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Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, FOX, Airs Monday 8/7c

After picking up some steam from the new Terminator movie due out next year and some solid buzz at Comic-Con this summer, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” heads into its explosive second season. Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and her son John (Thomas Dekker) have traveled ahead in time to escape Terminators sent back to assassinate them. The sexy Cameron (Summer Glau) is a Terminator from 2027 that has been reprogrammed to help them survive.

Episode: “Samson & Delilah” (Season Two, Episode 1)

Synopsis: Sarah and John’s negotiations to get their hands on the Turk, a computer program that will eventually become SkyNet, turn sour. Cameron is rocked in a jeep explosion that resets her programming, making her target John for termination, which sends him and Sarah on the run. Meanwhile, Special Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) is the only one left standing after the Terminator Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt) massacred the team sent to take him in.

Review: The episode starts out with a bang… literally. We’re given the runaround as to where the Turk is, and Sarah and John go on the run from Cameron after they kill their captors. Watching Cameron relentlessly stalk Sarah and John is entertaining enough, fondly reminding me of the original films. Let’s face it… Summer Glau is at least half of my motivation to watch this show because it’s a great deal of fun to watch her kick a whole lotta ass. Since she’s one of the anchor characters on the show, I expected her programming to get resolved by the end of the show. Thomas Dekker takes on a darker tone as we see the soldier emerge in John Connor’s personality. While not the greatest actor in the universe, Dekker plays a better and more sympathetic John than Edward Furlong or Nick Stahl ever did. Lena Headey continues to brood a little too much, and 90210 alum Brian Austin Green isn’t given much to work with in this episode as Derek Reese, John’s uncle. Fortunately, the writers seem to have shed some dead character weight, letting Sarah’s former lover Charley (Dean Winters) go back to his regular life. The tone of this season seems to be following that of the first, but I do hope things don’t start to wander aimlessly on the run like an old string of “The Incredible Hulk” episodes. Take heart because we see a little more depth potential with Cromartie as he starts to communicate with Ellison, and we also see a new villain introduced in Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson), a corporate CEO looking to bring about Judgment Day, who also has a big secret of her own. – Kevin Carr

Did you catch the first episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles? If so, please feel free to discuss it below…