Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

What does a trickster bring in the night?

This week Sarah’s gone mental on us, or, rather, she's gone a little more mental than usual. She hasn’t slept in weeks, she’s seeing coyotes everywhere, and now she’s in a sleep clinic – or is she? In other news, no wait, there is no “other news” this week, so sit back, pop your meds and get ready for Dream Analysis 101 with your professor, Sarah “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” Connor.

Previously: Sarah killed a man. At the time, Derek and John thought she was seeing things. Catherine killed a lot of people. Sarah went to the funerals and bonded with the woman she widowed. And last, but not least we jump back several episodes so that John can remind us that Sarah’s been sick and hasn’t been sleeping for awhile. Got it? Let’s jam, y’all.

One of the writers recently told a Fancast chat audience that he writes Sarah’s voice-overs at 3am after downing several cans of caffeine. I no longer think he was exaggerating, because as the story opens Sarah’s driving down a dark road (symbolic of difficult and scary choices) and we’re listening to this:

Midnight is the witching hour, if you believe that kind of thing and most people won’t admit it if they do. Midnight is the time when a door opens from our world into the next and we are visited by dark spirits of the Shadowlands. The incubus, the succubus, the old hag. Visitors are known by many names, but each story bears the same marks. The demons come after midnight and the first three hours of the new day when we are alone and vulnerable, deep asleep and helpless, when we cannot move. They lay on us, press on us, suffocate us and take from us what is most precious – our lives, our love, our sanity. Our sleep.
If you believe in that kind of thing.

And if you think that’s off the rails, just wait. Thankfully, Sarah's run out of time at this juncture as she's reached her destination. She is alone. Exiting the car, she decides that maybe now is a good time to tell someone where she is. After all, the last time she went of by herself she got shot, so what’s the worst that can happen this time, right? John answers and after the requisite beep-sign she gives him the short version. From the Charm Acres surveillance tapes, she discovered one Western Iron and Metal, a supplier to the facility that Catherine blew up. She tells him to start with his mad hacker skilz and find out who owns the place while she breaks in. John’s not amused, he thought she was tucked nicely into bed sleeping, but he does her bidding anyway. It’s the first of many examples this episode where John acts more like the adult than Sarah, and the role reversal is kinda fun to watch. Of course neither of them remembers that Brian Austin Green is still on the show, so calling for back-up never happens. Sheesh. Who's a gal gotta shoot in the leg to get the man some screentime?

Adding insult to injury, I note Sarah’s breaking and entering without gloves. AGAIN. SOME MORE. Apparently I’m not the only one irked at this as it sounds like someone’s throwing something off-screen. Much more interested in that than in picking locks, Sarah goes to investigate, gun in hand. There’s a lone coyote (symbolic of the trickster) standing by a dumpster. Sarah watches it, entranced, as a guy in a ski mask walks up behind and tasers her. She lies on the ground, twitching, and...

...Sarah wakes up with a start. She has electrodes attached to her head and is in a clinical setting of some sort. A concerned lab-coated nurse named Hobson tries to calm her down, saying she had another nightmare, but Sarah just wants out. Hobson says one night isn’t enough to prescribe a treatment for Sarah’s insomnia, and if she leaves now, it’s only going to get worse. Everyone needs to sleep. “Not everyone.” The nurse manages to make a point, and Sarah momentarily puts her escape plans on hold. After Hobson leaves to get Sarah some coffee, decaf of course, Sarah hears the sound of a lighter. She goes to the other side of the room to discover another resident, named Dana, tossing a cigarette and quickly hiding the zippo in her ample bosom. For the audience's edification she introduces herself as Sarah’s roommate, in for nightmares of her own probably stemming form one of a number of dizzying ailments she lists out in an impressive display of TMI. She’s also trying to quite smoking, or I should say trying as in sneaking smoke breaks wherever she can because dammit, they can’t take her last vice away, fer the love of Pete. Well, that and young men which beings us to....

“Hey, tiger,” she purrs in the general direction of John who’s just arrived for visiting hours. He looks very uncomfortable and he and Sarah make a hasty exit to meet Cameron down in the cafeteria. Going through the line Cameron’s filling a plate for John in a creepy display of techno-maternal concern and nutritional awareness. John jokes that the pancakes won’t be as good as hers. Sarah looks sad and disheartened that Cameron made pancakes for John. Cameron snidely says she added a teaspoon of vanilla to her recipe. “I don’t have a recipe.” You know, the one on the box, loser. Sarah looks sadder – she’s being replaced by a machine.

Outside, Cameron hovers a decent distance away like a good bodyguard as John asks Sarah if they’ve figured anything out yet, if they know why she’s not sleeping. “Besides the fact the world’s about to end?” Yes, Sarah, that. John notes she was sleeping fine before and when she says she’s needed at home, he shoots her down. She hasn’t slept in weeks, she fell down the stairs (falling-symbolic of anxiety or failure, down stairs-symbolic of setbacks), and she’s generally a mess. “You need to get better. I need you to get better.” And that’s the button, the one that always gets pushed with Sarah – John. Knowing he’s won that round, he gets up to go and Cameron follows. As Sarah sits, an orderly with a tattoo on the back of his neck clears the table in front of her. The tattoo? A coyote. The soundtrack gets scared.

Sarah’s asleep with more electrodes as we fade to a blurry image of the back of a van with a steel mesh separating the driver form the back. Bright light flashes through the windshield and eventually the van stops. The driver gets out and when the back door opens, it’s Dead Ed, the guy Sarah killed. She tells him that much and he adds, “And I killed you. One of us is gonna have to step it up.” He gets into the van and we cut to...

... title card! Da-da-dum-da-dum! Clank!