Recap: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles S2E4 "Allison from Palmdale"

Flash to the future resistance: Cameron runs for her life through the resistance's tunnels.  A net catches her and she falls, screaming.

The present: John drops Cameron off at the market while he goes to get more computer stuff.  Her chip is clearly not right as she keeps having those future flashes, then just completely zones out, knocking over a pile of watermelons and then standing there in a fugue state.  In a future flash, the girl we see is not the Terminator Cameron but a real girl, Allison Young, part of the resistance, and it was she who got captured by the machines.  At the market, the cops are called and they end up sticking Cameron in jail.  Cameron can't remember who/what she is.

Back at the house, Sarah has to take Casey to the hospital because she's cramping and bleeding.  The doctors want to run some tests and Casey asks Sarah to stay with her.  In a rare display of humanity, Sarah stays with her.  Through the whole episode, in fact, and they talk about motherhood and protecting your children.  And Casey's baby daddy shows up and he wants to take care of her, but he's a cop and asks Sarah too many questions for her to be entirely comfortable.

John returns to the market, looking for his "sister."  A bystander tells him what happened so he heads for the police station.  In the meanwhile, the cops let Cameron go and a street kid, Jody, notices how much cash Cameron has on her and decides to become her new BFF.  They head off together, just an hour before John shows up.  A cop tells him that Jody tends to hang out on the Boulevard, so John heads there.

Ellison goes back to meet with Catherine Weaver again.  Shirley Manson looks a bit haggard, if you ask me.  He's reluctant to hunt the machines again, he says, given the massacre that happened last time.  She encourages him to take the job.  Later, Ellison goes to see his ex-wife, who also works at the FBI, and asks her to run a check on Weaver.  She does, and Weaver is clean.

Jody gets Cameron to buy lunch.  They are interrupted by a thug who thinks Jody stole from him.  Cameron, not knowing who she is anymore, hands the guy her wad of cash and yells at him to leave them alone.  Jody is discouraged by the loss of the money, but takes Cameron to a halfway house so they can crash for a couple of days.  The only catch is that they'll have to talk with a counselor - Jody advises Cameron to lie about everything.  In Cameron's session, the future flashes start to bleed through: Cameron thinks she's Allison.  She remembers a phone number and tries to call her mother.  A young woman answers.  Yes, she's "Mrs. Young" but she's only just pregnant and doesn't currently have a daughter.  Aw - Cameron just called her future mom.

John tracks the girls to the restaurant where another dude tells him about the halfway house.  When he gets there, the girls are happily playing foosball.  Cameron doesn't recognize John and insists she's "Allison from Palmdale."  John realizes her chip is wonky but tries to reason through it.  Cameron gets another future flash: Allison, trying to escape, running through a room full of caged humans and animals.  She climbs out of the tunnels and thinks she's free, but is snared in another net.  She is brought before one of her captors, the Cameron-Terminator.  It seems as though the machines built Cameron after they had captured Allison, using the human girl as the template and hoping to infiltrate the resistance that way.  Cameron asks Allison where John Connor's camp is.  Allison refuses to give up the information.

Back at the halfway house, John tries to make Cameron come with him.  She freaks out, shoving him away, so the staff kick him out.  The therapist talks to Cameron again, and Cameron now tells her that she thinks she's a machine, sent to "kill John Connor and stick his head on a pike."  The therapist is required to report any talk of violence so after Cameron leaves, she makes a call.  The cops show up at the halfway house but Cameron and Jody have already scarpered.

Ellison goes back to Catherine Weaver's office.  He takes the job.

John has followed Jody and Cameron to Jody's parents' house.  The girls are there to rob the place.

Future flash: The Cameron-Terminator snaps Allison's neck when Allison lies to her.

When Cameron realizes that Jody was going to leave her in the house to take the fall for the robbery, she grabs Jody around the neck.  John bursts in, finding Jody on the floor.  She's okay, though, just woozy.  For some reason, now Cameron recognizes John, saying "We have to go."  They drive off, heading for home.  Clearly John's got some work to do on Cameron's chip.

Previously on T:TSCC / next time on T:TSCC