This week on Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles in 2.1, "Automatic for the People," we get a little more back from the future which has Sarah and team facing nuclear power and cancer. Meanwhile John skips school and gains a perky friend.

We open with a hole in time. Once more the future extrudes into the present and a resistance fighter future-pods on through. It’s a curious moment because he’s fine when he arrives, but a moment later a chunk of flesh over his heart explodes missing. Since his dying warning is inordinately cryptic, I do wonder at the dying center at the heart of his message.

While the future bleeds, we cut to the crucifix at the church where the Connors took refuge last week. We pan from Christ to the mother of the savior, Sarah, to the young savior himself. John sleeps precariously on some chairs.

As he sleepily wakes, Sarah and Derek talk, almost as if he isn't there. Neither of Sarah or John have slept. She wonders, looking at Cameron, what you do about a guard dog that you cannot trust. Derek tells her that he spent the night talking to Christ about Cameron. Sarah responds that Cameron is outside of Christ's jurisdiction.

This plays at a very interesting difference in perspective here. Sarah, who has no faith, seems to be speaking from a perspective of God as savior. In that context, Cameron cannot be "saved" because she has no soul. While Derek, who prays as in 'there are no atheists in a foxhole,' seems to think Cameron is just as much in Christ's jurisdiction as the bullet you pray doesn't hit you.

John walks away from this conversation of faith as Derek says that it's only a matter of time before Cameron goes bad.

John talks with Cameron. On the outside, it seems like the machine is healing faster than the human. However, she tells him things have changed and that means he cannot be trusted. By risking his life to "save" her, he could upset people.

I wonder who these people are. She clarifies that she doesn't mean Sarah or Derek. This may be that Sarah and Derek are loyal to him. It may be that they see him as a child with a child's decision making. This is a far different perspective than of a follower to a savior. With people traveling back from the future and every choice John makes reshaping the man who he is in the future, I hope I get to see who "people" are.

Sarah sends John back to school, because it's normal. This decision also serves to reassert her identity as the parent. She makes orders. She takes care of business. John, who is not yet mature, must go off to be taught. This also means that the identities they used for their home address wasn't the same as their school enrollment address. Their lives have layers within layers.

John goes to school, but he clearly feels a thousand miles different from all the laughing open teenagers. In that moment, he seems old. He is more alone every moment as the hallway clears and he heads outside to brood.

A girl, Riley, approaches him outside. They have English together, but he is so in his own head space that he not only doesn't know her name, but the name of his teacher. He tries to brush Riley off. She asks him for twenty dollars, because she's hungry. In the face of someone asking for his help, he opens up and smiles.

Meanwhile Sarah and crew examine a new house as shown by a very pregnant woman, Kacy Corbin. At a look from Kacy, Sarah explains they are all banged up due to a car accident from teaching Cameron to drive. This is reiterated throughout the episode in increasingly funny ways. Sarah and Kacy discuss Kacy's pregnancy. Kacy feels like an orca with boobs. While I do realize that an orca is a type of whale, killer whales are so fast and sleek it's easy to equate Sarah as once having been that killer whale while pregnant with John.

As Cameron approaches, Kacy tells her to touch her stomach, and that it's weird to think that Cameron was inside her mother. Beyond the obvious humor of Cameron never having been inside any mother, this scene, like so many in the episode, is about the future. Kacy talks about her past self, young and attractive, her present orca-like self, and the future. She is going to have a child, which will bring one life and one death into the world. Kacy boggles at all the potential for that future life. Sarah, bogged down as she is by the knowledge of what the future holds, pulls Cameron's hand away from Kacy.

There's a knock on the door, but it is a different door. Agent Ellison visits Michelle Dixon. She found a gun in Charlie’s drawer. As Charlie returns home, Agent Ellison tells him that they need to talk.

Sarah sits in her new home and has one brief moment of peace before the future man crashes through a window. There goes the security deposit, but given the Connors that was probably lost when they put guns in the walls.

The resistance fighter, with that familiar bar code on his arm, tells them to stop Greenway at the nuclear power plant in Serrano. He then dies.

Derek says that he'll handle it. Sarah responds that she's seen how he handles things and she knows that if she sends him and the "landmine" in that she knows that someone will end up dead. Even having perhaps killed Sarkasian, Sarah is willing to consider the possibility that maybe someone isn't supposed to end up dead. Derek has foxhole faith. Sarah, while lacking it, still believes in the value of human life.

We flash to the future, where humans fight Mecha at the nuclear power plant. Back in the present, Sarah, Cameron and Derek discuss that in the future there was a huge battle and humans gained control over this plant, which provides the Resistance with most of its power.

Sarah and Cameron infiltrate the plant as temporary janitors, which means they get to endure a wonderfully cheesy "nuclear power" training video with a talking squirrel.  Given that two janitors called in with emergencies, I wonder what Cameron did to give them emergencies.

We cut from a grim HR woman telling our ladies that they don't want to be "crapped out" and get a scrub down, to Michelle Dixon being told that Sarah is alive and in L.A, and most importantly robots from the future robot apocalypse are running around in the present. Charlie rather significantly misses the point and tells Michelle that he doesn't love Sarah anymore. She slaps him because on this show womens' eyes are always firmly on the big apocalyptic picture.

Ellison tells Charlie that they are going to need to leave because it isn't safe. Charlie wonders if any place is safe. As with all characters in this show, once they gain an understanding of the future, all the wonderful possibilities narrow. Later in the episode, the Dixons pack up, because there may be no safe place, but anywhere is better than there. As they prepare to drive off, Ellison gives Charlie a worn Bible for the road. In the midst of all the angst, and remembering John's role, it's a reminder that there's always hope.

Back with the school skipping savior-ific crowd, John and Riley go to a roach coach. Riley normal-burbles at him and he depresses back at her, which she calls him on. He is unable to resist the pretty girl burble. He tells her that he's moving, but he hasn't seen it. He invites Riley to see it with him. This re-emphasizes John's sense of rootlessness. His home is unknown to him. He knows the future, but cannot understand the present.

At the plant, it turns out that Greenway is a control room supervisor who wants a minion to do some safety double checks, which quickly establishes him as not the sabotage type.

Sarah warmly introduces herself to Greenway. Obviously Sarah's done some very rapid research on him, because Sarah tells him that she comes from a town not far from one place where he was stationed while in the Navy.

Greenway is called away by the plant supervisor. She follows them. The manager berates Greenway, because the manager wants the plant to go live on schedule. Sarah follows them and watches them argue. The manger sees her, but she's gone by the time he gets there.

The industrial setting feels particularly apt for this episode. We've gone from the micro discussion of a wire going wrong in Cameron, a machine who can protect or kill, to the macro of a nuclear power plant, which can power a resistance or melt down a seaboard. We are again treated to the dichotomous possibilities of the unknown future, which hold the potential of life and death, and what lies between.

John arrives at his new home with Riley. He's never brought a girl home before. They go look for his room, which turns out to be a little boy's room with a tiny bed and toys. On character level, he is disgusted at what he sees as him mother's inability to see him as not a child. His difficulty is that he is in a between state. He is neither a child to sleep in that bed, nor an adult to understand that his mother may have had other concerns.

From not-childhood, we cut to a bar near the plant. Sarah walks up to Greenway and chats him up. She shows him a bar trick and, in a conversational gambit, she tells him that she waitressed while taking computer classes. If that is true, it places a very interesting context on that young woman of Terminator 1. Consider that as a young woman, fresh out of high school in the 1980s, she would have been taking classes in computers because that's where the future lay. Then that future cancered itself into her present and that carefree Sarah was lost.

In any case, as Sarah and Greenway discuss histories, it turns out that he is a cancer survivor. This throws Sarah for a brief loop. All her fears of a cancer sell-by date flood into her face.

Meanwhile, Cameron hustles plant guards at pool and scans their badges for later use. Derek breaks into Greenway's car to look for information, which is promptly vandalized while he's hiding in it.

They confer. Sarah tells them Greenway has enemies because plant employees are afraid that if he stops the plant from going live that the plant will be shut down, which if true means the Resistance would be without power and Skynet wins. However, if he's right in his safety concerns and the plant melts down, there would be no plant, and half a state, and Skynet wins. They can't know which future will lead to Skynet winning. There's even the dreadful possibility that both futures will lead to Skynet winning.

Sarah returns home and sees Riley there. Sarah talks to John alone, while Cameron is weird at Riley.

Sarah and John argue. John wants control of his own life, which in the present takes the form of going upstairs with Riley. He and Riley lie yin and yang on his tiny bed and stare at the ceiling. They discuss whether he ever thinks about the future, which obviously he does. Riley sees the future as a place of freedom, while for John the future is a place of endless obligation and burden. Riley notices that there are glow-in-the-dark stars in a sort of happy face on John's ceiling.

Outside, Sarah, shut out from John, walks away into the mission of the next day. She follows the plant manager into a restricted access red door/nuclear waste area with a security badge Cameron made. The manager spots her and has her go inside a nuclear waste room for some clean up. She only makes it a few moments before her fear for the cancerous future that she can't fight overwhelms her. As she emerges her, she is scanned and the manager tells her that she's "crapped up" and in a cold horrifying scene they wash her down with hoses and brushes. The manger then tells her that it was an equipment malfunction and she's fine, clearly trying to intimidate Sarah with the possible next time.

John and Riley wake up that same morning. I'm left to think that Riley has very permissive parents, or no parents. She then gives him a Lego robot that she made for him out of the child's toys on the floor. He's briefly freaked by the wee representation of his future, but accepts it. He tells her that he's not going to school, but gives her both his phone number and a code to let him know it's her. I love that in a time travel show, the code that they use is the date, day then month. It both grounds them in the moment and is a good method of randomizing the code.

At the plant, Greenway has clearly been replaced by a Terminator, which Derek confirms by finding Greenway hung in his house. His Terminator not only killed him, but did it in a way to imply that Greenway committed suicide if his body is found, which is clever-cold on so many levels.

Terminator-Greenway starts opening valves on the coolant lines. When he returns to the control room, he kills everyone there.

Sarah goes to Cameron, who is mopping the floor, and tells her that Greenway's been replaced. Cameron keeps mopping and when confronted says that she's thinking about what to do. As Sarah notices, this is very odd behavior, which seems to confirm that Cameron is now dealing with free will. She is neither controlled by a program to kill John, nor one to protect him. She controls herself with all the complexity that brings.

However, since in a lot of ways she's a child, Cameron follows Sarah's orders. Cameron confronts Greenway at the pipes and they fight.

Derek arrives as the plant begins meltdown. They looks through manuals. He wants them to flee, but Sarah insists they can fix this. I also can't help but think there is nowhere in the short term they could flee that is far enough away. Sarah's choice is the only one, keep trying.

Sarah sees Cameron fighting Greenway. She leaves the control room, very efficiently takes out a guard for his gun, and runs through the red door that terrified her earlier. She slides on the ground and slams against a drum of nuclear waste, but she gets up goes through the other side.

Derek tries to follow, but stops at the red door.

Cameron and T-Greenway continue to fight and in a moment of 'mom to the rescue,' Sarah shoots T-Greenway back into a electrical-vat-thing. He sizzles and convulses in a manner indicating he's deactivated, but I didn't really trust that.

Sarah had more immediate concerns as Cameron turns, and with Terminator music playing, walks over to Sarah, who doesn't drop her gun. Cameron tells her that she's ok and then goes to close the valve. Cameron hides the Terminator body in a Nuclear waste vat along with the security tapes of what has occurred. I do wonder that that the tapes were video tape cassettes, rather than digital, which hints at the analog nature of the current human controls at the plant.

That night, Cameron scans Sarah for radiation and declares her clean. Sarah asks Cameron if she's still going to die of cancer? If today is how it happens? Cameron doesn't know. Sarah further asks the machine if, like a time bomb, she'll go up one day. Cameron returns the question and asks if she will go up like a time bomb. This returns us again to the micro versus macro nature of the episode. Sarah's time bomb will kill herself. It is internal. Cells that go against their purpose and nature, and destroy the whole. Cameron is a time bomb that could kill everyone around her. She is also, to a way of thinking, a time bomb that could destroy Skynet. Cameron’s agenda will not necessarily be the same as Skynet’s.

Cameron goes inside and talks to John about Riley. She isn't sure he's safe, because girls are complicated. John tells Cameron, regarding what she told him earlier about trust, that he doesn't have to prove himself to anyone, which includes her. Cameron walks away as his phone rings. It's Riley, who is just testing the phone number and the code. This undercuts John's "prove" statement in a way I don't think the character understands. After all, he's going to have to prove himself to an entire Resistance. He proves himself now by answering a phone.

Sarah, brooding on mortality outside, notices a bloody hand print, which leads her to a wall where that dead Resistance fighter wrote a series of cryptic warnings.  She walks over to the message about Greenway. This is interesting in context with Catherine Wheeler's new Turk project, Babylon.

While it's a common phrase to refer to some sort of sign about the end as, "Writing on the wall," it's important to remember here that the phrase derives from the Bible, book of Daniel, where a message of doom on a wall spelled the end of Babylon. Here it's less clear if these messages will succeed in destroying Babylon.

Later, Sarah, with her musical refrain playing, showers under a rain shower head and attempts to wash away her fears of the future.

We end at the power plant, where a man talks at a news conference. We are told that due to this tragedy, Automite Systems will install a machine in control rooms at multiple nuclear facilities to prevent "human" error and prevent a major disaster. Afterwards, the man walks into his car and morphs into Catherine Wheeler. It seems Skynet has been studying it's strategy and has planned for a way in which all choices lead to Skynet winning. For now, computers will control the nuclear power plant.

However, there's still the writing on the wall, which will power the rest of the season.