TSCC 2x22: “Born to Run”
Mar. 19th, 2020 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsTSCC 2x22: “Born to Run”
Even though I more or less knew going in where this ended; I still don't know the answer to the first question that needs asked, were there follow-up stories written once the show was officially canceled? Because I would like to know how this ends, since this is not an ending.
Yet in an odd (emphasis on odd) way, this does seem more like a series finale than just a season one. The pacing is weird as hell, with long stretches that sort of say goodbye without actually saying it. It could have still worked as a season end if they had gotten picked up, and you can blame the fact that I know this to be the end for why it felt like an end, spending so much time with John and Cameron just hanging out, stuck in a holding pattern had a finality to it. Reflections on what Sarah's been through and whether or not anyone would believe her feels like we've come around to where we started. The breakout scene feels like a climax that I don't know how the series would have come around from.
And John's ending, while I don't believe for an instant the show would have left him there, feels kind of...necessary. It's like...we know he's going to end up back in the modern day, trying to stop J-day from happening, but before he can do that, he needs to see something about the future. Whether it's worse without him and he needs to understand that, or if even without him he can find answers that will help him change things, or a necessary step in his development to not be the John Connor for a while and learn how to be the John Connor. I don't know exactly what direction it would have gone in, but as a place we end up leaving him it's practically daring the audience to figure it out for themselves.
I'm sure we would have seen Jesse and Riley, in addition to finding out about Allison; but I feel the most cheated out of more of John and Kyle. I've basically been waiting since Terminator 2 (and I don't mean the watch for this review series) for time to bring them together; and as much as I liked the short bit at the end of s1, this would have finally done what I wanted the most. Okay, maybe not quite most because T1 already makes me super curious what their actual relationship was, with John knowing what was going on and Kyle not, but this is closer to that. I like to think that when John has done what needs to be done in this future and it's time to go back, Kyle would be part of getting him there, making sure that his son can go on and help people. I also suspect that in this future Sarah's running around somewhere and it's going to be weird.
I don't know what the actual plot would have been to all this, I don't know if it would have been a couple episodes or a good chunk of the next season, I don't know what Weaver's game plan was for all this, for that matter Cameron seemed to have some other plan in the works when she set this in motion. First on my list of things I would have wanted would be for the characters. This show has done a pretty good job of controlling its own plot, so I feel the need to have the writing that would show how the plot resolves, but the characters...for all the show keeps us at a distance from them, it's always what I want explored more.
I'm not even going to try to fit this into the time master John narrative I had going, I'm sure if I ever tried to write my version of what comes next elements of that would still slip through, because that's how my brain works, but this episode just breaks the toys on its way out the door and unless there are tie-ins we'll never see if or how they get fixed.
One of the follow-up posts is going to be me looking into things like rating and dates because part of me wonders how much of the cancellation was rating and how much this show got sacrificed for Terminator Salvation. I do suspect it was having trouble attracting and keeping an audience, it's not what a lot of people would think of for a Terminator story, it's not super actiony, it's pretty despondent a lot of the time, it doesn't offer a lot of hope that things will get better, that they can save the world. And whether most people stop to consider it or not, the more you show the future in these sorts of stories, the more you plant doubt in the audience if they want to see the future changed; which puts things in a confusing spot; you don't want the world go up in flames or see the apocalyptic future; but you also don't want to think about the people we care about from that future as different people who don't live in it. Which is part of what this field trip to the future would have tested, how do you feel about playing with their fates?
And of course the show was on Fox, no one can claim that they're known for giving genre shows time to find themselves and their audience. But that's a topic for later.
Even though I more or less knew going in where this ended; I still don't know the answer to the first question that needs asked, were there follow-up stories written once the show was officially canceled? Because I would like to know how this ends, since this is not an ending.
Yet in an odd (emphasis on odd) way, this does seem more like a series finale than just a season one. The pacing is weird as hell, with long stretches that sort of say goodbye without actually saying it. It could have still worked as a season end if they had gotten picked up, and you can blame the fact that I know this to be the end for why it felt like an end, spending so much time with John and Cameron just hanging out, stuck in a holding pattern had a finality to it. Reflections on what Sarah's been through and whether or not anyone would believe her feels like we've come around to where we started. The breakout scene feels like a climax that I don't know how the series would have come around from.
And John's ending, while I don't believe for an instant the show would have left him there, feels kind of...necessary. It's like...we know he's going to end up back in the modern day, trying to stop J-day from happening, but before he can do that, he needs to see something about the future. Whether it's worse without him and he needs to understand that, or if even without him he can find answers that will help him change things, or a necessary step in his development to not be the John Connor for a while and learn how to be the John Connor. I don't know exactly what direction it would have gone in, but as a place we end up leaving him it's practically daring the audience to figure it out for themselves.
I'm sure we would have seen Jesse and Riley, in addition to finding out about Allison; but I feel the most cheated out of more of John and Kyle. I've basically been waiting since Terminator 2 (and I don't mean the watch for this review series) for time to bring them together; and as much as I liked the short bit at the end of s1, this would have finally done what I wanted the most. Okay, maybe not quite most because T1 already makes me super curious what their actual relationship was, with John knowing what was going on and Kyle not, but this is closer to that. I like to think that when John has done what needs to be done in this future and it's time to go back, Kyle would be part of getting him there, making sure that his son can go on and help people. I also suspect that in this future Sarah's running around somewhere and it's going to be weird.
I don't know what the actual plot would have been to all this, I don't know if it would have been a couple episodes or a good chunk of the next season, I don't know what Weaver's game plan was for all this, for that matter Cameron seemed to have some other plan in the works when she set this in motion. First on my list of things I would have wanted would be for the characters. This show has done a pretty good job of controlling its own plot, so I feel the need to have the writing that would show how the plot resolves, but the characters...for all the show keeps us at a distance from them, it's always what I want explored more.
I'm not even going to try to fit this into the time master John narrative I had going, I'm sure if I ever tried to write my version of what comes next elements of that would still slip through, because that's how my brain works, but this episode just breaks the toys on its way out the door and unless there are tie-ins we'll never see if or how they get fixed.
One of the follow-up posts is going to be me looking into things like rating and dates because part of me wonders how much of the cancellation was rating and how much this show got sacrificed for Terminator Salvation. I do suspect it was having trouble attracting and keeping an audience, it's not what a lot of people would think of for a Terminator story, it's not super actiony, it's pretty despondent a lot of the time, it doesn't offer a lot of hope that things will get better, that they can save the world. And whether most people stop to consider it or not, the more you show the future in these sorts of stories, the more you plant doubt in the audience if they want to see the future changed; which puts things in a confusing spot; you don't want the world go up in flames or see the apocalyptic future; but you also don't want to think about the people we care about from that future as different people who don't live in it. Which is part of what this field trip to the future would have tested, how do you feel about playing with their fates?
And of course the show was on Fox, no one can claim that they're known for giving genre shows time to find themselves and their audience. But that's a topic for later.
