Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – Born to Run

By Melissa Voelker

I haven’t done a rant to start off with lately, but I feel like doing one this week.  I am sick and tired of season finales that end on cliffhangers.  I think that is really rather rude of the show creators, especially when it is a show like Sarah Connor Chronicles that may not be back next season.  Not only is it irritating to have an episode end abruptly with questions that viewers will have to wait months for answers on, but if the show doesn’t come back for another season we will NEVER have answers.  I can understand that writers want to give you something to think about, and a reason to tune in for the next season because you want to find out what happens next, but I’m still sick of the cliffhanger finale business.  It is aggravating and actually makes me less inclined to want to watch next season because I feel like the show creators are thinking more about their own bottom line and less about keeping their viewers happy.

On that note, let us discuss the season (possibly series) finale of Sarah Connor Chronicles.  After the disasters of last week (which I didn’t watch but don’t really feel like I missed out on anything), which included Derek’s death and Sarah’s incarceration by the Feds, John and Cameron are trying to figure out what to do next.  They are hiding out in a low rent hotel, watching news stories about Sarah and arguing over whether they can try to save her.  John also wants to know if Sarah could be getting cancer from prolonged exposure to Cameron’s power source, though that wouldn’t really make sense if just Sarah got sick, as John spends even more time with the girl-bot than his mother does.

While John and Cameron discuss radiation leaks, Catherine Weaver and John Henry also monitor what is happening with Sarah.  Agent Ellison doesn’t like some of the stuff that is going on around him these days, but Weaver insists they are doing what needs to be done in order for their project to continue successfully.  She wants to meet with John Connor, but Ellison’s initial talk with him and Cameron does not go well.  They refuse to set up the meeting, though something Ellison relays to Cameron seems to upset her a little.  This doesn’t stop her from going along with John’s latest insane plan to bust Sarah out of jail, however.  With the help of John Henry (whose assistance they don’t actually know about) Cameron shoots up the jail and manages to get Sarah free.  Then the reunited Conner Crew heads over to Catherine Weaver’s office.  John and Sarah head up to talk to Catherine while Cameron goes down to the basement to meet up with John Henry.  Discussions are cut short when someone attacks Weaver’s office and she reveals her liquid cyborg tendencies.  Soon everyone is running downstairs to find out if John Henry and Cameron are still kicking around or if they might have killed each other off.

Weaver reveals that someone is out to kill her “son,” a system she was building to stop SkyNet in the future.  It looks like they are too late to get to John Henry though, as they find he has jumped through time with Cameron’s brain chip.  Weaver sets up the time machine to go after him, but Ellison refuses to tag along.  John also decides to go into the future, desperate to find Cameron’s stolen chip.  At first it looks like Sarah will follow, but at the last minute she steps out of the time bubble mechanism and stays behind.  John and Weaver arrive in a war-torn future and quickly find that it isn’t the one they were expecting.  When John runs into his uncle Derek Reese, it appears that Derek has never even heard of John Connor.  Moments later, John has another shock when his father, Kyle Reese, appears with Cameron/Allison from Palmdale at his side.

There was some good stuff in this episode.  Tearing John away from Sarah and forcing him to make his own decisions was a nice development, even if the choice he made was to launch a suicide rescue mission.  It showed that he has grown somewhat as a character, and does really have the potential to be the leader destined to save the human race.  It was also interesting to see the relationship between John and Cameron deepen.  The scene where she took off her clothes and had him digging around inside her chest plate was a little creepy but also a little sexy.  It’s been obvious all along that John has feelings for Cameron that probably aren’t healthy (she is a machine, after all).  Watching him jump through time into an unknown future just to save her brain chip made it clear that he has let himself fall pretty heavily for her.

The reveal that Weaver was designing John Henry to fight SkyNet was less of a surprise than it was probably meant to be.  While I had some thoughts that she might be designing SkyNet in the beginning of the season, that quickly became too obvious of a plot device.  The brief mention of Miles Dyson’s son in this episode, along with the attack by John Henry’s “brother” in a previous episode, and the entire warehouse place that Weaver destroyed, all link together much more fluidly for me as the answer to where SkyNet comes from.  John Henry was designed by the same liquid cyborgs that refused to join up with John Connor after the disastrous submarine trip that Jesse survived.  John Henry is meant to help save the world, and it makes sense that even John Connor would need robotic help to really pull that off.

But there were also things about this episode that just didn’t fly with me.  Once again there was a crazy terminator machine chasing after the Connors (and possibly John Henry) and that always makes me irritated.  I’m sick and tired of random terminators popping up all over the place and making a mess of things and not actually killing the proper people.  If these machines are so powerful and deadly in the future, and have managed to kill off so many humans in the future, WHY are they so bad at it in the past?  They are chasing after targets with less experience and less weapons, and they can’t seem to kill any of them.  It’s just lame.

I also didn’t appreciate the jump John Connor took through time – AGAIN.  It is just too easy in this show for people to jump forward and backward through time.  They have made such a giant mess of the timeline and the universe that nothing really makes sense anymore.  Now John has even managed to jump into a future where he isn’t the leader of the resistance, and his own family doesn’t know who he is.  So therefore he shouldn’t even exist.  And sure, the writers can explain all that with alternate timeline nonsense, but I think that is just a cheat.  Time travel isn’t real, and so in order to write it in a way that feels real, you have to stick with some rules.  By throwing people all over the place in time and disregarding any kinds of rules or restrictions, this plot device just seems silly and unbelievable to me.

It hasn’t been announced yet whether or not “Sarah Connor Chronicles” will be back for another season, and honestly at this point I kind of hope that it doesn’t get picked up again.  I wanted to like this show in the beginning, and there have been episodes I really enjoyed, but there were too many things going on that just made me want to scream and throw things at the TV.  Unless the writers can start reining themselves in on things like time travel and alternate realities and cyborgs that can’t manage to kill anyone, this show just isn’t worth saving.

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

About Melissa: By day a mild-mannered tv station receptionist, by night a fighter of crime and corruption in the dirty streets of Spokane, WA . . . or maybe not so much. More like a hyperactive, anal-retentive daytime receptionist and a melodramatic, hyperactive nighttime fangirl who only wishes she could be a fighter of crime and champion of justice (except that would lead to getting my super costume all dirty and I hate doing laundry.) Though my intent has always been to write bestselling novels and live a life of wealth and luxury, putting my talents for snarkiness and word doodling together while letting my geek flag fly suits me just fine – for now.

Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season [Blu-ray]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete Second Season

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Skynet Edition) [Blu-ray]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete Second Season (Limited Edition Steel Packaging)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Seasons 1 & 2 [Blu-ray]