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Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2 Episodes 1 - 5
13 Plays9 hours ago
Seth Heasley is back to continue our discussion of one of our favorite shows "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." We discuss season 2, but only episodes 1 - 5. Warnings for spoilers across the Terminator franchise.
Unfortunately, the show doesn't seem to be streaming for free on any services, but can be purchased on iTunes, Amazon, and other services.
Theme music by Skips A Beat music.
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Transcript
Introduction to Mandemonium Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Mandemonium, a podcast where I, your host, Mandy, talk to guests about their favorite works of fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows, or more.
Season Two Overview: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
00:00:20
Speaker
Today, I welcome back Seth Heasley to continue our discussion of Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles with season two, episodes one through five.
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome back, Seth Heasley. We are continuing our discussion of the Sarah Connor Chronicles. We are in season two, but we are only going to be starting our discussion with a small subset of episodes because last time we went quite long discussing season one, which was a half a season.
Deep Dive into Season Two Episodes
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah. Since season two isn't a strike shortened either. It's a full 22 episodes.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yes, back when we had that many episodes in the season. Yeah. So we're only discussing five episodes today, the first five. Yeah, you've already been on. We've already discussed why you love the Sarah Connor Chronicles. So I think we can jump straight into the meat of it unless you have any big picture thoughts you'd like to give about season two.
00:01:10
Speaker
Oh, not really. I, you know, I i remember really enjoying the the second season. And i I think I mentioned on the previous episode, I have these on, you know, physical media, because I'm not sure if at the moment, as we're recording that they're available for ad supported streaming, they were last time they were on Amazon freebie. Yeah, I don't know, because I purchased them on iTunes, a long time ago, probably one of my first iTunes purchases. Oh, nice. Nice. I did not check to see where they were streaming.
Season Two's Promise and Cancellation Discussion
00:01:41
Speaker
and i'll do Yeah. And but it in the show you know, it it I'm sure that we'll eventually circle around to kind of where the show left off and was canceled. um But, you know, just my overall thoughts on the season is that it is a very good season and really, really was going to set up for something interesting in the next season and then gone.
Exploration of New Terminator Concepts
00:02:02
Speaker
I, yeah, there's so much in this season that is clearly like, I feel like when you look back at season one, it's like, okay, they're clearly trying to sell us on something. And then season two, they're like, okay, we can bring out all the big ideas now. Cause we're a real show. Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of expanding the scope of everything and, and expanding the mythology. And there are some really interesting ideas, even in this first five episodes, especially when we discuss, uh,
00:02:28
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Episode four, is it? I think we'll get to that. But Alice from Palmdale. Alice from Palmdale. Yeah. Yeah. We will get to that. but Yeah. But there's a lot of interesting terminator related ideas that are introduced in the series that most of the movies never touch or explore ah because they're movies. Everyone forgive me. I have a cold. So I will do my best to cut out any nose blowing, but it could.
00:02:54
Speaker
No promises. No promises. So, previously on Terminator, the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron got blowed up real good at the end of the season. Yeah. And John and Sarah were captured by the folks that they thought were Sarkeesian, right? they they They had been going after somebody else and then they realized, oh, that wasn't him.
00:03:13
Speaker
right And so so it's a you know it's a good cliffhanger ending. Kind of i opens us up exactly there again, showing us Cameron being blown up and then rebooting and then John and Sarah trying to escape and unable to do so. And then of course with Cameron being blown up, what we're showing is that her chip integrity is compromised. Right.
00:03:34
Speaker
Dun,
Programming and Reprogramming Terminators
00:03:35
Speaker
dun, dun. We all know that directed zero on every terminator is to kill John Connor. Right. I have to infer that, you know, that this is a reprogram terminator, right? it It always kind of, you know, they just say we reprogram the terminator. Does that mean there's flash? There's some kind of, you know, ROM that they can they can edit, right? You wouldn't think that damage to the chip would necessarily blank the flash or, um you know,
00:04:02
Speaker
hurt anything that was over the top of the of the core programming. But, you know, we try not to ask those questions. that I have a lot of questions about Terminator mechanics that I mean, at some point we just accept it's magic. Right. Like, yes, I had this discussion with someone at work recently because they were like, how do you watch all these space movies and, you know, suffer through them because I'm a space person.
Terminator Objectives and Behaviors
00:04:24
Speaker
And I was like, as long as it's internally consistent, I don't care. Right. So in Terminator, it's fairly internally consistent.
00:04:32
Speaker
that a terminator is gonna default back to some earlier programming. There's some gold copy programming. I don't know why the rebellion's not able to eliminate that.
00:04:44
Speaker
right Because you know i to relate it to satellites, every satellite has a gold copy of its software on board. We can replace that gold copy with something else. right like ah But you want to have something there in case there's a reboot and it falls back. Why the humans can't get rid of the core programming of terminators, we will never know.
00:05:04
Speaker
This the season also opens up a lot of questions about terminators motivations, too Which brings up questions of does every terminator have the same core programming, but it does seem that right? Cameron at least when she finally comes face to face with John she is going to terminate him, right?
Character Introductions and Developments
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think all terminators have a decision tree, right? They have a primary objective, but at the back of it, it's like oh, yeah John Connor we kill that guy, right? That's actually one of the things I really liked in um Terminator 3, and maybe we mentioned this last time, is that the terminatrix was not sent back for John Connor, right? She was sent back for other things and then she sees John and she's like, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. We have a new primary objective here.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the the episode opens. And one one of the characters that's introduced in this episode is Catherine Weaver played by Shirley Manson, who was the lead singer of Garbage. And so i before we started recording, you mentioned you didn't know that. And so you probably also didn't know that the song that's sung, the Samselon and Delilah song, which gives the episode its title, is sung by Shirley Manson.
00:06:04
Speaker
I did not know that. So the act, that's her song. Wow. I thought it was a really good song. like I noted that. I was like, this is a good song for this opening sequence as it's talking about burning everything down and the building is burning down. Yeah. I don't know that she wrote the song, but she definitely sang it. Yeah.
00:06:21
Speaker
I wonder if that made it easier for them to get the rights if the actress was in. Maybe, maybe. So, yeah, Sarah and John end up escaping, but we're not exactly sure how it happened how other than there's some
John Connor's Character Evolution
00:06:34
Speaker
trauma involved. And I don't think we really bottom out on that for half the season. I think we learn more in episode six. We won't get there in our discussion today. Yeah, that's kind of the overarching background. John is different in season two and whatever happened here is why. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And he finally gets a ah decent haircut. Amen.
00:06:59
Speaker
ah I remember thinking that when watching the show like live, being like, finally, they gave him a real haircut. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Which is ironic because it's like he went from an emo haircut to a normal haircut, but John is a lot more emo in this season. Yes. Yeah. Yes. One thing that I really love about Terminator 3, and I think this is something you and I are going to keep doing is talk about how we think that movie is underrated, is that you know that is a John that has so much PTSD.
00:07:28
Speaker
like Like his life has been so screwed up, no wonder he's a basket case in that movie. And um and so here you see a little bit of that damage occurring. And I think this is really the season of John is damaged and a teenager. Right. And I think I'm going to have a lot of comments about that where I'm like, oh no, he's 16. Yeah.
00:07:48
Speaker
Exactly. So yeah, came Cameron comes after him and and the house ah fortunately blows up before she's able to actually hurt him. um And they go basically on the rung from from Cameron and shelter in a church, and they have a plan to try to shock her to force that 120 second shutdown to get her chip out, which does not work. And they get in a car accident on the way to the church. So it's like hurt, hurt again.
00:08:15
Speaker
yeah And then they show up at the church and they interrupt a baptism and the priest is like, are you guys okay? Well, he yeah, he basically infers that they're coming from an abusive household, which is true, um but in a different way, right? yeah Our sister is trying to kill us. Abused by a teenage girl who is not actually a teenage girl. um Yeah. I also appreciate that, like,
00:08:39
Speaker
Sarah always defaults to like the Spanish community. Yeah. Because like that's, you know, the people who gave her shelter and taught her when she was ah in Mexico. And then I think they spent some time in the jungles of like South America, and South America. Yeah. Yeah. So she knows Spanish. She is very familiar with this culture. John obviously grew up at the Mexican kind of a culture, which we'll get to even later in the season.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah. And I like that, you know, when they're kind of requesting asylum there, than then John and Sarah are talking and Sarah, you know, lays it out. Look, Cameron knows everything. She knows all about all our funding, all of our safe houses, everything. And and John is trying not to admit that, but but he doesn't, you know, he's like, I know when like bangs on the table. um Like he realizes that, yeah, now Cameron is threat.
00:09:29
Speaker
And that's going to be one of his struggles this season, right? Because he he loves her, but she knows he knows she can kill
Cameron's Self-Repair and Role
00:09:38
Speaker
him. And this really breaks his trust in her. Yeah, does it, though? I mean, there's there's so many things later in the season, though, where he doesn't respond to her the same way he would have in season one. Yeah, true, true. So they're eventually able to extract her chip and and she goes into full like manipulation mode. Oh, it's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah, it's brutal. It reminded me. Did you ever watch The Good Place? Yes, I did. And they're going to reset Janet.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yes. and Her husband and three children. That's that's the comedic version of the same thing. Yes, I she totally goes to play him for everything. i She and it's just like he hesitates. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, he he wants to repair the chip, which I'm sorry, scraping a little bit of soot off the outside of of of the packaging isn't isn't going to actually repair any internal damage to the chip.
00:10:36
Speaker
I also have questions about, you know I know he, okay, so he wants to repair the chip. He shoves it in her head right when the adults are kind of thinking he's going to kill her. But from a, once again, I know he's a teenage boy.
00:10:50
Speaker
okay But last season, we already saw he could hook up a chip to his computer. So I would think that in the repair process, he could be like, look, I'm going to try to repair her chip. We're not going to put it back in her body till we know it's good. I'm going to connect it to my computer and we're going to see what her programming is. Yeah, that makes way too much sense.
00:11:11
Speaker
i and And, you know, to to be fair to John, I doubt Sarah and Derek would have accepted that course of action ah because Derek is completely irrational where Cameron is involved. Yeah. I mean, there's
Catherine Weaver's Corporate Maneuvering
00:11:25
Speaker
some rationality in there. Right. He knows he sure he's.
00:11:30
Speaker
reluctant to trust a terminator right to trust sure which is which is fair but you know any computer can be programmed uh yes yeah so the other kind of and all that goes on right they put the chip back in her prime directive shows up as kill john connor and then there's an override and so we're good i like that it shows her repairing herself where she goes into the store and staples her face back together the makeup looks great so it looked really real like I other than it's the standard like her face is like thicker there because it's obviously a prosthetic like it it looked very believable and I loved the ah random guy in the grocery store he's just watching like are you okay
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, she she is able to kind of repair herself a little bit. And then, yeah, she comes out of it and she's like, nope, I'm not going to not going to kill you. So we're all good. And then you you kind of have a couple other bits of plot in there where like Charlie and Derek meet at the blown up house and try and you know try and find everybody. Right. Yeah. It's, you know.
00:12:33
Speaker
a little side plot kind of there. But the other major one is with Katherine Weaver, who is the CEO of Zira Corp., I think it's called. And she has purchased the Turk. Yes. And she is starting up a new project that she calls Babylon that's going to change the world. And she's very we don't know what her motivations are. We don't know much about her. She we do learn at the end of the episode that she is a terminator. Yes, a liquid metal terminator.
00:13:01
Speaker
I have a lot of questions about how she knew the guy she wanted to kill was going to pick that urinal. Yeah. I mean, you can study human behavior and and determine which urinal men will take if they're all available. This is a thing. If there had been somebody else in there, then it's obvious you're going to skip one, but that's, ah that's just. And I guess she was going to wait until the other guy left to kill him. So, you know, that's fair. There's so many interesting things about Weaver, um
Discussion on Control and Education
00:13:23
Speaker
and they're not all introduced to this episode, but the ones that are introduced to this episode is she's a like Scrooge level boss, right? She calls in people from their vacation. for And for what meeting? The meeting they have is like, I'm forming a new division. Right, right. Could have been an email.
00:13:40
Speaker
I've been in email. I could have waited till Monday. Also, I always love when shows, I know they have to do this, but when they're like and calling it Babylon, it's from the Bible. I'm like- No, it's a literal place. First off, Babylon was a real place. I mean, not that places in the Bible aren't real, but you know what I mean? like right It's a place you study in history class, like the hanging gardens of Babylon. You didn't just pick a name from the Bible.
00:14:05
Speaker
And then she walks in, she says that, and then she leaves immediately. Like, yes, this should have been an email. I don't and don't know what's happening. Well, maybe she's got her hatchet man there to say, OK, all of you are are reassigned to the project or or that kind of stuff. I'm sure that's what it is, is like, OK, you guys need to discuss who's moving from which divisions to support this. but i like I like the performance of Shirley Manson as Weaver, where she you know she is on the phone with one of her assistants and says, you know get the whole team in here. And she says, well, everyone's on vacation. And then Weaver doesn't say anything.
00:14:34
Speaker
And then like, okay, I'll get it done. Thank you. I just got that great Scottish accent. so ah the The accent really is interesting because like you don't really see like Scottish people portrayed as like CEOs right and like high-power people, I feel like. I mean, technically, Logan Roy in the succession is Scottish, played by Brian Cough. I never watched that. And we'll learn later that like this is a company that her and her husband founded together. Right. But there'll be more of that in later episodes. Yes.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah. Ellison's also in this episode just a tiny bit. Right. Just showing him the one confrontation with Krimarti, right? Right. Just to remind us that Ellison is still going to be a character in this season is, I think, the point of that scene. Like we're not discarding him. Well, yeah. And to I mean, it also needs to remind you of like what he went through, right? Because he was essentially the sole survivor of this massacre of all the FBI guys. And then he has this confrontation with Krimarti and he says, you know, I won't lead you to them.
00:15:35
Speaker
Right. And I love I love Cromartie. I love Garrett Ilhan as Cromartie is so good. Just the way he says, we'll see. Right. And then walks away. He's put his bets on an elephant to lead him to them, and he's not wrong. Yeah, I don't remember if there was if in previous episodes we knew that Charlie really knew about the terminators, but he definitely. Finds out about I feel like one he got Did he get told in the previous season? No, I can't remember. He definitely knows now. He knows enough to hide from Cromartie at the end of the last season. So I think he does know about the termators. I think they show him either Cameron's arm or another terminator that they've killed. But his wife is not in the know at this point. um Right. And Derek gives him a hard time like, oh, so there is a wife.
00:16:26
Speaker
um So, yeah, what what did you think of it as a as a season opener? I thought it was high action, which is I think what they wanted it to be. At one point, they drive through an alley or something where cars aren't supposed to go. And I was like, ah, that's right. They're reminding us this is Terminator. And you're going to have big cars driving on like random arroyos in California. So this this is. Yeah, this is probably the episode that feels the most like It could have been from a movie. And I don't mean that in production quality. I mean that in like plot, like a traditional Terminator like plot line. So for me, it was a little boring because it was so high action. ah I like and I know there's so much good like intrigue and like character stuff later in the season. I was like, yeah come on. Yeah, I for me, I I remember thinking I'm not sure that I love this as a as a season opener. It sets up a lot of stuff, but it doesn't go very deep on any of them.
00:17:19
Speaker
Um, mostly because of the, the action. One other problem I have with it is at the top, you know, when they're getting beat on by Sarkissian, it's all in slow motion. And there's sometimes where you can tell the actor knows that it's going to be in slow motion. And so it's, you can just tell they're just not moving fast enough. You know, like, no, you're not curb stomping that person. Like you're really trying to hurt them. You're, you're doing slow motion things and pantomiming, you know, stage fighting, that kind of stuff, but it's okay. yeah I think it's a decent episode.
00:17:46
Speaker
But I think they're definitely just trying to get people to be like, Oh, that episode was so exciting and action paced and action packed. And there's just so much more interesting ideas in this season that this episode like doesn't really stand out to me. Yeah. Other than I remember Cameron.
00:18:01
Speaker
you know, trying to kill John. Yeah, it's interesting too that really when you as we move on to episode two, episode two is called automatic for the people. And this is where you kind of get the this feels like the actual episode 10 feels like the last episode of season one, the the first episode, sorry, of season two feels like the last episode of season one.
00:18:19
Speaker
And it's closing that arc. It was strikes Jordan, right? And so it totally actually makes sense. Whereas then episode two of this season, episode 11 of the series feels more like the season opener because you have this mortally wounded resistance fighter played by Scott Farkas. um I don't know if you, if you made that connection.
00:18:36
Speaker
um I don't know what that is. from oh From a Christmas story, the bully from a Christmas story. Oh, yeah. um Yeah. he So he shows up and leaves a message for them, right? Yes. Because they're not home at the at their new place. And he leaves them a message. And that's their kind of wall of weird for the season to make a Smallville reference. And that is why I think episode one feels a little clunky, because it wasn't really supposed to be the season opener.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, you could definitely see it if it was supposed to be the mid-season opener, yeah right? Like you ended on this huge cliffhanger, you come back after Christmas and you have this action-packed episode. But I agree, this episode is the episode that gives them the, why are they doing all the things they're doing this season?
00:19:17
Speaker
Their list. Yeah, the list that they're going to work off. And and one of the one of the things on there is Serrano Point, right? And you I like the dynamic of, you know, you you you read a name off there. Well, nobody knows what that is. Nope, Derek does. He's like, no, that's a nuclear reactor that was really important to the resistance. Yeah, Derek does. And then Cameron often does, depending on what it is, right? right And then we're gonna get some timey-wimey-ness later in this season. Yes. I do want to notate one thing before we go too much into this plot is there's a conversation in this episode and last episode with Sarah ah because religion is a weirdly a big theme in terms this Terminator series. There's a lot of religious discussion. Some of that's because Ellison is very religious. Right. Some of it's because they want to have a lot of Bible references because they use them for titles of... Babylon is from the Bible.
00:20:02
Speaker
In last episode, someone asked Sarah if she believed in the resurrection and she's like, would you with everything I've seen? In this this episode, she says like terminators are outside of God's like jurisdiction. and i'm like I'm not saying I don't believe that Sarah wouldn't be an atheist. I'm just saying that right those responses are kind of funny in light of what she has seen. right like You don't believe in the resurrection. Your child's father is from the future.
00:20:25
Speaker
yeah like Is that less or more believable than a person coming back to life? Like, you know, like, you know what, Sarah, it's fine. You could believe whatever you want to believe. I just think it's funny. She has seen some crazy, and c incredible things. And because she's seen crazy, incredible things, she doesn't believe crazy, incredible things.
00:20:43
Speaker
Right. So, so we have a ah theme also in the season of, like you mentioned, of Cameron being too, or John being too close to Cameron, right? And being, making exceptions for her. And Cameron says something to him that's kind of mysterious in this episode that people will be upset, you know, about the choice that he made. And he, she clarifies that it's not Sarah and Derek. And so I, I'm not totally sure what that means, other than later in the season, we meet somebody else who's also suspicious of Cameron.
00:21:09
Speaker
I think that's one of those many lines that's alluding to like future plots and future things. i And yes, definitely the person we meet later who's very discombobulated by John's relationship with Cameron both in the future and the past. Yeah.
00:21:25
Speaker
And, you know, John's thinking very two dimensionally when it comes to time, despite the fact that he's aware of all this time travel, he's never time traveled. yeah Whereas Cameron and Derek are like from the future. So ah technically they did all time travel in the first season. That is true, jump but only. Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:45
Speaker
only ahead. They've never traveled back. yeah It's different, right? When you're traveling back in time, trying to change the past. I also, this whole conversation between John and Cameron, where Cameron says he's ominous things, and then he doesn't tell Sarah any of it, which kind of starts like showing that friction between them. Where things are happening, he's seeing things and he's not sharing those things.
00:22:08
Speaker
either with Sarah or Derek, because at the end of the last season, he was trying, he was getting a little bit closer to Derek, right? um But now it's like he doesn't trust. any of the adults in his life. Right. Because they, you know, and we'll get this more and we'll get more details later, but ultimately, they failed to protect him. Right. aye And even though he's a teenage boy and thinks he should be able to protect himself, he's still a kid wants the adults in his life to protect him. Right. And speaking of being a teenage boy, boy, he he meets Manapitzi dream girl, Riley.
00:22:39
Speaker
I hate Riley so much. i mean really Even from the first episode, the first time I watched this, I was like, I do not like her. but like And it's it's not like the actress is doing a bad job or that she's even poorly written. It's that i it's frustrating to me how quickly John just trusts her.
00:22:59
Speaker
like A girl singles him out and he just goes along with it. like but She's pretty. and We're going to see that a lot in this season i that ah a none of the men at the nuclear plant have clearly ever taken honeypot training ever. right and Then both Derek and John are apparently easily manipulated by women. Not Sarah, but women they're attracted to.
00:23:23
Speaker
right And the first little, you get a little seed of, there's something off about her when she so uses the term that he he's full of carrots and apples. And he's like, i'm not I'm not sure that's a saying. And you know as somebody who enjoys linguistics and that kind of stuff, and i I like it when like a movie or television show goes into, if you travel much you know out of your time, language is different.
00:23:49
Speaker
It might be subtly different. If you go a couple hundred years, now it's starting to get much more different. Little phrases like that are the kind of things that change first, colloquially. Right. And it's like the person traveling from the future to the past will generally understand most of what people in the past say because they've studied the past.
00:24:04
Speaker
But the people in the past aren't going to understand all the phrases of future people because they'd have no yeah references. ah So waitler yeah but so so the the guy comes through and he doesn't die immediately, right? Well, he pretty immediately. But before he dies, he kind of croaks out, stop Greenway, Serrano Point, Serrano Point. And that's what sets them on looking into this nuclear reactor. And it's pretty easy for Sarah and Cameron to infiltrate it.
00:24:33
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I have so many questions. like ah Not that I disbelieved that there wouldn't be temps, but no background checks? There's probably a temp agency out there somewhere.
00:24:47
Speaker
where everyone has a background check and a low level clearance. yeah Sarah and Cameron have fake identities. Cameron's fake identity isn't even 18. Like I don't... Right. And so so like you said, the honeypot training, right? Sarah chats up Greenway at the bar, right? Yes. Finds out that he's he's drinking tonic water or something and and notices a scar that he has. And this is important um because later on a version of him without a scar is going to show up.
00:25:17
Speaker
And that's because, and this is something that I think there were seeds of in the first season where they're sending back specific replacements for people to accomplish particular purpose purposes, right? Where they had the guy who was the boyfriend or or husband of the woman who was doing the traffic control system. This time it's, they're sending in a version of Greenway who's going to sabotage the power plant, because there's all this discussion of, well, you know, there's safety things that we have to do in order to bring this thing back online. And so there's, there's kind of they discuss that there's two options, right? It comes online, something bad happens, and then it's shut down forever. Or I can't remember what the other one was. It's like there's there's two different ways that it could go wrong for them.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's because ah this is a plant that's used by the humans in the future. So it's a plant they're using. So it gets shut down and the humans aren't able to ever use it, or it gets turned on and the robots have control of it. Yeah, or it turns on and melts down and then is unusable. Right, right. yeah And so it's like win-win for Skynet. And Greenway had stopped the reactor from coming online before for safety concerns. And so everybody kind of hates him.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yes. So he's he's a bad friend to make. Even though I'm not sure that would be true, people in America are so hesitant over nuclear power that I'm not sure how much I believe that the workers would hate him if he was like, oh, no, your family might be irradiated and die because they live within, you know, but it's the conceit of the episode. I'm more disturbed by the fact that no one at any level, has honeypot training. i Whether that's Greenway, Greenway's boss, or the random guys that Cameron steals money. hustle She hustles. I love the way she gets their IDs by just you know copying the pattern and then just writing down the barcode. with yes i love that it's like She's just writing the barcode right over there.
00:27:14
Speaker
you You also have the the thread from the previous season that Sarah died of cancer, right? And so now she's working at a nuclear plant and worried, what if this is you know how I get it? Which of course, it's not because this is seven years later. um Right. This is completely outside the timeline. So it's like the cancer she's going to get is probably going to happen regardless of environmental exposures, right? yeah Some people are just genetically prone to certain cancers. No, no, it was the COVID vaccine, Mandy.
00:27:42
Speaker
I related to that though, not to COVID, but related to the cancer. This corporate Orville Lord guy, I don't remember what his name is, but he's the corporate guy who's not Greenway. He's Greenway's boss. it's It's Hank from Breaking Bad. Who really wants the plant to open. He makes Sarah go in a place she's not supposed to be. like yeah None of that sequence makes sense at all to me. like It doesn't make sense in the conceit of the episode unless he's a Terminator, which he's not, and we know he's not. like He's just a perv.
00:28:17
Speaker
or something. Yeah. Like, I mean, he's definitely a perv in later episodes, but like here he finds a janitor snooping where she's not supposed to be. So he makes her go in with a nuclear waste. Like this is how you get like fired and like class action lawsuits against you. And then it's like it's a joke in the end. He was like, oh, you weren't really crapped up. Oh, sorry. We just wanted to, you know, scrub you down naked. Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah. It's just really like nobody at any level, the chain of command was like, what are you doing boss? Like you can't just throw in random employees who aren't like, this is a major security risk. So that whole sequence, like I understand why they have it for Sarah's like storyline with the cancer, but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
So yeah, Greenway shows up without the scar, starts up the reactor and, and you know, goes in sabotages at first, right? he He kills the whole staff, which you'd think there's could be some butterfly effect from killing a room full of people. You would think so. I'd also think there would be cameras in there connected to some other place where someone would raise an alarm. But you'd think. Yeah. Yeah. The cameras aren't actually plugged in. first problem It's still new. So he had pulled out like a steam Yeah, like a cool manifold or something. Yeah. You know, I and so Cameron goes to to put it back and then they have like a Terminator fight between the camera and hesitates before going into action. And that's one one little clue that, OK, maybe she's still not quite right.
00:29:47
Speaker
Yeah, I believe my comment is Cameron is acting like a weirdo at multiple times in this episode. Yeah. And you know, the way she ends up defeating him is throwing him into a bunch of big, you know, transformers and stuff, which like it's a power plant that that could cause some problems with the, you know, the power delivery of the plant. Either either of those transformers were, you know, getting the energy ready to send someplace else or they were doing something in the plant. But, you know, again, we don't ask those questions.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, let's see what ah so they they save the plant in the end. Well, at least it doesn't melt down. Right. But they don't turn it on either. i The Greenway hung himself in quotes. The Terminator clearly did it. But and nobody's going to ask questions. We could have hung himself in the Terminator then showed up. But you know, right. Right. But you've got him dead there. And then I guess nobody who saw him in the plant that day survived. So I guess that the coroner's like, he died 24 hours ago. They're like, oh. Well, and and you know and all that was left of the other greenway was the endoskeleton. So like I guess there's there's no trail to follow other than we find out that there is video ah in part of the plant in ah yeah in a subsequent episode. right There is a nice conversation at the end where Sarah is asking Cameron, you know is this how I get cancer? you know and And basically feeling like a time bomb and Cameron's like, yeah, I get it.
00:31:13
Speaker
actually She feels the same way, too. Yeah. Also, ah John says something in this episode where he says, I don't have to prove anything to anyone, including you. And I'm just like, that's not true, John. You actually have a lot to prove. Right. Right. Well, yeah, he has his you know, when when is the time for me to live my life? Right. Because he brings where I live by the house. And so he is a very ah the worst boyfriend moment where he wants to be. Yeah, I actually, so Sarah being the worst boyfriend mom, I have a comment about that on a later episode where I was like, John's trying to make it seem like Sarah's that crazy woman, that crazy boy mom that you never want to marry into that family. Right. i
00:31:49
Speaker
when it's like, she is, but not for the reasons you think. Right. Right. It's it's unfair to to call her that. Yeah. Yeah. it's It's not because John is a boy or because of cultural whatever. It's because, you know, he's literally the savior of the future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Messiah complex, you know. Yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so we also get at the end of this episode, the bad lady, sorry, uh, Weaver, uh, I keep calling her bad lady. We don't actually know that she's bad. So, uh, other than she killed some dudes generally considered bad Mandy in the Bible.
00:32:25
Speaker
From a human morality sense, we don't recommend killing people. We know she's a robot. I guess my thing is, is we don't know what side she's on. We don't know her agenda. Yeah. Yes. ah what What game she's playing. ah So she talks, she's in the disguise of someone else. She talks about, ah because she's a liquid metal machine in case we don't make that clear.
00:32:46
Speaker
She talks about bringing the nuclear power plant back online, but it'll be automated. So that's clearly implying a step towards Skynet, making you think that she's obviously a Skynet terminator. And then i she does this a couple of times and it's totally a TV thing. She's walking back to her car. She gets in her car and she immediately switches back to her Weaver appearance as if there aren't people just like who can see through them around. Yeah. Yeah. And this happens in multiple episodes and it's for the viewer, but I'm just like that she would drive away as this guy and then change.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, but the the audience needed to know that, Mandy. and It reminds me a little bit. um Have you ever read Jumper? The book? No, I own it, but I have not read it. It's good. um But he talks about how, you know, like when you just teleport in behind somebody and they turn around and see you there, their brain fills in that while you were there the whole time. Right. Because because rationally, we we can't admit the possibility of the magic part. I still think that she would have a little better operational security. I think so too. yeah It's a good episode, though, I at least to me, like I like I said, I feel like this is the actual premiere for the season. I think is so. And is it at the very end of this one when they see the whole wall? Yes. Yeah. Because before this point, they just had the green way and then they go into that. They follow a blood trail into the is it like a garage? I think it's a garage. Yeah. And they see a wall written in blood.
00:34:12
Speaker
of a bunch of names. We should also mention that they're renting this house, so they will need to be wrong. From a very pregnant lady. I guess she's the neighbor who's taking care of it. Yes, which is also confusing, but I feel like that's an unnecessary level of separation that they didn't need to have. They could have just been renting directly from this lady.
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah i didn't I didn't mind it too much, but um but I really like that that character. um she she She makes the most of of all her scenes, and like I like to see a genuinely pregnant woman in things, because there's so many bad ones. I think she's really pregnant, the actress, because when they do that scene later where she's in the hospital, I'm like, that's not a fake belly. like No, it is not.
00:34:55
Speaker
That's real. Yeah, I think it's definitely real. So it it means that they had they had a certain set of time when they could they could film scenes with her because she looked very pregnant. Charlie and Alison do show up in this episode with each other. Alison tells Charlie's girlfriend the truth. I feel like does that happen? No, no, no. Charlie's wife. She yeah Alice. Yeah, Charlie's wife. Michelle shows up. Michelle. He.
00:35:24
Speaker
is worried because Charlie has a gun in the house ah that she didn't know about. And then somehow I feel like that he learns about, she learned something about Sarah. I don't know if she learns about terminators here. Oh no, it does. I did write a note. It says, Charlie finally tells his wife the truth. And to make it worse, he makes it about his feelings. Right.
00:35:45
Speaker
He tells her all this information. He's like, I don't still love her though. And she's like, I wasn't even thinking that. You just told me about full plots from the future. Exactly. Yeah. That's the kind of thing the person who was still in love with her would say. Right. That's exactly what she's thinking. Like I would not have. Yeah. ah So that's a little really minor plot. They don't do anything other than have conversations. Yeah. um So and there's so many students. John does so many stupid things with Riley in this episode like She sleeps over at the house. He gives her his phone number and explains their code. right and And I'm just like, John, you're so dumb. And I mean, oh, you're 16. It's okay. Like it's a believable level of like dumbness, but you've known this girl like two days.
00:36:27
Speaker
Mm hmm. I think it's in this episode when when he explains that to her and then she calls him and the the first date that she mentions is 11 16 November 16, which is my birthday. So I thought that was kind of fun. Shout out to Seth. Yeah. All right. So then episode three, the mousetrap.
00:36:46
Speaker
No, this is, this is a good one. Charlie Ellison basically convinced Charlie and his wife to leave LA. Like yeah Sarah didn't have to do this. Charlie Ellison was like, you are a target. Chrome already is going to come after you. Yeah. Especially because he's following me and I've led them right to you. Right. Charlie and Michelle are leaving. I have no idea where they are driving to and what road this is as someone who has driven between Albuquerque and l LA. I'm very confused.
00:37:13
Speaker
It looked like it was near Joshua Tree, so you know Barstow kind of down that way. It just seems like maybe they're taking a highway instead of the interstate, which I'm not sure why you would need to do that. Just take the interstate, guys. Take the interstate. Carmartie's not actually following you, especially if you leave. Right. Well, he is following them. but Go to Wisconsin. you know what Cromartie kidnaps Charlie's wife while he's at a gas station. First off, I always look when the door opens at a gas station. If I'm sitting in the car and my husband gets out of the car and then someone comes out the door, I'm aware. And I lock the doors at the gas station. So Charlie's wife, you have failed on three levels of like security. See, now they would have been much better off in Oregon in previous times when we couldn't pump our own gas. um Now you can.
00:37:57
Speaker
but Except Cromartie would have just killed the gas pumping guy. Yeah, probably. Yeah, but he can't kill Charlie because he needs Charlie, right? right He needs to Charlie shell to, you know, six degrees of Kevin Bacon back to Sarah. Yeah, this is the plot of this episode that Cromartie has kidnapped Michelle and Charlie calls the Connors because he doesn't know what else to do.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah, I like the way Sarah keeps it from john, it ends up being the wrong thing to do. But um the way she's she's just talking to him, like you know, like it's, it's nothing to do with the Terminator, right? She says, Oh, it's definitely nothing to do with a Terminator, john, you go back with your little friend.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's the the twofold problem of John and Sarah, which is very realistic, is that at what point do you start trusting your child to tell them like adult things? Yeah. Because if she had told him the truth, I know her concern is he would want to come along. But because she didn't tell him the truth, she put him in more danger. Yes. Yeah. If if she had said, Cromartie's after Charlie, I need you to go to ground somewhere.
00:39:03
Speaker
This is clearly a trap, right? Like, so I need you to go to ground. You can't ditch Cameron. She's the only protection you have. Yeah. But instead, he's just acting like a normal teenager because it's a normal Tuesday or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And so I also like the the little tidbit. as As I said, I like the what is her name? The neighbor. I can't. I did not write down her. Pregnant lady. No. um Where John is ah stealing cable for her.
00:39:30
Speaker
Yes. It's like, well, no pregnant lady should have to pay for cable. Exactly. Yeah. and And she says something about, you know, pregnancy is what too many beers and the rhythm method will get you. Just the TMI of it. I also liked, I think this is in a different episode where she looked at Cameron and she was like, you were once inside of her pointing to Sarah and, and, uh, cause Cameron's supposed to be Sarah's daughter and Sarah's just like, Nope. No.
00:39:59
Speaker
yeah Which Sarah does a really bad job at pretending to be Cameron's mom. Like if I was any other adult who came in into like interaction with these people, I'd be really worried. I'd be like, you clearly have a favorite. Yeah. So John just ditches Cameron and goes to hang out with Riley to do random teenage things. Right. Sarah and Derek go to help Charlie. Despite Derek saying it's absolutely, it's the absolute wrong thing to do, right? You should just just let the Terminator do whatever he's going to do. We don't engage.
00:40:30
Speaker
Which turns out to kind of have been the right course of action, yeah right? i love I love any time you have like a a bad guy or you know somebody who's trying to set a trap for people who does it really, really smartly. And you know it it should show that a Terminator is a very efficient machine for doing this. And this episode definitely does that. Yes. And it takes advantage of how well he has learned about Sarah and what she's going to do, right? Because the future doesn't know a lot about Sarah, but Cromartie's been in the past hunting them right for quite some time now. It's almost like somebody taught them a lot about human behavior. I wonder if that's going to come up. Yeah, we'll circle back to that. But Sarah can't. I mean, part part of what makes her not a villain, if you will, is that she cannot just let bystanders suffer for her and John. Yeah.
00:41:20
Speaker
and And you see that in the movie too, right? Because, you know, she could have just killed Dyson and this whole family and terminated her too. but she's not able to do it. And here she's not able to even stop the car. she She stops the car when Charlie asks her to at one point when she shouldn't, right? Like they go out to the middle of the desert. ah Charlie's wife is trying to escape, which is the right move if you're ever in a situation like this. yes I also thought, I'm pretty sure this is the Terminator being clever of how close he left the cell phone to her instead of just taking the cell phone away. Cause he could have destroyed that cell phone. That's not part of his plan.
00:41:56
Speaker
Right. Because he wants them to find her. Yes. i So she's able to call Charlie and lure them in to the right location. And this is all like i juxtaposed with Riley and John doing superficial things while this woman's fighting with for her life. Yeah. Yeah. they're They're like headed down to the pier or something just to to have a party day. Right. I can't remember if they're skipping ditch in school to do it. I think they are. I think they are. Yeah. And they're definitely trying to ditch Cameron who's watching them like a creeper.
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, I like that Cromartie gives a little TED talk about ah mouse traps while he's setting up the trap with with Michelle in it. He, uh, he knows a lot. Why not share it? The whole point of setting all this up was so, so that Sarah would show up here, call John. So Chrome already could clone her number. Then he blows up the cell phone tower. So now she can't make any calls and he has inclusive access to their code on the cell phone to her cell phone number. And so now he can find John. He tells John where to go. Right. He tells John to go to the pier. Right. Right.
00:43:00
Speaker
I also liked when um they find Charlie's wife, when Sarah says, I thought this would be easier, I thought you would be dead. Yeah, what she knows are the machines, right? But you know Cameron says something later in the season ah that I think is true of a Terminator. It's like they're not cruel. They only do things that help their mission, right which we see in episodes all the time where it's like, if you're not shooting at the Terminator, the Terminator leaves you alone. Yeah. Unless you're his target. ah So he just needed them to get out there. Whether Michelle being alive actually slows them down more.
00:43:35
Speaker
And she's not alive for all that long because she she gets injured in the explosion. Yeah, she gets some sort of shrapnel to the stomach. You know, there's this whole argument where Derek and Sarah want to leave her and ah not just like leave her, but they're going to leave her and um Charlie. Yeah. And they're going to go and they'll send back help when they find help. And I'm like, they should have just done that. Like, I don't know. But Michelle insists that she is good to go and she is not.
00:44:03
Speaker
Not good to go. Yeah. Yeah. So meanwhile, Cromartie finds John at the pier. John realizes, oh, okay, this is bad. um and And ends up able to evade Cromartie by jumping into the water, which I, from a tactical standpoint, I feel like now you have ah somebody with a gun above you who can easily draw a bead on you. But Cromartie's decision-making is not amazing here because he just jumps in the water.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't think that made any sense because John has to come up, right? Like he can't stay underwater. So I would think Cromartie would just stay above and shoot at him ah and or wait for him to get to the beach and then chase him there. But because Cromartie jumps in after him, he loses him because John's able to escape from his grip, though, to be fair, grabbing onto John's ankle and just sinking him is a great way to kill him. If you're able to. Yeah, that definitely would have worked. So and I'm sure that's what the there were some percentages in there that were like, OK, jump in, we drag him to the bottom and then we walk. But the Terminator clearly can't swim at all. So he had to jump in right where John is. Yeah. Yeah. Because he's too heavy. Yeah, you miscalculated that a little bit. So I like them after Cromartie Sinks, you know, Cameron shows up finally, um but not not good to ditch your your Terminator bodyguard. And he's like, hey, a little help. And she's like, I don't swim. It's like, yeah, yeah, I got that. Figured that out. In the TV show, I feel like terminators weigh as much as they need to weigh for the plot. Yes.
00:45:36
Speaker
Uh, because there's an episode, uh, five, so the last episode we're discussed, there's a terminator who crosses a piece of essentially plywood. And I'm like, it should have just snapped under his weight. Like, yeah, I think, I think it was like a two by 12. So, but even so, I just think it's too thin. Well, you also had the, the implications that, uh, one of the terminators from the previous season was had been intimate with his partner and.
00:46:05
Speaker
Right. The physics of that don't bear thinking about. Don't make sense. Yeah. and And of course, there's just the fact that Cameron is able to physically hold her own with any terminator who's clearly like 100 pounds heavier than her. And I know they're both robots, but weight still does matter. yay She's just a more advanced model. So her her her martial arts are superior. Her martial arts are, are made she's she's made of the better metal because there is that better metal that some of them are made from. Right. Cold time. Yeah.
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, Cromartie thinks he's heavy. It's possible. I guess I guess when I think about the decision making, I'm like, OK, continuing to fire, it's just going to draw more attention. We're just quietly dragging him to the bottom of the ocean. You know, that would work.
00:46:47
Speaker
Yeah. And then if you drag him to the bottom of the ocean, you kill him in like five minutes. He's dead. You walk out like so. you Or you don't. You're just like, OK, I'm done. I can I can just shut down here. Just but shut down. Do whatever you need to do. Yeah. So ah B plot, I guess. Ellison gets a call from Weaver about a job. Yes. And and she intimates that she knows that Krimarti is not human.
00:47:11
Speaker
She intimates a lot in a lot of ah episodes that I feel like Ellison should ask more questions about. Yes. Yeah. And she says she's trying to reverse engineer the the terminators, essentially. That's the first question I feel like Ellison should have. like For what purpose? Right. Can can can we get to that?
00:47:30
Speaker
Because you know there's a lot of implication in Terminator 2 that reverse engineering the terminators is how terminators are invented in the first place. Right. right right The whole ontological paradox of all that. Yeah. yeah Nobody ever really invented the terminators. Right. Which is the same with John Connor, right? like He's also a paradox because if he hadn't been born, then he wouldn't be born. Right. Right. Yeah. But Ellison's just like, cool, someone believes me. She offers him a job. He's still technically employed by the FBI at this point. Yeah. But he's on a leave of absence because basically everyone thinks he should be insane after seeing all of this. And definitely should be in therapy. He definitely should be in therapy. But what's he going to tell his therapist?
00:48:15
Speaker
you know so Yeah, machines from the future. Please find me a rubber room somewhere. that That's something about all of these characters is they're all actually fantastically bad liars. Yeah. ah So Charlie's wife dies. There's a funeral. Alison comes to the funeral. Cromartie comes to the funeral. The Connors do not. Yeah. That's what Cromartie is hoping for is that. Is this the episode where Alison gave Charlie a Bible as well? Yes. And he throws it in the grave at the end, right?
00:48:47
Speaker
He either gave it to him in this episode or the last episode, but regardless, Charlie throws it away. ah That is the proper way to dispose of a Bible, is to vary it from what I understand. it seems a appropriate. I don't even know if the priest would get offended because he could think it's the wife's Bible and be like, yes, bury it with her. yeah Also, I want to point out that at some point in this episode, Weaver drinks a glass of water in front of Alison. Yeah, I had to back that one up. My son and I were watching. I'm like, do wait, did she just drink water? And I'm like, I mean, I guess she could.
00:49:20
Speaker
i I think she does it on purpose, right? To be like, I am not a terminator. Look at me drinking water. Cause Cameron never eats. No, no, no. She ate pancakes in the first season. Oh, I don't remember that, but yeah yeah. Yeah. She's just trying to be like, I am human. Uh, which, you know, only works. So yeah, it reminds me of some of the stuff from deep space nine with the changelings where like with the blood draws and that kind of stuff. Yeah. Or they eventually figure out how to, how to.
00:49:47
Speaker
overcome that. Did you ever watch the ah there was a British show called humans, I think, where where it's about androids, essentially? I don't think I watched that one. no There's there's a character there who's posing as a human. And she eats a whole meal. And then and then after the meal, she pulls this big bag out of her esophagus to dispose of it.
00:50:07
Speaker
Oh, that's disgusting. Yeah, it was episode four Allison from Palmdale. Yes. So this is a really interesting episode that introduces a lot of ideas. Yeah. Yeah. I i feel like, you know, when you, uh, did you ever watch the X files? Yes. There were like the mythology episodes and the monster of the week episodes. And this is like a a mythology episode.
00:50:29
Speaker
Yes. Though ah done better than X-Files because I feel like X-Files and mythology episodes are some of their worst episodes. yeah yeah ah Whereas I feel like this is a really good episode. so We have this future flashback, if you will, of Cameron running through a tunnel being chased by robots and she's captured and you're like, what's going on? yeah yeah well in cameron yeah Cameron's having this flashback. right it's ah It's a consequence of the chip damage, I i suppose. I assume so. She goes catatonic.
00:50:54
Speaker
Yes, she was sent on to go grocery shopping, essentially. ah She's reading barcodes, which I think is fun that she can like read the barcodes and like just grab what she needs and know how much she's spending. And she runs into some watermelons and freezes. yeah And the cops are called on her. i have a lot of react I have a lot of thoughts about how the cops react to this teenage girl like freezing up in a grocery store. like Is this really an arrest worthy thing? like Later in the episode, they're like, the grocery store is not pressing charges. Pressing charges for what?
00:51:23
Speaker
Yeah, for knocking over a display. We're having like an epileptic episode in the grocery store. Like, yeah. I mean, there are are like wellness check kind of stuff that that cops should do. And it's one of those things in the defund the police kind of thing where where he like, are are we sure we want to send men with guns for some of these wellness checks that like you go to check on somebody who's clearly having a psychotic episode. He ends up getting shot and you're like, how did this happen? no You sent mens with men with guns.
00:51:50
Speaker
I'm like, this is a teenage girl who if she's carrying an identification, says she's a teenage girl, because it's probably her Cameron identification, instead of like calling the ambulance, which is what I would think you would do. Right. No, but she said her name's Allison. So that's, that's true. She says her name is Allison Young. They book her at the station. My advice to Cameron is don't talk to random girls in the lockup Cameron Jodi street girl Jodi.
00:52:17
Speaker
Don't make friends with Jodi. John is trying to find Cameron. He's actually being a good brother. Brother-ish. Because he's like, I lost Cameron. The cops release Cameron. Jodi sees all of Cameron's money. And now wants to be best friends. Yes. We should hang out. Oh, and in the other plot, ah Casey, that's the pregnant lady. Casey has a contraction scare and goes to the hospital.
00:52:46
Speaker
and Right, she's only supposed to be like seven months pregnant or something, so it's yeah way too early. It has a good talk, actually, with with Sarah, where Sarah, in order to comfort her, kind of makes up a story about about John's father being there when when she gave birth, even though, of course, it was in the jungle. um Yeah, because ah the baby daddy for Casey's baby is not there yet, though he does show up. Yeah, so that' that's basically what Sarah's doing this whole episode, is hanging out in the hospital. With Casey, yeah. With Casey.
00:53:15
Speaker
i Meanwhile, John shows up at the grocery store too late. Jodie is like, Cameron's going to treat me to lunch because she has all this money. right And Jodie is just spinning like a bunch of lies to Cameron about the past, about everything. Well, somebody comes along and starts roughing her up, right and Cameron just gives her the the water cash, right? Yep. Yep. Which is funny, because obviously Cameron's a robot, and she could have like destroyed that thing. Great, because you act like a chicken.
00:53:44
Speaker
And we get more future fashion flashbacks between kind of a lot of the stuff going on. So they go to this new hostel shelter. yeah They have to do an interview with the counselor. The counselor's asking who she is. She has these future flashbacks to like the robots asking her questions. Right. Well, yeah, there's there's like a bracelet or something she has. And they're like, this what does this mean? you know where Where did you get this?
00:54:11
Speaker
yeah and She's like, my sister made it. She says she's Allison from Palmdale. The psychiatrist asks her like about a memory or something, and she talks about birthdays and how nobody had any birthdays the next year, right? Because D-Day, the Judgment Day. And then they call Allison's mom. Yes. And who is still pregnant with her daughter, right? And the inception, the name.
00:54:37
Speaker
Yes. Alison, that's such a nice name. And this is about the point where John does catch up with Cameron, but he is not very good at convincing her or other people to let her go home with him. And like, it's totally believable to the way she reacts to him. I mean, she shoves him into a wall pretty hard. um But well he tells her she's a robot. He's like, you're a machine. and She's like,
00:55:02
Speaker
yeah What are you talking about? And in the future flashback of this section, we get an interesting look into this place where Allison's being held because she's not the only person there. There's a bunch of people in cages, but there's also a bunch of animals in cages. yeah So there's definitely some sort of experimentation going on here, and we don't know what it is. But I also have a lot of questions of why Alison is so helpless for someone who is surviving in the future. like Whether she's running from the robots or from this guy in her time period, why is she so meek? like ah Because everyone else we meet from the future is like super tough.
00:55:39
Speaker
ah So I have a lot of questions about what Allison's life and role in the resistance was like was she someone like is there like a whole group of people who are like protected who don't have to like Fight the machines, you know, like yeah. Yeah Yeah, I don't know. I mean maybe maybe they softened her up over some amount of time and she's just finally broke it could be but yeah, I so this version of her personality we're getting from Cameron could be the broken and version but yeah it's very interesting because I'm also like when she goes through that room where all the people are she should have released all the people just to cause maximum chaos ah to hide right but she doesn't she's just running and they're on a huge turns out they're on a huge ship right yeah I forgot about that
00:56:20
Speaker
Also, if I was John, this is the point where I'd call Sarah, because Sarah as the mom would have a lot more power to get Cameron out of there than he does as the brother. Yes, yeah, big time. And yeah, John can't snap her out of Alison mode. And then she tells the counselor that she's going to kill John Connor. And that triggers mandatory reporting. Unsurprisingly, yeah. And that's going to be important in a subsequent episode, because she's in the system now.
00:56:46
Speaker
Yeah, she tells a psychologist she's also a machine from the future at this point. Because I think in the future flashback, we finally saw that the robot who is interrogating Allison is in fact Cameron. Right. Or a Cameron model. Right. We don't necessarily know it's the same. But it brings up all these questions of why the Cameron model has all of these Allison memories. Right. And so I feel like there's kind of two philosophies at this point. One is either It's actually from Cameron's perspective that we're seeing Allison run and all that kind of stuff. So the camera is Cameron, right? aye And then the other one is that the deeper one that they kind of play with at different points is that Cameron somehow has Allison's personality like downloaded into her somewhere, which gets back to the ballet thing in the last season.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yeah. So then we find out that, yeah, Jodi's been lying to her the whole time. She actually has a home and, uh, Cameron racks pretty poorly to that and just about strangles her. Yep. Yep. Is basically gonna kill her. Uh, Cameron doesn't like being lied to Jodi. Uh, but so that's john jones yeah John shows up and and she snaps out of her fugue. Yeah.
00:58:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And then kind of with the the bookends of the Sarah and Casey thing is she Sarah admits that no, in fact, Kyle had died, that that her husband or her, John's father had died. And Casey also admits that the story that she told that that her boyfriend freaked out when she got pregnant was not true. She freaked out because he's got a dangerous job because he's a cop. I also think that the pep talk that Sarah gives Casey is really weird.
00:58:29
Speaker
because she's like, you can do this. After they've had this truth moment, right? She's like, you can do this by yourself. I did it by myself, so you can do it by yourself. And I'm like, that's true, but baby daddy wants to be involved. Yeah, but he's a cop and and Sarah doesn't want him around.
00:58:47
Speaker
Yeah. I'm like, but yeah. So I'm just like, you shouldn't be encouraging her to like get rid of the child's father just because she can do it by herself. Unless you actually know he's a scumbag and we haven't been shown that he's a scumbag other than, you know, yeah, he's not around all the time, but presumably that's because she doesn't want him around all the time. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then Sarah and Cameron have a conversation where, uh, Cameron says that was my last get out of jail free card.
00:59:14
Speaker
I'm like, if only you guys would actually talk to each other and share what's actually going on, maybe we could learn things. But we can't. Well, yeah. I mean, then we'd have to get the whole family into therapy, and that would never happen, Mandy.
00:59:27
Speaker
Never. And we'll get to that. All right, so episode five. Episode five. this This was a bonus-size episode, as I recall. um Episode five, goodbye to all that. It was one of those, you know this is this episode is brought to you with limited commercial interruptions. So it was like a 52- By four. 52-minute yeah episode.
00:59:47
Speaker
Oh, did you have ads in it or are you just saying? No, I just remember when these kinds of episodes were released, they would tell us at the beginning of the episode when they aired it, yeah who it was. And then I can't remember if I noticed in this one, but one of the episodes was definitely Ford and they would linger or either Chevy, whichever, whoever the car. Oh, on Derek's truck, right. They would linger on the truck and be like, oh, look, this is a, this kind of truck.
01:00:12
Speaker
Yes, it's like the enterprise in ah Star Trek The Motion Picture. We got a linger on it. Exactly. So this is it's kind of ah a flashback to classic Terminator stuff where there's a list of names of the same person that's being killed. Right. And in this case, it's Martin Bedell. I have a lot of questions about this one. So, OK, go for it. Sarah Connor is being killed. Right. Because they make that direct correlation to the the phone book killings with Sarah Connor. All the Sarah Conners who are killed are adults who would be listed.
01:00:41
Speaker
in 1984. Two of the Martin Bedels targeted here are my children. They are not in the phone book. So that's not the way he got to them. But that's what the episode wants you to believe. Oh, dang it. Man, you just killed this episode for me. I love this episode. I love it. It's a great episode. But I'm like, why is a 10-year-old in the phone book? Actually, I don't even think that kid is 10. I think he's like seven. They were just going to all the Bedels. And they were able to log on to ancestry.com and look at the family trees and that kind of stuff.
01:01:11
Speaker
My other question is, um you know, like in the back in the original Terminator, right? This is all the Sarah Connors in LA. LA is quite large. It might take a few days for a Terminator to get to all of them. And so the news cycle might be fast enough to pick that kind of stuff up. But, yeah you know, the newspaper reported this how quickly, um even though, you know, of course, it's it's nitpicking. And, you know, Derek immediately recognizes, oh, this is an important guy.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, Derek knows this guy i personally, right? Yeah. Derek also is trying to use this as an opportunity to get John to open up. So, because they agree to like split the Martin Badals, right? Derek knows which one is the real Martin Badal. Right. It's, he's in a military school and he is like, Oh, we're just going to go grab this kid, go to ground. It'll be fine.
01:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, but he's a liar. He's like, the Terminator is definitely going to come after this one. Sarah is going to go after the little kid one. Derek takes John because that's going to be his cover to get into the military school. And Sarah allows this, which is interesting and says a lot about how much she trusts Derek just by him being Kyle's brother. Derek's like using the car ride to try to get John to talk. John doesn't.
01:02:19
Speaker
I want to talk. I also have a lot of questions about what Derek thinks military schools are actually like. They would not have that many firearms. I'm just saying. Yeah, because he does say, look, at you know no, we're not going to throw a bedell into a hole. where This is a place where we can set a trap for the Terminator and try and take it out.
01:02:39
Speaker
A high school military school is not a military base. They are going to have some guns that shoot because they are going to do like they do in the episode where they, you know, shoot at targets and stuff. But you're not going to have like claymores. And I like I like the guy who plays the Terminator in this one. He's he's big. It's Patrick Kilpatrick, um which is a great name. That's a great name. um And yeah, he's a big dude.
01:03:03
Speaker
believable as a, as a termator. Definitely. Unbelievable. The school offers Derek a teacher position. Instructor. Yes. Provisional. It's like a teacher, a student, like he's not like, he's not actually an instructional teacher. He's supposed to be there for like, like an RA almost. i feel Yeah. Yeah. Some, somebody who kind of helps keep everybody in line. Right.
01:03:25
Speaker
but they should have done a better background check. yeah And and you know there's no there's no like question of what unit do you serve in? you know just There's sort of vague stuff. like he gets He gets the vibe off of Derek that he's a guy who's seen a lot of stuff. And icuid I kind of get that. yeah yeah I love when he goes to tell ah John, he's like, good news, you're in. Bad news, I'm in. And I like, there's there's a couple of nice little moments in this one where where Derek sees a deer.
01:03:54
Speaker
You're like, when was the last time he saw wildlife? I had that thought. And then he later tells you, right? i He sees a deer, he's in awe in it. And then later he tells John about how the last time he saw a deer, he was hunting with Kyle. And he shot it for food because this was before they were in the army. And Kyle cried. Yeah. Because he was a kid. And so he buried it instead of eating it, which I thought was a nice little story. Then he went and put Kyle to sleep and dug the deer up and hopefully.
01:04:28
Speaker
Yeah. Don't let your brother starve to death. Yeah. John finally meets Martin Bedell at the gun range where another kid's having problem fixing a gun. So John shows him how to deal with it. And so John gets a merit and a demerit.
01:04:39
Speaker
Right. And then Bedell says to him, you like to run Connor or bomb, I guess it's bomb, right? John bomb bomb. Yeah. Which it's nice when, when they're kind of inter, intercutting at some point in this episode where Sarah is reading the Wizard of Oz to, to the other Martin Bedell, who she just barely saves from the Terminator.
01:04:55
Speaker
She like grabs him. Yeah, she grabs him and they they they run away and Cameron helps kind of knock that Terminator out of, not out of commission, but just, you know, off the Jeep that they're in. And Cameron basically says, it'll go after the other one, yeah the the next the next name, um because it won't know where we're going. and And I'm like, it's good to have that insight.
01:05:14
Speaker
I also liked that because they kidnapped, for lack of a better word, this kid right after he got shot at, the kid never questions Sarah's intentions. like Because it could have been a very different episode if they kidnapped him and spent the whole episode trying to like escape from them. But instead, he's like, oh, this guy just literally tried to kill me.
Military Strategy and Education's Role
01:05:35
Speaker
You guys saved me. And then he like tore the roof off the Jeep. Yeah. I won't ask too many questions. Right. And I'm not going to try to call my parents.
01:05:42
Speaker
ah other than other than I do have a book report due. I think that's a classic example of a person focusing on the thing they have control over. Yes. Right? Very much. I think it's realistic because he's like, I can't control this stuff, but I have a book report due on Monday. Yeah. You're like stopping it from happening. I like the way the kid portrays him.
01:06:01
Speaker
and that I think he's very believable. I think he does a good job. Yeah. So John goes running with Bedell, and I like when they come up on Derek, and he's standing there with a 50 cal strap to him, and they they come across the tar pits, right? And I like – before Derek's even turned around, he's like, so you're out here running?
01:06:20
Speaker
alone. you know like This is tactically unsounding. He turns around and sees Bedell. And you know I love Brian Austin Green in this role. He's so good. um Just so good. the The look on his face when he sees Bedell sees this younger version of somebody that he loved from the future and and really respected. And I like that moment where he's like, I heard a lot about you. And Bedell's like, oh, a lot of good, I hope. And he's like, a lot of good. And you can just say, he just wants to hug this guy.
01:06:47
Speaker
yeah Because Bedell would be older than Derek, right? Not by a lot, but older. And you get all these future flashbacks of Derek and Bedell and Kyle, right?
01:07:01
Speaker
And Bedell basically goes against John Connor's orders. Um, just a tactically different decision, not like, not like defecting or something. just like Well, and that's, that's the whole value of, of Bedell, right? That Derek says like, like he was really important to John because this is a guy who went to West Point. This is a guy with actual military training to help the resistance function more, but more efficiently. Yeah. But he essentially dies for them. Right. Yeah. He saves John's life and, and Kyle's.
01:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, though I do really hate the age up makeup they use. It does not work. No, it doesn't. But I'm okay with it. I mean, the the the budget of the show was pretty high. um and The effects don't look amazing most of the time. Most of the time they try to stay away from as many effect shots as they can. um yeah And just be like, we're we're going to be inside this bunker and you're not going to really see the outside.
01:07:54
Speaker
Right, but but there's a lot of inside bunker shots. Yeah, and the the makeup wasn't amazing, but I'm okay with it. Yeah, i John learns that Bedell is thinking of dropping out. Right. For a girl, once again, all these people making bad decisions related to girls, who is a year older than him, I guess, because she's already at Dartmouth. Right. Is her name right? Yeah, and and he he feels the weight of his family's legacy, right? And John can relate to that.
01:08:22
Speaker
When it's like the smarter decision, Videl, once again, people making dumb decisions is to finish high school. And then if you would like apply to go to Dartmouth. There we go. Cause if you can get into West Point, you can probably get into Dartmouth. So.
01:08:36
Speaker
Yeah. And you could do ROTC, you know? Yeah. I also question why he would even tell John this. Like, why is he opening up to John so much other than I think John, this is all supposed to be like John has some sort of quality about him. Right. That I think people just innately trust. and Yeah. Kyle Reese says that on the first movie, right? There's there's you trust him. He's got a strength. Yeah, I think for Bredell, it's probably that John looks like somebody who's seen some stuff.
01:09:02
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And is also making a choice because he's supposed to be choosing whether he's going to stay here. Yes. Meanwhile, a cadet decides to ask Derek if he has many kills. And I feel like cadets at a military academy would not ask those questions. I literally wrote this down. I was like, we did not talk like this in 2009.
01:09:24
Speaker
Because first off, he says we heard you were in the war. I like no one in 2009 referred to it as the war. What is this like? Yeah. World War Two. Like you you would say, oh, we heard you were in Afghanistan or Iraq or the Middle East. You wouldn't say the war. And then, yeah, asking about kills. I'm just like, are you dumb? Yeah.
01:09:46
Speaker
that's and That's not really how the military operated in the in the Middle East in this time period. this it wasn't like like In Vietnam, I've read a lot of papers about this. I'm sorry. There was actually like a lot of weird interdepartmental competition between like the Army and the Navy and the Air Force in Vietnam, and they were racking and tracking kills, and it was dumb.
01:10:08
Speaker
And it led to many dumb decisions. There are many papers you can read about this. But that's not really how they played it in Afghanistan. No. And as someone who was about, you know, in 2009, I was like, what, 22? Like, so I had friends who were in the war, like, we we just didn't talk like this. I don't know. Yeah. And so Derek has a really intense response. Yeah. So then then I think he gets the call from Sarah that, you know, the the triple eight is is moving on from this target to yours. And so he's like, all right, well, we can expect him to show up here pretty soon. So he sets this drill up with with everybody. It was like, all all you got to do is tell me that he's on the way. It is like he's putting these kids lives in danger. But as long as they actually listen to him and don't shoot at the Terminator, they'll be fine. Right. Yeah.
01:10:57
Speaker
And so they set up the Claymores to slow down the T888. I really like that this whole scene because it's intercut with Sarah reading The Wizard of Oz, and there's a couple points in there that are um not creepy, but like could, for a little kid, could be a little creepy. um yeah and And I like the physicality of the when the Terminator gets knocked down, the way it picks itself back up just looks very machine. I really like the way that that actor did that.
01:11:24
Speaker
And i you know, all these kids see this terminator get shot and like nothing happened. So I assume the average kid thinks that like a blank was used, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because this is supposed to be an exercise. But Bedell is like, these were not fake claymores, right? Yeah. Because he's much closer. Well, and like you said, then it has to shimmy across the ah the board. wow And I like the the the smart thing that Derek does here where he just he's like, well, I can shoot his legs and then it won't be able to to balance. Maybe the plan was for it to sink in, right? Yeah. but But it looked like it was going to make it so he shoot and he he takes out the ah the legs and then
01:12:01
Speaker
shoots it through its CPU with the 50 cal, which is the makeup looks pretty great. Instincts it in the tar. And that was, you know, one of my comments, like if a dinosaur can't get out of a tar, a terminator can't get out of a tar. Right? Yeah, exactly. Though I do feel like the tar would be better blocked off by the school. Yeah. Just have these random tar pits in the woods where these kids go running. I don't know. Yep. Yep. We lose a couple of years. You know, we're okay with it.
01:12:26
Speaker
It's only the weak and the infirm, so. Bedell shows up. Bedell's there, sees them burn the robot, and is like, oh my gosh, what's going on? Cameron also shows up right around this time, though doesn't reveal herself. Yeah, realizes, no I guess I'm not needed here. Yeah. And basically, they tell Bedell everything, because why wouldn't you? Yeah, and he's like, well, what's the point of of going back to school?
01:12:47
Speaker
you know Yeah. And ah John's like, it does matter. It all matters, which is kind of like giving a pep talk to himself, telling someone something he doesn't really believe in at the moment, but needs to. And maybe he does. But then then he asks Derek and finds out that, you know, yeah, he he died. John, he died for you. We all die for you.
01:13:05
Speaker
right I also love that this continues the paradox of like Terminator because it's like the Terminator's accidentally setting John Connor up to be the future leader of the rebellion by having him save people who are important in the rebellion. Like, yeah, yeah. Bedell now knows John is important. Yeah, because like when Bedell says, you know, yeah, see you around Connor, you know.
01:13:25
Speaker
Yeah. John and Derek return. Did Cameron walk back by herself? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. How's she going to run pretty fast? I guess, I guess. And then on the over on the other side, right, Sarah finally you know realizes, okay, it's all clear and sets the kid to go back to his mom. And I love the way the kid's like, so you're a mom because he kind of suck at it. She's like, you're not wrong. It's fine. And I love that she tells that kid she can he can always call for any reason.
01:13:54
Speaker
Right. And she would come.
Leadership and Series Reflection
01:13:56
Speaker
Yeah, I actually really like this episode. This is one of those episodes that sticks in my mind of season two. Like if you ask me what episodes I remember, this is one of them. Yeah, I like this one a lot, just because I mean, I think it was smart to kind of it's it's modeled after the first Terminator. Right. Where there's a list of a list of names. I can't remember if Bedell was on the the wall of weird in the barn, but or in the. I don't think he was. I think this just came up from he was clearly being targeted.
01:14:23
Speaker
aye It's a good thing they were reading the newspapers. Right. Right. Yeah, I just enjoy this episode because it has a I enjoy John talking someone else off the teenage angst cliff. Yes. And you would think that would help him to be more mature in the next couple of episodes. It's not. But you know, I know that I was just going to say, because he he comes off very mature in this episode. Right. From helping the guy with the the gun jam, you know, to to everything. Yeah. I think that's one of those realistic things, though. Right. like kids, teenagers, especially with who you are with your family and who you are out in the world don't always match. yes And you can come across as very grown up and adult in the the world. And then at home, you're not. And that's twofold, because like, there's a lot of reasons for that. It's not just because you're trying to be a punk at home. It's because your parents also remember you being a five year old punk. So they assume everything you do is punkish.
01:15:16
Speaker
Right. Yeah, that's that's one of the joys of parenting when when all the teachers are are like, well, you know, he's really, really good at school, you know, really friendly, really helpful. And we're like, well, that's not the kid we see at home all the time. Right, right. At home, he gets to be himself more and he gets to say he wants to be a normal kid at the school setting. He is the future leader. And he has to be that person.
Episode Quality and Podcasting Experience
01:15:38
Speaker
Yeah. But in the next episode, he's going to go back to being the kid.
01:15:40
Speaker
But this is where we're going to stop for now. So do you have any final thoughts about these five episodes? Uh, I think they're good. I think it it starts off the season really well. Um, episode five is my favorite of that group. And, um, so yeah, I was, I was glad we got to this one in the first episode of season two, or sorry, the first mandemonium episode of season two. Yeah. I, you know, I was debating whether to stop here or on six, but I think this is a good place to stop and we're going to yeah probably spend a lot of time talking about six.
01:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, i'm a I'm enjoying this. It's been fun to revisit. I've been watching with my son and and he, like I think I watched the whole series before I introduced it to him, but we've watched it a few times. I assume he likes it. He does. Yeah. Yeah.
01:16:24
Speaker
All right, well, thank you, Seth. Glad to have you back on. Do you want to plug ah your online space? Yes, sure, sure. I have the Hugo's there podcast, which is still going strong. I'm not doing the Hugo winners specifically anymore, just because I caught up with that list. I'm doing all kinds of other stuff, author deep dives, sub-genre spotlights, and also regular episodes and bonus episodes, like we did the one on Aliens a while back, yes which was fun.
01:16:52
Speaker
and And then take me to your reader where we're still doing book to movie adaptations. We just did a fun one where we got to go record on a submarine at the Oregon Museum of Science and industry for doing our episode on Hunt for Red October. So that was awesome. All right. Well, thank you. And we'll have you back on to continue our Sarah Connor Chronicles discussion. Sounds good. See you next time. Yeah, thanks for having me.
01:17:19
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you will join us again next month on March 15th. I'll be welcoming back Rachel Gleishman to continue our discussion of Midnight Mass with book six, Acts of the Apostles.
01:17:30
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Mandemonium. You can find me, Mandy, on Twitter at brown underscore aja. That's A-J-A-H. You can also find the podcast on Twitter at MandemoniumPod, and we also have a podcast Facebook page. Theme music for this podcast was created by Skips of Beat Music. Thank you so much for listening, and we hope you come back next time.