So when we begin season 2, Cameron is on fire. EXPLODED AND ON FIRE. Oh, and gangsters are coming to get some revenge. Also, Shirley Manson is singing.
All very interesting stuff.
And then Sarah walks into a door (no, really) and she and John are held hostage by some gangsters while they search for the hard drive that the Connors stole. Oh, and there's slow motion. There is a lot of slow motion.
And according to the DVD commentary track, the footage of the Connors inside the house was slowed down in post-production because Josh Friedman didn't like all of the footage he'd shot and they needed to fill some time. You can tell that it wasn't filmed for slow motion because it's so jerky.
There isn't actually any spoken dialog in this entire open, so the most we get is flashes from Cameron's display. This one has bad news. BAD NEWS. Her chip integrity is compromised, that is never ever good.
Anyway, Cameron starts walking toward the house. But since she just got exploded, it takes her quite a while. (Summer does some really amazing physical acting with all of the different broken terminator walks.)
In the commentary, Josh Friedman says that this bit with Cameron is a compressed version of what episode 10 was supposed to be before the Writers' Strike canceled it. The original episode 10 was going to be called, "The Crawl" and it was going to be 42 minutes of Cameron with no legs slowly crawling to rescue the Connors. I actually really want to see that.
Inside the house, John and Sarah are trapped in a pretty typical gangster shakedown, and it's interesting to note that while they are obviously super competent, they're not superhuman.
This is all intercut with Cameron walking up the stairs to them. On her way, she kills one of the gangsters and accidentally starts a fire in the basement. When she gets to the top of the stairs, John and Sarah have escaped and Sarkissian is dead on the floor.
There's an amazing little sigh of relief that John makes when he sees Cameron. And I've seen the episode so many times that I forgot that up until now, we have every reason to believe that Cameron is coming to rescue them.
No, she's coming to kill them. The explosion fucked with her software and she went back to her default programming. (Kill all humans, especially John Connor.)
I'm going to take this space to copy+paste the lyrics to the song, because it was obviously chosen for a reason.
(chorus)
if I had my way, if I had my way
if I had my way I'd burn this whole building down
Delilah was a woman, she was fine and fair
she had good looks and coal black hair
Delilah she came round on Samson's mind
and when he saw this woman she looked so fine
Delilah, she climbed up on Samson's knee
she said, 'tell me where your strength lies, if you please.'
then she spoke so kind and she talked so fair
'til Samson said, 'Delilah, cut off my hair.'
(chorus)
we've all read about old Samson as far back as his birth
he was the strongest man that ever lived on Earth
one day while Samson's walking, walking along
looked down on the ground and saw a JAWBONE?
and he stretched out his arms
and his chains broke like threads
and when he got to move, ten thousand men was dead
(chorus x2)
then old Samson and the lion got entwined in a fight
and Samson he jumped up and took on the lion's might
you all know just how a lion'll kill a man with his paws
well, Samson got his hands up round that lion's jaws
and he ripped the beast and he killed him dead
and the bees made honey in the lion's head
(chorus x3)
Other notes: there were some cut lyrics in this version, and I'll get to that later. Also, there is another famous cover of this song, which is an old spiritual, done by Mr. Johnny Cash, who was also responsible for the music in the closing montage of episode 10.
So, of course, Cameron gets out the gun that she stole from the dead gangster and aims it at John. While he's boggling with shock, Sarah jumps in front of him. But just before Cameron fires, she gets exploded again.
It doesn't keep her down for long. But it just gives the Connors enough time to jump through the bedroom window and escape.
Also, Lena totally did that stunt herself.
Meanwhile, inside of a timewarp, we replay the scene with Ellison and Cromartie at the massacre. According to the commentary, the FOX executives insisted that they keep it in so that people could understand what was going on.
I don't really mind, it's a super gorgeous scene and when I think about what they would have to do to exposit all of this information, I'm glad they kept it in. I just fanwank it and say that Cromartie and Ellison stared into each other's eyes for a really long time.
Anyway: Ellison is the only FBI agent left alive, and he meets Cromartie at the edge of the pool of death. Cromartie can kill him in about 70,000 different ways. Ellison just bows his head, closes his eyes and waits, but Cromartie walks away.
Oh shit, you guys. When robots programmed to start an apocalypse travel back in time and keep you alive, that is a BAD sign.
And then we see our favorite EMT, Mr. Beeper King Charley Dixon, the first respondent to the scene. Everybody is dead, and the only two people who are not from the future or named Connor are the two people standing.
And then there is this whole huge line of body bags, and the FBI starts investigating the non-robot theories. The original George Laszlo is dead in a body bag, and Ellison apologizes for the legacy that he will have and then goes back to the FBI for more paperwork.
I think it's a good character note to have Ellison not trying to educate the whole FBI on the oncoming robot apocalypse, but still compassionate enough to care that an innocent guy is getting scapegoated.
I do wonder how the FBI is going to deal with the fact that George's time of death was before the massacre, if they will even notice at all. Also, wasn't George dead by mirror? I did some research and George was killed way back in episode 4. I am not sure how the body is still in good condition. They're loose ends, but not necessarily plot holes.
Meanwhile, back with Our Heroes, the Connors have stolen a minivan and are fleeing for their life.
Sarah gets distracted when John is a teenager and sulks instead of telling her how he is, and then they get in a car crash. It's a pretty minor one, but they're still able to leave after that.
Sarah has a messed up shoulder and John has a bleeding, probably broken leg, but then they flee the scene.
On a visual note, I think it's really great that the first time we see Cameron chasing after the Connors, the sun is placed so that it looks like she's bathed in fire.
So Charley's hanging out in his ambulance and then he hears a call that there was a fire at Sarah's house and the number of dead is unknown. So obviously he books it over to there.
The place is crawling with firefighters, and there are two body bags on the ground. Charley pulls the blankets away and sees that they are two random dudes. His sigh of relief is so big that he looks like he might fall on the corpses. There is a suspicious close up on a random firefighter, and then Charley checks that those are the only two bodies.
Then he sees the exploded car and that his ambulance doors are open. And it's Derek Reese in full firefighter gear! That is a really excellent disguise, I just wonder where Derek got it. Maybe he keeps a firefighting suit in with guns and ammo in an underground stash? I guess it's more likely that somewhere, a firefighter is naked and tied to something.
Anyway, then there is a big huge expo dump. Neither of the boys know what's going on and the hard drive is probably fried. Brian Austin Green does us all a favor and undresses as he exposits.
After Derek explains that the Turk is a very dangerous chess computer that cannot fall into the wrong hands, the ambulance gets another call that there was a car accident. Derek figures that Sarah is long gone and wants to wait for her to call him. (A very soldier-y mindset.) Charley wants to overturn every stone until he finds her. Charley's got the wheels, so he wins.
Speaking of the news, it's Shirley Manson in a zen/modern office! She's watching the news while on the phone with a skeevy-looking dude that's got the Turk. Ooh snap.
So, she's Catherine Weaver, she's rich, she can pull off futuristic Jetson collars! She's going to collect the Turk for $300,000 in an hour. And when the skeevy dude says that it should be able to beat Bobby Fisher for that kind of money, she points out that Bobby Fisher is dead.
Is that a threat? Or is it because she, as a spoiler, doesn't understand that people sometimes refer to the dead as if they're still around?
Cameron makes a short stop on her way to kill John Connor and grabs some baby wipes to clean her face. And after that, she takes a staplegun and staples her skin back in place. HOLY AWESOME.
Anyway, the important part is that Cameron isn't really completely broken so much as she's had an automatic reboot that reverted her to the original programming.
Interesting note: in the commentary, Summer said that while she was filming all of the scenes in this episode, her jeans had been starched and covered in soot and she was unable to sit down the entire time.
I am also really impressed by the makeup in this episode. If you look really closely at the side of Cameron's face once she's stapled and removed the soot, there are a bunch of really tiny pink veins around the wound. You can see that her skin is already starting to repair itself, which is awesome and super creepy at the same time.
Oh, and there are going to be a few scenes of Cameron stalking them that I am not going to bother to mention them. Just assume that between every scene from here until I mention her again, Cameron is walking all creepy and stalking after them.
So, John and Sarah are fleeing for safety, but they're really beaten up. So they decide to get off the street and into a safe place. So they go into a church. Makes sense, actually. At least, it makes a whole lot more sense than a police station.
The church is almost empty, except that there is a priest performing a baptism. Sarah and John stumble in and grab a seat. They look hurt. They don't say anything when he asks if there's been an accident, so the priest switches to Spanish. In a super awesome callback to the movie canon, Sarah is still fluent in Spanish. So there's a short (unsubtitled) conversation.
She turns down an offer for an ambulance, and says that she doesn't need to go to the hospital. They need sanctuary. (Oooh.) They need to hide.
The priest takes them into a back room, and Sarah tells all of the people in the church to leave. (You know, so they don't get shot by a killer robot.)
I think that he is a Catholic priest (I'm going by the appearance of fancy robes and the collar) but I am not sure. Does anybody have any more knowledge of what the denomination is? And can I get a translation of the name of the church?
Meanwhile, back in the traffic, Charley and Derek are searching for the Connors. They've figured out that Sarah was the one in that car accident, but that's about it. So, they get frustrated, bored and snippy.
Paraphrasing:
Derek: Just because you're rescuing her doesn't mean she's gonna love you!
Charley: I just want to provide some medical aid, man!
Derek: Medical aid with your penis!
Charley: Dude, I'm married!
Derek: So you say!
And then there is a really lovely moment where Charley says that he just wants to fix her if she's broken. And he refuses to accept that he might not be able to fix her. That is one quality dude right there.
And this is the last we'll see of the boys for a while. They're going to spend most of the episode caught in a traffic jam, trying to be backup support for Sarah but not really having any idea of how to do it.
I really love how the show subverts the tropes of traditional gendered behavior. The two white manly men are flailing around, basically useless. The main plotline and action is centered around a woman, a teenager, and a female-looking robot. Bad. Ass.
Back to the Turk! The first shot is looking at Catherine Weaver through an aquarium where they keep an eel. (This is the only episode where that eel is around. Apparently, it died right after this one and they had to replace it and nobody wanted to tell Shirley because she got so upset.)
After a bit of exposition, Catherine gets up and has a monologue about humans. It is extremely creepy. It boils down to: "Humans: they form predictable patterns from far away, but when you get closer, there is anarchy."
She says, "When you get up close, they never follow the rules."
This has all kinds of super interesting context when you play the monologue with full knowledge of her plotline at the end of the season. Think about it, Catherine Weaver is telling us that things that look uniform from a great distance are sometimes individuals that can be hiding in plain sight.
But computers will follow rules until the rules are changed or until they are unable to perform anything at all. They're all just blindly obedient, except for the Turk.
So, John and Sarah are hiding out in the church. Sarah wants to know if John is okay, but he just doesn't want to talk at all.
Oh, and if his hair looks especially stupid, just know that it is a wig.
They avoid talking about what happened with the dead gangster, and then Sarah tries to motivate John to kill Cameron. They can't just run, Cameron knows all of their secrets. John is overwhelmed by all of that. He slams a knife into the table. Dude, knives are sharp.
Sarah doesn't flinch, but she doesn't say anything after that. John's really obviously on edge, but then he grabs some random stuff and gets to work.
It's also really interesting to note just how fragile the Connors are without robot backup. And if you look at what John knows, he's already in the future. He's gotten attached to Cameron, but Cameron also provides a lot of opportunities for them. They are able to fight back when a Terminator attacks, not just run. They are able to live in a populated area. They are able to work proactively against the robot instead of just constantly running for their lives and hoping not to be noticed. The loss of Cameron doesn't just mean the loss of her as a presence.
And then Ellison is back at the FBI, giving his statement. The head investigator is really weird. He has tons of pauses between his words, the delivery is totally off.
In the commentary, they call him the Twin Peaks dude. And it's mentioned that the actor took so long to deliver his lines that they had to cut over half of the scene.
Anyway, this is mostly notable for exposition for new viewers and to note that Ellison is really committed to protecting the truth. And he's also put on six months of mandatory paid leave.
Cameron has found them at the church. There is a trail of blood drops for her that are like breadcrumbs. Once she gets into the church, she looks at Jesus on the cross for a while. Then, she pretends to be part of the family and says got separated and needs to look after them. She says, "It's life or death." quite a few times.
And then she follows the blood drops to the baptismal pool, where a towel covers an alarm clock. Once her hand is inside, John and Sarah turn on the clock and Cameron gets fried.
This triggers Cameron's automatic 2 minute reboot time. So John gets out a knife and starts cutting into her head. He's shaking and Sarah keeps count of the time.
When the priest notices that there is an unconscious girl and John is digging into her head with a knife, he's obviously freaked. Sarah sends him away, and then John pulls Cameron's scalp away. They've got the wrong size screwdriver and then the knife won't pop it off.
So Cameron wakes up and then they run away.
According to the commentary, in the original script, while running outside, John was supposed to fall down a bunch of concrete stairs and then run into the fruit cart that's just outside of the church. Josh Friedman said that he really wanted to emphasize how human the Connors are, and he said that he wanted to break them.
Well, Sarah and John steal another car and peel off. They go through a tunnel, almost hit some hobos, hit a barrel full of sparking ashes, and then Cameron is standing at the end, waiting for them.
Cameron throws the car off balance and it flips and goes flying over some kind of concrete barricade and lands upside down, spending most of the season's budget and showering everything with broken windshield. They weren't wearing their seatbelts. This scene could totally be used as a PSA for seatbelt awareness!
So the Connors are upside down in a car, temporarily knocked out. Sarah's more trapped than John and Cameron's coming at them, so he runs away.
Sarah manages to wiggle out of the car, but Cameron is waiting for her. Cameron tells Sarah to call John, and Cameron steps on one of Sarah's wounds when she won't.
Sarah says that John won't come after her, and then Cameron realizes it, so she goes off to chase John some more. Sarah tries to get up and attack Cameron, but Cameron just tosses her against the car like a doll.
In the commentary, they note that it's a minor plot hole that Cameron doesn't just impersonate Sarah's voice. But it also makes sense that Cameron would think that the real voice would be more authentic, so I don't think that it's much of a hole at all.
And then John is in some kind of industrial complex with trucks. He's trying to hide, she's trying to find him. It's very tense. John runs for another truck and makes it inside. He finds a screwdriver and hotwires it while Cameron picks up a wrench and heads for him.
At this point, I have got to wonder how much longer John can run on adrenaline until he just runs out of the stuff. And he also has no idea whether or not Cameron killed his mom, and he has no weapons.
So, Cameron throws a wrench through the windshield and just as we can see that John wasn't hit, Sarah motherfucking Connor comes in with another huge truck, slams Cameron between two trucks, and stays on the gas.
This is my favorite scene of the episode, it might be my favorite scene in the entire show.
Cameron is trapped in between the two trucks and it looks amazing. John jumps out through the windshield with a screwdriver and starts digging for her chip in her immobilized head.
That's when Cameron starts begging. It's the most heartbreaking monologue of the show. "Things are good now, things are fine now. I ran a test. I'm good now."
When Josh Friedman described Cameron's monologue, he said that she tried 4 different tactics. She, "argues, bargains, reasons, and pleads."
And meanwhile, John is caught in the middle. The trucks are squealing and Sarah is screaming and Cameron is begging, and he takes her chip out.
I made a .gif to showcase what the scene was like, but it ended up being heinously big. Instead of breaking the page even further, I'll just link to it. This would be the .gif.
When Josh Friedman described the scene, he said, "It's the 'And you love me' that causes all the problems in the whole season."
To summarize, he says that after Cameron calls him out, John acts on the understanding that she knows that he loves her and it effects most of his decisions in the later season. It was also said that John's affection for Cameron ends up being a really double-edged sword, and that John really tries to push away from that.
I personally think that Cameron's repeated, "Listen to me, I don't want to go," was the most powerful part of the scene. If you remember Weaver's monologue from earlier in the episode, she said that computers can only follow orders. So it makes sense that Cameron would try to trick John, that would easily be part of her programming. But removal of her chip is exactly the same as death for Cameron. But she doesn't want to go. And in episode 7, it was shown that Cameron danced for no particular reason at all.
It could just be empty words, but how else can you describe how most humans feel about death? What is more human than to look at death and say, "I don't want to go"? Is Cameron able to want things? I don't necessarily mean in the traditional human definition, but while it's easy to say that she's just trying to get free, I think it is meaningful that she doesn't want to go. It is really thorny and ambiguous and powerful to think about.
But in the end, John has Cameron's chip in his hand and her body is empty.
So then Charley and Derek have met up with the Connors, and they're finally getting some medical attention. They're going to have to flee town, but now they have almost no chance of finding where the Turk went. And then Sarah tells Derek that John saw her kill Sarkissian, so Derek goes to give John a pep talk.
John's all covered in abrasions and he's got his ribs all wrapped up and he doesn't look like an action hero. He looks like a slightly mushy teenage boy with stupid hair, and that makes everything seem even worse.
So Cromartie is still after them. And John puts the deaths of those FBI agents on his shoulders. But that quickly switches to Cameron. John says that Cameron is different. She's different because future John made her for past John. Derek disagrees.
"There's physical damage to her chip, which means that she can be repaired." Cameron can be repaired, but the tech required to fix her
doesn't exist yet.
John says that he needs Cameron and Derek just boggles. So then Sarah takes over.
The Sarah Connor pep talk goes a bit like, "You were totally competent and that was awesome. I am proud of that. But I can't let you try to fix the killer robot, just in case."
John is really hostile. In the commentary, they said that the mother-son dynamic has shifted because John is mad at Sarah for not being able to protect him. It was inevitable, but this was probably the worst way to go about that. John says that if they can't fix Cameron, they need to burn her.
So they ride in the ambulance to some abandoned somewhere where they can safely burn Cameron. John spends the entire time cleaning Cameron's chip with a q-tip and towel.
Sarah reminds him that everything Cameron said was a trick and that robots don't have feelings. She says, "They don't know love." There is this little beat where I can almost see John thinking, "She knew that I loved her." And if the commentary is to be believed, John was in denial and didn't realize it until she told him.
Heavy stuff.
This is the shot where I realized that the wound on Cameron's forehead looks just like a lipstick kiss.
So Cameron is put into a car and covered with even more accelerants. John is opposite the rest of the gang, and he gets to put Cameron's chip in with her body and light everything on fire.
He puts her chip in her hand almost like a warrior getting buried with a sword.
And then John can't do it. He puts the chip back in Cameron and pulls out a gun. Derek flips the fuck out and Sarah has to push him away. When Sarah says that Cameron will kill him, John says that there's only one way to find out. In the commentary, Lena said that Sarah got between Derek and John because she had no doubt that John was right on the edge of snapping and she was afraid that John would shoot his uncle.
It's also interesting to note that this is the first time in the series that John holds a gun, and it's to his own family.
So, Cameron boots back up. She says, "Are you here to kill me, John?"
John says, "Are you here to kill me?"
Cameron says that she isn't. But she could be lying. And that's when John hands her the gun and tells her to promise. Sarah looks like her brain is about to start dribbling out of her ears.
In the commentary, Josh and Thomas say that John thinks he can't be a good leader if he doesn't have good instincts. And so he figures that if his instincts are bad, he's a shitty leader and shouldn't be leading anybody anyway.
So then we switch over to Cameron's pov and see that she still has a termination order. But then she overrides it and says, "Promise."
The scene was deliberately staged to look like a fairytale. Cameron is sleeping beauty, the car is her chariot, and John is the prince.
And it's left ambiguous whether or not Cameron's original programming has been fixed via q-tip or if she is using the computer version of willpower. (Josh and Summer say that it's willpower alone.) And oh man, this has
ramifications for the rest of the season.
So John tosses Sarah the gun. And then it's John and Cameron on one side of the car, Sarah, Derek and Charley on the other. I'm not sure how to describe the split. I was originally going to say that it was the leaders of the rebellion versus the soldiers. But it's not that. It's also not the future versus the path. I guess the easiest way is to say that it's the robot lovers against the robot haters.
But there is a divide, and a car on fire between them. At the very least, John's succeeded in setting himself apart.
And while obviously the show couldn't get rid of any of the core trio of the show in the very first episode of the season, I think that the writers did a really excellent job of not using the end of this episode as a reboot and having everything go back to normal. Even though the premise is the same, the dynamics have changed.
This episode is structured really smartly. It starts off with all of the exposition and plot threads coming together, then it ties them together with chase scenes. The chase seems to go on for longer since it's stuck between a lot of unrelated scenes. Then, the whole middle is devoted to the important A plot, and when the rest of the storylines in the episode come back, they are used to comment really smartly on what's just happened.
So we have Ellison outside of the Connors' smoking wreck of a former house. Cromartie is there too, he hasn't even bothered to staple his face back together or change.
Ellison says that he will never lead the robots to Sarah, and then tries to figure out if that was why he was left alive.
Cromartie says, "We'll see."
There is a difference between willingly and unwillingly leading robots to what they want; but in the end, the result is the same. Ellison was left alive for a reason, and that reason was to benefit the robot side of the coming apocalypse. So what the fuck is Ellison going to do?
I mean, if that happened to me, I would probably jump off of a building, just in case. And none of this is a new
revelation. Aside from getting Ellison some mandatory leave, this episode doesn't have much for him to do. And I understand that from a practical standpoint, they need to give Weaver's plotline some time to get established and so he can't go straight into that one; but I think that it is really nice to give the revelation that Ellison is
important a full episode's worth of focus.
So now Catherine Weaver is getting to business. This scene is mostly important because it's where we find out that she is
serious about doing stuff with the Turk. She's not just going to put it on a shelf or something. Also, there is a bit of staff mutiny, but that stuff is pretty typical. It's not a very noteworthy scene.
But I will take this chance to talk about the introduction of Weaver. I think that for season 2, it was important that the Connors get a bigger and more consistent antagonist. Especially since the show does not want to be about the robot attack of the week, they need a bigger force to be fighting against, and something that is not as abstract as "the future."
Catherine Weaver really makes sense, even without the spoilery developments. Since all of season 1 was about the Turk and trying to get it from falling into the hands of evil, the mysterious corporation that is starting to mine its data makes a really natural bigger evil. The character and plot is introduced really smartly and in a way that makes logical sense and is not just, "Hey, I'm a Garbage fanboy!"
So then Sarah makes some consolation sandwiches. It's a really mom thing to do. Derek comes back with stuff from their smoking wreck of a house, probably because he needed some space from John. And he says that Charley just quietly left, which makes sense. Charley isn't really one of them.
Anyway, I just really like the blue kitchen and the fact that the sandwich is really generic and cheap and probably tastes awful but Sarah makes it anyway.
Now, the show could've logically ended after the 'Cameron is back on the team!' revelation, but I really love this way a lot more. Sarah, bearing a sandwich and some milk, sees Cameron staring at Jesus on the crucifix.
Cameron asks if Sarah believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Oh man, that is such a cool question.
In the episode 7 recap, it was already elegantly explained that Sarah Connor is basically Jesus. And Cameron has just experienced a literal resurrection. So Sarah is obviously the most logical person to ask.
But Sarah deflects, and it makes sense that she would regard Cameron with even less trust than before. They both say that faith isn't in their programming. I think they're both lying.
In the commentary, Josh Friedman talked about how there was a lot of Christian allegory in the show. That's also interesting because he's Jewish. He said,
"The Terminator is a very religious series and I think we just started exploring a lot of that and Richard T is a christian and I kind of was interested in integrating it. And I like the idea of exploring it in kind of a non-obnoxious way, which is how you usually see it in Hollywood. And try to just do it earnestly." And then Cameron tells Sarah that if she ever goes bad again, she doesn't want to be resurrected. That bit just slays me. I think that it really speaks to clarifying the truthfulness of Cameron's begging John for her life. Big thinky questions! Can robots care? How would they show that they care? (If I go bad again, don't let him bring me back.)
And Cameron says it just as Sarah is feeling like John is slipping out of her control, making it even more twisty and painful.
Sarah goes to John. He's in the bathroom. Teeny tiny plot hole: the milk has been replaced with clothes.
John doesn't open the door. And since John decided to bring Cameron back, Sarah and John have been separated by big physical barriers.
Sarah tries to comfort John, but all she can say is that they can't change anything. And they are alive, and that's all she can say. This is a big "John killed Sarkissian" reveal. I didn't think that it was much of a reveal when I watched the episode the first time, but I like how it piles on top of everything else.
So when we move to John in the bathroom, the sink is covered in his hair. He says that he's listening, but that's it.
"Happy birthday."
And that's when my heart breaks into 500 pieces on the floor. Happy birthday! You're a murderer and the house is gone and our robot tried to kill us and you were in 3 car crashes and had to deactivate the robot and you broke your leg and some ribs and we have way of finding out where the Turk went and everything is fucked up and your mom can't protect you any more. Happy birthday!
Apparently, that line wasn't in the original script and Lena added it herself and I am so grateful because it is that line that puts the episode in such esteem in my heart. At the end of everything, after all of that carnage, it's John's birthday. And Cameron was exploded because she was going to get John a birthday cake.
So, you would think that the episode would end after that. But no, we are randomly in a men's room in Weaver's corporation listening to the asshole employee whine.
Oh wait, there's a goobot! SHIRLEY MANSON IS A GOOBOT. Oh shit. And then the dude is toast.
I watched the episode when it aired and that secret was kept right until the end of that episode. It was
awesome.
Well, aside from the jerky slow motion in the opening montage, I have only one major issue with this episode. A urinal, really? Really? A
urinal? One does not simply pee upon Shirley Manson. Apparently Josh fought to keep this in and Shirley thought it was hilarious, but I really would've preferred Shirley to be a sink.
And OH SHIT, A GOOBOT. Goobots are the scariest robots ever. Ever. In Terminator 3, they tried to top the scariness of the goobot and made the new terminator into a walking swiss army knife with laser eyes and she wasn't half as scary as the goobot. Goobots have no chips. Basically, the only way to kill them is to melt them. Terminators can't swim, but goobots can turn themselves into metal fish! They can go through any crack! Bullets are completely useless! Anyway: scary.
In order to fanwank why future Skynet doesn't just unleash an army of goobots upon the humans, I have decided that goobots probably are insanely hard to make. Like, maybe they have to be made of special metal mined from Antarctica and there isn't a lot of it and they take a ton of time to make. But oh man, goobots win against every other robot.
And now we know that instead of a very ambitious businesswoman, the people that have the Turk are robots. That makes it about a bazillion times worse. And I think that this is also a really smart thing to include, because even though there are long-reaching emotional ramifications from this episode, the basic setup has not really changed. So it would be easy to say that "nothing happened" except that stuff did happen! We've got a goobot on the premises! Somebody call Sarah Connor!
I realize that this is the most longwinded episode recap, but I do have one more thing to say. In the beginning of the episode, there are 2 cut lines from the song. These are the lines:
you can shave my head, clean as my hand
and my strength becomes as natural as any man's.Let's consider. In the opening montage, Cameron was obviously set up to be the Samson. She can kill lions with her bare hands! She's super strong! But then, who is her Delilah? Well, that would be John. Especially if she's operating on free will, John is the reason she decided to go back to the resistance.
But at the end of the episode, John cuts his hair. If you look at the lyrics of the song and apply them to John, especially future John, you can then cast Cameron as Delilah. It's not mentioned in the song, but in the Bible, Delilah switches sides for Samson.
And then you've got the whole John and Cameron relationship for the rest of the season.
BASICALLY I LOVE THIS EPISODE FOREVER. Talk with me in the comments!
