Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-????) Season 1

"Half an hour, one bag plus the guns. I'll make pancakes."

"Come with me if you want to live."

"Everybody on the floor! Please."

It's 1999, two years after the events of 'Terminator 2' and Sarah and John go on the run yet again. Not only to escape Terminators but because Sarah is wanted for numerous crimes. But a new Terminator shows up, Cameron and she is here to protect John. Skynet has not been stopped so that is Sarah, John and Cameron's mission.

Highlights:

• The nuclear shockwave in Sarah's nightmare.
• Agent Ellison describing Sarah as a Grade A Whack-A-Mole
• Sarah using the alias Reese as in Kyle, John's father.
• The Terminator teacher hiding the gun in his leg.
• The Terminators having expressionless faces during their fight scenes.
• Cameron's eye trick.
• The kid taking a photo of the naked Cameron, Sarah and John with his phone.
• Cameron continuing the Terminator tradition of mugging gangbangers for clothes.

Comments:

• Why is Sarah suddenly a brunette?
• Why is Sarah dating a guy who looks like the Terminator from the second movie?
• There are federal warrants for Sarah for among other things: arson of United States government property and property used in interstate commerce and domestic terrorism.
• Cameron with her bad talk and shiny skin is creepy.
• Couldn't the Terminator teacher tell what Cameron was?
• The kids saw the Terminator teacher's mechanical leg and isn't anyone wondering why people keep trying to kill John and Sarah?
• Terminators were in 1963?
• You can't send technology back so you send somebody back to build the technology, good idea.
• Didn't the bank's security video record the Terminator teacher tearing the bank vault door apart?
• The isotope gun, I feel will come back to haunt Sarah.
• Why aren't the FBI wondering who Cameron is?

"I will send you back to private school. The one with the uniforms. They will dress you like a flannel sock."

"Why did you do this?"
"Because you couldn't."

Now transported to 2007, Sarah and John need new ID. But somehow the Terminator Teacher (or part of him) has followed them through time. As the TT tries to rebuild itself, Sarah learns an old friend may not be trust-worthy and John look up Dixon, the man who nearly became his stepfather. Good, I'm buying the boxset.

Highlights:

• Mention of a Skynet Work Camp, creepy.
• Cameron getting run over.
• John learning he and his mother were presumed dead in the bank heist in 1999.
• Cameron imitating the gang chick.
• Sarah pretending to be Cameron's stepmother.
• The kitten poster.
• Sarah tossing the rebooting Cameron out the window.
• Cameron's gang makeover.
• Sarah not knowing about 9/11.

Comments:

• It's been established in all three movies that nothing non-organic can travel through the time machine. So how did the Terminator teacher's head go through?
• Nice opening credits.
• Sarah's voiceovers are a bit ponderous.
• Resistance fighters came back through time as well.
• Where did Sarah and co get the house, car, clothes, first aid kit and phones?
• Sarah was supposed to die in 2005.
• Enrique, played by the poor man's F Murray Abraham, was a sleaze.
• Sarah's abandoned fiancée Dixon is not going to go away I think.
• Who was the snake tattoo guy watching the trio in the alley?

"Go back to your office, your desk misses you."

"We went. We learned. I didn't get killed and she didn't kill anybody. It's a pretty good first day."

Cameron and John go to high school where they encounter mean girls, metal detectors and teen suicide. It's not the best day ever. Meanwhile Sarah looks up Andy a nice man who has created an AI that could become Skynet. Sarah doesn't want to kill Andy so she just burns down his house instead. Elsewhere Agent Ellison is finding unexplainable stuff at crime scenes: blood that isn't blood and a dead man who has the same fingerprints as a child living hundreds of miles away. A dull episode after the brilliance of the previous two.

Highlights:

• Sarah's dream, her head is a dark place.
• Cameron's clomp clump robot walk. She only walks like a human while around other people.
• Cameron setting off the metal detector at the high school and John claiming she has a plate in her head.
• Sarah plots escape routes from John's new school.

Highlights:

• The shattered mirror scene.
• Cameron and Sarah leave a bad guy in a minefield.
• Cameron exiting the truck as it goes over the cliff.

Comments:

• Cameron notes the nuclear bunker is the future site of the factory where she herself will be constructed.
• John stops being emo.

Andy (from 'The Turk') is back. He's rebuilt his AI that Sarah previously destroyed by napalming his house. Now he's competing in an AI contest and the winner gets a military contract. Somebody kills Andy. But who? A mysterious stranger shows up, he is another resistance fighter and his name is Derek Reese. Yes Kyle's brother. Derek has a T-888 after him and John freaks out over the prospect of losing the only link he has to his father. Meanwhile Agent Ellison finds the ripped off arm of the T-888 in the aftermath of a brutal fight between it and Cameron. Okay.

Highlights:

• At the AI contest, the camera pans over a row of androids starting at primitive and moving up to advanced and the shot ends with Cameron standing next to the display. Good moment.
• Flashback to Lil'John in the jungles of Central America.
• Cameron storms the prison transport van holding Derek.
• Sarah grabs a stun gun determined to force a doctor to treat Derek.

"I built Skynet."

"Sometimes they go bad. No-one knows why."

The wounded Derek remembers 2027 and his brother Kyle. The events he recall ties in with scenes from 'The Terminator'. Meanwhile Charley learns the truth, John broods over his dead daddy, Derek remembers killing Andy and Cameron hides the T-888's chip. Goodish.

Highlights:

• Cameron melts the T-888 with thermite.
• Cameron threatens Charley.
• The 2027 Cameron throws another Terminator through a wall.

Comments:

• They recreate the photo of Sarah and her dog from 'The Terminator' with the new Sarah in place of Linda Hamilton. The dreadful 80's headband is also missing from the recreation.
• John's parentage isn't known.
• In 2027 Derek knew Andy and after Andy confessed to building Skynet, Derek killed him after travelling back in time.
• Why did Cameron keep the T-888's chip?

Cameron goes undercover at a ballet class and ends up getting two people killed. Meanwhile an obsessed Ellison tracks down the man who was Sarah's shrink in the loony bin. The shrink is now a doomsday convert and he's really nuts. Meanwhile John broods about various things including his long dead foster parents. An okay episode.

Highlights:

• Cameron dresses as a cop in a total homage to Robert Patrick in 'T2'.
• Derek comments on how Ellison is always investigating things: "They only have one FBI agent in this town?"
• Cameron does ballet.

"We can't blow up city hall."
"No, it's really not that hard."

John and Cameron study the T888's chip and learn the T888 pretended to be a man named Vick and had a wife. Whom he killed. Meanwhile Sarah and Derek plan to stop a traffic system that could become part of Skynet someday. Somehow Sarah figures out Derek killed Andy and threatens him, while he's showering. An okay episode. Now that the show has been renewed one has to wonder: will they keep Derek and the Cromartie Terminator around for all of season 2?

Highlights:

• Vick's chip reactivating.
• John cut a hole in Cameron's head and removed her chip. He's so tender, one wonders if this John will ever hook up with his future wife or if he'll stick with Cameron.

"This is your car?"
"No. It belongs to the guy I killed and stuffed into the trunk."

Guest Starring: Craig Fairbrass ('Cliffhanger') and Brian Austin Green

The search for Turk provides Sarah and co with a new mortal enemy for season 2. Meanwhile Cromartie continues its rampage. A lot of plot points for season 1 tie-up but a hell of lot is left dangling for season 2. Questions remain: why didn't Cromartie kill Ellison? Will Charley stick around? Will Ellison's career and sanity survive what just happened? What'll become of Cameron? Will Derek stick around? A good episode, returns to the level of quality set by the first 2 episodes.

Highlights:

• The young Derek and Kyle see Judgement Day.
• Derek covering the kid's eyes.
• John meets his five year old father.
• The use of Johnny Cash's 'The Man Comes Around'
• The pool filling with FBI agents.

Comments:

• Will Cameron ever make that prom date?
• Ellison, the only FBI agent in town.
• How did Derek figure it out?
• Kyle Reese: mythologized by Derek as the perfect little brother, by Sarah as her true love and by John as the heroic dead father. The show should avoid at all costs having any more Kyle screentime for that reason. Giving Kyle a big brother was iffy enough and with his appearance in the upcoming 4th film 'Terminator: Salvation', Kyle could lose some of his dead hero mythic status.
• If Sarah and co prevent Skynet and the rise of the machines, won't John, Cameron and Derek all cease to exist? Because John will never have been born, Cameron will never have been built and adult Derek will never have time travelled.

See you in season 2