Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.05

Goodbye

There's a T-888 on the loose and he's hitting close to home. Opening the episode we see a man named Martin Bedell getting read to enjoy some barbecue when he comes face to face with the bot. Cut to Casa Connor and we're regaled Reese's story of why the bots are after Bedell: in the future Martin Bedell becomes one of John's right hand men. Schooled in strategy and tactics as a West Point graduate he helps to put a serious hurt on the futuristic oppressors. Lucky for the Connors however, they killed wrong Martin Bedell. There's two more listed in the phone book and its time for the Connor Clan to protect them.

Reese and John team up and head to the near by military school in search of Bedell #1. Going under cover as a student and his uncle (Get it? Cause John doesn't yet!) John quickly locates and befriends Bedell and begins to reel him in.

Sarah and Cameron set off in search of Bedell #2, a young boy who lives at home with his parents. While home by himself one afternoon trash talking on Xbox Live he hears a knock at the door. Thankfully for him Sarah's made it there already and pulls him out of the way when the T-888 blows down the door.

All the while, Catherine Weaver continues to talk the skeptic agent to a slow painful death as she steers him towards running the investigation of the near meltdown from a previous episodes escapades at the nuclear power plant. Still unsure what they're going to do with this angle, the writers continue to throw Ms. Garbage on the screen at random and make her talk in stilted fashion!

Both teams fight bad guys, both teams make friends in the form of a Martin Bedell and eventually, John Connor actually cries!

Well here you have it folks. I've been bitching about the direction of this season for four episodes now; now you get to hear me talk about an episode I liked!

Finally, "Sarah Connor Chronicles" feels like it did in the first season. There's intrigue, there's action, and yes there's drama and I still liked it. Thanks to John Shelton's comments in last week's blog post, I decided to lighten up on Sarah Connor a bit. This episode showcases more of her struggling with protecting the savior of mankind or being a mother. It's still a bit wishy washy, but looking at it in this sense as John pointed out makes it more acceptable. Written off is the idea that we're going to see the hard as nails Sarah Connor of the movies; if you can accept this and be able to take a softer side of Sarah, it works. This episode sees her as she realizes much of where she went wrong or missed out with John as she spends time with the kidnapped Martin Bedell. Some nice moments of her helping him with his homework and such pulls out an 'aww' or two. Not bad and thankfully a minor aside.

Where the true guts of the story are this week is with John and Reese as they infiltrate the nearby military school. We're given some good back story...uh...future story...flash forwards? It's all so confusing! Anyways, we're treated to some insight to the robot war through Reese's recollection of the future Bedell. Showcasing minor skirmishes throughout the time it is a light dosage, but helps to flesh things out. We also get to see a side of John that we haven't seen yet; the military minded John who's a sharp shooter and knows more about guns and such than they've showed us this far. Things like this have always been implied but never shown. As an aside, I do like Brian Austin Green as Reese; he may have been a bagadouche in "Beverly Hills 90210", but he's adjust well and does a good job as a future soldier. His old character slips out once in awhile which is funny but not too jarring.

As I said last week, character development is indeed important, I just haven't been happy with how they've developed John Connor mostly with some minor annoyance in Sarah Connor as well. I've come to terms with their vision for Sarah though finally and I'm ready to give it a chance. John, they finally showed us a harder tougher John this week and it was great! To bad they took away from that with the boo-hoo's on the way home.

As far as Catherine Weaver and Agent Ellison go? DO SOMETHING WITH THEM! I'm sure they have some jaw dropping reveal planned for the finale with these two; we already know that Ms. Weaver's the T-2000. It's pretty apparent too that she's setting herself up to be the creator of Skyenet as well, but all we get to see is her talking a lot and Agent Ellison being skeptical. So far its failed to go anywhere!