Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles Season 1 Review

It's like someone was watching Terminator 3 and said "wait a minute..."

In A Nutshell:
So, in an alternate time line in which T3 never happened, Sarah and John Conner are still on the run from the law only to find that Judgement Day is still going to happen, but in the year 2011 (I'm writing this in 2012, so I think they fixed it). How does this happen? Well, two new Terminators arrive from the future, Cromartie (bad guy), and Cameron (good guy/girl, played by none other then Summer Glau). So, once again, they set out to stop Judgement Day, this time by doing a little time travel of their own,while still dealing with robots, resistance fighters, and FBI agent James Ellison (watered down version of Paul Ballard).

The Good:
There were plenty of ways this could of gone wrong, so many that I was actually genuinely surprised by how good this was. The show boasts all the intense, polished action scenes we loved the movies for, while still offering a good amount of introspection and depth (every episode starts out with Sarah doing a fairly deep voice over). A great aspect of the show is it's not afraid to do it's own thing, either, inventing new characters who are pretty awesome, most notably Derek Reese, brother of John's father. His story line was great, and he was just a good character in general, and gave us a top-notch Epitaph 1-esque episode by way of Dungeons and Dragons. And if you think that the show did a "terminator of the week" format, think again; the show uses a fantastically developed serialized format with a story that will keep you attention. By no means is this a revolutionary show, but it's absolutely a good time. The acting is great too, especially by Summer Glau your new favorite robot, Brian Austen Green as uncle Reese, and of course Lena Heady as Sarah Conner, filling in nicely for Linda Hamilton. Amazingly enough, John usually wasn't portrayed as whiny teenager (I say usually because he had his moments), and you could actually believe he might be some sort of military leader based on this portrayal of the character.

The Bad:
They had a few continuity issues with Cameron at first, mostly because in the pilot she passes for human without a hitch, but afterwards she makes it pretty obvious she's not a normal kid. There was also the fact that the season was only nine episodes, but that's the fault of the writers strike. At times, the plot does lag and rely too much on Cameron=fish out of water jokes, and there are instances where John does some major whining. It also doesn't feel quite as epic as it should, but that might just be because they're on a pretty small scale (and a very limited budget).

Final Rating: 90%


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