Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - What He Beheld (Episode 109)

Cameron shows off her own special way of making an entrance

Yee-haw!  Two Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes in one night!  This little recapper’s been working overtime.  I’m going to enjoy it while I can, because T:SCC is out of eps, and is about to go off the air.  Hey Fox… this show rules, and you’d better bring it back, ASAP!  Let’s get to that finale.  Sarah’s voiceover tells us that when John was little he used to sleep with his hand tucked under her chin.  She wanted to freeze time right then and there.  But we can’t freeze time, and we can’t protect our children.  As she speaks, a caption lets us know that it’s April 15, 2001 – Judgment Day.  Hey, is it a coincidence that Judgment Day is also Tax Day?  New geek theory!  Skynet is Turbotax gone wrong!  Anyhoo, two boys play on the front lawn of their house.  This is Derek Reese, teaching his younger brother Kyle how to hit a baseball.  Suddenly there’s a whooshing noise, and the boys look up to see rockets soaring through the blue sky above.  “Fireworks, cool!” exclaims Kyle.  Ummmm… sweetie, I’m thinking those aren’t fireworks.  Unless by “fireworks” you mean “giant deadly mushroom clouds.” 

Present.  Sarah and Cameron are in an internet café, getting ready to rendezvous with Sarkissian, the dude who bought Dmitri’s Turk.  Outside, Derek and John chill in the car, ‘cuz the grrlzz are the kickass ones in this little patchwork family.  John talks about how the man who founded Intel said the power of computer chips would frequently double.  That idea has become a statistical fact, which shows how they’ll be able to go from a chess computer to the apocalypse in just four years. Derek: “Screw four years a lot can happen in four seconds.”  One minute he and his brother were playing baseball, and the next the sky was on fire.  He took Kyle and went underground.  Dude, where were their parents?  Probably off paying taxes.  At the time, Kyle was just eight years old, and Derek was fifteen.  There’s really no good way to tell your kid brother that machines have taken over the world.  Inside the café, the girls sit down at Computer #19, as their contact has instructed.  An IM flashes across the screen. “I understand you’re interested in buying the Turk.”  “Yes,” types Sarah.  The response: “Five hundred thousand, at the mall, by the food court tomorrow.” The mystery messenger abruptly logs off.  They don’t have 500K… but that can be remedied.

FBI agent Ellison shows up at Charlie’s house.  Over tea (I would have thought he’d give up tea after what happened the last time) Ellison asks Charlie if he knows the story of the Rapture.  Charlie’s wife is the one who’s into the religious crap, but Ellison starts quoting from the book of Revelations anyway.  He’s seen some things with his own eyes… he’s beheld.  And he’s come to new conclusions.  He thinks that Sarah Connor is alive, and that Charlie knows where she is.  Ellison lets Charlie know that all of a sudden he believes in robots and Skynet and the impending apocalypse.  “If she were alive, I’m sure she’d like to hear you say that,” Charlie snarks.  He’ll tell Ellison what he told the other guy: Sarah’s dead.  At that, Ellison perks up.  What other guy?  Why, that other agent, Kester, natch.  Ellison’s eyebrow goes up so far it nearly pokes a hole in the ceiling.   

Time to take a trip back over to the gangbangers’ house.  Remember, the place where Sarah bought her new IDs?  Cameron’s silent girly gangbanger pal is there, and quite suspicious of the clean-shaven dude and the long-haired thug who have just pulled up.  She slinks away as they stomp right up the stairs and simply walk through the front door.  Of course Enrique’s nephew’s bodyguards pull all kinds of weapons, but the man exudes such confidence that nobody shoots.  He speaks in an English accent, and out of his pocket he whips a picture of Sarah Connor.  He asks if these guys know her.  The nephew claims not, but Mr. Accent is doubtful.  Uncle Enrique knew her pretty danged well, and Mr. Accent knows they associated with each other.  He thinks Sarah came to Enrique for an ID, and got one here before offing her former pal.  Mr. Accent has something Sarah wants… so he really needs to know where she is.  When the nephew continues to deny all, Mr. Accent grabs a sword off the wall and he and his thug quickly take out all of the gangbangers except for the nephew, who sits gulping on the couch without his coterie of protection.  “So,” says Mr. Accent calmly.  “How brave a boy are you?”  Yeeps.  Don’t mess with this guy! 

Back at the Connor place, there’s a knock and Sarah finds Charlie on her stoop.  He lets her know that Ellison’s ready to believe her about Judgment Day.  But Sarah tells him that the FBI can’t protect her.  Nobody can.  If any Terminators find them, it’s curtains.  She suggests that he take his wife and get out of town.  A chagrined Charlie practically gets the door slammed in his face.  Later, Sarah has Cameron estimating the value of the diamonds that were in the resistance fighters’ safe.  It’s not quite $500,000, but Sarah plans to negotiate.  She and Derek head to the food court, unfortunately with no idea how they’re going to recognize their mystery contact.  It turns out not to be a problem, however, because the elusive Turk seller stands them up again, but not before Derek lets us know that in the future, this food court is a concentration camp.  Hey thanks for that uplifting info, Mary Sunshine!

When Sarah and Derek get home… there’s Mr. Accent, making himself at home on the freakin’ living room couch!  He suavely tells Sarah that he just had to know all about the person who wants to buy his newly acquired Turk.  She’s very beautiful for a dead woman.  Aha, so this is Sarkissian, the man they were supposed to buy the Turk from!  He proposes that she multiply the previously stated amount by four, and he’ll let her walk away.  Derek’s all, “how abut this you shut your yap and give us the Turk and I won’t shove your head in a meat grinder.”  Sarkissian just chuckles.  Here’s one who isn’t scared of idle threats.  If he doesn’t walk out the front door, his people will call the FBI and tell them exactly where Sarah’s hiding out.  Oh, and they’re also watching John, who’s on a field trip to the science museum.  Sarah: “Gulp.”  They have twenty-four hours.  He strolls out the door and Sarah orders Derek to follow him.   

Over at the science museum, John’s not talking much.  Turns out that his birthday is tomorrow, and he knows that his mother forgot.  Cameron doesn’t get why that’s bad, and John explains that a birthday is supposed to be fun.   Last year his mom gave him a flak jacket.  Not so fun.  Cameron wonders innocently if she has a birthday.  John: “Maybe you have a builtday.”  Just then, Cameron spots Sarkissian’s thug with the long hair.  He’s acting suspicious, watching them not-so-surreptitiously through a dinosaur skeleton.  Cameron knows something’s not right and keeps her eye on the dude.

Later, Morris and John find Cameron by a kickass BMW in the museum’s parking lot.  Morris is all, “Is that your car??”  And Cameron’s all, “Nope it belongs to the dude I killed and stuffed in the trunk.”  Hee!  Truth, or sarcasm?  Depends on who’s listening.  Morris laughs, but John looks queasy.  Cameron orders John to get the hell in.  But before he does, Morris asks Cameron to go to the prom with him.  She stares at him with a complete lack of comprehension about what the crap he’s talking about, and finally John hollers, “Just say yes!!”  “YES.” Cameron all but shouts.  She and John drive off as Morris practically melts into a puddle of teenage boy hormone goo.  Um… prom already?  I thought school had just started a few weeks ago. 

Ellison’s back at FBI headquarters, investigating “Agent Kester,” who has somehow landed in the FBI database like a bona-fide agent.  Ellison is getting wiser and wiser to this game.  Meanwhile, Cameron pulls the BMW into the garage and she and John close the doors as Sarah comes in. Indeed, the long-haired thug is stuffed awkwardly in the trunk.  Derek comes back, letting them know that he lost Sarkissian’s trail.  He thinks they have to get out of there right now; it’s like the house has a giant bullseye painted on the front door.  But John doesn’t want to run.  Fortunately for him, just then the dead thug’s cell phone rings.  Cameron answers it in his voice, and tells Sarkissian that “he’s” still watching the kids.  Sarkissian wants them brought back to HQ.  Too bad none of them know where that is.  Suddenly, there’s a knock at the garage door.  It’s the silent gangbanger chick.  Her shirt is covered in blood and she’s still not saying a word.  But she’s got a gleam in her eye that I like. 

Next thing you know, the gangbanger chick has driven them back to that internet café.  She must have been more successful than Derek in following Sarkissian.  Dude… could she be a Terminator?  I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me before.  She’s deadpan and steady enough, that’s for sure.  Sarah orders her to stay in the car, and she, Derek, Cameron and John stroll right into the café and bounce the proprietor’s head against the counter to get him to tell them where Sarkissian is.  He points toward the back room, but presses an alarm button as they make their way through the door.  Sarkissian therefore knows that trouble’s coming.  He runs down the hallway and locks himself behind a metal door.  Cameron thinks it would be faster to go through the wall.  She punches holes in the cinderblocks like they’re made of Styrofoam, as John searches a nearby office for the Turk.  He yanks open a door… and finds a little girl sitting there.  She looks innocently up at him and says she’s waiting for her daddy to get off of work.  John tells her to stay in the office with the door closed, no matter what she hears.  Meanwhile, Cameron walks through the wall and Sarkissian is gone.  He had a security camera monitor in the room, and on it Sarah sees Sarkissian sneaking up on John back out in the hallway!  She runs back the way she came, eventually bursting out the back door of the building.  There, she comes face to face with Sarkissian, who has a gun to John’s head.  Sarah whips out her own pistol, and it’s a standoff. 

Sarah trembles and John’s almost crying when out the door comes Derek, with his own gun pointed at the little girl’s head.  “Not my kid,” snarls Sarkissian.  “Not mine either,” replies Derek.  The little girl’s obviously upset, and Derek bends down to soothe her, saying everything’s okay… and then suddenly he claps his hand over her eyes so that she won’t see him shoot Sarkissian square in the forehead.  He flies backward away from John, and Sarah lurches forward to grab her son into her arms.  They hustle back inside, and Sarah suggests that the little girl go find her dad, like right now, and not look back.  They grab Sarkissian’s hard drive and skedaddle.  Our crew is driven back to their house by the still silent gangbanger girl.  As she exits the car, Cameron asks if she needs to kill the girl now.  But rather than shooting her in the head, she cocks her gun and gives it to the gangbanger girl, who still has not had a single line.  I’m not sure why I’m so completely fascinated with this character, but I am. 

Ellison meets with the female FBI agent who’s been working the strange blood case with him.  She recognizes “Kester” as the suspect from the plastic surgeon’s murder, but Ellison says their blood doesn’t match.  The female FBI agent’s all, “So you’re saying that this guy killed six people and then made a plastic surgeon change his appearance and usurped an out of work actor’s identity and then decided to pose as an FBI agent?”  Um… to what end?  Ellison thinks that a better question is what is this guy?  He doesn’t even seem human.  “Some men are monsters,” says the female agent.  This is one monster they’re going to go arrest.  Yeah, good luck with that!

John tries to decrypt Sarkissian’s hard drive as his mom hovers over him and annoys him by smoothing his hair lovingly.  John ducks out from under her hand and whines that she should leave him alone.  She makes a prudent exit, whereupon Derek comes in and says he knows it’s John’s birthday.  They celebrated his thirtieth together, and John got drunk as a skunk.  He offers to buy John a beer, and John’s all, “I’m sixteen!”  Okay, then.  An ice cream cone.  Hee!   The boys go to the park, munching on their ice cream bars.  They watch a couple of kids playing ball, and Derek says that he can almost start fooling himself into believing the world will always look like this.  He’ll do whatever it takes to keep it from burning again.  The boys’ baseball goes wide and rolls across the grass, coming to a stop at John’s feet.  The younger little boy runs over and solemnly stares at John as he hands it back.  He’s a cute kid with floppy brown hair.  As he runs back to his brother, the older boy’s T-shirt comes into view.  REESE is written across the back.  Holy crap!  John realizes… “Is that you?” he asks Derek breathlessly.  Yes, it sure is.  And that means that the little boy is… Kyle Reese, aged five years.  “Your father always had a nice arm.” Derek comments.  WHAT?  He knows he’s John’s uncle?  But how? “Every time I look at you, I see him.” Derek says.  And besides, Sarah’s Kyle’s type.  John looks like he’s about to cry again as he gazes at the little boys, playing in the park.  “Happy birthday,” Derek says. 

Commercials.  Oh. My. GOD.  It’s that AT&T ad with the little girl texting while she plays Scrabble with her mother.  Every time I see this fucking commercial I want to grab that phone, throw it on the ground, jump up and down on top of it while bellowing obscenities at the top of my lungs, grab the kid by the hair, drag her outside into the sunshine, throw her a book or a jumprope or some marbles, and force her to do something other than text her life away into oblivion.  What the FUCK, AT&T?  Do you really think you’re going to appeal to consumers by implying that their children will turn into illiterate shallow snotty assholes who stare at their cell phone screens all day whilst rolling their eyes and peevishly mouthing off to their parents?  I mean, for the love of all that’s fucking holy!  And hey, all you moms and dads out there… your nine-year-old needs a cell phone like she needs a goddamned hole in her head!  Jesus Effing CHRIST.

Ahem.  Rant completed.  Ellison leads a gaggle of combat gear clad FBI agents to the residence of the impostor agent, Kester.  Jaunty Johnny Cash music starts up in the background as everybody runs up the apartment stairs.  Meanwhile, Charlie gets a call on his radio, advising all EMTs in the area to standby; the FBI are raiding Kester’s place.  Charlie immediately puts on his red lights and sirens and flips a bitch, roaring back toward the location of the raid.  At the apartment building, they break down Chromardi’s door, and this scene is pretty brilliant.  It really must be seen to be appreciated.  Shots are fired, and as the first Kevlar-clad agent goes flying over the second-story balcony and into the swimming pool below, the action slows.  Suddenly our view is from inside the pool, as agent after agent lands in it, spilling blood into the water.  We hear muffled gunshots and screaming, and the Johnny Cash song swells triumphantly.  Seriously.  Watch this scene.  I can’t even describe how cool and scary it is.  Before the whole thing’s over, Chromardi, with bullet holes pocking his skin and showing the metal underneath, aims a gun straight at Ellison’s chest.  The two men are the only ones left standing.  Ellison closes his eyes, as if resigned to his fate, and instead of shooting him, Chromardi lowers his gun and simply walks off.  I believe I just held my breath for the entire duration of that scene.  Wow.

Time for Sarah’s voiceover, so you know this episode’s wrapping up.  She tells us that in Lord of the Flies a group of boys slaughter a pig in the jungle. They torture it and offer its head to the pig god.  Charlie’s ambulance comes screaming into the apartment complex, just in time to see Chromardi leaving.  Charlie runs into the courtyard and sees the pool full of blood and bodies.  Ellison checks the female agent, but she’s dead.  He and Charlie look at each other in horror.  Sarah says that later one of the boys weeps, but not for the pig.  He’s crying for the end of innocence, and the darkness of men’s hearts. 

Back at home, John pulls photos off of Sarkissian’s hard drive.  It turns out that Sarah wasn’t the only one interested in buying the Turk – another man came to the internet café before she did.  In fact, he could have bought the Turk.  Sarah thinks that’s all fine and good, but that John should take a break.  How else are they supposed to celebrate his birthday?  Awww, she remembered!  Sarah says that finding the Turk is their mission, but his birthday is their life.  If we stop caring about that, they’re lost.  She even sent Cameron to get a cake.  John laughs and goes to shut down the computer, but as he takes a last look, he sees something important.  It’s a photo identifying a man as Sarkissian… and it’s not the man that Derek shot in the alley!  It’s some other guy with a mole on his face!  As Cameron walks out to the SUV, she sees the real Sarkissian walking off down the street.  But since she doesn’t know who he is, she’s not suspicious.  Oh crap, oh crap, this isn’t going to be good, I can feel it… Cameron gets in the car and turns the key… and the SUV explodes into a giant ball of flames.