[MTS]

What do people think of this show? I recently started watching it and have now just finished season 2. I was fairly impressed with the show in the beginning - the first season was very good, with a particularly menacing Terminator trying to track the Connors down, a reprogrammed Terminator protecting them (the usual formula) and the FBI element had the potential to be very good. However, I was a little let down with season 2. It became very serialised, with a lot of episodes just being boring and mere filler material, hardly advancing the plot at all. The whole "Sarah dream sequence" episodes were the worst. The Riley storyline was fairly boring, and the character of Jesse just grated. There were some unresolved plot points from season 1 (i.e. Cheri and Cameron's "prom date" friend). I liked the idea of Weaver and John Henry though - it was a very original idea, and Weaver has remained very ambiguous throughout the series: is she working for Skynet or against it? It was at the end of the series that the series came into its own, I though, with lots of action, forwarding of the plot and some very shocking deaths (i.e. Derek).

Although it sucked for half of season 2, I'm now looking very much forward to a possible (?) season 3, and will be quite disappointed if it gets cancelled. I'm dying to find out the resolutions to storylines concering Allison/Cameron, John Henry, Weaver, and the whole Derek thing (I mean, wtf?). I don't really care about Sarah anymore, which is a shame, because Lena Headey is a reall good actor.

[Abyss]

Season 2 fell apart with the whole 'is Sarah crazy/has cancer/useless' plotlines, plus John's teen angst. And the whole artificial intelligence learning to be human thing was drawn out and weak.

This series always worked best when it was about killer robots doing horrible things and humans running like hell and shooting at them alot. Its attempts at 'depth' kept failing, hence, loss of viewers.

Third season virtually impossible. Looks like it's back to the big screen for the Terminators.


- Abyss, terminated fandom.

[Stalker]

Yeah, I agree that there is almost no way that this show will return. The fact that its timeslot changed so often helped to show that they were desperately trying to find some new viewers. Which didn't happen.

I liked the end of the second season, the episodes were good, though I dislike Sarah and her weaknesses. I don't care, show me fights and stuff.

The good news about this being cancelled (which seems so likely) means that Summer Glau is out of a job. So now we need Dollhouse and ABC's Castle to be cancelled and then Joss Whedon can start new episodes of firefly!!

[Sir Thursday]

I thought Season 2 was fantastic overall - the characters seemed realistically affected by the many fucked up things they experience, which is a huge plus for me. John Connor's character in particular is handled very well - his gradual growth into leader of the future resistance slowly builds up over the course of the Season, culminating in the showdown with Jesse in The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter. I thought the chemistry between the actors and the levels of tension and emotion they managed to build up in that episode were outstanding. John Henry and his learning process were also expertly handled - Garret Dillahunt does a very good job of portraying the innocence of JH, while simultaneously probing human society's complex system of ethics that defy the hard and fast rules of his programming.

I appreciate the way the show understates deaths - unlike the majority of the televisual and cinematic mediums, there is no last hurrah, no heroic last stands in slow-mo, no choking out last breath soliloquys. John's stepdad and Derek dying are good examples of this, particularly the latter, which caught me completely by surprise.

I will say that I wish Sarah Connor wasn't in the title of this show - she is the weakest and least likeable of the main band of characters, and it would be better if she yielded the spotlight to John more often. In the last few episodes, that has happened for the most part and the result was simply awesome. I'm still optimistic about a 3rd Season - Prison Break has done horribly in the same timeslot, after all, and with the film coming out I could well see WB being keen to shop the show around to another network if Fox decides not to take it for another season. Seems like it would be a good fit for a Cable channel. All the rumours of its demise, as far as I can tell, stem from a blogger who spun some lies to boost the number of hits on her blog. So I'm not willing to give up on it just yet.


Sir Thursday