Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I just recently finished watching the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. And I'm in love. This is some show. And I'm heartbroken, because it hasn't been renewed for a third season.

I like so much about this show, and I wish I could give a better and more critical review than the one I'm about to do. I wish I could be a more critical reader and watcher in general.

This is a very spoilery post, so please avoid it if you haven't watched the series. Seriously.

edit: I thought that James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd were involved with this show as they were credited as writers, but further digging revealed they were credited with the (characters) so I am unsure whether they actually had any input!

The first series took a little to get going. It looked like it might be all about running and running and chasing and so on. I thought there were dropped storyline threads, especially around the school. But it picked up. And the second season is great.

It's clear that the writers are not making this shit up as they go along. They have story arcs and character arcs planned. This means I found the show satisfying. I want shows to be satisfying. Like, Battlestar Galactica or Lost never were – those shows ultimately disappointed me.

I felt like Chronicles wasn't trying to reinvent the mythology of the franchise, but build on it. For instance, there's an episode where John finds the polaroid photo of his mother, the one of her and the blue heeler in the desert, the one he will give to Kyle Reese in the future. It's just a moment, but it's there.

The characters are layered, developed. I even found the secondary characters more interesting sometimes. Perhaps this is because they are able to have more scope simply by being new to our screens compared to Sarah and John, with their familiar struggles and needs. Derek Reese is just awesome. The scene where he watches Cameron dance, in the first series, could be one of my favourite moments on screen, ever. He brings scarred, he brings internal struggle.

Cameron the 'good' cyborg has these wonderful touches of humour, and then can be so unsettlingly inhuman. The final episode has her echoing Arnie's rampage through the mental hospital in the second movie, as she breaks out Sarah Connor from prison, and she is a much finer and more competent and threatening cyborg than Kristanna Loken ever was. Then there is Riley's final scene, when she confronts Jesse about the truth of her mission, and I could really feel it as a desperate struggle of life and death.

Although - I felt Jesse was miscast, and I'm not that interested in Mr Ellison. During his scenes, I was always waiting for the rest to come back. And there were some episodes that I didn't care for - especially the dream sequence vs dream sequence one about Sarah.

But the second half of the second season got particularly interesting, with the development of John Henry, and Mrs Weaver starts saying more than, "Ah, Mr Ellison." It became clear than Savannah is very important. We already knew she must be important because Mrs Weaver – a cold-blooded liquid metal monster – had kept her alive when she'd killed her parents, and was concerned for Savannah's wellbeing and mental health. What is her motivation? I'm still super intrigued but I guess we'll never really know. Mrs Weaver – she of the moray eel – and the eel that worms its way out of the doomed submarine – I think are one and the same. They ask and reply to the same question, in the present, and in the future. She isn't Skynet after all, as she is actually against Skynet, but what she is creating with John Henry is actually not on the same side as John & Sarah either.

The end of this season – gosh. The loss of Derek, so brutal and sudden and then pushed aside because John & Sarah don't have time to grieve – nor do we, not yet. My heart broke a little bit.

And the final episode is brilliant. It ends on this note, this perfect and sad note, as John Connor looks at Derek and Derek does not know him, as he sees his father Kyle for the very first time, and as he sees Cameron - and then realises that she is not Cameron. That change of expression on his face is done so, so well.

There's references to the Wizard of Oz several times – the last names they take on as part of their false identities (Baum, Gale), the reading of the book by a child in one episode. I noticed the references and I'm still thinking about why - the tinman, maybe, who wanted a heart. The search to go (find) home? The wizard behind the curtain – perhaps this was John Henry. It has been a while since I read that book, feel like I need to do so again.

What else? I keep thinking, churning it over. I'm sure more will come up in my brain.

And there it goes. I fell in love with another amazing and cancelled sci-fi show. I can't believe that hohumblahmeh Dollhouse got renewed, and Chronicles didn't.