After a mere 9 episodes, the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has concluded.

It's been a tradition, especially in recent years, to end on a bang. To make sure that people are on the edge of their seats for the next few months until the show returns to the air... logically a show that involves a small group of people, fighting to stop robots from the future killing them/creating a computer that will precipitate a nuclear war that kills billions and then round up the survivors for summary execution - that should involve one helluva bang, right?

There was no bang... barely even a fizzle. Quite what the point of having the two episodes together was is unclear as well... perhaps as a fiddle for ratings because they seemed no more related than any of the other episodes. In any event those expecting a return to the action packed, tense and compelling action and drama of the pilot, you can forget it. That seems to be a momet that will never be remembered.

Not that the final episode doesn't tease you with the prospect of some action... but when said action occurs, it's witnessed indirectly... in an artsy style. It merely serves to show how weak the link between Cameron's films and this TV series is. Time and again, this show has tried to replace action with tension... it goes without saying that an excess of action can become tedious... and hence, there is a need for the tension, the suspense or simply the waiting in between... but then, at the opposite end of the scale... there's the excess of tension. Sarah Connor Chronicles doesn't even do that well... there's this tension, between almost all the characters... but it's not building or changing... it's just there.

The pilot set a bar for the show, a high bar. There was action, drama, explosions and tension... all nicely knitted together. The change of pace for the rest of series was like hitting a brick wall in a jet fighter. There are clearly numerous issues with the format that weren't considered... mostly, what do you do with a TV budget to imitate a franchise well known for its action set pieces... the answers is just hope people forget that part.

The lack of action might have been forgiveable... but... the core cast was... at best unengaging and at worst, irritating. Sarah was easily the most irritating. For someone who is supposed to be teach her son how to save humanity, she's really doing a lot of mollycoddling and teaching him how to be a pussy.

The Summernator - aka Summer Glau... it's hard to tell whether the girl has a pathological inability to act or whether her stint on Firefly made her a prettier, blander Buffy. While she is quite frankly preferable to Sarah Michelle Gellar - that's a lot like saying it's better to slam your hand in a door, rather than having poured boiling water on it. Clearly, at some point someone thought "it would be great if we could get her to do the unintentional humour again!" but then didn't bother getting people with the comic skills to do it... Not to mention the fact that her personality in the first episode is apparently turned off in the rest of the show. Shows of her trying to be "more human" are so prosaic, hackneyed and utterly cliché in all honesty, they'd have achieved better results sticking her face over Data's in scenes from TNG.

And of course, the "great" John Connor. It's somewhat hard to believe a whinging, momma's boy will lead humanity. Terminator 3 may not really have made him seem much better but at least he wasn't on his mother's apron strings. The John Connor of T2 was computer savvy, had attitude, leadership... you could see the emergent qualities of a leader in him... with Chronicles John... he's just another teen... WHY IS HE AT SCHOOL!?

His mother is over protective of him, to the nth degree... and yet, she puts him into school? Why? Is that going to help in the war against the machines? Somehow it seems unlikely that even LA will have classes on how to wage guerilla warfare against a numerically and technologically superior enemy. Anyway, while it might be an "ordinary" life... it seems like a strange move as it's clearly putting him in a fairly exposed environment.

Although, his mother acts - by and large - erratically. She wants to destroy Skynet before it's created but, oh - John, off you go to school! There seems to be an inherent conflict between preparing your son to be the saviour of humanity and trying to let him have a normal life... much as there is an obvious clash of interests between her deranged maternal instincts and constantly taking him out on dangerous missions.

The only interesting or likeable character is the hapless FBI agent who is following in the footsteps of the Connors. It's interesting to see how he finds the clues and starts to piece together the truth of Sarah's life. Not that he likes what he finds... Which makes it all the more interesting.

To another, more technical aspect... Perhaps one of the most iconic aspects of Terminator was the Terminator's eye view. The red tinged perspective, scrolling data, analysis... it portrayed the cold, calculating nature of the machine that walked as man. So... to show a Terminator's perspective without it? It's beyond lazy... it just removes that feeling and the way it was used felt like lazy storytelling and a betrayal of something so intimately associated with the film franchise.

The final episode - as mentioned, unrelated to the penultimate - sees the Connor crew finally get their hands on a meaningful lead on that pesky machine, The Turk. To be honest, the Turk subplot has been pretty dull since Andy died... and Sarah's mourning over him is beginning to grate and obviously, we're going to have to endure more of it as the Turk is still MIA.

The other aspect is our FBI friend tracking down the Cromartie... final score, FBI 0 - Robot from the Future 12. Of course, we see literally NO action. Just people getting tossed into the pool. Just typical of the anti-climactic nature of the show thus far and in truth, if you can't go out on a bang people's interest will wane as quickly as the ratings of this show.