It is a fairly low budget TV show based off two very popular movies, you can not expect it to live up to T1 and T2. At first I had a hard time with Sarah, the actress just didn't feel like she fit, but she kind of grew on me. Again, it is a TV show, of course they are not going to have the same actors, you kind of have to kind of take it as its own without comparing everything to the films. River never bothered me, she seems to be good at the role of being creepy and beating people up, I think she makes a decent enough Terminator. And John, for the first time is a likable character you can see growing up to be the guy he becomes. In T2 he was just an obnoxious ten year old kid, it is believeable enough that five years later and after having his mom back in his life that he mellows out. I have always hated his portrayal in T3! Now that was horrible miscast! Sarah was the more interesting character of the series at the time, but we kill her off with cancer, we make John a total looser and druggy who carries a paintball gun around with him... ugh! I also always like the "no fate but the fate you make youself" theme of the first two, and of course in the third movie they tossed that out and go with the idea that you can't change the future and no matter what you do judgment day will always happen. I like that the show is back to the "no fate but..." theme.

There are plenty of dumb things about this show, but that is pretty true with any TV show. The whole idea of a T-888 being able to contain a marriage for years and have a functioning social life felt far fetched to me. Maybe if they had had the Terminator have a conversation with his wife it might have felt more natural, but the only thing we ever here him say to her are one liners, "that's not a good idea" "just finish it", also when we see the Terminator before he gets killed, he acts very Terminator like. I just have a hard time swallowing that episode. I really liked the very last episode though.

As with all new shows, they usually take a little while to find their groove, and unfortunately T:SCC was cut four episodes short by the writers strike. It took until about the fifth episode for this thing to start getting decent to me, the first four episodes just didn't have much going for them. Hopefully if we get a second season then we will really see this take off.