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The Terminator crew visits a doctor whose name is on one of those lists of people who need to be either assassinated or protected from assassination. To figure out which it is, they start seeing him as patients, which would have been a good idea anyway. And this is where Catherine Weaver takes her "daughter" Savannah, because a little girl can tell the difference between her smiling, loving human mommy, and the humorless automaton who is now looking after her. Weaver's got her own problems -- the AI program her company's working on seems to be on the fritz, just displaying random images, but it turns out it's actually behaving like a bored child with not enough to do. It's telling jokes! Only jokes that a little kid would tell. Real cornball old jokes. Hey, here's a joke: "What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fsh!
Derek gets a blast from the past -- and a roll in the hay -- from an old girlfriend who's come from the future. Not to help protect John, not on some other mission -- she's actually AWOL from the war. Derek's disgusted by that, but not so disgusted that, as I've mentioned, he doesn't do her -- and the surveillance photos she hides under the bed indicate she's not being honest anyway.
There's another visitor from the future, this one a woman terminator who kills the receptionist in Sherman's office and tries to take her place, only she has the bad luck to show up for work at the exact same time Sarah shows up. They fight, and Cameron manages to literally twist the Terminator into a pretzel, shape. Generally Terminators are stronger than that, so it's clear the show just thought it would be cool to hire a contortionist for the fight scene.
And John's not kidding about really wanting to continue with the therapy. He's freaked out from what happened in the first episode of the season -- and the suspicions of many are confirmed. John's the one who killed that guy in the season opener, not Sarah. I wish it had been Sarah. She'd probably be moping a lot less about it.
Want more? The full recap starts right below! While Sarah and Cameron creep through someone's house at night (Cameron even checking out the medicine cabinet -- how rude!), Sarah voiceovers some as-far-as-I-know new information about her dad, who slept with a gun under his pillow, and how he never talked about the war he fought. Timeline-wise, we're talking Vietnam, I suppose. "I never thought I'd follow in his footsteps," she says. Sarah and Cameron bolt when the homeowner comes out in his bathrobe, wondering if anyone's there.Then there is a commercial for a certain auto company, which just kind of happens to star John and Sarah and Cameron, who have no idea what they're supposed to be doing with Dr. Boyd Sherman, child psychologist, whose name was one of the ones on the wall.
Over at that crazy offices where you just might get an icepick through the eye for urinating on your co-worker, there is some kind of photo shoot going involving Catherine Weaver, who is amazing the photographer to move her head exactly the quarter-inch or half-inch he demands. Unfortunately, when he asks for a "warmer" smile -- well, it would be like a shark for one.
The photographer's assistant tries to cajole Catherine's daughter Savannah to join Mommy for the photo shoot, but Savannah refuses, and when Catherine calmly tries to talk to her, Savannah wets herself (and the floor) and runs away. Careful, kid! God knows you don't want to get that on Mommy. Everyone at the photo shoot stares at Catherine.
Later, Catherine tries to get some parenting advice from the assistant, only blows it by referring to Savannah as an "it." The assistant admits that she had some troubles with her own child (Catherine positively perks up when she says, "Some days I wanted to kill him") but she took him to see someone, a miracle worker. Savannah isn't Helen Keller, lady. Besides, the problem's clearly Catherine, who despite having passed easily for human for god knows how long, is for some reason moving more robotically and taking things more literally than we've seen before.
So the Terminator family is going to see Dr. Boyd Sherman, pretending to be a dysfunctional family, I suppose, with Sarah pretending to not think counseling is necessary (although it's clear later that she really doesn't think it's necessary), and Cameron slips a bug under the doctor's lamp when he's not looking. The doctor suggests meeting individually if they're to continue, and John's all over it, somewhat to Sarah's surprise. But they're already letting the doctor think the family's all torn up over the war death of John's father. I mean, they kind of are, but obviously not in the way that they're presenting it here, and ... anyway. Let's just say Tony Soprano is a piece of cake for an analyst compared with this bunch. And Sarah is rather clumsily asking questions of Sherman, finding out that he's a counselor who's seeing more and more veterans back from the Iraq war.
Agent Ellison -- well, he's not an agent anymore -- is in Weaver's building and wants her to hold the elevator for him, only a security guard tells him he's got to wait for the car, because this one's full, even though it's just Catherine and one other guy. Why a security guard couldn't just tell Ellison that he's not cleared to go where Weaver is, is beyond me.
Where they're going is to a lab where the other guy from the elevator along with some more people are working on an AI project. At first I thought this was a team working on Catherine, teaching her not to act like a freaking robot, but they're working on a separate project, and they're having trouble with it. Instead of running the programs it's supposed to, it's running random images: math problems, a question mark, books, kids crying. They have no idea what it all means. Not only that, but its "computational time" is increasing while successful output is decreasing. "It's taking more time to do less," she says. "You could say that," says one of her employees. "I just did," she says. Again: why so robotic all of a sudden?
So here's where the Boyd Sherman connection starts to become clear: it's where Catherine Weaver takes little Savannah to get her head shrunk. Savannah is one happy little girl, and Sherman does her best to draw her out, showing her the toys she can play with, including little emotion cards that have people's faces on them, indicating happy, sad, scared, etc. Again, though, it's not like you need a PhD to figure out what's going on; when Sherman points out Savannah's shoe's untied, Catherine wordlessly gets up to tie it. Savannah seems absolutely terrified of her mother, and Sherman takes Catherine aside to tell her it's going to take some time. "I can wait outside if it'll make things go faster," says Catherine. More time than just today, says Sherman. When he goes back to Savannah, she's taken the emotion cards and put the Scared one on top, and she hands them back to Sherman, who ought to be a little more discreet than to look so dismayed while an arms-folded Catherine watches from a distance.
At the Connor Compound, Derek's getting back from a six-hour run. "I guess I'm slow," is his excuse. If Derek is anything like me as a 12-year-old, then the real reason he was gone so long is because he stopped off at that comic-book store after school again. He says he doubled back on Sherman's place and can't find anything significant. Sarah says they bugged the house but still need the patient files. Then there's the sound of a gunshot, so Sarah and Derek and Cameron all start running in slow motion for John's room. I really would appreciate it if, since they're going all cheesy slow-motion that they really embrace the cliché and have the characters speaking in slow motion too. Might as well, right?
They find a startled John in his bedroom, with a gun in his hand. He says he was just cleaning it and it went off. Well, that's puberty for you. He's all right, save for a burn on his cheek from an ejected shell casing. Sarah gives him a look, all, "Young man, what have I told you about making sure the chamber's clear before cleaning a gun!"
Cameron sits outside Sherman's building listening to the bug through headphones, although I'm kind of surprised the audio isn't just patched directly into her. Savannah's having a session, playing with dolls, Sherman trying to find out where the doll's mommy is. "She's working," says Savannah, adding the doll wants to tell Sherman a secret, which is, "I want my old mommy back." Again, Catherine stands outside, creepily staring at the session, and tilting her head like a breakdancer DOING THE ROBOT, and with none of the fluidity of something MADE FROM LIQUID METAL. I mean, GOD. The receptionist strolls up to tell Catherine that her daughter is beautiful, and that she looks just like her mother (which really just means they both have red hair). Session over, Sherman brings Savannah over and says he needs to talk to her mommy, so she goes into the waiting room and continues to look forlorn while Sherman takes Catherine into his office.
He starts by asking her what her most vivid childhood memory is. She doesn't offer one, and he tells Catherine that Savannah's most vivid memories are of her father's death: hearing the news, the funeral, etc., and because she's so young, she has no distance from it. "Well, we can't make her grow faster, can we?" says Catherine, awesomely inflecting the last bit to make it sound like it's not a rhetorical question, as if Catherine's actually open to suggestions. Sherman delicately tells Catherine that she needs to reassure Savannah that she hasn't lost her mother as well as her father. I guess that means he doesn't get that when Savannah wants her old mother back, she's not speaking metaphorically. In his defense, "my mommy has been replaced by a liquid-metal killing machine from the future" is not a problem that crops up often enough that he should have recognized it right off.
In the waiting room, John gives Savannah a lesson on how to tie her shoe, and his back is to Catherine when she stomps by, barely glancing
into the waiting room to call her daughter's name. Nice to see she's already taking Sherman's advice to heart, huh?
Derek's on another of his runs, and maybe this is why he takes so long -- the woman at the pretzel wagon at the park knows him well enough to say "the usual?" before giving him some food to stuff his face with. He's chowing down when a rustle in the bushes startles him, and he spots a woman running away. Since she appears to just be a jogger, there's got to be something else going on, and when he finally catches up with her, at a hotel room door, he says, "Jesse?" and she says, "Hey baby," and then they start making out.
Inside the hotel room, he wants to know why Connor sent her back. She evades the question by asking him the same one. "You're here, you must know," he says. She tells him that no one told her, and he left without saying goodbye. Derek says his orders were to come back and set up a safehouse and wait, so he's waiting. "Eating hotdogs," says Jesse. A man's gotta eat!
So he asks her again, and as she changes, she says Connor didn't send her back. He notices a big ugly scar on her back, and she says "There's metal everywhere these days," adding that Connor's got one at every major base, and one recently flipped out on them, killing two of them, Bird and Cullie. Her scar is from the same shrapnel that killed Cullie. Cullie's brother, who also sent Derek back, sent her back too.
Suddenly it occurs to Derek. "Are you AWOL? Jesse, did you run from the war." She tells him she just needed a rest from the war. "You're a soldier. You fight," he says. Not anymore, she says; she says she just wants to be with him when everything ends. She moves in for the kiss, but he pulls away like he just found out she's got two kids, gonorrhea and a jealous biker ex-boyfriend. "I don't want everything to end. Not again."
We sit in now on John's session with Sherman, who points out that John assessed the exits when he came in, like veterans do every day. John tries to shrug it off, and Sherman points out that John's dad is a vet. "Veterans are the ones who come back, right? My dad never came back, so..." says John. Sherman apologizes. Then he notices the burn on John's cheek, and John lies -- extraordinarily badly -- that he burned himself boiling water for pasta.
This leads into questioning of why John's mother brought him here, and what his role is in the family. "I'm a kid, I hang out," says John, which is the first time someone his age has ever referred to himself as a kid, I would think. "Are you?" says Sherman, and John jokingly asks if Sherman wants to see his passport. Sherman points out that children often feel pressure to replace an absent parent ("they grow up quickly"), and also says John's use of "passport" instead of, say, "driver's license" is telling as well, suggesting John might feel like escaping.
We see a quick flashback from the struggle at the house in the season premiere. "All the time," says John. Sherman asks him why. John hesitates, so Sherman says everything he says is between them: "This is a safe place." John stares RIGHT AT THE BUG, and then turns back to Sherman. "No, it's not. Nowhere is."
Meanwhile, Sarah's pacing around the waiting room, and her mood isn't helped by Cameron regurgitating facts from pamphlets on suicide -- specifically that sometimes first attempts look like accidents. Sarah doesn't buy it. Me either, if for no other reason than John could probably manage to off himself if he really felt like it.
John comes out from the session and brushes past his mother without saying a word, while Sherman tells Sarah that he wants to see all of them again. Cameron has some kind of social disorder, possibly Asperger's -- hey, every show has someone with Asperger's, depending on which bulletin boards you like to read. As for John, Sherman's reminded of Vietnam vets, the way he assesses a room, and he asks if John's been exposed to any violence lately. Sarah herself flashes to the assault in the first episode, and then NOT AT ALL SUSPICIOUSLY OR ANYTHING snaps that John hasn't been abused, if that's what he's asking. Which he wasn't, and he says so, but says John needs to talk, whether it's to him or someone else. "He talks to me," says Sarah. "That's not enough," says Sherman, because someone needs to tell Sarah that teenage boys don't usually confide everything in their mothers.
Catherine Weaver's in her office -- where else? -- while Savannah plays nearby. Catherine, on her computer, is watching some sort of old television interview with the real, and really pregnant, Catherine Weaver and her husband (she's listening to it on headphones, presumably so Savannah can't hear it), and studying the way the couple laugh together and touch each other, and listens to Catherine talk about writing on the butcher paper her father used to bring home from one of the oldest shops in Edinburgh. Hasn't she watched this before? And having watched it, she really shouldn't need to see it again, right? And maybe she should wear her hair down like the Catherine Weaver in the video instead of the femullet action she's got going on, right? Then she's buzzed and informed she's needed in the lab.
Downstairs, glasses-wearing guy tells her that the computer's not running any programs at all, just displaying the images of crying people and math equations, over and over again. He wonders if maybe they shouldn't scrap the project and start over with a clean platform. Catherine glares at him: "Should I consider scrapping my team as well? Or does that seem equally as intemperate?" Glasses-wearing guy wisely doesn't say anything.
Back upstairs, Savannah's now on the computer, watching the video of her parents. She asks why her daddy keeps rubbing her mommy's tummy. "I think he's trying to hug me," she says. Catherine comes over and, after again watching the couple affectionately touching each other, starts rubbing her daughter's arm. I was half-expecting Savannah to shudder, but she seems to like it, and she looks up at her smiling mom. Again, though, I can't help but think the Terminator would have all this down by now.
Sarah's hitting the heavy back at the Connor Compound when John stomps in all sour and asks when they're going to see Dr. Sherman again. Sarah says they're not going to, because the patient list is a bust and they're getting nothing from the tapes. John says he'll keep pushing, because Sherman's name is on the list for a reason. Cameron strolls in to suggest Sherman's on the list because he helps John. "What makes you think John needs help?" snaps Sarah. "What makes you think I don't?" asks John. Sarah looks at him. "Do you?" John doesn't say anything, and Sarah says he can talk to her. John lies that he's fine and stomps off.
Elsewhere, some bus driver is asleep at the wheel (?) of his parked bus, when the back of the bus crackles and snaps with electricity of a visitor from the future. It's another woman, this one looking like a really pissed-off Kathy Griffin. The groggy bus driver doesn't really wake up in time to prevent his blood being splattered all over the windshield, and the Griffinator puts on his clothes and strolls off the bus, totally forgetting to take a transfer.
Sarah's still moping in the garage by the punching bag, when Derek strolls in and figures she's not in a bad enough mood and launches into a story about a friend of his who he used to dig tunnels with, who went out to take a leak one day and then blew his head off, like LET ME KNOW IF THIS MAKES YOU FEEL ANY BETTER, SARAH and she says John isn't suicidal. "No, but what is he? He's not a boy, he's not a man. He's not a soldier." He says John's changed since he saw a mother kill a man. Sarah flashes back again, and doesn't say anything.
The receptionist from Dr. Sherman's office strolls out to her car and gets in. She adjusts the rearview mirror, and OH MY GOD, KATHY GRIFFIN IS IN MY BACK SEAT. "I won't scream," she says, which turns out to be a total lie as the Terminator pulls her into the back seat, and then,
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later gets in the front and drives off.
So Ellison gets on the elevator at Weaver's building with glasses-wearing guy, who has to bounce Ellison from the elevator because glasses-wearing guy needs to go down further. Again, really nice security guarding the AI project, guys. All Ellison has to do is make Moby here wave his little passkey over the elevator panel, and he's in.
So who better to diagnose the problems with the AI than a child psychologist? Weaver's brought Sherman in, to her office, not the lab, and explains the project they're working on and the trouble they're having. She plays him the images the computer keeps flashing: question marks, books, crying people, math problems. After a few moments of watching, Sherman starts to laugh, much to Catherine's consternation. Sherman explains the computer's telling a joke that a third-grader told to him. "Why (the question mark) is a math (the problems) book (the books) so sad (people crying)?" Sherman said it would seem the AI program is advanced, because as far as developing a sense of humour -- well, some people never do, he says, and he looks a little too long at Catherine. "If it were one of my patients, I'd say it's a gifted child who's grown bored and is amusing itself," he continues, adding that that's impossible, given that this is a machine. Yeah, well, it's kind of the project's goal to make this sort of stuff happen, Sherman. Catherine's still staring at the images. "Why is a math book so sad?" she repeats. Sherman provides the answer: "Because it has so many problems," and giggles. Yeah, that's not bad. Catherine just continues to stare.
Sarah's listening in on the Sherman bug. It's John's session, and despite the bug, he sounds like he's getting a little bit bolder in terms of opening up, when the doctor's asking him about whether he feels safe and whether his mother makes him feel safe. "Safe is the last thing she wants me to feel," he says, acknowledging a moment later that "She's probably right. She's always right." Since feeling that way will keep you alive on bad days. Sherman asks if John has a lot of bad days like that. John doesn't answer right away, and Sarah takes the headphones out.
Derek shows up at Jesse's door, and he starts talking about the time he went out to take a leak and she had to talk him out of eating his gun. Just like what happened to his fr-- oh. OH. thing you know, they're playing tonsil hockey and ripping each other's clothes off, because nothing is hotter than talking about taking a leak and suicidal tendencies.
Afterwards, we're treated to some extra-nauseating pillow talk with Jesse thinking they need a new word to describe what they just did, like WHAT EXACTLY DID THEY DO THAT DOESN'T ALREADY HAVE A WORD FOR IT, and then she says, "I have a new life, Derek. I want new words. Think of one and I might let you stay." How about "gflorptinate"? She asks him to get her a drink, and when he goes, she reaches down by her side of the bed and shoves a bunch of what look surveillance photos of the Connor Crew under the bed.
In Weaver's office, Catherine has built a giant Lego tower for her daughter, which Ellison thinks Savannah will love, and Catherine's not sure, and any time they want to get to the point is fine with me. Catherine asks him how the robot hunt is going, and he can use any resources he needs. I'm not sure how much faith Catherine should have in Ellison, considering that she all but has a blinking neon "I AM A ROBOT" sign flashing on her forehead. Ellison asks what's going on in the basement. "It seems there's high security," he says, which had me laughing my arse off for the five minutes straight. "We're building something. Good luck on your hunt," she says.
Over at Sherman's office, the doctor's seeing John in, since his receptionist didn't show up today (the temp agency's sending someone). Once inside, John, while Sherman is distracted, rips the bug from under the lamp and asks about being able to say anything he needs to.
Outside, Cameron, listening in, frowns at the static now coming through the headphones. She checks the receiver in her pocket, and then gets up and walks towards the building -- just as Kathy Griffinator is heading towards the building. They match each other stride for stride, staring straight ahead, each taking one side of double doors, and neither one of them notices the other? Not until they get into the elevator, anyway, and each pushes a button. They turn and look at each other, and cock their heads.
In Sherman's office, John's explaining that his mom worries about him, about everybody. "Your sister too?" asks Sherman. "My sister's ... stronger than I am," says John.
Outside, Cameron and the Griffinator reach for Sherman's office door handle at the same time, and look at each other again. And now there appears to have been some quick analysis, because Cameron kicks Kathy in the face and the fight is on. There's lots of arm-twisting going on, done by Cameron to Kathy, so clearly the producers have got a contortionist on their hands. Cameron kicks Kathy all the way down the hallway to the elevator, which dings.
In the session, John's telling the story of someone breaking into their house on his birthday. "He wanted computer equipment. He tied us up." John's flashing back now. "What happened ?" asks Sherman. "Nothing. Nothing happened," says John, clearly lying, adding that the guy got what he wanted and let them go. Sherman gently tells him that sometimes children feel they need to protect their parents, but that's not his job. "You're not one of my Vietnam vets. You're not a soldier. You get to be a kid," he says. "No," says John.
In the elevator, Cameron's kicking the crap out of a very scratched up Kathy, whose contortionist skills are being put to good use: Cameron shoves her, arms up, flat against the wall, and then bends her arms straight backward. Kathy twists around and frees herself -- and then the elevator dings, the doors open, and the combatants stand up straight and adjust themselves as a little boy and his distracted parents get on. Kathy tries to cover up her scratches with some hair, but the parents don't notice and the wide-eyed boy just keeps gazing at the two of them.
Eventually, the doors reopen, the family gets off, and as the boy looks back over his shoulder at the closing elevator doors, he sees a glimpse of the two woman scrapping again, but he's much too young to go, "rowr!" and make a scratching motion.
Time to get our money's worth from the contortionist! Cameron bends the woman's leg up to her face and jams her heel into her own eye. Yikes! She continues twisting Kathy into your basic pretzel shape and then effortlessly snaps her neck.
Back at the Connor Compound, Cameron tosses pretzel lady onto the floor, and I for one would LOVE to know how exactly that body was transported home like this. "It was there to kill him," says John. "Or protect him," says Sarah. Well, if it was there to protect him, maybe they shouldn't have sent the ALUMINUM model. Cameron hands John Kathy's chip, but it's been destroyed -- by the machine itself. "This model must have been redesigned," says Cameron. "With a self-destruct feature?" says an incredulous Derek, but John's got it figured out: "Skynet must not want me reprogramming in the future," he says. Well, with the way the machines flip out all the time, it's safe that probably some people in the Resistance would appreciate you retiring from reprogramming too, John. "Well, I guess they're getting smarter. We should too," he says. Let us know how that works out for you.
Savannah's finishing up her session with Dr. Sherman when Catherine shows up, wanting a word with the doctor. She wants to tell him he's done some good work. As has she, says Sherman: "Savannah seems happier. I gather you've worked hard to show her the mother she knew before her father's death." She has, says Catherine, but she was referring to Sherman's analysis of her project. She wants him on her team. He's flattered, but says he has a responsibility to his patients, so s
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he asks him to be a consultant then, to help her "raise" the AI program. "Just treat it like one of your patients. You'll do well," she says. We get a shot of the base of the lamp, reminding us that the bug is no longer there. Then she natters on about her most vivid childhood memory is her dad bringing home butcher paper because she liked the smell. "What did the paper smell like?" asks Sherman, smiling. "Cow's blood," she says. Yeah, that anecdote needs some work, Catherine.
Back at the Connor Compound, Sarah watches John examine the Griffinator, and she voices over some history of doctors diagnosing soldiers in the 17th century with "nostalgia" -- homesickness. "The cruel reality of war is that there is no return home, no return to innocence," she says. Catherine plays with her daughter, or rather, successfully simulates playing with her daughter. "What is lost is lost forever," says Sarah. Derek sits on a park bench, like HAVE ANOTHER HOTDOG, DEREK. "Like my father, war's wounds have bled me dry," says Sarah. Quick shots of Jesse's scar, Cameron looking at the suicide pamphlet and then looking at the self-destructed chip, and John looking at the bullet hole in his mirror. And Sarah's STILL going on, damn.
Back to Sherman's office, saying he was surprised when this unseen patient called. "Why don't you tell me why you're here," he says. It's Sarah. She doesn't answer, but she flashes back to the assault, and we see that it was John. John wrapped his hands around the intruder's throat and pulled until his neck snapped, while Sarah worked feverishly to free herself.
We end on a shot of Sarah looking distraught. You'd think she'd be proud!
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