Because John wasn't in the house. If John were in the house, he would have gone in and killed John. He needed a way to get in contact with John and whatever code (day/month at beginning of call) they used to signal that the call was legit.

As for point two, I was just thinking about editing my post because I didn't clearly make the point.

I know he had to wait for the call in order to find out John's whereabouts and/or setup a meeting, but after that, why not have a bomb in the house instead of the cell tower? One bomb in the house would probably be good, but he could even have a micro bomb in the cell tower (to disable it) as well in case Sarah or someone survived the house blast and had time to call John again and warn him.

I guess my thought about being concealed in the house doesn't work so well given that they would have heard him make the call to John, but replace it with: after the call is made he sets off the bomb then runs into the house to kill any survivors.

He is smart enough to setup a somewhat elaborate trap, he should be smart enough to play the percentages and realize that he has plenty of time to attempt to kill Sarah and the Uncle and still meet John. His overall chance of success increases if he can kill John's protectors.

Thinking about it more, I guess there is a chance that in a gun battle he is disfigured and might create a scene at the pier, but at the very least he should have setoff a bomb in the house to at least take the chance he kills someone. The falling cell tower obviously wasn't too effective.

oh yeah, and their code bugs me. They need some sort of progressive code so that if one call is intercepted they aren't boned. Not really liking the chances of the human race surviving with these people as our best hope, heh

Also, if this is the case, why not just disable the cell tower (so they can't call John to warn him) instead of having it crash into the house? Though a crappy 'trap', it obviously did kill someone. If Cromartie thinks Sarah is worth more alive then dead, then why take the chance of killing her?

It wasn't a good episode but not as bad as the hostage one imo. I thought they somehow engineered the absence of two workers (thought there was a reference to this) then were able to get jobs as low level janitors. If you notice, the ID cards appear to be optical. Cameron scans them as they are walking around, then there is a scene back home where she makes copies, creating a bar code with inhuman precision using a pen. Thats how they got access to the restricted areas.

As for the scrubdown, I thought that was the doing of the guy she pissed off by following. I thought it was his way of telling her to **** off. Evil management reminiscent of silkwood imo.

Who knows about the terminator they killed, perhaps some new model. The fight was terrible I agree.