FOX Airs Some Terminating Television

Are you feeling the excitement of the new TV season yet? I certainly am.

Last night we got the season premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and tonight J.J. Abrams and FOX are going to be delivering Fringe. It's another fall and the sci-fi fanboys are still in control. I love it.

I wouldn't refer to myself as a "fanboy," but I do like my sci-fi programming and I like to see it delivered on the major networks in all of its big budget glory. Think about it, Sarah Connor is adding a liquid metal Terminator this season (technically, people, due to upgrades I don't know, it's a T-1001, not a T-1000) and that's not cheap. Those pointy liquid metal spikes going through people's foreheads aren't free nor are the various morphs that we all expect a liquid metal Terminator to perform.

Sure, the show could go cheap on us and have our T-1001 not do neat-o spikes and morphs, and probably they won't be a weekly thing, but I have more faith in the show than that. I don't why, but I do. Sometimes that faith is betrayed (like last night when Cameron was dumb enough to get herself electrocuted and John was stupid enough to reactivate her), but the show is still enough fun that I can overlook such moments.

My biggest disappointment last night was the introduction of the new Terminator. I don't want to get into who exactly our liquid metal friend is, but if you watched the episode it should have been obvious from every early on, and I thought that was kind of sad. The actual scene where the character reveals itself to be a liquid metal Terminator was great, I just wish that earlier scenes hadn't made it clear that an important reveal along those lines (that the character was some sort of Terminator even if not a liquid metal one) would be coming down the line. Am I wrong? Do I just watch too much television? It was pretty clear who the new Terminator was from the moment they appeared, wasn't it?

I hope things aren't quite so obvious tonight on Fringe. Actually, I'm really nervous about Fringe. It has so much going for it, from being a creepy, weird sci-fi show to coming from J.J. Abrams to airing on the network that let The X-Files live on well past its prime. I'm all ready for tonight's premiere, I've invited friends over, I have some popcorn sitting ready to go, and beer on ice. I'm, inevitably, going to be disappointed. I fear as though I've set my expectations far too high for this series. I know I shouldn't have; despite it being all over our TV screens in primetime, sci-fi shows don't have a terribly good track record over the past few years. Yes, there are some major notable successes, but the failures are more numerous. For every first season of Heroes there is a second season of Heroes and a Threshold.

I have my fingers crossed though. And, not to worry, I'll report my findings, that I promise.