Writer: Toni Graphia
Director: Charles Beeson
Cast: Lena Headey (Sarah Connor), Thomas Dekker (John Connor), Summer Glau (Cameron), Richard T. Jones (Agent Ellison), Garret Dillahunt (George Lazlo/Cromartie), Brian Bloom (Carter), Catherine Dent (Agent Greta Simpson), Lee Thomspon Young (Agent Stewart), Sean Smith (David Lyman, MD) & Taira Soo (Office Manager)
Director: Charles Beeson
Cast: Lena Headey (Sarah Connor), Thomas Dekker (John Connor), Summer Glau (Cameron), Richard T. Jones (Agent Ellison), Garret Dillahunt (George Lazlo/Cromartie), Brian Bloom (Carter), Catherine Dent (Agent Greta Simpson), Lee Thomspon Young (Agent Stewart), Sean Smith (David Lyman, MD) & Taira Soo (Office Manager)
Whilst trying to destroy a metal alloy that will be used to create Terminator endoskeletons in the future, John is separated from his mother..."If you're gonna be a hero, you need to learn how to drive stick!"
-- Sarah Connor (Lena Headey)
We're 4 episodes in and I'm not convinced Sarah Connor Chronicles really has anywhere interesting to go. The series seems unable to create compelling standalone episodes and its few recurring plot-strands are becoming tiresome.
It was always going to be difficult trying to expand a film's concept into a television juggernaut, but perhaps it would have been wiser to do something more inventive with the format. A road movie/thriller with a 24-style sensibility would at least keep things tense and rapid.
Heavy Metal finds Sarah (Lena Headey), John (Thomas Dekker) and Cameron (Summer Glau) discovering secret shipments of coltan; a special metal alloy that will be used to create Terminator endoskeletons in the future. Seeing an opportunity to alter the future by blowing up the material, John is separated from his mother during a solo bomb-planting raid in a warehouse.
Elsewhere, a newly-skinned Cromartie has tracked down a plastic surgeon to help sculpt his features into that of an actor called George Lazlo (Garret Dillahunt). Of course, it's ridiculous to think one surgeon could operate alone, or have such amazing results... so suspension of disbelief is required. Chronicles' main cyber-antagonist now has the likeness of Dillahunt – who is certainly a better actor than Owain Yeoman, but is even less physically imposing...
Are the producers scared of casting someone of similar stature to Arnold Schwarzenegger? If so, that’s crazy – because I'm getting quite desperate for a villain who screams "Terminator" at you. But instead, Chronicles seem more willing to go down the Battlestar Galactica route – of having their cyborgs resemble ordinary people. That's fine (it worked brilliantly for Robert Patrick's T-1000 in T2), but they're having no success with either Terminator benchmarks, so far.
This episode does try to make Sarah appear more menacing finally, but Lena Headey still isn't cutting it as a slightly-unhinged action heroine. There's a scene where Sarah punches and threatens a henchman she's tied to a chair, which seems to bode well for her tough cookie status... until she quickly defers the ugly business to sidekick Cameron.
I'm sure the producers are too scared to make Sarah anywhere near as ballsy as Linda Hamilton was T2, but in a TV landscape that has Jack Bauer as a cult hero... there's really no excuse for her drabness. She needs to get intense: quickly. I quite like Headey as an actress, if she's given the right role, but she's little more than a mane-haired stick in this series.
But the biggest irritation of Chronicles so far is definitely FBI Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones), who's always one-step behind the action and playing catch-up. I can see why Ellison exists as a character, but he's a walking plot-recap at the moment, and needs to start taking bigger strides in his investigation. I want him snapping at Sarah's heels, not mopping up last week's episode.
Heavy Metal eventually boils down to John stuck in a truck that' s transporting coltan metal to Depot 37 – a location where Skynet will one day build many of its Terminators. Sarah and Cameron are in hot pursuit to mount a rescue, after realizing one of the men involved in transporting the coltan is actually a Terminator himself.
Everything come to a head at Depot 37, with the coltan offloaded and the Terminator powering down into "standby mode" to guard a blast door, now that its mission is complete. Sarah and Cameron arrive (stuck on the outside of the blast door), with John locked inside and trying to escape past the "hibernating" Terminator.
While definitely better than last week's dawdling episode The Turk, this is still a slothful story that failed to connect with me. The series has done a competent job giving us an idea what their overall mythology is, but the basic Terminator "fight the future" premise doesn't lend itself well to regular standalone stories.
As usual, the episode only comes alive when there's a fight to watch – as Summer Glau is particularly adept at selling a brawl, and the choreography is suitably punishing whenever two Terminators go at it. But, my faith is dwindling with this show after its enjoyable Pilot. Headey and Dekker aren't making much of an impression and the series lacks the key ingredients that made James Camerson's films so compelling: a really strong heroine, a tough/gritty style, and a nightmarish incessancy to the cat-and-mouse chase.
And please lose those trite voice-overs from Sarah that bookend most episodes. Her little speeches try to earn the show gravitas and poignancy, but they fall flat because the show's content is so comparatively dumb.
4 February 2008
FOX, 9/8c pm
