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Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.1 FAQ

What’s it called?
“Samson and Delilah.”

Who's responsible?
Teleplay is credited to series mastermind Josh Friedman (2005's "War of the Worlds").

What does Fox say?
“Rocked by the Jeep explosion, John's 16th birthday forces him to confront the reality of his destiny alone. Meanwhile, Agent Ellison faces off with his faith and the Feds in the aftermath of Cromartie's massacre, and a new player is introduced, Catherine Weaver (Manson), who is the CEO of a high-tech corporation. Cast: Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau, Brian Austin Green, Richard T. Jones, Garret Dillahunt, and Shirley Manson. Guest Cast: Dean Winters as Charley Dixon; Sandra Purpuro as Agent Norgaard; Marcus Chait as Justin Tuck; James Urbaniak as Sarkissian; Shane Edelman as Matt Murch; Carlos Sanz as Minister; Robert Guenveur Smith as Sac Federici; Noemi Amarilla as TV Filed Reporter; and Max Perlich as Walsh.”

The big news?
The Connors find themselves confronted by a mechanism from the future they’ve not been menaced by before.

Last season ended with Cameron caught in an explosion. What’s doing with the Connors’ cyborg protector?
Cameron is so damaged she is of little use to the Connors in this installment.

What else is Fox not telling us?
Weaver’s company wants the Turk chess computer many believe will evolve into the murderous, robot-dispatching SkyNet.

How is your beloved Shirley Manson in her acting debut?
Tall, beautiful, dialing back the Scottish accent (mistake!) and slightly less charismatic without the rest of Garbage standing behind her.

What’s this business about Ellison’s faith?
Ellison doesn’t know why he was spared in the first season finale. The bureau puts him on six weeks' paid leave.

What’s doing with Sarah’s ex-fiance Charley Dixon and John’s uncle Derek Reese?
They largely stick to the sidelines for the bulk of this week’s installment. For reasons unclear to me, neither Sarah nor John ring them up for assistance when things go from bad to worse.

What’s good?
This is the best episode of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” since the series’ two-hour pilot. Any fan of the series should love it, and anyone iffy on the series is not likely to be bored. The best scene this week (possibly the best scene in the series so far) involves what’s left of Cameron and two large trucks; Summer Glau sells it hard and sells it well. Catherine Weaver’s introduction is highly memorable. Garrett Dillahunt, now a regular, remains gratifyingly creepy.

What’s not so good?
The Connors in the TV show remain about 90 IQ points stupider than the Connors in the movies. The TV Sarah is a serial blunderer, and her vehicular blunders this week make the terminators' job much too easy. In order to get the writers out of a corner they’ve written themselves into, John does something no human being with a half a brain would. Something the movie Sarah would never let him do. The TV Connors need to smarten the fuck up, and fast, before they squander all the good will banked by the far better movies that spawned this series. Also? It’s still unclear why a terminator would ask Sarah to call to John when we all know terminators can impersonate human voices flawlessly.

How does it end, spoiler-boy?
With a scene, designed to set the online “Sarah Connor” fanbase afire, evoking a memorable sequence from that other ‘80s cyborg masterpiece, the original “RoboCop.”

8 p.m. Monday. Fox.

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