest thing the show's done since Shirley Manson made Weaver's daughter wet herself.

But here's the thing: if you're going to employ a storytelling gimmick that calls as much attention to itself as this episode's fragmented, POV-driven chronology, you need to actually get something interesting out of it. And other than the surprise of Ellison opening the car trunk to offer Sarah his hand (and his own version of "Come with me if you want to live"), there wasn't a single thing in this episode that couldn't have been accomplished if they had told the story traditionally.

"Boomtown" made this gimmick into its regular narrative style (at least in the first season, before NBC ordered Graham Yost to stop), and it always drove me nuts how little it added to the proceedings. Only on occasion would the out-of-sequence plotting change how we perceived events earlier in the hour, and there was nothing along those lines here. I kept expecting to see something in "Cameron's Story" that altered my view of events that had just been shown in "Sarah's Story," or "John's Story," but all the episode did was tell the story out of order because somebody thought it would be cooler to do it that way.

Also, I'm going to miss Garret Dillahunt as Cromartie, if we assume he's really dead for sure. And the manner of his dispatching was a disappointment. So all of a sudden a shotgun exists that can damage the metal that makes up a T-888's skull? One of the points the "Terminator" movies and the show until now have tried to stress is that a Terminator, of any model, is really hard to kill. If you can take down the non-morphing models just by shooting at them a lot, it really damages their mystique.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Friday catch-up: Life on Mars, ER, Private Practice and Terminator

It's Friday, which means it's time for another ever-popular grab-bag post, with spoilers on, in order, "Life on Mars," "ER," "Private Practice" and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," all coming right up...

Hell of a night for homages to "The Wire." First, Dwight on "The Office" talks about juking the stats, and then "Life on Mars" features three different "Wire" alums -- Chad Coleman (Cutty), Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka) and Clarke Peters (Cool Lester Smooth) -- in guest roles. Now, Peters was already in the show's premiere episode, and you see a lot of "Wire" actors turn up on shows shot in New York because they're East Coast-based, but I'm thinking the producers are fans to put three in one episode.

Unfortunately, the guest cast (which also featured Edi Gathegi, aka Big Love from "House," as a younger version of Peters' character, plus Whoopi Goldberg) was more interesting than the episode itself. My interest in the remake is fading even more rapidly than my interest in the original. They've already softened Gene Hunt far too much (and, yes, I say that about an episode where he was prepared to execute a murder suspect without trial or any real evidence), the cases don't interest me, and I don't think I'm going to really care about the clues about where/when Sam really is until we get to an actual finale. (Based on the ratings, that should be sometime this season.) The "Ice Ice Baby" gag was amusing in the same way that sort of joke usually works in any time travel story (see also Marty McFly inventing both the skateboard and rock music), but overall, the show's pretty flat.

(Also, I was waiting for the inevitable moment where Gathegi's character raised an eyebrow at Sam telling a story about a black NYPD detective he met when he was 17 years old, which would have been the 1950s. Was the NYPD progressive enough to have black detectives back then?)

I actually watched a screener of next week's "ER" with the resurrection of Mark Greene earlier yesterday, so it felt a little like watching "Memento" to then see this episode, which sets up stuff the characters will be talking about next week, like Gates and Sam moving in together, or Gates' homeless veteran patient.

Even had I watched them in the proper order, I suspect I would have found this one to be a pretty blah episode, even by later-period standards. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing with the new interns; isn't Shiri Appleby dating (or maybe even married to) the young surgeon, and, if so, why is she drooling all over Gates? (I mean, Stamos is handsome, but he's also got 15 years on her.) Also, casting Carl Weather as the father of a boxer is one of those ideas that probably sounded great on paper but inadvertently turned that entire story into a big meta joke. (The only way it would have been weirder was if they had mixed in some "Arrested Development" cheapskate jokes about Weathers.)

Matt at Throwing Things recently argued that "Private Practice" has been this year's most improved show so far. I can see that, in that it's gone from teeth-grindingly awful to mediocrity, which is probably a bigger leap than the good-to-wonderful one "Chuck" has taken, but the show is still, at best, something I have on while doing three other things. Glad as I am to see Addison behaving like Addison again, and to see more of a focus on the cases and the ethical problems contained therein, I still don't feel attached to any of the other characters. And even when a case involves life or death, as it did this week with the terminally ill teen who desperately wanted a baby, the setting somehow makes the stakes feel much lower. I can't explain exactly why, but put that exact same storyline into a hospital show and it would have felt a lot more powerful, I think.

Finally, it's a shame nobody's watching "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" -- and that even fewer will be watching once the show moves to Fridays -- because they're really on a roll of late. Other than the subplot with Derek and his time-traveling girlfriend, where I constantly feel like they're leaving all the exposition on the cutting room floor (how does she know Derek's fence, for instance?), every storyline was clicking this week. Stupid as it is for John to not tell his mom about Cromartie visiting the house, or about Cameron going walkabout a few episodes back, his desire to have something resembling a normal life -- with a normal girlfriend who did a much better job dealing with Cromartie than any other person to date -- is understandable and a good idea for the show to explore. (When John was whining to Sarah about her not protecting him from killing Sarkisian, she really should have told him that he needs to get ready to kill a whole lot of people and things.) And Ellison's ongoing crisis of faith in the wake of learning that SkyNet is real has been very well-done. I'm still not sure exactly how much, if anything, he suspects about Shirley Manson, and I'm taking a wait-and-see approach on this apparent SkyNet civil war plotline they've been setting up, but this season has been really engaging so far.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "The Tower Is Tall But the Fall Is Short": Suicide is painless

Spoilers for tonight's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I tell a third grader a joke...

Wow. That was the first episode of the series I haven't had to judge on a curve. My praise isn't qualified with thoughts like "I don't think there's a long-term series here, but..." or "If you can ignore that John and Sarah aren't that interesting..." That was just an extremely taut, involving hour of television, a rare (outside of "Battlestar Galactica," anyway) episode of a TV sci-fi series that was at least as interested in the psychological implications of the story as in the whiz-bang explosions and technobabble.

(And, I should add, the whiz-bang stuff was awesome. Cameron twisting the latest bad Terminator into a pretzel was as cool as it was funny.)

Now, my daughter's not too far in age from the poor little girl being "raised" by Shirley Manson, and so the notion of her being in the care of a machine was even more horrifying than it might have otherwise been. But even if I didn't have that personal connection to the material, I think my blood would have been chilled by the scene where Shirley gets the girl to pee herself and we realize beyond a shadow of a doubt that the kid isn't some small piece of T-1000, but the real daughter of the real (and dead) Catherine Weaver, being kept around because she helps the Terminator maintain its cover. For the first time, I'm starting to see why the producers cast Manson -- like Summer Glau, she has a physical presence that's really disturbing if you know what you're looking for, but would probably go unnoticed (or dismissed as Asperger's or another spectrum disorder) to anyone who doesn't believe in robots from the future -- and I'm finding myself engaged by her story. At the very least, I really want the season to end with Ellison somehow saving the daughter from an upbringing that would make Sally Draper from "Mad Men" seem lucky in comparison.

And while I cringe when some shows put their characters in therapy -- it's usually a clumsy excuse for characters to monologue about thoughts the writers couldn't find a more elegant way to have them express -- I thought it worked beautifully here. What the hell must it be like to be John Connor, to be told practically from birth that you're destined to be the savior of humanity, to get at the age of 13 incontrovertible proof that your mom's crazy doomsday prophecies are all very real, and now to have all these people from the present and future sacrifice their lives to ensure your existence? Even if he hadn't recently killed a guy himself(*), it'd be a miracle if he wasn't massively, massively damaged.

(*) And the episode's final scene solved the one major qualifier I was going to have -- that John shouldn't be so freaked out by seeing his mom kill someone, given all they've been through in the past -- with the surprising (to me, anyway) twist that it was John who did the deed during the denouement they didn't show us in the season premiere.

I liked that, in the same episode where one robot was struggling to simulate a maternal instinct, the show's human mother was oblivious to her own son's pain while her robotic daughter knew to start looking for the suicide prevention pamphlets. (And, in another neat parallel, Cameron looked at the fused chip and realized that the new line of T-888's are essentially kamikaze pilots.) As I've said many times before, I think it was a mistake to make TV Sarah so relatively well-adjusted, but recent episodes have started to take us in a direction where she seems normal but is in her own way just as disconnected from reality as the Linda Hamilton version. If the writers keep playing on these emotional beats for John and Sarah, I think we may have to stop complaining about Headey and Dekker being weak links.

Hell, I didn't even mind yet another character from the future casually showing up in the past. (How much of Los Angeles' population is made up of time travelers at this point? Is that how Jack Bauer gets so much done in a day?) Anything that gives the Notorious BAG some emotional material to play is okay in my book, and I look forward to finding out exactly why his shell-shocked friend is so interested in present-day John. What might the machines have promised her that would make her want to kill mankind's only hope?

I really, really dug this one. When Fox gave this show a full-season order last week, I was relatively pleased, since I enjoyed it well enough to be glad it was continuing, even if it wouldn't be near the top of my best-of list. But if they can come even close to this intensity level every week (in an episode that was actually fairly light on the action, even with the pretzel-twisting), I may have to reassess the situation.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Goodbye to All That": Tag 'em and BAG 'em, gents

Spoilers for last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I do a book report on "Ozma of Oz"...

What historical precedents are there for what Brian Austin Green is doing here? He's gone from squeaky-voiced "Beverly Hills 90210" fifth wheel (did anyone at any point watch that show for David Silver?) to convincing bad-ass, and, along with Summer Glau, the reason I remain engaged by a show that's otherwise just slightly better than mediocre.

Okay, I've got one: Kurt Russell, who began his career as a kid and teen actor in a bunch of squeaky-clean Disney comedies, then reinvented himself with a trio of performances circa 1979-81: first as Elvis in a TV movie (considered by many to be the definitive film portrayal of The King), then as a sleazy salesman in one of my favorite films, "Used Cars," and especially as one-eyed Snake Plissken in "Escape From New York."

I'm not saying that the Notorious BAG is remotely at Kurt Russell's level (though, to be fair, he was also the only watchable and funny thing about that Freddie Prinze Jr. sitcom a few years back), but it's still a pretty impressive career transformation, and not one I would have remotely expected from watching him back when he was DJing for West Beverly High and dressing like this.

Even with our most extended BAG spotlight to date, "Goodbye to All That" had some issues. Trying to use the same actor to play Budell as both a teenager and as an adult rebel in the future was a mistake and made all of Derek's flashbacks much sillier than they were supposed to be. (Also, the casting of Kyle Reese was awful. I'm not saying they needed to get a dead ringer for Michael Biehn, but get someone who you'd believe as Future John's number two, who you'd buy protecting a younger Sarah from Arnold Schwarzenegger -- someone, in short, at least as plausibly tough as the current incarnation of BAG.)

There's also the ongoing problem of the Connors being far less interesting than their protectors. This episode tried to mitigate the problem by splitting them up evenly so that most John scenes involved Derek, and most Sarah scenes involved Cameron, but watching Sarah struggle to learn how to be a normal mother isn't the best direction to take the character. I want to see her get more intense, not less, you know?

Still, BAG was good, and Richard T. Jones may yet get me interested in the Shirley Manson storyline. Ellison's reaction to seeing Sarah's picture at the bar suggests he's going to have some interesting choices to make in his new job, even if he takes a while to realize he's working for one of the machines.

(Someone asked me last week how I can continue to enjoy this show while hating on "Heroes," and Ellison's storyline is a good symbol of why. He's doing something that we know is stupid in working for Shirley, but in the context of the show, he's not in a position to know that it's stupid, and he's making some smart choices along the way. If Peter Petrelli and Mohinder were on this show, they'd probably be hard at work building SkyNet because someone told them it was the only way to save humanity.)

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Allison from Palmdale": Who am I?

Quick spoilers for last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I stare at a balloon...

Given what an odd character Cameron is (and what a wonderfully odd performance Summer Glau gives as her), it makes some sense that the first real Cameron spotlight episode would be such a strange, off-format hour. No Derek, no real action, even in the flashbacks(*), just Cameron disappearing inside her own head, until we discovered those weren't her memories at all, but those of the titular Allison from Palmdale(**).

(*) Is it a flashback if it takes place in the chronological future, even though, thanks to time-travel, it takes place in a specific character's past?

(**) Have they previously established that SkyNet has the ability to download human memories into Terminator brains? And do you think the episode was in some way a cheat because the flashback POV really wasn't Cameron's?

I want to get back to the issue of the show's timeline that we've been talking about the last few weeks. It's been established at various points in the franchise that when Future John sends Kyle Reese back in time, he knows that he's sending Kyle to father him and then die, and that Future John was so interested in befriending Kyle in the first place because he knew he was his father. But with all the time travel of the later films and now this show, exactly what does Future John know? Does he have memories of what's happening here in 2008 (which would suggest SkyNet is still inevitable) and, if so, did he specifically recruit Allison to join his inner circle because he knew SkyNet would replace her with Cameron, whom he would then reprogram and send back to protect himself as a teenager?

Excuse me while I go take some Advil.

I have to think that either Cameron no longer has the Kill John Connor directive, or that if she's secretly evil, there's some other directive that's even more important, because she's had plenty of opportunities to kill him. On the other hands, the TV version of Terminators seem a lot cagier and more interested in long-term planning, as evidenced by whatever Shirley Manson's doing. (And is the little girl supposed to be the daughter of the real Weaver, whom Manson replaced, or is she a Terminator, too?) So I don't know.

Sorry if my thoughts on this one feel as unfocused as Cameron was throughout it. I promise I don't want to put anybody's head on a pike.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "The Mousetrap": Smarter than the average robot

Quick spoilers for last night's episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I peruse the celebrity tabs...

That's three episodes in a row of "not bad." I don't know that the show has a higher gear than these B-movie self-contained thriller stories, and I'm not sure I'd want to see that higher gear. (What is the original "Terminator," after all, but one of the best B-movies of all time?) I'm much more engaged when the danger is clear and present than when the show deals with larger, more complicated story arcs like whatever Shirley Manson's doing. On the other hand, if I don't care about the arcs, I'm not sure the episodic stories are good enough to keep me watching once the timeslot crunch gets worse. (Again, I have a three-week head start on "Chuck," which helps.)

A few random thoughts:

• I hope the "Lost" producers have big plans for Penny in the final two seasons, because with Michelle's death here and HBO's decision not to go forward with "Tell Me You Love Me" season two, Sonya Walger's running out of semi-regular gigs.

• You would never have thought it from watching "Deadwood" that Garret Dillahunt is such a gym rat. Guy looked pumped in those swords-and-sandals clips.

• There are certain actors who should never, ever, be asked to run on film, because their running style immediately undercuts any attempt to make them seem like a bad-ass. David Caruso immediately comes to mind (there's about a five-minute sequence in "Elmore Leonard's Gold Coast" that's nothing but Caruso running, and it is among the unintentionally funniest things I've ever seen), and to that list I think we can add Thomas Dekker, who looked beyond goofy sprinting around the Santa Monica Pier. As the "Terminator" franchise is one big chase story, this could be an ongoing problem. Maybe lots of car chases?

• I liked the solution to the chase, by the way: while Terminators look like us, they weigh a whole lot more, and likely wouldn't be able to avoid sinking in water. On the other hand, how does Cameron avoid constantly breaking every chair she sits in?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Automatic for the People": Kim Kelly is my landlady

Quick spoilers for last night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I talk my wife into getting us a racecar bed...

Not bad. Nothing remotely as exciting as Cameron temporarily turning evil to chase after John and Sarah, but also nothing as goofy as Shirley Manson turning into a urinal (or vice versa). This show's going to come in a distant third to "Chuck" and "HIMYM" for me in the timeslot, but that's what multiple DVRs or Hulu are for.

Couple of random thoughts:

• Hi, I'm a sci-fi nerd, and therefore care about the rules for a show that so liberally uses time travel. John and Sarah have already changed the timeline many times, and now Shirley Manson's doing the same, and yet Future John is still able to send people and intel back to help his mom and his former self. I'm not crying foul over anything they've done yet, but at some point I want Cameron or Shirley or even Derek to explain how this all works.

• Exactly how long did it take the Zack Ward character to write that much in his own blood, and wouldn't it have been smarter for him to just walk into Sarah's new house and ask, "Hey, can I borrow a pen and paper -- and maybe some first aid?"

• Also, re: Zack Ward, when you see him do you think of him as Titus' dopey kid brother, or as yellow-eyed Scut Farkus?

• Good on the producers for giving Busy Philipps something to distract her during the late stages of her pregnancy.

• Is there any way John's new girlfriend (whom I believe is a cast regular) is as normal and non-SkyNet-y as John takes her for?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post