The Tower Is Tall But The Fall Is Short - Recap

Sarah, John and Cameron have broken into the house of Dr. Boyd Sherman, a child psychologist and one of the names on the list written on the basement wall of their house. They are interrupted in their search by the owner and flee unseen, debating later whether he is a friend or foe of Skynet.

At ZeiraCorp, a professional photographer is taking publicity photographs of Catherine Weaver. When Catherine asks her daughter Savannah to join in the pictures, she refuses. Catherine politely insists, but Savannah, clearly terrified of this woman she knows is not her real mother, finally runs away, with a puddle of urine left behind where she was playing. Catherine asks the photographer's assistant for advice, and receives the name of a child psychologist in return.

At the offices of Dr. Sherman, Sarah, John and Cameron are now there posing as patients of the doctor, who also does family counseling. Sarah gently probes for information from the doctor, and discovers he has a military background. The doctor offers to take them on as patients, insisting he will need to also talk with them separately. John agrees to the first appointment, to Sarah's surprise. Cameron surreptitiously plants a listening device when the doctor is not watching.

Catherine takes a private elevator to one of her secure labs, leaving Agent Ellison standing in the lobby. The engineers give her a demonstration of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) software project, showing how it is not performing properly and giving unexpected answers to their queries, while taking more and more processing power to do so.

Savannah and Catherine meet with Dr. Sherman, the psychologist that Weaver's assistant recommended. Savannah is unresponsive with Catherine in the room, so she waits outside at the doctor's request. With Catherine gone, Savannah flips through some cards with different emotions printed on them, settling on “scared”, which she shows to the doctor. A look of concern passes over his face as he sees Catherine staring at them through the window.

At the Connor home, Derek returns from his run and surveillance of Dr. Sherman's office. He and Sarah agree they have nothing tangible and need to see his files. They are alarmed by a gunshot. They rush to John's room where he is shaken by having a handgun fire unexpectedly while he was cleaning it. He has a burn on his face and Sarah and Derek look at each other with concern about John's mental state.

Cameron is sitting on a bench outside of Dr. Sherman's office listening to his current session. He happens to be talking with Savannah again, and she confides that she wants her old mommy back. Catherine is again watching intently through the window at the session. The doctor's assistant complements Catherine on Savannah's beauty, saying she looks just like her mother. Catherine agrees.

Outside, John passes by Cameron without a word on his way to his first session with the doctor. He arrives in the waiting room just after Savannah comes out and the doctor takes Catherine into his office, barely avoiding running into Catherine the Terminator. Dr. Sherman tells Catherine that he thinks Savannah is afraid she will lose her mother too, since she just experienced the loss of her father. In the waiting room, John shows Savannah how to tie her shoes, and has his back to the hallway as Catherine leaves hurriedly, calling for Savannah as she goes.

Derek is eating a hotdog in the park when he thinks he sees someone he knows. He starts after her when she takes off running. He chases after her into a hotel and catches her just as she is about to enter her room. She turns and greets him, then kisses him. Her name is Jesse and she has come back from the future. She tells him she is AWOL from the war, and needs a place to rest. She wants to be with him when everything ends.

Dr. Sherman notes that John checked all his exits before he sat down, something the doctor had seen in his sessions with veterans. He asks John if his dad was a veteran and John says not really, since his dad never came back from the war. Sherman then asks John about the burn on his cheek, the one John got from the misfiring handgun. John lies and says he got it while cooking pasta. John is asked what is role is in the family unit, suspecting that John is trying to fill in for his missing father. Sherman then tells John he can reveal anything, that whatever he says is confidential and that his office is a safe place. John glances at the listening device then tells Sherman that nowhere is safe.

Sarah shows up at the doctor's office where Cameron is waiting on John in the waiting area. She remarks that sixty percent of all suicides use a gun. Sarah insists the gun cleaning was an accident.

After John and Cameron's sessions, Dr. Sherman tells Sarah he would like to see them again. He thinks Cameron might have Asperger's syndrome, which is an autism disorder affecting social interaction. He is also concerned about John, his body language and other things that make him suspect he has known violence. Sarah is defensive and says he was not abused. The doctor backpedals and says he is not suggesting that, but that John needs to talk to someone.

Catherine is studying videos of the human Catherine and her late husband Lachlan that were taken when the real Catherine was pregnant with Savannah. She receives a call to come down to the lab because the AI program is non-responsive and keeps displaying seemingly random pictures and equations. When she returns to her office, she sees Savannah watching the videos. Catherine tries a reassuring caress of Savannah's arm, similar to a what she saw in the video and gets a reassuring smile from Savannah.

At home, Sarah declares their attempts to learn more about Dr. Sherman were a bust, and that he keeps his records encoded. John wants to return and push him some more, saying his name is on the wall for a reason. Sarah disagrees, saying they have no real knowledge about whether he is a friend of foe, plus no timetable about any possible threat to him. Cameron comes in saying maybe he is on the list because he helps John professionally. Sarah asks John if he needs help, and that he can always talk to her. John demurs, saying he is fine.

On a parked city bus, a female Terminator arrives through time. She approaches the just awakened bus driver and kills him, taking his clothes.

Derek talks to a disconsolate Sarah, telling her the story of a friend of his that committed suicide. Sarah insists that John is not suicidal. Derek agrees but says John has changed, and that he saw his mother kill a man, referring to Sarkissian.

Dr. Sherman's assistant enters her car on a dark night and finds the female Terminator inside. The Terminator kills her and takes her car.

At ZeiraCorp, Ellison is riding down the elevator with one of the AI project engineers. Ellison is asked to leave the elevator at the lobby so the engineer can continue down to the secure lab.

In Catherine's office, Dr. Sherman is asking why he was asked to come to ZeiraCorp. Catherine shows him the behavior of her AI project and asks for help figuring it out. Sherman says the AI program appears to be like a gifted child that is bored. Sherman chuckles when he recognizes the riddle the AI program is asking. Why is a math book so sad? The answer is because it has so many problems. Sherman thinks the AI program is remarkable in that it understands humor, saying some people never understand it. Catherine looks bewildered, not understanding the riddle.

Sarah listens to the surveillance tapes of John's session with Dr. Sherman. John is telling the doctor that he always feels fear, that it keeps him alive.

Derek returns to see Jesse, rekindling the passion they have between them. She insists she has a new life, then asks him to get her something to drink while she surreptitiously hides surveillance photos of John and Derek under her bed.

Ellison checks in with Catherine and she asks him how the robot hunt is going. She tells him to asks for any resources he needs. He asks what is going on in the secure lab and she tells him they are building something, but does not tell him what and dismisses him.

John returns to see Dr. Sherman, whose schedule seems awry because his assistant never showed up for work that morning. John removes the listening device and asks the doctor once again whether his office is a safe place. John tells him his mother does not want him coming there. He then starts telling the doctor about when Sarkissian broke into their home and took he and Sarah captive, clearly troubled and needing to get the story off his chest. He falters however, and does not tell the whole story about his involvement in the death of Sarkissian.

When the audio feed is cutoff, Cameron, who has been listening outside, enters the doctor's building at the same time the female Terminator enters, the two Terminators oblivious to one another until they both enter the same elevator and press the button for the same floor. When they both arrive at Dr. Sherman's office, they recognize each other as a threat and begin combat, ending up back in the elevator. When the elevator stops at another floor, they pause in their battle when a little boy and his parents enter. The two Terminators keep their bloodied faces turned away from the adults, but the boy just stares at them. At the next floor, the humans exit and the battle begins anew. Cameron finally overcomes the Terminator and disables it. She brings it back with her to the Connor home and shows the others. John thinks it was there to kill Sherman, but Sarah is still not convinced saying it could have been there to protect him. Cameron shows John the Terminator's chip, which self destructed when she removed it.

Savannah is finishing another session with Dr. Sherman. Catherine speaks in private with the doctor and tells him how impressed she is with his insight into her AI system problems. She offers him a consulting job with her company, but Sarah and John do not learn this since John removed the listening device.

Sarah returns to see Dr. Sherman, to his surprise. In a flashback Sarah remembers the events of Sarkissian's death, and we see that it was John who killed him, not Sarah.

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