em Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles /em Is Unexpectedly Cathartic Pandemic Viewing

Despite being a childless, science-fiction-loving grad student with nothing but time on my hands back in 2008, I somehow missed Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles when it was on TV. Created by Josh Friedman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled after two seasons and 31 episodes, despite mostly-positive critical reception. Binging it under pandemic conditions, as I have been recently, has been unexpectedly cathartic. This is a show about people living in a sunny, beautiful, Southern Californian present day while haunted by the knowledge that a grim future might be coming, unless they change it by their actions. It's also about parenting under stress and feeling constantly under siege by inescapable circumstance, which--well, if that's too real, you can always focus on the nifty killer cyborgs instead.