Episode Report Card Daniel: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Suboceanic Homesick Blues
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 03.13.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.You think Jesse doesn't feel? She feels! After killing Riley, she feels like going out drinking and getting in fights with off-duty military personnel, which means she needs to get bailed out by Derek, who's none too pleased about it. He comes off kinda dumb this episode, what with the way Jesse is practically wearing a T-shirt that says, "Ask me about my involvement with Riley's death" the way she keeps trying to make Derek see the positive side of Riley's death, which is that it'll drive a wedge between John and Cameron (whom Derek wrongly believes killed Riley).
John's suspicious of Cameron as well, but something about how hot Cameron is seems to persuade John that she's not lying to him (this time). Sarah's less enthralled than John, and seems to want to throw Cameron in the fire with which she's destroying all the spare terminator parts, which she found in the garage. The Connor Clan is leaving the compound, much to the chagrin of their neighbor and her massive boobs.
Speaking of dumb, Ellison helps Weaver find her missing daughter, who is playing a building-wide game of hide and seek thanks to Chrome Artie, who needs a chewing-out by Ellison for playing a dangerous game with a little child. That's fine. But Ellison could have been a little more unnerved by the fact that Weaver's missing daughter didn't unnerve her very much.
Flashback/forwards tell us the story of a mission undertaken by Jesse and her sub (the S.S. Minnow, right?) with the scrubbed T-888 as its captain, Queeg (played by Chad Coleman, also known as "Cutty" from The Wire). The good news is Queeg steers the sub to safety during an encounter with a much more powerful terminator submarine. The bad news is that Queeg's got another mission Jesse didn't even know about, from John Connor, which involves the crew picking up a package along the way. The show's to be continued next week, so we'll have to wait until then to see what's in the case. Unless it's like Pulp Fiction and we never do. Man, more people need to get shot on this show. Come on! Ratings bonanza!
Want more? The full recap starts right below! Jesse sits in her hotel room. In a chair. Lips pursed. She sits between two matching lamps on matching end tables, and she reaches over to the one on her left and shifts it slightly. I kind of expected a compartment to pop open with, like, a gun, or blueprints. Action Comics #1. Then she glances over into the other room and remembers that she needs to finish zipping up the body bag that Riley is lying in. Man, she's just like me in college! Whenever I had a big job to do, like finish an essay, or dispose of a body, I'd usually put it off by tidying up my room first. Lamp adjustment all finished now, she goes and zips Riley up.We fade to white and into a flash-forward to the resistance base at Serrano Point in 2027, with Jesse getting ready to leave on a mission and Derek apparently being all antsy about it, even though she calls it a "milk run," and he's worried about the terminator-infested waters she needs to get through, and she wonders if he's going to be like this every time she ships out. Worried about her? Life's rough, Jesse. He tells her he's going on a mission too, and she's all, "Oh, one of those missions," and he says it isn't one of those missions, but is awfully evasive when she tries to get him to tell her just what his mission is. All he'll say is that it's "different." Presumably we're talking about the jump back to the present day, so I'm not sure what she means by "one of those missions." Anyway, he's also not happy about the fact that her submarine is piloted by a scrubbed terminator, and she says that "Queeg" (awesome choice for the name) is a "good bloke," and Derek snaps that he's not a bloke at all. "Jesse, he's not on our side. Don't ever think that," he sassies. He tells her to aim for the chip. And they suck face for a little bit, and Jesse says, "I love you too," even though Derek didn't say it (unless he tapped out Morse code with his tongue or something), and they separate and Jesse calls after Derek to say "hooroo," which means, she says, "I'll see you later." And he says it back.
Back in the present day, Sarah is stuffing a bunch of bundles of money into a sack, and John strolls in and asks what she's doing, and she says she's "moving," and John looks reasonably accepting of this, saying it's probably about the right time, and she tells him to gather up his Fall Out Boy and Panic At The Disco CDs, and she's about to tackle the garage, and he too quickly says he'll do it, and he makes up an excuse that he's got a bunch of "memory cards and flash drives" out there, and he doesn't want to erase his old copy of Space Invaders, and she tells him the garage is all his.
Of course, the real reason he doesn't want his mom out there cleaning is that there's a boatload of old terminator parts out there. Cameron's setting some out on the table when John comes in, and he says, "It looks like a robot serial killer lives here. Oh, I guess one does!" and she tells him she's doing "inventory" and he's worried about his mom coming in and seeing it. He tells her to dig a hole out back where they'll bury the parts and come back later for them when they've found a place to burn them. "And we will burn them," he tells her. She stays silent.
Jesse has decided that moping around her hotel room isn't cinematic enough, so she's sitting at a bar listlessly stirring her drink. From a table nearby, some navy dude in a flight jumpsuit comes over from his table of fellow military men, and he cheerfully asks what she's drinking, and she sullenly says she doesn't know, just that there's some booze, some sugary stuff to cut the burning taste, and ice. And then looks up at him all doe-eyed and says it's almost empty.
And he tells the bartender to get her another one of whatever she's drinking, because I'm guessing he's got a thing for surly women with cuts all over their faces. And then he wonders how she orders a drink if she doesn't know the name of it, and she's all, "Just like you did," and then he says "it has to start somewhere," and blah blah blah, and then she tells him, "You ask a lot of questions for a guy who wants to get in my pants," which kind of catches him off-guard, and then she's complimenting his "costume" and asks him if he's contemplating a career in the military, and he says, "Actually, I fly P3s," "Oh, brownshoe," she says, which is a term I'm not familiar with, and he nods, and she says she works on a sub, which makes her a "bubblehead," I guess, and he's all, "They let women on subs in Australia?" "We program killer robots, too," she says, and then he starts talking about how weird it is that he hunts subs and she drives one, and then says they're like the wolf and the sheepdog ("not that I'm comparing you to a dog," he wimpily assures her). And she calls it a "good point" and stands up and says she just remembered something. "Sheepdogs hate wolves," she says, and punches him in the face, and instantly the other dudes at his table stand up and start menacingly advancing on her. She's like five feet tall!
So then Kacy, played by Busy Phillips, is helping Sarah pack up, by which I mean she's sitting there blathering on and occasionally handing Sarah packing tape. She says they'll "totally keep in touch," and Sarah agrees, totally not meaning it. Sarah won't let her carry any boxes anyway, even though what's-her-name says she snapped back to "fighting trim" like an elastic band after the pregnancy, and she's planning to breastfeed her kid until he's five so she can trick her body into keeping the massive boobs she now has. Maybe that's why Seth Rogen is across the street staring at her.
Speaking of which, who's got the baby? Trevor does, says Kacy. Not that Trevor's back, LIKE WE CARE EITHER WAY, but Trevor needed some "daddy time" after what he saw last night, which was a body they fished out of the river, a girl who'd been shot through the chest. Trevor said it looked like she'd been executed.
"Pretty little blond thing," laments Kacy, speculating the girl came to the promised land from Iowa to be an actress and fell in with the wrong crowd. Trevor said all they have to go on are scars from an attempted suicide, as well as a tattoo of a "pretty little star" on her wrist. Sarah's all, "mmm-hmm," thoughtfully.
And she goes out to the garage where John and Cameron are STILL sorting through the forbidden technology pile, when Cameron announces that Sarah is coming, so they hastily clean everything up. And Sarah comes in and says, "I need to talk to John," and Cameron stands there until Sarah's all, "now!" and Cameron looks to John to get the all-clear and he nods for her to go.
So she strolls outside, and spots a pigeon on top of a brick wall, like what is with the death wish these stupid birds have? Is the Connor Compound some kind of test of bird fearlessness? She gets a little closer and the bird flies away. "Goodbye bird. There's a fifty-one percent chance I wouldn't have killed you." Not bad odds!
Anyway, in the garage, Sarah's talking to John, who looks stunned at whatever she's telling him, and then he walks outside and stares at Cameron for a moment before continuing on to the house. Sarah comes out and starts to say, "Cameron..." only Cameron cuts her off to say she already knows: "I heard you. Riley's dead."
John's staring out into the darkness outside when Cameron comes out on the deck or the porch or wherever we are. He's playing with the little pocketwatch/Cameron-disintegrator thing she made him. "Was it you? Did you kill her?" he asks, and he rudely doesn't even turn around or anything. "What if I did?" asks Cameron. Whoa, a little bit of sassiness. Stick that finger in the wound, Cameron. John tells her not to play games with him, and says he needs the truth. She says she didn't kill her. "I wanna believe you," he says, pointing out that sometimes she lies to him. "Yes, I do, but I'm not lying now. And I am sorry." For what, he asks. "For your loss," she says. He says he wants to believe that too, and stomps off into the house past Cameron, standing there impassively.
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