Episode Report Card Daniel: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Suboceanic Homesick Blues
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 03.13.2009
taking them to a deep-water oil platform near the Indonesian archipelago. "Lt. Deets and his team will board the rig and retrieve a package. We will deliver this package to Serrano Point." Jesse points out that they have important cargo to deliver to Perth, like vaccines, but Queeg says the new orders come from John Connor. She asks if these new orders say what's in the package. "Yes, they do," he says, and that's all he says. Maybe he's distracted by the fact that a full half of Jesse's form is obscured by a promo of a writhing Eliza Dushku for that Dollhouse show and we can't actually see what's going on until Eliza disappears, thank you. "Please inform the crew. Thank you," says Queeg.So Jesse fills in Lt. Deets, who says he'll be fine, because he's "got this" and he cocks his weapon, and she tells him she's being serious. "I'm always serious about being fine," he says, and Deets is so going to die before the end of this two-parter. She says if he sees anything he doesn't like, to make sure he thinks before he pulls the trigger. "I've been seeing things I don't like since J-Day. You don't get to be my age without thinking first," he says, and reassures "Mom" that they'll hold hands before crossing the street.
So back in the control room Jesse opens up communications with Deets' team, and Deets says this deep-sea oil rig is the second-worst thing he's ever smelled, and she says they'll maintain radio silence until they've got their mitts on the package, and my guess is that she was worried he was going to say the worst thing he ever smelled was the time he followed her in the bathroom.
So we watch Deets and his team make their way through dark, dank corridors and steps, hooks and chains hanging everywhere, things sloshing. It's like watching a first-person shooter. I think I've played this one! Deets turns a corner and seems surprised by what he sees, and he steps back. He thinks for a moment, and then puts his rifle down and silently motions for his team to head out. After a moment, they do, leaving him there on his own. He steels himself, and then goes back around the corner, raising his arms in the air as he does so.
On the floor is a box, and there's a dude standing behind it. But what's got him raising his arms are the two armed endoskeletons standing there. "Connor sent me. John Connor. I've come for that," says Deets, sounding like he's pissing his pants right at this very moment. There's some sort of blue light on the box. "I'm just here for that," says Deets again. The dude, possibly a terminator himself, steps forward and picks up the box, holding it up, looking like he's half-smiling. Yeah, probably a terminator. Of course, the endos look like they're grinning demonically, with their weapons trained on Deets. On the plus side, at least it looks like his bowels are completely evacuated.
As Cameron approaches the garage, we can see the flickering orange light of a fire through the windows, and maybe, just maybe, if Sarah's burning the terminator stuff and all this sensitive stuff from the future? She should cover over the windows so the neighbours don't think there's a fire happening.
Sarah's staring at an endo hand when Cameron walks in. "I had planned on waiting for you with Derek's sniper rifle. Pull the trigger, solve about fifty percent of my problems, one shot," says Sarah, like NICE WELCOME, and she asks Cameron how bad she figures Sarah would have felt. "Very bad?" guesses Cameron. So much for her brainiac computer mind. "Not bad at all," says Sarah, but she knows someone who would have felt bad: "Someone who never would have forgiven me if I'd done that." She says she doesn't know what to do with Cameron, who knows why they're here and what the stakes are. "And yet here I stand, burning what's left of an endoskeleton I thought we'd burned months ago," she says. Oh, Cameron. She's disappointed in you! That's always way worse than when your mom's just straight-up mad at you! Cameron says she needed spare parts. "I don't care what you need because it's not about you," snaps Sarah. Cameron agrees and says it's about John. "You're concerned for his safety," she says, and Sarah says you bet she is. "From Skynet, from me?" says Cameron. "Maybe. Maybe especially you," says Sarah. Cameron says they're all a threat to John, because he worries about them, which makes him vulnerable. "I am not John's problem," says Sarah. "John is John's problem. Humans are the problem," says Cameron, adding that the only way for him to be safe is to be alone. "What kind of life is that?" asks Sarah. "John's life. Someday," says Cameron, before turning and walking out of the garage, with Sarah standing there, her little terminator bonfire there for the whole neighbourhood to see. Try not to kill any birds on your way back to the house!
And we go now to where John had to go: somehow inside a morgue in front of a wall of refrigerated slabs. Did he just walk in? Is this a public building? He opens a door marked "Jane Doe" and rolls out a shelf with Riley on it. And he takes a moment before he can even look at her body. And then he turns her head towards him, and then he lifts up her hand, with her nails encrusted with gunk (Jesse's skin?) and he presses the back of her hand against his cheek. "I'm sorry," he whispers. Riley does not reply. He puts the hand back, and pushes her body back into its compartment and shuts the door.
Elsewhere, Jesse sits in her chair. Slightly edgy, she reaches out and shifts the lamp again, and then sits there fidgeting until the "To Be Continued..." screen comes up. Because this episode is a cliffhanger more than a regular episode is how, exactly?