In the highly energized Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles (T:tSCC) premier, John has a truly spectacularly bad birthday. Sarah needs to wear a seat belt while driving. Cameron has a bad hair day. Derek and Charlie are on cleanup. (spoilers)

We open with updated credits. As a fan of the voice over, I was sorry to hear it go and be replaced by a rather generic male voice telling us that in the future a computer program called Skynet declares war on human race. The images that follow have an increased focus on John Connor, savior of mankind, Sarah’s role as his teacher and protector, Cameron the defender, and Derek as future freedom fighter. However, the battle for tomorrow still starts today.  
 
At which point, I’ll say just how much I love time travel. In particular, the time travel that we all do, which has brought us to the new episodes.
 
However, before we could get to the episode there was a long set of "Previouslys on T:tSCC" to remind viewers that last season Terminators were after John, and someone blew Cameron up.

We cut to Cameron sprawled in the burnt husk of the jeep. Happily, she's escaped with only minor physical damage. By which I mean she has a long chard of metal in the back of her head, but Summer Glau can keep playing Cameron, who will not need facial reconstruction. Her return to consciousness takes the form of static as her memories just prior to the explosion reboot.

We then begin a truly beautifully dialog free sequence in which we inter-cut between the Connors captured by mafioso Sarkasian and Cameron lurching back to life. The Connors were in slow motion, while Cameron was in real time. Over all these struggles, the song "Samson and Delilah", as sung by Shirley Manson, plays.

It begins with the line, "If I had my way, I would tear this old building down."

Since this is the song of Samson and Delilah, the old building in question is the palace of the Philistines. In the Bible, when Samson was born, God told his parents to dedicate him as a Nazirite, which is someone who never drank, fooled around, or cut his hair. He drank. He fooled around. Someone else cut his hair. However, and this is important, in the end, his enemies thought he was helpless and brought him out to mock him. That is when he knocked down the pillars of the old building and killed more of his enemies than he ever had as the reckless Nazarite.

But, that's enough Bible study. In the episode, Sarkasian attacks the bound Sarah, while John looks on. Outside, Cameron-view tells us that her chip's integrity has been compromised. Cameron-the-machine pries herself out of the broken machine. Inside Sarkasian's goons look for his stolen hard-drive.

The goon finds it, but too late. Cameron arrives and kills him. In a casual gesture, she lets kerosene and his lit lighter reach for each other and catch ablaze. The only words for this event are the lyrics about Samson fighting the lion. Samson killed a fierce lion and later found a bee's hive growing inside the bones. He told guests at his wedding feast this riddle, "Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet." This juxtaposition of images and lyrics parallels Cameron both with the Samson, she kills the goon without effort, and with the lion, which is a mindless killer. The question is what odd quirk of fate might lead to something sweet and nourishing to grow within her rib cage.

By the time Cameron lurches her way to the top floor, we find John and Sarah over the dead body of Sarkasian. It's unclear who killed him. According to the podcast put together by show producers Josh Friedman and John Wirth (see link below), Sarah killed Sarkasian. But currently, I'm liking the ambiguity. They could always change their mind.

What I'm glad they didn't change their mind about, is that the reason they start with a song is they wanted to create a sense of continuity with the season finale from last year.

As the music still plays, Cameron recognizes John and her mission to terminate him comes up. She raises her gun, just as the fire below reaches the water heater. She disappears in a flash, but like all Terminators, her hand reappears at the top of the step.

The Connors jump out the window as the house burns and the song dies away on the line, "If I had my way, if I had my way, if I had my way, I would tear this old building down."

We then come to where Johnny Cash played last season, where Ellison stood by the pool of dead FBI as Cromartie spared him.

Again, Charlie arrives in time to see Ellison in his grief.

After the commercials, Ellison identifies the dead body of Lazlo as the man that they were after. This, incidentally, must mean that Cromartie kept Lazlo alive. Otherwise, given the passage of time, the corpse would not have been in good enough shape to take the blame. Ellison apologizes to the dead man, but now that he has gone through the whirlwind of Sarah's truth, he believes the FBI search must end.

Meanwhile, Sarah drives down the road, repeatedly asking if John is alright. She is so concerned with his well being that she crashes the car. From the crash, she asks him if he can walk. When he says, yes, she tells him good, because they must run.

Cameron lurches behind them with her franken walk, emphasizing her nature as machine with her arms slightly akimbo.

Going from the disaster of the FBI killing fields, Charlie hears about the explosion at the house. As he arrives, he finds only open mouthed bodies and Derek hiding in the ambulance dressed in full fire-fighter gear. Derek does a brief apocalyptic info-dump on Charlie about the Turk going from chess player to destroyer of worlds, or at least destroyer of humanity.

As if summoning the Turk, a Mr. Walsh calls Catherine Wheeler in a corporate tower, and tells her that he has the item, which for 300K should be able to Checkmate Bobby Fisher. Wheeler tells Walsh that Bobby Fisher is dead.  There's a wonderful symbolism to that name. Not only was he a famous chessplayer, but the name itself is evocative of the wounded Fisher King. In Arthurian legend, the land is dying because the Fisher King is wounded, as will happen, in the groin. Here, we are told that Bobby Fisher is dead and all that is left is the mechanical Turk. This should have told me right there how the episode would end.

Catherine Wheeler calls a meeting of her department heads.

Cameron goes into a store and uses baby wipes, which relate her with childhood, to wipe away the grime from her exploded flesh. Then she staples her skin back together.

At the scene of Sarah's accident, Derek and Charlie follow the trail of carnage. They don't notice Cameron in the crowd.

The Connors head into a simple church, almost a converted storefront. Inside, a young family is having their child baptized. This ties beautifully back both to Cameron with her baby wipes and last season's discussion of the Turk as a child.

The priest approaches them and in Spanish, Sarah tells him that she doesn't want a doctor. However English was the language she chooses to ask for sanctuary in the humble house of the Lord. However, not before telling the family to leave.

Speaking of families, we have very interesting scene between Derek and Charlie in the ambulance. Derek questions why Charlie is looking so hard and tells him that Sarah left him at the alter for a reason. There's a curious quality here in that I don't think it's that Derek desires Sarah, but he has just left a baseball field where his younger self and his brother are playing. I think he wants her to remain the isolated Madonna in this story, a memento-mori for his brother. Charlie resolves the scene by once again insisting on his role as a nurturer. He loves his wife. He will fix Sarah and John.

While Charlie plans to heal, Cameron sees blood on the ground, dripped like a sacred script.

We then cut to Wheeler, as seen through an eel baring aquarium, which should tell us right away that she's evil. No good ever came from eel, or at least that's what cartoons teach me.

Wheeler talks to Walsh about how people from a distance can seem logical. They flow down the street and stop at the lights in perfect order. However, when you get up close, people are random. At any moment, a person could cross a street across against the light and be hit by a car. While Computers always follow rules until they wind down. What she is looking for is the rare computer that will cross against the light, which is interesting because essentially creativity, crossing the red light, like the light that shines out of Terminator's eyes, leads to death. She did not after all say, occasionally someone crosses against the light and gets where they are going sooner.

From the height of Wheeler's corporate tower, we switch to a homey church kitchen where Sarah wants to talk about "what happened," which has a nice ambiguous sound to it. "What happened" is a term that could encapsulate everything that has ever occurred since the beginning of time, which they could visit if someone built a time machine.

Sarah, possibly having crossed that last line, wants to talk. John, perhaps having crossed that last line, does not. The Mother reaches out to connect to her child, while the young adult pulls away as he defines himself.

Sarah shifts topics to Cameron and what they'll need to do. At last the mystery of how they setup so quickly in LA is explained. Sarah, as one might expect, has bank accounts and contingency plans. Cameron knows it all, and here's an interesting phrase, "She knows who they've been. She knows who they'll be." Sarah tells John that they will need to kill Cameron.

John, in a move evocative of Sarah in T2, stabs the cutting board with a simple kitchen knife to emphasize that he understands.

At a different cutting board, Ellison faces another agent, who questions him about his incident report with a spiraling series of questions about Lazlo. His questions spin out the lies that Ellison has told to explain what occurred. A series of reasonable sounding things that the man questioning him clearly doesn't quite believe. When asked if Ellison knows the details of this or that, Ellison takes that time worn tactic of not remembering. It's a quiet and understated scene after all those explosions, but no less destructive. With each word, Ellison strips away away truth and the his enforced six week leave is inevitable, because Ellison has already left the FBI behind. He has had a change of heart.

We then cut to a wonderfully Catholic mural of Jesus with his burning heart and the sign, "Jesus El Salvador Del Mundo," which tells me that Josh Friedman meant it when he said they were going to ramp up the religious iconography this season.

In the context of the religious symbolism of Christ's blood, Cameron following a trail of John's blood to the church is fascinating. She asks the priest if he's seen her family, because it is life or death. With shots of the crucified and bleeding Christ over various shoulders, Cameron approaches the baptismal with its holy water, but that was only useful in Buffy. Here, the utility of water, thinner than blood, is it's conduction of electricity, because Sarah and John have laid a an electrical trap for Cameron in the baptismal.

As Cameron falls, they race to open up her head and remove her chip, her soul. However their kitchen knife is not sharp enough. The screwdriver is not the right size.

They run as she wakes and it seems that their knife is sharp enough to steal a car. In a sort of classic horror moment, they flee, but lurching Cameron out flanks them. Oncoming traffic forces them down into one of L.A.'s ubiquitous flood control channels. They careen past bums who anoint the car with red wine and they overturn burning barrels, which splash the car with fire.

But still, Cameron is ahead of them, as the pursuer always is in these things. She flips the car and it lands with sickening crunch on its top. Symbolic in its way of all the Topsy-turvey of the episode.

John crawls to the half-conscious Sarah, who tells her savior son to run. He races past the graffiti and into some sort of truck yard.

Sarah pulls herself from the wreck and Cameron pushes at her wounds to force Sarah to call for John. I've seen some question as to why Cameron doesn't make the call herself. However, this is an episode where Wheeler talks about finding the computer that will cross against the light. This is an episode where Cameron's normally graceful walk limps. Where John makes that first real step to the identity that he will have and Cameron makes what seems a conscious choice. I am not surprised that we don't see Cameron mimic another identity. She's clinging to the one that she has.

Sarah does also and does not call for John. Cameron knocks her unconscious.

Cameron pursues John into the yard. While death looks for heat signatures, he attempts to find a truck that is open. He finds a screwdriver in a trick. Cameron finds a heavy wrench. His attempts to restart the truck, as electric as the baptismal spark that took Cameron down earlier, she hears the sounds. She throws a wrench through the window. However, as she approaches, Sarah-to-the-rescue drives through the open front door in a truck, which pins Cameron between the two vehicles.

The moment that follows is intense. Consider in this moment that John's first experience with a Terminator was Uncle Bob in T2. Unlike Sarah or Derek, for John a Terminator is a someone. That Terminator may try to kill you. A Terminator may be a gift from yourself and will die to protect you. Cameron, his not-sister, is his protector, except when she's not. Cameron begs John not to do it. She begs him not to remove her chip because she's fine now. She begs him not to remove her chip because she doesn't want to go.

It's also useful to remember that Skynet came into being and became what it did because Skynet was afraid. It feared its creators and destroyed. However, for all of Skynet's cross the road sentience, the Termintors it created were slaves to its will. They follow a program until they run down or are run down.

In the midst of all that, with Sarah telling John to hurry, Cameron tells John that she loves him and that he loves her. He certainly loves her. I'm inclined to think Cameron's fear is real, but her love is not. John pushes aside the long hair, her Samson long hair, her Delilah long hair, and pulls out Cameron's chip.

In the aftermath, Charlie patches Sarah and John up as he said he would. Sarah tells Derek that John saw it all, and I, the viewer, am left to wonder just what did John see. To put it another way, what did John perceive from the series of events in the old building that was burned down? What preconceptions about himself and his mother were torn down, as surely as if Samson had pushed the pillars, when John saw whatever he saw? I expect we will spend the rest of the season figuring that out.

Derek goes to his nephew. John is still processing that Cromartie killed twenty people because of him. Derek, who should not give up resistance fighting to be a grief counselor, tells John that those people are dead because people don't accept the reality that Terminator's carry death. Somehow, I don't think the FBI agents had that problem.

John insists that Cameron was different because he, that unimaginable future self, made her different. Future-John reprogrammed Cameron. He flipped some "if, then" code and reset Cameron to protect John. However, at her baseline, Cameron was still a machine following her program.

We then get to the heart of the matter. Savior John needs Cameron. He needs to be saved. She saved his life. She saves him.

Derek gives way to Sarah, who tells John that she's proud of him, but that she can't let him fix Cameron. John never looked more adult than in that moment when he is told he has no agency even within his own family.

They drive away in the ambulance with Cameron on the gurney. John cleans her chip, which is akin to hitting the inside of your computer with a shot of air to clean out the dust bunnies.

Sarah, thinking that John is concerned about what Cameron said, tells her son that machines can't love. This I think misses the point that John can love.

They go to yet another flood control channel where the lost and indigent live among the husks of cars. They cover Cameron with an accelerant. Charlie, Derek and Sarah stand on one side of the car. John stands on the other. John places Cameron's chip in her hand, like a momento at a funeral pyre. He asks for the flare, which Sarah agrees to give him. John looks down at Cameron, while older-wiser-less risking heads watch.

It then that John makes the leap into who he will be - someone who reprograms Terminators. He will be that one person of all the Resistance with an Uncle Bob and a Sister Cameron. He replaces Cameron's chip and holds a gun on his family, his loved ones.
 
Cameron wakes and asks John if he is here to kill her. He responds by returning the question. She answers, "No," and John gives her gun. Cameron is Samson. She doesn't need a gun to kill John, but it does make killing easier. She holds the gun in her hand, and looks at John with Terminator music in the background. We see with her eyes. She identifies the subject and gets her order to terminate.

Then Cameron makes that leap. She overrides the program to terminate. We are given no "if" or "then" statements to explain why. We merely know that John ran against the red light and Cameron changed her own course. She returns the gun and they stand together facing the adults.

Then John sets fire to the car wreck where they were going to burn Cameron.

From burning fire, we go to the burnt husk of Sarah's house. Ellison looks at the house and sees Cromartie, who sees him. Ellison tells Cromartie that he will never lead him to Sarah. In this crisis of FBI faith, he tells Cromartie that he will never do the devil's work. Cromartie's only response is a quiet, "We'll see."

Catherine Wheeler gathers her department heads and tells them that she is creating a new division from personnel taken from each of their teams. The project's name is Babylon, which has so many meanings this essay would be a hundred pages long if I tried to unpack them. For some reason the first that comes to mind is an old rhyme, "How many miles to Babylon."

Derek enters the church kitchen and hands Sarah the remnants of their clothes. Charlie, who really does have a wife, has gone home. Sarah makes sandwiches. She looks for John and sees Cameron in chapel.

What follows is a wonderful discussion about faith between the machine and the mother. Cameron asks Sarah, "Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

Sarah's response is a question to the machine, "Would you, if you'd seen what I've seen?"

Cameron responds that faith isn't part of her programming. It is not part of Sarah's either. So lacking faith, John's protector asks John's mother/teacher to not bring her back, to not resurrect her, if she goes bad again.  

Sarah seems to agree without words and goes where John sequesters in the bathroom. In that Catholic church, she leans her head against the closed door and asks John if he's listening. He is. She very emotionally asks John to understand that everything that happened that day just happened and that it has to be enough just to live.

However, John is busy imposing the only control he can at that moment. He cuts his hair.

Given the episode title, I've seen some discussion about the troubling symbolism of this cut. Leaving aside that I think Cameron is just as much Samson as John is, in the Bible Samson's hair is cut. It symbolizes someone else, a trusted someone, taking control away. Samson looses his eyesight and his strength. Like some Schwarzenegger from that Conan movie, he's put to the mill grinding grain. The regrowth of his hair is a regrowth of his own control of himself.

John cuts his own hair. It symbolizes not someone taking control away, but taking control of self in the most primal manner possible. In that moment of reassertion of control after a control-less day, Sarah wishes him a Happy birthday, and we are reminded that this still the same day as the finale from last season. That morning, John saw his father, a little boy. That night, John attempts to sheer away the child in himself.

We follow that up with those hapless Department heads going to the men's room. Mr. Tuck, the head of AI, complains that Catherine Wheeler is a little flaky, quoting Zen Koans and Bible quotes.

A moment later, as he stands in front of a urinal in a moment of liquid vulnerability, a T1000 morphs out of the urinal and becomes Catherine Wheeler. She stabs Mr. Tuck with her finger blade and tells his corpse that she's sorry that she pisses him off, but the feeling's mutual.

This is interesting in numerous ways, not the least of which is Wheeler claiming an emotion, anger.

I can't wait to see where this leads.


Sources
Josh Friedman and John Wirth interview