"Sarah Connor" 1.04: A mission-of-the-week with mixed results
"Sarah Connor" 1.04: A mission-of-the-week with mixed results
"Heavy Metal" is a step down for S1
Season 1 - Episode 4: “Heavy Metal”
Original Airdate: February 4, 2008
Written By: John Enborn
Directed by: Sergio Mimica-Gezzan
Plot Summary: John leads a mission to stop a new Terminator from stockpiling resources for the Future War. Agent Ellison’s investigation leads him to cross paths with Cromartie, who assumes the identity of struggling actor George Lazlo.
Review:
Following the storytelling confidence and self-assurance of the previous episode, “Heavy Metal” feels like a step back for TSCC. It’s not a bad episode by any means, but it definitely doesn’t seem sure of what exactly it wants to be. The main problem lies in the A-story, which kicks off when Cameron informs Sarah and John that Cromartie has followed them into the future, which coincides with some suspicious activity involving a shipment of Coltan. The main characters jump to the conclusion that Cromartie must be going after the shipment, despite not having much real evidence to go on, and John decides to take charge and take out their pursuer.
Putting aside that the premise of this storyline is a little shaky, the biggest issue here is that the episode never really settles on what it is that actually drives John to try to complete this mission, despite the danger it puts him in.
It appears that the episode, on the whole, was attempting to be about John’s choice to prove himself and no longer be a coward, to not be held back from the leader and man of action he’s supposed to be. At the outset, he seemingly blames himself for being inactive and not helping Jordon, who killed herself in the previous episode.
But it’s difficult to actually believe that Jordon’s death would have such an effect on John in the first place. It would make sense if John and Jordon had become friends or Jordon asked John for help and he refused to get involved because he was afraid of getting outed or drawing attention to himself. Yet John and Jordon never once interacted, nor did John even know who she is or what her troubles were. And there really wasn’t anything he could’ve actually done under the circumstances at the time to prevent Jordon from jumping.
One could infer that perhaps Jordon’s death is just an excuse for John to do something, that he has been feeling helpless and unable to do anything of value to prevent Judgement Day. But if so, neither this nor the preceding episodes do enough to establish that this is indeed the case. And the way things end, it is unclear, as to what John’s takeaway from all this is supposed to be.
Has John realized that it’s foolhardy to seek out danger and try to lead? Or has he indeed proven himself to himself? Has he recognized that what happened to Jordon wasn’t his fault? The lack of clarity indicates that the writers were struggling with John’s character and hadn’t quite figured out how to organically incorporate him into its more action-heavy stories.
John isn’t the only one, who makes some questionable character choices in this episode. “The Turk” established that Sarah actively wrestled with her conscience over killing human beings for the greater good. But here, she seems to have no problem leaving behind a man that unwittingly helped Skynet stuck in a minefield, and the episode seems to strangely play this off as a joke.
These issues are perhaps symptomatic of the fact that, whereas “The Turk” suggested that the show was now close to fully embracing its identity as a cerebral dramatic thriller, “Metal” seems to be trying to embrace the pulpy action movie elements that the preceding two hours had been steadily veering away from. The result is a less serious and more campy tone than the one that’s worked so well the past two episodes.
That’s not to say the A-story isn’t without merits. The sequence, where John has to get out of the silo, while Carter is in standby mode, is legitimately suspenseful. The final confrontation with Carter is exciting, even though it ends in a manner that is somewhat anti-climactic.
The series also continues to efficiently build out its world: we learn more about how terminators are constructed and how they operate, as well as where Cameron will be built one day. There’s one really good in-character moment where Sarah feels that she lost John. And then there is the implication that John is developing some kind of psychological disorder from his life-threatening experience. But the underlying issues of the A-story stand out because the Ellison and Cromartie threads, which dovetail nicely by the end, both organically build on with what we have seen in previous episodes and maintain the process-centric step-by-step storytelling of “The Turk.”
Ellison continues his gradual conversion into a believer, leading him to face pushback from his peers in the FBI, who don’t want to complicate the scenario and actually investigate the multiple murders much further. In some ways, his scenes recall the bureaucratic struggles depicted in The Wire, continuing to help the show maintain its foothold in grounded reality, as well as explain how Terminators function.
Meanwhile, Cromartie finishes reconstituting himself and takes on the appearance of down-on-his-luck actor George Lazlo thanks to some really effective “reconstructive surgery.” One reason this works really well is because it re-introduces the character with the face of the great Garrett Dillahunt, who helps redefine the Terminator as a terrifying, efficient, no-nonsense killer who looks very ordinary and trustworthy on the surface, reminiscent of Robert Patrick’s T-1000.
The best scene in “Heavy Metal” occurs halfway through, when Cromartie murders Lazlo after checking how well he passes for him in the mirror. It’s a striking image that continues the show’s foray into the horror genre, with Cromartie literally acting as an evil mirror opposite to Lazlo, whose sheer terror is juxtaposed with the Terminator’s chilling lack of emotion.
In this moment, the series returns to the original depiction of Terminators as scary, unrelenting monsters. It’s a great portent of things to come, and one wishes the tone and feel of the episode’s main story thread was more in line with what we see in the Cromartie/Ellison half.
Grade: B-Notes and Annotations:
Sarah’s sardonic comment about the Terminators’ penchant for self-reflection is, again, another type of line that I cannot imagine her ever really saying.
“Coltan” is actually a real-life alloy and is, in fact, prominent in Africa. This would play into a plotline in the second season.
I feel the show missed out on an opportunity to raise the question of whether or not Cameron will ever be constructed in the future without the Coltan storage.
While Cameron never actually uses the bar of Coltan she swipes at the end, the show would establish that she harvests parts from Terminators in order to repair herself when necessary.
I have a theory that the Coltan bar would’ve come into play during the last three episodes of S1. As Josh Friedman revealed in 2018, Cameron was going to lose her legs in 1.10. It would make sense then that the bar would be used to repair her, giving this episode more narrative significance in hindsight.
I wonder if Agent Stewart was supposed to be more of a recurring character. He seems really prominent here and being set up as a long-term foil for Ellison.
Or check it out reviews of the other episodes at the TSCC Review Index.