Thematically similar, I suppose

Whilst we're waiting for Blockbuster.com to send me my next DVDs, here are short synopses of two books I read recently:

Horns by Joe Hill.  I recently discovered Joe Hill, enjoying his short story collection quite a lot.  Horns is his most recent novel.  Ig Parrish has problems.  The love of his life was raped and murdered a year ago and Ig was the only suspect, although nothing could be proven against him; the residents of the small New England town he lives in believe him guilty.  Now, after a raging bender he can't remember, Ig has woken up with devil horns sprouting from his forehead.  He's also developed the ability to cause people to tell the truth, things they would rather keep hidden, things Ig would rather they keep hidden - and he realizes that perhaps he can solve his girlfriend's murder and get some peace at last.

The apple has not fallen far from the tree in the case of Joe Hill and his beyond-famous dad: Horns is a great tale, well-plotted, easily readable, clever and unstinting in the brutal details.  While Hill may not quite have the touch with dialogue King has, he also doesn't have diarrhea of the word processor - there's nothing extra here in these manageable 368 hardcover pages.  Fun stuff.  I now have to track down Hill's first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, because that's supposed to be quite good.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  In this grim, bleak, unrelenting novel, there is a man and a boy, his son.  They walk the road in a post-apocalyptic America, thirsty, starving, scared.  All they have is each other - they don't even have hope anymore.  And that's all there is in The Road.  There's no plot per se: the man and the boy walk, try not to freeze to death, scavenge what meager food they can, strain their water, hide from the violent gangs of cannibals that roam the country.  McCarthy never says exactly what brought down Armageddon onto the U.S., but it seems like it must have been some sort of nuclear catastrophe because the sun is all but blocked out and everything is coated with grey ash.  We never even learn the names of the man and the boy.  We just follow them as they try to survive and try to remember why they want to survive.  Grim, wonderful stuff.

The Third Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #3: Thirst

Damn - nearly halfway done with the month and I'm only on move #3?  That's pathetic.  I blame Blockbuster.com for moving my distribution center so far away.  I could watch more movies if they showed up quicker.  Anyway, I hadn't seen any Asian horror for ages and I was really looking forward to Korean (English subtitles) Thirst.  The plot:  Sang-hyeon, a young Catholic priest who is frustrated by all his flock (patients at a hospital) dying, decides to volunteer for a highly risky (like, no one has survived yet) medical experiment, trying to find a cure for a nasty disease.  He gets really, really sick (boils and pustules all over, puking up blood) but is amazingly cured after a transfusion.  Cured, except that he blisters and burns in the sunlight and if he doesn't drink blood on a regular basis, the nasty disease comes back.  Being a priest, he doesn't want to kill anybody for their blood so he sips from coma patients' IV lines - no one ever knows.

Everyone thinks he's a miracle for surviving the experiment and they want him to heal them.  A pushy lady convinces him to visit her cancer-ridden son Kang-woo, who, it turns out, knew Sang-hyeon when they were boys. Kang-woo gets better (it's never really clear if he actually had cancer and is in remission or if he's just a hypochondriac) and Sang-hyeon is invited home with them, to play mah jongg with their little clique of grotesques.  Creepy, idiotic Kang-woo is married to Tae-ju, who was an indentured servant in the home when she was a little girl.  Now she is pretty, repressed and somewhat feral, hating her idiot husband.  She and Sang-hyeon begin an affair - he reluctantly at first, finding it difficult to cast off his long-held priestly beliefs - and she sees him as a way out of her dreary life, even after he confesses to being a vampire.  She gets prettier and more confident as the affair continues, but she also turns on the crazy, cutting herself and telling Sang-hyeon that Kang-woo did it, so her lover will kill her husband.

After they kill Kang-woo  it gets weirder - they are both haunted by visions of the dead man - and they are unhappy and stressed.  In a fit of passion, Sang-hyeon snaps Tae-ju's neck ... and then feeds her his blood to save her life.  Now that she's a vampire herself, the crazy really kicks into high gear (and she has no compunction about killing her feeds) and Sang-hyeon is forced to deal with what they've become.

Thirst is a lovely, visually-interesting film but it's about a half hour too long, is pretty weird and is not really very scary at all.  Sure, there are some bloody moments but they're fairly artful.  It's actually more of a twisted love story than a horror movie - not at all what I was expecting.  I liked it but didn't love it, and really wished it was shorter (never a good sign).

Next up:  was supposed to be The Hunger with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, but that seems like it might be too languorous and affected.  So I'll have to shuffle things around.  It'll be a surprise!

The Third Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #2: American Zombie

American Zombie is one of those movies that I like better after the fact, the more I think about it.  I think it's because I like the concept more than the execution.  The extremely low-budget - but not at all campy; it plays it straight - AZ plays as the making-of a documentary about the population of zombies residing in greater Los Angeles.  In this universe, humans and zombies are co-existing side by side.  High-functioning zombies retain most of their brain function and hold jobs like customer service reps and Quik-E-Mart clerks; low-functioning zombies can hold factory jobs or collect shopping carts; "feral" zombies are difficult to differentiate from really bad-off homeless folks.  Zombies come into being when a dormant virus is activated in humans as a result of a violent death; some zombies are also pushed by the virus's need to procreate but there are few reported instances of zombie bites - in fact, the ZAG, Zombie Action Group, led by high-functioning zombie Joel, is offended by the thought that zombies eat people.

The documentary crew, led by directors Grace and John, follow four high-functioning zombies around their daily lives: activist Joel, convenience store clerk Ivan, CSR Judy, florist Lisa.  Interestingly, zombies mostly seem to have four-letter names, have varying degrees of physical issues (Lisa goes to an alternative medicine woman for treatment of her maggot-infested gut wound) and are so very lonely which manifests in the need to connect with people (hence Joel's activism and Judy's telephone job) and create art: Ivan makes a 'zine, Ivan's roommate Glen is a charcoal artist, Judy scrapbooks everything and Lisa makes string art.

Once a year, the zombie community gets together for an undead-only Burning Man-esque fest called Live Dead.  The documentarians have to get special permission to film here: Grace is looking to capture all facets of the culture while John thinks something fishy is going on out there.  The first couple of days and nights are simply counter-culture revelry with art installations, singalongs, BBQs and midnight raves.  But things get darker on the last night: what the organizers and participants insist is performance art, the filmmakers are convinced is a live human sacrifice.  I won't give away the entire ending, but we are left with serious behavior changes on the part of the documentary subjects and Joel's ominous promise that one day the zombies will rise up and reclaim this world.

See, it all sounds good on paper; there's just not much too it onscreen.  The little details are nice: Ivan trying to eat food with as many preservatives as possible to keep his body from deteriorating; Suzy eating an all-vegan diet and collecting cat figurines because she can't have real cats ... because she's allergic; the cow brains at the Live Dead zombie cookout.  But just nothing much happens, it's not at all scary and there's very little zombie gore or violence - very little payoff at the end, whereas I had thought we were building to a big finish.  It's uncommonly subtle for a zombie movie which is kind of fun, I guess, but if you're in the mood for living dead carnage, you just won't find it here in American Zombie.

Mini movie review: The Long Good Friday

Here's a non-Third Annual Friend Mouse Speaks Scarelicious October Movie Series movie for you, one of Mr. Mouse's requests: The Long Good Friday.  For the record: he decided he wanted to watch it after seeing Helen Mirren on a rerun of the BBC's Top Gear.  It's a British gangster flick circa 1980, starring Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Brick Top and Hatchet Harry from Guy Ritchie's British gangster flicks, plus an incredibly young-looking Pierce Brosnan, and while the music, clothing and decor are extremely dated, it's a good movie (if a little hard to follow).

Bob Hoskins is Harold, the head of the London gangsters, looking to legitimize himself with a real estate deal.  He's got cops and local politicians on his payroll, helping him secure his deal; he's lining up the American Mafia to help with cash flow.  The IRA gets involved, however, and starts chipping away at his organization: stabbing a confidante, blowing up his mother's car while she's at church, setting off bombs in restaurants.  Harold has to figure out who's after him - and stop them - before the Americans get cold feet and pull out of the deal.

There is a lot going on in this movie and it took some post-viewing internet research before Mr. Mouse and I figured out exactly what happened (and we're still not clear on one point).  The violence and language is incredibly tame for a British gangster movie by today's standards.  This was Hoskins's breakout role and he's quite good; Helen Mirren is his smart and gorgeous girlfriend Victoria, and she works just as hard as he does to try to resolve the conflict swirling around them.  I'd be hard-pressed to give The Long Good Friday a grade, though, because while I enjoyed it and found it held my attention, I was frustrated by so often not knowing who the players were and just what they were doing.

The Third Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #1: Teeth

The first movie of the Third Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series is Teeth!

In the shadow of the nuclear power plant, a young family enjoys the beautiful day on their front lawn, recently married adults sitting on lawn chairs, sipping cocktails, young children splashing in a wading pool.  Little Brad, at most 5 years old, fumbles around and says to his baby step-sister Dawn, "Now let's see yours."  A moment later, Brad is squalling bloody murder: the tip of his index finger has nearly been bitten off.  Fifteen or so years later, Brad is a surly, tattooed and pierced young man, still living at home, listening to death metal and treating his goth girlfriend very, very badly.  Dawn, on the other hand, has grown up to be a sweet, pretty girl.  She is thoughtful around her mother, who is now sick with cancer; she's polite and kind of a dork, the enthusiastic spokesperson for the chastity-pledge club, of which she and her besties are ring-bearing members.

Things change for Dawn when new kid Toby transfers to school.  Toby is also in the chastity club but he and Dawn find each other irresistible.  Making out, they are confused about what they're feeling: "This doesn't feel wrong."  But a pent-up Toby can't control himself: he and Dawn struggle; she gets hit on the head; while she is woozy and uncomplaining, Toby forces himself inside.  She wakes up screaming ... and soon Toby is screaming too, his disco-stick bitten off to a stub.  He runs, hollering and bleeding profusely.  Poor Dawn doesn't understand what's going on - their sex ed class textbook has been edited so that she's never even seen a diagram of what women's private parts look like - and later, she can't find Toby when she looks for him.  Well, she finds a little piece of him, but that's it.  It just gets worse for Dawn as she tries to comprehend what's happening to her body.  A skeezy gynecologist doesn't help matters - and pays the price - but gives Dawn a name for her condition.  As the movie goes on (only 96 minutes), Dawn starts to take control of her body and of her awakening sexuality.

I'm not sure I'd call Teeth a horror flick: Dawn is no monster, but nearly all the men in her life are so you're rooting for her.  It's not even that scary (perhaps for the menfolk it might be, I suppose) because after the initial Toby-experience, you know exactly what to expect.  The concept is based in an old, cross-cultural myth, ostensibly begun by men who feared women's sexuality.  Sex makes you vulnerable and the VD myth underlines that.  What I liked the best about this weird little movie is that it was played straight, no camp, no winking at the camera.

The Third Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series is nearly upon us!

That's right, everyone: it's October and that means it's time for the Third Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series!  The first movie is one for all the fellas: Teeth, a modern riff on the vagina dentata myth.  I'm watching it tonight so look for a post in the next day or so.

Mr. Mouse's parents are coming to visit in a couple of days so we may be getting off to a slow start for the TAFMSSOMS (I'm fairly certain that my in-laws are not big horror movie fans) but I'll crank 'em out as fast as I can.  Also, my Blockbuster.com DVD distribution center has moved from SLC to Denver which means that the DVD delivery is a little slower than I'd like.  Yes, I still rent DVDs.  No, I don't stream Netflix.  Yes, I'm a Luddite - I even still read books with paper pages.

Speaking of books with paper pages, I just finished 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of horror short stories by Joe Hill, also known as Stephen King's son.  I really enjoyed them: Hill is a good writer, intelligent but accessible, not overtelling things, with a voice that is reminiscent of his father's but still his own.  I have always loved Stephen King's short stories; I was pleased to discover that it runs in the family.  The collection is not just straight horror tales but also some dark fantasy, a sweet baseball story, some dreamy stuff, some creepy stuff, some nightmares.  My favorites were "Pop Art" and "Voluntary Committal."  Read them and figure out which ones you like best.

Book review: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld is the first in a four-volume series (also Pretties, Specials and Extras) of YA teenage dystopian novels.  Set in the future - our future, after a bacterium destroys all Earth's oil and decimates our economies and society in general - the current society has changed quite a lot.  Things are recycled, animals are no longer eaten, energy is self-sustaining and no longer petroleum-based, there are hoverboards and hovercars, and body image issues govern pretty much everything: at age sixteen, everyone undergoes a full-body plastic surgery procedure that homogenizes their appearance and makes them "pretty."  Before the surgery, you're an Ugly.  You live in a dorm with other Uglies, you're called by ugly names and you count down the days until you can be made pretty.

Pretties have all the fun.  After the surgery, it's nothing but parties and nice clothes and drinking fancy drinks. No worries, no cares in the world.  There are additional surgeries as people age, moving them to "middle Pretties," the conscientious grown-up stage, for example, and you can get elective surgeries to change your appearance even more, but the initial prettifying is not optional.  Tally Youngblood, Uglies heroine, can't wait to be made pretty.  Her BFF Peris is a month older than she, and so got his surgery before she did and subsequently abandoned her to his new life.  Tally is lonely and unhappy, hating the way she looks.  One night, after spying on the pretties, Tally meets another Ugly, Shay.  Shay is smart, irreverent and fun - and happy with her own face.  She doesn't want the surgery - something Tally can scarcely comprehend - and tells her new friend that she doesn't have to have it.  They can run away, into the forest surrounding the civilized city, and meet up with other people who have chosen to remain ugly.  Just days before her birthday surgery, Shay disappears into the wild, leaving Tally an encoded message on how to find her.  Tally doesn't know what to do - all her life she's only ever wanted to be pretty - and then, suddenly, the decision is not hers to make: the authorities pick her up and tell her that if she doesn't track down Shay and lead them to this rebel Ugly community, she will never be allowed the surgery and will remain ugly forever.  Tally heads into the woods where the world opens up to her in ways she never could have imagined.

I read a lot of books and I know what great YA fantasy fiction is.  Uglies is not great.  The premise is fascinating (because you do realize that "uglies" really just look like you and me but they've been conditioned to hate that) but the execution is just not there.  The characters are superficially developed and the writing just isn't that eloquent, like it's been dumbed down.  You don't have to dumb down YA fiction: The Hunger Games series, Coraline and The Graveyard Book, the Flora Segunda books, the Chaos Walking series, etc., etc., are all wonderful YA books with sophisticated writing.  But maybe it just takes Westerfeld a little while to hit his stride - maybe the next books are better, which is why I don't know what to do about this series.  I didn't love Uglies but I'm intrigued to see what happens to Tally next.

Recap: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles S2E22 "Born to Run"

Sarah sits in an interrogation chamber, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and a stubborn expression.  A smug, slick FBI agent does his best to threaten her with Miles Dyson's murder, the bank vault explosion, the fire-fight at Weaver's house and Savannah's kidnapping. He tries to get her to give something up about John but Sarah is resolute: "John is dead."  The FBI guy tells her to think about it.

Hiding out at a motel, John is nervous, pacing.  Cameron tells her that they are safe.  She also tells him that she won't let him try to break Sarah out.  What he wants right now, though, is a computer to research shielded nuclear power sources - "Like mine?" asks Cameron - to see if being around them all the time might have given his mom cancer.  Meanwhile, the T-888 is alive and well and patching itself up.  And over at John Henry's lab, Mr. Murch is playing D&D with the A.I.  Weaver interrupts them and asks Murch how long it would take to disassemble the lab in case John Henry gets attacked again.  Murch thinks that would be a bad idea: any changes to the current hardware and software would change John Henry - he exists only in this exact set-up.

Ellison goes to visit Sarah, swearing to her that the cops followed him to the theater, that he wasn't in on it.  Sarah is still a little cranky about it all, understandably so.  He encourages her to tell the FBI the truth, the actual truth about the rise of the machines.  She reminds him that the last time she tried that she ended up in a psych ward.  She asks him where Savannah is and he tells her she's back with her mother.  "She's not safe," mutters Sarah.  Then she shouts "She's not safe!" directly into the CCTV cameras where the FBI guy is watching.  Also watching: John Henry, who has tapped into the feeds.

Sarah has asked to see a priest.  A specific priest, in fact - the one in whose church the Connors took refuge when Cameron was glitching in S1.  The priest is not sure why Sarah wanted to see him again.  She asks him if he believes in the devil, the actual devil.  She says that she believes that someone or something wants this world to burn.  He tells her that he has desperately been trying to understand what happened that day in the church.  Sarah says she'll explain it to him, and then she'll ask him to do something for her.

When Ellison returns to John Henry's lab, he is displeased to find the A.I. and Weaver watching Sarah on the CCTV feed.  Weaver tells him that she wants to meet John Connor since (1) he was at her house when Savannah was attacked, (2) his mother thinks he's a messiah and (3) he and his "cyber-companion" are somehow connected to John Henry.  Ellison protests that he doesn't know how to reach John.  "Well, I do," smirks Weaver.

The T-888 goes to a gun store and buys more guns.

Back at the motel, John asks Cameron how much weight Sarah has lost.  "She was healthy before you showed up," he complains.  Cameron says that her sensors would tell her if her core was leaking.  "But things do go wrong with you, don't they?" John points out.  They are interrupted by a phone call: it's the Mexican priest.  Sometime later, a dark-haired girl picks up a package from the priest's confessional.  When she walks out of the church, Ellison follows her.  She isn't Cameron because they're being sneaky, not showing her face.  Then there is a knock on the motel door.  When Cameron opens it, it's the silent, dark-haired Latina bad-ass from S1.  She has brought passports for John and Cameron.  She has also brought a message on Sarah's behalf: "Leave this place, do not think of her, do not come for her, leave."  And Cameron is to make sure John does.  When she gets up to go, she tells John, "We lose everybody we love." Cameron pipes up, "Hasta luego!"

After the girl has gone, Cameron checks out the window, remarking, "That's interesting."  Then she goes out and drags Ellison back inside.  He tells them that Weaver wants to meet them, that Sarah was going to meet with her.  He says that Weaver has a question for Cameron: "'Will you join us?' Do you know what that means?"  Cameron is all, no, please leave, Mr. Ellison, and I won't ask you again.  When Ellison has gone, John looks closely at his terminator and asks if Ellison upset her.  Cameron: "You said it yourself, John, I'm just a machine."

That night, FBI guy tries a different tack with Sarah: "I believe you.  I believe in time travel and killer robots and the end of the world ... I've had 38 phone calls from people who've met John Baum and Sarah Baum ... I want to help you and your son - help me do that."  Sarah: "My son is dead."  Well, it was worth a shot, I guess.

The T-888 breaks into the garage under Weaver's building and shoots the security guard.  Then, when Weaver herself has appeared to investigate, it tries shooting her.  It's puzzled when that doesn't work.  Weaver spikes the terminator and electrocutes it, and then brings its chip to John Henry.  Unfortunately, the chip is coated with a compound that renders it useless once extracted.  When Ellison then shows up to work, Weaver tells him that she is disappointed in the Connors' response to her overture.

John wakes up with a start because Cameron is sitting there, staring at him.  She tells him that he needs to understand how her hardware and software work.  She was designed to kill humans and even though she's been reprogrammed, deep down she still wants to.  "I need to show you something," she says, taking off her shirt, then her bra.  She lies down on the bed, on her back, instructing a bemused John to climb on top of her.  She pulls out a knife and tells him where to slice in, because if she's damaged, they should know about it.  The camera angle is close up, focused on their faces, John's hands and Cameron's body out of the shot, making this all look like sex.  John reaches inside.  "What does it feel like?" Cameron asks him.  "It's cold," he replies, shakily, "That's good, right?"  Cameron: "That's good.  It's time to go."

The Mexican priest gets a phone call.  The voice on the other end sounds like Cameron.  The priest then goes back to see Sarah with a message: "She's coming."  Out in the prison, Cameron strides through the hallways, shotgun in hand.  Officers fire on her, shredding her clothes and her face, but she moves on, unstoppable.  John Henry watches from his lab and, unbidden, opens the locks.  All the locks: all the prisoners, male and female, burst free.  By the time Cameron finds Sarah, she (Cameron) looks like hell.  They get out and jump in the car John is driving.  Sarah snaps, "I sent you a message." John: "Bad John Connor - so ground me."  Sarah wants to know how bad off Cameron is because it's time to go see Catherine Weaver.

Hilariously, Sarah and John cool their heels in the lobby for a while.  This gives John the chance to ask his mom if she's sick.  Ellison arrives before she can answer.  As they ride the elevator up to Weaver's offices, Cameron batters her way into John Henry's lab.  They look consideringly at each other.  John Henry asks, "Will you join us?"  Cameron pulls out her knife and closes the door.

Weaver takes over the meeting immediately: We have a common enemy against whom we cannot fight via conventional means.  She means Skynet.  Ellison breaks in with a WTF as an drone comes smashing its way in through the window behind Weaver.  She snaps, "Get down!" and morphs into a shiny metal shield, protecting the three humans from incineration.  "Run!" she growls, and they do.  She catches up with them in the stairway and tells them to go to the lab.  Sarah: "They're trying to kill my son."  Weaver: "No, they're trying to kill mine.  Your son may save the world but he can't do it without my son."

Down in the lab, John Henry is gone and Cameron's chassis is there, defunct, chip removed.  John is frantic, saying he's got to get her back.  Weaver checks the remaining computers and flips a few switches.  When John demands to know where John Henry is, she smiles and says, "Not where, but when."  John and Sarah gape as they see the Turk computer in the tangle of hardware.  Weaver looks at Ellison, "Are you coming, Mr. Ellison? To fetch John Henry?" Ellison stutters no, and she shrugs, "Then would you pick Savannah up after gymnastics then?"  The blue sparking time travel bubble begins to grow around Weaver and John and Cameron's body.  Sarah backs away from it, saying she can't go.  John pleads with her to come with him - I love you - but she won't do it.  "I'll stop it," she promises, and the lights flash and John and Weaver are gone.

They reappear in the future, in the tunnels, John naked and Weaver clad in clothes of her own devising.  John finds a coat and puts it on, and they start to wander the tunnels.  When a patrol finds them, Weaver disappears and the soldiers question John grimly.  After a couple tense moments, John is thrilled and overjoyed to see Derek, who of course doesn't know him - nobody yet knows the name "John Connor" as this is where that all begins.  To make this reunion even sweeter, Derek's brother, Kyle, John's father, walks up and it's his coat that John has appropriated.  And then, finally, walking up behind Kyle is Cameron, pretty and smiling - and I think she's still human at this point.  John's eyes go soft and he's speechless when he sees her.

And back behind them in the tunnel, as the time travel flash echoes and reverberates, Sarah's voice: "I love you too."

Thus endeth Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  It finished strong, after I was about to lose hope in the Riley era, and I actually wouldn't have minded to see where the story would have gone from there.  Guess we'll never know.

Previously on T:TSCC

Recap: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles S2E21 "Adam Raised a Cain"

Sarah stands at the edge of a potters' field, looking out over the unnamed graves from the year 1984.  Derek joins her and she admits that she doesn't know which grave is Kyle's.  He tries to chide her for ditching him to go to Charlie's but she retorts that she really just doesn't trust him much right now, what with all the Jessie-secrets he's been keeping.  John walks up, rejoining them after the escape from the lighthouse.  He shows them a phone he found on the dead bad guy: there's a picture of Savannah on it.  John remembers her from the shrink's office - she must be important somehow.

Savannah, meanwhile, is at school and gets in trouble for chatting on the computer with John Henry during class. The teacher calls Weaver in to express her worry that Savannah may be being stalked by a predator.  Weaver promises to talk to her daughter.  She does so out at recess, asking Savannah why she was chatting with John Henry.  The little girl was teaching him a song that her daddy used to sing with her.  Weaver says that maybe she could sing it with her instead.  Savannah rolls her eyes: "You can't sing!"  Which is funny because of the whole Shirley Manson thing.  Weaver tells Savannah that she shouldn't chat with John Henry during class, plus she shouldn't tell anyone about John Henry either.

Blah blah blah - Ellison and John Henry talk at the lab.  Boring, except for the part where John Henry wants to figure out what the proto-Skynet A.I. is up to.

After school, Savannah is at home with her nanny.  John Henry calls her while she's doing her homework; she puts him on a headset so she can talk and work on math problems at the same time.  In the background, a yellow delivery van pulls up out front.  John Henry is watching on the security monitors as the delivery guy, a T-888, goes to the front door and shoots the nanny in the head.  As the T-888 stalks through the house, John Henry tells Savannah how to hide.  When the machine moves to another part of the house, John Henry sends Savannah down to the garage, making a point to avoid the dead nanny in the foyer.  Unfortunately, when Savannah gets to the garage, the headset is out of range of the phone she left in the living room and she can't hear her friend anymore.

The T-888 comes down the stairs to the garage.  Savannah hears him and runs around behind the car - right into John's arms.  Sarah and Cameron come up behind the T-888.  Cameron engages it while John, Sarah and the little girl run for it.  They make it outside, but Derek is still in the house, searching.  He rounds a corner and comes right up against the T-888, which promptly shoots him in the face.  Damn.  That was abrupt.  Cameron fights the T-888 again and throws it off the deck into a ravine.  The Connors go back through the house and find poor Derek's body.  John is in shock; Sarah has the presence of mind to take Derek's phone out of his pocket.  She tells her crew to keep moving, as they can hear the security company's approaching sirens.

Back at Weaver's office, a detective tells Weaver and Ellison that Savannah has been taken, the whole security team is dead and they found an unidentified dead body in the living room (Derek).  The detective questions Ellison pretty closely and says they should talk to Savannah's friends.  So after the police leave, Ellison goes downstairs to talk with John Henry, who asks him why he stopped looking for Sarah Connor - who is right up there on the security footage, clearly not dead.  Ellison confuses the A.I. by asking him to keep all this a secret from Weaver, saying that their best chance to get Savannah back is for Ellison to handle it himself.

The Connor gang goes to ground in an old warehouse.  Sarah gets a call from Ellison - John Henry procured her phone number for him - who asks if Savannah is safe.  He tells her that she's on the security tapes but at this point he's the only one who's seen them.  Sarah agrees to meet with him.  At their meeting, she tells him that it isn't safe for anyone, Savannah, Weaver, him - Derek's dead, Charlie's dead.  She's keeping the little girl safe and wants to meet with Weaver.  Ellison doesn't like that idea but finally agrees to try to set something up.  Sarah reminds him that she told her to stay out of this.  Ellison: I tried - everywhere I turn, there you are.

John, rallying from his grief over Derek, talks with Savannah who remembers him from Dr. Sherman's office. As they talk, she tells him about John Henry, her friend who lives in the basement of her mommy's office and has a cord in the back of his head.  John: Do other people talk to John Henry?  Savannah: Mr. Ellison does because he works for my mommy and is teaching John Henry stuff.  John, hoarsely: What kind of stuff?

Weaver is annoyed when John Henry says he can't access the security footage from the attack on her home. When Ellison gets back, he tells her that Sarah wants to meet with her.  Weaver is all, I have to stay her to protect John Henry.  Ellison is outraged: JOHN HENRY?!!?  Weaver says that Savannah's survival, Ellison's survival, may someday depend on John Henry's survival, and that's why she's so focused on the A.I.  She agrees to meet with Sarah.  Down in the building lobby, the detective corners Ellison and starts insinuating that he's involved in Savannah's kidnapping: they've identified Derek, you see, and know that he used to be Ellison's case.

When Sarah and Cameron get back to the garage, John tells them about John Henry.  Sarah's like, I destroyed that chip.  Cameron: You destroyed A chip.  John doesn't think it's Cromartie, but probably something worse like Skynet.  Cameron remarks that she should have killed Ellison.  Sarah, seeing Savannah listening to them, says strongly that no one is getting killed.  Ellison calls Sarah and tells her that Weaver will meet with her but she's got to hand over the girl first.

Weaver goes to the basement lab and scolds John Henry for lying to her about the security footage at Ellison's behest.  He reminds her that he's lying to Ellison about her being a Terminator.  Weaver's like, well, yes, you could tell Mr. Ellison about that ... but it wouldn't be very healthy for Mr. Ellison.  Back at the warehouse, John apologizes to Cameron for ditching.  Cameron replies that Sarah ditched them because she was intending on ditching John with Charlie.  John: WTF?  Cameron: She found that lump in her breast (John: it was a transmitter) and she's lost a bunch of weight recently.  John's expression is all, fabulous, I just lost my uncle and now my mom has cancer.

The Connor gang goes to a movie theater to hand Savannah over.  Ellison comes in, tells Sarah that he'll be in touch to arrange the meeting.  Sarah leaves the darkened theater ahead of John and Cameron.  As she goes outside, she finds dozens of cops waiting for her, guns drawn.  To create a diversion and let John get away, she fights with some cops and gets a beating for her trouble.  John and Cameron slip out the back, but not before Cameron has to pull a murderous John off Ellison, who bewilderedly swears that he didn't know about the cops.  John doesn't believe him.  Outside, as Sarah is manhandled into the police car, the T-888 watches from the gathering crowd.

We end with a musical montage, as John Henry and Savannah sit in his lab, singing the song that she taught him:  Savannah is reunited with her "mother;" Sarah is marched into police HQ in front of television cameras; John and Cameron watch it all on the evening news, John gritting his teeth; Derek's ashes are buried under a 2009 marker in the potters' field.  R.I.P., Derek.  You were very brave but not nearly shirtless enough.

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

Since I'm falling down on the recapping job, go read Feed

I thought I'd have finished T:TSCC by now, but then we went camping last weekend and this evening just got away from me with the three loads of laundry to get the old campfire smoke smell out of all our fleece and wool socks (temperature in the mountains upon waking was 36 F - brrrrr!).  So there's a slim chance I'll finish it up for you this week, and a slightly less slim chance that I'll get one episode up at least.  But in the meantime, whilst camping I plowed through the second book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, Deadline, and just started the last book, Blackout, today at lunch.  Seriously, go read these zombie novels.  I love them.  They're really, really good.  I mean, it helps if you fancy horror at all, of course.