We start off with the crackling electricity that signifies the arrival of someone from the future. Probably a human, judging from the way he's crying about the nipple wound he's suffered. As there should always be, some drunken homeless guy takes in the whole scene.
Over at the church of latter-day Terminators, the John Connor crew is waking up from a not entirely restful night. After all, Sarah doesn't really trust Cameron after everything that's happened, and Derek doesn't trust Terminators at all, and Cameron tells John that his risking his life to save her metal arse was the wrong thing to do. And Sarah tells John he should go to school, because they could all use a little "boring" right now.
So John goes to class and spends a good half-hour looking around at all his schoolmates, none of whom have to shoulder the burden he's carrying. The biggest worry they have is exams, or, in the case of the cheerleaders, dental dam or IUD or both. So he decides to go brood outside and some classmate named Riley comes over to hang out and hit him up for twenty dollars.
Meanwhile, Sarah and Derek are posing as a happy family who want to rent (or buy) a house from a very pregnant woman -- as she puts in, "an orca with boobs" -- who's the -door neighbor and standing in for the actual owners. Cameron comes over to feel the pregnant woman's stomach, and you know this just cannot end well, and I really hope that there's a particularly high damage deposit being charged.
Agent Ellison visits the Dixon household, where's Charley's wife is a little distraught after having found a gun in Charley's drawer, as he's no gun fan. And Charley comes home and is all, "What's up?" with Ellison.
Back at the new Connor Compound, Sarah tries to take five seconds to relax, but she's disturbed by some guy busting in through the patio doors. It's the time-travelling dude from the opening sequence, and he's able to croak out "stop Greenway" and "power plant" before he dies.
Sarah deduces that the guy is from the future and probably sent by John. Derek wants to handle it, but Sarah figures that if she sends Derek and "the land mine" (meaning Cameron) then someone is probably going to end up dead. "Maybe someone is supposed to end up dead," points out Derek, but Sarah isn't having it.
The Connor crew heads over to Serrano Point power plant, which Derek remembers from the future, and Cameron rattles off some statistics about the human resistance retaking the plant. They don't even really know what they're supposed to do. Is Greenway on their side or not?
thing we know, Cameron and Sarah are watching an animated feature extolling the virtues of nuclear power. Not only that, they've applied to work at the plant, and are given an orientation by a woman played by Debra Skelton, nee Wilson, of MadTV fame. As they walk through the plant, Cameron identifies a necktie-wearing dude as Mike Greenway.
Meanwhile, Charley's wife is stunned to find out that Sarah is alive and in L.A. Charley doesn't exactly make it easier when he tries to reassure his wife with, "I don't love her anymore. Not like that, babe." Fortunately, he winds up getting slapped.
Over at school, Riley is pestering John some more, and after recently dying, he sees nothing wrong with inviting her over to the new Connor Compound. Meanwhile, Sarah isn't attracting any attention at all by being a new-employee asking tons of questions about this power plant that isn't even online yet. Greenway, played by the guy who played Father Intintola on The Sopranos is too busy arguing with another guy at the plant to take too much notice of Sarah, I mean, "Karen."
At the same time John comes home with Riley, which is the first time he's brought a girl home, his mom is busy hitting on Greenway at a bar that's presumably close to work. While Cameron, calling herself Cindy, teaches some suckers how to play pool, Sarah gets Greenway to open up about a scar he's got. It's the result of cancer surgery, which he's had twice, and that makes him unlucky around a power plant as a black cat. Sarah says he seems like a good guy and if no one wants to drink with him, then it's their loss. "Oh, that's not why they won't drink with me," says Carl.
Outside, Derek breaks into Greenway's car (in between vandalism attempts anyway) while inside, Cameron is counting all the money she's making using her uncanny physics ability to win at pool. Derek comes in to let the others know that someone just smashed Greenway's windshield. Sarah says the other plant employees are worried about the plant not going online as planned if inspector Greenway has concern -- which he does. He's like Homer Simpson, only if Homer Simpson had any idea what a safety inspector does. It's a catch-22 for them; either Greenway is pressured to let the plant go online, and it fails and contaminates half the state -- which would benefit Skynet in the future -- or Greenway shuts it down now, which means that the resistance won't be able to use it as a power source in the future.
John is still entertaining Riley -- relax, they're fully clothed -- when the rest of the Connor Crew comes home, and Sarah gives John the gears about bringing Riley home when he just met her today. He whines a whole lot about wondering when it's his time to start living his life, when I thought the whole point of his haircut was that he was going to be less of a crybaby.
The day at work, Sarah follows Greenway's nemesis into a restricted area of the plant. He catches her where she's not supposed to be, but she invents a cover story about looking for the supply area, so he puts her to work in the waste-barrel part of the plant. Unfortunately, she gets "crapped up" -- exposed to radiation. Somehow. She should have zipped her Hazmat suit up tighter.
It's morning at the Connor Compound, and Riley has inadvertently spent the night. Since she woke up earlier than John, she's made him a Lego robot, which freaks him out a little more obviously than he probably wants. He does allow Riley the option of calling him sometime, provided the first words out of her mouth when she calls him are the date. That's just the way it is, he tells her. If she's smart, she'll be too freaked out to call him back. I have a feeling, though, that she won't be smart.
Over at the power plant, Sarah's finding out she's not "crapped up" at all, that the positive reading on the scanner must have been a "hiccup," according to the plant honcho.
Looks like Charley and his wife are moving out of their house, I guess because the killer robots from the future know where they live? Luckily for Charley, Ellison is on hand to see them off with a copy of the Bible, which should be nice protection from the searing pain of the laser beams.
At the power plant, Greenway's conducting the final test, only he's a lot less concerned about the coolant than he had been previously. Since he doesn't have the giant surgery scar on his arm that he used to, it could be because, as Derek discovers (Sarah calls him, opening the conversation by stating the date, just as John instructed Riley to do), the real Carl Greenway is hanging from a noose at his house. Whoever's conducting the test, that ain't Greenway. But the plant? She's online.
So the robot version of Greenway starts opening valves. Cameron doesn't react initially, because she's thinking about what to do. "Since when do you do that?" asks Sarah, but there's no time, as Cameron has to go fix a water valve.
Greenway heads back to the control room, where he ignores the concerns of his assistant as to the problems going on with the plant. He kills or knocks out the people in the control room, but the woman fixing the water valve -- Cameron -- is going to be a bigger problem.
Derek pulls up in a truck commercial, just as Robot Greenway takes on water-valve-fixer Cameron. In the control room, Derek wants to evacuate along with everyone else, while Sarah frantically looks for a way to fix the plant -- at least until she sees on a security feed Cameron grappling with Greenway. She takes off, knocks down a security guard and takes his M-16, then runs through the waste barrel area without a Hazmat suit. Not even Derek, in hot pursuit, is willing to do that. Just as Greenway's about to finish off Cameron, Sarah empties a clip of M-16 ammo to him, giving Cameron enough of an opening to toss him into a ... generator, I guess. It zaps him and burns off the fake Greenway skin, leaving a Terminator endo-skeleton behind.
Cameron seals up the bits and pieces of the Terminator, along with what I presume is the security video, in a radioactive waste barrel drum. And she gives Sarah the once-over with the Geiger counter. "You're clean," she says. A freaked-out Sarah reminds Cameron that she supposedly dies of cancer. Only Cameron doesn't know if that's still going to happen, or if this is what causes it. Sarah wonders if she's just supposed to wait and go off like a time bomb. That's pretty much what worries Cameron as well.
Cameron then goes into the Connor compound to chat with John about his new friend, who may have been creeped out by Cameron staring at her. Cameron says she was merely assessing the threat level. "Am I safe?" Cameron says, "Girls are complicated." Heh. But as far as whether Cameron can trust John, he says he doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. Cameron leaves, and John's cellphone rings. Riley starts off by providing the date. He praises her for getting it right. "Just practicing," she says.
Elsewhere, Sarah's at Greenway's place, following a bloody trail into a room with cryptic messages like "PALTO" and "ORB SHEL" scratched on the wall in red (more blood, I suppose). We quickly move to a shower scene with a pensive Sarah.
A press conference reveals that Serrano Point and six other power plants across the state are joining with a company called Automyte Systems, which will automate the control rooms, eliminating the potential for human error. Sarah, are you watching this? Shortly after the press conference, the head of Automyte Systems heads back to his car, where he morphs into ... Shirley Manson! And she didn't even have to risk getting pissed on this time!
See what Shirley Manson has to say about her new role as the T-1001 in Telefile. Find out what shows, moments and actors took home the top honors in our Tubey Awards.