I wish we were talking about season five of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” right now. I was always grateful for the two seasons I got, getting to watch a Terminator story every week. Now that The Terminator is coming back to television under a cross-platform plan to reboot the franchise, maybe people will revisit the previous series and kick themselves for not keeping it going when they still had the chance. Spoilers for “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” below.
While the movies fumbled trying to recreate James Cameron’s successful formula or embellish the scant future war scenes he created, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” had an imaginative take on the continuing story. Sarah (Lena Headey) and John Connor (Thomas Dekker) are still being hunted by robots from the future, sure, but since they were never going to match the movies’ spectacle, the show had to be smarter, since it couldn’t be bigger. We got to see the day-to-day lives of people living in hiding, dealing with a pursuer they couldn’t tell anybody about, lest they recommit Sarah to the asylum. Not to mention, she’s still considered an escaped patient from the year 1991.
As the movies were desperately trying to repeat what worked before, the show smartly erased Terminator 3 from existence by sticking with John and Sarah. The movies had killed her off when Linda Hamilton didn’t return. There was an event that brought TV’s Sarah and John up to the present, drastically invalidating the T3 timeline (which itself was confused by John’s age and the year in which Terminator 2 was set). The greatest contribution of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” to Terminator lore is the creation of the character Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green), Kyle’s brother who returns from the future. Derek was a badass character that changed the way I looked at Green, and confronted Sarah with a complicated substitute for the love of her life, Kyle, who died saving her from the first Terminator.
I loved watching “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” every week, and a small, intimate episode made me just as happy as one with robot fights. However, the Best Episode Ever was the season two premiere, “Sampson & Delilah.” This is the episode that contained all the promise of what a long running “Terminator” series could be.
Season one was cut short prematurely by the writers’ strike of 2008. It left off with Cameron (Summer Glau), John’s new protector Terminator, being blown up in a car bomb. Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt) just took out 20 FBI agents in a motel, while John and Sarah were trying to track down a chess computer that would lead to Skynet. “Sampson & Delilah” picks up with Cameron, her her face ripped open and limping, stumbling to the Connor house. Sarah and John are being held captive by some thugs after the computer chip. Cameron assists by taking out one of the thugs, while Sarah and John handle the other, but when Cameron sees John, her computer display screen tells her orders are to terminate John. Just like the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the first movie and the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) in the second.
What ensues is a Terminator chase in the tradition of the movies but with a TV twist. Obviously they couldn’t have a robot chase every week (nor would I want that), but “Sampson & Delilah” showed they could touch on the hallmarks of the movies and delve into areas for which the films didn’t have time. Glau looks awesome with metal sticking out of her cheek, and when she fixes herself with baby wipes and staples. That stalking cue from Brad Fidel’s movie score creeps in so we’re reminded Cameron is as deadly as any Terminator we’ve seen in a movie.
The chase is on, but as I said, it’s smarter, not bigger. Sarah and John seek sanctuary in a church, but they’re not just running from the killer robot. They booby trap the holy water. They have a pretty good plan to use what they know about Cameron’s reboot procedure to see if they can pull her chip out while she’s stunned, but this is really good suspense because they don’t have the tools to unscrew her head in time and they’re on the run again.
The big action set piece is a car flip, which is admittedly small scale in the Terminator world, but what’s really important in this sequence is the face off against Cameron. They are staring Cameron down in the middle of the road playing chicken, and she has no reason to move. She’s a machine sturdier than their car. John escapes into a warehouse where the space and sounds are used to create a suspenseful pursuit, because again they’re not going to out-do James Cameron, but they can show us how important it is that John keep quiet so Cameron can’t find him. The show could explore Terminators in more mundane settings than the exploding factories of the movies.
The piece de resistance of “Sampson & Delilah” comes when Sarah pins Cameron between two trucks. Now John can unplug her chip and the scene of Cameron trying to talk him out of it shows how much character “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” could get out of a robot. She begins with logic and then puts on a full emotional display, and Glau is heartbreaking begging John and telling him he loves her. We know we’re watching a robot here, but we’re wondering, does she?
Another strength of “Sampson & Delilah” is how John deals with the risk of living with a Terminator. In the show’s pilot, he thought Cameron was just another high school girl, so when she revealed herself as his robot protector he had to deal with the fact that she wasn’t even a human. Yet he grew attached to her because his future self did program her to be his companion.
There’s a powerful moment in “Sampson & Delilah” where John realizes he does have to kill Cameron. Dekker is so convincing in that scene that it’s even more powerful at the end of the episode when he defies Sarah and Derek and plugs her chip back in. He’s gambling with his life, and the only reason he lives is that Cameron overrides her own program to terminate him. It seems her switch was still flipped to evil, but she had developed enough sentience on her own to decide, “You know what? I think I don’t want to murder him.” However, it is another poignant moment when Cameron basically chastises John behind his back. In a conversation with Sarah, Cameron tells Sarah never to allow him to save her again. It’s a major mind bender, the kind on which Terminator stories thrive.
“Sampson & Delilah” also introduces Shirley Manson to the cast. For this intro, she’s kept vague as a mysterious CEO of a technology company. At the end of the episode, we find out that she is a T-1000, or rather a T-1001 for legal reasons. Whatever they call her, she’s the liquid metal Terminator we know from T2. I never expected they would use that on the series, let alone reveal her in her first appearance.
“The Sarah Connor Chronicles” was just getting warmed up in “Sampson & Delilah.” Had it been able to run for more years, I’m sure they could have kept elevating the complications of present and future, pursuit and battle. The season would explore other characters from the future dealing with the present, and present characters doomed by their roles in the future. The second season finale certainly set up a fascinating world in which a third season could play. This episode was written by Josh Friedman, who developed the property for television, and directed by David Nutter. Ashley Miller and Zack Stenz, who are working on the new “Terminator” series, were writers and co-producers on this series as well but they have big shoes to fill, both Friedman’s and their own. Can they top this Best Episode Ever?
