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'M' is for 'M.I.L.F.'
by BRETT WOODWARDALLOW me to be the first to second, and even third, Matty Quartermaine's astute positive comments about new Sci-Fi TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Gimme a second to vent here first up. US networks - with a flow-on effect to Australia - were ravaged by the three-month Writer's Strike. Had to be done. Media congloms were telling their shareholders that downloads, DVD and TV-on-demand were the future and that they'd all be rich and eating diamond-encrusted truffles by the next financial year. These same turds then turned around and told the writers that the revenue model for television in the 21st century was extremely uncertain. Translation from corporate weasel-speak: "Drop your daks, grab your ankles and take a deep breath - this is NOT a prostate exam." What the TV honchos weren't prepared for was just how keen writers would be to keep a stale crust of bread on their table. Networks also forgot that the entire television production apparatus is merely a complicated system for delivering stories from the tellers to the audience. When the writers withhold their creative input, you're left with a few thousand cast, crew and panicked executives sitting around wondering how long it will be until the bank takes back their Malibu mansion. Viewers soon realised the kind of unwatchable piffle that they would have to endure as the networks scrambled to fill airtime with anything but a test pattern. Still reeling from the strike blows, networks have watched their audiences disappear to alternative entertainments and are genuinely concerned about getting them back to a regular goggle-box routine. Now, that's a long, union-friendly, Rupert Murdoch-bashing preamble to a show about sexy robots. Point is, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles probably would never have got the prime slot it did if there was any other choice in the matter. It's action-reliant, genre TV, spun off from one of the most successful movie franchises in cinema history... did I mention the sexy robots already? I like it a lot! Sure, it's not within striking distance of TV's current finest offerings - The Wire, The Shield and (the new) Battlestar Galactica to give a comparable Sci-Fi example - but it's head and laser-mounted shoulders above all the other lawyer, doctor, cop shows that serve as background noise to drown out the crunch of the Doritos you're shoveling into your gob. The show has survived the transition from Scwarzenegger-sized big screen to TV extremely well. Some of the key personnel that made the movies such a success are on-board for the small screen version. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles would have been a far more touchy-feely affair without the testosterone and Viagra cocktail of original Terminator producers Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar. Between them, these two-fisted swingin' dicks have engineered such testicular blokefests as the Rambo, Basic Instinct and Die Hard movies; Total Recall; Judge Dread; and the more manly movies of Big Arnie, Jean Claude Van Damme and Tommy Lee Jones. A great deal of the rockin' visceral and psychological impact that made The Terminator and T2: Judgement Day so good is still there in this new show. Thankfully, the producers also learned from the missteps of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. For realsies: Nick Stahl as a whiny, timid hero and Claire Danes as an even whinier sidekick?! I was barracking all along for the murderous Kristanna Loken who took the first shot at playing the lethal hot 'bot! Chronologically, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fits in between the second and third Terminator movies. Mum (Lena Heady) and son (Thomas Dekker) are on the run. They regularly change small towns, schools and shitty hospitality jobs in order to stay ahead of the Feds that are looking into their paramilitary activities and, of course, a succession of kill-crazy cyborgs. The time travel paradox is still the narrative core: if robots from the future can snuff the young John Connor, he won't grow up to be rebel leader John Connor and defeat the now dominant machines. The show has been spiced up with the addition of human rebel reinforcements being transported from the future. Another new, and very welcome, aspect is the expansion of the story's mythos. We get a lot more detail of what is at stake in the future, and some nuts and bolts (c'mon, some puns are irresistible!) of the machines' strategy. I also enjoy the attention to small details. The soundtrack still employs that foreboding, descending drone that signals the surprise appearance of a Terminator just when you thought the good guys had made a getaway. And what would the action sequences be without the sonic double-team of pounding timpani and clanking metal? Although an episodic series will fall prey to a repetitive weekly formula - new threat, run or fight, overcome or perish - there's more than enough to keep the viewer coming back for more. The writers have realized that less is most definitely more when it comes to putting words into the mouths of boofheads. The dialogue is often so brief and terse that it makes John Wayne look like a chatterbox. You don't need someone to spell out the peril when seven foot of chrome-plated killer is running toward you with a .45 in each hand! And then... there's the ladies. It would be tempting to sing the praises of foxy Summer Glau who plays the human-friendly protector-bot sent back to act as a bodyguard for the teenaged John Connor. Glau played River, the young survivor of medical torture and black psych experiments in the phenomenal Firefly series and Serenity movie. Fact is, she's a dancer in real life, not a lead actress. Glau barely got a word in during a dozen episodes of Firefly and she's reduced to monotonal Arnie-speak for a lot of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - both wise choices. Flexible limbs? Oh, hell yeah! Decent-performer-given-quality-fight-scene-choreography? Yes my son! But the show's decision makers are sensibly keeping the gal working within her limits. Lena Heady, who plays the Sarah Connor title role, is the cast member who really drives the show. I don't know if it's the gap between her front teeth, the messy hair or the alluring sloppiness to her wardrobe but the gal is M.I.L.F. magic! The new yardstick for saucy single mums. Doesn't hurt that she can snap a man in two or field-strip a Kalashnikov while blindfolded. I don't want to bore you with my own obscure film theories about how Predator is the most moving film about male friendships since the safari slaughter of Howard Hawk's Hatari! . I needn't waste your time with the reasons why The Thing and Escape From New York mean more to me than every single film starring Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Joan Plowright and all 632 Merchant Ivory flicks. I likes me them genre shows and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is solid stuff you ought to get a look at. More information about Brett's cartoons, books & writing at brett's myspace 27 February 2008 If you'd like to comment on this story email us and we'll put your contribution on our new-look letters & comments page. |
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