Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Pilot (Episode 101)

 You threaten my son, you go DOWN, bitch.

Writer's strike be damned: there's still new TV to be had!  Welcome, everyone, to the much anticipated premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  Basic premise: Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor (A.K.A. the Savior of Mankind from the Terminator movies) uses maternal instincts and big giant guns (ahem - I mean the kind that shoot bullets, ya bunch of pervs) to defend her son from a new batch of robotic baddies.  If you didn't catch the pilot last night, read this recap and then run, don't walk, to watch part two, airing this evening on Fox.  We're one episode in and already it's clear that this show's going to freakin' rock. 

We start off with Sarah intoning a terse voiceover as she drives down a country road.  Some people believe a child shares his mother's dreams while he sleeps inside of her.  That's why children reach for their mothers when they're born.  But what if the mother has always known what's in store for her child - that he'll be hunted, and that his fate was tied to millions of people?  That every moment of her life would be spent keeping him alive?  Would he understand why she was so hard, why she held on to him so tightly?  Would he still reach for her if the only dream she could offer was a nightmare? 

Them's words for pondering, y'all, but not right now - action time!  Dressed in a v.v. short waitress uniform (seriously, I hope she doesn't have to bend over in that thing, because you would definitely catch a glimpse of her Fruit of the Looms) Sarah charges into a school and finds her son John, ordering him to come with her.  They run outside, only to find themselves surrounded by cops.  They're loaded into separate cop cars, and as Sarah surveys the scene she spots a man coming purposefully toward them.  Sarah busts out the kickassery I remember from Terminator II and headbutts the hell out of the cop next to her, grabbing his handcuff keys.  The determined man, a Terminator if I've ever seen one (though not a familiar model), pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and begins taking out cops.  Sarah gets her cuffs off, then makes her way to John.  She screams at him to run, firing a nearby pistol at the Terminator.  It barely fazes him and he shoots John squarely in the back.  Sarah screams and runs to her son as the Terminator approaches.  "Kill me," she sobs.  "It doesn't matter anymore."  The Terminator smirks.  Can Terminators smirk?  Apparently they can now.  "The future is ours, and it begins now," he intones.  Behind him, nuclear explosions go off, the school is demolished and fire melts off the Terminator's skin, revealing a ghoulish, grinning metal skull.  A robot skeleton hand closes around Sarah's throat.  Bad.  Fuckin.' ASS.

Too bad it was all a dream! Sarah wakes to her fiancé (fiancé!) soothing her out of the nightmare.  She says that she's fine, and they talk about the engagement ring that he has purchased for her - turns out that John's the one who picked it.  He's currently 15 years old.  Sarah tells her fiancé that she loves him - he should always remember that.  They kiss, and he gets up to go to work.  Uh oh, dude... that "Always remember I love you" thing?  It doesn't bode well for you.  Guys, if you ever hear that from your lady, maybe you should call in sick to work that day.

We're in West Fork, Nebraska, in August of 1999, and Sarah Connor fondly watches her son sleep.  He startles awake and knows that something's up.  Sarah tells him that they can't stay there anymore.  John's angry; they've been in this place two years and nothing's ever happened.  He insists that they're safe, but Sarah replies that nobody's ever safe.  He has half an hour; he can pack one bag, plus the guns.  My impression of a fifteen-year-old boy packing:  "Okay, I've put in a couple of pairs of sorta clean socks and my cargo shorts plus that T-shirt my mom totally hates.  Now, how much porn can I fit in my duffel bag?  Maybe I should take out the socks."  In the car, Sarah's voiceover says that every family has rules.  Theirs are to keep your head down and eyes open, and to try not to stand out.  And to know your exits. 

Sarah's fiancé has gone to the cops about her disappearance, and is surprised to meet an FBI agent named Ellison, who asks about Skynet.  He lets Fiancé know that Sarah helped blow up the facility that was developing Skynet, and that a man named Miles Dyson died there.  Oh yeah, and that Sarah thinks John's the leader of the resistance against the robots who will nuke the human race.  Well jeez, when you say it like that it sounds downright crazy.  Fiancé's not sure why they're laying all this on him.  It's because Ellison wants information about Sarah so that he can bust her for Dyson's murder.  In fact, he may or may not be just an eensy bit obsessed with this case.  As he researches Sarah's alias, her profile pops up on another computer.  A reflection on its screen shows the glowing eyes of a Terminator focusing nastily on her picture. 

Red Valley, New Mexico, September 1999, and it's John's first day at his new school.  He meets a girl named Cameron, played by the lovely and talented Summer Glau.  You may know her from another sci-fi show that was 28 flavors of awesome, called Serenity.  Cute lil' Cameron's interested in John, who somehow he manages to be evasive and smitten at the same time.  Back home, Sarah straightens up his room and they have a mini-argument over clothes and a computer class, which is diffused by her asking if he met any pretty girls.  John: "Dude even though I am the Savior of Mankind I can still lie to my mom and say that I haven't met any pretty girls."  Meanwhile, Agent Ellison has also arrived in New Mexico.

The next day at school, Cameron sits next to John.  He comes clean about his mother being kinda uptight - he's all she's got, so she wants him around all the time.  Just then, in comes a substitute teacher whose polo shirt is buttoned just a little bit too perfectly for my taste.  Sure enough: as he takes attendance he stabs himself in the leg.  Gross!  Cameron's looking suspicious too, and with good reason; when he comes to John's alias name, the "sub" pulls a gun from the opening in his mechanical leg and starts shooting!  John dives away and Cameron leaps into the line of fire, getting hit three times in the chest. The students scream and huddle beneath desks.  John makes his escape out the window, and the baddie goes after him, but apparently can't resist making a very Terminator-esque statement before he goes: "Class dismissed."  Har!  The class is less impressed by the ironic one-liner than by the nifty robot innards that are very clearly showing. 

Outside, the Terminator shoots at John and conveniently misses.  Meanwhile, Sarah hears about a school shooting on the news at the diner where she's working, and immediately drops a plate of food.  The Terminator closes in on John, who cowers on the ground.  It's point blank, he's not going to miss... and then, Ka-BLAMMO!  Out of nowhere that bad old Terminator is hit by a pickup truck going approximately 596294 miles per hour.  The passenger door opens, and it's none other than "Three-Bullet" Cameron behind the wheel.  "Come with me if you want to live," she intones.  HA!  We've heard that before!  What up, she's a Terminator!  John gapes but figures it out and does what she says. 

Sarah spies on the action at the school from afar, until she suddenly gets grabbed by the throat.  The Terminator answers her cell phone in her voice (I've always thought that was a creepy trick), telling John to meet "her" back at the house.  There, he slams Sarah into a chair and uses her as bait.  John walks in and the Terminator fires several rounds, walking over to confirm his kill.  But it's not John... it's Cameron, wearing his sweatshirt!  She can do the voice thing, too, nah-nah!  The two Terminators set to a fabulous staring contest, whilst tearing the house apart as they kick the holy metal crap out of each other.  The fight takes them into the basement, where Cameron electrocutes the baddie with a live wire.  She runs out just in time to hop onto Sarah and John's speeding escape vehicle.  She's been sent to protect them.  Oh, and the other Terminator's programming will reboot in 120 seconds.  Sure enough, as they make like Speedy Gonzales down the desert road, the Terminator's eyes open.  This ain't over. 

Later, they've made camp for the night.  John's sleeping as a gratuitously semi-nude Cameron pries bullets out from under her skin.  She's from the year 2027, and has been searching for them for 73 days.  Even though Dyson was killed, someone else will build Skynet (she doesn't know who) and the apocalypse is set to happen on schedule.  Sarah:  "Well, crap on a cracker."  Meanwhile, back at the destroyed house, FBI Agent Ellison is, shall we say, a little chagrined that he has 19 witnesses who saw a dude with a robot leg trying to blast a cap in John Connor.  Said Terminator is currently patching himself up with that ever useful standby: Duct Tape. 

The good guys prepare to hit the road.  John wonders why this is happening again; he thought his mother stopped it.  Maybe she changed the future, but just not enough.  He can't keep running.  He isn't some Messiah, and can't lead an army.  John begs Sarah to stop this from happening.  My ovaries twitch with the sheer force of the motherly mojo radiating out of this scene as Sarah hugs him and says that she will.  They're not going to Mexico.  Nope: they're going to find Skynet.  Later, Cameron apologizes for lying to John.  He's a little bitter about the whole hot-chick-pretending-to-be-his-friend thing, but realizes that it's in her programming.  He should have known it was to good to be true.  But Cameron tells him that in the future he has many friends.  He asks what model she is, because she seems different.  Almost slyly, Cameron tells him that she is.  Naturally, my mind catapults straight into the gutter.  Anatomically correct Terminator, anyone?

The Connor posse shows up at the Dyson residence, much to the displeasure of the widowed Mrs. Dyson.  Sarah insists that she didn't kill Miles Dyson, and that now they need help.  "We're back," Cameron says, and her eyes glow all freaky-deaky to prove it.  It's all happening again, and Miles' work is the only link.  Sarah needs to know who else knew about Skynet.  Mrs. Dyson insists that nobody else was in on it, and that all the work was destroyed.  Cameron says they have to go - the baddie Terminator is approaching.  Sarah begs Mrs. Dyson to help her son. 

Apparently by "Help my son," she meant, "Fork over your car," because the next thing you know they screech out of the garage and take down the Terminator like some kind of lawn mower on crack.  Sarah at the wheel, they go careening down the driveway with the Terminator firing after them.  Sarah gets hit in the shoulder, but as Terminator runs past the pickup they were driving before, Cameron clicks a button and the whole damned thing explodes, tossing him like a really ugly rag doll and making even more metal show under his peeled-back skin.  Dude.  This guy needs some band-aids or something.  Is that a fiber-optic cable sticking out from his ear? 

At the nearest town, John goes for bandages as Cameron stitches Sarah up in an abandoned garage.  Sarah says that they can't keep running, or she'll lose John; he'll leave her.  The next morning Cameron takes them to a bank, where she apparently has a security deposit box that was opened in 1963.  Without hesitation, she walks in and grabs guns from the security guards.  She orders a teller to lock them in the vault with keys and get away from the door.  Once they're closed inside, Cameron scans the boxes before punching one open.  Inside are many sets of keys to different safety deposit boxes.  Cameron tells Sarah and John to open the other boxes and place the items inside on a table.  They pull out machinery parts as the cops and SWAT team arrive outside.  Agent Ellison is snagged, and seems genuinely confused about what's going on.  Cameron is busy assembling the parts into a really fuckin' big gun.  She says that when they come back through time, nothing comes with them: no weapons, no clothing, nothing.  This weapon is made from salvaged Terminator parts.  Kickass.

At the bank, the baddie Terminator arrives.  He strolls right past the stunned SWAT team and starts banging on the vault door like the cops on Britney's bathroom door (yeah, I said it!). Cameron gives the gun to Sarah.  When the isotope solution turns red, it can be fired.  As Sarah keeps the gun trained on the door, Cameron's opening other safety deposit boxes and pulling out... computer terminals?  Turns out that when this bank was built, one of their engineers came back in time and got a job wiring the vault to contain... a time machine!  Cameron wants to take the Connors forward in time, so that they can kill Skynet before it's born.  They can stop running and fight.  The Terminator rips open the door like a tin can, clawing his way toward them. 

John shouts that they've got to go, now!  The solution in the gun turns red as Cameron punches buttons.  Blue lightning arcs around them and Sarah fires at the Terminator, tossing him back.  A bubble forms around Sarah, John, and Cameron... and then suddenly the same bubble appears in the middle of a busy freeway in the middle of the night.  Cars swerve around, barely missing it.  One of them screeches to a stop right in front of the three naked figures that pick themselves up off of the ground, looking dazed.  A teenager in the car gleefully holds out his cell phone and hits record, the little pervert.  Cameron drags them away, off of the freeway and down toward a construction site.  They're in the same place, just a different time... the year 2007.  Sarah and John hide behind some equipment as a car of drunk teenagers handily pulls up and hits on the unabashedly nude Cameron, who promptly dispatches them with a few awesome round kicks.  After having stolen the teenagers' clothes, Cameron says that somewhere nearby Skynet will be born.  But nobody knows they're here.  "You're safe," she says to John.  "Nobody's ever safe," John and Sarah reply in unison.  Aw.  Look at the touching legacy of paranoia that John's inherited from his mother.  Tear!

Sarah's voiceover comes on again.  "It is said that the death of any one person is the death of an entire world.  For a parent, the death of a child is no less than a holocaust.  In the case of my son, these words are literally true."  We see the FBI agent barely missing the cell phone footage of naked!Sarah, on TV, but the incredulous ex-fiancé (now married - it is 8 years later) sees it.  "Even though we've traveled through time, they'll keep coming, keep trying to kill him.  It's going to be one helluva dogfight."  We finish with a shot of John walking into a new house, with a watchful Cameron and Sarah right behind, still scanning the horizon.