Episode Recap: 2x04, Allison From Palmdale
As an unabashed Cameron/Summer Glau fangirl, I couldn't resist recapping this one.
This week's episode has three main story lines: Sarah and Kacy, Ellison and Weaver, and Cameron and the girl she was modelled on, Allison Young.
Cameron & Allison
We start in the future, in the Resistance Tunnels. A girl is running for her life. Rewatching this now, you can tell it's Summer, but the first time around I'd say most of the audience doesn't realise how she is straight away. What's creepy about this scene is the way you don't see any Terminators or machinery, you just hear them.
The girl gets out of the tunnels and starts running through a wasteland, but she trips and is slow to recover, clearly exhausted. A net flies out of nowhere, capturing here. Lights find her and we see her face for the first time.
We then cut straight to Cameron's far more serene expression in the car with John.
She's distracted, and John asks what's up, saying that if she's going to try and kill him again he'd like a heads up.
He pulls over, saying he's going to Radio World and will meet her in half an hour. Cameron gives him a look at that - she may still be a Terminator, but she's getting more adept at using tone, expression and inference to communicate with the Connors.
As Cameron's walking through the supermarket she catches a distorted reflection of herself in a shiny balloon and we start switching back and forth between her and the girl in the future in the net. She then crashes into a display of melons and is almost entirely unresponsive when questioned by a police officer.
In the future, the girl is being interrogated by a disembodied Terminator voice, which is creepy as hell. Then a Terminator comes into view and tattoos the prisoner barcode on her that we've seen before on Derek and others, and she screams in her pain, before shouting that her name is Allison Young.
Cameron gets taken to a detention centre, and meets a girl called Jody. She nods sympathetically at Cameron's description of a blackout.
John gets to the supermarket to for Cameron, and hears that "some girl wigged out" and got taken by the cops, so he heads off in pursuit. Cameron and Jody get let out and get their possessions returned to them - Jody takes a sudden interest in a still dazed Cameron when she sees she's carrying a wad of cash. John gets there about an hour later and has been told his 'sister' left with one of the street kids, and is given a general area where Jody hangs out.
We gets a glimpse of Allison in prison in the future, throwing some truly disgusting-looking food against the wall. Throughout the episode, visual parallels are drawn between Allison's experiences and what Cameron is doing, so we cut back to Cameron getting some fast food, and she comments on how much there is - subconsciously reflecting the attitudes of someone like Allison, living on next to nothing.
She compliments Jody's necklace, who says she got it from "this awesome thrift store in Echo Park". She then gives a little bit of her backstory, saying she moved here from Michigan and ended up doing "whatever" for money, which got bad pretty fast.
Someone yells Jody's name, and she and Cameron try to make a break for it. A guy follows them, accuses Jody of stealing his laptop, and threatens them. Cameron panics and gives him all the money she's carrying, and he goes.
Jody takes them to a hostel, telling Cameron to make up some information on the sign-in form so that they can stay for a couple of nights.
There's then a scene that flashes between Allison being interrogated and Cameron talking to a counsellor. We get some of Allison's backstory, her parents, a memory of a birthday before Judgement Day.
In the counsellor's office, Cameron sees a picture of an extinct species of tiger, and asks the counsellor is she thinks that could ever happen to humans. She then remembers that she's from Palmdale. She calls a heavily pregnant Claire Young, who says she doesn't have a daughter - not yet. Cameron is distraught.
Later, John finds Cameron playing table football with Jody, but she has no idea who he is. He gets taken out by security.
Allison makes a break for it, running through the complex and coming across a room full of dozens of humans in cages, all screaming for her to run and get out. There are also animals, including a tiger. She makes it out and finds herself on the top of a huge ocean liner, so jumps into the sea, where a net's waiting to catch her again.
She finds herself face-to-face with a Terminator replica of herself. The Terminator tries to convince Allison that she comes in peace and wants to stop the extinction of humanity, if Allison just tells her how to find John Connor.
In Cameron's next appointment, triggered by her earlier encounter with John, she tells her counsellor she's a machine from the future, programmed to find and kill John Connor. The counsellor calls the police, but by the time a couple of EMTs show up, Cameron and Jody are gone.
John follows Cameron and Jody to a big house. Jody says she used to babysit the family and they're loaded. She looks for a spare key but Cameron just breaks open the door. Jody knows the combination to the safe, and Cameron spots a pair of earrings that match the necklace that Jody supposedly got from a thrift store.
Cameron realises something's up - acting much more like herself at this point - and keeps questioning Jody.
The Terminator we will come to know as Cameron returns to Allison, having discovered that members of the resistance wear bracelets as passes, and that Allison tries to set her up. She snaps Allison's neck and takes her bracelet.
Jody confesses that this is her house - she's from LA, got kicked out of college and her parents cut her off. She also says they have to leave because they've tripped a silent alarm, and Cameron realises she was planning on escaping and leaving her to take the blame.
In an exact replica of what she did to Allison, she grips Jody's neck, saying, "you lied to me".
John comes in to find Jody on the floor and freaks out. Cameron says they have to go, recognising John again, and as Jody regains consciousness they make a run for it.
The episode ends with Cameron and John in the car. John's furious with her. When he asks where Cameron got the necklace she's now wearing, she tells him it was from an awesome thrift store in Echo Park.
Sarah & Kacy
Kacy flags Sarah down because she's having some pain and bleeding, and Sarah realises she needs to take her to the hospital.
In the hospital, Sarah waits while they run tests on Kacy - everything looks fine so far but they want to keep her for a while longer while they check that the bleeding she had was her own and not the baby's. Sarah asks if she call anyone, and Kacy implies that the father of the baby isn't someone she can get in touch with. So Sarah decides to sit and wait with her, and even smiles a bit. Awww.
They talk about pregnancy and kids. Sarah tells a story about giving birth to John while hiking in Central America, adding that John's father was right there with her, and she held his hand really tight.
... CRYING, DON'T MIND ME. Oh, Sarah, honey. :(
A guy walks in, introducing himself to Sarah as Trevor. He asks after Kacy, saying he heard what happened and was worried. Kacy looks uneasy, so Sarah goes to get some magazines for her so she can come back.
Sarah stops to look at adorable babies, and looking fond, gives John a ring. John's clearly flustered, but doesn't let on that anything's wrong.
Sarah and Kacy talk about Trevor - Kacy says he freaked when she got pregnant and they've been on and off, but now that he's here she's not sure what she wants to do. She talks about how she just wants everything to be perfect for her unborn son, and Sarah's face at that breaks my heart.
Trevor returns to Kacy's room with food, and says that they should invite Sarah and her kids over for a barbecue some time. He also offers to take John to a shooting range, explaining that he's a detective with the LAPD. Sarah just about manages not to visibly freak out.
Sarah and Trevor talk - he says that his job freaks Kacy out, but that he'd do anything to protect his family. He gets a call and has to leave, but asks Sarah to stay and watch out for Kacy.
Kacy admits it was her that freaked out when she got pregnant, not Trevor. She'd thought the cop thing was sexy when she was a 25-year-old pastry chef, but she wasn't sure about raising a kid with all the police paraphernalia. However, she says Trevor's a good man, and that he'd be a good dad.
Sarah admits that the story she told her about John's birth wasn't true, that his father had died before she even knew she was pregnant. She'd told that story because she wished it had been that way, but she got through everything by herself, which means Kacy can too.
Ellison & Weaver
Meanwhile, it's Ellison and Weaver time! Hi, Ellison and Weaver, king and queen of hot sartorial choices.
Ellison says he's still considering Weaver's job offer - they talk a little about the concept of evil, and anthropomorphising machines.
Weaver tells a story about the helicopter accident that killed her husband. She implies that despite her husband's excellent flying skills, it was human error that resulted in his death. Ellison asks if she's saying that machines make better decisions than humans, to which she replies that in certain, extreme conditions, anyone can panic.
Question: Given what we know about Weaver, did the Terminator kill the original Catherine Weaver and her husband in that helicopter accident? Or simply take advantage of the situation?
At the FBI, Ellison asks his ex-wife, Lila, to run an off-the-record background check on Catherine Weaver, because she's offered him a job. Lila comments that Ellison's not wearing his cross. She can tell because the way he's carrying himself. (Oh, James! <3) She tells him that the shoot-out at the end of S1 wasn't his fault.
Weaver's background check comes back clear - although Ellison notes that the helicopter crash is down in the report as being due to mechanical failure. His ex urges him to get some help, saying that she's never seen him in so much pain. Ellison replies that they both know that's not true. (Oh, James!)
Ellison comes back to Weaver's office and meets Savannah, saying that he used to want kids very much, but that it wasn't meant to be. He calls Weaver out on the discrepancies in the reports - she asks him to tell her what really happened, and he says that official reports don't always contain the truth. He concludes that Weaver would want the official answer to be the one she'd want Savannah to hear - that mechanical, not human error was to blame. He then asks when he can start the job.
So! This is mostly a character-centric/backstory episode, which is possibly part of why I like it so much. I love the exploration of mechanical psychology, Sarah and Kacy bonding over motherhood, and the way we get to find out a little bit more about Ellison and Weaver. This also marks Savannah's first appearance.
This week's episode has three main story lines: Sarah and Kacy, Ellison and Weaver, and Cameron and the girl she was modelled on, Allison Young.
Cameron & Allison
We start in the future, in the Resistance Tunnels. A girl is running for her life. Rewatching this now, you can tell it's Summer, but the first time around I'd say most of the audience doesn't realise how she is straight away. What's creepy about this scene is the way you don't see any Terminators or machinery, you just hear them.
The girl gets out of the tunnels and starts running through a wasteland, but she trips and is slow to recover, clearly exhausted. A net flies out of nowhere, capturing here. Lights find her and we see her face for the first time.
We then cut straight to Cameron's far more serene expression in the car with John.
She's distracted, and John asks what's up, saying that if she's going to try and kill him again he'd like a heads up.
He pulls over, saying he's going to Radio World and will meet her in half an hour. Cameron gives him a look at that - she may still be a Terminator, but she's getting more adept at using tone, expression and inference to communicate with the Connors.
As Cameron's walking through the supermarket she catches a distorted reflection of herself in a shiny balloon and we start switching back and forth between her and the girl in the future in the net. She then crashes into a display of melons and is almost entirely unresponsive when questioned by a police officer.
In the future, the girl is being interrogated by a disembodied Terminator voice, which is creepy as hell. Then a Terminator comes into view and tattoos the prisoner barcode on her that we've seen before on Derek and others, and she screams in her pain, before shouting that her name is Allison Young.
Cameron gets taken to a detention centre, and meets a girl called Jody. She nods sympathetically at Cameron's description of a blackout.
John gets to the supermarket to for Cameron, and hears that "some girl wigged out" and got taken by the cops, so he heads off in pursuit. Cameron and Jody get let out and get their possessions returned to them - Jody takes a sudden interest in a still dazed Cameron when she sees she's carrying a wad of cash. John gets there about an hour later and has been told his 'sister' left with one of the street kids, and is given a general area where Jody hangs out.
We gets a glimpse of Allison in prison in the future, throwing some truly disgusting-looking food against the wall. Throughout the episode, visual parallels are drawn between Allison's experiences and what Cameron is doing, so we cut back to Cameron getting some fast food, and she comments on how much there is - subconsciously reflecting the attitudes of someone like Allison, living on next to nothing.
She compliments Jody's necklace, who says she got it from "this awesome thrift store in Echo Park". She then gives a little bit of her backstory, saying she moved here from Michigan and ended up doing "whatever" for money, which got bad pretty fast.
Someone yells Jody's name, and she and Cameron try to make a break for it. A guy follows them, accuses Jody of stealing his laptop, and threatens them. Cameron panics and gives him all the money she's carrying, and he goes.
Jody takes them to a hostel, telling Cameron to make up some information on the sign-in form so that they can stay for a couple of nights.
There's then a scene that flashes between Allison being interrogated and Cameron talking to a counsellor. We get some of Allison's backstory, her parents, a memory of a birthday before Judgement Day.
In the counsellor's office, Cameron sees a picture of an extinct species of tiger, and asks the counsellor is she thinks that could ever happen to humans. She then remembers that she's from Palmdale. She calls a heavily pregnant Claire Young, who says she doesn't have a daughter - not yet. Cameron is distraught.
Later, John finds Cameron playing table football with Jody, but she has no idea who he is. He gets taken out by security.
Allison makes a break for it, running through the complex and coming across a room full of dozens of humans in cages, all screaming for her to run and get out. There are also animals, including a tiger. She makes it out and finds herself on the top of a huge ocean liner, so jumps into the sea, where a net's waiting to catch her again.
She finds herself face-to-face with a Terminator replica of herself. The Terminator tries to convince Allison that she comes in peace and wants to stop the extinction of humanity, if Allison just tells her how to find John Connor.
In Cameron's next appointment, triggered by her earlier encounter with John, she tells her counsellor she's a machine from the future, programmed to find and kill John Connor. The counsellor calls the police, but by the time a couple of EMTs show up, Cameron and Jody are gone.
John follows Cameron and Jody to a big house. Jody says she used to babysit the family and they're loaded. She looks for a spare key but Cameron just breaks open the door. Jody knows the combination to the safe, and Cameron spots a pair of earrings that match the necklace that Jody supposedly got from a thrift store.
Cameron realises something's up - acting much more like herself at this point - and keeps questioning Jody.
The Terminator we will come to know as Cameron returns to Allison, having discovered that members of the resistance wear bracelets as passes, and that Allison tries to set her up. She snaps Allison's neck and takes her bracelet.
Jody confesses that this is her house - she's from LA, got kicked out of college and her parents cut her off. She also says they have to leave because they've tripped a silent alarm, and Cameron realises she was planning on escaping and leaving her to take the blame.
In an exact replica of what she did to Allison, she grips Jody's neck, saying, "you lied to me".
John comes in to find Jody on the floor and freaks out. Cameron says they have to go, recognising John again, and as Jody regains consciousness they make a run for it.
The episode ends with Cameron and John in the car. John's furious with her. When he asks where Cameron got the necklace she's now wearing, she tells him it was from an awesome thrift store in Echo Park.
Sarah & Kacy
Kacy flags Sarah down because she's having some pain and bleeding, and Sarah realises she needs to take her to the hospital.
In the hospital, Sarah waits while they run tests on Kacy - everything looks fine so far but they want to keep her for a while longer while they check that the bleeding she had was her own and not the baby's. Sarah asks if she call anyone, and Kacy implies that the father of the baby isn't someone she can get in touch with. So Sarah decides to sit and wait with her, and even smiles a bit. Awww.
They talk about pregnancy and kids. Sarah tells a story about giving birth to John while hiking in Central America, adding that John's father was right there with her, and she held his hand really tight.
... CRYING, DON'T MIND ME. Oh, Sarah, honey. :(
A guy walks in, introducing himself to Sarah as Trevor. He asks after Kacy, saying he heard what happened and was worried. Kacy looks uneasy, so Sarah goes to get some magazines for her so she can come back.
Sarah stops to look at adorable babies, and looking fond, gives John a ring. John's clearly flustered, but doesn't let on that anything's wrong.
Sarah and Kacy talk about Trevor - Kacy says he freaked when she got pregnant and they've been on and off, but now that he's here she's not sure what she wants to do. She talks about how she just wants everything to be perfect for her unborn son, and Sarah's face at that breaks my heart.
Trevor returns to Kacy's room with food, and says that they should invite Sarah and her kids over for a barbecue some time. He also offers to take John to a shooting range, explaining that he's a detective with the LAPD. Sarah just about manages not to visibly freak out.
Sarah and Trevor talk - he says that his job freaks Kacy out, but that he'd do anything to protect his family. He gets a call and has to leave, but asks Sarah to stay and watch out for Kacy.
Kacy admits it was her that freaked out when she got pregnant, not Trevor. She'd thought the cop thing was sexy when she was a 25-year-old pastry chef, but she wasn't sure about raising a kid with all the police paraphernalia. However, she says Trevor's a good man, and that he'd be a good dad.
Sarah admits that the story she told her about John's birth wasn't true, that his father had died before she even knew she was pregnant. She'd told that story because she wished it had been that way, but she got through everything by herself, which means Kacy can too.
Ellison & Weaver
Meanwhile, it's Ellison and Weaver time! Hi, Ellison and Weaver, king and queen of hot sartorial choices.
Ellison says he's still considering Weaver's job offer - they talk a little about the concept of evil, and anthropomorphising machines.
Weaver tells a story about the helicopter accident that killed her husband. She implies that despite her husband's excellent flying skills, it was human error that resulted in his death. Ellison asks if she's saying that machines make better decisions than humans, to which she replies that in certain, extreme conditions, anyone can panic.
Question: Given what we know about Weaver, did the Terminator kill the original Catherine Weaver and her husband in that helicopter accident? Or simply take advantage of the situation?
At the FBI, Ellison asks his ex-wife, Lila, to run an off-the-record background check on Catherine Weaver, because she's offered him a job. Lila comments that Ellison's not wearing his cross. She can tell because the way he's carrying himself. (Oh, James! <3) She tells him that the shoot-out at the end of S1 wasn't his fault.
Weaver's background check comes back clear - although Ellison notes that the helicopter crash is down in the report as being due to mechanical failure. His ex urges him to get some help, saying that she's never seen him in so much pain. Ellison replies that they both know that's not true. (Oh, James!)
Ellison comes back to Weaver's office and meets Savannah, saying that he used to want kids very much, but that it wasn't meant to be. He calls Weaver out on the discrepancies in the reports - she asks him to tell her what really happened, and he says that official reports don't always contain the truth. He concludes that Weaver would want the official answer to be the one she'd want Savannah to hear - that mechanical, not human error was to blame. He then asks when he can start the job.
So! This is mostly a character-centric/backstory episode, which is possibly part of why I like it so much. I love the exploration of mechanical psychology, Sarah and Kacy bonding over motherhood, and the way we get to find out a little bit more about Ellison and Weaver. This also marks Savannah's first appearance.