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‘The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ Goes for Heavy Metal

[IMG:L]Well, we’re three shows in and the story is really starting to come clear. The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a basic look at your typical modern family: No dad, a mom in need of heavy medication, a son with a messiah complex, and a teenage robot hottie who likes to flash her boobs.

It’s a tale for the ages, really.

Judging from the continuing drop in viewership over the first three episodes, those who tuned in for the unbridled violence of the movies are finding something odd and new and perhaps not quite to their liking–specifically a plot.

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And to add insult to injury, the twists in this plot are something that has been missing from most of the movies, which is to say: Emotions. Now, it does strike strange that the character who seems to have the greatest emotive range is Cameron, the teenage robot hottie (Summer Glau), and she isn’t supposed to be capable of feeling anything besides, perhaps, the need for more axle grease.

Maybe that’s splitting hairs. After all, the most interesting story line is the seemingly burgeoning love story between John Connor (Thomas Dekker) and Cameron. It’s a whole new level of geek porn for network television.

Next up is Episode 4: Heavy Metal. The so-called spoiler that has been all over the web tells us that “John becomes separated from his mother, FBI Agent Ellison turns up a new lead in his murder investigation, and the future is darker than imagined.” Which is to say it spoils nothing and tells us only that the whomever is writing these things should go back to Deep Throat school and learn how to drop a tantalizing hint.

“The future is darker than imagined”? Come on folks, are we talking about the next presidential election here or primetime TV?

[IMG:R]The only rumor worth mentioning is that Brian Austin Green of Beverly Hills, 90120 fame is going to show up on this episode.

The folks over at BuddyTV have hypothesized that he’s going to be playing a Terminator or, at least, some kind of villain. Since the range of choices for this show seems to be good guy or bad guy, well, the Buddy TV guys have a 50 percent chance of being right–that much for sure.

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On the geek porn tip though, the more curious choice may be the episode’s title. For history buffs, “Heavy Metal” does not just mean a quiet riot of guitars, rather it’s the borrowed title of the long-running sci-fi/fantasy cult comic that blends dark futurism with erotica (think battle-axe wielding, big-busted women in metallic braziers).

Now, I have no problem with Summer Glau dressed as a dominatrix, but for a struggling sci-fi show this is dicey territory.

That magazine’s covers launched some pretty weighty careers including the legendary H.R. Giger–the artist who created the aliens for Alien. Heavy Metal is the stuff of nerd lore and borrowing its moniker sets the bar pretty high.

And if the folks at Fox want to deliver, they’re going to have to do significantly better than “the future is darker than imagined.”

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