a 5AM nutshell.
It's Blog Day over at savethescc.com, which explains why this post is public but not why I'm trying to write it at 5AM...
Often enough, I get asked why I'm doing this by people that apparently expect an answer besides "Because I fucking love it, you dumbass." Seems obvious enough, doesn't it? I love The Sarah Connor Chronicles and I think just about everyone who knows me is (painfully) well-aware of that fact. And if they didn't catch it the first time, my incessant discussion of it will drive the point home.
So I love it. A lot. Enough to realize one night, in the middle of yet another long (the kind of long that means breaking the livejournal comment character limit over and over...and over) post-episode discussion, sitting in the sidelines, crossing all my fingers and toes and hoping that May would bring a miracle - deserved, but a small miracle nonetheless - in the form of a renewal from FOX simply wasn't going to cut it. I'd seen shows be cancelled in the past but had never been an active participant, until that moment when I finally found that moment countless fans had reached before me: the realization that you'd rather do anything - and everything - to save a show, than know that it was cancelled and you stood by and did nothing. Does that mean our efforts starting that night in March have been successful? That all of our conviction and hope will bring us somehow closer to something more than we have now? I don't know. But I do know that I couldn't then and I still can't bring myself to give it up without a fight. And I know that there are fans everywhere who feel the same way.
And so we fight. We might not have the numbers of the Jericho fans or the Browncoats and Kevin Reilly might be more scared of the Jossverse than he is of us, but we're not giving up. One foot in front of the other. Remember the mission.
We do. We will.
• • •
The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a story. It's a novel. It's an epic. It isn't a weekly medical mystery, no one can fly, and if there are dead bodies, it's usually because our beloved protagonists have made them so. Stuff blows up...but usually only because...well, it makes sense for it to blow up (or because Derek Reese got his way.) There are guns because swords require proximity and getting up close and personal with terminators usually doesn't end so well. There's heart...and sometimes it's made of coltan. It takes thirty one episodes to work its way to saying the word "terminator".
Okay, joking aside.
It's a story about mother and son. It deepens and examines the relationship between Sarah Connor and her son in a way that began and ended in T2: Judgment Day. It takes a warrior and reminds us that she's a woman. She's a mother but not motherly, she's feral and a bitch and hard as nuclear nails. She'll die and kill for her son. A son that reaches for her even as he struggles to become the become the man everyone's watching and waiting for, the leader whose destiny it seems is to be alone.
It's survival, fighting to live not only in a world where artificial intelligences build scary as fuck robots to kill you, but to survive when no one believes or trusts you, to love it enough to save a world you cannot live in. To keep sane through the horrifying and incredible, to keep in you the humanity you're fighting to save.
It's a love story and it isn't an easy one. (Because being in love with your cyborg protector/fake sister is never easy. And hallucinating dead lovers is only slightly less messy.) It's complicated and painful and different and beautifully, wretchedly, strangely perfect. It's familial and unrequited and doomed and the foundation of everything that happens. It's the driving force, it empowers and protects, damns and destroys. "It's not love until you wind up half naked in a different timeline."
It's growth. A boy becoming a man. A mother struggling to let go. A machine that learns to cross against the light. It's 'different'. They lie and hurt and hate and love in their own ways. They change and evolve. They take the concept of 'hurting the ones you love' to a whole new level but it's always believable. They have serious trust issues.
There are no certainties because everyone lies and the future is always changing.
It's time travel and cyborgs, bitches. (Cameron Phillips, I love you.)
It's the thin line between man and machine and what it means to be either...or maybe both. It's quietly emotional and heavy and never stops asking questions. It makes me cry and it makes me long for answers that we may never get. It's inspired a thousand discussions I'm grateful to have had, and maybe a few I wish I hadn't. It has, I'm pretty sure, driven us all a little mad and made us love it every step of the way.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles is an enthralling, emotional journey about hope, perseverance and the will to survive. It is a story about mother and son, man and machine, questioning fate and fighting the future. It is a love story, an adventure, a sci-fi exploration of artificial intelligence and human passion, an epic tale of humanity and a mother's love.
It breaks my heart. And my brain.
And that, in a 5AM nutshell, is why I love The Sarah Connor Chronicles. You know. More or less.
Often enough, I get asked why I'm doing this by people that apparently expect an answer besides "Because I fucking love it, you dumbass." Seems obvious enough, doesn't it? I love The Sarah Connor Chronicles and I think just about everyone who knows me is (painfully) well-aware of that fact. And if they didn't catch it the first time, my incessant discussion of it will drive the point home.
So I love it. A lot. Enough to realize one night, in the middle of yet another long (the kind of long that means breaking the livejournal comment character limit over and over...and over) post-episode discussion, sitting in the sidelines, crossing all my fingers and toes and hoping that May would bring a miracle - deserved, but a small miracle nonetheless - in the form of a renewal from FOX simply wasn't going to cut it. I'd seen shows be cancelled in the past but had never been an active participant, until that moment when I finally found that moment countless fans had reached before me: the realization that you'd rather do anything - and everything - to save a show, than know that it was cancelled and you stood by and did nothing. Does that mean our efforts starting that night in March have been successful? That all of our conviction and hope will bring us somehow closer to something more than we have now? I don't know. But I do know that I couldn't then and I still can't bring myself to give it up without a fight. And I know that there are fans everywhere who feel the same way.
And so we fight. We might not have the numbers of the Jericho fans or the Browncoats and Kevin Reilly might be more scared of the Jossverse than he is of us, but we're not giving up. One foot in front of the other. Remember the mission.
We do. We will.
• • •
The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a story. It's a novel. It's an epic. It isn't a weekly medical mystery, no one can fly, and if there are dead bodies, it's usually because our beloved protagonists have made them so. Stuff blows up...but usually only because...well, it makes sense for it to blow up (or because Derek Reese got his way.) There are guns because swords require proximity and getting up close and personal with terminators usually doesn't end so well. There's heart...and sometimes it's made of coltan. It takes thirty one episodes to work its way to saying the word "terminator".
Okay, joking aside.
It's a story about mother and son. It deepens and examines the relationship between Sarah Connor and her son in a way that began and ended in T2: Judgment Day. It takes a warrior and reminds us that she's a woman. She's a mother but not motherly, she's feral and a bitch and hard as nuclear nails. She'll die and kill for her son. A son that reaches for her even as he struggles to become the become the man everyone's watching and waiting for, the leader whose destiny it seems is to be alone.
It's survival, fighting to live not only in a world where artificial intelligences build scary as fuck robots to kill you, but to survive when no one believes or trusts you, to love it enough to save a world you cannot live in. To keep sane through the horrifying and incredible, to keep in you the humanity you're fighting to save.
It's a love story and it isn't an easy one. (Because being in love with your cyborg protector/fake sister is never easy. And hallucinating dead lovers is only slightly less messy.) It's complicated and painful and different and beautifully, wretchedly, strangely perfect. It's familial and unrequited and doomed and the foundation of everything that happens. It's the driving force, it empowers and protects, damns and destroys. "It's not love until you wind up half naked in a different timeline."
It's growth. A boy becoming a man. A mother struggling to let go. A machine that learns to cross against the light. It's 'different'. They lie and hurt and hate and love in their own ways. They change and evolve. They take the concept of 'hurting the ones you love' to a whole new level but it's always believable. They have serious trust issues.
There are no certainties because everyone lies and the future is always changing.
It's time travel and cyborgs, bitches. (Cameron Phillips, I love you.)
It's the thin line between man and machine and what it means to be either...or maybe both. It's quietly emotional and heavy and never stops asking questions. It makes me cry and it makes me long for answers that we may never get. It's inspired a thousand discussions I'm grateful to have had, and maybe a few I wish I hadn't. It has, I'm pretty sure, driven us all a little mad and made us love it every step of the way.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles is an enthralling, emotional journey about hope, perseverance and the will to survive. It is a story about mother and son, man and machine, questioning fate and fighting the future. It is a love story, an adventure, a sci-fi exploration of artificial intelligence and human passion, an epic tale of humanity and a mother's love.
It breaks my heart. And my brain.
And that, in a 5AM nutshell, is why I love The Sarah Connor Chronicles. You know. More or less.