As mentioned in a previous post, recently two of my favorite shows reached their conclusion.  While the Battlestar Galactica finale left a lingering bad taste in my mouth (The Cylons had a plan all along?  Bollocks!), the conclusion of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was gripping and satisfying.  In fact it was one of the best hours of TV I’ve seen in a long time.

More below the fold.  Warning: Indiscriminate spoilers follow.

“Born to Run”, the second-season finale (and possible show closer) took that and dialed it to “11″.  First off, the FBI agent now pursing the case is played by Josh Malina, of Sports Night and West Wing fame.   I admit to seeing a little of Will Bailey in Agent Auldridge but that was OK.  He made it work as a sympathetic but tough agent of the law (which doesn’t put it beyond possibility that he is in fact a T-888 trying to trick Sarah into revealing the location of her son).

Much of the episode revolves around Sarah using her contact with a Latino priest to get a message to John: Forget me and run.  Sarah’s been trying to get John free of entanglements for a while and has clearly been positioning him for when he lost her — though she suspected it would be from cancer, not the LA cops.  Cameron is in full agreement: John should disappear with her and regroup.

There’s a truly excellent and disturbing scene when Cameron decides that John has to check if her atomic core is leaking.  This involves her disrobing and having him climb on top and cut open her chest and feel around inside.  Given the long-running sexual tension between the two, the overtones were obvious and creepy and tremendously effective.

Ellison tracks down John to extend an invitation to meet Catherine Weaver, the shadowy CEO whom (we know) is a liquid-metal shapeshifting Terminator.  He also passes along a message, or rather a question, from Weaver:  “Will you join us?” (a nice call-back to the flash-forward in which future John Connor asks this of a different [or not?] liquid-metal Terminator).  The question disturbs Cameron visibly.

We get to see a Terminator-esque assault on LA County Jail, with obvious visiual homages to the scene from the first movie.  This time, the Terminator isn’t coming to kill Sarah; it’s coming to free her.  Cameron gets in and gets her but is banged up pretty badly.  Now John feels its time to meet Weaver, and does… and everything goes sideways.

First, Weaver is first to mention SkyNet, and as a common enemy.  Weaver speaks past Sarah and directly to John, in recognition of where he’s headed.  Ellison is understandably confused as these people conduct a conversation about things he’s only half-glimpsed.  But the big reveal is cut short by the arrival of a flying H-K unit (seen a few episodes earlier) that crashes into the office.  Weaver morphs into a liquid-metal shield saving John Connor (!) and then hustles them to the basement.

We’ve previously seen Cameron come upon John Henry, the AI evolved from the Turk and now housed in the body of defunct T-888 Cromartie.  And John Henry asks Cameron, “Will you join us?”  To which her response is to pull a knife and close the door.  When Sarah, John, Weaver, and Ellison arrive in the basement lab, Cameron’s deactivated body is slumped in a chair and John Henry is gone.  John examines Cameron’s robo-corpse and discovers that John Henry has taken her chip.

Sarah recognizes the Turk (her infamous “three dots”) and accuses Weaver of attempting to build SkyNet — to which the terminator replies she was building something to stop SkyNet.

Meanwhile, over on the Turk console, a single line repeats over and over: “I’m sorry John.”

And then everything goes not only sideways but into a whole new dimension.

Weaver activates a time-jump thingy, Sarah pulls back out of the bubble, and then bamf! John and Weaver are in a burned-out hulk of a building, naked (of course).  Soldiers approach — it’s members of the Resistance.  Wait, it’s Derek Reese and he’s never even heard of John Connor.   John has barely begun to process this when Kyle Reese — Derek’s brother,  John’s father — steps out of the shadows.  And just as he’s getting used to that, John’s eyes rove to Kyle’s companions and he sees Cameron.  Except, no, wait, it can’t be Cameron, because she’s bending down and petting the quiescent watch dog, and (as everyone knows) dogs hate terminators and bark incessantly when one is near.  This isn’t Cameron — it’s Alison, the girl from “Alison from Palmdale”, upon whom Cameron was specifically modelled in order to assassinate the future version of John Connor.

And then, before you can even begin to piece this together, the shot cuts back to where John arrived and, into the empty air, drifts Sarah Connor’s final, “I love you too”, responding to an earlier unbidden declaration of familial love by John.  And then we fade to black.

Wham!