In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close. Derek's sent by Sarah to help a teenage girl and her dying pregnant mom, who are in a safe location and already aware of the whole fighting the future thing, having already been saved once six months earlier by Cameron and Sarah (John was apparently at home, whining and microwaving Pizza Pops). Derek himself has a connection to the family, because he recognizes the teenage girl from a resistance operation in the future. In the future, the terminators use a bio-weapon to almost wipe out the human resistance, but Derek (with the assistance of Jesse, whom he meets) retrieves the sole survivor of the attack so that her immunity can be studied and a vaccine created. Six months ago, Cameron and Sarah showed up because the family's name was on the hit list Sarah had, and she wanted to know why. At first we think it's because the father is a banker who's doing some underhanded work for a computer company, but it's actually because the mother is pregnant with the baby who will grow up to be that sole survivor of the biological attack. Six months ago, Cameron and Sarah save the family. Today (and trust me, you'll hurt yourself trying to fit these events in on the series' overall timeline), they're not so lucky, as dad's dead, mom dies, and mom's boyfriend dies too. Derek, however, does save the baby, and he tells her older sister that they can stay with the Connors (ground rules: no terminators after 10 p.m.), but she vanishes with the wee one. I mean, not literally.
Want more? The full recap starts right below! Derek's on the phone with Sarah, whose end of the conversation we don't see, but she tells him she's "hunting it," and he wants to know how she knows it's not "hunting her," and maybe if the two of you have nothing better to do than spout a bunch of nonsense at each other, maybe you should each focus on the task at hand. Derek's in some kind of abandoned warehouse, or something, presumably another weapons cache. There's an abandoned bus, which the Connor Crew will need as they add members; they can just use the bus and save on gas money.
Derek hears a woman scream and comes upon a bloody, pregnant woman lying on a table being attended to by a teenage girl. Derek briefly flashes back (or forward, depending on how you look at it) to a time when he came across a family, including a pregnant woman, huddled, dead. In the flashback, Derek's wearing a gas mask. The girl hears him and whips out a gun in his face, but he tells her Sarah sent him to help. "I thought..." she says, and Derek says he knows what she thought: "You'd be dead already." Well, glad you showed up to lighten the mood! The girl says her mom's about thirty-four weeks along. She's wheezing badly, thanks to a cut on the throat and chest. Her presumable daughter has already begun an intubation, so it's nice that the Girl Guides offer a Risky Emergency Surgery badge now. Derek, having a little more experience with battlefield medicine, finishes it, allowing the mom to breathe a little easier. He asks how they know Sarah. Funny story!
Flash back to six months ago, in a cabin with a happy family (the mother and daughter are the ones currently covered in blood and getting help from Derek) that would only be perfect if the daughter would only learn to close the door and not track mud everywhere! Oh, wait, it wasn't your daughter Lauren, but a couple of stylish hot tamales toting huge weapons. "They're alive," says Cameron, as she walks in the room. "Lauren, go to your room and close the door," says the father, who apparently outfitted his daughter's bedroom in the cabin with armour plating. The father is played by Hey! It's That Guy! Carlos Jacott, who's been all over your television. Buffy, CSI, Big Love, Studio 60, but as usual, I will always know a person best from a once-upon-a-time part on Seinfeld, in this case, Ramon the pool guy who got friendlier with Jerry than Jerry was comfortable with.
Here, Carlos's name is David, and he tells his wife, Anne, to call 911. Pretty ballsy, to be telling your wife and daughter to do shit while two possibly crazy women train massive weapons on you. Sarah puts the kibosh on the 911-calling and orders Cameron to get Lauren back. Into her phone, she says they got a hit on one of the names on the list. "Alpine Fields. It's a family." She says everything's under control, but they might be late: "Can you handle dinner? John, just put the alarm on." Handle dinner? He's a teenager. Things haven't changed that much from when I was John's age, so as long as he's got some Pizza Pops [Editor's Note: Sadly, those are only available in Canada, which is so unfair because now that I've looked them up I want them real bad. America never gets to have ANYTHING. - Mindy] in the freezer, he's good.
Suddenly, Lauren's standing there, holding a cute wittle gun on Sarah. David takes it from her and orders Sarah to put her gun down. She does so, and he asks her who she is and what she's doing there. Oh, and he wants the truth. Good thing he specified! So Sarah tells him the truth: about the end of the world, about Skynet sending cyborgs back in time to kill humans. She's got a target list, he's on it. "A machine is coming to kill you," she says, adding that it found their house in the city and now it's on its way here. David tells his wife to call the police and tell them all about the crazy lady, and finally Cameron shows back up, like WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG, and somehow David gets the drop on her and tells her to drop her gun too, and Cameron catches Sarah's signal to comply. She does so, but just long enough for David to let his guard down slightly, and Cameron disarms him.
Sarah orders the whole famn damily into the van, much to the consternation of the family dog. "What about Charles Barkley?" asks Lauren. Hee! Cameron and Sarah both say "no" at the same time. Because Lauren says she'll look after Charles Barkley, but it'll just end up being something else that Sarah'll have to do.
So Sarah drives while David and Anne bicker in the back seat over the fact that David has a gun. Interesting that it doesn't appear to occur to her that her daughter knew about it while she didn't. David says he had for situations just like this, a bear. Yeah, and how'd that work out for you? Cameron examines the gun and points out that it wouldn't be much use in a situation like this. Or against a bear, for that matter. Anne asks Sarah, "Does your son know you kidnap people at gunpoint?" Sarah's all, "Yes, ma'am, he does." Heh. Anne says he'll be prone to juvenile delinquency. Yeah, well by that logic, your daughter's going to be prone to not know when to shut the hell up. Lauren says, "It's obvious she's well beyond Dr. Phil." Yeah, there we go. Sarah's just telling them to mind their own damn business when the van is rammed by a lime green pickup truck. Great. Now they gotta exchange insurance information with this guy, and ... oh, worse luck! He's a terminator! Sarah and the Fields hightail while Cameron goes hand-to-hand with the metal, taking a round of bullets in the chest. With the Fields running for their lives, Sarah turns to watch the battle for a second. It looks like Cameron's got the upper hand.
In the present day, while Derek tends to Anne, he tells Lauren to cover up the St. Jude's medallion she's fingering, as it's a target. She ignores this. She sees his bar code tattoo and asks where he got it. "One of them," he says. "Do I want to know?" she asks. I don't know, do you? You can imagine how keen Derek is to talk about it. She says that he sounds so used to it. "You don't get used to it. You live through it," he says. Anne stirs. "You sound like David," she says. Derek looks confused for a second. TOTALLY different show, lady! Lauren says they were at a motel outside of Elko when it caught up with them. Dad "emptied the Mossberg" into it, and then went after it with a table lamp and curtain rod, just long enough for the two of them to get away. Sarah told them to call if it came back. "Do you think David could be all right?" asks Anne. The look Derek gives Lauren isn't a confident one, but he says, "Anything's possible." Yeah, lady, your husband was fighting a terminator with a CURTAIN ROD. He's hamburger.
Flash back to the future, with Derek lying in some kind of hospital bed, with someone in the foreground injecting something into his IV. We see her face through a Hazmat suit. It's Lauren. Back to the present now, and Lauren catches David looking at her. "What?" she says. "Nothing. I just know that look," he says. Then he grabs his big ol' gun and goes out to, I don't know, patrol or establish a perimeter or whatever.
After the commercial break, we're in 2027 at the Serrano Point resistance base. It's good to see Derek's just as diplomatic in the future, as he tells some general that his plan sucks: "You can't use metal for this!" The general tells him only one person out of two hundred survived the bio-weapon attack, and since terminators are immune to disease, that's why they're going in. Derek, getting angrier, says terminators aren't immune to going bad and putting a bullet in the end of someone they desperately need to live so they can all survive the plague. He volunteers to go in. "Once exposed, there's no way to know how long you've got," says the general, saying the symptoms could take four or twenty hours to show up. "This could be a one-way trip," he tells David, who is so hardcore he sneers, "We're all on one-way trips."
So General Perry gives him a lecture about how Kyle isn't out there: "Either you learn to live with that, or you die from it." The general walks away, and after glaring at him for a moment, Derek goes his own way.
Back in the present, Anne's sleeping when Derek comes back. "You wanna tell me how it found you?" he asks Lauren, who stays silent. "It's best if I know," he tells her. Lauren admits that it was her fault, because she called a friend, Roger. "I needed to feel normal, you know? Like a person." Derek's all sympathetic: "So you broke the rules?" Yeah, Don't worry about making her feel like it's her fault her mom is dying, Derek. "Rule number one is, there is no normal," says Lauren.
Six months ago, she and the rest of her family were hobbling back into the cabin, with David nursing some kind of leg injury. This is the part where Sarah basically gets to say, "I told you so." There's some sort of trophy oar hanging above the fireplace, which Sarah snaps like a breadstick to make a splint for gimpy David. Strangely, half an oar and some duct tape don't make for a great splint, and David can still barely stand up. He tells them to leave him and head for "Schaeffer's place," about a mile down the road. "No one gets left behind," says Sarah. Anne says, "What about your daughter?" and explains that Cameron isn't exactly human. "No freaking way," says Lauren. Sarah says she needs to know why that thing is after one of them. "Either of you work in computers?" she says, "I'm a banker. She's a housewife," he says, gesturing at Anne, and then at his daughter: "She's ... nothing." "Hey!" says Lauren. "You know what I mean," he says, almost apologetically. Anne brings David some Oxy. "I have a bulging disc," he explains. That's not how Anne tells it! Oh, and it's L-4, in case you don't believe him. He says they don't know what they did, so they can't help her. Meanwhile, Sarah's examining the door. "What's this door handle made of?" she asks. "It's oil-rubbed copper," says David, or, as a non-douchebag might say, "copper."
So Sarah heads out to the shed and starts poking around. She hears footsteps, and gets her gun ready, only it turns out to be Lauren, asking if she needs any help. "You can look for flashlights," says Sarah. Lauren asks what she's doing, and Sarah tells her she's making a trap. She asks if they have any "hole saw bits." "Like for making birdhouses?" says Lauren, and Sarah makes a face and says, "I don't know. I don't make birdhouses." Maybe not, but you are aware that there are such things as birdhouses, and that you would probably use one of those bits to make the entrance, right? Lauren starts blathering about her and her dad making a million birdhouses but having yet to see a bird eat there. And Lauren seems to think fighting cyborgs is so much cooler than making birdhouses, and Sarah says she'd trade for birdhouses any damn day.
Lauren keeps on with the mind-numbing chit-chat until Sarah finally just up and asks her why she came out here. She says she stands there like she's got a secret but she doesn't say anything, reminding her of her son. "You really do this with a kid?" says Lauren. "He's why I do this," says Sarah. Anyway, the secret is this: David's not being straight with her.
So Sarah stomps back to bust on David about Sym Dyne, this cybernetics company. Sarah's all, "Yeah, when I asked why a CYBORG might be after you? THIS IS RELEVANT." Lauren surprises her dad by having the actual e-mails from the company. David's holding out because the work he's doing isn't exactly legal. So the Fields start squabbling, with Anne upset about the illegality, and David angrily asking his daughter what she's doing on his computer. "Looking at lesbian porn, dad. What's the difference?" And not even the threat of death from a futuristic killing machine is enough to prevent parents from having a little freakout over the possibility of their daughter being gay. She's not though. "Thanks for knowing me," she snaps. Sarah has gone over to examine the door again, but is probably by this point thinking that it's fine with her if the T-888 gets them. Then she shushes them. "They're hunting," she says, looking out the window. "Each other." "So are we safe?" asks Anne. Sarah doesn't respond. She just starts hacking into to the wall with an axe.
Back in the present, Lauren says, "No one is ever safe." She hops down from the table, saying she needs some air. Derek hands her a gun. "Do you know how to use this? If you do, take it. If you don't, leave it. You don't go outside without it." Lauren expertly checks the clip, and gives Derek a half-smile before she goes.
At Eagle Rock bunker -- look, do they need to tell us it's 2027? Doesn't the dystopian landscape clue us in -- Derek, wearing some kind of facemask, gingerly makes his way through all the bodies on the floor, hanging off beds. It's like a frat house on a Sunday morning. It kind of looks like a first-person shooter for the Xbox. Among the dead are what looks like a family, with a woman who is (was) very much pregnant.
He heads back outside, gasping for air, looking more than a little freaked out. He stands there a moment, staring at his gun, but before he decides to off himself, he's surprised by a woman holding a very large gun on him. It's Jesse. She glances down. "Your fly's open," she says. "Well, it pays to advertise," is what Derek should have said, instead of nothing.
Back in the present day, he's working on bandaging a wound on Anne's arm when she stirs and asks where her daughter is. Derek says she went out for some air, which doesn't win him any love from her. "Your kid'll be fine," Derek tells her. "She hasn't been a kid for months," says Anne, which Derek, clearly thinking of his whiny crybaby nephew John, says it's easy to say and think that, but it's not always the case. She tells him it sounds like he knows something about that, and he says he knows Sarah is protecting her. He doesn't buy her "I called Roger" story, since kids can adapt to this sort of thing better than adults can. He's guessing Anne called this "Roger" guy.
Six months ago, Sarah merrily hacks into the wall so she can pull out some wiring and attach it to the door handle. She tells Lauren that the shock will force the Terminator to reboot, and they'll have two minutes to get the chip out of its head. "Does that work?" asks Lauren. Sarah admits it sometimes doesn't work. Dave takes the time to bicker at his wife some more for not questioning how the money was coming in. "I assumed you were earning it!" she yells, and stomps off to go to the bathroom, which she assumes is OK with him.
Only Sarah catches her in the bedroom on the phone. Anne, clearly lying, says she was just checking the phone lines. Then there's a little boring chatter about how they're not like Sarah. They're normal. "I was normal. I had to learn this," says Sarah. Anne whines that she thought a crisis was supposed to bring a family closer together. "Don't confuse close with happy," Sarah advises. Their bonding is interrupted by Lauren, who says she sees something coming down the road. Sarah orders her away from the window, but she says she thinks it's Mr. Schaeffer. "Roger, from down the road," explains David. "These things can look like anyone," says Sarah, readying her gun, and getting even more convinced when the dog starts barking. But Anne says she knows it's him, and frantically goes to the door to rip off the wire booby-trap. David's awfully confused about why Roger's even coming here, since David told him they were going camping. Anyway, Anne opens the door and yells for Roger to come inside. "He's coming to see me, OK?" she tells everyone in the cabin. Ohhhh. Yeah, this is awkward. Sarah glances at Lauren for an explanation. "She never goes camping. She keeps the home fires going," says Lauren. Poor kid! Knows about her dad's illegal activity, knows about her mom's affair. "With Roger?" says David, looking kinda stunned. "Don't confuse close with happy," Anne says, looking at Sarah. Lady, I don't think your family
is in danger of being thought of as either one of those.
Back to the present, where Anne admits that she called Roger. She just needed to "let him know," she says. And now he's dead. Sure hope he appreciates it. Oh, and she figures David's dead too. And Lauren and this baby will be all that's left of her when this is all over. She marvels at her daughter trying to protect what's left of her dignity. "She needs it to be normal," says Derek, unusually empathetic. Well, not that empathetic. She starts to wheeze, and he tells her to stop talking, because it's bringing her heart rate up. Funny, it's having the opposite effect on me.
Back in the future, Jesse lowers her gun after figuring it wasn't Derek who sent the signal her shore party picked up. Must be someone in the radio room, she figures. "I didn't make it that far in," says Derek, forgetting to add, "before I came running out and started thinking about blowing my head off." He wants to know about this "shore patrol" thing. She breezily talks about the supply runs they've been making from Perth for months now in a nuclear sub. And not just ANY nuclear sub: the Jimmy Carter. "Who drives it?" he asks. "Not who. What," says Jesse, explaining that they've got a "scrubbed trip-eight" running it. You can imagine how Derek takes this news, but Jesse shrugs it off, telling him that if he finds her a sub commander who survived "J-Day" she'll sub him in. "Have a little faith, mate; she'll be apples," says Jesse, who's rather overdoing it with the Australian slang. He hands her a mask so they can go inside. She asks if it'll work. "Probably not," he admits. They head back inside, making their way through to the radio room, and Derek knocks on the locked door. No response. "Come on," he says, and hammers again. The door opens ...
... and we're back in the present, with Anne screaming in pain. "We need to get her to a hospital," says Lauren, running back in. Derek tells her that until Sarah Connor walks through that door, the safest place is right there. "My baby," cries Anne, apologizing to Lauren.
Back six months ago, the Fields family was having a good ol' row about Anne's affair with Roger. Dave wants to know when it started. "Was it last summer when I couldn't travel because of my back accident?" he says. She says he has a bulging disc from sleeping on his stomach. "You have a weak core!" she yells. "At least my core isn't a slut!" he yells back. Then she calls him a "hophead," like when have you EVER heard that term used? This fight is hilarious. Roger, who doesn't like the man he's cuckolding to say bad things about his girlfriend, so he's all, "That's your wife," on David, who isn't interested in listening. Sarah actually has to fire the shotgun into the ceiling to get the two of them to shut up, but that is just a brief respite, as Roger immediately starts in on Anne about how Sarah is a crazy person, and the guy out in the woods is probably her "meth-head boyfriend." He becomes a lot more convinced when Cameron's body comes flying through the window. "What the hell is that?" asks Roger. Convinced now? Charles Barkley starts yapping and then jumps through the now-glassless window running up the road. Lauren watches him go, and we get to hear the noise go from barking to whimpering to silence. And then here comes the T-888, slowly walking down the path. So wait -- he threw Cameron from that far back? Nice shot!
Roger shows his true colours by heading for the back door, leaving everyone else. David, on the other hand, grabs the gun jammed in the waistband of Cameron's jeans and heads for the front door. Anne shrieks at him and Sarah tells him she can't allow him to do it. He tells her he doesn't give a damn about Skynet; he's just trying to save his family, and if she won't let him, he'll just end it right here. He puts the gun under his chin. Anne covers her face. Lauren cries, "Daddy!" Sarah just stands there, so David heads out the door and hobbles up the road.
He meets the Terminator, a guy with the look of a hockey enforcer, scratched up, all kinds of metal exposed after tussling with Cameron. David tells him he's David Fields: "I'm the one that you want!" The terminator grabs him by the throat and assesses him: No target match. Threat level: none. The terminator tosses him aside and keeps walking.
Inside the house, Sarah's showing off her terminator expertise by deducing that it's not after David but one of them two. "Someone's not telling me something," she says. "David doesn't know. It's not his," says Anne. "You're pregnant?" says Sarah. Since she says she can only help one of them run, looks like it's going to be Anne. She hides Lauren in the closet while she helps Anne to Roger's truck. You really think it's still going to be there by the time you make it over? Lauren assures her mom she'll be OK. "You sure?" asks Sarah. "I mean, I'd rather be making birdhouses," says Lauren, and maybe you two can have a touching moment when a terminator ISN'T RIGHT OUTSIDE.
Back in the present day, Anne's breathing is getting worse; her intubation jar is filled with blood. She apologizes to Lauren for doing this to her. Lauren's upset because she doesn't know what this is about. "It's about you and your little sister," says Derek. Lauren asks how he knows ... ohhhhhh. "You're from the future," she says. Derek says her sister's name is Sydney (well, if it wasn't before, it will be now), and he knew her.
Back to 2027, where the radio room door is opened by a gaunt brunette. Like if Wednesday Addams looked less healthy. "Those gas masks, they won't help. You're already infected," she says. Not much for small talk, this one.
After the commercial break, Derek looks outside the bunker at the sunlight and says they'll have to wait until nightfall to head back to Serrano Point. Jesse tosses something called "plumpynut," which is peanut butter mixed with baby formula and vitamin powder. Hope it tastes as good as it sounds. "You guys are growing your own food again?" says Derek. Jesse says it beats chasing rabbits, and this was all set up so Derek and Jesse can talk about the invading rabbit population in Australia that the country tried to wipe out, including with a disease, but a few survived and so in a few years the country was overrun again, and I'll spare you the details because I'm pretty sure you all get it.
Afterwards, she asks Derek for his canteen because she's parched. Derek hands it over, and wipes the sweat from his brow. He glances over at Sydney, and then suddenly wants to leave now. "In broad daylight," says an incredulous Jesse. Derek doesn't say anything, so Sydney does: "It starts with a dry mouth. And then the sweats. And the fever and shaking starts. And then your lungs fill up with fluid and then you die. You don't have much time. It's coming." Debbie Downer here must be a lot of fun at parties. "Let's go," says Derek, and Jesse checks her own forehead for sweat.
In the present day, Anne, while dying, is all, "So you're from the future," she says. She's pieced together that if he knows her daughter in the future, then she must make it. Derek says there's an immunity in Sydney's blood. She saves a lot of people. This makes Anne happy, and she asks if Sydney saves Lauren too, but before Derek can answer, Anne starts gasping again.
Six months ago, Lauren is hiding in the closet when someone goes for the door. She cowers behind some coats, but it's only Roger -- who then gets incapacitated by Cameron, who looks like she's feeling all better. "He's human?" says Cameron. "Of course!" yells Lauren. "My mistake," says Cameron, not exactly looking broken up about it. She gives Lauren her hand.
Meanwhile, Anne and Sarah are being chased through the woods by the terminator, and they're fortunate to cross the road at exactly the right time for Cameron to hit the T-888 with a Jeep. Anne and Cameron pile into the Jeep with Lauren, Cameron and David. The terminator chases after the Jeep, but since no one can really do what Robert Patrick did, the Jeep quickly loses it.
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Back in the present day, Anne's still screaming. "She's fully dilated," says Lauren, who became an obstetrician when no one was looking. It appears Derek's going to have to deliver this kid.
So of course, he does, and it's fine, and Lauren brings the little purple thing over to her mother who smiles and has a look, and then lays her head back down and dies. Just like that. Lauren's face gets lumpy and she leaves.
In 2027, it looks like the daylight return to Serrano Point was uneventful. At any rate, if anything happened, we don't get to see it. All we get is a dialogue-free slow-motion scene of Derek, Jesse and Sydney being greeted by Hazmat suit wearing soldiers, including General Perry, who gives Derek the Solemn Nod of Respect.
In the present day, Derek pulls a sheet over Anne's head. to him, Lauren rocks little baby Sydney. Lauren, I hope you're able to lactate.
Back in 2027, Derek and Jesse are side by side in field hospital beds. Jesse asks Derek if he knows what Oscar Wilde's last words were. "'Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.'" Derek's too busy having trouble breathing to appreciate Wilde's last perfect quip to give a shit. "I thought it'd be over by now," he says. Jesse, in the same difficulty he is, tells him he's ready for it. Nuh-uh, says Derek. "Then what were you doing when I found you outside Eagle Rock?" she says. "I think ... I was waiting for you," he says. Smooth. His chances of getting laid just skyrocketed. Assuming he lives. And assuming Jesse lives, which is looking less likely as she starts hacking up a lung.
A couple of Hazmat-suit wearers come in to inject some stuff into their IV lines. Derek looks up and sees Lauren. "Thank you for saving my sister," she says. Wow, she hasn't aged a day. Must be the leisurely life in a post-apocalyptic hell-world.
In the present day, Derek's holding Sydney now. "I've been where you are," he tells Lauren. "There are days when you don't think you can go on, but you will. Because she needs you to. We all do." She says even if they kill that thing, there are more out there. "Does it ever end?" she asks him. He admits he doesn't know. But that is what they're working for. He invites them to come stay with them. I hope he means at Jesse's place, because it's not like he ever hangs out at the Connor compound anymore.
Lauren says she doesn't know, and takes her sister back. Breathe in that new baby smell! For anyone who doesn't know, and I didn't know until my daughter was born, babies smell really, really good. Well, most of the time, anyway.
Six months ago, Sarah, Cameron and the Fields have made it far enough to take a break at a diner. Lauren asks Sarah when she got it: "When this happened to you, how long 'til you knew everything was going to be different?" "Right away," says Sarah. Lauren looks over at her parents, who are in remarkably good spirits. "I don't know if they get it," she says. Sarah says they'll need her help. "They always have," says Lauren, and Sarah leaves while Lauren goes over to sit with her parents in the booth.
And six months later, it's all gone to hell, huh? Derek gets on the phone with Sarah, asks if she got the triple-eight. Is she sure? She's sure. He tells her the baby's fine. "Girl's a tough kid. I told her she could come stay with us. ... Well, it can't get much worse, can it?" Plus, she can kick in some rent money!
He heads back into the room with Anne's dead body, but Lauren's not there. She's left her St. Jude's medallion on her mother's corpse. "Lauren, you forgot your medallion! Lauren! You forgot your -- I'll just hang on to it! Call me!"
Ever noticed how John Connor is really more of a whiny teenager than a post-apocalyptic leader? Yeah. So have we.