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Say what you want about the Fox network’s less than stellar record when it comes to renewing shows, but it could be worse. They could be like the Sci-Fi Channel and go over an entire year without new episodes, and even then only give you a half season at a time. Anyway, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles made it’s triumphant return last night.

I was one of the many people who doubted that they could make the Terminator franchise translate into a weekly series, but once I saw it I was hooked from the start.

The cliff-hanger at the end of the first season wasn’t quite on the same level as the Jericho first season finale, or the Rag Tag Fleet finding Earth in the most recent half-season finale for BSG, but it was still good enough that I was really looking forward to new episodes, and last night didn’t disappoint.

If you didn’t see it last night, it’s posted on Hulu.

(Warning… spoilers ahead)

The biggest question going into this season was what would happen to Cameron after she got blown to kingdom come at the end of the season finale… apparently the blast caused her chip to malfunction or revert to her original programming because she was suddenly targetting John Connor instead of protecting him. That was plot A for the episode, as Sarah and John tried to stay ahead of the limping Cameron. Plot B involved Charley and Derek, who were trying to track down Sarah.

The most interesting part of the story involved new co-star Shirley Manson… you may remember Shirley from such bands as Garbage. This is her first acting gig, and she actually pulls it off pretty well. Her character runs a computer company that has just seceretly purchased the computer program that will eventually become SkyNet… why you might ask? Because she’s a terminator. She’s one of the liquid metal jobs too, and even had an opportunity to surprise a guy by morphing to a urinal… just before she killed him.

Eventually John was able to fix Cameron, Charley and Derek tracked the rest of the gang down, and Agent Ellison seems to have made a full-fledged conversion to believe that SkyNet is real. There was an interesting scene at the end, where Ellison ran into Cromartie (the terminator that wiped out all of his FBI buddies last season), Ellison said that he wouldn’t lead him to Sarah, and that he would “never do the Devil’s work,” to which Cromartie replied “We’ll see.”

We saw in the previews that Ellison eventually goes to work for the company run by Shirley Manson’s character… so at the very least he’ll be doing work for the company that ultimately creates SkyNet, and he could very well inadvertantly lead another terminator to John and Sarah.

All in all it sets up a pretty exciting season. And it was great to see that cool liquid metal terminator effect again. Of course the downside of that is the fact that it probably ate up half of their special effects budget for the year.

My predictions for the season: Charley’s wife gets killed by Cromartie, and he joins the resistance full-time, Ellison probably gets his new job because he wants to learn about SkyNet, and realizes that his new boss is up to no good, and Cameron… who said that she loved John when she was trying to convince him that her chip was ok again… will have her first experience with jealousy, since John is getting a girlfriend this season.