Review: Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles 1.07
by Paul Talon on Feb.27, 2008, under Reviews by Paul Talon, Television, Terminator
“The Demon Hand”
As you can tell from the previous episode and more currently, the title of the episode, the central theme revolves around getting the severed hand of the Terminator back so it can be destroyed. There are three main plots that are weaved together but for simplicity I’ll take them apart and go through storyline by storyline.
As we recall, Agent Ellison picked up the hand, but at this point, he’s left it out of the official investigation because he realizes that no one is listening to him really. He is choosing to research portions of this on his own.
After researching more on Sarah Connor and her hospital stay, he wants to track down people who worked there when she was a patient. Eventually he tracks down Dr. Silverman (previously known in the Terminator film franchise as Dr. Silberman) who for TV is being played by veteran character actor Bruce Davison.
After seeing everything he’s seen with Sarah and Arnie, he’s gone a little paranoid himself. He is frightened that Ellison is a Terminator who has come to hunt him down. He drugs Ellison and ties him to a chair before jabbing a knife into his knee to prove what the agent is.
After proving that Ellison is human, Silverman listens intently to what the agent knows. Ellison tells Silverman of the hand which is in his trunk. Quickly Silverman finds the hand and decides that Ellison knows too much and that his own personal safety could be in jeopardy. He decides to burn the house with Ellison in it.
Fortunately while Ellison is screaming and only semi-conscious, Sarah finally shows up after tracking the hand and Ellison down. She knocks Silverman unconscious before taking the hand. After hearing Ellison scream, she hesitates and then goes in to drag the now mostly unconscious Ellison out of the house. When he awakens, Sarah is long gone, but Ellison doesn’t know quite to believe his memories about Sarah helping him.
I wasn’t a big fan of Silberman…sorry Silverman going so completely nutso. I felt as if it cheapened the character quite a bit to make him as selfish as his paranoia has made him. I honestly almost feel better considering him a different character. Ellison however is becoming much more intriguing. As he is slowly being won over through his investigations he still maintains that third power in the Sarah clan/Terminator struggle for supremacy. Ellison is intelligent and well handled and I look forward to the episode where Ellison catches up to the Sarah Connor clan.
Cameron’s storyline meanwhile is mostly forgettable until the ending. Charged with tracking down Shipkov, Cameron infiltrates Shipkov’s sister’s ballet class. Besides the humorous lines like, “You’re upper body is too mechanical.” there isn’t much texture here.
She learns that Shipkov owes some men some money after a ruffian comes in to talk to his sister about it. Cameron beats up the guy and promises to help her and Shipkov if she can take her to him.
When Cameron gets there she learns that Shipkov did steal the Turk and then sold it to pay off some debts. The interesting thing is that once Cameron gets the information she leaves them high and dry as gangsters come in to shoot up the Shipkovs. Cameron walks away while it is happening. True to character, it makes you wonder about the development of Cameron as a “good guy”.
Back at the homefront, Derek does nothing this episode but recover slowly and keep reiterating every chance he can get that Cameron has to go. It gets a little old after awhile and it reminded me of Silver asking Donna to have sex with him at least twice an episode.
We get the point, you think they are bad.
John sees a video of Sarah that she pilfered from Agent Ellison’s house that shows her giving up her parental rights to John which truly upsets him.
Um…has she not proven over and over again how much she loves you? It’s an emo moment that is really beneath Connor and the only motivation there could really be is to show that Connor is still not quite the mature resistance leader he will supposedly become.
A much better episode this week as it mixed action with advancing storylines and characters more efficiently. It didn’t help that Ellison appeared in this week’s episode and he always adds a more interesting angle to the show.