Recap: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles S2E11 "Self Made Man"

WTF:  It's a flashback to the 1920s, New Year's Eve at some speakeasy.  The bar catches on fire and flappers run screaming into the night.  I repeat: WTF.

Now: Sarah makes John continue the search for companies with three dots in their logos because she is obsessed.  He reminds her that it is something she saw in a dream.  That night, Cameron goes out to the library after hours.  A guy in a wheelchair lets her in and she gives him doughnuts.  They appear to be acquainted with each other and he thinks she's a real girl.  As she looks at some old photographs, she recognizes a face as one belonging to a T-888.  It's a photo of the aftermath of that 1920s speakeasy fire and the guy is standing outside on the street, staring up at the sky.  Cameron is all, I need to know what happened to that guy.  Wheelchair Guy thinks this is weird but goes along with it because, damn, a hot chick in motorcycle boots is hanging out with him on the library nightshift.  They start going through microfiche and find a photo of the guy, "Myron Stark," on the red carpet with Rudolph Valentino and some old real estate developer, Rupert Chandler.  Cameron heads downstairs to search county records for more on Stark.

Back at the house, John gets a call from Riley.  She sounds upset and asks him to come pick her up from this house party.  When he finds her, she is no longer upset and wants to party.  John is a little annoyed at this.

Wheelchair Guy is pissed off that Cameron broke into the county records room.  He feels used and frets about getting fired.  It doesn't stop her from searching the old files but later she finds him and apologizes.  Curious, he asks if she found anything.  No, she didn't, which she is not happy about.  WG suggests that maybe Stark was an immigrant who wanted to stay off the books.  Cameron wants to see police records.  They find some old radio recordings about a bank robber who kept eluding the cops despite getting shot numerous times.  They delve deeper, into real estate records, learning that Stark bought a bunch of land and started a construction company.  He was in bitter competition with that Rupert Chandler

This storyline is needlessly detailed and a pain in the ass to recap, mostly because there's too much talking (about uninteresting things) and not enough action - which is really this show's strong suit.  If it has a strong suit.

At the house party, John gets roped into playing a first-person shooter video game.  It freaks him out a little since, you know, he often gets in actual gunfights.  When he and Riley try to leave, a guy accuses Riley of stealing his lighter.  The kid grabs and shoves at Riley and John beats the living crap out of him.  On the ride home, John wants to know why Riley called him.  She says that she wanted to see him.  "I shouldn't be around people," says John.  "People get hurt."  They start making out.  Whatever.

Cameron and WG watch a video clip of a modern news story detailing the discovery of a body of one of Chandler's associates who disappeared back in the 1920s.  Also, Chandler's son died in that speakeasy fire.  Cameron and WG think Stark may have set that fire.  They check out the film archives, finding an extremely convenient documentary about life in the 1920s in which a former flapper who survived the fire is interviewed.  This woman recalls seeing a flash of blue light and sparks, and lo a naked man appeared - although she may have been "zozzled" at the time.  Cameron surmises the fire was an accident, a by-product of Start teleporting into the world.  She also figures out that he ended up in the wrong time (she gets that because of the photo where he was looking at the sky, fixing his time and place in space from the location of the stars).  Also-also, she learns that Stark, after ruining Chandler, bought a piece of property formerly owned by the real estate developer, and built a skyscraper there.

Cameron goes to check out said skyscraper, due to open this coming New Year's Eve after having been retrofitted after the last earthquake.  She checks out the ballroom, noting that the governor is scheduled to give the keynote speech there, and then knocks out the back wall, pulling out a shut-down Stark who was hibernating there, waiting to bust out and murder the governor. OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS?  Stark is still wearing his 1920s suit and carrying a tommy-gun.  They have a Terminator fight and she disables him by crushing him with the elevator.  Then she digs out his chip.

There's some more stuff about how Cameron ruins her relationship with WG because she's a robot who doesn't understand humans and when she tells him that his cancer is back he gets mad because she's being a bad friend.  Whatever.  The next night she goes back to the library but he's gone.  Cameron gives the evening's doughnuts to the new nightshift clerk, who lets her in - and she's on her way to making a new "friend."

Pluses:  Lots of Cameron and no Sarah.  Minuses:  Didn't advance the plot AT ALL and there was no shirtless Derek.

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