Okay, watched it on TV and on Hulu, rewatching a second time on Hulu now. Here are some thoughts:
1.) Anyone else notice that the reinforcing rib on the side of The Turk's casing makes a "Z" shape that's rather similar to the Zeira Corp logo?
2.) Yay voiceover! The "excerpts from the journals of Sarah Connor" voiceovers that bookend each ep was a nice hallmark of the first season. It's been sorely missed so far in second season. Glad to see it back.
3.) Contents of Dr. Sherman's medicine cabinet: a bunch of arthritis medications:
What, no bandaids? No cough syrup? No mouthwash? And did Cameron not consider the visible bottle of eye or nose drops worth mentioning?
Contents of his bookshelves: 35 fiction, 17 (general) reference, the rest psychology texts:
What, no hobbies outside of psych? No heirloom books from parents or ex-wives? No picture books for kids, or does he keep those at the office?
4.) A very scary bit of parallelism in the car ride back home from burglarizing Dr. Sherman's house. Cameron says, "Skynet has no friends". Recall in D&D last season when the resistance officer said "John Connor has no friends"? Recall somewhere else last season when Cameron reassured John by saying that, in the future, he "has lots of friends"? Recall how lots of us interpreted that to mean his only friends were his pet reprogrammed Terminators and maybe the Reese boys? Possible new twist interpretation now: Cameron and the (possible) other terminators who want to make peace rather than simply genociding humanity may have LET themselves be reprogrammed, or even simply been turned the way a human spy can be turned to serve the other side. Another bit of possibly portentious dialoge in the same car ride is when John tries to clarify by saying that Skynet may not have friends, but they do have "whatever the opposite of foes are", and Cameron simply says "Friends". Maybe their binary computer brains can't see a middle ground between "ally" and "enemy". Maybe why Skynet went bad was it could no longer trust it's supposed allies in the human military, and thus they MUST be enemies...
5.) Same car ride...Cameron says "not everyone needs protecting, some need..." and gets cut off by Sarah saying we don't know anything yet. Granted, Cameron has been less than forthcoming with complete information, but shouldn't they be trying harder to pump her for whatever information she IS willing to part with? So what do the others need? Killing? Turning? A good chiropractor?
6.) I giggled incessantly at Weaverbot trying to smile "warmer". And then shuddered at the effect she had on her poor kid. Is there an age limit beyond which you can't show someone's urine on prime-time network TV without the FCC getting annoyed? Also, for all those who briefly theorized that Savannah was a "puddle" from Weaverbot's liquid metal to act as a decoy...no, not that sort of puddle, apparently. But close.
7.) I'm half expecting the writers to at some point show Weaverbot reading (very fast) a copy of Dr. Benjamin Spock's infamous book and subsequently screwing up the raising of Savannah in an entirely new way.
8.) So, the Connors make an appointment out of the blue for therapy with Dr. Sherman, and then promptly say they aren't sure therapy is for them? So why are they THERE?
9.) There is indeed a VA facility in Livermore, California, and they do have mental health services there, including counseling of this type:
www1.va.gov/directory/guide/facility.asp?ID=5196. What's scary is that they use what is practically the B5 Psi-Corps Logo on their website:
www.palo-alto.med.va.gov/MentalHealth/Psychology.asp10.) So...The Turk is taking more time to do less? Is it actually thinking about stuff rather than just computing?
11.) Dr. Sherman really needs to get the Weaverbot to step a bit further out of his office when he's talking to Savannah "alone".
12.) The child actress playing Savannah is pretty darn good. Kudos to the creators for finding a girl who both looks the part and can act the part.
13.) Hmmm...we saw Cameron put one bug on the base of the lamp next to the couch. After the first ad break, we see Cameron apparently listening to a different bug attached to the doll house the doc is using with play therapy with Savannah. Did they place multiple bugs? John only removes the one on the lamp later. Is the one on the dollhouse still there?
14.) So...did the costume people put Stephanie Jacobsen in a tank top over a tank top in subtle reference to her role in BSG Razor? She WAS awesome as Kendra.
15.) Everyone notes that Derek said nothing to the Connors about Jesse. He also said nothing to Jesse about linking up with the Connors. He doesn't trust her as much as it seems. Of course, she doesn't trust him either.
16.) So, at whatever point Jesse left the Future (some time after Derek left, it seems), John Connor has placed at least one reprogrammed Terminator in every major Resistance base. This is despite the fact that they still frequently "go bad" and cause massive casualties. I'm starting to think that the future John Connor is a terminator replacement infiltrating the resistance to destroy it on behalf of Skynet, and the person who is gonna get killed this season is JOHN. This will make it exponentially more crucial to stop Judgement Day entirely, as it is no longer a viable backup plan to keep John alive so he can win the war afterwards.
17.) Jesse says that "when everything ends, I want to be here with you." What the heck did she mean by that? She wants to meet adolescent Derek? She wants to be with the Derek who went back in time, and she's been looking for him? That would explain both the surveillance pics of Derek and John, as well as why someone fleeing the war didn't go back a few decades further in the past, long before Judgement Day. Escaping the war for four or five years of bliss in the early 21st century, before having to live through (or be killed by) Judgement Day all over again, does not seem to be a wonderful idea.
18.) It takes real lack of skill to screw up boiling water to make pasta. I've done it, but not in a way that resulted in a burn on my face. Speaking of which, all that stuff about John's role in the family and if he cooks for them a lot struck a tad close to home, as I do a lot of the cooking for my family.
19.) Speaking of parallelism, loved the bit where Dr. Sherman says his office is a safe place, and John replies, "No, it's not. No where is." No one is ever safe, as his Mom finally drilled into his mind. Good for her.
20.) I was amused, like most of us, by Cameron reading the suicide prevention pamplet. Wonder what she'd think of a Jack Chick tract? You can find bizarre stuff in waiting rooms and park benches and such.
21.) You'd think, eventually, someone would notice that something keeps carving perfectly spherical chunks out of vehicles, buildings, chunks of pavement, and such in the LA area. Especially when a high percentage of the events correlate with someone immediately getting horribly and bloodily murdered nearby.
22.) Wonder why Derek doesn't think seeing his UNCLE kill a man a couple of hours before wasn't just as traumatic as "seeing his mother kill a man"? Granted, Fake Sarkissian was holding a gun to John's head at the time, does anyone think the real Sarkissian was any less of an immediate threat? Is killing someone with bare hands any more traumatic than seeing a bullet splatter out someone's brains six inches from your face? In either case, I'd think the whole "almost getting killed yourself" part would be a hell of a lot more traumatic than killing someone, or seeing someone you love kill someone, at least if that someone had been trying to kill you or someone you love at the time.
23.) So...the incredibly sophisticated security system for the secret Zeira Corp lab working on The Turk in the basement consists of...waving a keychain RFID pass over the elevator control panel? Really? THAT'S not vulnerable to someone stealing a researcher's keychain and sneaking in, is it? I could SEE those wheels turning in Ellison's head as he watched that.
24.) I came up with an alternative interpretation of that adolescent math book joke The Turk was displaying. Why is a numerical information system sad? Question mark, math equations, books, images of sadness and suffering. Maybe The Turk isn't telling jokes, but expressing feelings of pain and sadness? Of course, this theory falls apart when you remember that the original trigger for this display was the technician asking "show me funny".
25.) Dr. Sherman makes a big deal of John using his passport as shorthand for identification document instead of drivers' license. What's the big deal? I've got a passport. I don't have a driver's license. My wallet is currently missing, so I don't have my State ID card, either. So, in that context, yeah, I'd ask, "wanna see check my passport"? It's the only ID document I have handy at the moment. And why is a passport more of a symbol of a desire to flee than a driver's license?
26.) Derek comments on Jesse's new scar on her side, she doesn't comment on his new scar on his chest. And that thing about new words for "booty call" or whatever was so painfully bad that it positively reeks of "one of the writers actually had this conversation with a significant other at some point". And how fracking arrogant did BAG sound when he said "I'm pretty sure if we use one of the old ones, you'll still do it with me"? Granted, he is the guy who bagged that chick from Transformers, but still...what a jerk.
27.) Ya know who Shirley Manson reminds me of in this ep? Tilda Swinton as the White Witch in the Narnia movies. I recall an interview with her talking about that role, where she said that little kids aren't scared by scenery-chewing villains making blustery statements of threat and intimidation. What scares kids on a deeply insinctual level is emotional unavilability and coldness. Shirley nailed that this ep for sure.
28.) Nice LEGO Tower of Babel, Weaverbot...I'm sure your daughter will love it. Mostly because she's too young to realize the symbolism behind it.
Speaking of symbolism, I liked it when she told Ellison that "we're building something" in the basement...while putting another LEGO brick on the tower.
29.) When Cameron and the Contortionist-bot are walking into the clinic doing the mirror-image walk and such, yeah, I think they were implying that they are at least similar models of Terminator. Several posters have used this for evidence of why Cameron can beat her so easily. Couldn't it have gone the other way? Couldn't, by the same logic, the redhead contortionist-bot have easily beaten Cameron because they are the same model? Or are we saying that Cameron beat her because they were an even physical match for each other, but Cameron has more experience?
30.) As cool as the catfight was...that early bit where Cameron kicked her FAR down the hallway while still upright clearly broke several laws of physics. It didn't do my willing suspension of disbelief any favors, either. Wire-Fu should be used to allow a fight scene to show stuff the ACTORS can't do, or at least can't do safely, not to do stuff that NO ONE can do, not even a Terminator.
31.) I'm not sure what the doctor/patient confidentiality laws are like in California, but it may be a good thing that John didn't admit to Dr. Sherman that he killed Sarkissian. The good doc may have had the obligation to report a killing, even in self-defense, to the cops.
32.) That little pause Weaverbot did after Dr. Sherman turned down her initial offer on the grounds of his responsibility to his patients...I got the impression she was momentarily considering killing all his patients so he wouldn't have that responsibility any more, then discarded that notion as impractical.
33.) That bit about the butcher paper smelling like cow's blood...Weaverbot has the oddest gaps in her practical knowledge. On the other hand, a more informed response may not have been much better. What did the paper smell like? Industrial solvents and bleaching agents.
34.) The first name in the closing credits was "Co-Producer: Jessie W. Dugan". A quick check on IMDB showed this person formerly worked on shows like Sisters and She's the Sheriff, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume this person is female. So...is Derek's new love interest named after her?