Airs: Mondays at 8pm EDT/PDT 7pm CDT/MDT

NOTE: I’ve been absent with my weekly episode recaps. There will be two more posts covering Episode 5 and Episode 6.

And I’m back. Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. Let’s catch up to see where we are since Episode 3.

“I’m From Palmdale”
Cameron’s coming out and digging deep into her past is the major focus here. She has an incident at a grocery store, is suspected to be on drugs and is arrested. Down at the police station, she is befriended by Jodi, who was in the same holding cell. Both are released, but Cameron has a flashback when asked for her name. She writes down Allison Young.

During this time, John finds out what happened when he tracks down Cameron and is now on a frantic search for Cameron. Remembering the last time that Cameron’s chip went crazy is his driving force. But Cameron and Jodi are now off the streets and at a halfway house. The person in charge there begins to quiz Cameron on her life. Cameron then goes back and forth between present day and the time of her other life as Allison Young, visually explaining experiences and details.

*SPOILER ALERT*
It’s at this point we realize the story she is telling is not from the past but from the future. As she talks to the halfway house director, a phone call is made to a Mrs. Young. Cameron/Allison speaks, “mom, it’s me” with the woman on the other end of those phone saying she doesn’t have a daughter - at least not yet, as she walks behind the kitchen counter showing her pregnant.
*END SPOILER

The one side story that confuses me is the one of the pregnant girl that Sarah, John and Cameron are living with. She has labor pains and Sarah takes her to the hospital. The one thing I can see the connection is how she is telling Sarah about how she wants her child to be raised well, and that gives Sarah a chance to reflect back on when she had John, although we don’t see a visual flashback, just simple and generic face gestures. The father makes an appearance, revealing himself as Trevor, an LAPD detective. This piques Sarah’s curiosity, but for now, it just the start of this part of the story.

John gets to the halfway house and confronts Cameron. She doesn’t know who John is, nor who Cameron is. Defending herself as Allison, she has more future flashbacks. It’s here we have a revealing part of the story:

*MAJOR PLOT SPOILER ALERT*
The future John Connor has trusted Allison as a protector. To aid in this, a terminator was designed to look like Allison and go back to the past for John Connor. As for what, it becomes obvious through a flashback showing Cameron the terminator confronting Allison.
*SPOILER END*

Catherine Weaver meets with Agent Ellison again to task him with her plans. They are both on the same page with seeing Terminators, although Ellison still is not aware who Weaver really is. I’m sure he’ll find out soon enough.

The episode ends with John and Cameron driving away, after being at Jodi’s house. Cameron is back, but now we are always going to be curious how often she will revert to Allison, as there is now a ticking time bomb of events that could happen from here.

Airs: Mondays at 8pm EDT/PDT 7pm CDT/MDT

This week’s episode continues the overall story line of protecting John Connor, with a new 42-minute adventure of fighting off a terminator. This one was action packed and we learned about a terminator limitation in this episode, plus we see how a former tie may reconnect.

The setup for this episode is as follows: Charley [Dean Winters] and his wife are leaving town, on the advisement of FBI agent James Ellison [Richard T. Jones]. The terminator Cromartie [Garret Dillahunt] has caught up with them at a highway gas station and that’s where this episode starts.

Cromartie is pretty smart and takes measures to distract Sarah [Lena Headey] and Derek [Brian Austin Green]. While this same-ol-same-ol pattern happens in each episode, it’s how it plays out that makes each episode exciting to watch.

Sarah is trying to put Charley in her past, but in this episode, she gets involved in trying to save him. A tragic turn of events happens [which I won't reveal here] that places the thought of a reunion of sorts. I can see this happening, but how it happens will be the key to keeping this series fresh. This is really where the term “Stay Tuned” should be heeded with importance.

One thing to point out that’s been happening in the all of the episodes is Cameron’s [Summer Glau] methods of becoming self-aware of her surroundings and trying to adapt with the humans. This episode involves a bird stuck in the house, with her natural reaction to kill it. The fine line of her trying to be human but still physically a terminator is actually fun to watch, but scary due to the overall nature of her being: a mission to kill. All programming aside, this tedious nature leaves the door wide open for her to turn at any time and like she did in the Season 2 opener. It keeps that on eye open to see how she is going to react based on her inherent nature.

I’m not going to offer any spoilers here, but the scene where all of the action takes place is when Cromartie is chasing down John off the pier. We learn at the conclusion of the scene that the T-888 cannot swim, which if you think about it, makes total sense. Metal sinks pretty fast, regardless of any skin covering the ecto-skeletal frame. Although we don’t see how exactly how Cromartie escapes the depths of the ocean, we do assume it’s walked along the bottom as we see him at the water’s edge, walking up to the beach. The anticipation of putting Cromarite into a thermite grave in a future episode intrigues me, but you know that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Catherine Weaver [Shirley Manson] makes a brief appearance here, trying her best to tie the story together by recruiting Agent Ellison. She doesn’t morph into the T-1001 this time, but she does a pseudo sales pitch that leaves this part of the story open, at least until next episode.

And lastly, Riley [Leven Rambin] continues to be a distraction for John [Thomas Dekker] in a developing side story. The best I can make from this is simply the fact that John is a teenager and wants to be normal. If there’s anything else that’s going to come from this, I hope they meld it properly into the story line without making it too over-the-top or cheesy. If this is made too much like most other shows on the air, it will take away from the unique appeal of this series. Again, another “Stay Tuned” on this one.

And that, my friends, ends another Terminator: TSCC recap. I’ll try to get next week’s recap posted much sooner. Want to talk this episode up in more detail? Chat me up below.