Terminator: Struck Down Too Soon
Thomas Dekker, Brian Austin Green and Lena Headey in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles by Richard Foreman/Fox
Well, that was frustrating. I know it was Johnny Cash we heard underscoring the ill-fated FBI raid in the season's final hour of
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (part of Monday's premature two-hour cliff-hanger), but darned if I didn't hear Carol Burnett in my head: "Seems we just get started and before you know it. "
I was not ready to say so long just yet to TV's
Terminator, a prominent casualty of the writers' strike, having completed only nine of the original 13-episode order. While it's far from a perfect series, this has been an engrossing, exciting (if often confusing) ride so far. I'm hoping it comes back next season at least for 13. It's too bad it never got a chance to air alongside
24, as originally intended. That would have been one rock-em-sock-em Monday of smart action TV.
For me, this show kicked into high gear midstream with the arrival from the future of Brian Austin Green as Derek Reese: brother of Kyle, uncle of John Connor, all-around hardened and ruthless soldier, who makes even Sarah think twice about how far she's willing to go in her war against the machines. (Suddenly,
90210 seems like a very distant zip code indeed.) His instant dislike and distrust of CamBot has made for some first-rate conflict on the home front, and I'm sure it's not just me who's noticed that his lingering looks at Sarah convey a bit of lust under the heroine worship. (And not just because she confronted him in the shower.) Plus, Derek was responsible for the single most memorable moment in the two-hour finale, when he gives John the birthday present of seeing his dad in the flesh: albeit a 5-year-old present-day version of Kyle, playing ball with his big brother Derek (foreshadowing another brotherly game played in the shadow of the looming apocalypse on Judgment Day, an image that opened the final episode).
I'd be lying if I said I understood everything going on here. I'd also be lying if I said that it mattered. This is a show with a forceful mission, and I'm onboard as long as it can pull off sequences as masterful and inventive as the underwater pool shot during the FBI raid, with body after bloody body plunging into the water as we hear muffled echoes of the carnage above the surface.
Moments like that distinguish
SCC from just another chase thriller, just as Agent Ellison's readings from Revelations - the Terminators as the new horsemen of the apocalypse? - give the show unusual metaphorical depth, at times veering unexpectedly into
Battlestar Galactica territory. I'm not saying
SCC is as good as
BSG, just that nine hours of this story wasn't nearly enough.
For a more in-depth analysis of the finale than I could ever hope to provide, check out Robert Ivins'
show blog.
