I’m a bad man. I have been pretty busy and have neglected reviewing Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. And there’s no excuse, because I’ve kept up with watching the shows and in my opinion, it’s been a fantastic season.

T:TSCC has evolved from simply an action show to a hard look at time travel paradoxes, the nature of artificial intelligence, and family relationships in stress. And for me, it totally works.

The latest episode, potentially the second to last ever unless the show receives a last-minute third season renewal this May, sets up the end game of the Connors versus Catherine Weaver, the T-1001 running ZeiraCorp with a mysterious ulterior motive.

Last week a bunch of humans, we don’t know who they work for, attacked both Cameron & Derek and Sarah & John. Cameron ultimately saved Derek and while Sarah was away from John, Charlie Dixon gave his life to save John. This week, they all meet up at the unmarked gravesite where Derek’s brother and John’s father is buried. The men that attacked them have a picture of Savannah Weaver. The Connors surmise that whoever attacked them has one more target, and John remembers Savannah from earlier in the season at the therapist’s office.

A Terminator invades the Weaver house, killing the nanny and going for Savannah, but Savannah has built an oddly touching relationship with John Henry, the AI that Weaver is trying to raise with some sort of morality. He tries to guide Savannah to safety but ultimately she is saved by the Connors.

However, in one of the show’s biggest surprises ever, the Terminator casually shoots Derek in the head while searching for Savannah. There is no build-up, musical sting, or any cue. It’s within the show’s first few minutes and Derek is just gone. It’s incredibly shocking to lose such an awesome, fascinating character and in such an atypical way. But I think it works perfectly, in that it raises the stakes for our remaining characters and gives the show a realism that it needs when dealing with time travel and robots. The fact is if you go up one-on-one with a Terminator, you have no chance. Your only hope is to run or catch it off guard.

The police begin an investigation to find Savannah, but Weaver quietly has Ellison, as head of security, talk with John Henry. Reading between the lines in this episode, we realize that John Henry is not Skynet. Instead he seems to be being groomed to oppose Skynet. There are at least two factions of the Terminators in the future, in addition to the human resistance. I hope we get some solid answers next week on what each side wants.

John Henry has learned that Ellison lied about not knowing Sarah Connor. He worries that she wants to kill him. We also realize that he knows Weaver lies and that he knows she is a robot. Still, he wants to help save Savannah. Weaver, meanwhile, explains to Ellison that Savannah’s ultimate survival will depend on John Henry’s survival and they don’t tell the police about him or what he has seen.

Ellison meets with Sarah to get Savannah back to her mother. Sarah agrees as long as she can meet Weaver, who John suspects has answers they want. Ellison agrees and the handoff takes place but Sarah is confronted outside by a large squad of police officers. Ellison says he didn’t tip them off and I believe that. Did Weaver call them? Or was the police detective just smart? I think the latter.

Anyway, Sarah is arrested (as far as the police are concerned she killed Miles Dyson and blew up Cyberdyne) and John is now left on the run with only Cameron. Early on in the season, producer/creator Josh Friedman said that of the three women in John Connor’s life (Riley, Sarah, and Cameron) one would die, one would leave him, and one would betray him. Anyone else think Cameron’s chip might go buggy in the finale?

This episode packed robot-on-robot action, reversals of fortune, and clever clues and answers on the forces involved in the Future War and in my opinion was about as good as the show gets. It loses a tiny bit only because there wasn’t more Cameron and it was sad to see Derek go (only to be buried in an unmarked grave in the same place as his brother).

I give this episode 4.75 Terminators out of 5.

photo credit: Grufnik