This week’s Good Sport Award goes to Summer Glau: a/k/a
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ foxy robot Cameron a/k/a
Firefly’s seductively enigmatic River. The cult cutie rode the rails and suffered the clammy attentions of the “hopeless geek” quartet from CBS’s underappreciated Monday hit
The Big Bang Theory in this week’s episode. It’s about time she appeared on a show with a sizable following, don’t you think?
The night’s come-on line, created by Howard but usurped by Raj (temporarily emboldened by non-alcoholic brew): “It’s hot in here. It must be Summer.” She grinned and bore it, until Howard got uncomfortably chummy with his cell-phone picture-taking, at which point it was all “Terminator broke my phone.” Who could blame her?
And who could blame any fanboy from going gaga over this not-so-obscure object of desire? She is, I’ve got to say, probably the best and most intriguing thing about Fox’s
Terminator series these days. Last Friday’s Cameron-centric episode was arguably the strongest since the show’s mid-season return, with the robotrix fiddling with her own mechanics as she fretted over her killer circuitry, revealing her self-destruct chip to John Connor. (Nice twist in making us think she’d be the one killing Riley, when it turned out Riley’s colleague-from-the-future Jesse was setting her up all along.) Am I wrong in thinking Cameron’s existential dilemma has more human dimension than any other character on the show? Once again, the machines win. Can you imagine if she took up with a Cylon?