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- TV Series: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
- Episode: Born to Run
- Starring: Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau, Richard T. Jones, Brian Austin Green, Shirley Manson, and Garret Dillahunt
- Written By: Josh Friedman
- Directed By: Jeffrey Hunt
- Network: Fox
- Series: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Sarah Connor Chronicles: Born to Run
Judgment Day? By
Rob Vaux
April 11, 2009
What could be last episode review for Fox's TERMINATOR: SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES(2009).
© Mania.com/Robert Trate
Watching the rousing and honorable finale to the 2nd season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles served as a reminder of the difficult task this show set before it, and the at-times erratic way it pursued a solution. Evoke the essence of James Cameron's seminal movies without becoming too derivative. Find blockbuster excitement on a television budget. Explore the Terminator universe in new and different ways and yet hold onto the core of everything which has come before it. If Friday night was indeed the end of The Sarah Connor Chronicles--and unless McG comes riding in on a white charger, it will be--then at least it ended with its best foot forward. It's the previous steps which likely caused its demise.
Ironically, the subplot which held the season together didn't involve Sarah (Lena Headey) or her son John (Thomas Dekker), but Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson), the presumed villainous T-1000 who turned out not to be so villainous after all. SCC tricked and teased out her possible motivations over the season without losing our interest, aided by the ethical conundrums posed by the child-like A.I. in her basement and her periodic bouts of cold-blooded murder. The rest of the show never quite managed that trick… at least not with the regularity and precision it needed to survive. Lowered budgets demanded more dialogue-laden scenes in the middle of the season: all well and good, except that SCC couldn't find anything remotely interesting to say. It may be that the universe itself simply lacked the depth to handle twenty-two hours worth of content. It may be that the writers didn't have the tools at their disposal to find a good direction for these characters. But amid questions of Cameron's (Summer Glau) loyalty, Jesse's (Stephanie Jacobsen) head games, and John's flat-out whining, the spirit of the endeavor was lost. By the time the show found it again, the audience had departed and the Friday night doomsday slot nailed the coffin shut.
For the finale, at least, the stars aligned, and SCC showed us what it was all supposed to be about. Director Jeffrey Hunter and writer Josh Friedman leaned a tad too heavily on Cameron's films for inspiration, as an enemy T-800 came up against Weaver and John busted his mother out of prison in manner we've seen more than once before. But they also found a unique rhythm all their own, and the long-delayed confrontation between Weaver and Sarah didn't disappoint.
Weaver, presumably the T-1000 from the Jimmy Carter, is ostensibly on humanity's side. Her spawn John Henry is here to fight Skynet, and Friedman managed to tie the two of them in with a number of other distracting plot threads in a spectacular attack from that desert UFO that popped up earlier in the season.
More importantly, he did so while opening up a viable new direction for the show to pursue. John Henry headed for the future in search of his "brother" Skynet, pursued closely by John and Weaver. Sarah remained behind with James Ellison (Richard T. Jones) and Cameron--now linked to John Henry's hard drive--presumably to find a way of stopping Skynet. Then there's Cameron's human doppelganger Allison Young, who served as the episode's final twist before fading to black. With her and the other fascinating possibilities now laid out for the Connors, Season Three appears to be far more of a lost opportunity than it did during the February throes which will presumably deny its existence.
And yet beneath all of that promise, the Season Two finale still displayed imperfect solutions to SCC's various difficulties. The timeline has become increasingly tangled yet again, with alternate universes suddenly popping up and the question of who is doing what when becomes a source of grade-A headaches for anyone attempting to understand it. Superfluous supporting characters have been removed, but new ones have risen to take their place, and they may prove equally problematic. I love Joshua Malina as much as the next man, but I'm not sure what his Agent Auldridge could contribute besides the odd witty quip, and reintroducing Kyle Reese (Jonathan Jackson)--even in the future--feels like a big mistake.
As it stands, we'll probably never know for sure how it would have turned out. Abysmal ratings coupled with daunting production costs have all but assured that the train stops here. But a few glimmers of hope remain, and SCC's final fate may not be written until the fall schedule is formally announced. (A quiet death gives Fox options in case the movie is a big hit, while keeping the fans from growing too agitated in the process.) Many times this season, it seemed to deserve cancellation. Many times it squandered our goodwill, and left us bored and frustrated over its repetitive noodling. Many times… but not every time, and in those moments where it found its heart, it earned the right to be measured in the same class as its predecessors. When the end came at last, SCC met it guns blazing: if not quite flawlessly, then at least reaching for the potential it always carried in its heart.
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I hope McChicken can save this show with an awesome T4 movie...there I've said it. The last 3 episodes were what I was looking for all season. Maybe it took that long to find its legs, who knows but I hope it gets picked up for a 3rd and they can start a sprint that never stops. Though I can't help but be angry that they wasted most of the season with finding the dot stories, etc. They could have closed this chapter better then they did otherwise.