Come with me if you want to live...

"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" has been a pleasant surprise. Here was a show that I felt sure would suck based on the very vague initial promotional spots. I would probably have never even tried it except that Fox cleverly held back the strike-shortened first season to air in the doldrums of the strike when there was literally no new scripted television on air at all.

With nothing to watch, I gave it a shot and found it was actually pretty good. I mean, here's a show that seems to be an obvious cash-in on a franchise that was looking pretty tired after the last movie. In addition, it features cast members from such notable dramatic successes as "Beverly Hills 90210" (fn1), "Judging Amy"(fn2) and "John from Cincinnati".(fn3)

To say I had low expectations would be overstating things quite a bit: I had less than no expectations. But the show does some pretty interesting things with what is, when used right, a pretty snappy premise.

At any rate, it was my pleasant surprise of the season. I actually had pretty high expectations coming into this season and thus far it has met them.

The only serious issue I'm facing is that I now have 3 overlapping shows that I enjoy on Mondays. This one, "Chuck" and "How I Met Your Mother".

I haven't yet watched the premiere of "Chuck" but I enjoyed last season so I'm hoping it's still good. "How I Met Your Mother" is one of the funniest shows ever and if you're not watching it you are cheating yourself.

The premise is a guy in the future telling his kids about his time in NYC back in the now. Theoretically it's the long story of how he met his wife, the future-kids' mother, but mostly it's just about being in your mid-20's to early 30's in NYC.

And it is awesome. I say this as someone spending his mid-20's to early 30's in NYC. It's basically me with better writers.

fn1) Brian Austin Green. Did you know the 'Austin' was made up because there was already a Brian Green in the SAG? Now you do! (fn4)

fn2) The guy who played her assistant whose name I am not going to look up. I'm also going to skate over the fact that Judging Amy was a guilty pleasure of mine for a long time.

fn3) The guy who played the doctor. Now, to be fair, he was also Jack McCall, the man who shot Wild Bill in the excellent "Deadwood", but still.

fn4) I recently read my first David Foster Wallace piece. It was an essay about a cruise he took. I enjoyed it and have been rocking the footnotes more and more since reading it.