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Upon taking the mysterious box aboard the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, Jesse's crew, led by an increasingly insubordinate Dietz, rebel against the lack of information being provided them, and take it upon themselves to find out just what is in that box they're risking life and limb for. It's a T-1000, the shape-shifting terminator, which promptly kills one of the crew and slithers off like mercury into the nooks and crannies of the ship. Anti-tin can tension festers into outright mutiny and the crew lay the boots to Jesse in the mess hall, with Queeg stepping in, killing Dietz in the process. Jesse tries to relieve Queeg of the ship, but Queeg says his classified orders override normal behavioural protocols, so Jesse shoots him in the head, and sends the sub plummeting to crush depth. Just before she abandons ship, the T-1000 coalesces in front of her and tells her to tell John Connor that the answer is no.
She herself doesn't get to talk to John Connor but has to relay the message through Cameron, who lets her no that the question prompting the response was "Will you join us?" Oh, and one more thing, Jesse: you were pregnant. You aren't anymore, though. Cheers!
John confronts Jesse in her hotel room, because he's known for a little while that Riley was from the future herself; little phrases tipped him off. He'd followed her, and he figured out Jesse's plan. After a ton of blah blah blah, he lets Jesse go without shooting her. But she's not out of the woods yet; Derek confronts her in the parking lot, all suavely leaning against his truck and listening to music. There is much talk of sacrifice between the two of them, with Derek reminiscing about his good friend Billy Wisher, who was actually Andy Goode, who wrote the program that became Skynet. "John Connor let you go," Derek tells Jesse. "But I'm not John Connor." Jesse runs for it, and Derek pulls his gun. He seems to be in the process of depressing the trigger, but we never actually see the shot fired, we never actually see Jesse die. It seems likely she's dead, but it's also easy to think this is a case of the writers allowing us to fill in the blanks themselves, while also giving themselves an out if they need to have Jesse alive some time in the future.
John's leadership is being forged before our eyes, and the responsibilities he will shoulder in the future are weighing upon him, so is anyone going to begrudge him crying in his mother's lap because of his dead girlfriend (oh, and also because he needs to save humanity?).
Oh, and John Henry is some kind of miniature-painting Dungeons and Dragons nerd now, but we can talk about that later.
Fucking stellar.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!So last week was such a gripping cliffhanger that we naturally open with Derek and John just sitting there in Unky John's truck, and Derek tells John he's sorry about Riley, who didn't deserve what happened to her, and John sullenly says that people rarely do, and I for one am having a really hard time telling apart mopey John whose girlfriend was alive vs. mopey John whose girlfriend was just murdered.
John asks Derek how long he could survive against Cameron if she wanted him dead. "What kind of weapon do I have?" asks Derek, like maybe John's going to say "a nuclear bomb" or something. "Your fists and your elbows and your fingernails and your teeth," says John. "Against her? Those aren't weapons," says Derek, who allows that John already knows the answer: "If she wants me dead, I'm dead." John agrees and says he wants to talk about something, like OH GOOD, MORE TALKING, and he says he wants to talk about the future, and Derek says, "Yours?" and John says, "Yours."
Meanwhile, Jesse's at a swimming pool, and there's no one there but her, and she's staring at a bulletin board that has all kinds of notices posted all over it, but also it has these weird random shots of families on it, like there's a family of five all wearing hard hats for some reason, and I can't think of anything I'd like less than if my parents had put up the family photo of that summer vacation when my aunt and uncle and my cousins came to visit and we had matching sweatshirts printed up. I mean, my GOD. But speaking now as a father? I think it would be kind of awesome to have matching sweatshirts printed up for a family vacation.
Anyway, Jesse stares at the bulletin board and then goes and crouches by the pool and runs her hands in the water, and we pan into the water which takes us back to the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter in the Pacific Ocean in the year 2027. And Jesse is talking to Dietz on the radio or however they communicate from submarine to little pod thing, and he's saying they have secured the package and he sends over video of it, and the chief asks what it is and all Jesse knows is that it's Connor's box.
So the little pod enters the submarine on top, the hydraulic doors closing rather too quickly considering they're underwater (oh right, time-traveling robots, never mind). And it takes Dietz and a couple of the other men to carry the package down some steps, and Queeg stands there impassively when Dietz says "little help?" and then Queeg lifts the thing himself to secure it in the magazine: "Authorized access only," he informs them.
Dietz asks Jesse if she's going to let them know what's in the box, or if it's just between her and Queeg. "It's just between Queeg and Queeg," says Jesse, admitting she doesn't have any idea what it is. "That doesn't bother you? Metal keeping secrets from skin?" says Dietz, this weird edge to him. I mean, she's still your superior, Dietz. Jesse says (presumably pretending) that it doesn't bother her, not even a little. Dietz says it should bother her, a lot, and that one of them should know what it is, not just one of "them." "One of us knows. His name's John Connor," says Jesse, shrugging and walking away, while Dietz scowls like crazy at her.
So in the mess hall later Dietz is doing a little rabble-rousing, telling the other crew members that they work for the robots, and not the other way around. Everyone looks kind of uncomfortable, and Jesse strolls in at the back of the room and takes in the show. One of the crew speaks up to say that John Connor needed the box, so they got it, but Dietz isn't hearing that: "Connor is so into his chess match with Skynet, he doesn't see how the tin cans have got us right where they want us. Metal on every base, running the show in all but name." He says they're just waiting to hit them all at once with something big, maybe with what's in the box.
Jesse finally steps in to say break time's over, and for everyone to get back to their stations, and Dietz isn't exactly snapping to, and she tells him to get back to his rack, and he's all attitude, and she informs him that the response should be "yes, ma'am," and she says he's a good sailor, but the pressure is getting to him. "So what's getting to you, ma'am?" he snaps back.
In the present, Jesse stands on the edge of the pool for a moment before diving in.
Over at the Connor compound, Sarah is polishing the knobs on the kitchen cupboards or something really useful, like aren't you guys supposed to be moving or something? John sulks his way into the kitchen and silently sits down. "You went to see the body," says Sarah. She tells him he shouldn't have done it. She sits down across from him. He grits out that he knows it was a risk. "I don't mean the risk. You shouldn't have to remember her like that, that's all," she says. He says there were things he needed to see and understand, and she asks if he understands them now, and he says he thinks he does, and he's sorry he doubted her. She shakes her head and says, "John..." only he says, "Not you. Her," looking over her shoulder. There's Cameron standing there. Oh, hi! Didn't hear you come in. John gets up, presumably so he can go hang out on his bed with his cyborg bodyguard/girlfriend.
Back at the pool, Jesse's doing the breast stroke from one end to the other, and she holds onto the wall long enough for a closeup of a gross cut on her hand.
And then it's back to the future on the Jimmy Carter. Jesse's checking out the map with Queeg, who says they lost a day evading the ASW bots near Fiji, so they'll take a more direct route to make up the time. He asks her to tell the crew so they're prepared. "This crew can sneak through the gates of Hell and back if they need to, but they're not machines," she says, adding they perform better if they know the reason they're doing so, but all Queeg will say is that they'll perform as asked because that's what's necessary to survive and complete the mission. "You understand," he says.
Suddenly alarms start going off: motion detectors in the hold. "Unauthorized access to our cargo," says Queeg, and Jesse is already tossing him a rifle and taking one herself.
In the cargo hold, Dietz and a few of his buddies are rather easily bypassing the box's locks, physical and electronic, with a screwdriver and a crowbar, and they pry the top off just as Jesse and Queeg come down the stairs. Jesse is furious at Dietz, who says there could be anything in there, and they were just going to take it through Serrano's front door. "Of all the stupid things -- " starts Jesse, and Dietz interrupts her: "'Stupid'! Stupid is taking their word for it! For anything!" He says he's not afraid of "that thing," glaring at Queeg. He's not? I am, and Queeg is just on my television and not RIGHT THERE. "Be afraid of me," says Jesse, but Dietz brandishes the bar-code tattoo on his arm and says she didn't spend any time in a work camp so she doesn't get to tell him what to do.
Meanwhile, this woman member of Dietz's little mutinous crew is all, "guys?" and everyone turns to stare into the box, which seems to contain liquid metal, which suddenly rears itself up into human form. The woman quickly hoists her rifle, but the metal's coalescing arm shoots out into that metal pincer thing that terminators like so much, piercing her through the chest. "Metal!" yells Dietz, but Jesse stops him, and everyone continues to watch as the metal takes on the features of the dying woman impaled on its arm. It withdraws the poker, and the woman collapses, and the terminator turns toward its audience. She/it lifts up a finger, and wags it at them. Then it liquifies again, falling to the floor, and, snake-like, slithers into a nearby vent. "This is what happens!" yells Dietz at Jesse. When you don't leave a note? He yells at her to pull Queeg's chip and make him tell them what's going on. She says no, that they'll divide into search parties, and turn the ship over stem from stern until they find the thing. Queeg quietly speaks up and tells "Commander Flores" to secure all weapons, to take petty officer Goodnow's body and to return to duty. He turns and leaves. A stunned Jesse looks at an equally stunned Dietz, and then she hands her rifle to another sailor and chases after Queeg.
She catches him in a corridor and asks him if he knows what the thing is. He does. She wants him to tell her. "At least tell me. We're a team, right?" she implores. "It's not your concern," he says, and he brushes past her.
Back at the Connor Compound, Sarah's trying to screw down some floor vent, and John comes and growls that she should just throw a rug down, and "they'll never know the difference," and she tells him that she's sorry it's come to this. Not just the moving, but all of it. And then she reminisces about the time they wound up in some hippie town, going from farmers and good ol' boys to pot growers and kids named "Sequoia." He smiles, and says, "There was only one Sequoia. There were three Sages, though." Heh. There was a family in my hometown where all the kids were named after nature: River, Lake, Forest, etc. She tells him she felt bad about leaving, because he was just making friends and fitting in. Yeah, great, THIS should cheer him up. He reminds her that he was fighting every day. "Yeah, but you won those fights," she reminds him. That's one way of looking at it, he says, adding, "I hated that town," before leaving Sarah standing there, like NICE CHATTING WITH YOU, SON.
Oh, God, Ellison looks as bored as I do, because apparently John Henry has been transformed into a Dungeons & Dragons miniature-painting robo-nerd, prattling on about how it's important to put a matte layer on the miniatures, so the colors stick to it and provide the "illusion of depth," which I don't get, I mean, the miniatures are THREE-DIMENSIONAL, after all. John Henry says it's the detail work he finds most interesting, because there are so many choices. Like the eyes, which he read are the "window to the soul." "That's what they say," says Ellison, sounding ridiculously bored, and John Henry says he needs to choose the color more carefully. Ellison says it doesn't matter, because they're just statues, and they don't have a soul -- like, nice thing to say to the machine -- and John Henry looks confused and says that they have eyes. Then he says Ellison's eyes look tired, so does that mean his soul is tired? "No, my soul isn't tired, but I am," says Ellison. He gets up to go, and he picks up something that looks kind of like a remote starter for his car, only he points it at John Henry, who pleads not to be shut down, because his monster isn't complete. He's like a kid who, when his parents say it's time for bed, says, "I just have to do one thing!" Ellison sighs and picks up some paint to help him finish the damn monster. John Henry smiles. "Mr. Ellison? Does this make us friends?" Ellison looks up at him, and John Henry smiles, and Ellison doesn't even say anything, and they work in silence, and maybe Ellison's trying to teach John Henry how to be as rude as possible to the person whose company you're enjoying.
Jesse hangs underwater, eyes closed. She's somewhere in between the baby on Nevermind or Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
We're back in the break room on the Jimmy Carter, and Dietz is glaring at Garvin, who's pushing his food around on his plate. "What's the matter? You don't like hash browns?" snarls Dietz, and the poor guy just says he isn't hungry, and Dietz snaps that Garvin's always hungry, that everybody's always hungry. "How'm I supposed to eat with Goodnow dead and that thing running around out there?" says Garvin, and Dietz slides his tray over and says, "Here, have mine," like maybe MORE hash browns are the answer, and Garvin says again that he's not hungry, and Dietz says, "Maybe. Or maybe you're not really Garvin. Maybe you're that thing!" and the two of them flip their trays over while standing up and getting into each other's faces, and Jesse has to get between the two of them, and Dietz agrees, that maybe it isn't Garvin: "You're not the one who spends all day locked in a room with metal," he says, staring straight at Jesse. "Stand down, Dietz," she says, but Dietz is just getting warmed up. He says he always knew Jesse was a "metal lover," but maybe she's more than that. Maybe she's one of them: "Just like that little metal bitch that follows Connor everywhere." So he violently gropes her, saying that he should check, for "safety," and she slugs him in the neck but in a split second she's set upon by a bunch of other guys in the mess, and they slam her face down against a table and start punching her, and then throw her to the floor and start laying the boots to her. Suddenly, Queeg's in the middle of everyone, pulling people off of Jesse, with Dietz saved for last. Queeg effortlessly picks Dietz up and slams him against the wall, leaving a bit of a stain. Dietz crumples to the ground. Queeg looks around at the group. "Report to your duty stations," he says. Jesse doesn't get up; she just stares at Dietz's dead, bloodied face. This is going to mean a lot of paperwork.
Back in the Connor Compound, Cameron's headed out the door, with a gun. Like, not in her pocket or anything, actually carrying a gun. I'm sure the neighbours would love that, Cameron. Sarah tells her she's not going anywhere. John needs me, says Cameron, and Sarah says, "If John needed you, he would have asked for you. He didn't," and repeats that Cameron's not leaving the house. She says the police could identify Riley at any time, so she needs to be with him, but Sarah figures it's likely that the police would come here, so it's better that John's out. Probably better if Cameron's out, too, if the police show up, Sarah.
Sarah asks why she's here. "Protect John. Hunt Skynet. Stop Judgment Day," Cameron rattles off, but Sarah wants to know more than that. "John sent you here from the future. He sent you away. Away from him." She says maybe Cameron should think about why John didn't want her around anymore. Maybe Sarah should think about the fact that John sent her back to HIMSELF, so it's probably not because John doesn't trust Cameron.
John Henry is still up painting miniatures, only Ellison is nowhere to be seen when Weaver comes in. "You're up late," she says. "I convinced Mr. Ellison to leave this body operational," he tells her, which she calls "progress." He shows her some kind of ogre thing and tells her he made its eyes blue. "They're the window to the soul," he says. She takes it and looks at it. This one's going on the fridge!
He casually tells her that while he's been painting, he's been taking inventory at Zeira Corp -- she looks startled -- and he's discovered some things. Like a peregrine falcon nest on a ledge on the twenty-third floor, and the eggs are going to hatch soon. Weaver smiles. She knew about the nest, but not the eggs. No, if she'd known about the eggs, she would have craned her neck out the window and slithered around to eat them. Oh, and in her "private database," John Henry says, he's found letters of resignation from former employees Richard Hack, Laura Rogers and Justin Tuck. The documents included new jobs and changes of address, but he can't find any records of these people in their new locations or jobs. "Is that so," says Weaver, evenly.
John Henry's also found letters of resignation from all the employees of Project Babylon, including Mr. Murch and Mr. Ellison (the pictures pop up on the screen behind John Henry). Ellison's file has documents that indicate he's taken a new job and moved to Copenhagen. "The documents have no dates," says John Henry. Weaver says that's very interesting. "Mr. Ellison is our friend," says John Henry, and Weaver agrees. "Are you going to kill him?" asks John Henry. Nice to see his Getting Right To The Point software is working so well. "Mr. Ellison has proven himself a capable and loyal employee, but he's still a human being," says Weaver. John Henry reminds her that human life is sacred, and Weaver says they have to prepare for any contingency, because humans will disappoint you. Oh, yeah, and my computer NEVER crashes. Up yours, Weaver.
Jesse's toweling off by the side of the pool when some guy -- probably the attendant? -- strolls up and says it was a pretty long swim tonight, and Jesse could not be less interested in talking to the creepy guy who's apparently been watching her swim, but she fakes politeness, and he asks where her friend the blond girl is, because he doesn't think he's ever seen Jesse in here without her, and Jesse says she'll be sure to bring her time, and then the pool guy is like, "She's a nice girl," like maybe you should have tried hitting on Riley when SHE WAS ACTUALLY THERE, Creepy Pool Guy. "She... she is," says Jesse. Fortunately, not, "She... she was."
Back aboard the Jimmy Carter, Jesse walks into the command room, where Queeg is at the controls, and he tells her she looks ill and should get some rest, and she's all, "I'm fine, not like DIETZ," and he tells her that Dietz tried to murder a superior officer and incited the crew to riot, possibly to mutiny. "Possibly" to mutiny? Jesse was being kicked to death on the floor! Anyway, the penalty for that is death, Queeg tells her, and Jesse tells him he doesn't get to impose summary judgment like that. "Mr. Dietz's behavior threatened our mission," says Queeg. "What mission? Your behavior threatens our mission," says Jesse -- like, nice comeback -- and she tells him the crew's tearing itself apart because that thing killed a woman and took her shape, and Queeg can't expect them to act like it didn't happen.
Yeah, he can, actually; he tells her to report to her rack because she's ill. She asks him if he really wants to "do it this way," only he doesn't know what she's talking about, so she formally says that as XO and ranking human aboard the ship she's relieving him from command under suspicion of compromise to his programming. She tells him to move away from the controls.
After several seconds, he pushes back the controls and stands up, and walks over to her. She tells him to submit to chip extraction, and the "chip tech" will decide what to do. He looks at her for a few long seconds, and then turns to the chief of the boat to tell him to escort Commander Flores to her rack, because she's ill. Nobody moves, and Jesse tells Queeg she gave him an order. "My mission order overrides standard behavior protocols. You have no authority on this boat," he tells her. That would probably necessitate a change of underwear on my part. He tells her again that she's ill. She shakes her head and says they can't take that thing to Serrano Point, that John Connor has to know -- and he interrupts her to tell her "John Connor knows what he needs to know." And then: "Your behavior threatens our mission." Which is, of course, what got Dietz killed. So Jesse turns to go, and Queeg heads back to the controls, but Jesse suddenly grabs a rifle, spins and shoots Queeg in the head before he has any time to react. He falls to the ground and lies there, the top of his head blown apart. Aimed for the chip, like Derek told her. Meanwhile Garvin and the chief of the boat are just standing around uselessly, and Jesse tells the chief to record that she relieved Queeg of command. "We can't drive the boat without him!" yells the chief, and she says they're not going to drive the boat. And she starts smashing the control panels with the butt of her rifle, much to the crew's shock. "We're taking her to crush depth. Mother Nature will handle the metal," she says.
She gets on the P.A. to tell everyone to abandon ship, and screams at the control room crew to move, everyone starts running, and Jesse strolls over to Queeg's body, where she crouches down and closes his eyes. "I'm sorry," she says, and gets up and hustles out of the room. As we're coming up on a commercial break, I fully expected him to open his eyes again. But he doesn't.
The chief hustles everyone on to the escape pod or whatever, with Jesse the last to climb the steps, but she stops to look around. "You're coming, right? Not going to go down with the ship or anything crazy like that?" Jesse says she's coming, and takes a last look around before heading up the steps, but she stops, sensing something behind her.
Sure enough, it's the T-1000, in the shape of Petty Officer Goodnow. "Who are you? What do you want?" asks Jesse. "Tell John Connor the answer is no," says the terminator, before reverting to liquid form and shooting up to the ceiling. Jesse hurries into the escape pod, and then we watch as the mini sub floats up from the Jimmy Carter which soon explodes. A ribbon of liquid metal shoots up through the water, over the escape sub.
In the present, Jesse strolls into her hotel room, carrying a plastic bag, and who should be waiting there but a grouchy John Connor, sitting in a chair, holding a gun. "If you pretend not to know me, I might shoot you in the head," he says, like nice welcome. He says they owe Riley the truth. "Don't you think?" he says, and stands up. "We owe the dead that much."
"You're John Connor," says Jesse, who then asks where the metal is. "If she were here, you'd be dead. You know that," John tells her. He calmly asks for her gun, since he knows she's not going to shoot him. She hands it over, and then John launches into a long, rambling soliloquy. I'm guessing a better reason for asking for her gun was so she wouldn't shoot herself rather than sit there and listen for five minutes as John gives her a little bit of the family history, and how future him sent people back to protect him. He used to wonder why he took the chance of sending a machine back (this would be Arnie in T2). "I don't wonder anymore," he says. "Human beings can't be replaced. They die and they never come back."
He says it wasn't Derek who told him, if that's what she's wondering. She's probably wondering, "How long do I have to stand here and listen to him prattle on?" He says Derek loves her. "You and me, we're the only things he has in this world," he says, adding sadly that Derek's like Riley in that way.
He says that she made mistakes, small things; a word or a phrase. "'Carrots and apples.' I'm guessing that's yours." He says when they were in Mexico, she heard his real name and ignored it. A man took his picture, and she destroyed it. "She put herself between me and a machine that was hunting me," he says. And he realized one day that she wasn't treating him like John Baum, but like John Connor.
Jesse finally breaks her silence to ask when that was. John's all, "I have to stare dramatically out the window before I can answer you." He shrugs and says he doesn't remember exactly, but it was a bad day. "Anyway, I started following her. The rest was easy. And hard." Jesse says Riley wanted to tell him. "I know. But she didn't."
He indicates Jesse's scratches and asks if Riley did that to her. Jesse nods, and John goes on with his pontificating. He says Riley figured out what Jesse was up to before he did. He couldn't figure out why she'd go to the school counselor or to DCFS. Because she didn't. "I only understood after I saw how you'd hurt her. That's when I knew what you'd try to do, and how it went wrong." Jesse says she's sorry. "Yeah. Everybody says that," says John, adding that it's all his fault, because he knew Riley was in trouble and could have helped her, but didn't. "You wanted it to be real," offers Jesse. "Or maybe I wanted to win," he says. Jesse says he didn't want to be John Baum, but John Connor. "But that's just the thing, isn't it? I am John Connor." And he's barely whispering at this point.
He throws a duffel bag at her feet and tells her to go. "Just like that?" she says, surprised. "If I have to live with this, so do you," he tells her. Maybe he's seen that her guilt has her twitchily moving around lamps! She asks him if it would have worked. "If the cyborg had murdered the girl, or if I could have made you believe that she had," says Jesse. John thinks about it for a second before saying it wouldn't have.
"Well, it's a damn shame," says Jesse. "It's a damn waste," she adds, before walking out the door, all attitude. Well, it was your plan, crabby.
Back to the future again, where Jesse is being questioned by Cameron in some kind of barracks enclosed by sheets. Cameron chides her because her actions resulted in the loss of a T-888 as well as the Jimmy Carter, which is irreplaceable, and Jesse notes that she hasn't mentioned the people they lost. "You never do," she adds. Cameron takes a moment to pretend to be sorry about losing them, as well as the box, "We opened the damn box! Hell came out of it!" yells Jesse, who wants to be taken to Connor to give him the message, but Cameron says that isn't going to happen: "Telling me is the same as telling John." That just makes Jesse laugh and shake her head. "Dietz was right. Who the hell is running this war? What the hell are we fighting for if telling you is the same as telling Connor?" But then she gets all "fuck it" and passes on the message: "You tell Connor that the metal monster said that the answer is no." Cameron seems somewhat surprised by the answer, or at least it's taking her a few minutes to process, like when you get that little spinning wheel on your Mac.
But Jesse wants to know what the question was. Cameron's a little bit more forthcoming with answers (maybe because she knows what happened to Queeg). "'Will you join us?'" she says. That was the question. This doesn't really put Jesse into a much better mood, but Cameron's about to completely ruin her day by saying she's sorry for her loss. Jesse doesn't know specifically what Cameron's talking about, but don't worry, Cameron will explain it. She says the doctors aren't sure if it was because of the fight or the change in pressure when they scuttled the Carter. "You were pregnant. You're not now." Hmmm. Seems kind of afterthought-ish to me, right there. Jesse shakes her head, and a tear rolls down her cheek.
In the present, Jesse's not home free just yet. She comes down the hotel stairs to the car park to find Derek, who's all stylishly leaning against his truck, all backlit, smoke swirling around, staring moodily at the ground, some Alice In Chains-lite music blaring from the speaker, like just how long has he been posed like this waiting for her?
He doesn't even look up as she approaches. Finally she says his name.
He asks her if she knows who "Billy Wisher" is, and she doesn't, and he realizes she's from a future where Billy Wisher doesn't exist -- his best friend Billy Wisher, who fought in Derek's squad, because Billy Wisher's name was in fact Andy Goode. "And back here in this world he wrote a computer program. The program that becomes Skynet. And so Andy Goode is dead." Which means so is Billy Wisher, because Derek came back and killed him. "He was my brother, and I loved him, and I killed him." Jesse's staring at him: Yeah, your nephew just talked at me like this for about five hours so I'd really like to take a pass on this one.
"I did it for Kyle, and John, and I did it for you." She starts to speak, and he tells her to shut up. "You have no idea! You have no idea what they took from us!" she wails at him. He says he doesn't even know her. She's crying again. "I'm Jesse. I'm Jesse!" "You're not my Jesse," he says. "You never were."
They stare at each other for a moment. "John Connor said to let you go," says Derek. He waits a moment, then: "I'm not John Connor." In slow motion, he goes for his gun, and she throws her bag at him and turns and runs. He raises his gun, aims it at her retreating back, and looks conflicted. She makes it to the bottom of the stairs and glances at him. Closeup of his finger on the trigger, and he depresses it, and it clicks, and that's all we hear or see.
In the hotel room, John's there playing with his Cameron Destructo-Pocket Watch when Derek comes in. And as usual, the characters on this show avoid looking at each other whenever possible, because it's more dramatic that way.
"Complications. That watch. It has complications," says Derek, finally, adding that the complications of time and the future are what he's been thinking about. John sits down. "What do they think about me? In the future, what do people think?" he asks. Derek says if he's asking if people agree with everything he does, of course not. "If you're asking if everybody loves you... love's a lot to ask for." Well, thanks for cheering up your nephew. "You can't do what you do and expect everybody to agree. Or to love you."
John asks what it is that he does. "You lead," says Derek. "And they follow," says John. "We follow. We rise or fall on your shoulders," says Derek, and if that's not pressure enough, "Humanity rises -- or falls -- on your shoulders. But we're always watching." "For me to make a mistake?" asks John. "For you to be human," says Derek. I suppose in the future, Us magazine has a "Leaders of the Human Resistance -- They're just like us!" section.
John asks if he did it: "Did you kill her?" "John Connor let her go," says Derek. That's all he says.
Montage. Sarah putting another arm in the terminator spare parts bonfire. Damn, how much of that stuff is there? Cameron stands overlooking the city lights at night, holding a pigeon that is alive. FOR NOW. A maid tidies up the late Jesse's hotel room, and notices one of the lamps is a little out of place, so she fixes it. Quick flash to the future, with a dirty, frightened Riley huddled underground, and soldier Jesse crouching down beside her, brushing the hair off her face. "You're a pretty girl. What's your name?"
And then Cameron, John and Sarah sit together in the living room. Sarah looks at John. John looks over at Cameron, trying to hold back tears, and failing. Sarah reaches for her sobbing son, who leans over and cries in her lap while she comforts him.
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