Episode Report Card Daniel: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Life of Riley
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.10.2008
car stops, and then there are muffled shouts, and then the sound of gunfire. The car revs up again and Sarah tries using the can on the lock, and there's more gunfire, and the car stops suddenly, surprising her and -- oh, OW -- sending a jagged chunk of pop can under the skin of her palm, and a few shots give the trunk some much-needed ventilation, daylight streaming in fresh holes. Sarah starts kicking the back seat. The car stops again, and Sarah gets ready. The trunk opens, and Sarah's prepared to attack a futuristic killing machine with half a pop can. Only it's James Ellison standing there. He introduces himself formally, and then holds out his hand. "I need you to come with me," he says. Yeah, "Come with me if you want to live" is much cooler. And there's John standing there! Hi, honey!Time for Ellison's story. He's out for a jog, trying to leave all his personal demons behind him (good luck with that!). His cellphone rings, a call from Agent Carlson. He listens for a moment. "Mexico," he says. He asks if anyone is looking into it at the Bureau. The response appears to be negative, as he says, "Connor case has been cold since '99, I know." He tells Carlson to e-mail it over, and he'll take a look.
A picture of John Connor shows up on Ellison's screen, and he gets back on the phone to say it does look like him. "John Connor. God rest his soul."
Cut immediately to Ellison showing his identification to El Capitan, and saying John Connor matches the name of a fugitive of his. "The domestic terrorism case," says El Capitan, who's all up on the details of foreign terrorism cases that are almost a year old. Ellison's similarly impressed, except El Capitan says the case came up when they ran John's name. 'Course, Ellison's fugitive would be 24 by now, if not already dead. "I'd be grateful for just a visual identification, to help bring me some closure," says Ellison. "You have traveled an awful long way for closure," says El Capitan. Ellison says that if the prisoner is who Ellison thinks he is, then he's in lot of danger. "And yes, I've traveled a long way.
El Capitan seems receptive, but they're interrupted by a deputy who comes in and speaks a few words to the captain, who then excuses himself. Ellison sits and waits for a moment, then glances behind him, where, through a window in the captain's office, he can see his old buddy Chrome Artie, moments before Artie starts shooting up the place. Typical ugly American on holidays! Ellison jumps behind the captain's desk and starts looking for a weapon. He doesn't find one, and he crawls to the office door, opening it to find a wounded officer on the floor, just as Riley and John go running past. Outside, Riley's yelling and screaming and running, like you'd think she'd never had something go wrong on vacation before. John and Ellison are quick out the door after her, with John yelling for Riley to get in the car, and the three of them pile into Chrome Artie's ride and peel out, as he comes out of the police station, guns a-blazin'.
They're forced to back up down one alley, with Chrome Artie firing away, and maybe Skynet would have succeeded a long time ago if they'd just sent a Terminator that can actually hit the broad side of the barn. After getting away, they haven't really gone very far before Riley starts whining about feeling something in the back seat, and John yells for Ellison to stop the car, which Ellison does, because John is the boss of him.
And in the trunk they find Sarah, brandishing her pop can. "Sarah Connor? James Ellison. I need you to come with me," he says. Oh. So his suave response actually makes very little sense and was just written that way as a hook for the end of Sarah's story? OK.
Sarah gets out of the trunk, and then they spot Chrome Artie pull up in a truck nearby. "We need to move," says Sarah. Yeah, "move," like the lackadaisical extra jogging less-than-urgently RIGHT BY THE KILLER. Chrome Artie gets out of his truck and starts walking.
So the Connor Crew has found a hideout, I guess? In this tiny little town? Sarah pulls the metal out of her palm. Ellison offers to help, and Sarah snaps that she needs to be able to use it. "I should hope so," says Ellison, who probably knows all about needing his hands in good working order since his divorce. Sarah asks what he's doing in Mexico, and he tells her John was flagged in an FBI computer. She asks if he couldn't have just buried it. "It's been watching me," he says. "'It'?" says Sarah. "Out there. It," says Ellison, jerking his head towards the window. Sarah snaps that he could have led Chrome Artie right to John. "It wasn't me in the trunk," says Ellison, which would be a good point, except it's not like Sarah led Chrome Artie to Mexico by BEING IN THE TRUNK.
Anyway, Ellison says he was coming down to pop John out of jail no questions asked, which Sarah doesn't believe, until Ellison says he felt he owed Sarah one for saving his life back at Silberman's cabin. Sarah shrugs it off, saying it wasn't much. "It was my life," says Ellison. "How do you feel about that now?" she asks him. He doesn't have much of an answer.
Nearby are John and Riley, still on the worst first vacation ever. John tells Riley that she has to go, but he'll call her when he gets back to L.A., and instead of saying, "Yeah, don't worry about it," she pulls a whole "stand by my man" thing. Of course, that's partly because there's a guy out there killing people. "He won't follow you if you run away from me," says John. Yeah. Because Terminators NEVER try to use friends and family to get to their targets, hey, John? Moron. "I don't want to run away from you," says Riley, so I think someone should check to see that she isn't actually technically brain-dead. "Get her out of here," says Sarah, who then goes over to Ellison to ask for his phone. "You have a plan?" he asks. "And a weapon," she says, and he surmises she's talking about Cameron.
Sarah calls Derek, puts in the code, and says she needs him and Cameron, because she and John are in trouble. Derek says they're there already, at the jail.
So it's over to Derek's story now, which ... starts with Cameron and Derek arriving outside the police station with wounded people hobbling about. "Chrome Artie's here," says Cameron. "Then we should stay undercover," says Derek. He says this while skulking around his jeep with his gun drawn, so I guess his cover is "undercover cop whose cover is blown." Cameron just strolls right up to the police station, and Derek follows. Inside, they survey the dead and dying. "I'm looking for John Baum," says Cameron to the captain, who's lying on the floor, bullet wound in the chest. "Yo no sè," he says. Derek wants to get out of there, but Cameron's intent on finding John. "We're no good to him dead," says Derek. "I can't let anything happen to him," says Cameron, heading deeper into the station. Hey, it's the worst prison guard ever. "Escaped or dead?" asks Derek. "Escaped," says the guard, who then asks Derek for a little help, and Derek's idea of a little help is to tell him, "He won't be back."
Back out in the station entrance, Derek's cellphone rings. It's Sarah, and thus ends Derek's sad little twenty-second entry in the story. "Where the hell's Chrome Artie?"
Yay! It's Chrome Artie's story! They should go back years, like to when Chrome Artie was just, I don't know, a toaster. Making Pop Tarts. Instead, it picks up with Artie in the police station being asked to leave. "I'm gonna need to see John Conner," he tells the captain, right before reaching into his bag, pulling out a gun, and calmly blowing away Dejalo's finest. He stalks through the police station, shooting as he goes. It's not exactly the police station scene from the first movie.
He squats next to the prison guard and says he's looking for John Connor. "He's gone," says the guard. "Are there any other exits?" he asks. No, says the guard. So Chrome Artie calmly walks back out the front door, where he sees Ellison, John and Riley pulling away in his car.
After a commercial break, we get to see