Few stories ever use the time travel gimmick without completely breaking the plot. The entire Terminator franchise has been based on the ability of viewers to suspend disbelief about the logical issues arising from sending characters into the past to fix the future, a la The Time Machine. While it wasn't a perfect series by a long shot, The Sarah Connor Chronicles managed to address this glaring plot hole and even turn it into a great piece of story telling.

Ever since its inception, TSCC has been on the edge of cancellation. Its time slot was moved around and its seasons were staggered by the writers strike and just generally odd placement. Viewers who tuned in for a mindless action show were turned off by the slow, brooding atmosphere and the attempts at dramatic layering. By the last leg of this last season, the only people still keeping up with the show were there specifically to see those more dramatic elements.

I call this the last season not only because TSCC is a minor commercial flop but because the writers seemed to have closed out this second season on as conclusive a note as possible without completely ending the franchise as a whole. Not only was "Born to Run" a heck of a finale, it was also a rather cerebral explanation of the logic that drives the entire Terminator universe.

In its slow first half, the episode focuses on Sarah stuck in jail dodging her interrogators. She calls on the priest who saved her and John way back at the beginning of second season. With his help Sarah gets some fake papers for John and Cameron, telling them to leave her behind. Of course, John won't let that happen.

Before all the classic Terminator gunplay ensues, John and Cameron finally get to have a scene with some heavy sexual subtext. Concerned that a radiation leak has made Sarah sick, John questions Cameron's assertions that she isn't broken. So, Cameron has him reach inside her body to feel the condition of her reactor casing. The scene managed to finally address all of the creepy sexual tension between the two characters while remaining definitively unsettling, as any pseudo-sexual behavior with a killer robot ought to be.

What follows is a cyborg-aided prison break that has Cameron getting shot up more than even Arnie in T2. With John-Henry monitoring the whole thing, Weaver-bot finally has a means of getting to meet John and Sarah. When they go up to Weaver's office she begins to explain things, then a drone smashes into the building in a kamikaze strike against all the enemies of Skynet at once. Weaver becomes a metal shield and has everyone run down to the basement where Cameron and John-Henry are having a little chat.

Well, the "chat" involved Cameron giving her chip to John-Henry and the two of them hopping to another point in time. It was one hell of a twist that all of the machinery in John-Henry's room wasn't a means to operate the cyborg AI, it was a time machine. With the building coming down around them, Weaver boots the machine back up and puts John Connor and herself into the future. Sarah decides to stay behind.

When John and Weaver get to the future, who should show up but both Reese brothers. With them is a version of Cameron who seems to actually be the human girl on which the robot was based. When John introduces himself, none of the freedom fighters have even heard of him, the implication being that Kyle Reese is the leader of the resistance in this version of the future.

Thus ends Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (unless something unusual happens and it gets a third season I'm not sure anyone even wants). All of the questions raised by the series seem to have been answered. Between Derek and Jessie's conversations and the events at the end of this episode, it's basically been explained that sending people into the past results in a totally new timeline being formed, unrelated to the timeline from which the time-traveler comes. Even more importantly, the big question about whether or not it had to be John Connor leading the resistance has also been answered with a resounding "No". Presumably, the Connor family isn't even relevant to the story anymore, which is pretty cool actually.

Best Moment: There were too many good ones in this finale. Cameron's examination, the prison break, Weaver kicking a T-888's metal ass, John-Henry playing D&D. It was just an all-around great episode, especially as a finale.

Biggest Shock: John-Henry's brain ain't John-Henry's brain. Weaver-bot's been building herself a time bubble.

Episode Rating: 5/5- Excellent all around for the above-mentioned reasons.

(Presumed) Series Rating: 4/5- The Sarah Connor Chronicles has had its slow moments and its weak plot points. Looking back, though, there were too many items to cover to fit into one season even if there wasn't really enough for two. It managed to make the Terminator franchise intellectually stimulating instead of being just a series of increasingly dire action movies. It gave us a chance to see two talented, young actors show their chops. I hope to see Thomas Dekkar and especially Summer Glau as regular fixtures in pop culture. When they were there the action scenes were great and there were some bold directorial choices. I believe time will be kinder to this show than critics of the present have been, as it's a member of the new breed of dramatically mature science fiction programs.

Friday night just got that much lighter.