In the first five minutes of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," we see a robot from the future track Sarah and John Connor and try to murder them with a shotgun and a couple of Uzis. He mows down a slew of cops in the process. Terminator fans will no doubt be happy to see that the television show is loyal to its source material.
Set after the events in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (the show ignores the third movie), it begins with mother and son running from the law because of the mayhem they caused in that film. Hunting them is the FBI, which we quickly learn has been infiltrated by a terminator. John (Thomas Dekker), yearning for a normal teenage life, is resentful of his Messianic status as the future savior of mankind from the machines, but he's a pretty good sport about it all. Lena Headey plays Sarah, and while she never makes you forget Linda Hamilton, she's appropriately intense and efficient. The two of them manage to be kind of cute together, despite the fact that Sarah is usually shouting (justifiably paranoid) lines at John like, "No one is ever safe!"
John is just settling in at the latest in a long string of high schools when his teacher pulls a handgun out of his robotic leg and starts busting caps. Fortunately the cute girl sitting next to John is also a terminator, and she's here to protect him. From there the basic premise mirrors that of T2: a "good" terminator protects Sarah and John from a "bad" one (here a couple of bad ones). But instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger, we get Summer Glau, the wide-eyed girl next door, sporting lip gloss and mini-skirts. In contrast to Arnold's unwavering voice, Glau's hushed tones feel timid and confused. She's actually more believable when she's kicking ass. Then again, she's attractive enough that most fan boys won't care about her acting chops; and terminators are always kind of aloof, anyway.
Fans should enjoy references to the films peppered throughout the show, from quotes ("Come with me if you want to live"), to secondary characters (the Dyson family, the arms hoarder Enrique), to visual homage (the rolling highway, the lonely swing set). The show puts clever spins on the films' established time travel mechanism. It also shares its predecessors' penchant for cheesy (and generally amusing) one-liners.
Naturally, there are ways in which "Sarah Connor Chronicles" suffers as a result of its medium. Sarah was working through emotional scars ten years after her first brush with a terminator; here she has to maintain her sanity while outrunning an android every week. And the special effects obviously can't compete with those in a big-budget James Cameron film. But as far as television sci-fi action romps go, this is really not bad; it's about as good as one could reasonably hope for a Terminator t.v. show to be.
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