Sarah Connor (Lena Heady) has words for Cameron (Summer Glau) in TERMINATOR:THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES: Gnothi Seauton(2008).
© Fox

Mania Grade: B-
Episode: Gnothi Seauton
Starring: Lena Heady, Summer Glau, Thomas Dekker
Produced By: Mario Kassar
Network: Fox
Series: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

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TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES: Gnothi Seauton

The creators of The Sarah Connor Chronicles need to be very careful in their design of this series. When you bring in time travel as a major plot device, a story can quickly get convoluted and already there’s a lot happening regarding time travel in the first two episodes. One thing that made me happy is that Cameron, the protector Terminator interested in becoming more human-like, reveals the true importance of traveling to the future. In episode one, it seemed like an awfully extreme decision to make, but hey I just figured this is TV. The decision was made by Cameron because she knows that Sarah will die of cancer and traveling beyond Sarah’s death would avoid that event. Well, it won’t but at least it’ll let Sarah stay around for the big fight.

This episode bogged down a bit and nothing really seemed to happen. Sure, we learned more history of the Terminators and their existence in various times and we learned about the freedom fighters that came back into the past but the story just didn’t seem to go anywhere for the characters current situation. Most of the episode involved simply getting new ID’s. We learned a few other things too. I complained that Cameron’s advanced abilities over previous Terminators seemed to be that she could eat chips but actually she can gain a great deal of medical information from someone by simply touching them. The ability isn’t without limits but hey it’s something. This series takes place between T2 and T3 right? So what about seeing a liquid metal Terminator? All of the current Terminators, with a few additional abilities, seem like older models.

While they're waiting to obtain new ID’s, John is forced to hideout, not going outside at all. Well, while Cameron and Sarah are out of the house John decides to take a trip of his own. He seeks out his Mom’s ex-boyfriend and learns where he lives with his new wife. He heads there and breaks into their house. When he meets the man face to face, he bolts because he knows he should never have went there. I can see why he’d want to go there but he’s supposed to understand the weight of his situation as much as anyone so why would he take a chance on involving someone else he cared about? Simple, he does it to bring in another character to the series and allow for some subplot and filler action later in the series. We also learn, not surprisingly, that the FBI agent is a Terminator too. I actually like this twist. This Terminator is working toward his goal in a different way, not just through sheer violence but through intellect. 

I was thinking about Cameron after the end of the second episode. In some of episode one but more in episode two, we see Cameron experimenting with trying to appear more human, and she doesn’t talk very much like a human at times. Didn’t she sure seem really human when John first met her in school? The answer is: yes, she did. She was more human in those moments than at any other time in the two episodes. This leads back to the FBI agent who has been able to fool everyone around him successfully. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened, clumsy writing. On that note, the tin man stuff is a good bit heavy handed. What happened to creating themes subtly? Not all of us TV audience are idiots, we can pick up on subtly, especially when there’s so much time throughout a television series to develop those themes. It was the pilot however, and this is only the second episode, so there’s still time to make a great series. The creators certainly have the actors in Summer Glau and Lena Heady to do it. If they’ll just get down to the business of telling the current story and not bog the series down in time travel convolution, they may have something fun for us.