Cameron, In the Library, with a gun.
Cluedo is a game of deductive reasoning, you have to figure out from a limited number of possible outcomes what happened by eliminating the different combination of people, weapons and places that come into play, so while completely random, there will always be only one possible outcome and no room for ambiguity.
In the episode of Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Self Made Man, we are given insight into what Cameron gets up to at night, and the answer on the surface doesn’t make sense.
Josh, the creator of TSCC has a knack for the ambiguous, done on purpose, he has even said in passing that he wants his audience to make up their own minds to what certain scenes mean, and won’t divulge what’s really is happening.
There is nothing more annoying than a character doing something uncharacteristic for no good apparent reason, and this episode is a prime example of that, well at least it was until I realised that what I thought was going on isn’t “exactly” what it would seem.
Cameron is a Terminator, who doesn’t sleep, so what does she do? The obvious answer is patrol the perimeter; protect the life of John Connor while he is at his most vulnerable, asleep.
That wouldn’t make for a very interesting episode, no, we are to believe that she would abandon her post and go to a public library!
So Cameron knocks on the library door and is greeted by a guy in a wheel chair called Eric, and all night she reads books and shares stories, heavily censored, about what’s going on in her life.
Very un Terminator like behaviour, and soon lost because "that’s" not what the episode is about, that is just the “hook” to get Cameron out of the house so she can have her own adventure sans team Connor.
Still, as a hook, it’s a very poor excuse for one because I don’t know about you but I haven’t needed to step foot in an actual library in about 10-15 years, around about the same time I discovered that I could find all that’s in the library on this thing called “the web.”
And if Chromartie can hack into the FBI database I’m sure there isn’t anywhere in cyberspace Cameron can’t hack into, a wealth of knowledge at her fingertips, but watching Cameron reading a computer screen would be even less interesting than watching her stand guard all night, so what plausible “Terminator” reason would compel Cameron to visit a library at night?
The library has two things, books and Eric, and while I believe she “is” there to study, books are not what’s she is studying, it’s Eric.
Cameron can act very human like when the need arises, but there are subtleties of human behaviour that elude her, that betray her for what she really is, and correcting that deficiency would make her more efficient at her job, however Cameron learns by interaction with people, and team Connor already know what she is and treats her accordingly.
She needs to observe and interact with somebody who doesn’t know she’s a Terminator, and do it in an environment she can control if things go south, and that’s where Eric and the library come into play, Eric is alone and interested in interaction, and the library is empty and controllable if Eric becomes a problem and needs to be eliminated, no witnesses.
So there you have it, an infiltration “Terminator” reason to visit a public library in the dead of night, to better herself to be the most efficient killing machine on the planet; Either that or it’s to get out of doing laundry or to make a friend, you make up your mind.