Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Gnothi Seauton (Episode 102)

Already another episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles?  Bring it on, baby!  Remember last night when Sarah and John Connor, accompanied by ass-kicking teenaged Terminator Cameron, jumped into the future via a naked-making lightning bubble?  Yeah, well, it turns out that the Terminator they shot in the bank came along for the ride.  His glowy-eyed skull shot out the back of the bubble, and his skeleton ended up along the median.  Sarah was too busy being, well, naked and in the middle of the freeway to notice.   As we open, her voiceover contemplates that a wise man once said "know thyself."  That's easier said than done when you've had nine aliases and twenty-three jobs, spoken four languages, and spent three years in a mental hospital.  But Sarah's always known her purpose: to prepare and protect her son.  Maybe if you spend your whole life hiding who you are, you only end up fooling yourself.  On the highway, a chucklehead on road cleanup crew finds the Terminator skull and stuffs it into his bag.  Yeah.  That'll end well for him.     

Even though they arrived entirely nude and possessionless in the L.A. area, three days later Sarah and her crew have somehow managed to find attractive, well-fitting modern duds, and even more impressively, they've rented a house.  Now that's savoir-faire.  John has been hiding since they arrived; Sarah needs to get them new IDs and papers before he can be seen.  Cameron's all over that idea, and Sarah promises to track down an old friend, Enrique, who used to be the best fake paper man around.  What does Cameron have to say to that?  That "John sent back better ones."  Say what??

So it turns out that future!John has sent resistance fighters back, and they're just chilling in various locations in the present.  Cameron hotwires a car as Sarah goes on a tirade about how she needs to know this shit.  Just then, John calls because he wants a nosh and can't find the sliced turkey in the fridge.  Sarah says: "Move food around and the turkey will reveal itself to you."  Hee! That was awesome.  I love how this show is full of kickass action, gunfights, and crazy robots from the future, yet Sarah still takes time to pick up her son's socks, make him pancakes, and scold him about how to navigate the fridge.  Moments like this are set to become my favorites.

Cameron takes Sarah to a craptacular apartment where John's future resistance fighters are supposedly holed up.  But instead of grateful devotees ready to worship at the feet of the Mother of the Savior of Mankind, they find four bodies on the floor.  Whoops!  They're too late.  One of the dudes has a barcode tattoo, which proves he was in a cyborg prison.  Cameron flips over another body, and... this one ain't dead!  In fact, it's the very Terminator that killed the other three, biding its time by playing dead and waiting to kill the fourth resistance fighter.  Cameron and the dude set to fighting in that awesome, straight faced matter-of-fact Terminator fashion.  Cameron's smaller, but damn, can she hold her own.  They toss each other through walls and against the floor for awhile, until they go smashing out the third-story window.  The Terminator turns tail and runs away like Britney Spears from rehab (I can't resist those Britney analogies... it's just so easy).  Cameron gives chase on foot; Sarah steals a crotchrocket from some douchebag in a colorful leather jacket and follows them.  She purposely takes a dive on the bike and lets it skid across an alley to slam into the Terminator, knocking him flat.  Cameron goes for him... only to be hit head-on by a car driven by some pasty tourists!  They scream at Cameron's head sticking through the windshield into the car.  "Please remain calm," she deadpans.  Har!  The other Terminator scampers away, whereupon Sarah yells at Cameron for having said that they'd be safe in the year 2007.  It was just as safe back in 1999, and if they'd stayed Sarah would have had a few more years to get John ready.  Cameron: "No you wouldn't have."  She tells Sarah that she would have died on December 4, 2005.  Remember that from Terminator III, y'all?  I've been wondering how they were going to deal with it.  A shocked Sarah can't seem to pick her chin up from where it's fallen somewhere down near her ankles.

Cameron explains that there are Terminators all over this time period, each with a different mission.  But Skynet doesn't know that John Connor is here, so there's no directive to hunt him.  He could tap dance naked to the tune of "My Baby Takes the Morning Train" in front of 865241 Terminators and they wouldn't recognize him.  But if they ever learn his name, you'd better bet your booty they'll come after him. Sarah and "Tin Man," Cameron set off to get the papers from her paramilitary pal Enrique.  On the way, Sarah asks Cameron if the whole plan was to jump forward over own death.  That, and John wanted them to fight; Sarah's the best fighter he's ever known.  Sarah: "Yeah well if I'm so good at fighting how come I'm gonna be pushing up daisies?"  "Cancer," Cameron intones.  Yikes.  The big C. 

Meanwhile, back at the house, John gets bored testing out various dorktastic messages for his cell phone (give it up, dude - no matter what you say, your voice mail message will never sound cool.  Nobody's ever does.).  He decides to disobey his mother and go out, ending up at the mall, where he checks out various L.A. skanks chatting vapidly on cell phones.  He makes his way to a computer store, and thinks he's being all sneaky doing some online research.  That is, without realizing that he's working on a demo computer and that everything he clicks on is popping up on a gargantuan flatscreen right behind him, for all the world to see.  John googles himself and finds a link to Charley Dixon, his mother's ex-fiancé.  Charley's living in L.A.  Fortunately, just then a clerk comes over and helps John disconnect from the world's least private computer.  So much for incognito. 

Enrique serves iced tea and chats with the girls. Sarah tells him that they need three sets of papers, but Enrique claims he's done with his life of crime, having become "El Finito" or "The Finisher."  He's completed his career without any losses or time in prison, and has retired undefeated.  But he does have a nephew named Carlos (not a "believer") who's taken over the family biz.  He and Sarah embrace before she leaves. 

The white trash chucklehead who picked up the Terminator skull (he's probably going to try to figure out how to make it into a really awesome bong or a cupholder for his can of Coors) sets it down once he gets home to his trailer.  Suddenly, the eyes flash red.  At the junkyard, an arm shoots out of the rubble.  Reboot!

Sarah and Cameron go to shady Carlos', where they're escorted inside by tattooed Mexican gangbangers with pit bulls.  Cameron goes out to wait at the stolen car as Sarah deals.  Carlos is interested in knowing his uncle Enrique's secrets and figures he might get close through Sarah: the only time he ever saw Enrique cry was reading her obituary.  He'll fork over new Identification for the low low discount price of only $20,000.  Sarah's all, "That's extortion, yo!"  But Carlos counters that post 9/11 the fake paperwork stakes are higher.  Sarah then proves that she truly has not lived through the past seven years by innocently asking: "What's 9/11?"

Outside, a calm, badass Mexican chick has taken a friendly (?) interest in Cameron, chilling nonchalantly against the car next to her.  Cameron rather adorably emulates her too-cool-to-care stance until a cop pulls up, wanting to know who Cameron is.  Might the car be stolen and she a drug runner's lookout?  The cop turns to run the plates, and Cameron gets a Terminator glint in her eye and goes after him, only to be snagged by Sarah.  Mama Connor does a great job pretending Cameron's her wayward stepdaughter, speaking in a brassy Jersey accent and threatening to send her back to private school if she doesn't stop meeting her boyfriend in shady areas of town.  The cop totally buys the domestic dispute crap and lets them go.  On the way home, Sarah says Cameron needs some rules.  Yeah.  Good luck with that.

Sarah says in a voiceover that she can't imagine the apocalypse.  As the gangbangers described 9/11, she was sure she'd have thought the end was near; that they'd failed in their mission.  Meanwhile, John breaks into Charley Dixon's house.  Charley has apparently married Penny from Lost, 'cuz she's in a lot of his photos.   As John pokes around, Charley gets home.  He of course incredulously recognizes his almost-stepson, and says he saw Sarah on the news.  John tells him not to come any closer, but Charley reaches out to him anyway.  Bad move, dude.  John totally takes him out, slamming him into the ground before apologizing and then running away.  Poor kid.  This recap isn't long enough to talk about lack of childhood stability and the importance of a father figure.

Back home, Supermom!Sarah totally knows John left the house, even without Cameron's brief analysis of his heart rate (which involves a kinda sexy quick caress of the back of his neck - yowza!).  All fake-casual, Sara wonders what other madd skillz Cameron's hiding - like, can she analyze blood and do CAT scans?  Cameron: "No."  Just, no.

That evening, Sarah, Cameron and John go back to the apartment of the resistance fighters.  It's been cleared out by the cops, but Cameron's sure money and guns are hidden somewhere.  Gee, could there be a wall safe under that completely incongruous poster of a fluffy kitten?  That wouldn't be obvious at all.  Upon tearing down the poster,  Cameron reaches for the safe... only to get electrocuted like a giraffe on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm.  She's out cold, and won't reboot for 120 seconds, but we've got another problem: the Terminator who escaped earlier is back.  Good thing apparently all it takes is using your T-shirt like a potholder between your hand and the safe in order not to get electrocuted!  That's exactly what John does to open the safe, after having also very handily guessed the code.  They grab what's inside.  To make their escape, Sarah shoves Cameron... out the window. Dude, that's seriously the second time today she went out that window, only this time she's unconscious.  Fortunate that she's made of metal!  Cameron crashes like a sack of steel turnips onto a car below.  She reboots in time for them to run off, as a man with a barcode tattoo watches from the shadows.  Must be the fourth freedom fighter, who hasn't yet been murdered by the Terminator. 

The bag contains money, guns... and diamonds, and Sarah almost seems jealous when John gives Cameron one.  Cameron says that she knows what the Tin Man is; Sarah used to read John the Wizard of Oz in Spanish.  It was one of his favorite things and he talked about it all the time.  Sarah seems to think it very strange that this staring cyborg knows so much about something personal between her and her son.  For my part, I find it... disconcerting that she's talking about John in the past tense, when he's in the next room.  It's bizarre to think that he's going to become the man she's talking about, but that they're not the same person yet.  The whole concept of time travel makes my brain hurt.

The freeway cleanup chucklehead confronts an intruder in his house; a guy wearing a motorcycle helmet.  Chucklehead flips up the visor to see a dead face.  It's a decapitated head on a Terminator body.  Said body promptly dispatches the road crew chucklehead and reclaims his metal cranium.  Meanwhile, Sarah looks remarkably comfortable surrounded by a passel of Mexican gang members as she receives the paperwork for their new identities.  As she and Cameron they walk out, Carlos says something in Spanish slang, which both ladies overhear.  They're also both clearly taken aback by it.  Meanwhile, Charley's wife (whose name is unfortunately not Penny but Michelle) wonders if he's okay.  He lies and says that he is. 

Sarah likes having no name or story; it's the only time that she gets to be herself.  But the price is getting higher every day.  The next thing you know, she's at Enrique's, aiming a gun at him.  Is there anything he neglected to tell her?  Something he lied about?  She overheard Carlos and his crew call Enrique a snitch, an informer.  Is he selling her out?  Enrique admits that he was in prison for two weeks on a gun charge, and gave information to the cops about his child molesting cellmate.  But he swears that's all.  Sarah's face softens, and she looks like she almost believes her pleading friend... and then, bada-bing, bada-boom... he's gunned down by gang-bangin' Cameron, who flatly states that he was, and I quote, "possibly lying."  She shot him because Sarah couldn't.  Furious, Sarah asks how Cameron could know what she would or wouldn't do.  Cameron doesn't know Sarah, or her son.  Oh, Sarah, darling.  Denial isn't a river in Egypt.  I think this Terminator knows a great deal about the man your son will become, and it's eating you up inside.  Sarah breaks down over Enrique's body, saying she feels like she doesn't even know her own name anymore.  "Sarah Connor," Cameron intones oh-so-helpfully.  Hee! 

Cameron quizzes John on his new identity, because they're enrolling in school.  At least Cameorn has mastered the 2007 slutty L.A. teenager look.  With her blank, semi-bitchy expression, miniskirt and thigh-high socks, she'll fit in just fine.  Meanwhile, FBI Agent Ellison listens to a message from Enrique the really-a-Snitch (good instincts, Cameron!) as CSIs go over his house.  The message just said that Enrique knew something big; fortunately it doesn't mention Sarah.

We get a closing voiceover.  Sarah says that you should know thyself - because what else is there to know?  People hide secrets, time is a lie, and the material world can disappear in an instant.  Our identities and mannerisms change; we're shapeshifters.  There's no control or constant, no shelter but the love of family and the body God gave us.  We can only hope that will be enough.  As she speaks, we see the hooded metal Terminator hanging out in a transient camp, and Sarah sitting tensely in an Oncology office, waiting to speak to a doctor about her own fate.