Unable to sleep for two weeks, Sarah checks herself into a
sleep clinic to find out what is wrong.
The title of this episode is borrowed from a line in
Shakespeare's play Hamlet. It is also the title of a
1974 book by Dr. William C. Dement, a pioneering American sleep
researcher.
Didja Notice?
At 1:09 on the Blu-ray, Sarah drives past a bus bench with a
Coca-Cola ad on it. She crosses Ivar Avenue at about
this time. From the building designs seen here, she appears
to be
driving down Hollywood Boulevard, crossing Ivar Avenue in Los
Angeles.
At 1:12 on the Blu-ray, Sarah drives past Milano Jewelry and
Abe's Imports. There are a few names similar to "Milano
Jewelry" in the greater L.A. area. Abe's Imports does not
seem to exist now, but was probably a real business at the
time.
In Sarah's narrative monologue at the beginning of the
episode, she describes "dark spirits of the shadowlands" who
may visit us at the witching hour, midnight, mentioning the
incubus and succubus and the old hag. An
incubus and succubus, respectively, are the folkloric male
and female forms of demons that fall upon men and women
while they sleep at night for purposes of illicit sexual
intercourse. The "old hag" is a type of succubus who is old
and ugly (other succubi are said to be seductively
beautiful). Sarah goes on to say how these visitors "lay on
us, press on us, suffocate us, take from us what is most
precious. Our lives, our love, our sanity. Our sleep." She
is specifically referring to her own problem with being
unable to sleep in recent weeks. Modern science generally
considers reports of these kinds of "visitations" as
examples of sleep paralysis, occurring when a person is just
falling asleep or awakening and are aware of their
surroundings but cannot move their bodies and may be in a
semi-dream state where they also hallucinate things that are
not there.
At 1:41 on the Blu-ray, Sarah is seen turning off of
Jefferson onto another street. This may indicate she was on
Jefferson Boulevard in
Culver
City at this time.
At 1:50 on the Blu-ray, Sarah is driving a 2007
Chevrolet Suburban with CA license plate
3Q49953, even though that plate was previously seen on a
Jeep Cherokee in "Samson and Delilah"!
The same plate later turns up on Derek's Dodge Ram in
"Today is the Day" Part 1 and "To the Lighthouse"!
Sarah investigates the Western Iron & Metal Trading Company
for connections to the former drone factory in
Charm Acres. Western Iron & Metal
is, of course, a fictitious business.
Sarah pulls out her
Glock 17
pistol when she hears something during her attempt to break
into
Western Iron & Metal.
John remarks that his mother has not slept in two weeks.
This episode reveals that Ed Winston survived being shot by
Sarah in
"Earthlings Welcome Here".
She shoots him again here, at the end of the episode, killing him this time.
The van Winston holds Sarah captive in appears to be a
Dodge
Ram Promaster cargo van.
Ed Winston asks if Sarah was talking to her boyfriend on the
phone and whether they are a "Bonnie and Clyde" type
operation.
"Bonnie and Clyde" refers to Bonnie Parker (1910-1934) and
Clyde Barrow (1909-1934), an infamous girlfriend-boyfriend
couple who (along with a larger gang) robbed stores, gas
stations, and banks during the Great Depression.
Later, after finding out about Sarah's son, Winston says
she's not Bonnie, she's Ma Barker.
Ma Barker (real name Kate Barker, 1873-1935) was the mother
of four sons who were a crime family, involved in various
degrees of criminal activity from 1900-1939.
Sarah tells Winston she quit smoking years ago. This
is the first indication that she ever was a smoker.
Nurse Hobson's smock has a breast
patch indicating the sleep clinic Sarah is at is called the
Los Caminos Sleep Clinic. This appears to be fictitious.
Los Caminos is Spanish for "the roads"; possibly it
is meant to be the name of a town the clinic is in, though
there is no such town in Southern California.
Nurse Hobson suggests Diazepam for Sarah's sleep problem,
but Sarah responds she doesn't like drugs.
Diazepam (also known as Valium), is a drug that generally
produces a calming effect.
Hector makes dream catchers for the patients at the sleep
clinic.
A dream catcher is a small, webbed, willow-wood hoop
decorated with feathers and other sacred items, believed by
a number of Native American peoples to trap bad dreams and
allow only the good ones to pass through to the owner.
Dana tells Sarah that Nurse
Ratched gave her some sleeping pills.
Nurse Ratched is the cold, tyrannical head nurse at the
psychiatric hospital in which the 1962 novel and 1975 film
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is set. The role
was made famous by Louise Fletcher's Academy Award winning
portrayal in the film.
Dana asks Sarah if her dreams have to do with drowning,
being chased, or her teeth falling out. These are all
relatively common dream scenarios that psychologists have
applied various interpretations to. Dana's own declared
recurring dream of burning alive is also known.
Sarah responds to Dana that if you die in your dreams, you
die in real life. This is a suggestion about dreaming that
some believe is true, but how could anyone know? If a person
died in their sleep as the result of doing so in a dream,
they can't report on it! Presumably, there have been
individuals who reported dying in their dreams, but woke up
to speak of it, disproving this as a universal truism.
The pistol carried by Winston may be a Colt M1911A1.
Winston comments on all of Sarah's scars...bullet wounds,
stabbings, and an emergency C-section.
"C-section" is short for Caesarean section, delivering a
mother's baby through surgery rather than a vaginal birth.
Winston's comment implies that John was born through an
emergency C-section. The unanswered question is, what was
the emergency she was under at the time? In
"Allison from Palmdale",
Sarah claimed to Kacy Cotton that John was born while she
was hiking in the South American jungle.
Sarah tells Winston that his bosses at Kaliba will likely
kill him like they killed everyone else who worked at the
factory. Kaliba was said to be the company that owned Desert
Canyon Heat and Air in
"Earthlings Welcome Here".
Cameron looks at a Salvador Dalí painting reproduction at
the sleep center and remarks that Dali often explored the
subconscious and the dream world in his work.
Dalí (1904-1989) was a Spanish artist known particularly for
his surrealist paintings. I've not been able to identify the
painting seen here.

At 20:43 on the Blu-ray, the vending machine John makes a
purchase from contains Gourmet Apple Rings, Fruity Bears,
Fruity Fish, Sour Mini Worms candy, Cookie Dough Bites,
Worldwide Potato Chips, Henry's Chocolate Bars and John
purchases Let's Potato Chips. The Gourmet brand gummy
candies and
Cookie Dough Bites
are real world items.
Henry's Chocolate Bar and Let's Potato Chips are prop
packaging. Let's Potato Chips appeared previously in
"Brothers of Nablus" and "Self-Made Man".
The Henry's Chocolate Bar prop package is designed to look
like a Hershey bar wrapper.
During John's cell phone call with Sarah, Cameron suddenly
walks by wearing only bra and panties, distracting him. She
did something similar while John and Sarah were talking in
their house in "The Turk". Since
this scene,
at the end of the episode,
turns out to be part of Sarah's dream it's her memory of that incident resurfacing
(though Cameron is wearing different colors/styles in the
dream). The scene informs us of Sarah's continuing fear that
John is becoming too close to Cameron. In the series,
Cameron seems to be intentionally trying to be sexually
appealing to John in various ways throughout the series,
but it's not explained exactly why. Possibly she wants him
to have feelings for her so that he won't someday decide she
needs to be destroyed. Maybe older John in the future even
programmed/instructed her to do this with his younger self.
When John sneaks into the sleep clinic to rescue his mother,
she asks him if he can hack the electronic combination of a
locked door she's seen Nurse Hobson using. Ironically, he
answers, "In my sleep."
At 36:47 on the Blu-ray, the computer
file on Sarah at the sleep clinic gives her date of birth as
2/4/1974. Of course, this is the file of her alias as Sarah
Baum and the birthdate helps to cover up the 7-year time jump
the Connors made back in
"No One is Ever Safe".
Sarah Connor's date of birth is actually 1965, extrapolated
from her age as given in various sources concerning the
events of The Terminator
and Judgment Day.
The file also gives her height as 5'6", which is a
little more problematic considering Ellison's FBI file on
her in
"No One is Ever Safe"
states she is 5'4".
The paragraphs in Sarah's file on the right side of
the screen don't actually say anything about her...they are
a description of various types of insomnia largely lifted
from the
insomnia entry on Wikipedia!
John shoots Nurse Hobson (revealed to be a Terminator) with
a Glock 17.
At the end of the episode, all of the sleep clinic scenes
turn out to be Sarah's dream while she's asleep and being
held by Winston in the back of the cargo van.
Sarah sees a coyote at the beginning and end of the episode
and sees the coyote tattoo on Hector in her dream. In many
Native American mythologies, the coyote is a trickster
character who plays mischievous pranks on humans and may
appear in or manipulate their dreams.
Memorable Dialog
decaf only facility.mp3
a girl's gotta sin sometime.mp3
why you're not sleeping.mp3
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