Oddball Update

Before I started this entry, I considered simply adding to the comments thread of Pooch’s post on the Knight Rider movie. In the end, I had so many thoughts banging around in my head that I decided it was worth adding an entirely new post on the subject.

To recap: This past Sunday night, NBC aired their “reboot” of the Knight Rider franchise, starring Justin Breuning, a Shelby GT500KR and a few forgettable folks. While I certainly didn’t think it was horrible, it also didn’t completely satisfy me, a die-hard KR fan from way back. In the end, I think this was due to a number of factors:

• The overt commercialism got in the way of my ability to suspend my disbelief. As ludicrous as some of the concepts in the original Knight Rider were, the show always took itself seriously. Somehow, that made it easier for the audience to do likewise. The new movie, however, felt fake somehow, like a 2-hour advertisement.
• The actors in Sunday night’s remake were either utterly forgettable or completely unlikeable, with the exceptions of David Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight (during his all-too-brief cameo) and Charles Graiman, played by Bruce Davison. Mike Traceur seemed like a sour, spoiled punk; Sarah was endlessly holier-than-thou, then there was the lesbian FBI agent with a permanent chip on her shoulder…all of them, stiff as boards. What’s with these people?
• The writing was completely uninspired, with the exception of a few “golden moments” where the Knight Three-Thousand actually demonstrated a glimmer of Two-Thousand-esque attitude.

Now, all of the above are issues that can be addressed, if the new Knight Rider gets picked up as a series (and its excellent ratings performance suggests that it has a pretty good chance of that). And if a series does premiere on NBC, I’ll be right there to watch it. If nothing else, I feel like that’s my karmic duty as an original Knight Rider fan.

But one day after the Knight Rider movie premiere, I was reminded — by a network called Fox, of all things — that rebooting a television franchise in a genuinely exciting, interesting and engaging way actually is possible. This is exemplified by a show called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it might just be the most exciting sci-fi drama on TV right now. (At least, until Battlestar Galactica returns to the airwaves next month.)

Now, this all may just be my opinion. But I happen to believe that The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the best thing to happen to the Terminator franchise since T2.

It’s ironic, actually. Because Fox faced the same problems with rebooting Terminator that NBC faced when it chose to reboot Knight Rider. Both franchises date back to the early 1980s and have had a huge fan base ever since. The devoted followers of each have waned in recent years, after one or two terrible movies that did more harm than good (Knight Rider 2000, Terminator 3). But in each case, if that dedicated fan base can be tapped into, it could mean ratings gold.

Wisely, both NBC and Fox chose to ignore the latest entries in their respective franchises. Just as the new Knight Rider essentially pretended that both Knight Rider 2000 and Team Knight Rider never happened, The Sarah Connor Chronicles pretends that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines doesn’t exist. (Oh, how I wish that were true.) Instead, it picks up a few years after T2 left off, and let me tell you, it’s a tour de force right from the word “go.”

While Knight Rider diddled around with terrible, amateurish effects shots and a lot of teen-friendly emoting, Fox’s Sarah Connor Chronicles has been treating us to little miniature Terminator 2s, week after week. It’s got the pace, the action and the pulse-pounding suspense of 24, set in the timeless sci-fi world of Terminator. Better yet, it doesn’t just pay occasional homage to the films that came before — it’s a full-on extension of them, treating us to storylines that can be deeply woven into the first two Terminator films in ways that make complete sense. There’s no forced “skewing” of prior established facts so they can fit into the new canon. Sarah Connor works with the existing canon, and skyrockets it to new heights. This is what T3 should have been — even without Ahhhhnold.

In fact, when you compare Sarah Connor Chronicles with the new Knight Rider, there’s parallels aplenty to be drawn. For example, the young male stars of each show are almost interchangeable. Justin Breuning (Knight Rider’s Michael Traceur) and Thomas Dekker (Terminator’s John Connor) both play the late-teens, early-twenties young man with a dark past, a serious case of bed head and a face full of stubble. But behold: Where Breuning’s Traceur is nothing but an irritant who seemingly lacks common sense, Dekker’s John Connor is almost exactly as you’d expect him to be. He’s conflicted — wrestling with the reality of his destiny as a future war hero, while faced with the necessity of pretending to be a regular high school kid. Dekker pulls it off well, and gets more and more likable with each episode. Would Breuning get more and more likable, too? Perhaps we’ll have a chance to find out.

In fact, Dekker isn’t even the titular star of The Sarah Connor Chronicles — that honor belongs to Lena Headey, an actual, honest-to-god adult woman in a prime-time drama who doesn’t look like a tarted-up stripper. I thought I’d never be able to see anyone but Linda Hamilton in the role of Sarah Connor, but Lena Headey has made me a believer. She may not be as muscle-bound, nor have as much of a brutal, tough-girl image as Hamilton, but the years that have passed between T2 and Sarah Connor can explain this. Sarah’s gotten back to being a mother to John, so the emergence of her softer side does make sense.

And did I mention the action? Seriously, I don’t know what Sarah Connor’s budget is, but they are destroying loads of stuff every week — cars, trucks, rooms, walls and even buildings. There’s gunplay, car chases, and plenty of Terminator-against-Terminator deathmatches that are a pure joy to watch. It’s rare that a network drama can continually capture a big-screen, sci-fi action movie feel, week after week, but The Sarah Connor Chronicles does it.

The icing on the cake is Bear McCreary’s original soundtrack. Each week, Bear, who is also known for his gripping score to all three seasons of the new Battlestar Galactica, treats us to his take on the classic Terminator 2 score. That includes the repeating, minor-key descending notes that signify the presence of the bad guys, the wonderful metallic percussion and the heavy-metal feel. It truly evokes Brad Fiedel’s wonderful T2 score, but avoids sounding dated and synthetic. In my opinion, Bear McCreary continues to prove that he is one of the top soundtrack composers of our time.

By comparison, NBC’s Knight Rider reboot felt like a plasticine supermodel who had been dolled up for the critical young adult male demographic at the expense of good taste. It’s full of emo characters, fake-feeling bad guys, bad CGI, over-the-top effects and a musical “score” that sounds like it belongs on Smallville. And above all, its massively in-your-face commercialism kept me at arm’s length.

If NBC, fresh off their high of seeing the Sunday night Nielsens, decides to add a Knight Rider series to the fall schedule, they’d do well to spend some of the summer months reviewing Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Because if they can make Knight Rider even half as good as that, they’ll have a certifiable hit on their hands.

I sure hope Fox has a ratings hit as well. Giving Sarah Connor the Firefly axe would be a travesty. And Summer Glau is in both shows, too…bad juju, baaaaad juju.

Tagged as Knight Rider, Media, Terminator, TV + Categorized as Media, Media/Television