Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Allison from Palmdale (Episode 204)

Allison? From Palmdale?Question: why is it that a show about bimbos throwing themselves at a short, moronic, giant-clock wearing, fugly dude with a mouthful of gold teeth can get renewed for 38596035 seasons, but awesome, deep, emotionally moving sci-fi shows are always on the endangered species list?  I read that if Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ ratings don’t pick up, the evil PTB over at Fox will give it the axe.  It’s enough to make this recapper cry.  This show so deserves to be on the air, and tonight’s episode proved it.  Twisty storyline.  Interesting character development.  Cool special effects.  Gut-wrenching acting.  So if you’re a fan of T:TSCC, tell your friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers to change the channel from whatever crap they’re watching on Mondays at 8 PM (Dancing With the Stars?  Really?  Do you honestly enjoy watching Cloris Leachman’s wattle jiggle around a dance floor?).  I’d hate to see yet another awesome sci-fi show get cut down in its prime.  

As we open, a girl runs from an unseen pursuer.  It appears to be the future, and the girl looks a heck of a lot like Cameron.  In fact, if she wasn’t screaming in fear, I would think it was Cameron.  Cam, however, doesn’t scream.  And she also doesn’t get scared.  Her doppelganger, here, is pretty much scared shitless.  The girl pries open a door and runs outside into a field of rubble, but she’s suddenly snared in a net.  Crash back to the present, and a calm Cameron rides shotgun in the Connors’ product-placementmobile.  I really hope this enormous, shiny, out-of-place gas guzzler gets blowed up by an errant grenade really soon, because I find it a teensy bit ironic that the marketing department Connors have picked a ride with an onboard computer.  John’s driving, and fortunately seems to be a little more levelheaded and less whiny than usual.  He drops Cameron off at the grocery store as he goes to pick up some equipment.  

Even though I’m pretty sure Terminators don’t eat, Cam’s doing the family shopping.  As she walks through the aisles of the store with her cart, something starts to go wrong.  Her eyesight goes blurry and she has some sort of a flashback, a vision of the girl who looks like her being interrogated by Terminators.  Suddenly, it’s like Cameron’s programming stalls; her cart runs into a watermelon display, and fruit goes rolling across the floor.  Cameron’s in a trance, totally unresponsive to the puzzled shoppers asking if she’s all right. Next thing you know, there’s a cop shining a flashlight in Cameron’s face, asking what she’s on.  Coke? Crack? Smack? Dope?  Oh, if only you knew the truth, Mr. Police man.  He asks her name next, and Cameron has another flashback to the future interrogation room.  “Why should I tell you my name?” Cameron’s doppelganger bravely asks her freaky-deaky metallic captors.  As a response, they burn a barcode into her arm.  “My name is Allison Young!” cries the girl.  

Present.  The cops think Cameron’s a junkie, so she gets tossed into a ladies’ lockup.   Another girl, who is supposed to be a “street kid” but is way too well fed, nicely groomed, attractive, and non-tattooed, asks what she’s in for.  The new friend’s name is Jody… but Cameron is apparently not Cameron.  It seems she thinks she’s Allison.  Whoa… I don’t know how Cameron even has the ability to think this (how the heck did it get into her programming?) but she suddenly believes she’s a terrorized human girl who’s been tortured by Terminators.  Damn.  I can’t wait to see how this one plays out!  When “Allison” and Jody are released (“Allison” getting back her only possession of a wad of cash approximately the size of Rhode Island), Jody invites her to go hang out.  Being that Allison/Cameron can’t remember John and doesn’t have anywhere to go, she agrees.  Meanwhile, John arrives back at the grocery store to pick up Cam, but she’s nowhere to be found.  He learns that some chick on drugs was arrested, and immediately books it toward the police station.  The cops tell him that Cameron went with Jody, who can usually be found hooking hanging out on Hollywood Boulevard.

Over in the B storyline, the Connors’ monstrously preggo neighbor Casey is having pain and bleeding, which causes Sarah to immediately load her into the Connors’ other car (a far more appropriate dusty hard-workin’ Jeep) and take her to the hospital.  The doctors determine that she’s not in any danger, but Sarah decides to keep her company.  We learn that Casey’s having a son.  Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if her kid turned out to be some key pivotal resistance fighter in the future?  I adore continuity like that!  Sarah promptly announces that she gave birth in a manger Central American jungle, and she says that John’s father was there holding her hand the whole time.  Liar!  He got Terminated by Arnold Schwarzenegger, way back in like 1985, remember?  Just then, Trevor, Casey’s baby daddy, arrives.  They take a moment to discuss the fact that she’s ready to pop and he’s not ready to be a pop.  Snerk.  Sarah calls John, who’s walking along Hollywood Boulevard asking Every. Single. Person. in L.A. if they know a chick named Jody.  

Last week Ellison was offered a job by Catherine the Terminator, and he’s still pontificating about it.  Catherine tells him that her husband was killed in a helicopter crash a few years back.  He was an expert pilot, but even the most highly trained humans can make mistakes.  That’s why she thinks helicopters should be flown by mistake-free robots.  Ellison still wants to run a background check on his potential boss, so he goes and meets with his ex-wife, who is a detective and has hair that resembles a four foot Bozo the Clown wig.  Ellison’s ex, who’s now remarried, smugly gets in a few zingers about how well she still knows him and how much he looks like crap warmed over.  Ah, exes.  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t strangle ‘em the way you’d like to.

Jody tells Cameron a story about how she relocated from Michigan a couple of years back, and ended up living on the street.  Cameron compliments her on her necklace, which Jody says she got at a thrift store.  Just then, a scary Hell’s Angels type spots Jody and chases her down, hollering that she stole a laptop from him.  Right there in front of everyone at Mondo Burrito, he hauls off and punches her in the face!  Whoa, there, dude, you just popped the pal of a Terminator.  Cue Cameron knocking this douche flat on his ass!  Except… all Cameron does is cringe and thrust her wad of cash at the thug, begging him to leave them alone.  That proves it.  Cameron really doesn’t remember anything about being a Terminator.  Dude, the way that chip keeps malfunctioning, I hope it’s still under warranty!  Take that shit right back to Best Buy.  Allison/Cameron and Jody head to a shelter, where they plan to spend the night.  Jody promises that from now on, she’ll have Allison/Cameron’s back, too.  She takes off her thrift store necklace and puts it around Allison/Cameron’s neck.  Aww!  They’re, like, totally BFF!

In order to stay at the shelter, Allison/Cameron has to have an interview with a counselor.  Jody encourages her to lie, but Allison/Cameron doesn’t seem to be capable of it.  Hereupon follows one of the most interesting, cool montages I’ve ever seen.  Scenes from the conversation with the counselor are intercut with Allison’s recollections of her far-less-pleasant interrogation by the Terminators in the future.  This is really hard to describe, but I assure you that the effect is kickass:

Counselor: “Where are you from, Allison?”
Creepy Disembodied Terminator Voice:  “Where are you from?”
Cameron/Allison (in response to both): “I can’t remember. Why does it matter?  It’s not there anymore.”
Counselor:  “Sometimes people forget because they need to, but memory is an associative thing – sights, smells, and sounds can take us back.”
Creepy Disembodied Terminator Voice: “Tell me about your life.”
Cameron/Allison: “I live in a tunnel; I eat garbage for dinner.”  
Counselor: “Tell me about your family.”
Cameron/Allison: “My father was an architect.  My mother was a music teacher.  My sister gave me the bracelet I’m wearing for my birthday.  My father said I’d get a bike the next year, but I didn’t have any more parties after that.  Nobody did.  Everyone was dead.”  (Cameron/Allison starts to cry).
Counselor: “Where is home?”
Cameron/Allison: “Palmdale.  I’m from Palmdale.”  

The next thing you know, Cameron/Allison is phoning home.  A woman picks up.  “Mom?  It’s me, Allison,” The woman, Claire Young, is pleasant but puzzled.  She doesn’t have a daughter – yet.  She’s pregnant!  “That’s a pretty name,” says Mrs. Young.  “Allison.”  That scene sent a chill down my spine, it was so neato.  If only Mrs. Young knew that she was talking to a machine from the future, who’s a dead ringer for her unborn child… as a teenager.  Wounded and vulnerable, Cameron/Allison wonders why her mother would pretend not to know who she is.  

Sarah talks to Casey about the baby daddy, Trevor.  Surprise!  Casey was the one who got cold feet.  Now that she’s laid up with stretch marks and cankles, though, Trevor’s looking not so bad after all.  And guess what else?  Good ol’ Trev… is a cop!  When Sarah learns this, she tenses like a deer in the headlights of a cement mixer.  Hee!  Casey and Trevor are all palsy-walsy with Sarah, whom I’m sure is now trying to think of a way that she can gracefully get the hell away from this cop as fast as humanly possible.

After asking approximately 9074635 random citizens if they know Jody, John gets directed to the halfway house.  Spotting Cameron, he grabs her arm.  Cameron declares that her name is Allison, and John’s all, “Uh, no it’s not because you’re a machine from the future.”  Suddenly, Cameron/Allison has another flashback. She’s running through hallways, trying to escape the Terminators.  She enters a room full of cages, and the people locked inside yell at her run.  Allison scrambles out a metal door and finds herself on top of a massive aircraft carrier, which is apparently serving as a prison for the humans.  She only hesitates a moment before jumping over the edge of the giant ship and into the sea.  Holy crap, that has to be a hundred-foot drop!  But she’s not even safe in the water… before she knows it, a net scoops her right back up.  Allison is tossed back into the Terminator interrogation room.  Except that this time, the creepy disembodied voice… belongs to Cameron!  The Terminators have been modeling Cameron after Allison the whole time!  The two identical women, one human, one machine, face off.  Cameron tells Allison that her hair is very pretty… they worked hard to get it just right. She declares that she’s not Allison’s enemy; that she thinks Allison is very brave, and that’s why John Connor chose her.  Cameron claims to admire him, and to disagree with the Terminators who want to hunt humans to extinction.  “Some of us want peace,” Cameron says.  She claims to want to know where John Connor’s camp is so that she can negotiate a truce.

In the present, Cameron’s wires are uncrossing, and she’s beginning to remember the fact that she’s a Terminator.  The first thing she does?  Haul off and give John’s surly ass a good hard shove.  He’s escorted out by a security guard.  Now that she remembers the encounter in the interrogation room, Cameron’s becoming more like herself and less like Allison all the time.  She goes in for another counseling session, where she tells the therapist that she’s a machine from the future.  Her job?  To infiltrate the human resistance, and find John Connor, the Savior of Mankind.  “I’m going to kill him and hang his head on a pike,” Cameron declares dreamily.  Therapist: “Okey-dokey.”  She promptly calls the cops.  Meanwhile, Cameron hangs out with Jody in their room, asking the same questions she asked Allison.  “Tell me about your life.”  Jody says she doesn’t want to talk about the past.  She’d like to relocate to somewhere more “authentic” like Portland, and she wants Cameron to come along.  They can reinvent themselves!  

Ellison’s background check didn’t find any dirt on Catherine, but it does say that the cause of her husband’s helicopter crash was mechanical failure, not pilot error like Catherine said.  Confused, Ellison goes to see her again.  There, he meets Catherine’s equally redheaded daughter, Savannah.  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  How is it that this Terminator has a kid?  Maybe she’s usurped the identity of a real woman, and is raising her daughter?  This whole “Catherine’s a Terminator” thing makes less and less sense every week.  I hope we start getting some answers soon.  Anyhoo, Ellison comments that if he had a child, he’d rather she believe her father’s death was caused by mechanical failure, and not his own error.  Catherine nods, and apparently this is enough for Ellison to make up his mind that he wants to work for her.  “When do I start?” he asks.  

The cops shows up at the halfway house to pick up Cameron, but the girls have departed, on their way to rob a house round up some funds for their trip.  Jody claims that she used to babysit for a rich family, and Cameron breaks down the front door of their darkened house.  Jody even knows the combination to this family’s safe, and she opens it and starts unloading jewelry.  Cameron and I are both starting to notice that Jody says a lot of things, and her stories don’t add up.  For example: a pair of earrings in the safe match the necklace Jody gave to Cameron.  Jody changes her “thrift store” story and says that she stole it from this family.  When Cameron calls her on it, Jody finally admits that the necklace is hers, and this is her family’s house!  

Suddenly, Cameron’s having a flashback.  In the interrogation room, she accuses Allison of lying.  Allison told them where the camp was, but failed to mention the fact that her bracelet was, in fact, a secret pass.  Allison was going to send Cameron there without the bracelet, and the humans would have known immediately that she was a Terminator. Cameron grabs Allison by the throat.  “I’ll never help you get John Connor,” Allison chokes.  Whereupon Cameron… snaps her neck!  She takes Allison’s bracelet, and intones horribly, “You already did.”  In the present, things are playing out rather scarily the way they did in that interrogation room, except now Jody is in Allison’s place.  Cameron accuses her of lying about who she is, and Jody admits that she pretty much everything she’s told Cameron has been a lie.  But they have to get out of this house, because they tripped a silent alarm on their way in.  Hey Jody?  You’re kind of missing the fact that Cameron’s getting pretty worked up, here.  Wires are definitely still crossed.  Shit’s going awry.  This will not end well.  “You lied to me.  You were going to run and leave me here to take the blame,” Cameron says.  She grabs Jody by the throat, exactly the way she grabbed Allison.  Suddenly, John bursts through the door, and finds Jody crumpled on the ground with Cameron standing over her.  “What did you do?” he gasps.  “Did you kill her?”  And... Jody draws a ragged breath.  “Apparently not,” says Cameron flatly.

Back at the hospital, Casey thinks she’d like to let Trevor back into her life.  Sarah admits that she lied about John’s father – that he died before John was born.  She told the story because she wishes he’d been there with her.  The fact that Trevor’s a cop is scary to Casey, but he’s a good man, and will be a good dad.  “I got through it, and so can you,” Sarah says.  “And besides - I’ll be right next door.”  What’s that, I see?  Is it Sarah, putting down roots and starting to care about somebody?  Dangerous territory, Sarah.  I think history has shown that anybody you care about can be used against you.    

Cameron is apparently back to her normal (read: not quite murderous but still sorta batshit insane) self.  As she rides back to the house in the product-placementmobile, she coldly fingers the necklace that Jody gave her.  “Where’d you get that?” John asks uneasily.  “From this awesome thrift store in Echo Park,” Cameron intones, echoing Jody’s lie from earlier in the day.  She stares out the window, expressionless.  

Okay.  This episode was so flippin’ good that it deserves some extra commentary.  Having Cameron team up with another girl her age was brilliant - I loved the parallels they drew between Cameron’s interactions with Allison and with Jody.  I still haven’t figured out exactly what went down in Cameron’s brain.  At one point, she was Allison.  Clearly, Cameron had studied Allison’s behavior so closely that a part of her could be that human girl.  But then when she started to remember, there was a period where she seemed to be both herself and Allison, and the lines between their personas were blurred.  Allison still existed in a way, albeit in the body of the machine that killed her.  Twisted.  This show raises so many interesting questions about compassion, humanity, and self-identity.  Anybody else have any comments?  I’d love to hear your impressions!