Tuesday, February 19

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles Episode 6 Review

A lot of my friends were not so positive about "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," but I have been and the episodes are just getting better. Also, Brian Austin Green being cast in the show didn't help things. Fans were scared he was going to play an older John Connor or even Kyle Reese. Last week, he was revealed to be Derek Reese, Kyle's brother and John's uncle. Which is just fine with me. This week, the episode "Dungeons & Dragons" really rounded out things and filled in the mythology. Basically, we are given flashbacks from Derek's perspective of the future. Does that make any sense? Well, to make a place look post-apocalyptic is not hard on television, since everything has to look like a mess and less buildings. We get an inside view on how it is in the future. Derek gets captured by Terminators so much of the episode is in a 'prison' house.

While in the present, John surprises the girls with Charlie Dixon (Dean Winters) at the end of the last episode to care for Derek (above). Derek received nasty wounds last episode. Charlie is Sarah's fiancée she abandoned eight years ago before they went to our time. He still loves Sarah and she has to tell him a bit of the truth, he did pick a bit from the CIA (about the future, etc.). John wants to tell Derek he is his uncle but Sarah is against it. She says they are family but that doesn't mean they can trust each other. Charlie witnesses Cameron taking a Terminator apart and believes the whole future thing better. He even has a conversation/scene with Cameron. He puts emphasis on how scary she is. Could this foreshadowing? Sarah then has to have a heart-to-heart with Cameron about not harming Charlie. Dean Winters is such a great actor, I really feel for his character.

The surprise was they actually got an actor playing Kyle Reese. It is Jonathan Jackson. I don't have a picture of him from the show but he is much more rough looking, with more facial hair, not clean cut like above. Sarah mentions in the episode that he had piercing eyes. His eyes do indeed stand out. This comes from John asking her if Derek resembles Kyle, she says they do, they don't for me, but eh, go for it. In the epsiode, Kyle has the legended picture of Sarah, but it is distinctly different from the one in the first movie. For one, she is in a white desert outfit and the picture has less wear-and-tear than the one in the movie. It still has the same origin, it was a Polaroid photo taken in Mexico. Derek even says he is 'tried of seeing that damn photo.'

It also happens to be that in the future, Derek met Cameron. Cameron was 'reprogrammed.' Cameron doesn't remember meeting him and explains to Sarah that she was reprogrammed. Sarah is not sure about this. Derek doesn't trust the Terminators as much as he can throw them either. The episode deals with his distrust of them. In the whole episode, he tries hard to meet with John to find out what happened to his brother Kyle who he was separated from. In the timeline, Kyle went to the past to save Sarah. Then later, Derek went to the past with three others to be the resistant fighters. In Episode 2, they were killed except for Derek. So, in the end, Charlie does find out Derek is John's uncle and at least that John's father is dead. As for what Sarah said about not trusting Derek, that is precedented in the ending of the episode, where it is shown Derek did indeed killed Andy Goode (Brendan Hines) and he said he didn't. For those who don't know, Andy Goode is a chess-freak who creates a self-thinking computer that lead to SkyNet and Sarah dates in Episode 3.