Dr. Boyd Sherman thinks he hears people rummaging through his house (he does - Cameron and Sarah are there looking through things), but all he sees is an open window. His name was on the wall along with the other clues, so they're trying to figure out what his connection is. What's the best way to investigate further? By utilizing his services, of course. Sarah takes in John and Cameron under the guise of needing therapy from Dr. Sherman, and after some discussion, he says he wants to talk to all of them separately. We find out later that they actually planted a listening device in the office so they could try to get information about the other patients.
Catherine is in her office doing a photo shoot, but she has seemingly developed the inability to smile convincingly. I could have sworn that she was smiling just fine previously with Ellison and such. Daughter Savannah is nearby playing, but when she's asked to be in the pictures, she refuses, and when Catherine presses her, Savannah runs away after having peed in her pants out of fear.
Catherine has other problems as well. The AI program isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's not reacting according to plan, and instead, it's flashing a series of random pictures. At some point during the episode, Ellison is in the building, and he finds out that there's a super-secret basement area that he's not allowed to go to, so he asks Catherine about it, and she says they're building something. It was kind of a throwaway scene, so maybe they're just setting up for Ellison finding out about the AI, with or without Catherine's consent?
Catherine takes Savannah to a therapist and conveniently picks Dr. Sherman, who shows Savannah a series of cards with facial expressions to depict a particular mood. Unbeknownst to Catherine, Dr. Sherman sees that Savannah has picked the card showing "scared". Savannah tells Dr. Sherman that her mommy is different and that she wants her old mommy back. Dr. Sherman figures out that the death of Savannah's father is still with her, and she feels like she's lost her mother as well, and Dr. Sherman tells Catherine that she must have changed because of her husband's death. Of course, there's no way he'd know that she's changed so much because she's now actually a maleable metal alloy that kills, but they probably didn't cover that in med school.
When John goes to see Dr. Sherman, he ends up meeting Savannah and teaches her a trick on how to tie her shoelace. In his meeting, Dr. Sherman encourages him to talk, that his office is a safe place, but since John knows the office is bugged, with Cameron and/or Sarah listening, he says nowhere is safe. In later sessions, John does open up to him a bit and tells him about the intruder that was encountered, with flashbacks being shown of what we didn't see at the time, leaving out the details about the terminators and such. Dr. Sherman says that he doesn't have to protect his mother, that he has the right to be just a kid, but Dr. Sherman doesn't know how much John longs to be just a kid. Eventually, John takes out the recording device and tells Dr. Sherman about how he really feels, that Sarah never wants him to feel safe, but that's probably a good thing because fear will keep him on his toes. Dr. Sherman had made some comment about John acting like the Vietnam vets that he previously treated, scouting out a room for exits when he first enters and such. He's dead on. John isn't just a kid. He's seen way more than a kid should, and he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. I really liked the development of the scenes between John and Dr. Sherman.
Derek figures out that he's being watched, and after giving chase, he comes face to face with Jesse, who we learn is from his time and someone he had a relationship with. Derek thinks John sent her back like he sent Derek, but she reveals that she left on her own, so Derek says she's AWOL. Jesse says she just wants a new life, one that includes Derek.
Catherine watches old tapes of real-Catherine with her husband when she was pregnant with Savannah, and she learns mannerisms that she adopts, like stroking Savannah's hand in comfort.
Catherine thinks Dr. Sherman is doing a good job with Savannah, so she asks for his help on the AI project, which she describes as being like an interactive human child. She tells him about the pictures that it's flashing, and when she shows it to him, he laughs. He says the computer is trying to tell a riddle with the pictures, which means that it's bored and is trying to find ways to amuse itself, but of course, it's just a computer, so it can't possibly be doing that. Later, in Dr. Sherman's office, Catherine says that she wants him to do more work with the AI system, which he declines, saying he needs to tend to his patients, but Catherine wants him to work as a consultant, whenever his schedule allows, and she wants him to treat the AI just like another child that he teaches. Unfortunately, because John removed the listening device, no one else will know this conversation took place.
Another female terminator has come through the portal, and it's eventually revealed that the terminator is targeting Dr. Sherman. The new terminator and Cameron end up walking into the building and the same elevator at the same time and then realize who each other is, and there's a pretty awesome fight between the two as the elevator is moving. It's about to stop on a floor, and they stop their fighting and try to fix themselves up, even though they have messed-up hair and cuts and bits of metal showing through. A family of three get on the elevator, but the parents are so pre-occupied that they aren't even paying attention whereas their little boy is just staring at the two female terminators who are just standing there. When the family gets off on a floor, again, the parents don't notice anything, but as the boy looks back and the elevator doors are almost closed, the two terminators are fighting again. Cameron eventually defeats the other terminator and brings the bent-up body back to the house. They discover that it's a new model of terminator, one with a chip that self-destructs, and John figures out that they've changed them so that he can't reprogram any more terminators.
Early in the episode, a gunshot is fired, which immediately puts Sarah, Cameron and Derek on alert, but it turns out that John was cleaning a gun and accidentally fired it, grazing himself with the powder burn. Both Cameron and Derek are concerned that John may have been giving off a sign of suicide, but Sarah refuses to believe it. Derek tells him the story of a rough soldier who went outside one day and almost killed himself just like that. Derek says that tough people can just break.
It's later revealed that the soldier he was talking about was actually himself, and Jesse was the one who inadvertently prevented his suicide. After sex, Jesse convinces Derek to go get her something to drink. I knew something was up. Why couldn't she go get it herself? And sure enough, as he walks away, she has a pile of photos of Derek and John et al which she shoves under the bed. OK, so is she really Jesse or is she a terminator? If she's really Jesse, why is she spying on John and Derek?
At the very end, Sarah is back in Dr. Sherman's office, and the end of the struggle with the intruders is revealed in the flashback. Andrew's comment on this blog post about that episode was dead on - it wasn't Sarah that killed the intruder. John did. John the teenager who still isn't really comfortable with having to be the saviour of the entire human race. That's why he's been so freaked out, and why he wants to just be a normal teenager going to the mall and interested in girls, not someone that machines keep trying to kill.
I did like the contrasting of Catherine and Sarah as mothers. Catherine doesn't know how because she's not a human, and while she can't ever feel the feelings, she can mimic the actions, like letting her daughter sit on her lap. Sarah would probably have been a good mother, very nurturing, but from before John was born, Sarah knew what she had to raise him to be, what skills she had to teach him that normal kids don't ever have to learn. She's never been able to be nurturing or loving or kind to him because she can't allow him to be soft and unguarded - that could get him killed. She tells John that he can talk to her about anything, but he needs more than she can give him, and he knows that she probably wouldn't want to hear that he's scared or that he doesn't want to be shoved in that role, because they both know he has no choice.
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