The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 1 (2008)
9 episodes, approx 44 minutes each.
It takes place after events in Terminator 2 (1991), so it's essential to have watched it. It also follows a similar template: the machines are hunting the teenage John Connor, so a modified one is sent back from the future to protect him. The biggest difference is in the perspective. In the films the protagonists were mostly on the run. In the series they're no longer running. They're taking the fight to Skynet. That new dynamic makes it a million times more interesting to me than the films ever were.
There are two strong female characters. Lena Headey plays the mother figure, Sarah Connor. She makes the character her own, successfully portraying a woman torn between duty and personal tragedy, giving a performance full of both strength and vulnerability without compromising one or the other. Beneath the necessary hardened outer shell is a burden of desperation that fuels her; she thrives on it despite wishing with all her heart that the need for it be removed for all time. Lena deserves all the praise I can heap upon her.
Similarly, Summer Glau brings a strength to her role as the machine tasked with protecting the young John (Thomas Dekker). She has to be emotionless but engaging, which is a tall order. She does it well. Her character is saved from the one dimensionality of the Arnie model by having an ambiguity about her, one which the viewer is manipulated into not trusting one hundred percent. It keeps you on a precipice and gives the writers a fun toy to play around with.
The aforementioned vulnerabilities of the characters make them endearing. The fight to survive and save the future is contrasted with the daily grind of their everyday life, within which the possibility of failure keeps it exciting.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 2 (2009)
22 episodes, approx 44 minutes each.
In this case it's neither of those things. Instead, it puts a face to an element that was already evident in Season One but remained unseen.
It's a decent idea badly executed, in part because of the lack of originality and also because it's Shirley Manson of the band Garbage. Shirley is a great vocalist, but less successful as an actress; her character is two dimensional and she doesn't yet have the experience to make it any less flat. She improves as it progresses, but not enough.
She's just one of a trio of new female faces. The other two are written in to tug apart the collective Connor 'family'. Again, it's good in theory but it forces the series to return to the chase mechanic of the films, which is an element that's overused, predictable and contrary to the initial premise. It also doesn't help that the women are often written as being irritating and offensive.
Add a run of bad scripts that deviate drastically from the formula to explore some ridiculous conceits, some past/future filler that feels like padding in an already poorly stitched garment, and you have a season of huge disappointment. It falls to Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt) and Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) to keep the show on track, but mostly TSCC turned into a damp squib.
The final episode is the opposite of everything I've said so far. It has edge of the seat excitement and captures (even surpasses) the greatness of Season One. It almost makes up for the chore that watching the previous twenty-one episodes felt like. And it really was the FINAL episode because Fox didn't renew the show for a third Season.
