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TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES: Automatic for the People
Sarah Gets Crapped Up This Week By
Stephen Lackey
September 17, 2008
TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES
© FOX
This season of Sarah Connor Chronicles started off strong. The hope is that the show maintains that level of quality throughout its run but that sets a high bar. So, of course this episode is of lesser quality overall than the previous episode, and even worse it sets up a writing crutch that we’re unfortunately going to see again and again in this series. What the episode does right is that it places Sarah and John in their proper positions in this universe. The show is called “Sarah Connor Chronicles” not the “John Connor Chronicles” so the show should be Sarah central with John’s evolution as a leader happening as a part of the story and a result of Sarah’s actions.
So, this week John is trying to go back to school, flip flopping from his dedication to the cause and back to “I wanna be a regular person”. He’s inconsistent as a character and needs to be developed in a way that makes sense from week to week. He meets a girl this week that is well portrayed by the actress but also takes a good bit of abuse from him before he finally opens up to her. At the same time, Sarah is setting up a new place for her, John, and the rest of her motley crew to live. Right after moving in a dying man from the future breaks through glass doors in their new place and gives them their mission of the week. This is the crutch I was speaking of. Now anytime the writers need a quick and easy set up, they can just send a soldier from the future to give instructions and then let him die from the trip. So, this red shirt appears from the future naked in an alley, grabs a coat from a homeless man, and runs right to Sarah’s new house. Sure, this is easy to explain away by saying that there are records in the future of where Sarah and John were at that exact time so it was easy for the man to find them. Problem is, if that were true why do the terminators have so much trouble finding Sarah and John? You’d think during the future war that SkyNet would be able to find whatever documentation that exist that details Sarah and John’s locations at various points in time. This kind of weak writing could be the death of this series.
Speaking of the future war – the brief scene from the future of the battle around the power plant was a great looking exciting scene. Hopefully there’ll be more scenes from the future like this one. The other great scene in the episode was the appearance of the Shirley Manson terminator. The intriguing part of this episode was the puzzle set up for Sarah; if she completes her mission SkyNet wins, if she doesn’t complete her mission, SkyNet could still win. Inevitably, Sarah didn’t contemplate the situation too deeply and the final moments of the episode show the true success or failure of Sarah and Cameron and a bit more of SkyNets more complex plan is revealed.
The story ends up being interesting and it offers some great potential for future story arcs but it’s also littered with inconsistencies and writing crutches. So, it basically balances itself out this week. Automatic for the People was a good installment but one of the weaker ones since the show found its footing.