TVSquad

I think they were trying to imply that Eric killed himself. Hence the suicide question earlier.

And also Stark had accidentally killed the guy who was supposed to build the building by landing in the speakeasy.

I would assume that requiring to kill the mayor on new years was done because it caused a specific response from people which led to some sort of necessary riot or reaction by the people.

Isn't Riley sent back from the future to try and sever John's infatuation with Cameron?

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"I have another, more general question: why doesn't Skynet send Terminators further into the past to kill the ancestors of the target humans?"

The closer the target is to the present for them, the easier it is to kill them. They have less interactions with future people that can lead to future events that affect skynet.

If you kill one person a 100 years before skynet, there is no way to predict who that person could have interacted with, and then that persons interactions, in which could lead to an event that would alter skynet.

I thought about the answer to that question (without reading this yet) while watching the show tonight.

If you look at it in this scenario, it's like if somebody simply went back in time and killed your father before you were born, you wouldnt be born, simple. But if somebody went back in time and killed your great great great great grandfather, of course you wont be born. But if you go further back and kill your great great great great grandfather, though you wont be born, that is so far back that say your great great great great grandmother married somebody else, had a kid with that person, and then that kid had kids, etc. And then one of the descendants ends up killing skynet, the result being skynets fault.

A good example would be if you've watched star trek voyager, the year of hell. That sort of gives a nice little breakdown of what could happen if you changed a small event, some closer to the present, and some before life itself.

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- Summer Glau looked great tonight. Never hotter.

- John had a great takedown on that dude at the party. About time the writers added a little combat training for him.

- Anyone know how many episodes are left this season? Thanks.

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"very obvious when you consider she didn't even try to help him up when he fell from his wheelchair"

What episode were you watching? After staring briefly, she moved and reached out her hand to pull him up, and he waved her away peevishly, because a) he was pissed that she had broken the lock and put his job in jeopardy, and b) he sees her as a woman and wants her to see him as a man, not a disabled man.

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I am really confused by the review, since it seems like the reviewer watched a different show...or at least did not watch this one closely.

Cameron offered to help Eric up after he fell -she put her hand out to help him up - and he yelled at her not to do so.

The "Mayor" was the new Governor of California - a fictional guy they inserted. I was really disappointed by this since when the started to pan across the marque card and I saw "Governor" I assumed that "Arnold Schwarzenegger" would be the next, completely hilarious, words we would see. Why not set the reopening at New Year's 2009 and do that?

It was pretty clearly stated in the show that the son that was killed in fire was the architect that would build the Pico building and that the lot it was to be built on was set aside by his father as a memorial garden. That was where the Terminator was supposed to execute the Governor in 2010, so he had to figure out a way to make sure the building would be there as it was supposed to be. The whole "showing up where the son happened to be" was, as Cameron said, "wrong place, wrong time".

As far as changing the past, Skynet has to be very, very careful about what get's changed because without humans Skynet doesn't get created, so going back to the stone age and destroying all of humanity does Skynet no good - it's suicide. Skynet has to change the past in very particular ways to ensure that it gets created, but that John, the greatest threat to itself that it is aware of, does not. Since with all the time traveling it has managed to intimately tie past-John into it's own creation, this is a non-trivial exercise.

That said, really good episode. Still not sure what Cameron was doing there in the first place, other that serving as a plot driver, but I really liked the whole investigation of the past thing. I think, though, that one of the big themes of this episode was that things can go wrong (going to the wrong date, killing the wrong person accidentally on arrival) and that they must be set to right in order to have some ability to predict what will happen in the future. This defines for us the limits of what Skynet can do, and underlines the power that John etc. have to change the future. It also seems to point to the possibility of multiple future time lines that can all intrude on a single past....which will become a big deal later, I think.

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Aw, give Cameron a break. She did like Eric and care for him in her own machine AI way. But overall she has a Mission to do. So, in the end, she had to simply let go of Eric and move on to making a new friend who would be useful to her.

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'It's funny how Eric was trying to build a friendship with Cameron, who doesn't feel anything (very obvious when you consider she didn't even try to help him up when he fell from his wheelchair' Dude, what show were you watching?? Maybe you took a beverage break.. Cameron did indeed offer to assist Eric and he brushed her off...

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Liked the episode. I actually didn't miss Sarah, Derek or Jesse at all... And while this episode did not progress the overall story-arc that much I still was highly entertained.
The only reason for this is Summer Glau: She really has perfected her "robot-moves"... From the way she walks (she kind of stomps, doesn't unroll from her heel), the way she moves her head, looks, speaks and reacts (always lagging a second with her answer as if she computes all the possibilities and chooses the best one). This show - for me - is all about Cameron. I don't really care for John, Sarah or SkyNet...
This is why I found it interesting that Cameron does a little "soul"-searching... From the bathroom-cancer-wouldyoukillyourself-conversation we know that Cameron still does misfunction (I think she meant her chip when she was talking about a ticking bomb inside of her).
And then, at the end, I was wondering if Cameron was jealous when she found out about John and Riley. Because why would they show her "I love you John"-scene in the recap before this episode if it didn't have any deeper meaning? Back then I thought it was pure strategy of Cameron, trying every angle on John not to kill her. But maybe there is more to it...

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I personally thing the suicide comment wasn't Cameron wondering if Eric would kill himself if he found out he once again had cancer, but Cameron discussing her own contemplation of self termination, out of fear of turning and trying to kill John Connor again.

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I think it is interesting that the suicide subject once again peaked it's head into the series. If you remember Cameron had a hard time understanding why the girl jumped from the school roof in season 1.

This is one of the top 3 episodes of the series, and Summer played her role excellently. Great plot and story execution! I loved how she flipped open the knife to pull his chip out!

So did she burn him, or is she saving his body and chip like she did with the other terminator and the steel they got from the trucks? So many questions I hope there are many more episodes to answer them!

BTW: I really don't like Riley's character...she needs to go.

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I believe that Eric (the last poster) is exactly right.
The Cameron and Eric relationship was/is fascinating. Eric wants a friend and so does Cameron. But Cameron knows she lacks the human communications/interaction abilities which build friendships. She tries, but sees herself failing. She is drawn to Eric also because he is also "broken", by his disease and inability to walk, while she also knows her chipset, which focusses on her misssion, is also damaged. As a robot she feels flawed and she also feels inadequate in her communications with humans. Thus she tries to understand what drives Eric in his circumstances. And she feels an affinity with him and almost an admiration for his ability to continue his life in a positive manner.
I also see Cameron wanting to be John's friend, but sees Cameron as first and foremost as a robot guardian. Not as an "individual".

What sets this series apart, IMHO, is it's focus on building out the characters and how events are changing them into what they will become in the future.

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I'm surprised that nobody picked up on the appearance of the 3 dots!

When Cameron mentioned that Myron Stark was checking the date by looking at the stars, it seemed sort of obvious that they showed 3 stars grouped similarly to the vision that Sarah saw.

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Does anybody else think Cameron was designed as a lovebot?
Seriously, there are many clues which suggest she may have been designed with special seduction skills and perhaps even sexual functions.
In the pilot, she makes some comment about John's emotions and John marvels that she seems to understand him and understand emotions better than other terminators, and she says something like, "I'm different."
In "Allison From Palmdale," we see Cameron in the future talking to her human counterpart Allison Young. Cameron says, "John Connor chose you." I believe John "chose" Allison as his lover, or at the very least, as his closest confidant. This would explain why the machines felt that a robot duplicate of her was their best chance to get close enough to John to kill him.
In "Samson & Delilah," Cameron's statement that she loves John and that HE LOVES HER suggests that something may have occurred between them in the future. As Cameron's damaged chip causes her to access supposedly destroyed programming to kill John Connor, perhaps she also regains access to some of the lovebot programming/memories which John Connor attempted to remove before sending her back in time. Another possibility is that Cameron, who confuses her own identity with that of Allison Young in a later episode, may have been suffering from the same malfunction when she tells John that she loves him.
In a recent episode, when Cameron wants to have a conversation with John (I think it was a conversation about why John should quit seeing Riley), she takes off her jacket before entering John's room and lying down on his bed to talk to him. Clearly, she knows she can persuade men more effectively by showing off her female figure.
In a recent episode, Jesse emphasized that Cameron in the future is getting way too "close" to John...
It seems that Reese is aware of Cameron's capabilities. His hatred of her in Season 1 suggests that she is capable of more than just killing. I think he called her "twisted." In "Dungeons and Dragons," Reese and other men are captured by terminators. The men are imprisoned and are sent one-at-a-time to a mysterious basement. The fact that the men are not killed suggests that they are subjects of a mysterious experiment, perhaps psychological. (The music playing in the basement is the same music Cameron uses for dancing ballet alone in the Connor home in the present.) Later, when Reese goes to the Resistance hideout, he sees Cameron and immediately recognizes her as a machine and freaks out. It seems Cameron was the one conducting the (psychological or sexual) experiments in the basement. The fact that music was playing in that basement is why I believe the men were not simply there for standard torture/info extraction.

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"It's funny how Eric was trying to build a friendship with Cameron."

Yeah, that's what Eric was trying to do with Cameron. Build a friendship.

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Nice catch! I totally missed that.

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The fire was completely an accident. Notice how normally, when people appear from the future, they appear outdoors, and the "blue light" consumes whatever's in its way (i.e. the T-1000's appearance created a circular hole in a fence). This is the first time I can think of that a "blue light" appeared indoors. Apparently, the apparition creates such an electrical discharge, that it set the building on fire. Cameron herself said that all those people didn't have to die and that the fire was by accident.

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