Episode Report Card Daniel: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Protect Ya Neck
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.20.2008
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,