"Law and Order", "Celebrity Apprentice" and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"

"Law and Order: SVU" - The episode started out a bit slowly, but it really picked up. At first, I thought Erika Christensen as the FBI agent was a bit stilted, but as the story developed and her character was more flushed out, she was terrific. This episode was very disturbing in that it showed Olivia completely affected by what happens and what she witnesses. So often, she encounters horrible things, and you wonder how she manages to deal with it. In this case, the look of abject horror on her face when they discover the torture room and the torture table and the many instruments of terror was just incredible. The idea of what the women had to endure, hours of unspeakable torture, and even watching videos of women who had been tortured before them, all the while knowing they would eventually be killed was just horrific. Then when they were reviewing the scene, you could see they were just focussing on the professional aspect because to feel anything about what they're seeing would be devastating. When they find the last victim, still alive, the FBI agent makes it worse by trying to cut her restraints with one of the implements, sending the victim into a frenzied panic attack. And then you get to the twist at the end, when Olivia is confronting the FBI agent over her part in the investigation, and then the very end, with the line "one of the rules of chasing monsters is that you can't become one of them", and Olivia screams as the FBI agent shoots herself. You also see that this situation stays with Olivia, through the conclusion of the investigation. Very powerful episode.


"Law and Order: CI" - This episode was slightly different than normal episodes because it was very personal on a work level, as opposed to some of the personal life stuff of the characters that has come out previously. A police officer is killed, and it turns out he was the partner of Alex's husband, who was also killed in the line of duty. The investigation becomes more complicated and eventually points back to the murder of Alex's husband, and while Bobby is putting the pieces together, Alex plaintively says to him that this isn't just one of his puzzles. They eventually do figure out that the recent murder of the cop is related to the murder of Alex's husband, and she has to relive his death all over again.


"Law and Order" - I loved the subject of this episode. A pregnant woman is hurt in a bomb explosion, and in the course of the investigation, it's discovered that the bomb was meant for a doctor in the same building. The doctor had previously pinpointed a genetic marker for being gay, which was embraced by the gay community as it bolstered the nature argument. However, the "gay gene" could also be detected in fetuses, which meant that gay children could be detected long before they were born and thus, could also be aborted, so the gay community was then against further research on the subject. It turns out that the bomb was planted by the gay brother-in-law of the wounded woman. At the last minute, the woman's father inexplicably provides an alibi for the brother-in-law, but the detectives discover that the alibi comes at a very high price. The baby had been tested and had indeed showed signs of having the gay gene, and since the grandfather was severely homophobic, he agreed to alibi his comatose daughter's brother-in-law in exchange for his son-in-law aborting the supposedly gay baby - his potential grandson. The gay brother finds out about the deal and confesses fully to thwart the abortion. It was indeed a very powerful episode that touched on a lot of interesting issues. I still have a concern though. It's only the second show of the season, but so far, no full trials and therefore, no summation. How long are they going to do that for? I guess this means they realize how much they're missing with Jack now being in the DA's chair? I'm not optimistic about how the rest of the season is going to be.


"Celebrity Apprentice" - The previews seemed to indicate that it would be a good show, but the confrontation between Gene Simmons and Donald Trump over Trump's daughter was really just a red herring. Yes, Gene was mildly dismissive of and rude to her, but nothing major and when confronted by Trump over it, Gene apologized. The challenge this time involved Pedigree pet food, and each team had to make a public service announcement advocating dog adoption. Hydra came up with the brilliant idea of centering it around Lennox Lewis and a lovable dog. The commercial was amazing, with images of Lennox playing with the dog. The music alone that starts the spot is enough to make your eyes start to tear, and then the voiceover just adds to the emotion of the spot. Someone later on questions whether Lennox Lewis is well-known enough to be identifiable and that they should have identified who he was, but to me, it didn't matter. The image alone of the big black man turned into a puddle because of the little dog was enough. Empresario on the other hand decided to focus on several dogs, none of which had the same impact, especially since the voice-overs (supposedly of the dogs) were just awful. In the boardroom, the hispanic news lady picked Nadia Comaneci and Carol the supermodel. I think Nadia was fired ultimately because she was so weak and didn't stand up for herself (similar to Tiffany from the week before), but you have to figure that news lady is going to be headed for the door if she's in the boardroom again. Her biggest mistake was really in picking Carol as one of the two to rejoin her instead of picking Marilu. And on a side note, what in the heck was with the matching yellow and black outfits on the women?!?!?!?!?


"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"

I'm a huge fan of the Terminator movies (though T3 not as much), so I've really been looking forward to seeing this show. I was not disappointed.

The series is set up to fall within the timeline of the known story, but you get enough information so that I don't think you're lost if you're not familiar with the movies. The timeline of the show starts about 2 years after the events of T2. (I love the nod to history by having their last name be "Reese", the name of John's father.) John is now 15, and Sarah has never gotten over her wanderlust or fear, as manifested in her continued nightmares about John being killed by terminators, and even though she has recently become engaged, she takes John, and they run. When the fiance goes to the police with his concern about their disappearance, he unwittingly alerts an FBI agent who has been pursuing Sarah and who fills him in on Sarah's history with the mental hospital, Miles Dyson and Cyberdyne.

Sarah and John have meanwhile started a new life in New Mexico. John makes friends with Cameron, a pretty girl in his new school who turns out to be much more. When a substitute teacher tries to kill John during roll call (that scene of him stabbing into his leg to get at the concealed gun was gory and great), Cameron steps in front of the gunshots, and John gets away, with Cameron later incapacitating the terminator and rescuing John again, much to his amazement. Later in the story, the fight scenes between the two terminators were spectacular. They did a great job in deciding to make John's protector a slim attractive girl this time. This is completely against what you'd expect and very different from the terminators in the movies. It also makes for great action scenes when the little girlie takes on the big bad killer terminator and basically kicks his ass.

It also seems to be a trend (a la "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Alias" and "Chuck") where the seemingly defenseless girl has killer abilities. John also reminds me of Buffy in that he's a teenager who just wants to live a normal teenage life, but he has a much more important calling that he reluctantly must live up to and which basically ruins his normal life.

Sarah wants to run again, but John convinces her to try once again to put a stop to Cyberdyne, so they return to the Dyson residence. When the FBI agent was showing pictures of the Dyson family, I noticed they weren't the same as the people in T2, and I wondered about that change and didn't know if it was a matter of getting the previous actors' permission. But since they had to actually return to the house, the recasting made sense. They of course have a new Mrs. Dyson since Dyson's wife from T2 has been playing Lt. Van Buren on "Law and Order" for some time now.

The trio then head to a bank at Cameron's instruction, and she arranges to have bank personnel lock them in the vault, which comes in handy later as it takes the terminator some time to break it down. It turns out that parts to create a gun that will defeat the terminator have been stashed there, as well as a machine that basically teleports them elsewhere. When they arrive, causing quite a scene as they arrive naked, Sarah asks where they are, and I love Cameron's response: "Same where, different when". They have travelled 8 years in the future, to 2007.

When the second episode picks up, they have set up residence, and Cameron says there are other resistance fighters in that time, who she takes Sarah to for help, but they discover that the entire group has been killed.

They think they're safe in this timeline since no one knows where they went, but it turns out that their arrival and specifically Sarah was caught on a camera phone, alerting the FBI agent of their presence. In addition, unbeknownst to them, the terminator was blown up but was teleported along with them, and apparently, its component parts can exist on their own, so he eventually manages to put himself back together again.

After the first attack, Sarah rails against Cameron for bringing them there, but Cameron reveals that in the regular timeline Sarah died in 2005, of cancer. After all the fighting she did with unnatural forces, the irony is that she was killed by a natural force even more malevolent. Sarah then goes to an old friend for fake IDs, but the friend is now out of the business and refers her to his nephew, who has taken over. After some negotiation and interaction, they finally get their new IDs. During the course of the episode, Sarah refers to Cameron as "tin man", and it takes a while for Cameron to get the reference, but she then tells Sarah that John never told Sarah, but John's favorite memory was of Sarah reading "The Wizard of Oz" to him. Fittingly, we find out later that Sarah's new name is Sarah Baum.

While Sarah and Cameron are out, John has been instructed to stay indoors, but cabin fever gets the better of him, and he heads to the local mall to get a sense of normalcy but in the process finds out about his former potential stepfather. He heads to his stepfather's house and inadvertently runs into him. The stepfather can't believe what he sees, but he doesn't seem to particularly notice that 8 years have passed but John looks exactly the same.

Sarah eventually goes back to the old friend's house, worried because of what she overhead his nephew say, and she's concerned that her friend may be ratting her out. Cameron ends up killing the old friend, which stuns and upsets Sarah. I wasn't sure why Cameron killed him, but we find out later that he was about to talk to the FBI agent with a promise to give him good information. We also see Sarah going in for treatment of her developing cancer.

So far, I love what I've seen - good action and good story. I think it's going to be difficult to sustain a television show with this premise, but I'm eager to go along for the ride to see how it turns out. At least there's more going on than just the terminator. Not only are Sarah and John running from the terminator that wants to kill John, but they're also running from the FBI agent who doesn't buy the "machines" story, and they also now have to figure out who took over Miles Dyson's work and to once again prevent the coming of Judgement Day.