Episode Report Card Daniel: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 17 | Aired on 03.06.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.This show finally gets back to following up on the fallout from Riley slitting her wrists in the Connor Compound bathroom. Sarah goes to Riley's foster parents' place to try to sniff out any truth to the suggestion that Riley's bruise came from the fist of her foster father, and she's none too subtle in asking about it, pissing off the foster father, who reveals that Riley attacked his wife, while freaking out about a hellish vision of the world featuring bleached skulls. Oh, and by the way, the guidance counselor thinks John is a bad influence on Riley as well.
So Sarah goes to see the counselor, who turns out to be Jesse (not that Sarah knows who she is), who shares with Sarah all of the Connor activity that Riley has seen fit to share with her.
Sarah's none too happy about Riley's big mouth. Nor John's for that matter, although he denies telling Riley anything. Sarah doesn't believe him. And this only makes Riley seem like even more of a threat to John, which makes Cameron want to take her out. Cameron also thinks Riley saw her arm opened up so she could tinker with the wiring inside; she totally did, but plays dumb anyway because, Jesse warns her, Cameron will slaughter you. Which, as it turns out, is apparently Jesse's plan anyway: to have Cameron kill Riley, turning John against metal.
And Riley wants none of it anymore, so she attacks Jesse, who fights back and eventually puts a bullet into Riley's chest. You know, not long after Riley transformed into essential plot point from annoying half-forgotten subplot. Jesse may yet achieve her goal, since John doesn't believe Cameron doesn't know anything about Riley's disappearance.
Derek might as well be on a totally different show at this point. Same with Weaver, Ellison, and Chrome Artie. Cameron tells John about the self-destruct she's placed in her head, since it's become necessary and terminators can't destroy themselves. Poor John, I hope he doesn't realize that all the women around him seem to be trying to kill themselves.
Want more? The full recap starts right below! There's a pigeon flitting around the Connor Compound. Cameron's watching it, then, amazingly, tries to persuade it to leave. "You shouldn't nest in the chimney," Cameron tells it. The pigeon declines to answer. "You're migratory. You need to find a mate." Already tired of the lecture, the pigeon flies into the window. "That's a window, bird." So the pigeon tries to fly by her, but she reaches up and snags it.Holding the bird, Cameron walks outside. "I'm not supposed to kill you, but you can't stay here," she tells it. When I was a bartender, that's exactly what I told people at closing time. People eventually got the message. She holds the bird up and tells it to go, but it does not. Possibly because Cameron starts to squeeze it, and then drops it, dead, on the ground. She stares at her hand, figures twitching, looking mildly alarmed. Since most of the time her features are expressionless, she's completely freaking out.
Sarah's brushing her teeth in the bathroom, and then looks over at the huge bloodstain on the floor, like "Oh, yeah. That." So she hauls out a can of Nova Brite and is scrubbing away and suddenly Riley's standing there. "I was wondering when we'd see you again," says Sarah, instead of, say, "hello" or "how are you." Riley's wrists are bandaged, and she says, "They make you rest a couple days." Sarah asks if it helps, and Riley says it doesn't.
Speaking of helping, Sarah's used up all the Nova Brite, and Riley asks if there's some anywhere else, and Sarah tells her that it's in the kitchen, so Riley volunteers to go get it, which seems fair.
Only instead of bringing it back, she sits on the kitchen counter with it, reading about how it's deadly to people and domestic animals, and in case you're wondering if maybe she's thinking of trying to kill herself again, here comes Capt. Sunshine himself, John Connor, and she says she needed a "minute alone," and John asks if "she" said anything, and Riley says she asked her, but she thinks Sarah was just trying to be nice. The nickname "Suicide Blond"? Not so nice! It's John's opinion that it's not anybody's business, and Riley has to point out that she did do it right in their bathroom. And then they talk some more about forgetting things and things that are in the past, and he strokes her hair, and meanwhile poor Sarah is up there just waiting for the Nova Brite, and eventually she gives up and goes to get it herself and it's just been left there sitting in the middle of the hallway, like thanks for nothing, Riley.
Elsewhere, Derek is shooting at a row of apples out in the bush near an oil derrick, like how wasteful is that, and he misses one, so of course the sight must be off. Jesse smirks and offers to give it a try, and takes the gun. Derek says it's nice to be able to waste bullets on apples, and I for one would much rather watch these people waste bullets on each other, and then Derek says April 21, 2011, was Judgment Day for him, and wants to know what hers was, but she's too busy missing apples as well, and avoids the question, and then eventually says that whatever it was, it's probably changed now, so there's no point worrying about it.
Derek says he needs her help with something, and she says, "Didn't I just help you with something? This morning in the shower?" and I'd appreciate it if the two of them can keep their damn hands off each other for two damn minutes, and Derek says there's a guy with information he needs. "So ask him," says Jesse, helpful as always. "Not that kind of guy. Not that kind of information," says Derek. Skynet, deduces Jesse, and Derek nods. She tells him she's here to win the war, not prevent it. "John Connor," says Derek, and Jesse does likewise. Derek says she keeps saying that, but he doesn't know what it means: "So either help me with my plan, or show me some progress on yours." She asks him what he needs. Another shower, probably.
Sarah's sifting through some piles of documents on the dining room table, looking for something she can't find. She tells Cameron that there was a stack of papers on the lawyer who set up the drone shell company. "Derek took it," says Cameron. "So he's chasing it down?" asks Sarah, but Cameron doesn't know. Sarah gets all ticked off, saying Derek should keep her in the loop: "It's my loop," she says, and Cameron says she's been distracted. "I was kidnapped," says Sarah. "Which is distracting," points out Cameron.
So because Sarah's not in a foul enough mood, she asks Cameron about Riley, and Cameron tells her about the bruise on Riley's face the day she tried to commit suicide, which John thinks is from her foster father. Sarah asks if Cameron agrees, but she's not sure: "We don't know much about Riley," says Cameron, who offers to go visit the foster parents, but Sarah says she'll do it. It is her loop, after all.
Then there's a closeup of a wrist, and someone is slitting it open with a razor blade! Gah! Oh, it's just Cameron, judging from the machinery inside. She cuts lengthwise down her arm too, with it resting on a table in the garage. She starts poking around as her fingers twitch.
Outside, Riley strolls up to retrieve her bicycle, leaning against the garage. She peers through the window, and sees Cameron tinkering with her arm. Freaked out, she grabs her bike and gets out of there. Cameron hears her leaving, and goes to the door and watches her. Riley pauses, briefly; her eyes widen, but she doesn't turn around.
So it's great that Cameron, after being concerned about being spotted by Riley, goes right back to work on her freaky terminator arm with the garage door actually ajar. John comes in, and Cameron tells him that she killed a bird. John's all, "Not the bird in the chimney," like maybe he had grown attached to it or something. Then he asks if the bird cut her arm. Yeah, the straight surgical incision that ripped open her forearm, a bird did that. "The bird experienced an involuntary movement of my fingers," says Cameron, which is, I suppose, one way of putting it. She's digging around because there's been some damage done to her arm but she doesn't know how it happened. John figures it happened during a fight, which is brilliant speculation on his part; I can easily see why mankind depends on this kind of genius. "You're not designed to fight other machines," he says, so I guess it's too bad that she's been sent back in time BY him to fight other machines FOR him.
But it's tough luck for Cameron, says John, because it's not like they have a box of spare terminator parts just lying around. At which point Cameron is all, "Yeah, the thing about that is..." and then she pulls out a box of spare terminator parts, as well as Christmas decorations. John's pissed about it: "You're supposed to burn the endos," he says. "Not all of them," says Cameron, and John says, "Says who?" and it turns out Future John said it was OK, and Future John, being all grown up and not a crabby whiner, outranks present John. "I have damage to my hand, and now you're able to fix it," says Cameron simply. John contines to glower. "Future John has better information than you do," she says. Nicer, too, she thinks.
Riley's waiting on the side of the road, and Jesse pulls up. Riley's all, "She's gonna kill me!" and Jess asks what happened, only she refers to Cameron as "it" rather than "she." Riley says Cameron cut her wrists open, and Jesse asks her why it did that, and Riley doesn't know, but she says Cameron knows she saw her do it. "If she knew you saw, you'd be dead," says Jesse, which probably isn't as comforting as I bet she thinks it is. Riley paces. "I wonder what's wrong with it," says Jesse, and asks Riley if Cameron's been acting strange. "Everything she does is strange!" snaps Riley, who says she can't go back there. Jesse ain't hearing that though, and tells her to remember the mission. "Trust me, there is only one way. I won't let Cameron hurt you." She strokes Riley's hair. People like to do that to Riley. "I won't let anyone hurt yo