Plot
Sarah and John are foggy from "time lag," after their jump across time to 2007. John has been stuck in the house for three days, and is getting anxious. Sarah tells him he can go out when their new identities are ready. Sarah and Cameron decide to track down Sarah's old friend Enrique, a paramilitary fighter and the "best paper man in the business." Cameron casually drops the news that John sent other resistance fighters at the same time as Cameron, infuriating Sarah. Before they can visit Enrique, they go to the meeting point and find the bodies of all four resistance fighters. Or so they think. One of the bodies turns out to be a Terminator Playing Possum (named later in the series as Vick) which attacks Cameron, and eventually escapes. As they head home, Cameron reveals to Sarah that she died in 2005 from cancer.
While Sarah and Cameron visit Enrique, who tells them to contact his nephew Carlos, John sneaks out and does an Internet search for old names. He then goes to Charley Dixon's home, but Charley arrives and confronts him: John makes a hasty exit, unable to tell Charley anything about what happened.
Carlos agrees to provide the fake IDs for everyone, but Sarah is shocked at the price. Carlos explains that 9/11 increased the risk of providing fake ID, and then has to explain the 9/11 terror attack to a horrified Sarah (who obviously missed it due to her time jump).
John, Cameron, and Sarah return to the safe house, where they find a stash of money, guns, and diamonds, narrowly avoiding a further encounter with the Terminator that killed the rebels.
Sarah and Cameron return to Carlos's house to buy the fake IDs, but Carlos, not realising that Sarah can speak Spanish, jokes with a buddy about his uncle being an informer. Sarah and Cameron don't initially respond, but after they've bought the IDs go back to Enrique's house and interrogate him. Sarah is disposed to believe Enrique's denials, but Cameron coldbloodedy shoots him in the back, which somewhat disturbs Sarah. We then see Agent Ellison, too late, receiving a voicemail message in which Enrique contacted him offering unstated interesting information, presumably on Sarah.
Meanwhile, it's revealed that Cromartie's severed head was caught in the time-travel field and carried with the trio to 2007. A road cleaner finds the metal head by the roadside where the Connors arrived, and brings it home. The head activates, and in a junkyard some distance away, the body activates and kills a security guard. Wearing the security guard's head as a disguise, the body finds and kills the road cleaner, reclaiming his metal head. Still in disguise, the now complete but still fleshless Cromartie wanders out into Los Angeles.
Tropes
- Back for the Dead: Enrique briefly appeared in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but doesn't survive the episode.
- Back from the Dead: Carlos points to Sarah that she's this, and that makes getting ID for her more costly.
- Bilingual Bonus: An in-universe example. While Carlos and his friend whisper to each other in Spanish, they don't seem to care much that Sarah knows the language quite well. This is how she finds out Enrique's a rat.
- Blatant Lies: Lots of them, but mainly most of what Enrique says to Sarah and Sarah's story to the cop about why she and Cameron are in gang territory. Also Charley's story of how he got a bruise on his arm.
- Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Played with. When they come back from the safe house, John gives Cameron one of the diamonds. It then cuts to Camerson asking Sarah why diamonds are a girl's best friend.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: The guard dog at the junkyard and the pitbulls at Carlos' house react to Cameron. Sarah tries to explain it away by claiming Cameron is a "cat person".
- Face–Heel Turn: "El Finito." We don't discover this until the end, after Enrique is already dead.
- Mr. Exposition: The cop, who explains to Cameron (and the audience) the importance of a pretty young girl hanging around in front of a car in gang territory.
- Playing Possum: The Terminator amongst the resistance fighters bodies.
- Post-9/11 Terrorism Movie: The gangsters explain what 9/11 is, to an unprepared and horrified Sarah.
- Shout-Out:
- To The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Sarah and Cameron discuss Sarah's calling her "Tin Man." Sarah read the books to John in Spanish when he was little, and it was one of his favourites. This sets up Oz as a recurring motif throughout the series. Their fake last name is Baum and John's back story is they're from Kansas.
- The idea of an evil headless robot using a severed human head to pass previously appeared in the Blake's 7 episode "Headhunter".
- Spared By Adaptation: Zigzagged. An unusual case with Enrique. A deleted scene storyboarded but never shot for T2 shows the T-1000 arriving at Enrique's camp after Sarah, killing Enrique. In this iteration, he lives...only to rat on Sarah and get shot for his troubles.
