Sepinwall on TV: 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' season two review

by Alan Sepinwall/The Star-Ledger

What do you do if you're producing a show about people trying to prevent machines from taking over the world and your most compelling and popular character by far is one of the machines? If you're the producers of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (8 p.m., Ch. 5), you open your second season by blowing up everybody's favorite robot -- for a while, anyway -- and trying to pump up your human characters into the heroes they're supposed to be.

It's not a spoiler to say that Cameron, the willowy but deadly reprogrammed Terminator played by Summer Glau, didn't die in the explosion that ended the show's uneven first season. Glau has been featured prominently in all the advertising, and no fan of the show would be foolish enough to think the producers would be foolish enough to dump her. After all, the dancer-turned-butt-kicker's physically strange and marvelous performance was and still is the best reason to watch.

But the explosion does temporarily prevent Cameron from playing her role as protector to future rebel leader John Connor (Thomas Dekker) and his mother, Sarah (Lena Headey), and that gives the "Terminator" producers a chance to make some course corrections.

They already made a few during the first season. Headey's Sarah was far saner and blander than the character from the "Terminator" films. That's no doubt a result of the belief among TV executives that main characters need to be "relatable" -- why would a soccer mom want to watch a psycho mom? -- but it robbed the series of the unpredictable intensity Linda Hamilton gave to the second movie. Rather than have Sarah lose her grip on reality, the producers introduced a new character, John's uncle from the future, Derek Reese. Well played by, of all people, Brian Austin Green from the original "90210," Derek brought the crazy, which helped the show but not Sarah.

John, meanwhile, came off as a whiny kid very far removed from the brilliant commander we're all told he'll grow up to be.

So the second season premiere, "Samson and Delilah," is a concentrated effort to make Sarah and John seem more like saviors than those in need of saving, and if the Biblical allusions get laid on thick at times -- at one point, they face down a bad guy inside a church -- remember that the original "Terminator" screenwriters deliberately gave their messiah the initials J.C.

The transformations aren't complete by episode's end -- though at least Dekker chops off his floppy Emo bangs -- but it's a step in the right direction for a series that struggled to live up to its potential and pedigree last spring. So long as Glau, Green and Garret Dillahunt (as an unreformed Terminator) are around, it at least won't be dull.

One other change I should note: Alt-rocker Shirley Manson joins the cast as a businesswoman who's very interested in the computer that Sarah and John fear will be turned into the evil SkyNet. Manson, with carrot-colored hair and porcelain skin, has an interesting visual presence, but she's not much of an actress yet. Her most prominent scene in the premiere is unintentionally funny, whether or not you know that one of her band Garbage's biggest hits, "Androgyny," featured lyrics about "boys in the girls' room, girls in the men's room."

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com, or by writing him at 1 Star-Ledger Plaza, Newark, N.J. 07102-1200. Please include your full name and hometown.