Episode Report Card Daniel: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Wave of Complication
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.17.2008
Ellison's car pulls into the driveway. "It didn't seem like much of a threat. We're not built for cruelty," she says. "Well, that's one for cyborgs," says John, and Cameron agrees, as they get out of the car to go whale on Ellison.Inside, Ellison's barely finished shaking off after going to the bathroom when Cameron's hand is around his throat. Then she's throwing him all around his house as John informs him that the body is missing, and they need it so they can destroy it. "What the hell would I want with it?" protests Ellison, which earns him a head-first trip into a corner shelf.
Cameron thinks he's lying, and chucks him into the glass table, shattering it, and he lands on his back. Cameron starts to choke him. John tells him that if Ellison knows where the body is, better say so now. Ellison gasps out that he has no idea. After a few more moments of Cameron's erotic asphyxiation, John tells her to let him go. She does, and after Ellison lies there for a few moments, gasping, she reaches down and flips him back onto his front. John's about to leave when he sees, in the broken detritus of the room, the picture of his mom taken at the gas station before he was born. He looks at Ellison for a moment, and takes the photo with him.
Back at the torture central, Derek's sitting with a groggy Paul, when Jesse comes in, hauling some bound, hooded guy with her. You know, the security in this place is terrible. Derek's all, GREAT, I only bought lunch for THREE, you know. Jesse says Paul doesn't want to tell them who he is, so she brought proof. She takes the hood off the guy, some youngish guy, and she pulls down his shirt collar to reveal a prominent birthmark on his shoulder. She goes over to Paul, and pulls down his collar, revealing the exact same birthmark. Then she punches Paul. She likes doing that.
So now new guy has duct tape on his mouth, at least until Jesse rips it off to ask who he is. The guy, rather scared, says he's name's Charlie Fischer, and he works at SRF -- Seismic Retrofitting. He's just a service technician who has no idea why he's here. "Tell him who you are," Jesse instructs Paul, who says that he's told them who he is, and accuses them of playing a trick on him. "And you're in on it!" he tells Charlie Fischer. "What do you want from me?" he yells at Jesse, who then starts pounding on him some more, which freaks Charlie out more than it does Paul.
Outside, Derek tells Jesse that even if this guy is who she says he is, they need to find out why he's here. Maybe he's AWOL like you, he suggests, and Jesse rejects that, saying he's got to be here for a reason. She nestles her forehead against Derek's temple and gets all Lady Macbeth on him, saying, "You need to beat the hell out of him. You need to get him to talk."
I guess nothing motivates Derek like his old lady getting on his case, because he marches right back in and grabs a pair of pliers or wire cutters or something, goes over to Charlie, grabs a hand, and starts cutting or yanking or something. It appears to be very painful. Even Jesse is looking on in horror, and she's the one who wanted Derek to go all Hostel on his ass. "Don't hurt the boy!" says Paul. Derek prattles on, some nonsense about how "you can beat and beat some people all you want but they hate themselves so much that they just absorb the pain," and eventually Paul admits to being Charlie Fischer. Well, of course he is. It's Richard Schiff, after all. Young Charlie looks on in horror. I'm really going to lose my hair, you can see him thinking. Jesse looks at Derek, all, "You owe me a Coke."
Old Charlie says he's not here on a mission, but as a reward. He says he was locked up in Pelican Bay when the bombs dropped, and when the terminators got their hands on him, it was either tell them everything he knew, or say goodbye. "And what'd you learn?" asks Derek. "I learned what makes people tick," he says. Enraged, Jesse flips the chair over, and Derek has to stop her from beating him to death right there.
Oh, great, just when things are getting interesting, we have to head over to Dr. Sherman's office where we can watch Sarah refuse to be at all forthcoming with any sorts of details about her life that might help him understand where her dreams are coming from. So he can only speak in generalities, and tells her that dreams usually mirror the central conflict in the dreamer, which he guesses would be with John. He also asks about conflict with Cameron, which Sarah says is different, and anyway, she doesn't want to talk about Cameron. Sherman says that's odd, because he thinks this is what the three dots are about, and why she only wants to talk about "one of the dots" is beyond him.
Sarah continues to sit silently. He sighs and stands up. "Nothing is going to happen in here until you decide to be honest." Sarah gets up and stomps out.
Back in the container, Old Charlie has filled in Young Charlie, who seems kinda skeptical. "Judgment Day? Machines?" Old Charlie goes off on how you have no idea what you'd do. He asks Young Charlie what the toughest decision he's had to face has been: Whether to stay with Rebecca or take a chance on Christine, or being worried about getting fired for taking time off for Grandfather's funeral? "You think you know who you are? You don't have a clue," says Old Charlie. Young Charlie wonders why he doesn't just tell them what they want to know. Yeah, really. Seems like he's made a career of that sort of thing. "You're here, you're safe," says Young Charlie. "Safe"? He's getting the crap beaten out of him by people he betrayed!
Speaking of whom, Derek and Jesse are conferring about what to do. Jesse says the guy's just playing games, pretending to be weak. He asks her how she knows, and she says she just does. She says Derek might not remember him, but she does. "He was the worst of them. The worst. He needs to die, Derek."
Derek asks what this guy did to her. From the sound of her? My guess is he dated her for a while and then just stopped calling her.
Jesse says there was a raid on a bunker. Metal was everywhere, and they killed the children and anyone over thirty. They took the prisoners to this place, says Jesse, and we watch as a bound Jesse lies on the table in the middle of a room with Terminators watching through windows, as Old Charlie walks around telling his audience that he will show them how to extract information from people, what makes people tick. This is what my closed captioning says, but I don't hear Old Charlie's words on my television at all. Weird. It certainly explains why Jesse snapped when Old Charlie talked about what makes people tick earlier.
"It was kind of a perverse theatre, like he was teaching them," says Jesse. Derek asks how long it went on. Weeks, months, says Jesse. There were drugs and starvation, she says, and we watch as Old Charlie administers a needle to Jesse's arm. "And he talked to you, for hours, for days, just to break you down. Just to get to your inner ... to get to you." Derek asks how she got out. "I don't know. You never told me," she says. Derek's all, huh? She puts her hands on his hips. "It wasn't me Fischer had, baby. It was you." Derek's stunned, because yeah, you'd think you'd remember that, right? We see a future scene featuring Derek instead of Jesse, who says she can't believe he doesn't remember.
Well, Derek goes marching in again and introduces himself, complete with first lieutenant, 132nd SOC. "Yeah, well, good for you," says Old Charlie. "Not for you," says Derek, and he smacks him one. Old Charlie's all, "Yyyyyeah, I was wondering when you'd remember." Derek says he doesn't, but Jesse does, and that's good enough for him. A single tear rolls down Jesse's cheek, so I guess this is the Oscar reel. Old Charlie asks if Derek's going to kill him now. "Not you," says Derek, taking his gun out and pointing it at Young Charlie. There's a gunshot, but it doesn't come from Derek but from Jesse, who's shot Old Charlie instead. "Oh, thank you!" gasps Young Charlie, who you'd think would still be traumatized