'Chronicles' Wows - Enough Said

By LillyKat
PTR Senior Staff Writer

An open letter to Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

Dear T:SCC,

You got me.

Check that - you wowed me.

Left me with goosebumps.

Made me want to take back all of the bad things I said about your mid-season experiment into Sarah Connor Tangentland that did, effectively, bore so many of us to tears and lead some of the most loyal viewers - yours truly included - to question whether you were still worth watching.

And just when I thought you had forgotten how to create that sense of mystery, drama, sentimentality, excitement, action and suspense that made me love you so much throughout your first season, you deliver "Adam Raised a Cane."

And you have left me speechless in the process.

You let Summer Glau's Cameron kick arse, take charge and be definitive once again. No wandering around in her underwear. No useless standing around in the background doing nothing. Protecting. Ordering. Demanding. Directing. Just what a good machine should be doing. Just what she always did so well and of which made her so much fun to watch.

You stun us with the death of Brian Austin Green's Derek before I've even settled into the episode. No warning, no pomp and circumstance, no hoopla. Just appearing around the wrong corner at the wrong time. Bang. Gone. It was so simply perfect and absolutely fitting to have this character go down doing exactly what he was sent here to do - protect John.

You show us Lena Headey's Sarah still does have her own pair and is still willing to put the greater good of everyone above herself - no matter the weight of it, no matter its never-ending pursuit. The fight to protect John at all costs and save the world from the machines is, always has been and always will be hers until the day she comes around the wrong corner at the wrong time.

You show us that Thomas Dekker has finally be given the chance to embody the true quiet leader strength of John Conner. THIS is the man who really WILL grow up to save mankind. The sacrifices he must make for that to happen weigh on him heavily, but no longer in such a dopey, emo, poor-me way. And no sacrifice is perhaps more poignant than with the death of yet another person close to him, or with the capture of his own mother - both of which he comes to terms. But then again, that's what people do for John - they give up everything for him; they die for him. So not only do we see it with Derek's stunner and in Sarah's arrest, we FEEL it through John.

But most of all, you let little Mackenzie Brooke Smith's Savannah Weaver steal the entire episode with an unbelievably brilliant, most amazingly nuanced performance that actors twice her age sometimes fail to do. The chemistry she shares not only with Garret Dillahunt, but in character with John Henry, is just too.damn.good. I think her duet with Garret to close the episode will haunt me for weeks.

At the end of it all, I am left proud to have called you show my favorite. If next week is the last I see of you, I can honestly say you have done the one thing I had hoped this second half of the season would do: give some closure, be complete, and send it out with a wow and a bang.

And if you do make it back for a third season, may these episodes serve as your blueprint to remind you of what makes you work at your best.

Yours sincerely,

LillyKat
A Proud T:SCC Follower

The second season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles airs next Friday at 8 p.m. on FOX. You can also watch full episodes online. Visit the Official Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Web site to catch up (or re-watch!)