Stuart Turton at Den of Geek put up a bit of an article examining The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ failure to obtain a third season.
His first assertion is that the show is too introverted, with complex philosophies and character relationships, and a creative team that doesn’t ease newcomers in mid-show. I guess that to a degree, he’s right. There’s a lot to pick up (not as much, as BSG), and without a connection to the characters, you might feel it’s not worth the effort.
Personally, I wouldn’t blame you. As Turton points out, the Terminator name implies robot fights and big explosions. TSCC only occasionally delivers those, and they’re not always very spectatular. Also, the “navel gazing” portion is often in a (to my mind) needlessly self-indulgent format.
I wouldn’t blame any viewer for giving up on the show, and when viewers do that, so do networks.
5 replies on “More T:TSCC post mortem”
Too true. If a die hard Terminator fan like me had trouble keeping interested in the TV series, I can imagine the average Joe’s interest level once the teen angst took over the focus from the action sequences.
While the teensy Teminator was awesome, (is huge River fan) I didn’t like how she reverted from ‘cool/alternative kid’ in the pilot to ‘socially inept innocent’ in the following episodes. wtf?
John Connor! was so whiny and whingey and a self centered prick!
OK… so I only watched about 4-5 episodes in season 1 (did we ever get more on Australian tv?) but did he get any better? I think it clashed with shows of greater priority (like possibly house or greys anatomy or even criminal minds – and that’s one of ly lowest priority shows at them moment but back then Mandy Patti-something was still head shrink) and got dropped from my list of things to watch.
I still prefer Linda Hamilton’s Sarah, but maybe that’s because I didn’t really connect with the new one and didn’t stay to watch long enough for her to grow on me.
What can I say? I’m not surprised.
Damn…
You caught me in a chatty mood.
Why didn’t the lines between my paragraphs show up?
John is a self-centred prick because that’s what fourteen year old boys are like. Particularly ones that are told from birth that they are the last hope of humanity at the end of the world.
He develops nicely, but it’s a slow and human transformation; nothing overnight. There are some interesting hints about what kind of person he will be like in the future (references to a “great chess game with Skynet” etc).
Sarah is an interesting character. She definitely does not grow, but that’s a deliberate choice on part of the writers (I hope). There is an element of generational handover, as Sarah has to deal with the fact that John can depend on other people (like Cameron and Kyle), especially other women (like his girlfriend Riley).
That’s the main focus of season 2. I think that’s all an important realisation for Sarah. John’s development into the master strategist comes at a pretty high price, but Sarah is the one who doesn’t really cope.
David’s last blog post..More T:TSCC post mortem
I see…. I’ll probably check out the new movie still. I just can’t resist the thought of Christian Bale as adult John and Checkov!
I’m still looking forward to the movie. My understanding is that it doesn’t necessarily relate to the TV show directly.
That said, the TV show is indicated that with all the time travel involved, there could be multiple timelines going on. I’m not sure any of them relate directly to T3 😉
David’s last blog post..More T:TSCC post mortem