Cromartie's first line in the series was "Mr. Ferguson is Ill Today."  He was played by a different actor, in a different decade, but in an episode that focuses on the Day of the Dead, and he exits in an episode of the same title.

This was an episode about stories: Sarah, Cameron, John, Ellison, Derek and Cromartie. It is about the intersections of stories. The way Sarah's perceptions interleave with John. The way their stories touch and interact. Given that Riley doesn't get a perspective her role on the periphery is clear. She is the mundane that can only be damaged by entry into this world. Ellison has already gone too far, while Cromartie, he had faith, but no repentence. His end that makes a great deal of sense from a story telling perspective. Cromartie is the Season 1 representative of the relentless Death. In Catherine Weaver, we have an entirely different sort of antagonist altogether. Cromartie had faith in Ellison. Catherine actively takes her leaps of faith, which seem to crash helicopters.

I'm somewhat fascinated by Sarah's building of a safe at the beginning of the episode. As around her, John forms a connection with Riley, she works to keep things safe. In a way that is what she continually does. She attempts to build a safe space in the wake of violence. However, she can neither keep John within a safe space and she in prevented from creating that safety. Cromartie arrives as he does and prevents Sarah from completing her construction. While John himself is gone. Oddly, his rebellion is what saves his life.

Then this is where it get's really interesting. They start the story again. Whereas we started with Sarah's story, in Sarah Connor's Chronicles, now we see the same events from Cameron's perspective. There's a slightly different angle and emphasis on the words. We see slightly different scenes. We see the conversation between Cameron and John. Cameron drops her jacket before going into John's room and there's really no way to interpret that other than as an attempt to engender a physical response. Calling back to earlier scenes in the season, like Riley, she lies down on John's bed. They talk and there is the clear implication from what Cameron says that Future-John's relationship with Cameron is non-platonic, which has all sorts of odd implications. Cameron repeats what seems to be the mantra of this series, that connections are dangerous. Although, given the impending apocalypse, it's all a matter of degree. John jokes about scarring Riley for life if she came back, but seems neither drawn nor pushed away from Cameron. She's not his confident, not now. He's trying another story on. Cameron leaves confident that she's gotten through to John. That she has connected with him.

But then we get John's story and see how fragile that connection is. The John we see in John's story is a John in full on teenage rebellion. He is told over and over that he is endangering Riley's life. He has examples in his own life. Over and over he's seen the results. His foster parents. Even those FBI agents that he's never met. Yet, he so longs to return to some sort of childlike state that never really existed. He drags Riley along on a roadtrip to Mexico where he lived for over a year.

The use of the Day of the Dead here is fairly brilliant. In this mythology, skulls and skeletons have always signified Terminators. From the moment in the first movie where a Terminator steps on and crushes a human skull to Cromartie's skull bouncing between decades, they are the grinning death. In some ways, this episode reminds me of those old stories where a man on seeing death in one town, flees to another town, only to find Death there also.

 

Riley, the mundane, tells us that she doesn't like skulls, but they are an ever present part of John's life. As they walk down the street, I was taken by the skeletal bride and groom who follow after them. They stay in the honeymoon suite. There's a tub with jets and it's all teenage rebellion, but as I looked at the suite, I was reminded of the bride and groom. Death follows to whatever town John goes.

John is reminded of this when they leave the bubble of the room and go to a bar. As with last week, where photo's can only lead to discovery, John's photo is taken and he is recognized as Sarah Connor's son. That's quite a reputation that this many years later, Sarah Connor is remembered. It is also an interesting inversion. He is remembered as Sarah Connor's son, not Sarah as John's mother. Then too soon, Death arrives with a gun.

Then we jump back into Sarah's story. Back in time before those gun shots were fired. We see Cromartie's photos. The evidence of all the research he has done that has led him to the Connors. Sarah learns what her mercy has bought, Cromartie at her door. He comments on the changes in the Connor's strategy, which ties to Cameron's damaged chip. Change is related to damage, and yet we were told in the pilot that what Catherine Weaver is looking for is the computer that will change strategies. Whereas before Sarah tried to kill herself when captured, here she tries escape. She makes a weapon of an aluminum can, even knowing that it's unlikely to do Cromartie any damage.

Except now she's in Ellison's journey.  When he gets John's picture through the wire, even though John should be 24, and he doesn't know the story of that leap, he goes to Mexico. He goes into the Day of the Dead. He finally finds what he's been looking for, but it's a rebellious teenager in a Mexican jail with a Terminator hot on their trail. It's Sarah in the trunk of a car. Where Sarah's mercy to a teenager brought Cromartie to her, actively saving Ellison here saves her life.

Here we slightly loose the tight Point of View emphasis as, while still Ellison's story, we shift to Sarah and John talking about Riley. Once again we hear that mantra that connection leads to danger, but Riley's life has already come to close. While Derek's story is a brief flash.

Leading us to that most pivotal of point of views, Cromartie's story. Given that in this story Sarah is the stand in for the Virgin Mary, it's somewhat hilarious that Cromartie carries his guns in a Virgin Mary tote bag. Seeing the Ellison walk into a church, as Cameron did in the season opener, he goes into a church. But whereas the Connors shocked Cameron, here we have Cromartie walking into a chruch and being asked by Ellison if he has come to repent. Cromartie's chip is not damaged. He has learned to adapt, but he is still the relentless death. Standing in a crucifixion pose, he fires at both windows where Derek and Sarah parse his faith with bullets. Ultimately, it is Cameron who puts him down with shots to the head, which reveal the metal skull below. Her expression, as it has been several other times in the series, is one of regret. Her chip is damaged. 

After so many years, so much looking and all the ways that Ellison's life has been affected by the Connor's, we come to his John Baum moment. The attempt to reject the way things are go to some sort of simpler time. He's looking for a way home, a way back to the person that he was before. Sarah doesn't have that to give him. She cannot give it to herself. Her life is this bare bones moment, and there's an odd sense as Ellison walks away of being cast out of the kingdom.

While Sarah, finally faced with Cromartie's chip, has the melt down that has been coming for years. She cannot build a safe. She cannot be safe. She cannot recreate a Eden. She lives in an eternal day of the dead. She smashes the chip and John finally sees just how vulnerable his mother is. After an episode of teenager point of view, he holds her, looking frightened. It's both adult in that he expresses concern for something outside of himself and childlike, because I think he finally understands that his mother is human, fragile and damagable.

 

We'll see where this revelation leaves them.