Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Canceled — A Final Review

It’s gone.

It’s gone and it definitely won’t be back.  How depressed am I?  Well, I totally just nailed a Terminator “Be Back” joke and there is nothing inside me at the moment that feels like giving so much as a smirk at my own “genius.”

Early yesterday FOX announced its 2009-2010 television line-up and TSCC was not picked up for a third season.  Do I think it an injustice?  Kind of; kind of not.  I mean, I get it — numbers are numbers, demos are demos, and the Nielsen Ratings (dinosaurs though they may be) are still looked to as a primary source of decision making.  TSCC began with stellar numbers, and slowly trickled off.  It was enough, however, to warrant a second season which, sadly, saw an even more harsh drop in numbers.  To begin with, the show’s second season was given an initial thirteen episode order and the rest of the episodes were not ordered until it reached its mid-season hiatus.  Even then, though, the rest of the fans and I were biting our nails, losing sleep, hoping the show would live through the winter.  FOX graciously ordered the full season and then moved it out of the highly competitive Monday night position to a much less competitive Friday night, where sci-fi fans were given a treat: not only would we be viewing the rest of our TSCC season but we could also stick around for a similar genre show called Dollhouse — the new high concept drama from Joss Whedon.

But, less competitive though they may be, Fridays are not necessarily as forgiving.  TSCC and Dollhouse premiered to not-so-great numbers.  In the end, if memory serves correctly, TSCC concluded with around four million viewers and a 1.4ish in the demos.  I don’t understand demos, though, so I won’t try to dissect them now.

FAN RANT (Beware)

I must now digress into saying that as much as FOX tried to do for the show, there was also a lot it did not do, not to mention a lot of excuses it used that did not really hold any steady ground.  What seemed to hurt the show more than anything in the beginning was the WGA strike of 2007/2008.  When show creator Josh Friedman pitched the pilot to FOX, a full twenty-two episode season was initially ordered, but with the impending strike looming over, FOX decided to cut the order to thirteen in hopes of having them filmed before the strike began.  In the end, however, only nine episodes were filmed.  That is correct, episode nine of season one, which still serves as one of the MUST-SEE episodes of ANY TV show, was not meant to serve as the brilliant season finale that it eventually became.  The fact that there are some many genius moments in the episode (an FBI shoot-out choreographed to Johnny Cash’s “When the Man Comes Around,” anyone?) is purely coincidental and serves to further show just how genius the writing on the show was and has always been.  Like so many other shows, including the recently renewed Chuck from NBC, the numbers suffered due to the WGA strike — people just seemed to lose interest in television around that time.

And though FOX did order a second season, they are also responsible for a complete change of tone when the show returned.  TSCC was always meant to be a serialized action/drama, meaning that while each episode told a full story, they were also only small windows of a much bigger picture that the show would build towards throughout the season and series.  Since FOX was not sure about its own faith in the show, though, when they renewed it for a second season, they made specific requests for changes, one of the primary requests being the show be less serialized.  The thinking was that the show needed to see a decent rise in numbers, therefore it should thus be made so that anyone could jump on at anytime and not be completely lost.  The problem here was that season one was already building towards something and that season two must try and finish that off and continue forward.  Giving the show a more stand-alone type of feel would mean that the writers could not always make the show what it needed to be, and that filler episodes would ensue.  Now, I for one am happy with how season two turned out — for all the b.s. the writers had push through to make it right, the show still turned out damn good and still easily one of the smartest shows on television.  Friedman never wanted a “terminator-of-the-week” type of show, but to oblige FOX, the decision was many times out of his hands — and if I remember correctly, one of the cast and crew members stated that the whole concept of the names on the wall in the second episode of season two was their way of setting up all of those stand-alone episodes.  And as much as I hate that that is what the show had to become, I cannot complain when the episodes were still wonderful (see “Self Made Man”).  Still, though, FOX’s decision to make the show into something it just was not meant to be was a VERY BAD idea.

FOX also decided to cut the budget for the second season as well.  Now, this is not a gripe on my part — insane special effects hold little merit if the story just isn’t there.  I only mention the budget of the show because it seems that that was also a factor in determining it’s renewal chances — that the show was quite expensive to make — but Friedman himself has stated that contrary to that belief, the show doesn’t have THAT big of a budget.

The biggest mistake that FOX seemed to have made, though, was that since TSCC’s first season had little time garner a stable audience and still needed proper time to gain its footing, FOX still opted to place it in a highly competitive Monday night time slot where, among other things, the show would be up against Monday Night Football.  Now I personally do not watch football but I AM oh so aware of how many people do, so putting TSCC’s unstableness against THAT audience was freakin’ insane!  And of course the ratings suffered.  It did, however, finally level off at around five million viewers (I forget what the demos were but I don’t think they were TOO great).  That in mind, the fact that TSCC still managed to almost garner that same audience in its last couple of episodes showed, if nothing else, that the show definitely had a hardcore audience in its grasp.

FINAL REVIEW

*Spoilers*

I’ve written several blogs now regarding my thoughts and opinions of this series, so now I will only take the time the review the show’s series finale and also give one last defense of what others have deemed as the show’s “faults.”

To begin with, the finale, “Born to Run,” starts with us meeting Sarah in jail and John and Cameron in hiding from the authorities — in the episode prior, Derek Reese had been slain and Sarah was arrested soon after her meeting with Ellison.  Almost everyone in John’s life had been killed at this point — Riley, Derek, and Charlie — and now his mother has been taken away, leaving him only with his defective cyborg, Cameron.  All of this leads to several interesting conversations: John discussing the possibility of Cameron’s nuclear reactor causing cancer (since it seems that Sarah now has some form of it); Catherine Weaver revealing herself as a cyborg who ALSO seems to want to save humanity; Cameron explaining that she will always be a threat to John no matter what her hardware circumstances are; and there is even a nice callback to the first season when a familiar character emerges to relay a message from Sarah.

Everything slowly builds to a confrontation with Catherine Weaver and the Connors which results in what could possibly be one of the greatest plot twists in television history.  Weaver reveals herself to the Connors (and Ellison as well) and suddenly an HK attacks the ZeiraCorp building and everyone rushes down to where John Henry is being kept only to find:

Cameron, no longer “alive” with her chip removed now sitting limp.  John Henry is gone via a time machine that Weaver seems to have built as well and now Weaver instructs everyone to follow her as she chases John Henry through time (as she explains, he is equally as important as John in the salvation of mankind).  Weaver begins the time jump process and John steps into the sphere.  Sarah, though, cannot find it in herself to do it and steps outside of the sphere, as does Ellison.  John explains that he has to retrieve Cameron’s chip but Sarah won’t budge.  And therein is one of the most heartbreaking moments in TV history, with John being completely abandoned now by everyone in his life (it was, after all, Cameron’s choice to have her chip removed) and jumping into the future with only Weaver by his side (and she soon leaves as well).  But not long after he arrives, though, do we find another twist of plot (two, actually).  Firstly John finds Derek alive and well and is almost dumbstruck.  Since they’ve technically never met, though, John tells Derek who he is and — SURPRISE — neither Derek, nor anyone else, has any idea who John Connor is (since John technically disappeared from existence when he jumped through time, he therefore never became the leader of the Resistance).  And as all of these revelations begin to hit home, John runs into yet another shocker.  His father, Kyle Reese, emerges behind him and John, having never seen his adult father, is left speechless.  Oh, and just for good measure, when Kyle emerges, so does a one Allison Young, the girl Cameron was modeled after.

To be frank, it was all sheer-fucking-brilliant!  And it wasn’t just the plot, either: the execution was spot on.  Before the Connors confront Weaver, there is a nice long moment of silence as they and Ellison ride the elevator to their destination.  And just beforehand, John, not knowing what to expect, turns to his mother and tells her that he loves her.  A nice moment made all the more genius by the episode’s last shot.  The camera pans to the spot where the time sphere emerged where an electrical aftershock seems to have brought through Sarah’s voice (and last words of the series): “I love you, too.”

There have been too many complaints over this season for me to list completely here so I will now only pick what I find to be the most important.

For people to call John’s character “whiny,” and “emo” is to not understand ANYTHING about character development.  First off, the kid is roughly fifteen or sixteen years old and he’s already murdered a human being.  It seems that people want this badass savior of mankind to be born that way — nobody these days seem to care about the hero’s journey; to see the things that make him who he’ll be.  This season is a perfect example of that.  John must face the reality of taking a human life and at the same time try and make a connection with someone he thinks will understand him.  Enter the much criticized (though not by me) Riley.  Riley’s character was everything that he needed, but as we find out, she was also more than she let on.  John must face not only this reality as well but also the fact that in his destiny to save mankind, it will be a long and lonely road.  And while people can say what they want about the show needing more action, I honestly wouldn’t have had it any other way.  From the very first season it was always clear that the show was much more introverted than most others, tending to focus more on its character’s dilemmas than mindless action scenes that go nowhere.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

What hurts the most about TSCC’s cancelation, though, is the fact that there was so much story left to tell.  You see, Josh Friedman never intended this show to last forever and when he pitched it FOX, he gave them his plan for a series that would last no longer than four or five years.  There was always a definite beginning and a definite end to his story.  And now it is gone — likely forever.  One can hope that maybe Friedman will continue the story in another medium (after all, Joss Whedon has continued his Buffy and Angel series in comics, why can’t TSCC follow suit?) but at this point in time, it seems very unlikely — one can only hope that Friedman, who now has to sit on his story with no outlet, will reach a point where he just HAS to finish telling his story to the fans.  Fingers crossed, I suppose.

And one last thing.

In a recent interview, Brian Austin Green (Derek) explained that he had faith in the show’s renewal since FOX likes to stick with shows that have a core audience. *Sigh*  I probably do not even have to utter the word Firefly (but I did) to explain how wrong he was.  If that was true, a show such as Sit Down, Shut Up which has an innate Arrested Development audience built into it, would not have been canceled.  I mention this because a friend of mine was just explaining how great that show was becoming (shout to you Matt) — I for one did not care for the Pilot but have since heard that it was getting better.  But, you may interject, FOX renewed Dollhouse!  Yes, they did.  FOX spokesman Kevin Reilly explained that they are keeping the show because of Whedon’s fanbase and that they had faith in the direction of season two.  Yeah, sure.  If that were true, they wouldn’t have made cuts to the show’s budget, kept it in the same timeslot, and only give an initial thirteen episode order (sound familiar?).  That’s some faith.  I wish Whedon well, though (the man has yet to let me down yet) — there are also rumors that he is in talks to create a new project of some kind featuring Summer Glau, so it’ll be nice to see her again, sometime soon hopefully.

As for TSCC, it was a fun ride of which I rarely missed an episode.  It was thrilling, heartfelt, and oh so very honest.  Maybe one day the story will be concluded; only time will tell.  For now, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

(Again… I can’t even smirk)