SARAH CONNER CHRONICLES

TSCC is a sloppy mix of hope and despair and that suits some people just fine and others don't have a taste for it. I've made peace with that. I'm not particularly interested in giving the world a xanax and telling them it's gonna be all right. It's usually not all right. And I don't want someone showing me what it's like to be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm probably not gonna be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm gonna be scared and mediocre and I don't need to feel worse that I'm not awesome. I want to know that scared and mediocre is a reasonable response to hard times and not something to be ashamed of. TSCC is a sloppy mix of hope and despair and that suits some people just fine and others don't have a taste for it. I've made peace with that. I'm not particularly interested in giving the world a xanax and telling them it's gonna be all right. It's usually not all right. And I don't want someone showing me what it's like to be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm probably not gonna be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm gonna be scared and mediocre and I don't need to feel worse that I'm not awesome. I want to know that scared and mediocre is a reasonable response to hard times and not something to be ashamed of. But my show got cancelled. So what do I know. That's from showrunner Josh Friedman's interview with io9, after the shows much-rumoured cancellation was announced officially. He seems like a classy guy, and I have a friend whose dad plays golf on the same course as his dad, which makes us family, sort of... but I watched this show religiously from the first episode, and I thought it was uneven and sometimes too slow, and Leah Rambin bugged me -- I mean she bugs everyone, but she bugged ME because she's related to Mary Rambin, that 26 year old bimbo who hangs out with Julia Allison and wrote a defense of getting botox at 26, which is enough guilt by association to make me think no relative of hers should be allowed within six miles of the MOTHER OF THE MESSIAH for gods' sake. But OK, that's besides the point. There was a lot wrong, mostly in the two leads, but there was also a lot write. The robots themselves, were both terrific, Cameron's whole when-will-she-blow thing completely worked, and the fact that Summer Glau is a)gorgeous and b) a dancer with killer grace (sorry for the pun) worked wonders. Plus the season one finale, with all that slo-mo bloodshed by the pool sort of showed just how devastating and dramatic the story could be. The problem wasn't the "mix of hope and despair"-- it was the mix of hope and despair unmitigated by humor. I don't necessarily mean the Joss Whedon-style quips -- I just mean the kind of gallows humor that you see in real life among soldiers who are constantly at war. And then I'd want Sarah to have a little more Brooklyn in her – like, instead of developing stoicism and paranoia as a coping mechanism, why couldn’t she have gotten brash, caustic, a little violent with John. Or, considering the stress she was under, more theatrically nuts? You could have made her a little more wild and spun out (more like the original Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. Or like Holly Hunter in Saving Grace. A mother entrusted with raising the future saviour of all mankind is going to end up all kinds of crazy -- and crazy is fun to watch. Also, the supporting cast were just better than the principles. This Jon Conner didn't do it for me, I don't know who would have been better, not without a time machine of my own (Jason Gordon-Leavittt, circa 2002? check. A 20 year old Leonardo DiCaprio? Check). But Sarah Jacobson and Brian Austin Green were awesome. I would totally watch a spin-off based on their relationship. And I want to look like her when I'm reborn as a post-apocalyptic bisexual biracial revolutionary with bloodlust and awesome guns. [SPOILER ALERT] The show was uneven and, lots of times, really slow, and could never have survived that Friday night death slot, even if it were the consistent masterpiece it should have been, but good God was that an awesome finale. John Conner gets shot forward into a wartorn future in which he never existed at all? And we meet the flesh and blood woman who was the model for Cameron? And I actually like the SCTT hybrid better than the hybrids Battlestar Galactica. Props to Shirley Manson. Could there possibly be a better training ground for the saviour of humanity? It's like getting the answer sheet for your final exams the day in advance, but with the future of the world at stake. [SPOILER OVER] And finally