Recap: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles S2E20 "To the Lighthouse"

It's the homestretch, folks - the action should start taking off now.  But first, quite a lot of talking.

Sarah, showing more cleavage than she usually does, pauses in the midst of finishing her packing to give us a dreary voice-over about her time in the South American jungle when John was but a wee lad.  Flashback: Sarah and John, tromping around in the jungle, with guns.  They make camp, Sarah telling John that this is a game they're playing.  But he knows better, calling it "training."  Later, when he's asleep, Sarah sneaks off to watch him from afar, to see how he takes care of himself, without her.  She dozes off and when she wakes up with a start, he's gone, nowhere to be seen.  She calls for him and he sneaks around behind her, surprising her.  Clearly the boy can take care of himself.

Back in the now, the house is all packed up.  The plan is to meet up at their new safe house, out in the desert.  Sarah and John are to head there directly; Derek and Cameron head to the weapons storage locker to clean it out.  Over at John Henry's lab, he's playing action figures with Savannah when something happens, a glitch running through the servers, shutting them down momentarily.  When they come back up, John Henry is different, scary, another consciousness seemingly running through him.  He grabs Savannah's arm, hurting her.  She shrieks and runs away.  Moments later, Mr. Murch, the techie, races into the lab and hits the kill switch, shutting everything - including John Henry - down.  Weaver and Ellison stand in the doorway, concerned.  Murch explains that John Henry has been hacked, infected with a malware code.

In the Connor SUV, John is annoyed when the radio won't tune in - some kind of interference.  When he notices that his mom misses their exit, she explains that they're taking a detour: to a cottage near a lighthouse.  Sarah walks right in to the cottage, disarming the alarm.  A fat yellow lab comes out of the back of the cottage to greet them - John is definitely a dog person! Aw.  He asks his mom: What is this place?  And then Charlie walks in, answering that question.  Sarah found him this cottage after his wife died.  Over at the storage locker, Derek is a little testy with Cameron, snapping at her when she brings Jessie up.  As they talk, he realizes that Cameron knew Jessie back in the future.  Cameron explains: "I met her once."  Derek: "She never told me that."  Cameron:  "It seems she didn't tell you a lot of things."

John and Charlie catch up, clearly happy to see each other.  Charlie is less happy to see Sarah and lets her know exactly that when John goes to the car to fetch his tools.  Sarah: "I won't be here long."  Charlie: "No, you won't."  While John and Charlie work on Charlie's boat, John opens up a little about Riley, which is what Sarah was hoping for all along.  Then, when he's done talking about his feelings, John asks Charlie how he's got the beach rigged.  Explosives, Charlie explains, hard-wired to a switch on the dock, enough to give him about sixty seconds to get down to his boat in the event any more T-888s come after him.

That night, after John has gone to sleep, Sarah corners Charlie in the kitchen.  They talk a little about old times, then she takes his hand and presses it to her right breast.  At first he thinks she's coming onto him ... and then he feels the lump that she found there a couple days ago.  "Oh, Sarah," he says, voice cracking.  "It's my fate," she says quietly, "There's nothing I can do."  Charlie pulls her into a hug.

Weaver tells Murch to start the A.I. back up, but keep him off the internet.  When he does, the computer basically moans and laments, "All alone - why have you abandoned me?"  They figure that John Henry is so used to having such an incredible input of data that when he was pulled off it, it was like dying slowly.  Murch says that they need to hook the A.I. back up to the internet immediately so it doesn't starve.  Ellison isn't sure this is a good idea, what with the recent malware infection, but Weaver insists.  They bring John Henry back up and he immediately tells Ellison that he now knows what it feels like to be alone, to die and to come back.  He also tells them that "there is another - another one like me."

Now things start to pick up.  The next day, Sarah goes to the doctor for an ultrasound.  The lump isn't cancer after all: it's a cystic mass that has formed around a tiny wire, a transmitter that was injected into her when she was kidnapped during that dream episode.  Out in the hallway, a bad guy approaches, dressed like a water delivery guy.  Other bad guys follow Derek and Cameron; another one walks towards the lighthouse.  Sarah grabs a couple of cardiac paddles and slaps them on her breast, shorting out the transmitter and knocking herself temporarily unconscious.  Derek's truck gets a blowout and while Cameron changes the tire, Derek notices a skulking van and goes to check it out.  The bad guys Taser him and drive off with him in the van.  Cameron gives chase but can't catch them.  She does note the license plate.  At the lighthouse, the alarm sirens go off.  John and Charlie grab guns and run for the dock.  John unties the boat while Charlie covers him, flipping the switch for the beach explosives.  Back at the hospital, Sarah takes out the guy stalking her and grabs his gun, heading back to Charlie's.

John Henry tells Weaver and Ellison that the other A.I. has installed a worm in nearly all the world's computers (uh-oh, sounds like Skynet's making its move), trying to find him.  John Henry says that his own code is closely related to the other A.I.'s code.  Weaver asks what the other A.I. wants.  John Henry: "What we all want - to survive."

Cameron has tracked the van to a warehouse.  She marches right in and is immediately doused with a bucket of water, then electrocuted, shorting out her chip.  The bad guy gets instructions on how to remove her chip from his phone - Bad Guy: "Where'd you get this diagram?  Your brother?  You don't say." - but her doesn't move quickly enough and she comes back online and snaps his neck.  She frees Derek and, when he just gapes at her, says, "You're welcome."  Derek: "Why'd you come after me?"  Cameron:  "You know the location of the safe house."

When Sarah gets back to the lighthouse, the cottage window are shattered, the poor sweet lab has been killed, the bad guy is blown to bits on the beach.  She runs down to the dock and sees that the boat is gone - John has gotten away.  She also sees poor dead Charlie, shot three times in the chest, floating face-up in the water.  She almost cries for him.

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