We were talking about a book he'd written, and I asked him if he'd tell me the answer to a Big Unanswered Question in the book. (I won't say who this novelist is because I don't have time to call him and ask him if I can quote him.)

NOVELIST: I can't tell you, Josh. I don't know the answer.
ME: Really? It's like, a big unanswered question for the characters and for the reader.
NOVELIST: For me, as well. I don't know.

Which lead us to this: there will always be a point in your world-building when the world you've built outgrows the scope of the story you're telling. The edges are fuzzy; the next town over is mysterious. Perhaps you've hinted at something which suggests something else, which would really turn things on its fucking head IF you were to go down that path BUT YOU ARE NOT.

Not now. Not yet. And possibly, never. If you're world-building well, your world should feel full and alive and bustling in the corners, even if you've never actually made it over to the corner to see what the fuck is going on there. The world is true to your vision, but there is ambiguity and mystery and things undiscovered. I can know a thousand things about my the world I've created, but if there aren't a thousand others just outside of my creative periphery, then I start getting a little sketchy and bored.

This is the type of thing that drives studio and network executives crazy.

In the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles season 2 finale "Born to Run," Cameron invites John Connor to get up on top of her and cut her open in order to check and see if her nuclear power source is leaking. This is what she says (although she never actually says it) but we can wonder whether this is what her plan actually is. Certainly she knows whether it's sound or not, so perhaps she's doing it for John's benefit. On the other hand, she's not exactly clinical about the way she makes him straddle her. Here's the conversation I had with one of my executives:

EXECUTIVE: I don't get that scene.
ME: How so?
EXECUTIVE: I just don't get it. Why does she do that? Why does he do it? Was he going to kiss her? Does she want him to? What does she really want from him here?
ME: Well, we've got a lot of different possibilities. I'm sure she has her reasons. We don't really know Cameron's mind, do we?
EXECUTIVE: Shouldn't we know it?
ME: We, who? The royal we, you and me? Or the audience?
EXECUTIVE: Well. Any of the above.
ME: Like I said. You could read that scene many different ways.
EXECUTIVE: Do you have a favorite?
ME: They're all God's children.

Which is why they usually hated me.

Now whether you want to believe it or not, this was not me just being lazy. This is the way that I like my drama, both written and watched-organic, ambiguous, a little messy and inclusive of multiple interpretations.

Which, I grant you, on a bad day is barely distinguishable from lazy.

I can think of at least four reasons Sarah let John go by himself with Weaver into the future at the end of season 2. I can think of any number of reasons why he chose to do so. I also welcome the idea that both of these decisions were horrible decisions, and you might think that the Sarah Connor and John Connor that exist in your head would never do what they did. Because while I may lead you down a particular path, it is your god-given right as a participant in this television show to veer off the path at any time and start hacking your own way through the jungle.

Which is not to say I abdicate responsibility. Bad writing is a demon that takes all forms and often finds a warm and inviting host with writers who confuse the arbitrary with the mysterious.

So in that spirit, let me now contradict everything I've said previously by also saying that in Sci Fi TV there is NOTHING more important than the proper, specific detail. To wit:

In Episode 102 of the Sarah Connor Chronicles ("The Turk," written by John Wirth), the Terminator Cromartie kidnaps a scientist to assist it in growing cyborg skin. Cromartie has brought the skin recipe back from the future, and writes it on the scientist's wall so the scientist can follow it.

When writing the script, John had actually spent time on the phone with a cell biologist trying to get a formula which would best approximate something you might use to grow skin for a cyborg. John had given that formula to our production designer and he, in turn, had given it to the on-set painter so it could be written on the wall. These are the types of things we do all day.

The night before we were scheduled to shoot that scene, John Wirth and I went down to the set to see how it looked. It's late and I know the crew wants to get on their work. But here's the conversation we have:

ME: There's something…not right.
JOHN: I agree. It's just…what is it?
ME: It's not…I dunno…right.
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Could you be a little more specific? We'll fix it. But, you know, maybe a direction to go in? Font size? Pen color? Anything?
ME: It's just…I can't think of any other way to say it…but it doesn't look like a Terminator wrote it.
JOHN: Exactly.
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Huh.

What followed was a lengthy conversation where we ran through a number of issues:

Had we ever seen Terminator handwriting? Do they write in a particular style? Would they be as precise as a computer or would they be in some way affected by their biped-ness, their height relative to surface…Would they disguise their writing as more human-like? And seriously - where was the fucking manual for this?

Eventually we took the entire wall down and did it all over again. This time…more…Terminator-y.

Now this type of conversation occurs on every set on every television show in the world every day. I'd be willing to bet that as I write this at ten o'clock at night, somewhere in Hollywood a showrunner is staring at a set of drapes, a pair of shoes, a bloody handprint, or a gunshot wound and trying to find the perfect balance between story, character and filmic verisimilitude. That's the job. (Frankly, that's everyone's job.)

But in Sci Fi you also get this:

ME: We need to re-do that urinal morph, Jim.
JIM: What's the problem?
ME: She looks like she's coming out of the urinal.
JIM: Isn't she?
ME: No. She's supposed to be morphing from a urinal into a woman. Right now it looks like the urinal is birthing her. That's gross.
JIM: I getcha.
ME: Think "the prow of a ship."
JIM: Awesome. Great note. I'll make it so.
(Because they do love to make it so.)

TV fiction is a depictive media, while written fiction is a suggestive one. A novel's language casts different shadow plays off the back part of each reader's skull while a tv show casts one vision for everyone. We all have our own idea of what China Mieville means when Detective Borlu "unsees" someone in the neighboring city, but God help the poor schmuck who has to decide what that idea means for everyone.

So we (or I, since it's my blog post) try to balance the concrete specificity of what can be seen (Terminator handwriting, urinals) with the novelistic "suggestiveness" of what we don't see but feel (why does she do what she does?). This is not exclusive to science fiction, but especially true of it; speculative fiction is just that - speculative. Creating a beautiful unanswered question can be a complete work of art - just ask Schrödinger and his cat.

Just know that some day somebody will open that box and, dead or alive, there better be a fucking awesome kitty in there.

Josh Friedman was the showrunner on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

My therapist is Swiss German and a Freudian as well as a psychooncologist and an art therapist. When she watches Sarah Connor she doesn't see robots and Skynet and John Connor, she sees cancer dreams and death fetishes and the psychological damage done by the absent and perfect father (not that my father is either of those things). My therapist quotes freely from Einstein's biography and has attended the latest Marlene Dumas exhibit but has never seen an episode of Firefly and only nods and smiles when I tell her one of my greatest fears is somebody spoiling the last two seasons of Battlestar for me. (Seriously. Don't even think about it.) But she is one of the only people who cares that the Sarah Connor pilot episode originally had a completely different voice over to open the series and that the first lines we ever hear Sarah speak were supposed to be:

"I will die. I will die and so will you. Death gives no man a pass."

Which some people in the focus groups found a little bit of a bummer.

I used to feel slightly slippery talking to my therapist about television, like it's really just a way to avoid digging deep and having a breakthrough and all that other bullshit that we've been taught (mostly by television) is what happens when you go to therapy. There are few Perry Mason moments in court and there are few Eureka moments in therapy (did Tony Soprano have any? I can't remember right now) but I'll be goddamned if I don't walk out of my shrink's office every Monday and Wednesday feeling a little let down that I couldn't think of a great button for that fifty-minute scene. I want each session to be a close-ended episode of CSI and in truth it's much closer to a badly written soap that's been stripped of the sex and the betrayals and the evil twins and replaced with a meandering, repetitive monologue about why the main character eats too much Chinese food and won't go to the gym.

Recently a sober accounting of my feelings about my son starting kindergarten quickly morphed into me summarizing the entire five hours of Torchwood: Children of Earth and how the finale had my wife curled up in a ball sobbing and cursing Russell T. Davies. In a valiant attempt to earn her fee, my therapist pointed out that all parents are addicted to the warm fuzzy feelings they get from their children and it's not just the 456 who would mainline a youngster if they could get away with it.

Ever since my show was cancelled I tell her new stories; we talk about demon possession and alien abduction and different theories of time and space travel. She now knows the plot to China Mieville's The City&The City and we both wonder what it is that makes me obsessed with being in two places at once, and things hidden inside other things, and worlds where death cannot reach us so easily. We talk about whether science fiction can reach larger audiences and why I only like serialized storytelling and whether or not Deadwood is as good as Shakespeare and if The Wire is the Crime and Punishment of my generation. We talk about fanboys and chatrooms and being loved and hated and cancelled and what that dream episode was really about and whether it's appropriate for a five year old to have a huge poster of a gun-toting Summer Glau in skin-tight leather pinned over his bed.

We wonder if my life writing Sci Fi TV isn't just a blatant land-grab for the undeclared territory that is my subconscious.

At least we would wonder that. But the bitch is out of town this week. So I guess it's just you and me.

Josh Friedman was the showrunner on Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Here's a bit more about our guests.

Before helming Sarah Connor Chronicles, Josh Friedman wrote the screenplays for Brian DePalma's film The Black Dahlia, and for the Steven Spielberg version of War of the Worlds. Weird fact: He is also the guy responsible for starting the "Snakes on a Plane" meme frenzy on the internet, by posting about the script in his blog and suggesting the line "snakes on a motherfucking plane."

Jesse Alexander is currently working on the forthcoming NBC apocalypse show Day One, which he created. He was a co-exective producer on Heroes, Lost, and Alias.

Look for their posts starting later today!

Friedman has already said he won't talk about what would have happened in a possible third season of T:SCC, because he wants audiences to imagine their own continuations, based on what they saw. But I did want to ask him a bit about that ending. Here's our conversation.

There's been a lot of talk about moving Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to Syfy, or putting out direct-to-DVD movies. How realistic is that talk, and is there anything fans can do to make it more realistic?

I know there's been a lot of talk online about moving the show elsewhere but I've said before and I still believe that the show is over. I don't own it, control it, or have any pull with those who do. James Middleton and I had conversations a while back to do our homework in the case of cancellation and didn't find anyone receptive to moving it. There has to be a motivated buyer or seller to make it work and currently we don't have either one.

I felt like it was pretty clear the end of season two was a cliffhanger, with John in the future, but a lot of people seem to feel like it was an ending — that this is how John becomes the Resistance leader he's meant to be. Did you intend for it to feel that final, or were you definitely thinking of it as a cliffhanger?

I think the finale can be looked at both as an end and also as a springboard to a new part of the story—that's what I intended, at least. I wanted to bring an end to many of the questions that I'd raised in the episodes previous but it's dramatically unsound to try and create a rogue's gallery of scenes just to check off every narrative box. I knew there was a chance we were being cancelled but I also needed to let the network see where we could take the story if given the chance. So I tried to close one door while opening another. There's obviously different opinions as to how successful I was hitting that target. But I'm very proud of the episode.

Do you think there's any truth to the idea that in the middle of an economic collapse, people are more interested in upbeat, optimistic stories, and post-apocalyptic tales of destruction and despair are a harder sell?

Do people want more upbeat stories during trying times? I don't know. I think people want more upbeat stories all the time. Sarah Connor's a difficult woman to have in your living room on a weekly basis. But that doesn't mean she shouldn't be there or we shouldn't be trying to tell challenging stories. Episodic television conditions the viewer to expect resolution. You become addicted to knowing the end without paying the price for knowing it. It's death without the pain of dying, dramatic immortality, really. And that's very comforting to people.

I prefer to watch characters try and fail and try again and sort of succeed a little and maybe fuck up again. That's what I want to see. Flawed people trying to figure their shit out. Because that's me. We're not perfect parents or lovers or friends. We're not heroes. But we can do heroic things once in a while, sometimes even on purpose. So TSCC is a sloppy mix of hope and despair and that suits some people just fine and others don't have a taste for it. I've made peace with that. I'm not particularly interested in giving the world a xanax and telling them it's gonna be all right. It's usually not all right. And I don't want someone showing me what it's like to be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm probably not gonna be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm gonna be scared and mediocre and I don't need to feel worse that I'm not awesome. I want to know that scared and mediocre is a reasonable response to hard times and not something to be ashamed of.

But my show got cancelled. So what do I know.

Blogging on Fox's official Terminator blog, showrunner Josh Friedman addressed the cancellation and came out much more philosophical, and grateful, than upset:

Good shows are cancelled every year; smart shows, worthy shows, shows which move their viewers to write blogs and have viewing parties and create action figures and bury executives' email accounts under thousands of messages. I miss Deadwood and The Wire and Arrested Development but thank God that I still have Rescue Me and The Office and a recently renewed Party Down written by ex-T:SCC writer John Enbom.

Bad shows are cancelled, too. And certainly there are those who did not like what we did and had their own vision for what a Terminator TV show should be. It's easy to look at low ratings or cancellation as "failure" and for those who believe we've gone about this all wrong I'm sure today's news will only serve to confirm a world view that I would never try to change. We've written the show as best we can, executed it to the best of our abilities, and sent it out in the world knowing that we worked out asses off to do something that wouldn't be a waste of anybody's forty-three minutes.

Thanks to a brave and talented cast, a feature crew working on a TV schedule, and everyone else who I could list but won't because they know who they are. Mostly I'd like to thank those of you who've supported us and fought for us and given up hours of your life to watch our show. At the end of the day, that's what it's about. The watching.

If you're busily preparing a boycott of all Fox shows because of the news, he had a word for you, too:

I know a lot of you are angry about the cancellation and want to find a place to direct your anger and to that I say do yourself a favor and find a way to move past it. Every network wants a big fat hit, especially one with a brand name behind it, and Fox was/is no different. They supported the show, they supported my vision of the show, and they gave it plenty of time to find an audience.

He's a classy man, and here's hoping that he ends up on staff somewhere soon. Joss, need someone to help out with Dollhouse's second season?

One last thing from Josh Friedman [Fox.com]

In his new post at the show's official blog, Friedman says fans seem to be "stressed," both about the show's direction and about its chances for survival. And he tried to offer fans a bit of digital valium. As far as the show's ratings go, Friedman says, everyone expected it to have a drop-off when it moved to Fridays, and nobody can really tell how much of a drop-off is too much. At least the second Friday episode had the same ratings as the first. How does Friedman handle the uncertainty? Here's how:

Every day early in the morning I drive my car to the Warner Bros lot. I approach the security guard and hold out my employee ID. He runs the scanner over it. If I hear the beep and the gate opens I say to myself: "So far so good" and go to my office. I will continue to do this until the gate does not open and I suggest you do the same. The show is on until it is off and while that could be next week, next season, or years from now, try to enjoy it while you can (assuming you enjoy it).

And then Friedman addresses your (and our) concerns about the show's creative direction — and it's very illuminating. For example, he says the two most recent episodes are part of a "trilogy" examining Sarah Connor herself, which concludes this Friday with "Some Must Sleep..." Friedman explains that he made a deliberate decision "some months ago" to start focusing the show more on Sarah Conner herself, and what the fight against Skynet is doing to her.

I wanted to explore not simply the idea of chasing Skynet and all that that entails, but also the psychological effects of doing so. It wasn't enough to just hunt/fight/protect; I wanted to see what was going on inside her head, especially when those around her doubted her. Now some of you find that interesting, some of you don't, some of you probably would but don't think I've done a good job depicting it. And most of you are just pissed there's not enough Cameron.

Is it difficult starting up with dark, psychological episodes after being gone for two months? Seems that's the case. People are worked up about the Friday night thing and the ratings and I probably underestimated that microscope in my desire to explore Sarah and her demons. To be completely honest, the network warned me not to do it but I felt (and still feel) these stories (and I consider the upcoming Some Must Sleep… as the third part of the Sarah triptych) were/are vital parts of the show. But that's coming from the guy who believes that if you enjoy watching Weaver slaughter thirty people in one episode you're obligated to go to their funeral in the next.

And then he lists all the stuff we're going to get a degree of closure on this season, and it all sounds pretty fantastic, including a future storyline about Jesse's Terminator-piloted nuclear submarine, which explains how she got back to the present, and what it means for John Connor. There will be more John/Cameron (or "Jameron") shippery stuff, but not too much. Catherine Weaver will fight another Terminator and have a "faceoff" with Sarah Connor. Agents of Skynet will mount a "deadly" attack on the Connors, and Cameron's chip malfunction will reappear in "new and deadly ways." Savannah will be in "mortal danger." Plus there'll be final closure for Jesse and Riley, an explanation of Catherine Weaver's backstory and mission, an explanation of the three dots, and loads and loads of death.

Reading Friedman's blog post, I felt a tad guilty that I was a bit harsh about last Friday's episode, which is growing on me. In general, I feel as though the show's second season has been way stronger than its strike-blighted first, and I'm always in favor of introspection and character study, along with the boom-booms. In any case, Friedman says the show is just about done shooting, so it's too late for anybody's back-seat writing to make a difference. Here's hoping the show pulls off a miracle and gets a third season — I suspect that upward trajectory in the show's quality would continue in year three. [Fox Blogs via Sarah Connor Society]

Does Cameron really love John?

One of the most jarring moments in the show was during the season premiere, where Glau's Terminator, Cameron, said she loves John Connor. Was she just trying to avoid being killed? Or did she mean it, sort of?

Glau surprised me, by saying that "Cameron's deep love for John is because he is her whole reason for existing... I think that is love, and I think she would do anything for him, and in her reality, I think that's what love is for her." She added that she's not sure where Friedman is going with the character, but she always plays it as if she does feel something for John.

The move to Friday nights, and the show's future:

"We were getting our asses kicked on Monday nights," Friedman says. Friday nights have different expectations, ratings-wise, plus it gives Fox an opportunity to promote Terminator and Dollhouse together, creating a science-fiction block that might appeal to the same audience.

Friedman remains optimistic about the show getting a third season, but also addressed the possibility that it might not happen. He says he wrote the season finale "the way I was planning on writing the finale for a long time... You owe the audience a logical conclusion to the things we have been building towards." It's true that fans get upset when a show has an open-ended conclusion and doesn't come back, but "fans also get upset if we write a crappy finale. If I tried to sum up every single thing in 43 minutes, it would be a disaster. It would end up like a clip show."

He also reiterated that the rest of the season is more serialized, with fewer standalone episodes, than the first half was.

Shocking things in the season finale:

Glau says she just read the script for the season finale and she was "shocked." Not to mention excited and "a little sad." It sounds as though something tragic and/or sad happens to Cameron this season. "I think everybody's going to be shocked at what happens at the end of this season." And Cameron has some great scenes in that episode.

Also, she has lots and lots of gun battles and smackdowns in the last nine episodes, way more than in the first half of the season. "People are going to be on a roller-coaster" in the final episodes.

The awesomeness of Summer Glau:

Friedman says he saw Summer audition several years ago, and really wanted to cast her in something. But instead, she went off to do the Serenity movie and The 4400. Friedman carried her audition tape around with him for a few weeks afterwards. And when the time came to do the Terminator show, he wrote the part of Cameron for her. "She's one of those few people who can be completely still, and still hard to take your eyes off."

Glau says that playing a robot is more challenging in some ways than playing a regular human, because she has to plan out everything in advance. She can't just react naturally or convey normal emotions.

In the pilot episode, Friedman says, he and producer James Middleton saw Glau do something incredibly clever during one take. They weren't sure if she was doing it on purpose, but then during the next take, she did it again. That was when Friedman realized how awesome Glau was going to be at playing this character, and how little hand-holding she was going to need.

Also, that scene in a recent episode where Cameron says she feels, because she wouldn't be much good if she didn't? That's part of Cameron's scheme. "I think she has a plan for drawing John closer to her, and so I've been trying to incorporate that all season," says Glau.

Also, someone asked Glau, "Do you ever get tired of playing deceptively strong asskickers?" And this was her whole answer: "No." Then she was pressed to elaborate, and she said something about how she enjoys playing complicated characters. But also, Cameron has gotten to be the damsel in distress on some occasions, and she's gotten to be sort of a princess and do ballet.

Other stuff:

Friedman says he'd like to be able to revisit the "Alison from Palmdale" character at some point — the future human whose appearance, and apparently memories, Cameron borrowed from.

Another character who might be revisited at some point: the engineer who built the time machine in the bank vault in 1963, which we saw in the show's pilot episode. The writers regularly debate whether to bring that engineer character back. Some writers pitch Friedman stories about that characters, but others never want to see him on the show. Friedman is obsessed with "the engineer" and definitely would like to bring him onto the show sometime — but not in the second season.

Cameron has "very few advantages" in a straight-up brawl with Shirley Manson's Catherine Weaver. It would be like a replay of the fight in Terminator 2.

io9: You've said that season two will feature John Connor stepping up and becoming more of the hero we know he's going to be. How do we build up John Connor without tearing down Sarah Connor?

Friedman: I don't know that you don't. I think, dramatically, when you're looking for conflict, to keep characters always with the same problems and the same attitudes gets boring. Everyone knows what Sarah Connor is, and that the thing that's most important to her is her son. And it's not about making her a good hero or tough or alpha, it's really about how you can be the toughest person around, and [it's still a problem] if your primary relationship, in her case with John, is suffering in some way. She still kicks ass, we have a lot of that, but how important is that if you have a problem in your primary relationship? So it's less about john becoming a hero, and more about John moving away from home and becoming an adult. It's just more problematic when he does that.

io9: We've been wondering. What is this thing with Terminators having names? Like Cromartie? He uses that name in the first episode when he's masquerading as a school teacher, and it becomes his name for the rest of the series.

Friedman: It becomes his name for the rest of the series, for those who need to call him something. Obviously, they don't have real names — it just helps us identify them.

I have something which I've never told anybody, which I will tell you: I am determined to never use the word "Terminator" in the show. I don't like it in the dialogue — it sounds weird to me. I think it was when I was watching The Sopranos, and I realized after five years, that I had never heard the word "Mafia." And finally it was said once, and the guy who says it gets killed. And it was really interesting that they'd never said that word. After our first episode [of Sarah Connor] I realized I never used it in that episode, and I said I'm going to see if I can go without it.

io9: So we know nobody named Connor will die on this show, and they'll never avert Judgment Day. Is the show's suspense mostly around the other characters? Does Brian Austin Green have a target painted on his forehead? Or is more about the relationships?

Friedman: [Laughs] I think partially, it's the relationships. I think when someone says the apocalypse is not going to be averted, well, yes. They're going to try as hard as they can to avert it. [But that's not what the show is really about.] In the first movie... the Terminator's not coming back to stop John Connor because John Connor is going to stop the Apoclaypse. [Connor] is going to save mankind. Skynet is, in a way, a rapid dog chase around the dog park. [The real issue is] will this boy in our show become what he needs to be to save the future? Skynet is probably inevitable.

By sending back a Terminator [Summer Glau] to be with John Connor, you're changing his character inherently, and what does that change him into? And what dos that mean? Is he becoming a different leader in the future? And i think this year we will see more ramifications from his relationship with [Glau's] Cameron. He has sent her back to help and protect, but the intensity of that relationship can't but affect him in the future, and I think that is something that is problematic.

io9: So how does that affect him? Does it make him more emotionless, because he's spending his formative years hanging out with a robot? More cautious, because he's living with a bodyguard?

Friedman: I don't know that those are the only two choices. It may make him more dependent on machines, than the original iteration of John Connor. John and Sarah have completely different attitudes towards Terminators: Sarah hates them, she's like a racist. They come back and try to kill her. [But for John] the function of Terminators in the movies was always as a father figure. Terminator 3 sort of abandoned that family dynamic, and who is this Terminator to John. So I think John has always had a more open idea about what they can do, he's repogrammed some and sent them back because he thinks of them as a little more mutable, which I think is potentially problematic or complicating his attitude to them in the future.

io9: So the show really isn't about stopping Skynet?

Friedman: [It's more about the fact that] we're going to die, what are we going to do from now until then? How are we going to live our lives? that's what the show's about: what are you going to do with your day knowing you're going to die? They think they can stop [Skynet], but we as fans think they're not going to stop it. But hopefully we're interested in watching them try to stop it. And are they going to be in any shape to deal with what happens next?

io9: So one of the most exciting things for me about the early SCC episodes was the Heathers riff, with the hazing and the girl who kills herself. And then it vanished. What happened to it?

Friedman: I was diasppointed. It was mostly cut for length. I was on strike from episode 2 to episode 9 in terms of editing. There were a couple of rough cuts of episodes 2, 3 and 4 when I left. We had shot most of the season, and I did not edit most of them. We had [high school] storylines that extended through most of those episodes. It always ended up being the things that got cut when it went long. I made all the writers watch Brick before we started. I was such a fan of it. High school is dangerous. It's dangerous on that Heathers level, interpersonally, and also it's a scary place. There was no safe place for John. You couldn't say, send him to high school, and have him say: "Mom's off saving the world, and I'm off with my wacky robot sister." The suicide and the blackmailing — I wanted it to be life and death, and I had a plan for it.

io9: So is that stuff gone in season two?

Friedman: This year, it's pretty much gone. For a while anyway. [It's a tough question] Do you cut away from Sarah being chased by a cyborg, to John in English class? We tried to make them kiss each other. We had a Heroes writer on our staff. I said to her, "We're taking the cheerleader, we're putting her on the roof, and we're having her jump. And she's dying." I wanted people to realize it's not going to be a fun place.

io9: Some people ask why is John in high school in the first place? Why isn't he hiding in a bunker?

Friedman: That would be a show where they're not going to learn anything. John Connor is a leader of people, he's not just a guy in a tank. He has to convince people to do stuff. How does that boy learn how to lead? And yet not be so above the radar where it's a problem? He's not a hothouse flower. How does that guy know how to lead people if he's just under his mother's wing all the time? That was how I rationalized it. [At first, I didn't want to have John in school at all.] I just wrestled with it. And then I had a really good plan.

io9: So there's a new love interest for John, and Cameron gets jealous?

Friedman: I'm always going to look at John and who's on one shoulder, and who's on the other shoulder, and what are they whispering to him? There are various triangles. This is a kid that everyone wants a piece of in some way, and everyone wants to influence in some way, and [there's kind of a battle for his ear. And who's going to influence him?

io9: One thing i liked in season one was the focus on the female characters in episodes like the Heathers episode and the "I married a Terminator episode." Is that going to continue?

Friedman: I think it is a feminist show, in a very matter of fact way. Sarah is who she is. Cameron is not technically female, but she's a representation of a female. Shirley Manson is in the show now. She's in a lot of episodes. [At this point, he gestured at Manson, doing another interview, and I realized that I'd been sitting two feet away from her for half an hour without noticing.]

We actually have another character, played by Busy Phillips [from Freaks And Geeks], a character who lives next Sarah who is 8 months pregnant. The actor actually is 8 months pregnant, she is only in 3 or 4 episodes before she gives birth. We really show her body and show her pregnancy, which for me is a really interesting thing. I've taken a lot of flack from people who think she's too pregnant on the show. We have an episode where she's wearing a skirt and a bikini top. And you realize, you never see that on television. You never see pregnant women on television. You see fake pregnant women on television. It's throwing some people off. You see some of the dailies, and people are like, "She's huge." In these scenes with Sarah and John Connor, who are these little dark lean pieces of beef jerky. It's important for people to see that, if you're going to put on the sexy robots, you need to put on other representations of women and the female form. Not for political reasons — I do it because it works on the show, and there's a reason thematically. She's like the alternate version of Sarah Connor, if Sarah wasn't Sarah Connor. She's a single mother, pregnant with a son. She's Sarah, if everything was okay. That's kind of what I wanted to do, and really show how full she is of life and how the other characters are death-oriented. I think this show does work for women, I think it should work more than it does, and I'm pretty sure it will.

io9: Will Busy Phillips be in more episodes after she gives birth?

Friedman: I hope so.

Photo of Josh Friedman by Josie SF.

• It's pure dumb luck that the final two episodes, airing Monday, form a decent season finale for the show. They just happened to be the last two episodes completed before the writers' strike. Episode 10 is awesome, but would have made a much less fitting ending.
• I started to ask Friedman a question, and when he heard I was from io9, he shouted, "Ease up on us! You're killing us!" Apparently he's been reading our recaps of the show, and thinks we're too snarky. (Which made me feel bad, because we love the show, and have been regularly accused of boosting it too much.)
• My actual question had to do with whether Summer Glau's Terminator Cameron is becoming more Cylon-like, with her apparent emotions and her love of ballet in the last episode. Here's what Friedman said:

  With all due respect to Ron Moore, Cylons have wanted to be like terminators for many years. Probably all of them wanted to be like Blade Runner. [Cameron] is a more advanced model, she has more ability to mimic emotion... Whenever you have any form of cyborg or android, [like] Data, there's always temptation by the writers to stat exploring that whole humanity thing. How far it goes and what the limitations are is something that I'm still exploring.

  He added that he wants to explore these themes in a way that makes sense to casual viewers and feels fresh to people who've watched tons of science fiction before. He said there's a lot of debate among the show's makers about whether Cameron is really feeling emotions, or just pretending to. And if she pretends to feel emotions for long enough, will she eventually feel them for real? He also said he can't watch Battlestar, because it does such a good job with these themes that he wants to deal with them on his own.
• The show tries really hard not to violate the rules of time travel, despite the fact that more people and Terminators are coming back through time than you ever saw in the movies. Friedman figures that Skynet would be cautious about sending back too many Terminators or other devices, because Skynet "understands that causality is so complicated that any one thing might change things." Skynet doesn't want to wipe out the human race before its own creation happens.
• Friedman wants to include more comedy in season two.
• We should find out in season two what happens in that spooky basement that FutureBrian Austin Green went into. If we'd gotten our full 13 episodes of season one, there would have been a second episode dealing with future stuff.
• Remember that whole plot about someone painting mean stuff on the doors at the high school? And the girl who committed suicide? And the mean girls? Well, Friedman hasn't forgotten it either. But apparently a lot of the high-school subplot ended up on the cutting-room floor in recent episodes, partly for length reasons and also because it sounds like some people at Fox are skittish about it. "I definitely had this whole huge storyline i was working on," Friedman said. He had planned to resolve that storyline in season one, and hopes to resolve it in the show's second season. I hope those deleted high-school scenes wind up on the DVDs, because the Terminator/Heathers mashup was my favorite part of the show, and I've been missing it.