Episode Report Card Daniel: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Hi-yo, Silver!
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 02.10.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Andy, having spent every moment since the fire rebuilding his chick-magnet chess-playing computer, gets back in touch with Sarah, because he thinks inviting her to his robot chess tournament might finally get him laid. Sarah tags along, after finding out the winner gets a military contract. She's cheering for the Japanese to win in the final, because if Andy wins, Cameron's going to kill him (side note: if the Japanese win, shouldn't Sarah kill them? No, because the Japanese names weren't found in the resistance safehouse, apparently). When Andy's computer loses the tournament, Cameron argues in favour of killing him anyway. Sarah finds Andy dead shortly after the tournament, though, and gets into a scuffle with a scruffy stranger played by none other than Brian Austin Green, who is the other remaining resistance fighter! He gets thrown in the pokey, and when a Terminator (another one!) finds out about it, he manages to get himself arrested too, which is, really, a smarter plan than Arnie's "destroy entire police station" tactic from the first movie. Sarah goes to visit David Silver in the clink, and David says he didn't kill Andy. Andy was dead when he got there, and the Turk was stolen. Oh, and one another thing: the name's Derek Reese. Kyle's brother. John's uncle! Sarah's kind-of brother-in-law! The Connor Crew busts him out of a prisoner-transfer van, and save him from the T-888 on his arse. Unfortunately, Derek takes a bullet to the gut. After getting him back to the Connor Compound, Sarah prepares to go out and kidnap herself a doctor, but when John finds out that that's Unky Derek dying on the kitchen table, he goes out himself and comes back with...Charley Dixon, whose response time in attending to the gutshot Derek suffers since he stands there for seven hours mooning at Sarah.
As usual, Ellison is sniffing around all episode, and is getting closer to his Tommy Lee Jones The Fugitive "I don't care!" moment: in the aftermath of the prison breakout, Ellison finds a severed hand that is filled not with bones and tendons and muscles, but gears and hydraulics. Elsewhere, Chrome Artie passes himself off as an FBI agent, sharply turned out in a dark suit, to try to find Sarah. And John delves a little more into the mystery blonde at his high school, named Cheri, who is "damaged goods," according to the 98-pound weakling in the Smiths T-shirt in John's auto shop class.
So who killed Andy? My money's on Cameron. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Oh, god, not another dream sequence to open the show. Here we have Sarah, outfitted with some kind of automatic weapon, traipsing through the jungle, and -- oh, wait, it's not a dream sequence; it's a flashback. Sarah voiceovers that of all the training John got in some L.A. park that's passing for the jungles of South America, nothing prepared him for combat like learning to play chess. Well, what a great steaming load that is. Next time he's up against a Terminator, he can try the Ruy Lopez opening and see how far that gets him. Maybe his training should have involved less chess and more driving lessons, huh? As we cut to the present day, with Sarah doing chin-ups on a swing set, she explains how chess taught John that to win, you must be patient, bold, calculating, and willing to sacrifice.
After swallowing a barrage of pills, presumably the cancer-preventing kind, Sarah's cell phone rings. It's Andy. Sarah's mildly surprised to hear from him. Hey, I wonder what that mysterious woman who asked a bunch of questions about my chess-playing computer right before that computer was destroyed in a fire is up to? She just kind of disappeared right after my computer was destroyed. Think I'll give her a call. He says that his house burning down was a blessing in disguise, and he wants Sarah to come meet him at the chess tournament he's entered in Pasadena. Chess tournament? Next thing you know, there's a puff of smoke and a Sarah-shaped hole in the wall, because who could resist that?
Elsewhere, good ol' Charley Dixon, who is apparently just heading to work or coming home from work, because he's in his uniform, opens his front door to find Chrome Artie standing there, sharply turned out in a dark suit. Or, as Chrome Artie introduces himself, "Agent Kester" of the FBI. He says he needs to ask Charley a few questions about Sarah Connor. Charley glances furtively behind himself, then invites "Agent Kester" inside.
Cameron and John are doing homework in the kitchen. John asks Cameron if she's good at math. She says yes. "You want to do mine?" asks John. Again: "Yes." So John hands it over as Sarah stomps in to say Andy rebuilt his computer. John says he thought Sarah "napalmed" the Turk, and Sarah explained that Andy has spent every waking moment since the fire in a coffee shop rewriting the code from memory. John understands this: "Good code is like a good song in your head: it's gotta come out." Cameron's response is just as poetic in its own way: "You should have killed him when you had the chance." Sarah snaps that she's surprised it took Cameron so long to bring that up, and Cameron explains she's busy with John's homework, earning John a reproachful look. Give him a break; she's just like a big fancy calculator.
Anyway, Sarah orders John and "the Tin Miss" to go to school and join her later at the chess tournament; John can't be absent, or he'll be "on their radar." Of course, he'd be in much less danger of being on anyone's "radar" if he DIDN'T SPEND ALL DAY AT A PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL, but let's not split hairs. He asks for money for lunch, and Sarah hands him a brown paper bag instead. The fact that the future hopes of mankind rest on your shoulders doesn't mean I'm wasting money on chicken nuggets and Red Bull, young man.