Episode Report Card Daniel: B+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT I Know Now Why You Celebrate Birthdays
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 03.02.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Sarah and Cameron make contact (virtual contact, anyway) with Sarkissian, the guy who bought the Turk, in a cyber café. They pretend they want to buy it, he instructs them to bring $500,000 to a mall food court the next day.
But this guy's got connections. Somehow he's read Sarah's FBI file, the same file that mentions Enrique, and Sarkissian visits Enrique's no-good nephew Carlos and finds out where Sarah lives. Can I just ask who doesn't know where the Connors live at this point?
Charley Dixon is visited by the now-Bible-quoting Agent Ellison, who tells him he thinks Sarah is still alive, and Charley knows where she is. Charley denies it, but then risks blowing Sarah's cover by running straight to Sarah's house to tell her about Agent Ellison's visit, because he thinks the man has come around. Sarah tells him to get lost.
After Sarah and Derek get stood up at the food court, they come back to the Connor Compound to find Sarkissian waiting for them. Think I'll keep the Turk, he says, but I'll take $2 million from you to not blow your cover to the FBI. Derek's counter-offer (death) doesn't go over so well, as Sarkissian has the place covered, and he's got a man watching John (who's out on a field trip). Sarkissian's man is dead and in the trunk of a car by the end of the field trip, which turns Morris on so much he asks Cameron to the prom. She says yes (prompted by John).
With the wordless help of the Silent Chiquita, the Connor Crew track down Sarkissian and kill him, in front of a little girl who just wanted to read her Dora the Explorer book. John takes a break from decrypting Sarkissian's computer to go for a birthday stroll with Derek, who's figured out Kyle is John's father, because of the family resemblance. And Derek's present is John meeting his father, albeit when Kyle is five years old, playing baseball with his older brother Derek.
Charley told Ellison he'd recently spoken to Agent Kester, with whom Ellison is not familiar. But he's in the FBI database -- and he looks an awful lot like George Lazlo. So this "Agent Kester" must be the guy who killed a bunch of people, and forced a plastic surgeon to make him look just like Lazlo (whom he then killed). This "theory" is enough to warrant an FBI Swat team swooping in on Chrome Artie's hotel room, and to a jaunty tune by Johnny Cash, the entire FBI team (except for Ellison, but including Agent Brassy) is massacred. Chrome Artie lets Ellison live -- perhaps because he knows Ellison is also looking for Sarah and John?
As Cameron goes out for a cake to celebrate John's birthday, he finds something on Sarkissian's computer: the guy Derek killed wasn't Sarkissian at all. Who the phoney Sarkissian was isn't clear. But that looks like the real Sarkissian walking down the street after Cameron gets blowed up in a car. Unless it's a thermite bomb, I think she'll be okay. Will she look the same? She better. If I wanted to watch ugly Terminators, I'd watch...well, I wouldn't watch this show. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We open on what we're told is May 11, 2011. Also known as Judgment Day, at least in this version of the Terminatorverse. Two boys, one a few years younger than the other, play baseball in the long shadows of the late afternoon. Sarah voiceovers something about...something. Something apropos, I'm assuming. "Batting's hard, Derek!" whines the younger one, after a swing and a miss. "Derek" tells "Kyle" that he's doing fine, and to remember to stay on top of the ball. Maybe if he wants to hit nothing but dribbling grounders. Kyle connects with the next pitch, delighting both brothers.
Suddenly, there's a loud rumbling coming from overhead. "Fireworks!" says Kyle. The boys look up, and see missiles streaking across the sky, like a real-life version of Missile Command. The screen goes white.
And we're back to the present day, in a cyber café, with some big dude getting way too upset that he's just been killed in the video game he's playing. This startles Sarah and Cameron, so I guess he's lucky he didn't get shot. Cameron speaks a foreign language that we're told is Armenian, and I'm just going to have to take their word for it. Sarah's rather surprised, and Cameron explains that she learned Armenian because Sarkissian is an Armenian name. Sarah gripes that they're not here to charm Sarkissian, but to get the Turk and get out. They make their way towards Table 19, which is where Sarkissian said to meet him, but they're stopped by a tall skinny guy who says they have some business to take care of. Sarah, clearly thinking this was not how she pictured Sarkissian, stares at him, and he indicates the sign behind her with the café's rates. She hands over some money.
Outside, Derek and John wait in the Jeep, and we see that the name of the café is, ugh, "Wi-Fi'd It." I had to work way too hard to even figure out what that meant. "Remind me again, why are the boys out here and the girls in there?" asks Derek. Because you couldn't be bothered to shave, that's why. John points out that one of the boys is still wanted for murder. "And one of the girls is harder than nuclear nails," he adds, totally setting up Derek to say, "And the other one's a cyborg." Heh.
John says the real reason they're there is "Moore's Law," which posits that the every two years, the number of transistors on a computer chip is doubled. "And that's how we can go from a chess computer to the apocalypse in just four years," says John. Maybe you guys should go back in time and shoot Moore then, I don't know. "I learned that a lot can happen in four years," says John. "A lot can happen in four seconds," says Derek, and talks about how one moment he was playing baseball with his brother, and then the next...well, apocalypse. "Judgment Day. What'd you do?" asks John. Derek says he took Kyle and went underground. Derek was fifteen, Kyle was eight. "How do you tell an eight-year-old machines have taken over the world?" asks Derek. I think most eight-year-olds would think it's pretty cool.