I’m in a bit of a rush, but just thought I’d relay the news that Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” will return next fall.
I’m not in too much of a rush to give you my 2 cents on the show.
I was on the verge of liking it when it debuted, but was on the verge of not liking it a good amount of the time during the rest of its first season.
The more I saw of the show, the more I felt the producers had made a big casting mistake by giving the role of John Connor to Thomas Dekker. Dekker didn’t appear to be capable of much more than glowering darkly through his artfully arranged bangs.
As was the case with NBC’s ill-fated “Bionic Woman” retread, this was a situation in which amazing casting might have been able to elevate (or help mask the problems of) a middling project, but that didn’t happen with either show (not even Katee Sackhoff could save “Bionic Woman”).
Dekker was fine in his minor part on “Heroes,” but he seemed too lightweight for his “Sarah Connor” role, which was admittedly underwritten.
But as with “Bionic Woman,” there are multiple other problems with the show, though I’m not sure they’re, uh, terminal in the case of “Sarah Connor.”
The show could be a decently satisfying action-adventure series, but I think there are some obstacles as it stands now:
• Apart from Summer Glau’s Cameron and possibly the new character played by Brian Austin Green (who will be a regular next season), I’m not too invested in the characters. They’re not particularly interesting yet, and their bonds aren’t all that potent.
• The stories are too loopy, timewise. I’m no fan of time-travel stories, so maybe this is just me, but the plots on “Sarah Connor” seem convoluted. They’re constantly going backward and forward, and the stories have to conform to various things that happened in the movies, and ultimately the gyrations on the time front made my brain hurt.
• The show takes itself pretty seriously. I don’t mind “Sarah Connor” trying to make itself about more than robots fighting, but people paid good money to see the “Terminator” movies in large part because robots fighting are cool. The narrations that we got from Sarah were often eloquent, but also a bit overwritten and pretentious.
As was the case with “Bionic Woman,” “Sarah Connor” seems to think it needs to make big statements about the meaning of life and what it’s like to be a woman in a difficult situation. OK, but don’t bang me over the head with it.
• “Sarah Connor” needs to have a little fun while its characters fend off the apocalypse. Other genre programs do it on a weekly basis without being so glum.
I kept seeing the kernel of something possibly cool in the show, or maybe I was just bored on Mondays until “How I Met Your Mother” returned. In any case, I hope that this show either steps it up a few notches next fall or that Fox puts on enough quality fare that I don’t mind that “Sarah Connor” didn’t quite get there.
Maureen Ryan is a TV critic for the Chicago Tribune.
