''Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles'': Hand Holding

''Terminator'' recap: Now who's crazy?

After a long day of parsing Oscar dresses, freedom fighters, I came to tonight's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles dying for a little something to take my mind off all the chiffon. I also walked in wanting to like this damn show, no matter what. After all, several of you seem to enjoy it; I can feel your passion raging through the comments section like a house fire set by a mad psychiatrist. And while I remain unconvinced that the show is not merely pretending to be decent until all the real shows come back (is it March yet?), I am legitimately happy to say that I think this hour was the strongest yet — and not just because I begged it to be.

No, I think what T:SCC managed to pull off for the first time tonight was a unity of tone, a strength of purpose, and an intactness of plot. Here, finally, was an Ellison story line that didn't have me reaching for the remote. Here, finally, was a John Connor upset about something tangible, instead of just moping under his bangs. Tonight we got a glimpse of actual craftsmanship in the direction — that scene between Bag and Cam at the breakfast table! — and, most of all, we tapped into the Terminator mythology in a way that neither insulted our intelligence nor required obsessive knowledge of the original films to appreciate.

We opened on some seriously scary music. Oh, wait. That was just my DVR recording the end credits of Moment of Truth (or, as my friend Jessica once called it, Are You Lying?). We actually opened with a girl on a motorcycle, dressed like Robert Patrick. It was Cam, all decked out in cop suit and Ray-Bans and shiny white helmet. She broke into a power plant and disabled a turbine, setting off a blackout in L.A. She then drove to a police station and — in the ensuing evacuation chaos of the power outage — broke into the evidence room, where she pawed through poor dead Andy Goode's evidence box, looking for something. Not finding it, she took the evidence sheet instead, on which Agent Ellison was listed as the last person to check the box out.

Ignoring for a moment the implausibility of a police station ordering an evacuation during a blackout — I used to live in Queens, I know from these things — this was a nice taut open, cross-cut with scenes of Mom prowling a crypt, looking for Andy Goode's grave. I get it: The dude is dead, and in a series of boxes. And, thanks to the voice-over, I know the one thing that was not in those boxes is his soul. Also not in the boxes: the T-Eightball's severed hand, which is what Cam was looking for. Mom tried one last trick: calling the FBI, pretending to be LAPD, looking for a prosthetic hand. Because he is the only FBI agent in L.A., Ellison was there when the call came in. He lied, said he never saw the hand, and headed on home — with the files on Sarah Connor, including videotapes of Sarah ranting and raving in Pescadero. She seemed like a crazy person, going on and on about the machines. But she's not so crazy, is she, Agent Ellison? You've got a freaking Terminator hand in your freezer, don't you, Agent Ellison?

Ellison went looking for Sarah's original psychiatrist, Dr. Silberman [yes, we had ''Silverman'' here, which is what we thought Ellison was calling him, as well as what Fox called him in the press release, even if he was Silberman in the movies; thanks for the catch, readers!], who had retired to a cabin in the woods. Meanwhile, Mom broke into his house, saw her file, and stole one of the tapes. Simultaneously, Cam was tackling a little recon project of her own: going undercover in the dance class of Maria, who is Dmitri the Russian chess guy's sister, hoping to get information on the whereabouts of the Turk. (Cheap way to get Summer Glau into a leotard? Are the male Terms programmed to dance, too?) The robot's upper body was a little mechanical, said Maria, who explained that ''dance is the hidden language of the soul.'' Cam processed that information (also, that she is a cat), and at the end of class, a Russian man came and threatened Maria, trying to discover the whereabouts of Dmitri. Oh, dear. But Cam returned, saw the Russian man threaten Maria again, and kicked him in the chest (into but not through a wall). This earned her enough trust that Maria took her to a terrified Dmitri, who was hiding out from these guys who want their money. Turned out the $20K he scored by programming the Turk to lose and then stealing it wasn't enough. Thankfully, Cam got the info on who hired Dmitri right before two more Russian mob types busted in and killed both Dmitri and Maria. Let's hope that info is correct. Otherwise, Cam's gonna feel like a real tool for not preventin' them murders.

NEXT: Brian Austin Green acts!