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Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete Second Season
Warner Bros. // Unrated // September 22, 2009
List Price: $79.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Series:
This time I can't complain that a network didn't give an excellent SF show a chance before pulling the plug. After a short 9 episode first season Fox renewed the show and aired a full 22 episodes before pulling the plug due to poor ratings. That leaves me without my favorite whipping boy to blame. Instead I am stuck scratching my head wondering why more people didn't tune into this well thought out show that gets just about everything right. They even avoid the mistakes that the third and fourth Terminator movies made; leaving us with an action packed fun show that has a lot of suspense.
Warning: If you're not familiar with the Terminator universe and who the main characters are, you'll probably be lost reading this review. Go watch the first two movies then come back.
While season two was saddled with wrapping up one of the least suspenseful cliffhangers in TV history (at the end of season one,) the show managed to turn that lame conclusion into a distinct advantage. As you might remember, Sarah (Lena Headey) and her son John Connor (Thomas Dekker) were looking for a chess computer (called The Turk) that they had reason to believe was going to evolve into the AI that tries to destroy humanity in the future. They have help in the form of a soldier from the future Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green) and a Terminator that John sent back in time to help his younger self, Cameron (Summer Glau). As the first season ended the people who had The Turk planted a bomb in Sarah's truck, and when Cameron turned on the ignition, it blew up.
No big deal. If a Terminator can withstand an exploding tanker truck full of gas as it did in the first movie, a car bomb isn't much of a threat. Cameron easily survives the blast and removes herself from the wreckage while Sarah and John are fighting the men who planted the device. The problem is that a shard of metal embeds itself in the back of Cameron's head, which partially damages her chip. She can still function at nearly as good as new, but the program that was installed to make her friendly to the resistance is no longer registering so she falls back on her primary mission: to kill John Connor.
Though Sarah and John manage to fix Cameron, she's still not quite as good as new. Little things go wrong. She freezes up in a supermarket and also starts to remember details of the life of the person she was modeled after. She also becomes curious about emotions and why humans do some of the illogical things that they do. This really starts to worry Sarah and especially Derek.
They don't have a lot of time to worry about Cameron though, because Skynet keeps them jumping. More evil Terminators are arriving from the past, and another resistance soldier from the future is sent back with a list of objectives that these machines have. The only problem is that he's fatally wounded and dies before he can pass the information along. With few options, he writes names and clues to Skynet's plans on the basement wall of the Connor's residence in his own blood. Now the group has to decipher the cryptic messages in order to find out what they need to do.
As if that wasn't enough, there's another subplot involving FBI agent James Ellison (a tip of the hat to SF writer Harlan Ellison who inspired the first movie, played by Richard T. Jones) who knows about the existence of the robots from the future. He's been hired away from the Agency by a company that's looking for Terminator parts so they can reverse engineer them and make a fortune. It's the same company that bought The Turk through back channels. Ellison's a good employee and does his job better than they could have hoped for. The only problem? The company is run by a Terminator.
Watching this season of the show I realized what makes this franchise so interesting and why the third and fourth movies missed the point. The franchise isn't propelled by the action or even the plot of how John and/or Sarah will survive. The things that make the Terminator franchise so engaging are the characters, particularly Sarah Connor. Think back to the changes she underwent in the first movie, transforming from a typical empty-headed young adult to a tough fighter with the weight of the world on her shoulders. T2 examined how Sarah handled that burden. This series continues that theme and expands to John too. Sarah has been running her whole adult life, never making friends and never having a close companion aside from her son. She knows that if she starts to feel for someone the best thing she can do for them is to leave. It's a price that few could pay. What's worse is that she has to train John to think that way, and that's doubly hard for a teenager. John wants to go out on dates, and is at that time of his life when kids naturally rebel. One of the great ironies of the show is that both Sarah and John have to separate themselves from humanity in order to save it. By focusing on this aspect of the characters the series hits all the right marks.
While every show has a good amount of action, suspense, and adventure, these episodes also flesh out the Terminator universe very nicely. They spend a bit of time in the future, filling in some gaps and expanding on what has gone before. One of my favorite episodes involves just who Cameron modeled her body after and why. They also introduce Derek's love from the future, someone who may or may not still be of the side of the humans.
I was also very surprised at how artful the show became in this second season. They could have played it straight and mimicking the direction style for every other action show out there, but in several episodes they try to do something different, and it often works. In the first episode at the beginning John and Sarah are tied up and being questioned violently by some creeps. It's a typical scene except for the fact that the audio consists solely of a song. The lack of sound effects and just the haunting lyrics was a beautiful touch, one they use again in the series. It grabs the viewer's attention in a way that a typical action scene won't. In another episode the climactic battle between the John and Derek and a Terminator is accompanied by Sarah's voice reading sections of "The Wizard of Oz" to a young child. It's touches like this that made the show so special.
The Blu-ray Disc:
Video:
The show is presented with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio on five DVDs encoded in 1080p with the VC-1 codex and the Blu-ray discs look better than the HD broadcasts. The show has a few 'pop' moments that work very well, especially brightly lit exterior scenes, but even in the low light sections, which there are more than a few, the image has a very good amount of detail. Smaller objects have nice definition and the lines are tight. The colors are also good with the flesh tones being accurate and the various shades looking realistic without being boosted to an unreal level. The blacks were nice and deep, and the whites were bright without being crushed.
On the digital side things also looked very good. Aliasing wasn't a problem, thought there was some very minor posterization in a couple of spots and some grain did appear. Blocking and other compression artifacts were not a problem and edge enhancement wasn't present.
Audio:
Unfortunately the only audio option is a 5.1 English sound track. While it sounds good, I couldn't help but wonder what the show would have been like with an HD audio codex. In any case the discs sounded good, especially when you consider that this is a TV show. The rears were sent a good amount of information during the battle scenes but there wasn't as much ambient noise coming from them as I was expecting at other times. The range was fine and there weren't any noticeable defect to the track itself.
Extras:
The Blu-ray edition offers all of the special features that the SD DVD set does, which is as it should be, most of them are even in SD this time too. Spread over the discs there are four commentary tracks featuring executive producer/writer Josh Friedman and various members of the cast and crew. Though I enjoyed the program, none of these really grabbed me. There were a few too many dead spaces and the comments didn't really enlighten me or add much to my enjoyment of the show. These weren't bad commentaries they just were not anything very special.
The Storyboard Process: Cameron Goes Bad is a three minute look at one scene and the corresponding story board. Similar to that is Cameron vs. Rosie: Fight Rehearsal a 5 ½ minute look at a fight scene including a look at the raw footage before special effects are added and the storyboards.
One cool extra is Collision with the Future: Deconstructing the Hunter Killer Attack. This Blu-ray exclusive bonus feature allows viewers to see a scene with one or all four options activated. These include "Production," "Direction," "Special FX," and "Visual FX". It was fun to play with.
The biggest bonus item is a nearly 45-minute (total) 8-part featurette entitled The Continuing Chronicles. This is a pretty interesting look at the show and includes section on the concepts, the future world, and the characters. The extras section is wrapped up with a series of deleted scenes from several episodes and a gag reel.
Final Thoughts:
It's really too bad that this show was cancelled. It's much better than many shows that were renewed. Filled with action, suspense, and some wonderful character development it has everything viewers want in a good SF show. Watching the series all in a row is an even better viewing experience than watching it one week at a time. Don't let last summer's theatrical movie keep you away. This is a show worth watching. Highly Recommended.
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