I couldn’t exactly remember the events of that episode exactly either, but looking at the recap at tv.com, Riley isn’t in the church where they kill Cromartie. Sarah makes Riley go home to LA alone via bus before the confrontation in the church. So she saw Cromartie, but didn’t see metal beneath his skin.
Yep, there’s a faction that thinks Cameron has too much influence over him.
Finally a good episode after the last couple half-assed stinkers. I was thinking about giving up on this show, but hopefully this ep means they’re bringing the quality back to the level it was at before. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems the more Cameron an episode has in it, the better they tend to be. Then again, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the amount of Sarah and the amount of Cameron. The Sarah solo episodes (or mostly solo, like the drag queen and the wake) seem to be the ones that kinda suck.
As far as (fake) Riley was concerned, John was wanted in Mexico, broke out of jail with her, and seemed to have some heavily-armed psychopath chasing him. Nothing super-normal.
-Joe
I didn’t much care for Riley so I was happy to see her go, but the show is too dark. It needs to lighten up a bit. Even the governator had a few humorous lines.
Plus the episodes don’t seem to hang together very well. I always feel like I’m watching my first episode of a show that’s been on for a awhile.
Anyone have any idea what going on with Cameron? Man, if she leaves I’m done with it. She makes the show for me.
The whole interaction between Cameron and John was interesting. In fact, her “injury,” even without the reaction, is interesting. They made it clear that she can work on herself but she opted to have John work on her. It’s understandable but when she realized he didn’t fix her properly, why didn’t she go back and do the job herself? Twitchy fingers are bad, how is she going to shoot guns properly? For that matter, how is she going to caress pigeons?
Beats me, but I don’t think she’s going to leave the show. She’s malfunctioning, but the malfunctions seem to lead to her being a bit more human. She accidently killed a pigeon, now she hesitated about what to do with Riley. She’s questioning her programming and motivations, I guess.
That kill switch she gave John, why three buttons? Wouldn’t it really only need the red kill button? What are the other two for?
If I were designing a kill switch, I’d make the activation into either a series of button presses or require holding down multiple buttons. Otherwise, my head might 'splode if a button were pressed by accident, or some random person got a hold of it and thought “ooh, what’s this red button do?”
As for twitchy fingers, the writers made her do that for the dramatic tension of the scene with Riley. And if I were a robot with one bad hand, I would fire guns using the other hand.
As for bringing the funny, they walk a fine line between making the robots quirky and making the robots retarded. If a writer thought it would be funny if Cameron wanted to caress a pigeon and instead banged two bars of soap together, saying “Oh, that’s Dove ™”, I think some might laugh, but others would think it cheesy.
Yeah, not so dissimilar from my life. 
Yep, as far as we know, robots aren’t righties or lefties.
I didn’t care much for Riley either, but I would have been even more happy to see Jesse (?) go. Damn I can’t stand her. I suppose that means that the character accomplishes exactly what she’s supposed to, but I just keep wanting to punch things whenever she’s on screen.
I was a bit confused at the second dead bird. What, did she just catch it to see if her bird-caressing abilities are back to normal again? Seems to me there are less bird-killy ways to test that. On the other hand, replicating the last incident as exactly as possible is perhaps the most logical way for a killer robot to proceed, so I guess I can live with that. (I still think the show’s trying for more symbolism than people give it credit for – crushed dove, huh? Bird of peace? Granted, it wasn’t a white one, but still…)
I thought that was the first dead bird, chucked to the side of the road. I didn’t get any peace dove imagery.
…I thought that was an altogether different bird (as in a different species)? Did I see that wrong?
Definitely different birds. First one was a pigeon, second one was…well, I’m not a bird expert, but it wasn’t a pigeon.
-Joe
I took her twitch to be non mechanical - her AI fighing over orders… referenced by the bird " fly away- scrunch" - she had no trouble with that hand holding the bird safely (even catching it mid flight) until she tried to release it.
I also found it funny that the box of spare parts contained huge “man sized” parts - yet they were able to ‘fix’ the arm.
Nice line from John - “you weren’t designed to fight other terminators” Yet, she’s been doing that since episoide one, and now she gets a pulled muscle thingy?
Accumulated damage. My Accord isn’t designed for going offroad, but I can probably do it a few times before I notice any big problems…
-Joe
Where did that come from? If she wasn’t designed to fight other terminators then what was she designed for? The sack? If so, money is no object.
It was in the garage scene where John was repairing Cameron…
Why is this considered so weird? Like almost everything else in this show, it has precedence in the movies. We can only assume Cameron is an 800 series Terminater (even though they haven’t stated it outright) because of the episode “Allison From Palmdale” and the fact that every other Terminator except for Weaver has been an 800 series.
In the movies they weren’t designed to fight other Terminators. Arnold says as much in T2 and T3. They are infiltrators that assassinate human targets and then get blown apart by Resistance gunfire three seconds later. They’re only indestructible in the present day (1984 - 2007) because humanity hasn’t developed handheld anti-Terminator weapons yet.
Exactly. The liquid metal terminators were designed because the human resistance was doing so well.
Interesting episode. They have me really curious about the submarine story. Incidentally, the sub stuff didn’t make me cringe - usually TV and movies get sub-related stuff horribly bad. They must’ve consulted someone who at least had a reasonable idea - although launching a torpedo as a decoy was silly - those subs have decoys that are designed to sound like the host subs specifically for that purpose.
It makes me wonder how many of the machines the humans have “scrubbed” - the terminators on the oil rigs presumably are part of the resistance network, since the soldiers went there to meet them. Or at least the soldiers have a reasonable expectation that they’re part of the resistance network. I have to admit I’d probably shit my pants if I had to walk up to some HKs and ask nicely for a box.
Their future weapons were scuffed up and looked combat worn - nice touch. Usually you see fancy freshly shined death rays.
I wonder how this Riley thing will play out. Cameron is such an obvious suspect in her death - from the Connor’s perspective, who else could it be? And it’s logical - if Cameron decided Riley knew too much and was a threat, it would be a logical course of action.
These last two episodes are definitely a step up in quality compared to earlier in the season. For the first time this season I’m really curious to see the next episode.
But John went to the morgue and saw Riley was beat to hell before she was killed. He has to know that Cameron wouldn’t do that, both because it’s not a Terminator’s style and because it would hurt him.
In fact, the fact that the police found the body at all should be proof Cameron didn’t do it. She wouldn’t be that sloppy.