Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: "Gnothi Seauton"

"Character Development"
Quieter than the pilot, but a solid series arc setup for all that.

Being used to the breakneck speed of the flicks and the series pilot, I had to dial down my internal clock in order to stay with the pace of "Gnothi Seauton" ("Know Thyself" in ancient Greek).

I like the way how the title was used to reinforce this episode's theme, adding multiple layers to the story.

The central problem this go-around for Sarah and company is getting new IDs for themselves. We find Sarah and John "time-lagged" in a home they're likely squatting in. Looks like John's cobbling together a portable hacker computer interface.

Cool.

John's going stir crazy from being cooped up for 3 days, though. He wants his new ID already. Sarah tells him to be patient when Cameron walks into the living room and asks about new IDs. LOL.

John suggests Sarah track down Enrique, the "best fake paper guy ten years ago." Cameron lets slip that future John sent better ones into the past.

In no time flat, Sarah has Cameron taking her to a safe house manned by resistance fighters from the future with weapons, money, fake IDs, etc. Only when the ladies show up, they find some guys riddled with bullets. Sarah and Cameron set to examining the poor stiffs, but one stops playing possum and tosses Cameron around like a rag doll. This episode's Terminator.

The baddie's logic circuits decide on a tactical withdrawal to assess the situation, so he sets to running. Cameron gives chase and Sarah follows on a motorcycle which she gets from a guy after waving a 9 mil semiautomatic.

Somehow Sarah finds the Terminator and sends her motorcycle skidding his way to take him down. Just as Cameron comes to finish the Terminator off, she gets rammed by a car. When it brakes to a halt, Cameron tells a yuppie family to "Please remain calm," pulls her head out of the windshield, and climbs off the hood and runs off like she's right as rain.

When Sarah and Cameron head back home, Sarah asks why they had to jump since she could've used the last 7 years to get John ready. Cameron says it didn't happen when she died two years earlier from cancer. Interesting.

Sarah and Cameron then go to Enrique, who's happy to see Sarah alive again, but has retired. He points them to his nephew, Carlos who's very good, but not "a true believer."

Carlos is willing to offer first class IDs--for 20 grand. Sarah gasps at the nevvy's extortion and keeps Cameron from knocking off a cop, who's trying to figure out if she's a new drug running gang banger.

Meantime, John steps out to explore 2007 LA. He wanders into a computer store, where he discovers the internet, looks himself up, and finds a listing of Charlie, Sarah's fiance. John goes to Charlie's home to....I don't know what. There he runs into Charlie, applies a joint lock when Charlie gets too close, and runs off.

And a roadside worker who found the head of the Terminator from the pilot, Cromartie, deposits it in his flat, where its eye lights flash back on. Its body then busts out of a scrap pile in a junkyard and takes out a yard worker when he comes to investigate.

When we get back to Sarah, she decides to go back to the safe house to see if they can find money or anything else they can use. John joins her and Cameron this time around.

When they see a poster of a kitten hanging on the wall, they deduce something's off, rip the poster off, and find a safe. I couldn't help but wonder why the LAPD didn't notice the poster, too, or why the Terminator from earlier didn't use IR or something to notice the safe in the wall?

Anyhow, Cameron sets out to rip the safe open. Except she's short-circuited by a live current and knocked out for 2 minutes to reboot. John opens the safe and Sarah empties. They have to hurry since the Terminator is downstairs tracking for survivors. Sarah shoves Cameron out a window onto a waiting car and ushers John out just as the Terminator walks in. Seeing nothing, the cyborg heads off to logically find another hideout.

The road worker who found Cromartie's head is trying to wind down to TV and beer when a guy with a motor cycle helmet walks in. The worker raises the visor, sees a head attached to a robot chest, and gets dispatched. The "guy" picks up Cromartie's head.

Sarah and Cameron get the IDs from Carlos, who raps with his hermanos in espanol. We then find Sarah back in Enrique's apartment with a gun to his head. She says she picked up from the nevvy that Enrique is a "rat." Will he sell her and John out? Enrique pleads very eloquently that he would never do such a thing when Cameron pumps a few rounds into him.

Cameron points out that she did what Sarah knew she had to do, but couldn't. Sarah shoots back that she didn't know what she would've done and that Cameron wasted Enrique for "possibly lying."

When Agent Ellison comes to investigate the scene, he plays a phone recording by Enrique who promises to give him some very interesting information.

John and Cameron go to enroll in the local high school. And as Sarah goes in for a CAT scan in the oncology department of a local hospital, she winds things up with a monologue on how we have to know ourselves since we're all we have in a world that's going to go boom.

This ep didn't have the intensity level of the pilot, but it did lay down the situation and set things up for Sarah, John, and Cameron as they gain their bearings in 2007.

I'm hopeful of seeing a big payoff in the episodes to come.