"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" - September 22, 2008 episode

Charlie and his wife Michelle are stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of town when Cromartie suddenly shows up and kidnaps Michelle. Charlie calls John and tries to keep it cool, but when John puts Sarah on the phone, Charlie tells her that Cromartie took Michelle. With John listening, it sounds like Sarah is telling Charlie to leave, but she's really asking for his location. She doesn't tell John or Cameron anything, though she does tell Cameron to stick with John, but she tells Derek where she's going, and though Derek tells her it's a bad idea since Cromartie is obviously using Michelle as a trap as a way to get John, he accompanies her anyway. Once they reach Charlie, they don't know what to do, but Michelle has managed to get to her celphone, and she calls Charlie. Once Charlie verifies that it's really her, she gives him an idea of where they are. When they arrive, they find that Cromartie has made a bomb using four mouse traps and her chair, and any movement by Michelle will cause the bomb to explode. However, they eventually discover that the bomb is actually a fake, but while they were all inside, Cromartie disabled the truck. Sarah realizes that he used Michelle as a decoy to lure them away from John, and now they're left stranded and unable to protect John. Sarah says she should have known it was a trap when they found Michelle alive.

While Sarah and Charlie have been trying to disarm the bomb, Derek goes searching around the building. He discovers that Cromartie has a device set up that taps into their celphones, so when Sarah calls John to warn him, Cromartie is able to get not only John's celphone number but also the code word sequence. Just in the nick of time, Derek realizes that Cromartie has set up a bomb in the room he's in which can be detonated remotely, and when the phone rings, Derek yells for everyone to get out of the house. After the explosion, they all manage to get out safely - well, almost all of them. Michelle shows some sign of discomfort and blood, but since they'll have to walk to get anywhere, she says she's fine and goes along. They eventually happen upon a man in a van and commandeer it, but while Sarah is driving at breakneck speed to get to John, it turns out that Michelle is hemoragging, which the rough ride is making worse. Charlie begs Sarah to stop, which she finally does, which seemed confusing to me since stopping wasn't going to get Michelle any help anyway, and she wasn't going to get better by herself, but it then seems clear that Charlie realizes she's not going to make it (which makes sense since he's a paramedic) and wants the quiet time with her before she dies.

Meanwhile, John and Cameron are running an errand buying some massive boxes of computers or something when Riley calls and is bored, so John agrees to meet her. Cameron is not keen on letting him out of her sight, but John sneaks off anyway. Cameron manages to track them down, and Riley spots her, so John and Riley are off again. John gets a second phone call from Sarah, but he doesn't know that it's actually Cromartie making his voice sound like Sarah, and she says for him to meet her at the pier. John says goodbye to Riley and heads off, and later, we see Cameron confronting Riley about John's whereabouts, which I'm guessing Riley told her since next thing, Cameron is at the pier looking for John. Unfortunately, Cromartie finds John first, but while John manages to evade Cromartie for a while, he is eventually trapped, and in a last-ditch effort to save himself, he jumps over the railing and into the ocean. Cromartie jumps after him, but since Cromartie is so heavy, he just sinks, while trying to take John with him, but John manages to shake off the jacket that Cromartie has grabbed hold of. As Cromartie continues to sink, John swims for the top, and when he breaks through, he sees Cameron waiting for him. Cromartie is later seen walking out of the ocean.

John and Cameron presumably manage to contact Sarah, who picks them up in the van. They drive to the hospital, where a distraught Charlie sits outside, and John tries to comfort him over Michelle's death. At Michelle's funeral, Charlie and Ellison are in attendance, but none of the Connors are, which turns out to be a good thing as Cromartie watches the funeral from nearby. It was a bit weird to have Sarah, John, Derek and Cameron all at the dinner table, but Cameron is sitting there without food since she doesn't eat.

Ellison has been otherwise occupied as he had received a call from Catherine, who entices him to join her for lunch by saying she wants to talk about who really killed all the FBI agents. In her office, she shows him pictures of a plane crash where an exo-skeleton arm was recovered, and she says that she and her husband have been trying to reverse-engineer the find, with no success. She also tells him about reports that a metal-like man was after a boy named John Connor, who was being protected by his mother Sarah, and she says that she wants him to find one of these metal men.

There was one early scene which seemed to not really fit in, so I'm wondering if it's a setup for something later. John is over at pregnant-neighbor Casey's to try to fix her television and in the process, he manages to steal cable for her. I'm still not sure what Casey's role, or that of her baby, might be later. There was some reference to the baby-daddy, so I wonder if that will turn out to be significant. After John has fixed the TV, they watch a report that one particular bad film of Laszlo's is now making all kinds of money from the people who want to see it because he killed all the FBI agents. Ellison is later shown watching footage from that very movie. Does Laszlo somehow figure in again later?


Next week's episode looks to be kick-ass, as we apparently meet the human model for Cameron.