With Riley’s body having been
discovered by the police, will Cameron be able to convince the
Connors of her innocence. Meanwhile Jessie finds her mind wandering
back to the past as the reasons for her distrust of John Connor begin
to come to light. Away from John Connor, at Zeira Corporation, John
Henry has decided to play a game with John Ellison.
So the discovery of Riley’s death
understandably upsets John. Cameron professes her innocence and John
is unsure if he can believe her or not. Sarah seems sure that Cameron
is guilty, given Cameron's history of lying to John. Jessie attempts to use
the death to her advantage, trying to convince Derek to join her
cause in turning John against the machine. Derek however seems
suspicious of how Jessie is reacting to the death.
So the death of Riley has reinvigorated
a lot of storylines on the show. The ill feelings between Sarah and
John have resurfaced via their dispute over Cameron. Jessie’s story
has again gained momentum as she has found herself in the difficult
position of attempting to frame someone for a crime she committed.
Derek meanwhile finds himself being stuck between his new life with
the Connors and his old life with Jessie.
In terms of Jessie’s past with Derek
we get another flashback to her past in the resistance. We see her
life aboard the USS Jimmy Carter. We have previously had a
description of her life on the sub and the reprogrammed T-888 who
pilots it. Being the first part of a two parter we spend this
flashback setting up why Jessie distrusts both John Connor and
reprogrammed machines so much.
We discover that the original mission
of the submarine, to deliver supplies to Australia, was a cover
story. The mission of the submarine is in fact to travel deep into
machine territory to retrieve a package for John. The crew manage to
find the package but they have to take it from a group of
machines who were waiting to give it to them. The reveal that John
has been working with machines in the future is interesting and goes
a long way to establish why his command may have become so questioned
in the future.
Away from the Riley situation, John
Henry is causing problems for James Ellison. After Catherine refuses
to play hide and seek with her daughter, Savannah, Henry decides to
play with her himself. He manages to lure her down to the basement
and convinces her to play hide and seek with him.
When Weaver and Ellison confront Henry,
he says that they have to guess answers to his questions to receive
clues for where Savannah is located. Having answered Henry’s
question Savannah is located.
Ellison angrily explains to John Henry
that what he did was dangerous, that Savannah might have hurt herself
and it would have been Henry’s fault (In a nice Frankenstein homage). Ellison makes a very clear
point to explain to John Henry that choosing to lie could have
endangered someone. This is clearly established to focus John Henry
on the other thing he is covering up, the fact of Weaver being a
machine. It will be interesting to see how long this particular
secret stays between only Weaver and Henry.
We leave the episode with John
discovering skin under Riley’s fingernails in the morgue and with
Derek, Jessie and Sarah attempting to work out what to do with the
increasingly erratic Cameron.
‘Today is the Day’ has the problem
of being the first episode in a two parter but it manages to build up
the second part very nicely. it does this by building up the
character tension and not focussing too strongly on the overall
narrative. This two parter is focussed on the death of Riley and how
it effects John and those around him.
In seeing the fallout to this we get a
lot of nice character moments. For example we get a moment where
Cameron explains to Sarah how each of them are a threat to John,
because he cares about them. This has forced John to be a recluse in
the future; he has to be alone to be safe.
‘Today is the Day’ is hard to rate
entirely because my opinion of it may change once I have seen the
second part. As a standalone episode it is pretty strong however and
successfully makes me want to see what will happen next in the story.
We shall see if the second part manages to deliver on what the first
part built up.
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