Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles– Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep

By Melissa Voelker

I’m a bit torn this week on whether or not I thought this was a good episode.  While it lacked all of that ridiculous time-travel stuff that drives me so crazy, it also seemed to lack anything that could make it . . . interesting.  It was yet another episode driven by Sarah Connor’s inner thoughts and turmoil, though this time it lacked the ghost of Kyle Reese to give it a little excitement.  While I must admit I enjoy seeing episodes that center around the inner struggles of these characters and what they are going through emotionally while fighting against the future, I’m not sure I want to see it all the time.  This is a show based on an science-fiction/action franchise, after all.  So some action would have been nice.  Instead it seemed to be almost all Sarah, moping around in karate pajamas, acting kinda paranoid.

In the beginning of this episode we find Sarah on another piece of her eternal hunt for SkyNet.  This time she has tracked down a connection to the warehouse that blew up a couple of weeks ago at another warehouse that she will probably try to blow up this week.  (Hey, we all know Sarah’s M.O. by now.)  But just as she begins trying to break into this new warehouse, someone gets the jump on her (um, where exactly did all her elite terrorist/soldier training go to?) and she is knocked out by a taser attack.  When she comes too, she is not being held prisoner like viewers might expect, but instead waking from a dream in a hospital bed with electrodes attached to her skull.  It seems that Ms. Connor has been suffering from insomnia and has checked herself into a sleep clinic to try and figure out why (like that would take medical experts to figure out when I’m sure we could all tell her pretty easily why she is so mentally unhinged.)  But sleeping at the clinic doesn’t seem to be helping her out much either.  Each time she closes her eyes she suffers from night terrors of being held hostage in a van by the guy she killed at the warehouse a couple of episodes back.  And he isn’t terribly pleased with her for how their last encounter went down, so he makes sure to hurt her just as much as he possibly can – in a dream at any rate.

While Sarah tries to work out her inner universe, she begins to notice that something might not be right with her outer universe either.  One night she catches a doctor giving a mysterious injection to her roommate, and then sneaking off to enter a secret office in the sleep clinic basement.  When Sarah tries to mention this bizarre occurrence to John, he just scoffs at her.  After all, she has been acting pretty paranoid and crazy lately.  When Sarah wakes up later on to find her roommate burning to death in her bed, she is even more sure that something hinky is happening, whether John believes her or not.  So she pretends to go to sleep one night and then sneaks off to find out what is behind the super secret mystery office door in the basement.  Luckily John shows up to help her out, even though he isn’t quite ready to believe there is actually something going on.  Of course it turns out that Sarah was right all along, as they open the secret room to discover a bunch of brain scans and profiles of patients and information on Sarah that makes her go a little nuts.  Then the sneaky doctor shows up and acts very un-human like, which of course doesn’t surprise the Connors as they are used to meeting people who aren’t exactly human.  And then things start to go a little over-the-top crazy, as the doctor shoots both John and Sarah, which should have killed them, except that Sarah wakes up suddenly and it is revealed that the whole sleep clinic storyline was a dream, and the night terrors of being held hostage by the guy from the warehouse was reality.

This is the first episode in a long time that only had one storyline throughout.  We didn’t see Derek or Riley or Jesse or Agent Ellison or the delightfully naughty Catherine Weaver even once.  And while their plotlines don’t always go anywhere that makes any sense, at least the break of the monotony of seeing just one character for an entire episode.  Especially when nothing much even happens to that character.  Sarah was obviously working through some inner stuff, both in her “dreams” of being at the clinic and in her “night terrors (reality)” of being held hostage in the van, but it didn’t seem like any conclusions about anything were reached.  We do know that they guy she thought she had killed would have been her first human murder, and that John’s birth didn’t go down terribly easily, but that was about it.  I couldn’t figure out any other important revelations she might have had.  Why else spend an entire episode going into the depths of her mind if you aren’t going to bring forth any important revelations?   It just seems like a waste of time.

I like that the writers for the show are trying to go in a new direction and focus more on character development, but I don’t think they’ve worked out how to do that well just yet.  There are definitely things I’m happy they have gotten rid of this season, though.  The opening with the character intros was lame, and having terminators and assorted freedom fighters popping up every episode was also really irritating.  But I think they can find something to fill in the spaces those dumb bits left behind, without sacrificing excitement and plotlines.  We still need to know just how much a part Ellison, Catherine Weaver, and her pet A.I. have to play in Judgment Day.  We still need to know how why Cameron is so important to John Connor, and why Jessie and Riley are in the picture trying to seduce him away from her.  And we need to know whether Sarah Connor will survive to see the robot war, and how much a part she will play in it now that Cameron changed her fate by bringing her into the future.  I’d like to know that the show creators have an idea of where this is all going, though sometimes it seems like they don’t and perhaps that is why they have episodes like this one, that don’t really seem to be going anywhere.

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About Melissa: By day a mild-mannered tv station receptionist, by night a fighter of crime and corruption in the dirty streets of Spokane, WA . . . or maybe not so much. More like a hyperactive, anal-retentive daytime receptionist and a melodramatic, hyperactive nighttime fangirl who only wishes she could be a fighter of crime and champion of justice (except that would lead to getting my super costume all dirty and I hate doing laundry.) Though my intent has always been to write bestselling novels and live a life of wealth and luxury, putting my talents for snarkiness and word doodling together while letting my geek flag fly suits me just fine – for now.

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