TV Review: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.3 – The Mousetrap
Posted by Kevin Carr (kevin@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 23, 2008
The Sarah Connor Chronicles, FOX, Airs Monday 8/7c
Episode: “The Mousetrap” (Season Two, Episode 3)
Synopsis: Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt) makes a return as the main bad guy when he kidnaps Charley’s wife. Knowing it’s a trap for John (Thomas Dekker), Sarah leaves him behind with Cameron (Summer Glau) while she goes to help. Meanwhile, the Garbage Terminator (Shirley Manson) contacts Special Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) to offer him a deal.
Review: Well, just when I thought we were done with Charley, he shows up again, this time with his wife in the hands of Cromartie. By the end of the show, it looks like Charley may be with us to stay, but he is becoming a more formidable fighter rather than a goofy, love-struck Sarah Connor flame. Let’s keep our fingers crossed on this one.
This episode uses the symbol of a mousetrap to show how the Terminators always seem to be one step ahead of our heroes. Charley’s wife is the bait in a trap, set for John. Yet even though the Terminators have set up some pretty clever traps, they’re pretty much batting zero for having these things actually work. Here is where the show teeters on a ledge. On one hand, they show the Terminators as having a massive presence in the present, along with valuable knowledge and tactical advantages. However, they are still woefully inept at killing a handful of soft, pink humans.
The real meat of the series is the cat-and-mouse chase of Sarah and John by the Terminators from the future. There’s also all the familial tension that they have with uncle Derek (Brian Austin Green). However, the parts I find the most interesting involve the machines from the future manipulating the timeline. There’s a lot of promise with the powerful CEO Garbage Terminator and how she has her hand in all the schemes. I’m also very curious to see where her potential partnership with Ellison will go. I’m sure when he discovers her Terminator origins, he will be more apt to help Sarah & Company.
What is really starting to wear on my nerves, which is in overkill mode for this episode, is how John is turning into a whiney little teenage girl. He’s rebelling against Sarah with no regard for how much danger he is putting everyone in. He gives out his super-secret cell phone number (and special code to verify who calls him) to everyone from Charley to the cute blond he’s sniffing around at school. It’s one thing for a teenager to rebel on an everyday basis. It’s another thing for them to be pegged as the savior of the human race yet hold no regard for safety or logic.
The one saving grace of this episode is the clips of the human Cromartie when he was a struggling actor in a Tarzan-like jungle B-movie. Hilarious bad movie acting saves the episode to a degree.
I hope future episodes don’t focus so much on John trying to score with his girlfriend but rather tell the story of how John actually builds his resistance team.
Up Next Week: Another memory glitch sends Cameron into an amnesiac state. She wanders off, and the people who find her start to dig too far into her memory.
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Did you watch The Sarah Connor Chroniclesthis week? If so, feel free to discuss below.
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