Today Is The Day, Parts one and two are an outstanding pair of episodes that not only bring a major storyline to an end, but does so with great suspense and compassion for its characters--including the "villain" of the piece, Jesse (very well-played by Stephanie Jacobsen). When part one begins, we see a reflective Jesse in her hotel room, after already having killed Reilly and placed her body in a large duffel bag. One would think that Jesse’s plan, to use Reilly to create a chasm between John Connor and Cameron, is over with the death of her pawn--but it’s still very much in play when Reilly’s body is discovered by police. And when Sarah finds out that Reilly had been shot execution-style, Cameron becomes the prime suspect. Sarah, as well as John, begins to suspect that Cameron simply can not be trusted, despite her continuous denials at having killed Reilly.

Yet just when you think things will go one way, and just when it looks like the writing might take a mawkish, soap opera-like turn, the neat little shadowy house of cards that Jesse built all soon comes tumbling down. And, surprisingly, it’s John who unravels Jesse’s Byzantine plot by making one last visit to Reilly in the morgue. The wounds on her hands, face and body show that she viciously fought her attacker, and had she been fighting Cameron, it never would have gotten to that point. Thomas Dekker is very good in the scenes where John steps up and begins acting like the legendary resistance leader whom people worship in the future. It’s ironic how he keeps asking advice from both Cameron and Reese about what the future John Connor would do, when in fact he is slowly becoming that man with each passing day.

Another outstanding quality of Today Is The Day, parts 1 & 2 are the flash back (flash-forward?) scenes in the future that show the events that lead up to why Jesse made the decision to go back in time and try to subvert John’s relationship with Cameron. Working as the second in command of a submarine in the service of the Resistance, things are going normal for Jesse until she realizes that the commander--a sympathetic terminator named Queeq who switched sides like Cameron--has quietly diverted the sub several hundred miles off of their normal route for a special mission deep in the heart of Metal territory. This mission tests the limits of Jesse, as well as the human crew, and pushes her to make a fateful decision. By showing her motivation, Jesse isn’t a typical cardboard villain, but a three dimensional human being whose story winds up being just as tragic as so many others in the post Judgment Day world.