September 8, 2008

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season Two Premiere --- "Samson & Delilah"

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Tonight was the first of many highly anticipated series/season premieres, starting with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which returns after a very brief initial season thanks to the writer's strike. Of all the shows impacted by the writer's strike (besides those canceled in part by the strike), this was the most severe only getting nine full episodes. Season One completely disregarded the third theatrical installment, and for most fans, this is a very VERY good thing. It establishes new actors in the familiar roles of Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) as the title character and mother of the ultimate leader of the resistance, John Connor (Thomas Dekkar), against SkyNet and their metal warriors. Introduced are new characters Cameron (Summer Glau), a Terminator sent from the future by John to protect himself in the present, Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt), a Terminator sent from the future by SkyNet in an Sarah Connor Chroniclesattempt to eliminate John in the present, Agent James Ellison (Richard T. Jones), an FBI Agent on the hunt for Sarah Connor and Cromartie, and trying to sort out reality from fiction, and finally Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green), the brother of the infamous Kyle Reese, sent from the future by John to protect Sarah from a Terminator trying to kill her in an attempt to keep John from ever being born. As you all should know by now, Kyle and Sarah fall in love and conceive John in one of the biggest mind fucks in cinematic history!

Anyway, back to Season One. Even though it disregards the third film, a few times the show still takes liberties with the timeline established by the first two films which really bothered me (that's for an entirely different post) and despite that, I really enjoyed the abbreviated first season, especially the last four or five episodes. With that, Season Two premiered tonight with great anticipation. Would they be able to continue the momentum gained in the latter portion of Season One? Could it be possible for Summer Glau to get any hotter than she was in Season One? How would singer-turned-would-be-actor Shirley Manson do in a major role? Would they continue to screw with the original timeline any more than they have already? We'll get to all these questions shortly. First, I'd like to address the first change that was made from Season One to Season Two, that being changing the intro from Sarah Connor (Headley) doing the voice-over to some professional male voice-over person who has no tie to the actual series. The reason I have issue with this is that the show is called "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and with that, it makes sense that Sarah would do the intro voice-over as well as various voice-overs throughout the episode. Am I crazy in thinking this was a negative change?

*THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD*

Anyway, despite this, the episode continues right from where the last episode of Season One leaves off, with Cameron being blown up by a car bomb and Cromartie decimating a full squad of FBI agents led by Agent Ellison. Cameron awakens to severe damage, including damage to her microchip which resets her programming back to it's initial setting...which is to terminate John Connor! Sarah Connor ChroniclesWe are introduced to a new character, Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson), who is an executive type who has been secretly behind the acquisition of 'The Turk', the computer that potentially could become the brain behind SkyNet and was the core of Season One's storyline. Initially, I do not like Manson as an actor, thinking they chose her more for her look and the ability to use her music at a discounted rate (there is a Garbage song* within the first segment of tonight's episode, and it couldn't hold a candle to Johnny Cash closing out the last episode of Season One) rather than her (lack of) acting ability. She does have THE one WTF moment of the entire episode that I think everyone will enjoy, but as a whole the episode was a bit disjointed, lacked the same edge that the last few episodes of Season One established, and seemed to only be a tool to get us, the viewers, to the surprise ending which will more than likely be the driving force behind the rest of the season. Oh, and to answer the question about Glau's hotness, during most of the episode, half of her face is hanging off or stapled back together, so the early answer is 'No!'

*EDIT: Apparently the song played at the beginning was not, in fact, a song by Garbage, but rather Manson singing a rendition of the Gospel song 'Samson and Delilah' specifically for this episode. Source: SciFi Wire (Massive spoilers in the article related to this episode. DO NOT READ unless you've seen the episode already)

Here's a countdown to next week's episode for those interested (and if you've read this far, I'll take that as a 'Yes'), let's hope they step it up a notch:

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