FOX
(Season 2, Episode 4)
“You’re not Alison, you’re not from Palmdale” – John
Tonight we started with another glimpse into the future. A familiar looking young women is running through the giant styrofoam rocks that litter post apocalyptic America. Seriously, could that debris have looked more like styrofoam? These are the special effects that are causing a budget problem with this show…? In any case, she trips, falls, and is captured by the machines.
Back in the present day, John is out running errands with Cameron. For a non-feeling robot, Cameron is certainly a sucker for John, isn’t she? A few bats of his eyelashes and she lets him go his separate way. You’d think that she would realize that nothing good happens when they are apart. Cameron heads to the grocery store and promptly freaks out, forgetting who (and what she is). Next thing we know she’s thrown in jail … apparently for knocking over some watermelons. Next time you’re shopping, be extra careful, I hear they’re cracking down on watermelon spillers.
Anyway, while in jail, Cameron flashes back to her apparently human memories of an interrogation in the future at the hands of the machines, where they ask her bizarre questions, wanting to know about her past and not about the resistance. We find out her name is Allison, as she tells her new troubled-youth friend Jody back in present day.
Meanwhile John frantically searches for hist lost terminator. I think my favorite part of the episode is when the guy in the grocery store told John that the girl who was arrested was around 16 or 17. Now Summer Glau is still a young woman at 27, but I’m not buying her as a 16 year old, not even close. Seriously, if she’s 16 years old, so are those Chinese gymnasts.
Cameron and her pal head to a shelter after getting mugged and harassed by one of Jody’s boyfriends. Here Cameron has an obligatory meeting with a therapist from the shelter and has a series of flash backs (flash forwards? Time travel can be so confusing), to more interrogations with the machines. She talks about her parents, wanting a bike for Christmas, and the horror of the apocalypse. That poor therapist must have thought she was a real nut job. Of course it only got worse at their second session when Cameron started saying that she thought she was a machine and she was looking to kill John Connor. Before that happened, however, there was another bizarre time travel moment as a confused Allison called her human mom, who was currently pregnant with her. Or the human that will look like her, anyway.
Turns out that Allison was being interrogated by Cameron in the future. That helped relieve a little confusion, as I thought that perhaps the machine Cameron had somehow downloaded all of Allison’s memories. It’s really a lot simpler than that, she just got Allison to fill in some details. We see that in the future Allison tries to pull a fast one on Cameron, telling her that the bracelet she is wearing is just a gift from her sister, when it is actually a sign of the resistance. Cameron is not so happy and snaps poor Allison’s neck. Back in the future, Cameron is remembering how much she hates lies and apparently snaps the neck of her lying little friend, Jody. I love that this show is so brutal and not afraid to go for the merciless kill. Unfortunately, they wussed-out here and Jody wasn’t actually dead. Luckily for Cameron and John, they find each other and Cameron’s robot memory is all back, no chip tweaking necessary.
Elsewhere in the episode we see agent Ellison trying out for Garbage meeting with Katherine Weaver about that job he was offered last week. It must be nice for first time actors like Shirley Manson to ease into the artform playing robots. Takes some of the pressure of having to emote off. Anyway, after a little emotional manipulation on the part of Weaver, Ellison takes the job to hunt down Cromartie and bring him to her. We also learn that he has a creepy looking FBI agent ex-wife who has Sideshow Bob hair. Nice to see that they’re fleshing out some of the secondary characters.
Sarah takes her super pregnant landlady Kacy to the hospital. This is essentially just an excuse to have Lena Headey display her uncanny ability to stare longingly in the distance with misty eyes. In all seriousness, she brings some great acting chops to this role. I was a little skeptical at first with her stepping into Linda Hamilton’s shoes, but she has impressed to date.
A couple questions that I was left with after this episode:
So what did you guys think? This was definitely a more character driven episode, but I still enjoyed it. From the previews it looks like next week will be more action packed.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Sep 29, 2008 @ 20:00 EST5EDT
I thought this was one of the best scripts for this series to date. This story was purely character driven – and it took us down some unexpected paths.
Did ANYTHING even blow up in this episode?
Liked it. Liked it a lot!
I concur a lot of ground was covered in this episode, even if it was Cameron centric. Kacy’s cop will definitely be an issue for the Conners in the future. I’m thinking that Katherine Weaver, like Allison Young was substituted by a machine after the birth of the child.
This episode was so different from any past T:SCC episodes, and like the Clackers above, I liked it. I’m ready for a more in-depth explanation of what’s up with Ellison and Weaver (lest the show turn into some shadow of “Lost” with too many questions and not enough answers).
As far as Bob’s yearning for the Derek character, I’ll just say “the less, the better”. Derek is very poorly fleshed out for the viewers, I think, and in turn, very one dimensional. He’s the weakest character and actor on the show, in my opinion.
Finally, to your point about the baby causing trouble. I don’t know, but I suspect it might be a diversionary plot line. Like any good suspense, the writers want you to think “oh noes!” but it won’t turn out to be anything but a rare bright spot for Sarah Connor. But we’ll see :)