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| Thursday, April 9, 2009 07:58 PM |
| On the Viewer - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Season 2, Episode 19 - "Today Is the Day, Part 2 of 2") |
 by Fëanor |
Derek of Riley: "She didn't deserve what happened to her."
John: "Few people do."
John examined Riley's body. I think he's even more certain now that Cameron didn't kill her. He tells Derek he wants to talk to him about the future - Derek's future. Hmm...
Back in the future (Jesse's past), we see that the hand-off has gone well and they have the mysterious box on the sub now - but unrest is developing among Jesse's men over the idea that only Queeg (and, theoretically, John) knows what the box is or what the mission is about. Dietze puts forward a conspiracy theory that machines are secretly infiltrating humanity through John's trust in them, and planning a big attack. Intriguing idea!
John: "I'm sorry I doubted you."
Sarah: "John..."
John: "No, not you. Her." [nods at Cameron]
Wow. I'm thinking maybe Jesse's plan backfired in a big, big way.
The box on the sub was full of liquid metal! That's awesome and horrifying at the same time.
A conversation between Sarah and John reveals she doesn't know him even as well as she thinks.
Heh heh. John Henry has taken up painting miniatures now, and is going on and on about them to Ellison, who sighs with impatience. Henry is a nerd! Aw, and he thinks he's found a friend.
Wow, the crew turned against Jesse pretty quickly once a fight started between her and Dietze! But I guess that'd been building for a long time. Even I don't really understand why Jesse let the liquid metal Terminator just slither away. And now the other Terminator is probably her only friend on board.
Sarah wants Cameron to think about why future John sent her away - why he didn't want her around anymore. Heh. That's kind of a bitchy, catty thing to say.
I love when John Henry suddenly comes out with really disturbing things he's discovered about Zero Corp. He's followed a trail of data and seen how Zero Corp. covers up the deaths of its employees, and sees that the same treatment could be in store for Ellison. Then he just asks Weaver straight out: "Are you going to kill him?" He insists that human life is sacred, as Ellison has taught him, but Weaver warns him: "Humans will disappoint you."
Jesse finally moves against Queeg, and discovers she can't control him, and he won't accept orders. When she mentions John Connor, he says, "John Connor knows what he needs to know," which is interesting indeed. Connor doesn't know everything either? Does that mean this secret mission comes from someone other than Connor? Perhaps... Cameron?
Jesse shoots Queeg, blowing his head apart, then tells the Chief of the Boat to record the time and date she relieved the Captain of command. Heh. Then she sets the ship to scuttle itself and orders everybody to evacuate, in the hopes that when the ship goes, the Terminator will go, too. As she's leaving, the Terminator comes to her and says, "Tell John Connor the answer is no." Extremely intriguing. Was the Terminator an ambassador in peace talks, perhaps?
John figured it all out. He's come to see Jesse. "We owe Riley the truth, don't you think? We owe the dead that much." John says he understands now why future John sent a machine back to protect him (in Terminator 2). Because human beings can't be replaced or rebuilt. John already knows that Derek and Jesse are together, that Derek loves her. He knew who Riley really was, too. He's way smarter than I thought.
John of Riley: "One day I realized, she wasn't treating me like John Baum. She was treating me like John Connor.... It was a bad day. A bad day.... I started following her. The rest was easy. And hard."
This transforms most of the previous episodes! Very interesting.
Jesse asks him if her plan would have worked: would Riley's death at the hands of Cameron have convinced him to send the Terminator away? He says: no. Wow. That's pretty brutal.
Jesse has an interesting conversation with Cameron after returning from the sub mission. The question, to which the liquid metal Terminator answered no, was, "Will you join us?" Pretty much what I expected, but still pretty mind-blowing. And just to make things even worse, apparently Jesse was pregnant and lost the baby during the mission. Jesus. I guess that would have been Derek's baby?
Derek and Jesse discover another interesting difference between their timelines. In Derek's timeline, his best friend was Billy Wisher. In Jesse's, Billy never existed - because Derek went back in time and killed him. Billy was really Andy Good, the guy who made the computer program that becomes Skynet. Derek came back and killed Andy - his best friend - to stop the development of Skynet. I guess I already knew all this, but it was never laid out so plainly or so dramatically before.
Derek: "I don't even know you. I don't know who you are."
Jesse: "I'm Jesse!"
Derek: "You're not my Jesse. You never were."
And he's even going to try to kill her! This is really, really brutal. Does he pull the trigger? It's not entirely clear. But he tells John, "John Connor let her go." A lot of discussion this episode of John Connor: the symbol, the human being he is now, the human being he will be, what people think of him.
John finally breaks down and weeps.
This was a very powerful episode, and a lot of big events occurred, changing the shape of the series. I'm excited to see where we go from here. |
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