This week was going to be different. I took a few comments to heart about being too hard on this show or too quick to dismiss it. This was going to be the week I dug in and really went deep with the show. Then something went wrong. I live in Chicago, a place of extreme weather every type of sausage you could imagine. While watching the Super Bowl last night, an unexpected snowfall kept threatening to knock out my satellite reception. It didn't, fortunately, but sometime later something went horribly awry. Around 8:20 tonight I turned on the TV to watch this week's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles only to see Hugh Laurie's scowling, frozen face and a "Searching for signal" message from DirecTV. D'oh.
That I'd run into such technical difficulties while trying to watch a show about technology gone awry didn't escape me, though I don't think Skynet is directly responsible for this. I did catch the last 35 minutes or so, but I'm not about to do a proper entry on it. But I will say that it looked like an okay episode. It's becoming clear that the series is pretty tightly plotted. We're getting callbacks to all the previous episodes and learning more about the way terminators work, even if the way they work doesn't make that much sense. What would a standby mode accomplish besides making the machine vulnerable? Are the batteries that weak? At any rate, it at least created a nice bit of tension and the Cameron vs. terminator fight that followed was pretty satisfying. One criticism I will venture based on what I saw: The voiceover has got to get better or go. That's some not good television.
So, my apologies. I'll try to catch up with this episode before watching next week's installment–the "most adrenaline-fueled Terminator of the season," if the promos are to be believed, although it looked an awful like an attempt to recreate the reservoir chase from T2 from the flashes I saw. Meanwhile, I'll open the floor up to you guys for comments.
Grade: Incomplete