Commentary with a Co-Ed: Terminator surprises

by Ashley Gouveia

The season two premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles began right where it left off with Cameron inside the Jeep as it exploded. We learned in the finale that Sarkissian, the holder of the Turk, wasn’t dead after all. He’s the one who put the bomb to make Cameron go boom. But she was back. However, she wasn’t exactly all in one piece.

As the show began, we got our usual “In the future…” intro, but this season it’s not Lena Headey’s voice doing it. Instead, it’s a promo guy’s voice and new images of the characters with Brian Austin Green’s Derek added to the cast. I actually like this intro a lot. But it seems like the opening credits for shows are becoming a dying trend. That’s a shame.

I think all of you know how much I enjoy a good ol’ musical montage. So when I saw that the episode was starting out with one I was excited. The song was appropriately titled “Samson and Delilah,” which was also the title of the episode. Shirley Manson, the new addition to the cast, actually sings that version. I thought the montage was great. It really set the tone of the episode.

Sarah and John struggled to get free from Sarkissian and his lackey, while Cameron came wobbling into the house and turned a gun on John. Luckily, the house went up in flames and knocked her target off. From that point on, we got a cat and mouse game with Cameron trying to track down the Connors.

Another big question that the finale left us with was; “Why did Cromartie leave Agent Ellison alive?” We finally got an answer to that one. It turned out that Cromartie believes that Ellison will lead him to Sarah. Although he denies that he would ever do the “devil’s work” Cromartie thinks otherwise. It’s interesting to see a Terminator choose not to do something. That lead me to another question I had later on in the episode.

John and Sarah tried to get Cameron’s chip out once but failed. So Sarah thought it would be a good idea to pin her in between two huge trucks. This had to have been my favorite scene of the entire episode. Cameron begged John not to deactivate her, pleading that she was good now, and she ran a test. John was having second thoughts, but Sarah was yelling for him to do it. Then Cameron screamed that she loved him, and that he loved her. I think that was about the time that my jaw hit the floor. After some hesitation John pulled the chip out. Amazing acting by both Summer Glau and Thomas Dekker. I had to immediately rewind my TiVo and watch it again.

The scene after that with John and Derek was great, too. I loved how John was taking a stand. It was also visible that his relationship with his mother has changed. He doesn’t look at her the same way, after they had to kill Sarkissian. I knew that John wasn’t going to be able to burn Cameron. He went against his family and did what he believed was right. He truly believes that Cameron is different than the other Terminators. Is she? She seemed to decide not to kill John, even though her programming initially told her to. We really need an episode about Cameron’s back story, pronto.

The whole hour was action packed, and I can’t wait until next week. It appears that John’s going through a rebellious stage. I don’t think that’s going to sit too well with Mama, since he’s supposed to be the future leader of the resistance and all. Also, how crazy was it that Shirley Manson’s character turned out to be a T-1000? I knew she was too scary to be human.

Commentary with a Co-Ed is a weekly column at Tube Talk new every Friday.

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