Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

CBR has good interviews with creator Josh Friedman and Brian Austin Green (Derek Reese) about the very nifty Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. SPOILERS aaaalll the way to the second season finale. I hadn’t realised that it was almost cancelled 13 episodes into Season 2.

Although it meandered and got bogged down mid-season I’m still really enjoying this show (making it almost certain that it won’t get picked up). It hits more often than it misses. There’s an intelligence and a thematic depth that reminds me very much of middle-period Angel, and when it gets it right it just nails its tone. Of all the series I’ve watched in recent years this is the one that specialises in cognitive dissonance: characters who relate (and fail to relate) to each other on multiple levels, in multiple timelines, with all the intellectual tension that produces. Or inhuman characters who look and act disconcertingly human, but with a blankness beneath it, and something else beneath that. That’s true of Weaver and Cromartie/John Henry as much as it is of Cameron, but THAT scene between Cameron and John in the finale is a perfect expression of how intuitively the series walks an extremely fine line.

The closing moments of the season are a roll of the dice, but also a pretty neat point to stop if that’s the last we ever see. It’s too abrupt to react with much more than a kind of reeling mental stock-taking, but the implications are really interesting. I can certainly imagine the show moving forward from here. I’d like it to get the chance.