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After the first two films (but ignoring the third), Sarah and John are still on the run from both the FBI, a new Terminator, and their own sorry social lives. That is, until River Tam Cameron shows up to bring them from 1999 to 2007 in order to stop SkyNet from being built.

The first season dealt with a Terminator of the Week style plot, with Sarah, John, and friendly machine Cameron on the run from the the killer cyborgs. They are soon joined by Derek Reese, John's uncle, who introduces himself by murdering a man who may have helped contribute to the design of his future's SkyNet. This marks the start of the show's headlong dive into murky morality. The foursome set up shop in Los Angeles, where they try to stop the future war and hide from FBI Agent Ellison.

The show then takes a quick swerve with Ellison's growing awareness of the machines and the introduction of a love interest for John. The Big Bad Terminator Cromartie, who has been hunting the Connors since the first episode, is re-appropriated for another, possibly sinister use. The second season started with a Terminator of the Week style, but soon grew more philosophical, eventually turning Darker And Edgier. After completing its second season, it was subsequently canceled. Whether the final season's evolution was to the show's benefit or otherwise is an ongoing matter of debate.

---

This show provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc (Did they ever pay off the blonde girl/spooky graffiti thread they set up in act one?)
  • Sort of. It might still technically count as an aborted arc, since it hasn't really played a big role since it happened, but it has been brought up.
  • And we'll all forever rue the fact that they never followed up with Cameron and Morris going to the prom.
    • I so looked forward to seeing Cameron in a dress too...
• Action Girl (Both Sarah and Cameron)
  • Also Jesse.
  • Even Riley. Just for a moment.
  • In fact, the tagline of the series should be Girls Gone Wild.
• Action Mom (Sarah Connor herself)
  • Cathrine Weaver claims the title in the finale.
• Alas Poor Scrappy ( Riley's senseless death at the hand of Jesse seemed pretty redeeming to this troper.)
• Anyone Can Die (Riley's death came out of nowhere for many viewers)
  • It was actually given away to attentive fans by Friedman's blog, where he mentioned "one of Summer Glau's female co-stars won't be around after March 6", and the episode summaries for those afterward mentioned Sarah and Jesse still being alive, which narrowed it down a lot.
  • Another recent episode killed off Charlie after looking as though he would be joining the heroes for good as John's father-figure. Apparently if you're not one of the three leads, you're not safe in this show.
    • Not even they're safe. Cameron is effectively put on a bus, with Cameron-played-by-Summer being effectively dead.
  • And now they've killed off Derek Reese with zero warning.
    • In a move which made many viewers look at their TV screens and go, "What? What?!?"
    • He's back. Time travel. It's one big messed up cornucopia of whackiness.
    • It's not the same one though, due to alternate timelines. The one we knew is dead.
• Arc Words (Will you join us?, three dots)
• Back Story
• Badass (Sarah, Cameron, Cromartie, and Derek)
  • Took A Level In Badass (John, starting in season 2)
    • And it looks like Charley Dixon may have taken a level in badass, too.
  • Badass Family
  • Badass Lolita (Again, Cameron)
• Battle Discretion Shot (The fight between the FBI and Cromartie at the end of Season 1)
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished (Both justified and averted; Cameron routinely gets banged up, but her skin goes back to normal due to her epidermal layer's Healing Factor. Lampshaded occasionally.)
  John: You're healing quickly.
  Cameron: Faster than you.
  • Allison Young, however, has some nasty, untreated cuts and scapes on her face.
• Becoming The Mask (Cameron briefly adopts Allison Young's personality in "Allison from Palmdale")
• Berserk Button (Don't threaten John around Derek or Sarah. And while we're at it, never lie to Cameron.)
• Big Bad (Cromartie assumed this role for season one and much of season two, though Skynet is obviously an ever-present threat. Subverted with Catherine Weaver, who seems to be set up as an evil, ruthless force sent back to create Skynet - but she's actually creating an equivalent AI to stop it.
• Bloodstained Glass Windows (A couple of episodes in second season, complete with booby-trapped baptismal fonts, crossfire ambushes in front of the altar, and crucified villain shots.
• Boot Camp Episode ("Goodbye To All That" has John enroll in military school and Derek sign up as a teacher.)
• Break The Cutie (Monkeywrenched. Allison Young comes pre-broken, and Cameron's brief time as Allison shows her breaking down too. Riley also breaks over the course of the second season, though that's because she's a resistance fighter from the future, and the stress of everything going on around her rapidly wrecks her already fragile psyche.)
• Cancelled by the Network (yep, it's officially done).
• Canon Dis Continuity (It only keeps Sarah's cancer as a plot element, along with the possibility of John Connor's death in the future.)
• The Cast Showoff (Summer Glau is a trained ballerina.)
• Character Development (Sarah becomes noticeably more humanized in the second season, though at the same time becoming much, much more erratic and psychotic as the stress starts to weigh on her psyche)
  • Similarly, John is slowly - very slowly - edging away from his whiny teenager phase and into a real leader, especially after Riley is killed.
  • Cameron is also showing interesting character development, particularly with relation to matters of trust and suicide, especially after she goes berserk atthe beginning of the second season.
• Chekhovs Gunman (The priest in "Samson and Delilah," the Latina from the first season, and Allision Young are all minor characters who return in the season finale.)
• Contemplate Our Navels (Sarah's narrative diary monologues at the opening and closing of each episode, presumably her "chronicles". Fortunately these are largely absent in the second season. The Big Bad, Catherine Weaver aka the T-1001, is also unusually fond of long monologues with biblical overtones.)
• Continuity Nod (Multiple references to events in the first two movies, even a few in-jokes referring to the third movie, even though that's now a Canon Dis Continuity)
  • Sarah's death from cancer in the timeline averted by their jump forward is a ref to Sarah dying from Leukemia between T2 and T3.
  • Cameron dressed as a motorcycle cop in one episode, complete with Cool Shades, is a ref to the fake cop T-1000 in the second movie.
  • The picture of Sarah that Kyle Reese carries around as a good luck charm in the future is a re-creation (with the new actress) of a very similar pic seen in the first movie.
  • Also, from the second season premiere, Cameron's use of "Call to him", a reference to a scene in T2.
  • In "Automatic for the People," Riley says that John's English teacher is "Mr. Henricksen," a reference to Lance Henricksen's role in the first film.
  • When Cameron's "switch is flipped" to Terminate instead of Protect in season 2 premiere, when she is chasing them she has a limp not unlike T-800 in first film.
  • In "Goodbye To All That", the terminator of the week begins killing people with the name Martin Bedell, of which there are exactly 3 in the area, just like the 3 woman named Sarah Connor in the first film. As with the film, the intended target is the last one on the list.
    • And the terminator is using the same ".45 Long Slide with Laser Sighting" gun prop from the first film (the production also took some promotional pictures of it with Summer Glau before they returned it).
  • The T-1001 uses the same finger-wagging motion to taunt Jesse that the T-1000 did to Sarah in T2.
  • Born to Run has a Terminator buying from a gunshop, and a terminator attacking a police station, presumably as continuity nods to T1
    • Interestingly, the T-888 is sophisticated enough to actually pay for services, compared to the T-800, whose ability to interact with shopkeepers seemed limited to the "12-gauge discount".
    • Also possible that the T-888 had money, but the T-800 didn't. Though series Terminators seem to be more concerned about not attracting attention, maybe because their missions are longer-term.
  • In the finale of season two, Cameron says "Hasta luego." to the gangster girlfriend from season one.
• Cop Boyfriend: Sarah's landlady had one. Ultimately subverted.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive (played with a twist, where the executive in question is a liquid-metal type terminator T-1001.)
  • May not be as corrupt as we think, though, considering she's apparently trying to teach John Henry morals, and there's another high-end machine intelligence operating out there with distinctly opposing goals to hers.
    • Completely subverted now. "Born To Run" confirms that Weaver is building John Henry to fight Skynet and save humanity.
    • That's debatable. Weaver shows little concern for humans or killing them as needed. The smallest that can be said is that she's not actively trying to kill Sky Net and Sky Net sees her as a threat to its dominance.
• Cool Shades (In "The Demon Hand," Cameron finally dons a pair of motorcycle cop sunglasses. Very large ones.)
• Crazy Prepared (The Connors as a whole, including the shotgun in the umbrella stand and the recliner filled with kevlar)
• Creepy Monotone (Summer Glau plays both its use and its absence to chilling effect)
  • And let's not forget Cromartie, especially when he becomes part of the Turk/John Henry
• Cute Bruiser (Guess who?)
• Darker And Edgier (Wins bonus points for making The Terminator darker and edgier)
• Dead Ex Machina (When Kyle Reese appears to Sarah)
• Death Glare ("Its not safe for you here.")
• Death Is Dramatic (Totally, completely, and absolutely averted.)
• Determinator: (Well, yeah.)
• Driven To Suicide ( Riley Except, maybe not. It may have been a Batman Gambit. Also, Cameron suggests this is the cause of John's gun 'accident'. Derek also contemplates suicide.)
• Dropped A Bridge On Him ( Derek's death in the penultimate episode.)
• Dysfunction Junction (Find someone on the main cast who isn't screwed up.)
  • Catherine Weaver. Maybe.
• Emotionless Girl (Cameron, again. Sometimes juxtaposed with brief flashes of her "regular girl" performance, switched on and off to creepy effect.)
  • Also slightly subverted by her occasional instances of inexplicable behaviour like writing a letter to the dead or practicing ballet in private.
  • Then it's subverted, inverted, and played with in the episode "Allison from Palmdale."
• Enemy Civil War (An apparent rebel faction of machines opposing Skynet in the future that wants peace with humanity.)
  • In "Allison from Palmdale," it's pretty clear that Cameron's flashback reference to an Enemy Civil War is a lie to try to get Allison to cooperate, and that at that time it still works directly for SkyNet.
  • The T-1001 impersonating Catherine Weaver eventually makes a similar claim. What it's really doing and who it's really working with or for is never clarified, since there will be no third season.)
• Ensemble Darkhorse (Cameron's pretty much ended up being the series' iconic character, and is overshadowing even Sarah and John in popularity)
  • Summer Glau just seems to have that effect on whatever show she's in. See the fan response to her in Firefly...
    • John Henry and Savannah have a substantial fanbase as well.
• Evil Detecting Dog (All dogs hate Terminators; even the robot dog in "Queen's Gambit" barks at Cameron)
• Eye Scream AAAHH GOD the end of "Some Must Sleep, While Some Must Watch"
• Fan Nickname (The Taminator.)
• Fan Service (the pilot does, indeed, have Cameron kicking ass while in the buff)
  • There's plenty of fanservice in the series, mostly around Cameron, including a rather blatant piece of it in "Some Must Sleep, While Some Must Watch" where Cameron walks by John in a bright red bra and pair of panties. This turns out to just be a dream by Sarah, made up of her worries and perceptions.
  • And a (mostly) non-sexual form of fanservice: Cameron with the glowing Terminator eye and dozens of bullet wounds, with the Terminator theme music blasting in the background. We've been waiting two seasons for that, and it did not disappoint.
  • The metaphorical sex scene in the series finale, where John checks whether Cameron's power source is leaking radiation... penetrating her yummy-belly with his hand... after cutting out with a knife... He seems nearly blowing it up. An obvious fan service to Jameron geeks, but an absolute Fan Disservice to others.
• Fantastic Racism (From the resistance fighters toward machines, and a mild form from Weaver toward humans, whom she feels "will disappoint you.")
• Fantastic Slurs (The use of the word "metal" has now become frequent enough to qualify)
• Fetish Fuel Large steaming bucketloads of it...mostly centered around Sarah and especially Cameron.
  • Indeed. The page may be called "Fetish Fuel: Terminator", but it's indexed under "The Sarah Connor Chronicles"—because not one of the examples in the article came from one of the movies.
• Fetish Fuel Station Attendant (Cameron. Holy God, Cameron.)
• Fish Out Of Temporal Water (The pilot episode sees the heroes jump from 1999 to 2007. Sometimes it's played for laughs (the group getting cell phones) and sometimes...not so much (Sarah having 9/11 explained to her))
• Flash Back (monkeywrenched - Derek has a Flash Back, but since he comes from the future—or one possible future—it's confusing what to call it)
• Foe Yay ("Your hair... it's so pretty...")
  • Not to mention the interaction between Cameron and Derek. Look at how they act in "The Demon Hand" or "To The Lighthouse"....
• Friday Night Death Slot
• Godiva Hair (See pic)
• Glowing Eyes Of Doom (No need to mention any. Well, maybe Cameron's once blue then red glowing eyes. Just Bugs Me.)
• Guns Akimbo (Cromartie on a couple of occasions, once with M-16s. Cameron does it on occassion too. Justified by both of them being cyborg killing machines with computerized targeting and superhuman strength.)
• Healing Factor (The living tissue covering on the new Terminators gradually grows back after sustaining damage. Cromartie/John Henry even regenerates from having half his face blown off. Compare this to the first Terminator movie, where sustaining damage seemed to make the T-800's skin die, start to decompose, and attract flies, essentially turning the Terminator into a walking Robot Zombie.)
• Honor Before Reason (John runs rampant with this)
• Hot Sub On Sub Action (The USS Jimmy Carter vs. the SkyNet Kraken)
• Heroic BSOD (Cameron goes through several of these in "Allison from Palmdale")
• Heroic Sociopath ( Catherine Weaver is one of the good guys.)
• I Cannot Self Terminate (Cameron gives John a kill-switch for a bomb in her head at the end of "Ourselves Alone.")
• I'm Not Hungry (Allison Young refuses to eat while being held prisoner by Skynet)
• Implacable Man (Cromartie is a T-888, slightly more advanced than Arnold's T-800, and thankfully unrelated to Arnie's Made Of Explodium T-850 from Terminator 3.)
  • Cameron also shows just how unstoppable she is in the second season premiere.
• Important Haircut (John cuts off his mop in the second season to show how he's growing up into the leader he needs to be ... and, for that matter, that the actor has established himself in the role and doesn't need hair and makeup tricks to establish continuity with the performance in Terminator 2 any more.)
• Inspector Javert (monkeywrenched - FBI Agent Ellison chases Sarah and John but gradually starts to believe them.)
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique (played with a twist in "Complications," where Derek tortures Charles Fischer's younger self to get the older version to talk.)
• KillerRobots
• Kill It With Fire (with a twist...they don't actually kill Terminators with fire, yet, but when they do manage to take one out with other methods, they have to burn and melt the endoskeleton with thermite to prevent bits of future-tech falling into the wrong hands and being used to reverse-engineer Skynet)
• Kiss Of Death (a liquid-metal terminator disguised as a beautiful woman seduces a man...then sends a liquid-metal tongue/tentacle down his throat to strangle his heart through his esophagus to kill him in a way that mimics a heart attack.
  • Almost a decade earlier, in the music video for The World is not Enough by Garbage, a robotic Shirley Manson (who would go on to play Catharine Weaver) is being built that kills a test subject by burning him to death by kissing him. "She" then kills the original the same way, and then explodes during a packed concert.
• Knife Nut (Cameron with a hunting knife anyone?)
• Kryptonite Ring (Cameron giving John the detonator)
• Kung Shui (When two terminators fight, punches and kicks don't do much, since they are almost literally Made Of Iron. So they tend to try and pick each other up and throw each other through walls...out windows...even through floors and ceilings. Much property damage ensues.)
• Lady Of War (Cameron, Sarah)
• Laughing Mad (Dr. Peter Silberman in "Demon Hand")
• Les Yay (mostly between Jesse and Riley, made slightly disturbing by the large age difference and Jesse's manipulation of Riley)
  • The age difference might be a product of their time and environment; there are some subtle indications of a similar relationship existing between future John Connor and Allison Young, who are similarly separated in terms of age difference as well. Of course, that could easily be wild speculation.
  • There's not a small amount of this apparent between Allison and Cameron, which is just plain disturbing, considering Cameron casually kills her a couple scenes later.
• Look Both Ways (Terminators show utterly no ability to do this. Perhaps they figure cars are machines, and thus should be on their side against the humans?)
  • The first episode of second season, Catharine Weaver lampshades this a bit with a scary monologue about humans "crossing against the light" and getting run over, and that she's looking for a computer that can "cross against the light". Guess she eventually found one.
• Mama Bear (Sarah again.)
  • Papa Wolf (Derek Reese, toward John)
• Manipulative Bitch (Jesse, who deliberately introduced Riley to John so that Cameron would feel threatened by Riley and thus be forced to kill her.
• Meaningful Funeral: Charley Dixon's wife's funeral was heaping with symbolism. Derek Reese's funeral, on the other hand was just his "John Doe" ashes being buried in an unmarked pauper's grave, with no one in attendance.
  • Worth noting, however, Derek's ashes were buried in the same graveyard as his brother's, which they visited earlier in the episode (Foreshadowing much?).
• Meaningful Name (John Henry, a reference to the legendary railroad worker, and Cameron, whose name is a direct Shout Out to James Cameron, and even minor character Billy Wisher, named after one of the screenwriters of the original movie.)
• The Medic (Charley Dixon)
• Moe (Cameron is probably the most Moe Moe walking death machine since Lucy from Elfen Lied.)
• Morality Pet (Savannah, to John Henry.)
• Murder Is The Best Solution (Cameron advocates this theory, which is only natural, as she is a Terminator.)
• Names To Run Away From Really Fast ( Queeg)
• Neck Lift
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel (Cameron's stoic emotionlessness while doing horrible things just goes to show how terrifying Terminators really are.)
  • Not to mention when she suddenly switches on her emotions, like that scene in the Season 2 premiere. "John! Please, please don't! I love you! Please-"
  • And a certain liquid-metal terminator with a penchant for killing men with their pants unzipped.
  • And the terrifying birth scene of a certain newly-repaired terminator emerging, skinless but not fleshless, from a literal bloodbath, and opening his eyelids to reveal his glowing cybernetic eyes.
  • "Hello, Mister Ellison. My name is John Henry."
  • "Your hair...its so pretty...." I never thought it was possible to make Les Yay terrifying.
  • "What...is...all this...about?"
• The Nth Doctor (Cromartie's changes across the first season)
  • Not to mention Cromartie's changes in personality. He goes from Cromartie to John Henry and now possibly Cameron.
• Offscreen Teleportation (Catherine Weaver seems to do this a lot).
  • With some Stealth Hi Bye thrown in for good measure.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter (notably averted; several episodes focus on SkyNet securing the limited supplies it will need to wage its conventional war on humanity after the nuclear war)
• Omniglot (Cameron: English, Armenian, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese as of the end of the second season.)
• Paranoia Fuel (Aside from the obvious, one recent episode ended with the possibility that there might be a Terminator in your walls. Right now. He's been there for decades. He's armed. And he wants to kill you. The fact that the Terminator in the episode was hiding in the walls of an old, abandoned hotel isn't actually better; think of how many buildings in your area are old and under renovation. Think of how many old government buildings there are, period, that you have to use. Pleasant dreams!
• Parental Substitute: Both Charlie Dixon and Derek Reese act as father-figures to John.
• Pay Evil Unto Evil (Most of the unarmed noncombatants murdered by Cameron or Derek — for being witnesses, liabilities, building apocalyptic genocidal computer networks, etc. — are assholes or petty criminals of one form or another.)
• Pet The Dog (John Henry playing with his toys and wondering why God didn't create humans with more ball-and-socket joints.)
  • Cameron gets a similar moment when she explains that Terminators aren't inherently cruel, and demonstrates this by rolling a battered Ellison (whom she herself had beaten up) off of a bunch of broken glass.
• The Power Of Trust (John trusts Cameron absolutely, to the point that he tells Jesse that even if he did believe Riley's death was caused by Cameron, it would not have broken his trust for her.)
• Psycho Sidekick (Derek and Cameron as the ruthlessly pragmatic half of the team, with Sarah and John as the more highly moral one. it's possible that Weaver might have ended up as one to John Connor and/or John Henry in the future if there had been a third series)
• Put Down Your Gun And Step Away (subverted by Derek Reese, who simply shoots.)
• Raised By Wolves (Cameron)
• Reality Ensues ( Derek Reese encounters a hostile Terminator at close range with only a pistol. Guess what happens.)
• Ret Con (the dates of the Back Story involving the events of the first two movies seem to have been fudged a bit. For no obvious reason, either. Who cares whether John was 10 or 12 during T2?)
• Ridiculously Human Robots (Cameron shows that she can eat food, something no other Terminator before could do, and also the ability to cry and show other honest emotions when in her "Allison" persona)
  • Also, "Vick", the Terminator after Derek, apparently had a wife, but this was only to make sure she made a piece of Sky Net. So, it's implied that he can...
    • Dialogue from that episode states that "Vick" was never the same after his "car accident", and that his wife thought there was something "off" about him, so it seems likely that T-888 "Vick" killed the real Vick (the woman's husband) and took his place, rather than wooing her from scratch, using PTSD as an excuse to cover up any behavioral or functional abnormalities.
• Robo Cam ("Termovision")
  • In "Allison from Palmdale," when Cameron adopts Allison's identity, the "Termovision" disappears, apparently reinforcing her belief that she is human. At the end of the episode, when Cameron reasserts herself, the HUD reappears.
• Robot Girl (a very scary one, too)
• Room 101: The basement in "Dungeons & Dragons."
• Sarcastic Confession (really, that is where she got the car.)
• Scannable Man (Derek Reese and his fellow future resistance fighters who spent time in Skynet work camps have barcode tattoos. We even get to see Derek's being applied in a Flash Forward.)
  • "Allison From Palmdale" shows Allison getting a bar code burned onto her skin as well.
• The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction (You just know the plant manager is toast in "Goodbye to All That")
• The Scrappy (Riley. Possibly averted, now that it is revealed that she is an agent from the future sent to seduce John, and is just as weirded out as the viewers. She honestly doesn't really know what she's doing. Plus, attempted suicide.)
  • And then she gets killed by Jesse when she realizes that Jesse was trying to get her killed by Cameron in the first place.
  • For some fans, that makes Jesse the Replacement Scrappy.
• Screw Destiny
• Ship Tease (the series is constantly teasing at John/Cameron., and contains hints at future!John and Allison Young.)

  • Both of these seem to be helped by the ending to "Born To Run." John actually "penetrates" Cameron in bed, and John ends up in the future, with who looks to be Allison.

• Shoot The Dog (Derek does this sometimes. Cameron, on the other hand, doesn't shoot the dogs. She nukes them.)
  • And now that The T-1001 has been "revealed" to haven been one of the good guys all along, or so it says, its multiple murders seem to fall here too.
• Shout Out (Detective Ellison is named after sci-fi author Harlan Ellison, whose stories inspired the first Terminator film. The episode "The Demon Hand" is even named after one of Ellison's Outer Limits episodes, "Demon With A Glass Hand.")
  • Someone who watched way too much anime might argue that Cromartie is a shout out to Sakigake Cromartie Koukou - a theory that gets more credence when one considers that James Cameron himself is a bit of an otaku.
  • Also, that moment where Derek Reese shoots the hostage taker is very reminiscent of a scene from a Firefly episode... never, ever hold a gun to a hostage's head in the last-broadcast (but not last-filmed) episode of the tragically-short first season of a FOX sci-fi series starring Summer Glau.
  • Also, in "Heavy Metal," the truck carrying the coltan alloy is owned by the Tetsuo Shipping Corporation.
  • In "Goodbye To All That," Derek chews out an overeager cadet named Pyle.
  • Cameron is a Shout Out to James Cameron himself.
  • Savannah telling her mother: "You can't sing." The mother is played by Garbage singer Shirley Manson.
  • John refers to the ill effects of time travel as time-lag, the same term used in the book To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Willis.
  • This Troper couldn't help but think of the sci-fi classic A Boy And His Dog upon seeing that last shot of Allison Young in the future with a dog at the end of "Born to Run".
    • This Troper also thinks that A Girl And Her Dog would make a great spin-off series.
• Sixth Ranger (Derek Reese, who starts off a mysterious guy from the future)
• Small Girl Big Gun (Sarah and Cameron, on a regular basis)
• Soundtrack Dissonance (both played straight and subverted; Cromartie slaughters an entire FBI HRT unit to the upbeat but lyrically disturbing Johnny Cash song "When the Man Comes Around")
  • "When the Man Comes Around" actually fits lyrically. It's just the melody that contrasts. A straighter example would be the season two episode after Derek's death, when a little girl singing a Scottish folk song is played over the burial of his ashes in an anonymous grave.
• Spotlight Stealing Title
• Stable Time Loop. Averted. The first Terminator film implied a Stable Time Loop, in this series that's clearly not how things work. Cameron comes from a future where Sarah Connor doesn't even live to see 2007, Derek and Jesse come from different futures, the date of Judgment Day changes all the time.
• Talking To Herself (Cameron having a series of very creepy interviews with Allison.)
• Tear Jerker (Any of the character deaths. The endings of "Demon Hand" and "Born To Run".)
• Temporal Sickness (time-lag)
• Terminator Twosome (Cameron and Cromartie, sort of)
• The Other Darrin (Sarah, John, Dr. Silberman, Mrs. Dyson, played by different actors than their film equivalents)
  • Also, Cromartie has been played by two different actors, but they justified this with the original Cromartie being burned to his exoskeleton and needing a new body and face. This was presumably intentional, not the result of actors being unavailable or aging out of their roles like the other examples.
• There Are No Therapists (both played straight and averted)
  • Hey, even AIs need therapists.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill (Only the Connors subscribe to this)
  • At least until the start of the second season. Then...
  • And now Sarah's gone ahead and killed one of her attackers, so this law is being abandoned.
• Time Travel
• Took A Level In Badass (John, during the season 2 premiere.)
  • And he's taken another level in the episode "Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter" where it's revealed John learned of Riley's true origin, and he tracked her back to Jesse. His speech to her is a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for him.
• Tricked Out Time (The terminator's behavior in "Self Made Man" is a text book example)
• Two First Names (John Connor, John Henry)
• Uncanny Valley (Cameron, Cromartie, and just about all the other Terminators look very human, but they're... off...)
• Unflinching Walk (Weaver, after destroying the warehouse in the desert. Complete with an Out Of The Inferno moment.)
• The Vonda Shepard Treatment John Henry and Savannah Weaver singing a slow a capella version of the Scottish-kitsch comedy song "Donald, Whaur's Yer Troosers" over a tragic montage at the end of the last-but-one episode.
• Waif Fu (Cameron, albeit justified by the fact that she's a superstrong cyborg assassin)
• Wham Episode ("To the Lighthouse." There's another machine intelligence out there, trying to take out both John Henry and the Connors. All signs point to it being the actual Skynet. Not to mention, they killed Charley.)
  • Let's just say the last several episodes of Season Two. The cast are dropping like flies, there's another machine intelligence out there, John Henry is learning to lie, Sarah is under arrest in very public fashion, and everything is going straight to hell.
    • Plus they frakking killed Derek!! Out of nowhere! Towards the beginning of the episode, even! What is it with FOX and out-of-the-blue deaths lately?
    • And "Born to Run." Cameron gives John Henry her chip. John himself ends up transported to the future, with future Derek and Kyle Reese, and Allison Young.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic (Used with constant Christian references, with an oblique Lampshade Hanging when the Corrupt Corporate Executive's underlings show chagrin at her constant Contemplate Our Navels Bible references)
• The Woobie (Allison, and Cameron when she becomes Allison)
  • Cameron ends up being a woobie all by herself later on.
  • Riley, of all people, starts becoming one of these later on, once her history as a resistance fighter from the future becomes apparent. And doubly so when it's revealed Jesse is psychologically abusing her and deliberately trying to get her killed.
• Xanatos Gambit (Cromartie pulls off a nice one in "The Mousetrap." It only fails because he can't swim; not to mention the psuedo-complex nuclear power plant plot of Automatic for the People.)
  • Also, in "Complications," Charles Fischer arranges for his younger self to be sent to prison so he can survive Judgment Day and assist Skynet.
  • Also Jesse's plan to turn John against Cameron by inducing her to kill Riley. It only fails because Cameron has an unexpected moment of indecision.
  • It seems that nearly every time traveler has their own secret agenda that may or may not be for the Human Resistance, the Machines, the Other Machines, or themselves. Series has been canceled in the middle of a Thirty Xanatos Pile Up.
• Your Mileage May Vary
  • Jumping The Shark (During the second seasion, the show readjusted its style, lessening its emphasis on the action and fighting, in addition to what some fans felt was a pointlessly slow and uninteresting plot buildup)
  • Too Good To Last (The rest think the show got better during its second season, and the cancellation was unfair on the part of the network.)
    • Growing The Beard (The show's second season saw it coming fully into itself, embracing a Darker And Edgier mentality, becoming more deep and meaningful than its source material, and developing its characters into real, three-dimensional people.)
• You Shall Not Pass ( Charley Dixon)

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