This is what the writers' strike has done to Monday night television.
You can choose between the "Terminator" (1984) spin-off "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," the "Dancing with the Stars" spin-off, "Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann" and "Deal or No Deal?" And hey, Lifetime's showing "The Fantasia Barrino Story!"
"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" on FOX is, sadly, the cream of the post-writers' strike crop. It's a diverting show with an interesting premise and a few flaws. The show takes place after the movie "Terminator 2" (1991), starting in the year 1999. Sarah Connor (played by Lena Headey, who also played Queen Gorgo in "300" (2007)) must, at all costs, protect her son John (Thomas Dekker)from time-traveling robots from the future.
If the words "robots from the future" give you pause, "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is probably not the television show for you. In the pilot, John is attacked by a robot assassin and saved by another robot (a more advanced model, one who looks like a pretty teenage girl and eats potato chips). By the end of the episode, he and his mother are transported to "the future," also known as 2007.
This is apparently the only back story the show's creators thought was necessary, leaving people who have not seen the "Terminator" films in the lurch. No more than a few sentences of exposition are given, which can be either refreshing or frustrating, depending on your point of view.
Without using the films as its foundation, the show does not make very much sense. How do they time travel? Why do they want to destroy the mysterious "Skynet?" Do they really expect us to believe that this whiny, brooding teenage boy will lead an army of followers? John Connor does not exactly inspire confidence.
The females around him, however, kick serious robot butt. His mother is from the school of tough love, and her character's hard edges make her interesting. Her gooey, "philosophical" voiceovers, on the other hand, are mostly just irritating.
Headey should take a hint from Cameron (Summer Glau), a robot chick without the programming for real emotions. Her dynamic martial arts prowess is paired with the clichéd artificial-intelligence blank stare and inability to comprehend humor and rhetorical questions.
Sarah, on the other hand, is full of questions and makes sure that we take away an appropriate moral lesson from each episode. She even feels the need to explain how horrible Sept. 11 must have been for those of us who did not time travel past that year, leading one to wonder whether Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign has been meddling with the show's script.
Though the plot is mostly just a setup for the sci-fi action, the script has its moments. Sometimes it tries too hard, making it difficult to take the characters seriously (viewers might just laugh at the unnecessary fact that Sarah reads "The Wizard of Oz" to her son in Spanish). But the script's quirks might surprise you from time to time. The best line by far is in the first episode when Sarah tells John to pack "one bag, plus the guns. I'll make pancakes." The show examines the interesting line between Sarah's need to be both protector and nurturer, though most viewers would prefer not to be beaten over the head with it.
"The Sarah Connor Chronicles" could probably benefit from less moralizing and more action. It's fun to watch robots fight, since bullets barely slow them down. Cars suffer the most damage of all, with so many vehicles getting destroyed during the first two hours that you have to take off your shoes to keep track of them all.
It's a great deal less fun to watch Headey's incessant brooding. We get it - the future is scary, and saving your kid so he can be a new messiah is hard work; we don't need your voiceover or pensive stare to tell us so.
If you desperately need something to watch on Monday nights, "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" will take up an hour of your time. Going into it without a solid knowledge of the "Terminator" saga, however, will make that hour rather perplexing and ultimately unrewarding.
