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Cameron takes a starring role in an episode that features very little Sarah, no Derek at all and John relegated to the B-plot (which, um, climaxes in a heavy make out session). So let's dispense with John and Riley right away. Riley? You're a psycho. And admitting that you're purposely trying to push John's buttons by flirting with another mom-hating douchebag doesn't make it OK. It makes you more of a psycho because you're doing it intentionally, and now John has to get into a fight because you think it's OK to steal someone's lighter.
So anyway, you know how Cameron likes to do super-fun crazy stuff like read the dictionary? Apparently she's read all the books at the Connor Compound, because she sneaks out at night to a library, where she befriends a guy who works the night shift, and she reads up on esoteric things.
A photo from a tragic New Year's party in 1920 catches her eye, and she recognizes one of the bystanders as a Terminator. She digs deeper, and we get to see a Terminator-with-a-Tommy-gun story that she manages to put together from records that are almost 90 years old. This terminator, Stark, somehow got sent to the wrong time; instead of going to 2010 to assassinate the governor of California ["Ha! Very clever." - Angel], he wound up in 1920. And here's how committed he is to seeing the mission through. When the owner of the building where he's to carry out his mission in 2010 refuses to sell back in the 1920s, Stark starts up his own construction company that eventually takes over the building (after some shady stuff like murder of the magnate's right-hand man), and Stark walls himself up to wait for the 21st century. Cameron gets to him first, and destroys him.
Which is great, because while she was out gallivanting around, Skynet got to the Connor Compound and killed everyone without Cameron there to guard them. Well, they didn't. But they could.
Want more? The full recap starts right below! Well, looks like it's the 1920s, because everyone's dressed all flapper-style and listening to big band music. Really, did everyone dress like that then? Eighty years from now, if a show is set in the late nineties, is everyone going to be dressed in khaki and black and listening to the Squirrel Nut Zippers just because some people did? The happy carousing is cut short by this raging bonfire that has everyone screaming and running for the exits.And they still look happier than John does, as we fade into the present day, with John farting around on a laptop in the dining room. He says he's dumped about fifty thousand websites, and there are hundreds of companies with three dots for a logo, including companies that make baby wipes and ice cream. "Nothing screams Skynet like baby wipes and ice cream," he says. Any new parent can change a diaper and figure that if such a sweet little bundle of joy can produce such a giant disgusting mess, then the end times can't be far off. John reminds her that she saw the three dots in a dream. Yeah, and also IN BLOOD ON A WALL, she points out, and tells him to keep looking. He says he will tomorrow, as he's beat. So Sarah passes off the laundry basket to Cameron and tells her to make herself useful, since she never sleeps. John isn't so tired that he can't hang around to sarcastically point out that Cameron is the most sophisticated killing machine ever invented, and she's got it doing laundry. Sarah's got the cure for that sassmouth: she takes the laundry basket and gives it John, who, once his mom is gone, sheepishly hands it back to Cameron, whose look clearly says, I may just be a terminator, but I know when I'm getting hosed. John walks out and turns the light out, so now she's got to turn on her nightvision just to fold the freakin' laundry.
And now Cameron's at the employee entrance of some university/library-looking building, and ringing the doorbell. The door's opened by a guy in a wheelchair who answers so quickly he kind of had to have already been there. Cameron holds up a bag: "One glazed, one rainbow sprinkle, one cinnamon twist." You never forget, do you, marvels the guy. I mean, it's THREE donuts. Does she need a mnemonic device?
So she's clearly been doing this a while; they sit in the library and work. Buddy asks her about her trip to Mexico, wondering if she met up with her friend. We flashback to Cameron and John digging up Chrome Artie but finding only a boot. "He was gone when we got there," says Cameron, and then agrees with Eric that it was "a bummer." Eric asks if her brother is still dating that crazy girl, and Cameron says yes, telling him about getting robbed because Riley snuck out the window. Eric asks if they got who did it, and Cameron flashes back to blowing away the perps in the bowling alley. "Everything worked out fine," she says.
Suddenly she asks if there are any books about California field artillery, as she's interested in muzzle-loading rifles used during the Murdoch Indian War. Eric seems surprised by the request, but tells her it would be in the California room.
So that's where they go, with Eric rambling on about the assignments he's got due this week. Cameron's barely listening as she surveys the old framed photographs on a table. She picks one up, of a chaotic scene with firefighters and screaming people. Eric rolls over to have a look. Cameron points out the guy in the centre of the photograph, as her on-screen display identifies the guy as a T-888. "I know him," she says, but Eric points out she'd have to be about 110 years old, as that photo was taken on New Year's Eve, 1920, at the scene of a speakeasy fire that killed forty-three people. It was rumoured that the party was started by a Molotov cocktail thrown by another speakeasy club.
We fade back into the aftermath in 1920, which looks like the season premiere of Law & Order: The Roaring Twenties, dead people laid out on the street, people crying. The T-888 makes his way through the wailing and the death and looks up at the sky, which is when the picture was taken. "I need to know what happened to him," says Cameron.
After the opening credits/commercial break, John's awoken by his cellphone ringing. He checks the number, sighs, and picks up. It's Riley, who's been indoctrinated into using their foolproof beep-boop phone code (which John doesn't do back, I'd like to point out). Sounding distraught, she asks him to come get her. Sounding put out, she gives him an address in Van Nuys, and pleads with him again to come get her. John hangs up without even saying anything, so I guess silence is implied acceptance.
Back at the library, Eric is explaining that most periodicals from the fifties haven't been transferred into digital format yet, so this could take a while, which is going to turn out to be ridiculously not true, but he's optimistic because with a fire that big there are bound to be survivor stories, and then he talks about the last living survivor of the Titanic, but he doesn't have any point except to mention his own bone cancer, which he says is like being the Titanic and the iceberg. If he's looking for sympathy from Cameron, he's getting nowhere. She's busy looking at a piece of microfiche, but she does notice Eric pulling his sweater on, claiming that it's cold. "It's seventy-six degrees," she says. She asks him to bring up image D6 on the reader: it's a picture of Myron Stark (he's the T-888) shaking hands with Rudolf Valentino at the premiere of Valentino's The Sheik. Cameron's never heard of Valentino. "Oh, you kids, with your rock and roll music and obsession with medieval siege weapons!" clucks Eric.
Anyhoo, Cameron wonders what Stark is doing there, and we flash back to a more sepia-toned age, with Stark enthusiastically shaking Valentino's hand and saying he enjoyed the movie very much, except for the fact that he disagreed with Valentino's giving Lady Diana a gun to defend herself from the caravan of thieves, given that she was "a security risk." Valentino seems a little freaked out by Stark's intensity, but Stark turns his gaze on someone else, which Cameron notices in the picture: Stark's actually looking at someone else in the picture, some top-hatted guy named Rupert Chandler. Cameron wants to search the city and county records, and Eric says that's in Vital Statistics, which is in the basement, which is locked, and he doesn't have a key, so she'll have to come back in the morning and talk to Barry. Cameron pays him no mind, and just walks away. "Excuse me, hey, where are you going?" Eric says, and starts rolling after her.
So John shows up at this party where no one says hi to him, except for the mom of the slicked-up tanktop-wearing utter douchebag Mike, who gets chewed out by her son for BUYING THE WRONG BEER, and then he basically tells her to get out of her own kitchen because it's kind of hard to relax with her hanging around, only judging by the way he's flicking bottlecaps around and playing with his Zippo, he seems plenty relaxed. Mike's mom asks why he never introduced her to his friend John, and Mike says it's because John's not his friend but some "weirdo loser who dropped out of school," and I can't imagine in a million years talking to my mom like that, and obviously neither can John, who eventually says he's looking for Riley, who coincidentally shows up and happily takes a beer and makes like it was no big deal that she called John all upset. She wants to hang out, and he snaps, "I only came to get you!" and she sulks and he gives in and apologizes to HER, and says they can stay awhile.
Cameron has helped herself to some records in the basement when Eric rolls in. Like nothing's happened, she tells him that she doesn't think Myron Stark is who everyone thought he was, but Eric's too pissed off that he lets her in after hours whenever she wants, and then she does exactly what he told her not to. "I need the information," she says, simply. "I need this job! You broke the lock!" he yells, and she says she'll fix
it. He tells her just to put it all back, and he reaches for a box of documents himself, and he falls out of his chair. Cameron moves to help him, looking like she's reaching to right an upturned turtle, and he angrily waves her off before climbing back into his himself, and wheeling away.
After the break, Cameron finds Eric in another part of the building, putting books away with a long reachy tool. She tries apologizing, but he flatly pretends it's no big deal. She says it is, because she doesn't have any friends. "That I find hard to believe," says Eric, clearly forgetting to add, "Because you're so hot!" When she turns to walk away, he quickly asks if she found anything out. She didn't, as there's no record of him before the fire. Eric suggests she try immigrant records, because maybe he came in through Ellis Island and worked himself up from nothing, which he calls the "single-minded pursuit of a goal" or something else that describes terminators and immigrants in equal measures. Cameron calls that "an effective strategy." "Either that or he robbed banks," jokes Eric. And we flash back to Stark doing just that -- a bandanna wrapped around his face as he mows people down with a Tommy gun. "Can you show me police records?" Cameron asks Eric.
And just like that, she's found a vinyl recording of an interview with a police officer describing the robbery of a La Brea savings and loan with awesome old-timey newspeak like: "Eight citizens were felled and did not live to tell about it." The police officer says the robber was hit by at least thirty bullets and still got away. "You really think he robbed banks?" asks Eric. "It's an effective strategy," says Cameron.
And they've already found more records of Myron Stark buying land just two days after that heist, and here, Cameron's already found a business application for Stark's construction company. And hey, here's a whole talkie newsreel which I don't believe even EXISTED at the time that documents the construction company battle for supremacy between Myron Stark and Rupert Chandler, that details the young upstart Stark taking on Chandler's company, the largest in the county. There's even some trash talking from Chandler's head foreman, Fred Jeffers, who said Chandler will "crush him like a bug." Stark's response? "We'll see," also used by Chrome Artie.
And now here's Eric wheeling in with some more information (Fred Jeffers disappeared in 1925 and was never heard from again) that he must have retrieved from the goddamn Myron Stark Wing, there's so much of it, and he puts it on the table but accidentally knocks Cameron's gun to the floor. He's rather disquieted by the fact that she's toting a gun, and asks her why. "In case I need it," she says. He asks if she's ever fired it. She has. He says he's noticed cuts on her face, and asks if she's in trouble. No. Is she afraid of someone? "'Afraid'? No." Heh. I loved the way she said that. She explains that there are people after her brother, and she protects him. "Who protects you?" asks Eric. "I do," she says. Duh, Eric. She's the one with the Glock. She puts out her hand to take it back, but Eric says he's never fired one before, so she asks if he wants to try, and the thing you know he's shooting up the Yellow Pages. And I'm rather impressed that he hit the target on his very first try, especially since he doesn't have the use of his legs to brace himself. Cameron digs the slug out of the Yellow Pages and hands it to him, but he can't hold onto it because it's too hot. He's ecstatic; I think a marriage proposal is forthcoming.
Man, nothing makes for a fun party like people sitting around playing video games. Meanwhile, John's sitting there looking all sour, and Riley's good-natured cajoling isn't improving things, and neither is Douchebag Mike's lighter-flicking. That's his thing, apparently. Like that's even a thing. John eventually takes a turn with the controller. "Look at you, Mr. Normal!" chirps Riley, like SHUT UP, RILEY, and John affects a Rain Man head tilt and gets his ass handed to him in some kind of futurist shooter, and it looks like his problem is not so much sucking, but that he's imagining how real this is all going to seem before too long.
When he's finally killed by a loser who celebrates like it's some kind of accomplishment (although to look at this guy, it wouldn't be a stretch to think he'll never accomplish much). John wants to leave, which means Riley's going to go, much to Douchebag Mike's chagrin (because John is a weirdo. In Douchebag Mike's defence, John's ACTING like a weirdo). Then he accuses Riley of stealing his lighter, and keeps grabbing at her arm, and John FINALLY steps in to help after Mike calls her a "screwy bitch" and efficiently takes him down by grabbing him around the face and throwing him to the ground. He then pounds Mike's nose a couple of times, getting it all nice and bloody, before Riley pulls him off and they get the hell out of there. See you at school!
While Eric flips through some old documents, Cameron watches a television news piece from the '80s, featuring a reporter with huge blown-out hair, and a green outfit paired with a massive leopard-print belt. She's interviewing a hiker who found an old-timey car with bones in it, and the personal effects identified the guy as Fred Jeffers, and we drift into a flashback of Stark stopping Jeffers' car on a lonely road. Stark lifts up the front bumper of the old Model T and drags it off the road and, from the sounds of it, tosses it down a hill. And it took sixty years to find it?
Back at Insta-Research Central, Eric's discovered that Jeffers' disappearance was just the latest in a string of tragedies for Chandler, who endured the loss of his son on New Year's Eve, 1920. Flashback to a cop identifying a dead man on the sidewalk as "Rupert Chandler's boy." So Encyclopedia Brown and Sally here have figured out that there must be some sort of connection because Stark was there too.
So John's taken Riley out to some sort of lookout, where she says she thought he was going to kill Mike. John grouchily asks why she called him, and she says she wanted him to come. He says she's got a funny way of showing it. "I'm a teenage girl, John. We do that kind of crap to guys we like," she says, and I hate to have to tell her that admitting you're a psycho does not make being a psycho OK, and no, not all teenage girls pull this kind of shit. Just the kind who wind up with men whose prison records are longer than their resumes. And you know what? She did take the lighter. "I like shiny things," is her reason. That's it: from now on their dates should consist entirely of John shining a laser pointer on the wall for her amusement.
And now we have to suffer some boring chatter about their foster parents, like how Riley's couple thought they were awesome because they recycled, and they called her "The Deviant" and she mentions BRUCE HORNSBY of all musicians, and John decides he can be just as boring and talks about how his foster parents used to call him "The Delinquent." Oh, if only they could see you now, John, beating people up at parties. He asks what happened to Riley's real parents. "They died when I was little. In a fire." She asks why John was in a foster home, and John says his mom was in a mental hospital. "Well, that explains things," she says, and she needs the concept of SHUTTING UP explained to her apparently, and it's WAY past time that John kicked her selfish, manipulative ass out. Then John cryptically tells a vague story about Charlie, and how he lost his wife, and Riley is asking him about talking things out, which John says he sometimes wants to do but mostly doesn't, and now they're making out, and for the life of me I can't understand why John is being cryptic about the whole Terminator thing with Riley, who was almost killed by one in Mexico.
Cameron needs to learn a thing or two about personal space, doesn't she? She barges into the men's bathroom with Eric in a stall, to tell him she found Will Chandler's obituary. She says four hundred people came
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to his funeral, so he must have been well-liked. "His father had money. There's a difference," says Eric, who hasn't gotten over his shock at Cameron barging in like that. Cameron thinks Stark killed Chandler, but Eric points out that they don't even know if the two knew each other. Besides, why take out 43 innocent people just to kill Chandler. "It happens," says Cameron. While Eric finished up, Cameron asks him if he ever thinks about death or killing himself. Surprised, Eric asks why she'd ask that. "Because there's something wrong with you," says Cameron. That's enough to make Eric's genitals shrink up and withdraw into his groin, so no more need to urinate! He rolls out of the stall and says he's never for one second thought about suicide, because of what it'd do to his family. And besides, he's clean of cancer; he just needs a scan done every six months.
Outside, Eric suggests checking out a documentary on the Roaring '20s, because it features a woman who was at the speakeasy. Cameron will have to go alone, though, because it's on the top floor and there's no wheelchair access. Cameron, who seems to have given up any idea of acting like a normal teenage girl, lifts Eric right out of the wheelchair. "You're strong," says Eric, ready to have Cameron's babies. "I work out," says Cameron.
Up in the film room, she sets him down on a box, and he's in awe of the "silver nitrate" all around him, none of that digital crap they do nowadays. He says the reels are "raw humanity on display" and Cameron's eyes are glazing over like she's being lectured at a party by the guy who smugly tells everyone he doesn't own a television, you know that guy? Just give him a second more to think about how no one on those films will ever get old, and it would be nice to freeze a moment, when you're young and healthy ... my GOD JUST WAKE ME UP WHEN YOU'RE DONE.
So this elegant older woman (think a Jessica Tandy type), smilingly reminisces about going out to gin joints and smoking and drinking, and at least her scandalized grandchildren aren't going to have to hear about Grandma's promiscuity as well, and she talks about the fire, how suddenly there was a man, "Naked as a jaybird" in the middle of the room, and there was this blue light and electricity. Cameron casts a sidelong glance at Eric, who's enthralled. She chalks it up to the liquor talking. "He didn't mean to kill all those people," says Cameron. Eric agrees, already chalking the fire up to an electrical problem. "It's just like in The Wizard of Oz when the house falls on the witch, says Cameron. We revisit the scene from the beginning of the episode, only this time we watch the familiar zapping electricity that accompanies time travel, and the Terminator crouch, and naked Stark grabbing some man fleeing in terror and saying "Give me your clothes."
And we watch him again walking among the dead and the distraught, including the crying woman who I assume is Smokin' and Drinkin' Grandma now, and he looks up.
Cameron strides outside, Eric right behind her, asking where she's going. "I know what he was looking at," she says, looking up at the sky herself. She says he was measuring the stars' radial velocity, distance in parsecs, and Cartesian co-ordinates. Well, why didn't I think of that? Eric asks why. "To pinpoint the date," says Cameron, which Eric seems to disbelieve. We watch Cameron -- and Stark in flashback -- do just that, and in what really can't be a coincidence, do so by picking out three stars in a triangular pattern that would make Sarah's head explode. Eric asks why the date is so important. "It's not. Unless it's the wrong date," she says. Starks' display shows him calculating the date as Dec. 31, 1920. "TEMPORAL ERROR" flashes the screen. A single metallic tear rolls down his cheek. "Myron Stark was in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Cameron. No, right place, wrong time.
Rupert Chandler's eulogy for his dead son? Of course it's there. Does it contain oddly specific information about a particular piece of land to hold a particular building that the architect son planned to design? Sure does. Pico Tower, on the corner of Third and Pico. Rupert said the land will never be sold or developed but will remain a memorial garden forever. Eric says there is a Pico Tower, though, an architectural landmark. "Someone must've built it," says Cameron. Yeah, that is what was probably required for it to exist, Cameron. Fortunately, the explanation is right at hand: tax records that show Chandler's battle with Stark cost him everything, and he had to sell off all his assets. "It's like the family's cursed," says Eric.
Flashback to yet another thrilling scene from the 1920s, this one of Stark accosting Chandler and Jeffers at the movie premiere and offering to buy the land at Third and Pico but getting rebuffed. When are they going to get to the fireworks factory? So who bought the land? Well, you're never going to believe this, but it looks like Stark did, and designed the tower himself. It's about the building, figures Cameron: "Stark accidentally killed the man who was going to build it, so he built it himself." Things seem to be clicking into place for Cameron, not so much for Eric, who discovers that Stark disappeared two weeks before the opening of the building and was never heard from again. Cameron asks if anything important happened in the Pico Tower, on New Year's Eve. "What year?" asks Eric. Any year, says Cameron. Eric can't think of anything, and at any rate, the tower's been closed for retrofitting since the last earthquake. Cameron turns and stomps out of the room. No goodbye for Eric.
Cameron walks in the front entrance of Pico Tower, which is apparently closed but for some reason has a sign on an easel in the lobby that says it's reopening New Year's Eve 2010: "Join us for the ceremony, with a keynote speech by governor Mark Wyman," the sign tells all the people who don't walk past it every day BECAUSE THE BUILDING IS CLOSED.
Cameron walks through the building, eventually coming to a large ballroom with a stage. She stands in the centre of the room, and then looks at the stage. She pictures New Year's Eve 2010, with a grinning governor standing at a lectern on the stage. She turns and walks toward the wall opposite the stage. She looks back at the stage, and her on-screen display overlays a grid and the words "Calculating optimal targeting angle" appear, and then she's picturing the governor being hit by bullets. She turns back to the wall, knocks a couple of times, until she hears a hollow reverberation. She punches through the wall, and standing there in an old-timey gangster's outfit and holding a Tommy gun, is Stark. He jerks back to life as Cameron breaks through, but isn't quick enough to keep her from throwing him through the wall and then unloading most of the ammunition from his Tommy gun into him. He doesn't fight back too well, but I guess it's like when your computer's a little sluggish after being woken up from sleeping. Cameron tosses him into the wall a couple of times for good measure, then kicks aside the grate guarding the empty elevator shaft. She throws him against the wall of the shaft, but he manages to grab a hold of the floor (and her ankle). She grabs a cord and yanks a freaking elevator down on top of Stark. Well, half of him, anyway. The top half struggles to pull itself to safety, so Cameron whips out a knife and gets to work.
Back at the Hall of Records, Eric's pleasantly surprised to see Cameron back, at least until he sees she's scratched up. "I'm fine," she says. "Your brother again?" he asks, and she repeats that she's fine. He's also not so thrilled when she tells him his cancer is back, in the long bone of his left arm, and possibly in his lungs. Eric calls her crazy, and gets angry when she starts clinically explaining what Ewing's sarcoma is. "No wonder you don't have any friends," he says, bitching that you can't just come by whenever you want something, can't carry a gun around and freaking people out, can't just barge in on someone in the bathroom. Well, appar
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ently you were fine with her doing all those things, up until she blurted out that your cancer was back, ERIC. Why do you suppose that was? "You have no idea what it's like to have something inside you, something that's damaged," he says. You mean like a computer chip? Cameron says it's like a bomb waiting to go off. She tries telling him that he should make an appointment with his oncologist, since the tumour's still small. He tells her to get out, which she does, casting a final look at the poor guy.
Back at the Connor Compound in the morning, John quietly comes in. Cameron's there, and since she's holding the laundry basket still, I guess her cover story is that it took her all night to fold one lousy basket of laundry. There's an almost cartoonish lip-smack on John's neck. Cameron touches it, to John's consternation, and is able to identify it as Riley's. She cocks her head at him. He just turns and walks up the stairs, pausing for a moment to give her a slightly smug half-smile.
And that night at the archives, Cameron's greeted at the door by some woman who has no idea where Eric is, just that they called her to come in tonight. Cameron offers her one glazed, one rainbow sprinkle, and one cinnamon twist, and the girl nods her in. If she's lucky, this one won't have a fatal illness (other than the fatality that often befalls people near the Connors).
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