Episode Report Card Daniel: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Got A Boy And His Name Is John
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.13.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Sarah and John adjust to life in 2007 (it was rough finding out the Spice Girls broke up, but what a relief to know they are touring again), and Cameron reveals that Future John sent back other resistance fighters from the future. But when Sarah and Cameron try to rendezvous with four of them, they end up in a tussle with another Terminator, who gets away. Sarah's pissed that they've only been in 2007 three days before all hell broke loose, and says it would have been better to train John for seven more years. Cameron said they didn't have the time, because Sarah would have died in 2005, which will probably turn out to be her excuse for everything.
While John stews about staying in hiding, Sarah and Cameron visit an old ally of Sarah's, Enrique, for some fake ID. He's retired, though, and points them towards his nephew, Carlos, who wants to charge them $20,000 they don't have. Meanwhile, John blows off the seclusion and heads to the mall, where he looks up details of Charley Dixon and risks being discovered by going to Charley's apartment. John acts like he hasn't seen Charley in eight years, and flips out and winds up knocking Charley on his ass and fleeing. Mother's intuition combined with Cameron's lie-detecting abilities suggest John is lying to them when he claims to have stayed at the house all day long, but the interrogation will have to wait until the team unwisely revisits the house where the resistance fighters were killed in order to snag some of the stashed money. They find a rigged safe, but the Terminator who set the trap is ridiculously slow in responding, so the trio escapes and buys the new identities from Carlos, who makes an offhand comment that leads Sarah to think Enrique is ratting them out. Cameron also thinks so, so she offs him, which horrifies the waffling Sarah (but Cameron was right, and now FBI Guy James Ellison is on the case). Meanwhile, the Terminator skull that the “previously on Terminator” scenes tell us traveled through time with our intrepid trio (which did not at all happen last episode) reactivates the body, and they have a joyous and bloody reunion. Less joyous is a visit to the doctor by Sarah, who's found out from Cameron that she dies of cancer. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Whoa! Flashy new credit sequence! Sarah narrates the basics of the fight to stop Skynet from ever being created, over shiny menacing chrome! There are our heroes, decked out and ready for war, or some crappy music video.
And now, the "previously on" scenes, which I mention only because of a slight cheat: supposedly, last time, when Sarah shot Chrome Artie with the not-really-nuclear gun and popped his head off, that head came flying through the time-travel bubble with them, bounced off the hood of a car and flew RIGHT AT US. Which didn't happen last week. Maybe it got cut for time. Or cut for HADN'T THOUGHT OF IT YET.
The skull lies in some garbage on the side of the road, waiting for some virgin to make it the centerpiece of his doll collection. While Sarah voice-overs something about a wise man once saying something like "know thyself" and struggles to apply that to her lifestyle as a fugitive (due to her speaking the truth), a roadside garbage-collecting crew picks up the trash. We get it, Sarah. You need to protect your son. Is a convoluted monologue going to run with a contrived theme that dovetails with the action in every episode? Is this Terminator and the City?
Inside the Connor Compound, John complains that his mom picked up the wrong needle-nose pliers for whatever electronics project he's currently hacking or whatever, and chalks it up to what he calls "time-lag." He suggest that some fresh air would help with the time-lag, since he's been cooped up in the house for three days. She says he can go outside once they get their new IDs, and talks about it like it's this momentous occasion, even though he points out they've been through this before. "This is different," she says. Cameron comes in to pester Sarah for the new IDs as well. "I want my new name. I want my whole new me," says John, somewhat sarcastically. He asks if Sarah's found Enrique yet. "Ten years ago he was the best fake-paper guy around," Sarah explains to Cameron. "John sent back better ones," says Cameron, who is like that new employee who keeps talking about how everything was so much better where they used to work.
But her comment has twigged with Sarah, who bitches Cameron out, while the Terminator hotwires a car, for not telling her earlier that there are other people here from the future. "Resistance fighters," says Cameron. "Are they manning some kind of apocalyptic paramilitary convenience store, filled with fake IDs and guns and money?" snaps Sarah. Cameron doesn't say anything, but I hope the answer is yes. I really, really hope the answer is yes. Sarah's cell phone rings, and it's John, who called because he can't find any turkey in the fridge. Sarah suggests he try moving some stuff around, and then voila! Turkey! Mankind's hope for survival, ladies and gentlemen. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, because we're going down.
Sarah and Cameron are meeting four resistance fighters at...the set of Children of Men. Or some kind of abandoned apartment building or something. Sarah wants to know if these resistance fighters know Cameron. "They've seen me before," says Cameron vaguely, as usual explaining nothing. Unfortunately, the apartment is full of bodies. There also appear to be bullet holes in the bodies, which doesn't bode well for their chances of getting up any time soon. Cameron checks out the bar-code tattoo on the arm of one of the bodies. "Kyle Reese had one," says Sarah, and Cameron says, "Skynet work camp. Prisoner." She checks another body, and another one...but the third guy ain't dead. He opens his eyes and chucks Cameron across the room for a spirited tussle. The battling Terminators manage to throw themselves out the window with enough force to hit the next building over, and then drop a few stories to the alley below. The new guy's display locks on Cameron, decides she's an "unknown cyborg," and opts to evade. He runs off down the alley, Cameron in pursuit. Sarah takes the stairs, and on the street, with her gun, relieves some Fudgesicle-sucking dude of his motorcycle. She takes off in hot pursuit, and despite being late to the chase and having no idea where she's going, somehow manages to get herself in FRONT of the fleeing Terminator, and hops off her bike, sending it skidding down the pavement to trip up another slow-reflexed Terminator, knocking him down in the middle of the street. Cameron strides toward him, but gets hit by a car. That's two for two in terms of vehicle-Terminator collisions this series, and I hope the streak continues. The Terminator gets up and runs away, while Cameron extracts her head from the inside of the car. She's gone clear through the windshield. "Please remain calm," she tells the freaked-out occupants of the front seat.