In the endless postmodern loop of revisiting eras, the 1980s are back. Then again, when one is discussing anything related to The Terminator, endless time loops are rather appropriate. This isn’t a news flash that the ‘80s are back: what with the resurrection of The Police, Duran Duran, Die Hard, skinny jeans (gag), bubble skirts, and (Lord-what-have-we-done-to-deserve-this) Rambo, we’re already aware. Next thing you know, MTV might start playing music videos again. Now, I’m not automatically averse to such flashbacks, although if people start walking around in neon and acid-washed clothing again, I may burst a blood vessel. As I wrote six months ago, the new Die Hard rocked (and the Police concert I saw last summer really rocked). Why did Live Free or Die Hard work so well? In revisiting/reviving John McClane’s seemingly perpetual battle against terrorists and stupidity, everyone involved kept what was effective the first time around (action, baby!) while keeping in mind that it’s two decades later. Computers are way more advanced, and it might be more generally palatable to have a story in which McClane’s daughter is the unruly female who learns to appreciate that patriarchal surname.  If you must revisit a 1980s cultural artifact, revisit it wisely. Shine it up a bit. Don’t just wallow in nostalgia for the bygone Reagan era and all it implies.

I suppose there was already a hint on the horizon that the 1980s were about to rear their big haired heads again when Ahnuld dusted off his leather jacket and sunglasses one more time for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003. Mercifully, he’s only doing a cameo in the next movie; otherwise it might have to be called Terminator 4: Retirement Community. Anyway, T3 may not have been directed by Terminator auteur James Cameron, but it still had traces of the slightly icky gender issues that turn Terminator 2: Judgment Day into a personal love-hate object. Making the bad Terminator a woman was on the one hand a stroke of genius. On the other hand, the spectacle of Schwarzenegger bashing her head into a bathroom wall was a wee bit discomforting. He just did it with such, um, vigor. It was a tad too reminiscent of Terminator 2’s aim to show us a formidably strong woman in the body of Linda Hamilton’s cut Sarah Connor, and then systematically slap her down. No woman—whether Terminator or Mother of the Savior of Humanity—is allowed to be as powerful as our Arnie.

That’s why I can watch T2 over and over (I’ll admit it, the first Terminator gives me nightmares, so I won’t watch it as much) and be thinking, “Feh,” even as I’m utterly engrossed. To summarize: while the Terminator is a rational, obedient, devoted, capable protector to pre-teen hero-to-be John Connor, Sarah is an unbalanced, emotionally absentee mother-virago.  Oh sure, they both have the same purpose, and they both spout the same out-there information about Skynet and Judgment Day, but Sarah is relegated to a permanent state of PMS over it that makes her far less effective. Thanks, Mr. Cameron. That’s so helpful. It’s also what makes The Sarah Connor Chronicles so refreshing and fun. For here, the series creators have wisely chosen to revisit a 1980s-early 1990s cultural artifact in a manner that highlights something that was way cool back then, while altering an aspect that is best left to the exile of nostalgia. Granted, they had no choice, since Schwarzenegger is a) the governor of California, and b) would probably never stoop to doing television. But he hasn’t been replicated, either. He’s been replaced by a teenage girl and the mother of all mothers.

Indeed, there’s something wickedly funny about the fact that Cameron’s presence in this resurrected Terminator universe is solely as the first name of Summer Glau’s girl Terminator.  The machine has struck back. Without James and Arnold around, we finally get to see the promise of Hamilton’s 1991 hard body fulfilled. We get to watch seriously badass women who don’t need to be narratively or physically put back in their place so that a male star can reign supreme. Yeah, Glau’s Cameron has already been thrown through a few walls by big burly male Terminators in just a mere two episodes. But since she is the new cyborg protector for John, she won’t be left crumpled on the floor while the audience cheers. She’ll get up again and fight back. Hard. Cameron also informs Sarah that she doesn’t follow orders from “this John,” who has been a bit of a teenage twit so far. She may have been programmed and sent back by an unseen older and wiser future John, but what we get to see is a girl with mad skills who doesn’t have to bow to the will of a callow boy. And how do we find out for certain that she is John’s new guardian Arnold? When she takes over one of his signature lines from T2: “Come with me if you want to live.” Hee!

The more vital adjustment, of course, is with Sarah. Hey, it’s her chronicles.  By framing the series story between T2 (crazy Sarah) and T3 (long dead Sarah), we at last get to appreciate why Sarah would be able to spawn and raise a future rebel leader. Sarah’s vital role in the Terminator mythology got a bit shafted in T2 and T3. Think about it (but not about the whole time loop thing—your head will hurt). John Connor has to be a stupendous, iron-nerved guerilla warrior tactician who can out-think super computers, reprogram super computers, and probably handle all kinds of weaponry in order to survive the kind of threat we see in the Terminator films’ brief glimpses of the post-apocalypse future.  Come on, he has to be worthy of being embodied by Christian Bale in T4. Where’s a boy going to learn all of that practical skill as he grows up? Not from the lame schools we see him attend (and not from dreadful foster parents). Not from Arnie’s single, solitary return. Yep, he’s going to have to get that long-term training, and model for a successful warrior mindset, from his mama.  You’d have to figure that Sarah Connor, then, is a more interesting character than the waitress we see in The Terminator, the mental case we see in T2, and the nothing we see in T3. Thus, a TV series is born….

Supposedly there was some pre-series grumbling among fans that Lena Headey’s Sarah isn’t buff enough. She’s definitely more slender than Hamilton’s Sarah. Yet, after the initial surprise of not seeing so many bulges and sinews, this Sarah’s body becomes a moot point. The Sarah inhabiting The Sarah Connor Chronicles doesn’t need an ostentatiously “strong” physique to prove her character’s power because this Sarah is allowed to have a strong mind. Wow. A Sarah with a steely body and mind?  Dear me, can it be true? So far, yes. Obviously, Sarah is still hyper-vigilant about her son and the once and future threat of machines, but she no longer comes across as a perpetual candidate for a nervous breakdown. She feels deep emotions (i.e. love for Dean Winters’ unknowing EMT), and makes tough decisions about those emotions (leaving him for the sake of John’s security) without losing her shit. She can experience moments of hysteria about the reappearance of Terminators and the subsequent threats to John’s safety that don’t incapacitate her. She can even soften enough to show genuine maternal affection beyond simply trying to groom a savior of the world. When she declares that she isn’t the person she was in her psychiatric file, it’s easy to believe her. She finds out she’s supposed to die of cancer, and that doesn’t make her crumple (nor does finding out about 9/11 six years after it occurs). Sarah even has a moment of potentially ruinous emotion when she confronts a former ally-turned-squealer that doesn’t become an excuse to undermine her (like her meltdown in T2 at the moment she could kill Skynet’s inventor). Cameron has to step in and kill him because she knows Sarah won’t. Cameron is right to kill him, too. But Sarah’s inability to pull the trigger isn’t a blot on her character—it’s a reminder that Sarah hasn’t sacrificed her humanity to be tough. Glimpses of that humanity, however, don’t make Sarah lose her overall fortitude.

Whether or not the series remains true to this conception of Sarah remains to be seen. But if Sarah does have another psychotic break that leads to institutionalization, at least the girl Cameron will be around to help ensure that she’ll be back.