I had the realization the other day that Battlestar Galactica and Terminator have essentially the same plot device (the bad guys, they look like us, and they're bad ass) but have taken it in very, very different directions. Galactica has politics and just a sense of largeness. Things are always afoot, and even though we follow many of the same characters, they're always acting in some kind of larger context. Terminator, on the other hand, is very small. The world at large has no idea what's going on.

Also, (spoiler free) the Terminator season ending cliffhanger, if you really want to call it that, was hardly cliffhanging. It's not like you can't easily predict what happens next. The Galactica cliffhanger, Jimi Hendrix allusions aside, was a total mental screwup and leaves us wondering what the frak is going on.