Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 1 (2008)

I'm not a Terminator fanatic. I enjoyed the first film, thought the second was okay, turned off the third halfway through the first time I tried to watch it and didn't bother with the fourth at all, so I wasn't expecting much from TSCC. It takes place after events in Terminator 2 (1991), so it's essential to have watched it. It also follows a similar template: the machines are hunting the teenage John Connor, so a modified one is sent back from the future to protect him. The biggest difference is in the perspective. In the films the protagonists were mostly on the run. In the series they're no longer running. They're taking the fight to Skynet. That new dynamic makes it a million times more interesting than the films ever were.

There are two strong female characters. Lena Headey plays the mother figure, Sarah Connor. She makes the character her own. She portrays a woman torn between duty and personal tragedy, giving a performance full of both strength and vulnerability without compromising one or the other. Beneath the hardened outer shell is a burden of desperation that fuels her; she thrives on it despite wishing with all her heart that the need for it be removed. She deserves all the praise I can heap upon her.

Similarly, Summer Glau brings a strength to her role as the machine tasked with protecting the young John. She has to be emotionless but engaging, which is a tall order. She does it well. Her character is saved from the one dimensionality of the Arnie model by having an ambiguity about her, one which the viewer is manipulated into not trusting one hundred percent. It keeps you on a precipice and gives the writers a fun toy to play with.

The aforementioned vulnerabilities of the characters make them endearing. The fight to survive and save the future is contrasted with the daily grind of their everyday life, within which the possibility of failure keeps it exciting.

9 episodes, approx 44 minutes each.

5 resistance fighters out of 5