The Terminator was one of the formative movies of my youth. In addition to scaring the living daylights out of me, the movie has stuck with me on a primal level. Something about the Terminator’s totally implacable, unstoppable, but unemotional pursuit seems far more disturbing than the evil-sadist-of-the-week horror films that seem so common today. [Terminator 2 was interesting in a different way... more hopeful and Hollywood, with lots of footage from my neighborhood, to boot. T3 wasn’t as bad as some people seem to think, but it wasn’t great: the recursion paradox is even more pronounced than in the other terminators, and the ending is a bit of a downer. Note that T: SCC is apparently disavowing T3 entirely].

I hesitated to endorse T:SCC for several reasons. First, it’s on Fox, and whenever I say I like a show on Fox, they immediately cancel it (except for House). Second, the casting on the show is pretty bad, overall: Except for Summer Glau (previously impressive in the short-lived, Fox-killed Firefly), who is amazing in her ability to impart nuance to a “robot” role, the casting of every major character seemed off, especially given their prior roles (Brian Austin Green = annoying 90210 teen, not a war-ravaged soldier from future; Thomas Dekker was the cheerleader’s gay friend from Heroes, not the savior badass John Connor; Shirley Manson is a singer in the band Garbage, not a evil shapeshifting robot; Matthew Ross was the scheming political counsel on the 4400, not the devious skin-stealing robot Cromartie)... and Lena Headey (playing the title character) seemed to be painstakingly carving each of her lines out of knotty pine. Finally, I had real doubts about whether they would be able sustain the central premise of the show: that unstoppable robots keep popping in each week and are ... stopped. In an hour. Week after week. Without anyone noticing. Oh, and I forgot the fact that they seemed obsessed with the teen angst angle for John, including an annoying, doomed-to-failure, teeny-bopper crush on Riley (Leven Rambin), who also seems miscast.

But despite mediocre ratings (it’s up against Chuck, How I Met Your Mother, and Monday Night Football... all of which seem to draw on its target demographic...me. Thank God for DVRs), Fox has apparently renewed it for the full season, and (surprisingly) the show has actually turned out to be pretty good. As I mentioned before, Glau’s Cameron (I appreciate the name irony, of course) has turned out to be a fascinating character, going rogue (albeit as the result of a totally pointless subplot involving the Armenian Mafia, of all things) and generally advancing the story convincingly. Green’s Derek Reese is doing a convincing job in his role, and actually manages to convey his disdain for John Connor’s callow, annoying, emo immaturity in a convincing manner. Manson’s Catherine Weaver and Garret Dillahunt’s Cromartie were both multidimensional, sophisticated, but fallible Terminators that were far more interesting than the typical “here I come try to stop me oh you crushed me damn” opponents I feared. Richard T. Jones has been interesting as an FBI agent who sees his career and marriage destroyed by his pursuit of the Connors, and Stephanie Jacobsen (of BSG: Razor fame) has been crackling on the screen in her guest role, promising to bring another dimension into the plotting of the series. But another thing that has helped me appreciate the show is the realization that the series is actually built on a different premise than I realized: rather than being a kill-the-baddie-of-the-week recurring nightmare, the show is actually at its core about the “home front” in a time of war. Only the main characters in the show realize the war is even going on, but it colors all of their perceptions and actions.

The show has certainly had its share of bad episodes, and as I mentioned, the acting and plotting can sometimes be annoying as the writers move their chess pieces around the board. But after several pretty substantial payoffs from those chessboard moves, I think the writers are actually playing for the win, not just a draw.