Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 2x10, “Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point”

Episode Title: Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point
Writers: Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz
Director: Scott Peters
Originally Aired: 11/24/2008
Grade: A-

It was quite nice to see John and Sarah getting along, to see John being considerate of and affectionate toward her, working so hard on her cover and making her a “cheat sheet.” Sarah flipping out over the three dots on her face and smashing the mirror… easily one of the oldest tricks in the book to symbolize a shattered psyche. The first example that popped into my head was the shot of DiCaprio’s face reflected in the wind chimes in The Departed.

What future is Jessie from? Cameron is in the past with our John now, but the way Jessie talks, she’s also in Jessie’s version of the future “now” guiding John to make questionable decisions. Everything so far has indicated that Jessie came back after Cameron and Derek—even just the fact that she’s telling Derek what FutureJohn is doing, like Derek wouldn’t know, supports this. Cameron can’t be in the past/our present and in the future/Jessie’s past at the same time. Jessie tells Derek to imagine if John spends the next 20 years with Cameron, so is Jessie from that future? Derek and Cam are from the same timeline, and Jessie and Riley are from a different one? Because that’s the only thing that makes sense. I don’t have charts and graphs or anything, but I pay pretty close attention to the details on this show, and it seems a little questionable that it would be so confusing as to who is from what timeline, who came back first, and how Cameron can be in two places at once. Is this some kind of glaring continuity error, or are Jessie and Derek truly from different timelines, as was suggested by Derek in the previous episode?

I'm also extremely curious as to why the survivors in Jessie and Riley's future are so firmly against Cameron... one would think that if John has spent so many years with her in their future, then she clearly hasn't betrayed him and should be trustworthy. But these people don't see her that way, which certainly hints that our present-day Cameron has a much more subversive, underhanded plan than just "kill John Connor." Prejudice goes a long way, but there's got to be more going on in that future than just "If she's metal, she's evil." Cameron has to be influencing John in a way that has a subtly negative impact on the human race.

I feel like there's a distinction between Derek's fear of Cameron and Jessie's fear of Cameron. In Derek's timeline, John reprogramming the machines was a fairly new occurrence, and Derek had recently been through his own metal-related trauma in the creepy, mysterious basement. It's understandable for Derek to be afraid based on pure and simple prejudice and the fact that these reprogrammed machines were a very new thing, one whose repercussions were yet to be seen.

If it's true that John grew up with Cameron in Jessie's timeline, and most of the resistance knew this, that makes it a different fear. They knew Cameron all along and could see that she protected John, that she didn't turn on him, which indicates to me that their fear is based specifically on the way she's influencing John, rather than just a widespread fear of Ts. And if they're right about the way she's influencing John, it also proves that our present-day Cameron is up to no good.

(But of course, it's also possible that Jessie's people are misguided in their fears and that John and Cameron are actually doing something good in the future. Or Cam could have nefarious plans but also be protective of John because she's developed even further along the paths we're seeing opened to her now.)

And stupid, stupid Derek, to tell Jessie that John is his nephew. Although it’s nice to know that it’s something that he cares about, and that fact means that he and Jessie will probably end up at odds at some point before the season is over. Jessie didn’t have any sort of evil, stereotypical “bad guy” look on her face when she hugged Derek in that scene, though. She looked pensive and conflicted, but far from “Mwahaha, I am mercilessly using you and will cast you aside when you no longer serve my nefarious purposes!”

Seeing Chromartie’s frame again made me think of Cameron giving the turtle to Chromartie and not Sarah in Sarah’s dream from the previous ep. I kind of want Sarah to be delusional rather than psychic, but still, maybe the dream meant that Chromartie’s new form, the one being guided by Weaver, is somehow a… protector of humanity? Is that stretching too much? Probably, but we don’t actually know what Weaver is up to and whose agenda she’s serving.

Final nitpick: One of my biggest problems with the time travel aspect of the show is that they haven't established which brand of time travel they're using and seem to be pulling from the singular timeline theory and the multiple universes theory, which is making it all feel very muddled and confusing.

Loved the callback to “Allison from Palmdale” in Cameron’s throwaway “It’s the hardest thing to get right. Hair.”