Bluray Review: Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2
Terminator TV Series Returns for a Second and Final Season
Oct 27, 2009
When viewers witnessed the Season One season finale, many pivotal events had taken place. Cameron (Summer Glau), the good Terminator teen tasked with protecting John (Thomas Dekker), had been blown up in a car explosion. Meanwhile, Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) was the sole survivor of an entire tactical squad which died trying to stop the deadly T-800 model Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt), which survived earlier destruction, and had its face remodeled after a B-movie actor.
Brief Overview of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2
The season premiere of Season Two hits the ground running. Not only has Cameron survived, but due to the blast her chip has been slightly damaged, altering her programming. Whereas she had been tasked to protect John at all costs, she is now reverting back to her original mission, that most Terminators in this franchise: Kill John Connor.
Of course, the show can't have one of its main stars chasing the other for the bulk of the season, so this subplot is resolved by the end of the premiere, with Cameron reprogramming herself willingly, to prevent John from dying at her own hands.
Meanwhile, the audience is privy to the introduction of a mysterious new character: Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson, lead singer of Garbage), the CEO of tech company Zeiracorp. Through the course of the season, her goal is shown to be the acquisition of various technologies, that may someday lead to the creation of Skynet. She hires Ellison as her chief of security, which helps her benefit from his existing knowledge of the walking robots roaming L.A. looking for John. Furthermore, she is hiding a great secret: she is in fact an advanced model of the liquid metal Terminator seen in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Not only can she adopt many shapes and appearances, but she can also emote more easily than the previous model.
As John, Cameron, John's mother Sarah (Lena Headey) and uncle Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green) continue to hide from authorities, while running down the list of potential Skynet collaborators left to them in blood on their basement wall (by a minor character at the end of Season One), we discover more elements each week, that put together could very well form the artificial entity which destroys mankind and enslaves them during a war of the machines.
Cast Analysis of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2 Bluray
The show is at its best when it explores further aspects of the known Terminator mythology, such as giving the audience glimpses of major events within the resistance in 2027, where Connor is leading the humans against Skynet. Meanwhile, almost half the episodes in the middle of this season deal too much with Sarah Connor's own insecurities, which tend to veer towards the melodramatic and thus reduces the impact of the show as a viable action drama.
Granted, every show does need some dramatic elements to further character development, however there is too much of that in Sarah's case. The mystique of Cameron's learning process deepens, and we get to learn more each episode, about how she perceives her human companions. Summer Glau is still impressive as the female Terminator, who like Arnold Schwarzenegger in T2, always has a question at the ready, in her continuing quest to learn about the human condition.
Thomas Dekker manages to avoid falling into emo mode while portraying John Connor, and grows a pair by the second half of the season...that is, when he's not too busy pining over his rebellious girlfriend Riley (Leven Rambin).
As for Green's role of Derek Reese, he also manages the role pretty well, and fulfills his role of armed muscle and tactical support. This is a feat of its own, since Cameron the Terminator could easily fulfill this role twice over.
The two characters which could have easily been dispensed with are that of Catherine Weaver (Manson), and that of Jesse (Stephanie Jacobsen). Manson's portrayal of the methodical yet cold CEO/T-1001 is expected given the role, but after a while the lack of reaction in most scenes just gets repetitive. Also, her character doesn't really get a chance to evolve until the last half-hour of the series finale, which feels way too rushed.
As for Jesse, her presence as a future resistance fighter who traveled back in time to kill Cameron, is never justified or explained. She seems written in simply to give Derek Reese a love interest, lest the writers be forced to have him sitting in the background cleaning guns and checking ammo each episode.
Sarah Connor Chronicles Season Two Overall Analysis
The series gets points for further elaborating on the origin of both Skynet and the Resistance, but loses points for dipping into pointless melodrama too frequently. As the producers discovered the series was to be canceled, they likely felt rushed for time, resulting in an uneven series finale, which has plenty of action, but so many loose ends that a TV movie filmed separately in the next few years, could easily solve this. An online campaign was conducted to try and save the show, but by now most of the cast have moved on to other projects, with Glau making appearances on Dollhouse, and Green appearing as John Corben/Metallo on Smallville.
The Bluray set includes some visual effects segments, as well as bloopers and deleted scenes.
7 out of 10 for fleshing out the major elements of the franchise's history, but for forcing the audience to go through a dozen pointless soap opera type episodes.
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