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Ellison's confronted by a doppleganger terminator that's destroyed by Chrome Artie, because Chrome Artie's got faith Ellison's going to lead him to the Connors. That might be difficult from jail, because Ellison's arrested by the cops for the murder of some guy named Peter Myers. Myers is clearly murdered by another visiting terminator, and when the eyewitness tells the full story, involving the naked man appearing in an energy bubble, the judge throws out the statement and the charges are dropped. The detective's acting oddly like a Terminator himself, which makes sense when he later morphs into Catherine Weaver, and it appears this was all a big test of Ellison's steadfastness and discretion.
The Connor Compound is broken into and robbed, which could cause them problems if their credit cards and fake IDs fall into the wrong hands. Which turns out to be a problem, because Chrome Artie is circling around, with a magic computer that alerts him whenever someone scans in a picture of Cameron. He finds the halfway house where Cameron wound up a couple episodes ago, where he meets Jody, who's all too eager to help him find "Miss Queen Bitch." Chrome Artie finds the grocery store where Cameron had her meltdown, and manages to find the Connor Compound, only to be greeted at the door by Riley, who's making a pain of herself in so many ways.
Miss Queen Bitch is out with Sarah, tracking down the thieves, which takes them to a diamond fence acquaintance of Derek's who, pretending to help them, actually leads them to terrorize a dentist who owes him money. So the Connor Compound breaks out the muscle, and Moishe points them to a loser wannabe filmmaker celebrating the theft with his buddies at an empty bowling alley. Moishe winds up dead at the business end of Jesse's gun, because he's been dropping her name a little too often for her liking. Or for Derek's, for that matter, because after Moishe mentions "Jesse" and Sarah asks Derek about it, he takes advantage of the androgynous name and pretends Jesse is a he who came over with him and was killed by a terminator.
At the bowling alley, Cameron executes three of the thieves, because they know where the Connor Crew lives. Sarah can't bring herself to kill the younger one, and hides him from Cameron, sparing him, which may prove to be unwise when he winds up in the hands of Chrome Artie.
Want more? The full recap starts right below! Ellison sits alone at home, all mopey, eating food, when his doorbell rings. My VeggieTales DVD!, he thinks and goes to the door, which is kicked in, knocking him down, by ... himself! Ellison, flat on his ass, is stunned to be staring at another version of himself (with absolutely no regard for personal property). "Agent Ellison?" asks Metal Ellison, who raises a gun. This is about when I figured this was just a dream sequence. Suddenly, there is a large metal object rammed out through Metal Ellison's chest, then withdrawn, then a hand bursting through, clutching a presumably crucial piece of internal hardware. Metal Ellison collapses, revealing Chrome Artie! Ellison says, "What? Aren't you on the same side?" and Chrome Artie says, "Skynet does not believe in you like I do." Ellison's all, huh? And Chrome Artie says Ellison's going to lead him to the Connors. I hope Ellison is insulted that Chrome Artie's faith kinda stems from certainty that Ellison will destroy the world as we know it.John, Sarah and Cameron arrive home at the Connor Compound to discover that someone has either ransacked the place, or some teenagers had the kind of house party that winds up making the local newspaper. They split up to check out the house, Sarah with her gun drawn. She doesn't find anyone, and finds the back door slightly ajar and banging against the frame. Why this makes her relax her guard I have no idea, but she lowers her gun, only to raise it again and almost blow off Cameron's head. Cameron appears unfazed, and says there's no one there.
So where's Derek? Where any good soldier should be: asleep in bed with his AWOL girlfriend. His cellphone rings, and he wakes up, grabs it, hits the redial. It's Sarah. "Where the hell are you?" she says. "Where the hell am I supposed to be?" is his non-helpful response. Sarah drops it to tell him they've been robbed of everything: diamonds, cash, credit cards, ID. Derek, having snuck out of bed, quietly asks if it was done by metal. At the compound, an annoyed-sounding Cameron says her leather jacket is gone, and John says most of the food is too, making Sarah conclude it was done by humans. Or maybe that's just what the terminator WANTS you to think! She's worried about what could happen if their IDs fall into the wrong hands. Credit-card fraud? Derek tells her to head downtown, and he'll call back in half an hour with an exact location.
After he hangs up, Jesse stirs to ask him who it was. "Real life," says Derek, and they have a little back-and-forth about whether Derek couldn't have just let it ring, like good advice from the war deserter, JESSIE.
Back at the Compound, Sarah complains that their security system didn't beep like it was supposed to, and Cameron rats out John, saying Riley climbed out his bedroom window. "Thanks," says John, and explains to his mom that she was there late watching television, and was supposed to reset it. "And yet your master plan went awry," says Sarah, and I don't think that explanation makes any sense anyway. How the hell was Riley supposed to reset it after climbing outside? So Sarah bitches at John, and he argues that the fake addresses can't be traced back, and I'd like to just ask again where Mr. New, Focused Saviour of Humanity has vanished to. Cameron says they should move to Canada, which I heartily endorse, especially if it means the possibility of seeing some bilingual terminators taking in a hockey game. And their nosy neighbour/landlord or whatever she is comes in, and she is STILL pregnant! About thirteen months along from the look of her. Maybe her name should just be Bonnie from Family Guy until further notice. She offers to call her cop babydaddy, and Sarah quickly invents some cover story about John having some trouble with some kids at school. "You know how stupid kids can be," she says, looking straight at John so he gets her point. Sarah tells Bonnie from Family Guy that she's on her way to talk to the parents right now. She and Cameron sashay out the door, and John whinily asks what he's supposed to do. Sarah tells him to get a broom.
Oh, poor Rita the paper pusher with a stack of files on her desk. Her supervisor comes over to bitch that they can't have a backlog like this. "I'll get it done. Today," she says. "I needed it two weeks ago!" snaps the supervisor. Well, you'll have to wait until time-travel is invented, then. Rita opens the file, takes out a picture of Cameron, and slaps it on some scanner thing. And moments later, the picture's showing up on a computer screen in Chrome Artie's jeep.
Meanwhile, Cameron drives while Sarah calls the credit card company to say that her son took the credit card and the family car. Once off the phone, she bitches at Cameron, asking her why she didn't say anything about Riley to her or to John or whoever.
"I've always made my position on security very clear. And no one likes a nag," says Cameron, as if a terminator that's supposed to protect John is going to be worried about being disliked for nagging too much.
Chrome Artie shows up at child protective services or whatever this place is, and strides right up to Rita's desk, holding a picture of Cameron. "I'm looking for this girl," he says. You know, I can understand Rita expecting him to take a spot at the back of the line, but I have no idea what she means by indicating the people already in line and telling him, "These are the real, people." He tries smiling and saying he's her uncle. "And I'm Angelina Jolie," she says, and tells him to get to the back of the line. Then that idiot XXXXX in line is all, "Hey, I know that chick!" and Chrome Artie moves over in her direction.
So she plays foosball and asks why he wants her. "I'm her uncle," he tries, and she doesn't believe him, thinking he's a cop. "When you find her, are you going to hurt her?" she asks. "Yes," he says, because that's a good response from someone posing as her uncle. XXXX doesn't appear to upset by this, and asks if he's going to hurt her brother, too. Chrome Artie produces a picture of John, and asks if that's her brother. Sure is, says XXXX. Chrome Artie smiles, but it has all the joy of a skull. "Let's take a ride," he says.
There's a knock on Ellison's door. Having learned his lesson, he picks up a newspaper by the door, which will be a big help if he has to swat someone to death. It's the Los Angeles Police Department, says the voice behind the door, and Ellison says he's just reading about last night's game and asks if the cop knows who won. "The Steelers, Mr. Ellison," says the cop, clearly aware he's being tested. I guess it's a good thing the cop follows football.
Ellison opens the door, and the cop, with his partner, says he's arresting Ellison for the murder of Peter Myers, and starts to read him his rights. Ellison says he knows his rights, but just doesn't know what the hell the cop's talking about. That, surprisingly, does not prevent the arrest from happening.
Derek stands outside a security gate with Cameron and Sarah and talks to the security camera asking "Moishe" to let them in, telling a cautious Moishe that Cameron and Sarah are "new customers." Once inside, the three of them have to endure some pontificating on the Torah. "No vengeance," says Moishe, and then quoting the "eye for an eye," part, and then starts to talk about "the brothers Nablus," which is where Derek cuts him off, saying they're just looking for their diamonds. Moishe at first tries saying that business has been slow, and Derek says he talked to four other fences who said Moishe's been busy this week. So Moishe shows them all the diamonds he's acquired in the last couple of days, "all from legitimate sources."
Cameron picks one up. "This one's ours," she says. Moishe says it isn't, and even it were, she wouldn't be able to tell with the naked eye. Cameron identifies some others as theirs, which is when Moishe's muscle starts to move in menacingly. Derek holds him off, saying they don't want any trouble, just to know where Moishe got them. Moishe hems and haw
s but then finally gives in, as a favour to Jesse, he says, and points them to Walter Ostrowski, from Toluca Lake.
Outside the shop, Sarah asks Derek who Jesse is. "He came back with me. He handled the diamonds," says Derek, adding, with a jerk of his chin toward Cameron, "One of them killed him."
Meanwhile, Chrome Artie and Jody are driving around, with Jody nattering away and Chrome Artie presumably doing everything he can not to stick something sharp into her brain. She offers him gum, and he turns it down, and he says, "You sure? It's cinnamon," like cinnamon is some magical rare thing that can't be easily obtained, and he blessedly ignores her. She asks if it would kill him to make some conversation. "No, it wouldn't kill me," he says, not even looking at her. She tells him he's funny in his own cop way, and he says he's not a cop. "You're not a cop, you're not an uncle, you're just some guy who wants to kick the crap out of little Miss Bitch and her brother." "Just some guy," confirms Chrome Artie, and XXXX asks if Cameron tried to kill him too. Yes, says Chrome Artie, and Jody says this is going to be interesting, and the chances of Jody surviving this episode at all are rapidly dwindling.
So instead of cleaning up the damn house, John is doing what any teenage boy would probably think to do: call his girlfriend and go replenish the food supply. Riley's amazed that whoever it was stole the food, and bets John's mom must have freaked. "Yeah. At me," says John, and Riley asks why, and John is all, "The alarm code?" Riley gasps. "Did I forget?"
Meanwhile, entering the store are Chrome Artie and Jody, who's nattering away about how she wasn't actually there, but this is where Cameron was busted. Then she grabs some cookies from a shelf and says, "You are so buying me these pink and whites, and that's all there is to it," and Chrome Artie magnificently refrains from strangling her right there and starts showing Cameron's picture to cashiers.
Riley apologizes profusely to John, while he tells her it wouldn't have stopped the break-in, but it might have stopped the picnic. And Chrome Artie strides down an aisle with Jody only now feeling like "this is getting a little shady!" because Chrome Artie saying he's going to hurt Cameron is fine, but going to the grocery store is "a little shady."
"Does she hate me now?" says Riley, and John tells her not to sweat it, as "it's a long list," like, way to sell out your mom. In the very aisle is Jody yammering away at Chrome Artie, saying people would probably like him more if he opened up a little, and then she's distracted by food again, like she's my great Dane when you wave a Dentabone in front of her face, and she touches a display of some canned goods that all come tumbling down, like NICE STACK JOB, STOCK BOY, and Chrome Artie is distracted by Jody's mind-bogglingly annoying idiocy long enough for Riley and John to walk past, not that they notice Chrome Artie either.
So let's check in with Ellison, who's standing in a police lineup and being confidently picked out. "That's the guy! That's definitely the guy!" says some white-haired dude. During the interrogation, Ellison says he doesn't know any Peter Myers, and the detective says the witness who picked him out recognized Ellison from the news a couple weeks back. Ellison, for some reason, needs some prodding to remember why he was on the news, and the detective starts talking about the FBI team that was slaughtered, and suggests Ellison's going a little crazy from survivor guilt. "By now you're drowning in guilt, I'm guessing," says the detective. Ellison wants to talk to his lawyer now, so the detective says fine, and gets up to leave, before asking, Columbo-style, one final question: "Why did you steal his clothes?" Ellison's all, wha? "You were naked when you killed him," says the detective. Well, if that's true, I should think it would be kind of obvious why Ellison stole Myers' clothes. "I told you. It wasn't me," says Ellison.
"Your alibi isn't exactly iron-clad, Jim," says the detective, "unless you've got a twin brother I don't know about." Then, for anyone who's an utter moron AND missed the beginning of the episode, we flash back to Ellison's doppleganger busting down his front door.
Speaking of busting down the front door, Cameron and Sarah visit Dr. Walter Ostrowski's office, and ignore the receptionist who tells them the doctor is busy with patients. They walk in on the dentist working on some woman's mouth, and tell the doctor he has something that belongs to them. They have a friend in common in the diamond district, says Sarah. "Moishe," says the doctor, who invites them to talk in his office, just across the hall. He follows them, but then makes a break for it outside, and manages to get all the way to his car, which is amazing given that he's an older overweight dude being chased by a TERMINATOR and everything. Guess it must be hard to run in hip-huggers that tight. Cameron punches through Ostrowski's window, and then rips the door right off the hinges, like RIGHT OUT IN PUBLIC, and Ostrowski starts begging them not to kill him, saying he'll pay Moishe all the money he owes him, which is up in his office. Sarah, annoyed, tells Cameron to let him go, because the dentist isn't the guy who robbed him. But they WILL take the money, though.
With Cameron taking Ostrowski back to fetch the cash, an annoyed Sarah asks Derek if they're here to be the collections agency for his fence. Derek points out they're there because the security system failed: "Why we're here is because that boy behaves less like John Connor and more like John Baum every day," he snaps. Yes! That's what I'm saying! Sarah's all, don't you talk about my baby like that! and says he's been through more than Derek will ever know, which is a fairly stupid thing to say to someone who's actually lived to see the apocalypse and lost a brother and countless friends to it. "Right back at you," is Derek's succinct way of putting it.
The Connor Crew pays another visit to Moishe, but manages to get through the security gate on their own, surprising the jeweler. "My friends..." he says, but Cameron sends his bodyguard flying with one punch. Sarah holds up his wad of cash and ask if that's what he's looking for. Moishe tries to pretend it's simply a "you do something for me, I do something for you" type of deal, but it's hard to pretend you're an equal partner when Sarah Connor is holding a gun on you. He gives up Tristan Dewitt, a loser friend of his cousin's who lives in Reseda, as the guy who stole their diamonds. As the Connor Crew clears out, Moishe looks at his bodyguard, crumpled in a heap in the rubble of some shelves. "You killed Liko," he says. "Not yet," deadpans Cameron.
Jody's rapidly getting bored of tagging along with Chrome Artie, who seems to be stopping and questioning every single person he sees. "Do you even know how many people live in L.A. County?" she asks? Well, shut up then, and let him keep going. Chrome Artie says that since the Connors have been seen more than once at the grocery store, it's likely they live in a one-mile radius. So, you know, an afternoon of canvassing ought to cover it. Jody's had enough, and snaps that she is done "hanging out with a creepy stalker" and says she only came with him to "get back at that bitch," and then admits that she also thought Chrome Artie was kind of cute. "But you know what? You're not cute. You're frickin' Silence of the Lambs."
Chrome Artie says nothing, but slows to a stop in the middle of the street, and then gives Jody a hard forearm, knocking her right out the door, onto her ass. "Freak!" she yells at him, unaware of how lucky she is to be alive to keep annoying the people around her.
Derek strolls around a pool filled with women who, collectively, aren't wearing as much clothing as he's got on. Doing her best to keep the thread count down is Jesse, lying on her stomach reading a book. Derek comes over and stands there staring at her ass for a while until she tells him he's blocking the sun. He t
ells her that Moishe's dropping her name pretty freely in front of people who don't need to know her name. "Well, he's your fence," says Jesse, who then says she'll have a talk with him. Then she asks Derek to help her out with some suntan lotion, but what she doesn't ask for is a guilt trip on how long she's going to be doing this sort of thing. "I'm certainly going to try to get through today without you spoiling it for me," she says, smiling. "The sun sets at 5:47. I'm not missing that sucker," she says, and then she starts sucking Derek's face.
Chrome Artie's knocking on another door, and it's answered by Bonnie from Family Guy, who pretends not to have seen Cameron, but is pretty obviously lying, especially when she's asking questions about why he's looking for her. "I'm her uncle," he says, trying on that creepy smile again. She says he looks familiar, and he says, "Common face," and can someone please explain to me why Chrome Artie is going around with the same face, given that he's been all over the news as the B-movie actor who KILLED TWENTY FBI GUYS? And can someone explain to me how, since he's still using the same face, that no one has identified him? He also asks her about the house door, for which she's listed as the contact in the classifieds. "That house has been rented," says Bonnie from Family Guy, closing the door. "Thank you for your time," he says, and moves on.
door, John and Riley are just arriving home. Riley is making fun of the groceries for some reason, and John says his mom's "not much of a cook" and Cameron's "not really into food," which probably sounds to another teenage girl like bulimia. The phone rings, and John declines to answer, saying that if it's important, they'll call his cellphone, which means Riley busts his chops on how important he thinks he is, and answers the phone for him, all "Baum residence," and maybe Chrome Artie could give her a hard forearm to the skull.
"It's your neighbour," says Riley, giving him the phone. John takes it, and Bonnie from Family Guy tells him there was a guy at her place looking for his sister, and she didn't get a good vibe from him at all. Just then there's a knock at the Connor Compound door, and John inches forward to see who it is. Pesky kids collecting money for Jump Rope for Heart? No, just Chrome Artie.
John grabs Riley's arm and tries to pull her out the back door, but Riley, as seems to be becoming routine, insists on making herself as much of a pain in the ass as possible, and says she'll get rid of him. John can't even stop her, so she sashays to the door and says she's never seen the girl in the picture that Chrome Artie's holding up. Inside, John's grabbed a shotgun. He tries to pump it really quietly, but even the tiny "click" gets Chrome Artie's attention, whereas John and Riley loudly talking did not. "How do you like your new house?" Chrome Artie asks Riley before pushing past her inside. Riley gets indignant about this, but Chrome Artie pays her as much mind as you'd pay a cigarette butt on the sidewalk. He stomps into the kitchen, while John creeps around a bookcase, and analyzes the pictures on the fridge. "You're not in these pictures," he says, and Riley, admirably quickly, says, "Maybe that's because I'm the one taking them." She says if Chrome Artie doesn't leave, she's calling the police. Chrome Artie studies her face for a moment. "Thank you for your time," he says, and puts on that non-smile that gets funnier to me each time I see it. John slinks back around the bookcase as Chrome Artie walks out the door.
Meanwhile, Cameron and Sarah are talking to the poor, sad parents of Tristan Dewitt, whose name is emblazoned on a plaque that features a golden film reel and the words: "The Lightning in my Wires, 2nd Place, Sandusky Film Festival 1993."
"We were too supportive. That was the problem in a nutshell," grouches the dad, who then proceeds to ramble on about lecturing his son on getting a salary job. The mother seems more sad than angry, thanking Sarah for not going to the police about this. "We just want our things back," she explains. Eventually, after more grousing about Tristan always working on some pie in the sky film project or another, the Dewitts rat out Tristan's friend Dave. "Dave. Another boy wonder," says the dad. Heh.
Ellison's in an orange prison jumpsuit in the visiting room ("no touching!") as Catherine Weaver strolls in to see him. "This is a very curious turn of events, Mr. Ellison," she says, sounding more intrigued than angry as she sits down. Ellison says he's innocent. She mentions the eyewitness, and Ellison tries the R. Kelly "It wasn't me" defense. Weaver says the witness was quite sure. "As I would be, if I'd seen what he'd seen," says Ellison. Catherine asks if Ellison has something to tell her that only she would believe. "Not here," says Ellison, shaking his head. Weaver gets up to leave and says she'll be in touch. "Thank you for believing me," he says. "What good is faith if we don't use it?" says Weaver.
John and Riley are driving around, with John being his usually monosyllabic teenage self with Riley trying to pry answers out of him. Riley, being a genius, has figured out that the dude wasn't actually Cameron's uncle. John says he's a criminal. "What if he comes back?" says Riley. "That's not how, that's not how he works," says an exasperated John, and adds that the guy's really dangerous, and then Riley blathers on about how she's a brave spooky ninja for getting rid of the guy, and then she kisses John, and just like that John's forgotten about how annoying she is. That's generally how it works with teenage boys.
Elsewhere, Sarah's driving with Cameron and bitching about fool's errands and the fathers of Nablus. Cameron corrects her: "The brothers of Nablus. Genesis, Chapter 34." "You memorized the Bible?" says Sarah. Yeah, Sarah, just like my laptop memorized the dictionary. Cameron relates the story: Jacob's daughter Dinah is raped by Shechem, prince of Nablus, who falls in love with her. Aw. Such a romantic book, that Old Testament. Shechem's father comes to Jacob and strikes a bargain so Shechem can marry Dinah. "That's brave of him," says Sarah. Jacob agrees, on one condition: that all the men in Shechem's town get circumcised. "Everybody gets what they want," says Sarah, like SHUT UP AND LET HER TELL THE STORY ALREADY. Cameron says three days later, with the men still in pain from the circumcision, Dinah's brothers rode into the city and killed them all. "That's your kind of story," says Sarah. "Yes. My kind of story," says Cameron.
Sarah's cellphone rings: it's Dan from the credit card company. Awesomely, my closed captioning gives him a last name: Dan Deffenbaugh from the credit card company. Someone just used her card at Alien Lanes bowling alley in Van Nuys. Hey, fantastic, but over in Chrome Artie's jeep, he's getting the same alert from "Credit Watch Services."
Meanwhile, the man who picked Ellison out of the police lineup is in an interview room, and the detective comes in and turns on the video camera, saying he's got a few more questions. Yeah, makes sense to get all your ducks in a row AFTER you've arrested a guy and charged him with murder, right? The detective goes over the details of the story -- nude Ellison, killing Myers with his bare hands -- sounding a lot more skeptical this time, especially as some of the details seem to have been held back a little by the witness. You know, like appearing out of nowhere, in a crater. Not a pothole, like "a complete dent in the road." The detective, who is curiously acting much more robotic than he had been, says, "Mr. Ellison just appeared out of this air?" and the witness reluctantly says there was also a bluish-purple light that made a crackling sound, like lightning. The detective, sounding skeptical, says, "So Mr. Ellison ... emerged from this energy bubble." The witness looks up and says he didn't say anything about a bubble. "But there was a bubble, correct?" The detective then rattles off the circumstances of the death -- whic
h sounds pretty much like any appearance of any terminator in any episode or movie, with its energy bubble and nakedness and clothes-stealing. The witness knows he's being mocked. "I know what I saw," he says, and the detective gives him a curt, "Thank you for your assistance," and walks out, much the same way Chrome Artie likes to say, "Thank you for your help." At least this terminator can smile convincingly.
Over at the deserted Alien Lanes -- presumably one of these yahoos, perhaps boy wonder Dave, works there -- a scruffy Tristan Dewitt is outlining the plot of his movie. A period piece in which Abraham Lincoln gets stuck in Gettysburg, which is overrun with zombies. You're telling me you haven't seen worse in the theatres? "We'll shoot on location in Gettsyburg, 35-millimetre," says Tristan. "Dude, with what money?" says one of his cronies, who's wearing a purple leather jacket. Strange that this guy needs to be reminded that they just ripped off a crapload of DIAMONDS, but there you go. So Tristan's holding a bag of diamonds when Sarah and Cameron stroll in, Sarah saying those are hers. "Not anymore, they're not," says Tristan.
Dude in the purple jacket says the bowling alley is closed, so unless they want him to call the cops, they should get out now. Yeah, because the guys who stole all the diamonds are going to CALL THE COPS. "My jacket. Give it to me," says Cameron. Ha ha! You're wearing a girl's jacket! "Come and get it," says Buddy. Cameron merely pulls a gun on him. "Come and give it to me," she says. Buddy quickly complies, and Tristan also hands over the stolen goods. Sarah says there's a credit card missing, which the third guy fishes out of his breast pocket. "We used it on the arcades. We'll pay you back," mumbles Tristan. You know, it's been years since I've been in an arcade, but do you need a CREDIT CARD these days? Good lord. I would have bankrupted my parents playing Double Dragon.
Sarah looks over at the pairs of shoes lined up by the table, and counts four of them. "Where's the other guy?" she asks. The three amigos play dumb, so Sarah goes to look for him. "Stay here," she tells Cameron, and walks off. Cameron stands there for a moment, and then calmly starts shooting the three guys, needing to take a couple of shots to finish Tristan off. Sarah stares at her, partly horrified, partly not at all surprised. "They knew where we live," she says.
Sarah doesn't say anything, just heads to the men's room to check it out. She surprises some kid -- noticeably younger than the rest of his now-deceased gang -- in a stall. Holding her gun on him, Sarah asks if he knows the guys out there. You know, that really should be knew the guys out there. The scared-shitless teenager nods. Sarah tells him that he was never here, and he never saw her: "You don't know what happened here, understand?" Sarah says if he ever says anything about what happened here, she'll hunt him down and kill him. She leaves the men's room. "Clear?" asks Cameron. Sarah says yes, and Cameron doesn't look like she entirely believes her.
The detective strolls into an interview room to tell a waiting Ellison that the witness is a nutjob and the judge tossed his statement in five minutes, so Ellison's free to go. He apologizes for Ellison's having to go through all this. "That's it?" says Ellison. "You're a smart guy, Jim. Take 'yes' for an answer." The detective stiffly holds out his hand for Ellison to shake, which the confused former murder suspect does.
Outside, the detective strolls to his car, and there's a quick flash of a couple people walking in front of him, and the thing we know he's suddenly Catherine Weaver. We don't see the actual morph (probably an expensive special effect) and so I initially thought Catherine was following the detective. That didn't make much sense given that the charges were now dropped, and in the detective's last couple of scenes we're clearly supposed to think he's now a terminator, so I'm happy to admit I was wrong, but do you know why I didn't immediately think that the detective morphed back into Catherine Weaver? Because what makes even LESS sense is that Weaver would shape change RIGHT OUT IN PUBLIC WITH MANY PEOPLE AROUND. I mean, REALLY.
Derek's gone back to pay Moishe a visit, bringing his gun as a conversation piece, I suppose. Moishe's got a bleeding bullet hole in his forehead, though, so someone's beat him to it. Jesse's there, and they surprise each other, holding their guns on each other for a moment. "I thought you were going to have a talk with him," says Derek. "I did. It was short," she says. Heh. No sense letting all these diamonds go to waste, huh? They take the diamonds and skedaddle.
Ugh. Do I have to recap this? I like Ellison as much as the guy, but this isn't Whiny Baby: The James Ellison Chronicles. He's sitting in his car outside his old house, watching his ex-wife and her new husband have dinner, and she comes out for a chat, and he blathers about needing something familiar, and she tells him he looks awful, and it goes on forever, and I can't believe we're going this long without someone being shot.
Almost as painful is the scene, with John finishing tidying up as Cameron and Sarah come in. Sarah says the place looks good, and John tries to gloss over the fact that Riley, who was, you know, partly responsible for the whole mess, was with John all day today. John doesn't see fit to mention anything about Chrome Artie paying a visit, either. "You can't bring people here anymore, John," says Sarah. John whines that Riley had nothing to do with it. "No, you did. She just made it worse," says Sarah. John angrily throws the drill he's been holding onto the floor. "Really? She's never tried to kill me," he tells Cameron. Got you there, Cameron. Then he lays into his mom, saying this has nothing to do with rules or security or safety: "You're pissed off because I finally found someone I actually enjoy spending time with, and it's not you." She asks if he doesn't think she wants him to have a normal life. "No, I don't," he says, and turns to go, and she grabs his arm and starts lecturing him some more about how they didn't choose this, it chose them, etc. We've seen it a hundred times already. She says she'll protect him as long as they're there. "Then why didn't you protect me when I was killing Sarkissian?" he snaps. Oh, so that's Sarah's fault now. "Why didn't you protect me when I had my hands around his throat?" Protect you from what, hand cramps? "Why didn't you protect me from that?" Sarah doesn't have an answer, and he stomps off.
Over in Weaver's office, Ellison is staring at the moray eel which could very well be Weaver herself, except here she comes to have a little chat about reading the witness report. "He comes across as crazy, doesn't he?" she asks him. "Who wouldn't?" asks Ellison. "You, if you'd tell me the truth," she says. Then she asks him if he has a twin. He does, but doesn't know where it is now. I don't know if it's smart of him not to explain that it was destroyed by another terminator. "Why did it come?" she asks. "I think I'm being tested," he says. Like Job, says Weaver, which gives Ellison a boner because she's heard of the famous biblical story of Job, who took all the shit God gave him. "He didn't renounce God, and God spared him," says Ellison. "So, who spared you?" asks Weaver. Spare me, please.
See, this is why Cameron's way is better. Chrome Artie's at Alien Lanes, chatting up the teenager Sarah found in the bathroom. And by "chatting up," I mean, "interrogating the poor kid, who's duct-taped to a chair." Chrome Artie asks him where he got the credit cards. The kid plays dumb, but Artie's not buying it. "She said she would find me. She said she would kill me," says the kid, almost crying. "I promise you, she won't," says Chrome Artie. Then he "smiles." Hee. I want that on my computer desktop.