Sarah-John-Cameron go on the run from Cromartie, which means a bunch of scenes stitching each other up in abandoned desert gas stations and eventually a trip to a bank vault in L.A. where Future John has sent a dude back to 1963 to build a secret time-travel orb machine thingy in case this very situation arises, and with which Sarah-John-Cameron transport themselves to 2007 just in the nick of time before Cromartie beats down the vault door with his fists. In 2007, they land nekkid in the middle of a freeway and get caught on film by some dude with a cell-phone camera, footage that gets picked up by the news media, thus alerting Agent Ellison, Cute Cute Dean Winters, and, most likely, the Bad Terminator(s?) to the existence of Sarah-John-Cameron in this present time frame. Where they will have to go on the run more. And that, freedom fighters, is your series. Basically, it all comes down to what I already knew: cell-phone cameras are evil.
Did you get all that?
As I've long since run out of room, I'm just going to hit on a couple last points here (come back tomorrow for my take on episode 2, which I hope will clarify some of the ''And why are we doing this exactly?'' questions I think we're all having):
1. There is nowhere near enough guh-guh guh guh-GUH in this series. You're gonna take the time to rejigger this whole franchise, but you're not gonna shell out for Brad Fiedel's soundtrack? Weak.
2. There is nowhere near enough dark humor in this series. Possibly the best part of T2 was the interaction between the Governator and little Edward Furlong, who taught the big robot how to be a cool dude. It was nice and wry and broke up the constant machine-gun fire. About the only instance of that coloring here so far came when Cromartie went into the bank, first scanning the SWAT team assembled outside and calculating ''Threat: None.'' More of that, please.
3. There are, however, a nice number of crossovers to the past, from the opening frames of dark highway with voice-over to the ending shot around the swing set, an iconic image from T2. Those were cool. But I am not sure how I feel about the fact that Sarah, John, and a Terminator once again set out to escape across the border into Mexico but turn around at the last minute in hopes of destroying Skynet. I am not sure how I feel about the series using the Terminator voice-replication trick already. I hope they do not abuse these callbacks to the original franchise, as it can too easily seem like laziness.
4. I am trying not to worry too much about the fact that Cameron is supposed to be an advanced Terminator that understands human emotion and apparently has some sort of spidey sense for danger, yet she comes from 2011 (not 2029) and is made of the usual living tissue over endoskeleton (instead of liquid metal). Oy, my brain. [Note: Our mistake: Cameron is from 2027. I'll discuss this point tomorrow in the TV Watch for tonight's episode.]
5. Please do not have John and Cameron make out. Their stilted conversation over a bag of chips — ''In the future, you have many friends.'' ''What model are you? You seem...different'' — made me never want to eat chips again. Also, no one should make out with a robot.
6. My jury is still out on the acting. Everyone on the show, with the possible exception of Richard T. Jones as Agent ''Snappy'' Ellison, seems really, really bummed out. Thomas Dekker and Summer Glau appear to have wandered in from the set of a CW show. And while I didn't ever mind Linda Hamilton's depression because it came with a nice side of crazy, Headey just seems like the poster child for one of those seasonal-affective-disorder medications.
7. The message of James Cameron and the first two Terminator films was actually a pretty decent one: Skynet's decision to eliminate humankind was based on our cruelty to one another, and if we could learn from our mistakes and go forward with compassion (''I swe-ah, I will not kill anyone''), maybe we'd survive after all. ''The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make ourselves'' is nice to think about. ''No one is safe,'' which appears to be the motto of T:SCC, is not.
8. I am sure some of you are thinking, ''Jeez, Whitney, quit with all the T2 comparisons! This is its own show!'' Sorry. It's not. You want to continue this beloved mythology? You have to answer my questions and meet the standards your own franchise has already set. I'll let T3 not exist, but the comparisons to T2 will remain.
Okay. Whew. I'm done. Your turn: What did you think? An exciting relaunch of an excellent movie franchise, or blatant audience pandering? Worth watching, or only worth watching 'cause there's a strike on? Do we like the actors? Do we like the pacing and general Fox-y feeling of it all? Does anyone else think a Kevlar recliner would be awfully hard to obtain on a week's notice, and certainly wouldn't fit in a Jeep Wagoneer? And am I the only one who is annoyed to distraction by the insufficient explanation of how on earth there can be a Terminator in 1999 if all traces of the Terminator, the computer that created the Terminator, and the man who created the computer that created the Terminator were eliminated in 1994? Or am I totally missing something here?
Want more? See EW's behind-the-scenes look at the making of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
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