T:SCC 2.14 and BSG 4.5

Feb 15, 2009 17:49


The phrase “good wound” sounds familiar but I’m not sure from where. It feels Christian, recalling stigmata or mortifications of the flesh but the only google hit I could find was from Les Miserables (“O, the good wound, the kind hurt!”). St Teresa subjected herself to various mortifications as punishment for visions she had been convinced came from the devil. Other reports of Christian ascetic practices imply that self-harming was used to induce altered states of consciousness (including visions). Or there’s the simple medical interpretation, Sarah’s original wound had to be re-opened to remove the bullet and allow her to heal.

What was future John’s message? “You have to be strong or I will never exist?” Sarah’s identity has been to follow that mission, to keep John alive, to make him ready, for so long now she scarcely remembers the woman she used to be before the machines. This season began with her failing in her mission, she couldn’t save John in their fight with Sarkassian, he had to do it himself and the fissures in her old identity initiated by that failure have been widening ever since. She needs something else something more but to find it she’s had to go right back to her beginnings. Through Sarah the psychotic warrior of no fate but what we make, through waitress Sarah to when Sarah met Kyle.

I liked that the actor they had play Kyle Reese was so much more baby-faced than the guy in the movie. It makes sense that 16/17 years later she’d remember him that way, last night when we were young. And it fit that he was there to be the voice of the softer more human Sarah and I could read that as her own voice and I like my Sarah to be that self-aware. Also the “smelled like apple pie” line was bleakly funny in its terrible plausibility. But the best part of the whole Sarah plot was the relationship that formed between her and the doctor. The recognition and the shared experiences. Women endure and Lena Heady plays endurance like no other actress.

One of the things that made me love the show back in S1 was the brief graveside meeting between Sarah and Michelle Dyson. They’ve continued those one-off interactions between Sarah and other women with Kacey, with Lauren, with Alan/Elaine, with Felicia and the pattern of them is interesting. Sarah is a disruptive, almost a chaotic influence. She changes people’s lives just by being who she is. With Michelle that change was destructive in many ways but also survivable. In the aftermath they interact not as friends but as equals. Kacey she inspires to opt for single motherhood over the father Kacey doesn’t entirely trust and although it’s a non-conventional choice it does seem to be one Kacey is on the whole happier with. Lauren, the sister of another future saviour loses both parents in the wake of meeting Sarah but although that’s a tragedy does seem to emerge stronger at the end of it. Elaine under Sarah’s influence decides to face her past (and gets killed for it) while Felicia guns down her abusive partner. Again Sarah brings death in her wake and the reasons why she might think it better to avoid further contact are compelling but there are other reasons to see her influence as ultimately good for those she comes into contact with. It makes sense to me that although this episode ends with no great advances in plot terms it does mark a sea change in the way Sarah interacts with those around her. Not just with strangers but with Derek with whom a working relationship with another adult from she doesn’t need to constantly conceal is at least a possibility.

In other news John Henry is the good son bringing Mommy information while Riley gains faux-maternal approval from Jesse for being prepared to risk death simply to gain John’s attention. Meanwhile to balance all the emotional and relationship angst we learn that not only is Catherine Weaver a killer robot from the future but Shirley Manson must be one too. Or possibly an alien as there’s no human being on earth who could deliver that Bryan Adams line with a straight face. Manson’s acting inexperience has shown in the past with her spoken material but she’s always been able to carry the character through movement and rock star charisma. In past episodes there’s been a little mermaid quality to the way her precipitous high heels make her look as if she’s walking on knives but in this episode her element was fire not water. Boom!


More twisted family relationships on BSG this week with Cavil demonstrating the perils of placing the mind of a precocious four year old boy in the body of middle aged man and being in effect his own grandfather contriving to commit double incest with a woman simultaneously both mother and daughter. Lee on the human side was the good son to Laura and Tyrol suggesting they solve the Galactic problem by making a hybrid seemed to show the way forward. But the same problems seem to recur whenever human, cylon or some hybrid of both get to the point of developing AI and the attendant potential for otherness, oppression and immortality. To be human is to be finite and imperfect. And thus forgetful and so it begins all over again.

bsg, scc

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