Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.14 “The Good Wound” Recap

We not-so-subtly cut to Derek, over at Jesse’s, rapidly getting ready to leave. She asks him why and he quickly exposits that John’s girlfriend is in the hospital. Obviously, this is important to Jesse, but she remains calm and tries to press Derek for details. But Derek’s oblivious, going on about hospitals and questions and how that was bad for the family. As he’s leaving, Jesse asks, ‘And the girl? How’s the girl?’Derek, who probably didn’t even ask when John called, simply says ‘Alive.’

He arrives at the hospital to find John waiting and Cameron…somewhere not in this scene yet. Again, for something that’s supposed to be protecting John, she sure gets scarce a lot. John recaps the situation for Derek; and Derek, the cold-hearted tactician that he is, begins criticizing the decision to bring Riley to the hospital. Dude, John can’t keep kidnapping Paramedic ex-fiancées of his mother’s every time someone gets hurt (‘Dungeons and Dragons’1.6). He just can’t. And perhaps he knows it because a wee bit of John Connor, World Savior pops up and tells Derek he made the decision, so, ‘Nyah!’Thankfully the doctor and Cameron arrive before Derek can hit him upside the head, so John has a new focus. The doctor wants to contact Riley’s family so John can expositionally remind the audience that she’s in foster care. And since he never found out the sourse of that mysterious bruise, he thinks that maybe the foster family’s not the best to call. Regardless, the doctor says he has to put Riley on a suicide watch and call CPS. John can chill until then. Derek doesn’t look like ‘chill’is in his vocabulary, but he’s not leaving John’s side.

Outside General Hospital, Sarah’s considering her options and on the phone with Derek giving him yet ANOTHER chunk of exposition. (Of course with ratings like T:TSCC’s, I suppose it’s easy to assume no one saw the last episode.) Long/short, there’s a warehouse with coltan-based metal in it, the car she had is full of evidence, and there’s a dead body — all of which needs to disappear in a fire. For the record, she sounds awful and Derek can hear it, but when he asks her how bad it is she ignores the question. She doesn’t want to admit she’s hurt. That the immortal Sarah Connor is human after all.

Derek walks back to where John waits and fills him in on Sarah’s apparent lead to the Dots of Delusion. ‘Is it real this time?’John asks and Derek replies that the bullet in her leg would indicate so. Instantly worried, John makes like he’s going to rescue her himself, but Derek pulls him back. He wanted Riley in the hospital? He gets to own that decision, so, ‘Nyah.’He reassures John that Sarah will be fine and he leaves, the camera lingering on John’s face perma-set on ‘scowl’.

‘I know that look. He’ll push you and doubt you and make you want to kill him.’You might want to think that Kyle’s talking about John, but he’s not. He’s trying to get Sarah to trust Derek. And that’s a lot of what this episode is about, Sarah re-learning how to trust and how to let go and Derek’s a big part of that equation, whether she wants him to be or not. All musing aside, Kyle points out that John is all Derek has, John and Sarah. He’s lost, out of his time. Sarah won’t quite admit he’s right. She’s not that desperate yet. What she is in the mood for, is a doctor-napping and a carjacking. She’s in luck as a young reject from Gray’s Anatomy pulls up, and is promptly forced away at gunpoint.

…the title card! Da-da-dum-da-dum! Clank!