"Sarah Connor" 1.07: The season's finest
"The Demon Hand" redefines TSCC as a biblical epic.
Season 1 - Episode 7: “The Demon Hand”
Original Airdate: February 25, 2008
Written By: Toni Graphia
Directed by: Charles Beeson
Plot Summary: Sarah’s search for the missing T-888 arm leads her to cross paths with both Ellison and her old psychiatrist, Dr. Silberman (Bruce Davison). Cameron infiltrates a ballet class in order to find The Turk. John discovers a long buried secret related to Sarah’s time at the Pescadero mental hospital.
Review:
If there’s any episode of TSCC that functions as a perfect illustration of the show’s strengths and proves that it is a legitimately great work of television, it is “The Demon Hand.” If there’s any episode that signals the show’s realization of its own potential and represents a major turning point in its overall perception of itself, then it is “The Demon Hand.” If anyone asked me what I consider to be the best episode of the entire series, my answer would be “The Demon Hand.”
Arriving right in the middle of Sarah Connor’s originally planned 13-episode first season, it illustrates that the show has worked out all its kinks and become its best self, achieving an overall sense of storytelling confidence and unity that makes the jump from good to great. While the show would unfortunately not able to fully sustain this sense due to the writer’s strike effectively killing the third act of S1 and Fox network execs mandating a soft-reboot of the series when it came back for S2, “The Demon Hand” without a doubt would continue to inform TSCC’s core identity.
And it accomplishes all this in large part by embracing the idea that the Terminator saga as a whole has always been a biblical epic. If this sounds farfetched, recall that John Connor is a messianic figure destined to save mankind by literally preventing “Judgment Day,” who has a name not too far from Jesus Christ, and whose story adheres to the mythopoeic narrative model popularized by John Campbell.
Consider that Terminator as a film was directly concerned with the secular apocalypse, a subject not uncommon in 1980s cinema, when there was a legitimate possibility of a nuclear war. Whereas the biblical apocalypse suggests that God will punish man for his transgressions, the secular apocalypse suggests that we ourselves will be the cause of our destruction. TSCC takes those ideas further by literally proposing that the biblical apocalypse and Skynet’s nuclear apocalypse are actually one and the same.*
* That it does so without any self-deprecation is another sign that TSCC was not your typical network genre show.
This comes up directly in a key scene between Agent Ellison and the TSCC version of Dr. Silberman, who has gone from being the skeptical secondary antagonist of T2 to a Sarah Connor acolyte. Silberman helps crystallize a lot of notions that the series had suggested previously, but never explicitly voiced until now. What if Sarah Connor’s dreams aren’t signs of trauma or mental illness but really prophetic visions of the future? What if Judgment Day, despite the efforts of the main characters, is inevitable? What if no matter, how much you postpone it, the future really is set and John Connor is fated to lead mankind to salvation after the world ends?
If so, Skynet is not so much an unknowable entity than a stand-in for the Old Testament God, while Terminators are analogous to angels — heralds of the end times, and instruments of His will. Man may have created Skynet, but punishing man for his sins has always been Skynet’s destiny.
In embracing the biblical subtext, TSCC is thus carving its own original direction and mission statement, rather than regurgitating the optimistic “no fate but what we make for ourselves” mantra that dominated the films that have preceded it. That is not to say that it dismisses those films. If anything, this episode more than any other so far relies on those films’ events as a founding myth.
It’s no coincidence that in the same episode that Dr. Silberman shows up, we get John reminiscing about how he got his foster parents Todd and Janelle killed, or Cameron masquerading on a motorcycle as a police officer. Yet the episode also retroactively adjusts its cinematic past to align it with the show’s own identity. We learn that, despite all the dysfunction we were privy to in T2, John actually kinda liked his foster parents, and that they wanted to adopt him. We see Sarah openly lament the way she had mistreated John after he broke her out of Pescadero. And we realize that Sarah, having been broken by her time at the mental hospital, actually gave up on seeing John again and signed away her parental rights.
While Terminator 2 tended to depict Sarah as a larger-than-life cinematic badass, TSCC brings her back down to Earth, reframing her decision to break out of Pescadero as having been motivated by a moment of weakness. That she even had one is a huge hit to John. If there is one constant that John has had in his life after he realized Terminators were real, it was his unwavering faith in his mom, whom he believed was the one person that would never give up on him. The first season has evidently struggled with John’s character but there is a clear sense of purpose to his scenes here. His arc in “The Demon Hand” is to basically realize that his mom is only human, to see her as a person rather than an infallible hero.
It maybe is a little convenient that Sarah happens to grab that confession tape and then leave it in a place where John could easily find it, even though she apparently wanted to destroy it. Perhaps on some level she actually wanted him to see it, because she could never bring herself to admit her weakness otherwise? In any case, it leads to that talk they’ve probably avoided for years, and it’s a great scene, where the show grounds the fantastic in a story common to most teenagers as they grow up.
Faith provides for a strong sense of unity between the various subplots and that extends to the Cameron story, which seems initially to be rather clichéd. The show preps the viewer for a familiar formulaic subplot, where Cameron decides to manipulate Maria and Dimitri into leading her to the Turk, but ultimately comes around and decides to save them from the done-to-death Russian mobsters, learning a thing or two about humanity in the process.
Instead, Cameron remains devoted to her mission, and leaves them to die. To her, they are a means to an end, and she ultimately doesn’t care about what happens to them. Even though we may not have gotten to know the two guest characters that much, it’s a gut punch of a subversive ending, with a chilling shot of Cameron simply walking away, while we hear screams and gunshots in the background.
What makes it resonate even more is how it parallels the ending of the Sarah/Ellison story. Sarah chooses to save Ellison’s life, even though the easier and far more convenient decision would’ve have been to let him burn. The shots of Sarah reaching out to Ellison with the fire behind her position her as a mythic or holy figure from his — and by extension the episode’s — perspective, while simultaneously recalling the “Come with me if you want to live” scene in T2.
Admittedly, it’s a tad frustrating that the show would continue to largely keep Sarah and Ellison apart plot-wise after this, but it has huge character repercussions, with Ellison essentially being reborn in the fire as a believer in Sarah’s cause. I don’t believe Ellison has indicated previously to having been a man of faith, but it’s a touching final moment to see him in a bible group. His journey from being a Connor skeptic to a believer has literally reinvigorated his faith in Christianity.
Look, I could talk ad nauseum about how pretty much everything in the “The Demon Hand” works, how the show uses its economical storytelling to pack two plus episodes of network plot into a perfectly paced hour, how we are privy to some beautiful, breathtaking shots or how it is more than the sum of its parts. Everything comes together into a lyrical ending, with that ambiguous final shot of Derek about to cry as he witnesses Cameron dancing.
What is Derek thinking at the end? Does he find Cameron’s dance beautiful or does he realize how exactly she “knows” him, as her earlier allusion to their shared past indicates? Or does he think Cameron’s dancing is proof that she indeed has a soul? However one interprets it, it is clear that “The Demon Hand” is a masterpiece, an example of great television, and a sign of the show’s artistic ambition.
Grade: A (+)
Notes and Annotations:
Critics and detractors tend to complain about the show’s portrayal of Sarah not matching up to the “intensity” of T2 Sarah, with some even citing that as evidence that Lean Headey was ‘miscast.’ In this episode though, Headey demonstrates just how well she can portray the rougher, more unhinged Sarah of the Pescadero days, which also evinces how the general portrayal of the title character as relatively well adjusted was a creative choice.
From here on out, the biblical references on the show would become far more ingrained into the text. Sometimes, their incorporation would be a little clunky but the series was better for it overall.
Minor complaint: I am a little confused as to how the Russians don’t seem to even notice Cameron walking out of that room, even though one of them (I think) is the guy she roughed up previously.
Once again, the timeline becomes a little troublesome. The date on the tape was supposed to be June 7, 1997. And that was apparently the day Sarah busted out of Pescadero. Which would mean, the events of T2 occurred in close proximity to the Judgment Day of 08/29/97, which also means that Cyberdyne was supposed to get Skynet operational in less than 3 months now?
I wonder if the TSCC writers were partially inspired by the original screenplay for T2. As I recall, a scene cut from the film following the Pescadero escape would’ve featured Silberman getting straightjacketed and locked up for claiming Terminators are real. Which is a fitting end to the guy.
Let’s face it, the ballet subplot was, to a small extent, an excuse to show off Summer Glau’s dancing skills. When watching Cameron dance to Chopin’s Nocturne, I can’t help but think of “Waiting in the Wings,” the standout episode of the third season of Angel, which I believe featured the first major appearance of Summer Glau onscreen. In that episode, she played a cursed ballerina and performed a pivotal dance at the end.
If Cameron has learned anything, it’s that she seems to enjoy dancing for dancing’s sake, and that is indeed even more perturbing than if she hadn’t learned a thing at all.
I love every given moment with Derek in this episode, especially when he feels the grass. He seems to be discovering the beauty of the world and it’s not easy for him to handle. John appears to completely miss the fact that he speaks from experience about the “four walls.”
Also, I love that breakfast confrontation with Cameron. There is a lot going here beneath the surface and the show doesn’t spell out anything.
Bruce Davison makes for a great Silberman. Honestly, I wish he and Sarah had at least one more scene together, cause their reunion was all too brief.
Or check it out reviews of the other episodes at the TSCC Review Index.