"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" - February 13, 2009 episode

Sarah wakes up in the hospital and hears a sheriff's deputy and a nurse talking outside her room. The deputy is trying to get information on and from Sarah, but the nurse won't let him disturb her. Sarah feels the gunshot in her leg and looks at her chart, which identifies her as a Jane Doe. Sarah feigns being asleep/unconscious when the nurse checks on her, and the nurse then closes the door. Sarah hears the voice of Kyle Reese, but then she hallucinates his presence in her room as well. Kyle is telling her to pull herself together. She still has the bullet in her leg, but she manages to trick and overpower the deputy and escapes. At Kyle's urging, she calls Derek to tell him about what happened to her and that he needs to go take care of the van and building to erase evidence of her visit. In the parking lot, she then kidnaps a female doctor and takes her to a motel room, where Kyle is waiting. While pointing a gun at the doctor, Sarah tells the doctor to take the bullet out of her. She says she can't go to a hospital, and the doctor notices healed marks on Sarah and asks why. Kyle notices as well and asks Sarah what happened. Sarah says they stabbed her to get to their son. Sarah is really talking to Kyle, but the doctor thinks she's just talking to herself and Sarah doesn't correct the doctor when the doctor thinks Sarah is the victim of abuse from a man, a situation the doctor is evidently sympathetic to.

The doctor agrees to try to get the bullet out, and she tells Sarah that women have a high pain tolerance, especially those that have given birth. When Sarah asks whether it's going to be similar, the doctor says yes, and as she starts, she tells Sarah it's like the first big contraction, and Sarah is shown reacting to pain. To distract her, the doctor asks Sarah about John, and Sarah talks about John while Kyle is listening.

Sarah later wakes up, and the doctor says that because of the location of the bullet, she can't take it out under those primitive conditions without the risk of Sarah dying. She gets Sarah to trust her and agree to go back to the hospital. Sarah and the doctor sneak into the hospital and end up in the morgue, where the doctor can operate without the high risk of being seen. Sarah is still hesitant to let her operate, but Kyle implores her to let the doctor do it, especially when the doctor says that the bullet is moving and will kill her if they don't take care of it.

Meanwhile, Derek leaves Jesse and goes to meet John at the hospital, since John has taken Riley there after her suicide attempt. Derek questions why John brought her to such a public place as a hospital where they would ask all kinds of questions, but John says he made the call. When Derek then gets the phone call from Sarah, he tells John about Sarah being shot, and John wants to go, but Derek says that he'll go and John has to stay with Riley since there are consequences to making a call.

John is told by a doctor that because Riley tried to commit suicide, she would be on a 72 hour 5150 hold and that CPS would be called since she's in foster care and there could be issues with that. John later goes to see Riley, who is mostly embarassed about what happened. Riley is surprised and a bit unnerved to see that Cameron is also there, and it's evident that Cameron is still suspicious of her.

Out in the hall, John doesn't know what to do about Riley and asks Cameron what the future him would do since Cameron knows the future him. She says that the future John has much more important things to do.

As Riley is in her hospital bed, Jesse shows up and says they're leaving. John and Cameron are later questioned by the doctor because Riley is gone. John says they need to split up to find her, but Cameron says that no, they don't need to find out and walks off. Meanwhile, Jesse has brought Riley back to her place and agrees to let her stay for just an hour or so.

The Sheriff and his deputies are investigating Sarah's car with all the blood as well as the recording device that Sarah had with her. The Sheriff then receives word that Sarah has escaped, and when they get to the hospital, he is disgusted that Sarah was able to subdue his deputy and escape. He realizes that Sarah couldn't have gone far with the bullet still in her leg, and it's later reported to him that a particular doctor is late for her shift, and it's apparent that he knows the doctor.

Ellison is still working with John Henry, and when Ellison goes to visit him, John Henry has some put-together robot toys and talks about how the ball/socket movement on them is so much more efficient than the hinged socket approach used by humans. Later, John Henry recounts for Ellison all the crimes that his former incarnation committed, and as he's listing them, the images of the crimes flash on the panel next to him, much to Ellison's horror. Ellison finds out that John Henry has access to the internet, which he tells Catherine is a bad idea. However, Catherine wants John Henry to be able to learn and discover things for himself, to answer the questions that he has.

Catherine later visits John Henry because he asked for her, and he tells her that he knows she's not human, that she's made of metal like him, but different metal. When she asks if he's told anyone else that, he says no, and she says she'd like it to stay that way. John Henry also mentions what element he's made out of and that quite a percentage of mines that have that element are now owned by Catherine's company. He plays a recording he accessed of an unsecure line where there's a problem with one of the mines. This discovery perturbs Catherine, who gets up to leave, but John Henry asks what she's doing with all the mines and elements and such, but Catherine declines to answer. Before she leaves, though, she becomes possessed by the spirit of Bryan Adams and tells John Henry that "everything I do, I do for you". When John Henry asked what Catherine was doing, it didn't seem casual or friendly but rather suspicious. John Henry presumably is eventually supposed to turn into Skynet, but since he now has the benefit of Ellison's teaching, which Skynet didn't before, it would be interesting if John Henry himself ends up stopping Catherine from having Skynet created.

Back at the building where Sarah was, the people are packing stuff away and are getting ready to clear out. I'm presuming they're packing the element that's being mined. Catherine shows up and kills everyone, presumably to erase all the evidence, and she even blows up the entire building. Her walking out of the exploding flames reminded me of a similar scene in T2, when the T-1000 emerged from a flaming explosion in its molten form before reshaping.

Back at the Sheriff's station, the Sheriff and a deputy are starting to piece things together. As the Sheriff is about to leave, a huge explosion from outside can be heard, and when they go outside to investigate, Sarah's Jeep has exploded and is in flames, completely destroyed. Meanwhile, Derek has snuck into the station and burns the other evidence as well.

Sarah wakes up after surgery, and the doctor says she got the bullet out and that everything is ok. Derek arrives, but the doctor points Sarah's gun at him, thinking he's the one who has been abusing Sarah. Derek tries to talk her down and after distracting her, pulls out his own gun to point at her, so they're kind of at a standstill. Then the Sheriff shows up, but it's evident from the interaction that he and the doctor are in a relationship and that he's the one who's been abusing her. In the end, the doctor shoots him. Sarah and Derek leave, but as they're driving, they seem the plume of smoke emanating from where Sarah says the building was.

Overall, I liked the episode, but I'm a little annoyed that they didn't say anything about who brought Sarah to the hospital. OK, they don't have to reveal to us who it is right now, but it would have been nice to have had *someone* at least voice the question. And, considering the last episode had Sarah seeing a descending UFO, it would have been nice to have that addressed, whether any of it was real or whether it was simply a hallucination. Or whether they are the ones who dropped Sarah off at the hospital on their way out of town. But then, she was hallucinating images of herself previously, and this episode, she hallucinated the entire presence of Kyle, so who knows.

And speaking of Kyle, I'd read in TV Guide earlier in the week that Kyle would be back in this episode as a figment of Sarah's imagination, but I was really surprised when I read that Kyle would be played by Jonathan Jackson, who I kind of know from a long time ago as Lucky Spencer from "General Hospital". I wasn't sure how he was going to be, but I really liked him as Kyle, though I have to admit that Michael Biehn will still always be THE Kyle Reese to me. I was struck at the resemblance that Thomas Dekker, who plays John Connor, has to a young Jonathan Jackson - good casting of father to son.


Jonathan Jackson as Kyle Reese

Jonathan Jackson in his younger years.

Another picture of Jonathan Jackson when he was younger.

Thomas Dekker as John Connor


Michael Biehn as the real Kyle Reese


In watching the opening credits, there was another name that for some reason caught my attention - Connor Trinneer. Now, I have no idea why his name registered with me. If I had to come up with his name, I don't think that I would have been able to do it. But in seeing his name, my thought was "Hey, isn't that Trip from 'Enterprise'?" Considering that I only watched "Enterprise" in its first season and I've not been very good about paying attention to actors' names, I was really surprised that I recognized him. When I saw him on screen, playing the Sheriff, that confirmed it for me. How weird seeing him again after all this time.