SGA 4.18 ("The Kindred, part 1"), and other stuff too
Dear Sci Fi Channel,
If, as the earnest voiceover suggests, your main hook for the next episode is, "You won't believe what happens in the last five minutes," and it seems that those last five minutes may be important and suspenseful, DO NOT SHOW THE TWIST IN THE PREVIEW THAT YOU AIR A THOUSAND TIMES IN THE DAYS LEADING UP TO IT.
Thank you.
Briefly:
- Rodney giving Teyla a baby present, all wrapped in periwinkle blue, with the hope that the little tyke will become a soaring intellect worthy of his tutelage. (He wants to be the brainy daddy; Ronon can be the brawny daddy and John will be the stoic hero daddy.) And then managing to pick up on her disquiet, and sitting through her explanation trying his hardest to be sympathetic to something so against his scientific/irreligious beliefs. Cute cute cute.
- Ronon teasing Rodney with that promise to buy him a token of his affection at the market. As if that weren't adorable enough, they kept it up with the faces while John and Teyla talked and walked ahead of them.
- Sucks that Connor Trinneer's name was listed in the opening credits, because that would have been a nice surprise when he turned out to be the orchestrator of the plague and abductions. It is good that the show is continuing to build on what happened in seasons past (bringing back Hoff, for example) and create this ripple effect, so many of Atlantis' ethical missteps over the years coming back to bite them. I also like how they handled the critical conversation between Michael and Teyla about how he sees himself alone in the universe with her as the closest thing he has to a peer. Among other things, it reminded me of something Ricardo Montalban said in an interview he did when Wrath of Khan came out (I watched it again last night, did I mention?): how the most interesting villains don't think of themselves as villains; they're acting rationally--or in a way they think is rational--based on the experiences they've had, while people all around them (read: Teyla) think they're insane and evil. Michael has resorted to some unforgiveable actions in his quest for revenge and acceptance; but it's not as if the people who victimized him are free of blame either. RM said he likes to find the gray areas in his heroes, too, and tonight they did address, even if briefly, just in how many ways the Lanteans have contributed to this situation.
It's nothing revolutionary, but they came one day after each other, so I'm tying them together. So there.
- Oh, man, Teyla. Poor Teyla. She never got to tell Kanaan about their child-even in the vision, she was telling Michael (which I keep typing as "Connor," oops), holding Michael's hand, she must be disgusted with herself for that-and now he's beyond caring. (Unless she and the team can bring him back somehow.)
- The Wraith are really obsessed with Teyla's baby, aren't they? First the Wraith queen in that cloning facility, now Michael.
Fun times with the sexual aggression, too. Michael invades Teyla's mind, disguises himself as her boyfriend in her dreams, takes that boyfriend away from her, tells her she's the only one who's ever understood him, acts generally creepy around her, and plans to appropriate her child. Not to mention that the last time they got together, he strapped her to a table in her low-cut blouse and placed a bug on her bosom.
- Magically inserted multi-world plague! "Well, as you know, we've been tracking [something something, disease, sickness, lots of dead people]..." Keller said helpfully to Carter. Well, no, we don't know, thanks very much, and if Carter knew, then why did you introduce the topic like that? Sloppy, writers; sloppy.
Great opportunity for a House crossover, though.
...She said, thinking of her sadly abandoned crossover bigbang fic.
- Lorne! Got to be mean! Excellent. And then Teyla got to be meaner when the guy called him on being one of the "do-gooders" of the galaxy. Also a bonus point for Lorne's remark about finding all kinds of stuff you may or may not want at the San Francisco markets.
- Also, Todd! Whom everyone (and by "everyone," I mean "Colonel 'Call me Sam' Carter") is now calling Todd as if it's really his name. I just love him. Todd/Michael showdown, maybe?
What else? Was there something else? I am not being at all deep today.
ETA: linabean
. . .
Some more articles of interest:
House, Boston Legal and Carl Sagan's Cosmos are among the ten smartest TV shows of all time as named by the chief of MENSA. (Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek: TNG almost made the list too.) He explains his reasons for choosing what he did, and of course it is utterly subjective, but I do not trust a list of smart shows that does not include Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Did you know that NFL recruiters pick their drafts after making all the candidates parade around in their skivvies like models and critiquing their assets? This so goes on the list of reasons there needs to be a post about men's refusal to acknowledge the homoeroticism in athletics. The article in question is Combine meat market a little disturbing by Michael Silver at Yahoo Sports. Skim past the first five paragraphs if you have a humiliation squick; there's good commentary in the rest.
. . .
Saw Manuale d'Amore 2 tonight (2007, dir. Giovanni Veronesi). Very good. It was like Love Actually, only it worked; two hours, four stories, four couples, one connection leading from each to the next, with an extra connection at the end. So imagine Love Actually with opening and concluding soliloquies on Eros instead of love, and most of the stories were of Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman's quality, and there was a gay couple, and you could actually keep all the characters straight (so to speak). It was also like Amores Perros, with a few of the tales converging on a moment or place, but with only hints of that film's constant, overwhelming dread. It was funny and sad, whimsical and serious, sexy and farcical, with the comedy (and fourth-wall-breaking techniques in the second segment) making the stories too outrageous to believe at times--fully on purpose, I'm sure--but the serious and honest and sometimes shocking moments pulling it uncomfortably down to earth again, in cycles. The ever-shifting balance worked, though; life is alternately farcical and painful too. The acting was fabulous. The people who were supposed to be hot were hot and the people who were supposed to be silly were silly and the people who were supposed to be sympathetic were sympathetic and so forth.
I liked the young man in the first story, a car accident victim recovering from paraplegia who falls for his physical therapist (Monica Bellucci). The radio announcer character who introduced the film spoke of how sometimes you can see Eros in people's eyes, and we promptly met this guy, Nicola, with a shot of his eyes, green like Jude Law's, though overall he much more closely resembled that guy from Entourage everyone had a crush on a few years ago, what's his name, not Adrian Pasdar. *looks it up* Adrian Grenier. He had just the right mix of lust, humor, youth and humanity for the character.
The weakest part, I thought, was the third couple, a pair of gay men about to fly to Spain to get married. They were too cliché overall for comfort; effete, one in conflict with his intolerant father, a transsexual friend who calls them "honey," a big fight, tears, slaps, a gay bashing, a touching reconciliation. But even they had their moments, particularly the Tony Danza-sort-of partner who has always entertained and bonded with his sister by doing hilarious imitations of E.T.
Overall, definitely recommended. I've never seen the first one, so I don't know how this compares, whether it's better or as good or worse, or whether it's more enjoyable if you haven't seen the first because they work from the same premises, etc. I can say that you definitely don't need to know anything about the first one to like this one; there aren't any of the same characters, so far as I know, so much as there is just the same concept for the film.
If, as the earnest voiceover suggests, your main hook for the next episode is, "You won't believe what happens in the last five minutes," and it seems that those last five minutes may be important and suspenseful, DO NOT SHOW THE TWIST IN THE PREVIEW THAT YOU AIR A THOUSAND TIMES IN THE DAYS LEADING UP TO IT.
Thank you.
Briefly:
- Rodney giving Teyla a baby present, all wrapped in periwinkle blue, with the hope that the little tyke will become a soaring intellect worthy of his tutelage. (He wants to be the brainy daddy; Ronon can be the brawny daddy and John will be the stoic hero daddy.) And then managing to pick up on her disquiet, and sitting through her explanation trying his hardest to be sympathetic to something so against his scientific/irreligious beliefs. Cute cute cute.
- Ronon teasing Rodney with that promise to buy him a token of his affection at the market. As if that weren't adorable enough, they kept it up with the faces while John and Teyla talked and walked ahead of them.
- Sucks that Connor Trinneer's name was listed in the opening credits, because that would have been a nice surprise when he turned out to be the orchestrator of the plague and abductions. It is good that the show is continuing to build on what happened in seasons past (bringing back Hoff, for example) and create this ripple effect, so many of Atlantis' ethical missteps over the years coming back to bite them. I also like how they handled the critical conversation between Michael and Teyla about how he sees himself alone in the universe with her as the closest thing he has to a peer. Among other things, it reminded me of something Ricardo Montalban said in an interview he did when Wrath of Khan came out (I watched it again last night, did I mention?): how the most interesting villains don't think of themselves as villains; they're acting rationally--or in a way they think is rational--based on the experiences they've had, while people all around them (read: Teyla) think they're insane and evil. Michael has resorted to some unforgiveable actions in his quest for revenge and acceptance; but it's not as if the people who victimized him are free of blame either. RM said he likes to find the gray areas in his heroes, too, and tonight they did address, even if briefly, just in how many ways the Lanteans have contributed to this situation.
It's nothing revolutionary, but they came one day after each other, so I'm tying them together. So there.
- Oh, man, Teyla. Poor Teyla. She never got to tell Kanaan about their child-even in the vision, she was telling Michael (which I keep typing as "Connor," oops), holding Michael's hand, she must be disgusted with herself for that-and now he's beyond caring. (Unless she and the team can bring him back somehow.)
- The Wraith are really obsessed with Teyla's baby, aren't they? First the Wraith queen in that cloning facility, now Michael.
Fun times with the sexual aggression, too. Michael invades Teyla's mind, disguises himself as her boyfriend in her dreams, takes that boyfriend away from her, tells her she's the only one who's ever understood him, acts generally creepy around her, and plans to appropriate her child. Not to mention that the last time they got together, he strapped her to a table in her low-cut blouse and placed a bug on her bosom.
- Magically inserted multi-world plague! "Well, as you know, we've been tracking [something something, disease, sickness, lots of dead people]..." Keller said helpfully to Carter. Well, no, we don't know, thanks very much, and if Carter knew, then why did you introduce the topic like that? Sloppy, writers; sloppy.
Great opportunity for a House crossover, though.
...She said, thinking of her sadly abandoned crossover bigbang fic.
- Lorne! Got to be mean! Excellent. And then Teyla got to be meaner when the guy called him on being one of the "do-gooders" of the galaxy. Also a bonus point for Lorne's remark about finding all kinds of stuff you may or may not want at the San Francisco markets.
- Also, Todd! Whom everyone (and by "everyone," I mean "Colonel 'Call me Sam' Carter") is now calling Todd as if it's really his name. I just love him. Todd/Michael showdown, maybe?
What else? Was there something else? I am not being at all deep today.
ETA: linabean
. . .
Some more articles of interest:
House, Boston Legal and Carl Sagan's Cosmos are among the ten smartest TV shows of all time as named by the chief of MENSA. (Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek: TNG almost made the list too.) He explains his reasons for choosing what he did, and of course it is utterly subjective, but I do not trust a list of smart shows that does not include Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Did you know that NFL recruiters pick their drafts after making all the candidates parade around in their skivvies like models and critiquing their assets? This so goes on the list of reasons there needs to be a post about men's refusal to acknowledge the homoeroticism in athletics. The article in question is Combine meat market a little disturbing by Michael Silver at Yahoo Sports. Skim past the first five paragraphs if you have a humiliation squick; there's good commentary in the rest.
. . .
Saw Manuale d'Amore 2 tonight (2007, dir. Giovanni Veronesi). Very good. It was like Love Actually, only it worked; two hours, four stories, four couples, one connection leading from each to the next, with an extra connection at the end. So imagine Love Actually with opening and concluding soliloquies on Eros instead of love, and most of the stories were of Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman's quality, and there was a gay couple, and you could actually keep all the characters straight (so to speak). It was also like Amores Perros, with a few of the tales converging on a moment or place, but with only hints of that film's constant, overwhelming dread. It was funny and sad, whimsical and serious, sexy and farcical, with the comedy (and fourth-wall-breaking techniques in the second segment) making the stories too outrageous to believe at times--fully on purpose, I'm sure--but the serious and honest and sometimes shocking moments pulling it uncomfortably down to earth again, in cycles. The ever-shifting balance worked, though; life is alternately farcical and painful too. The acting was fabulous. The people who were supposed to be hot were hot and the people who were supposed to be silly were silly and the people who were supposed to be sympathetic were sympathetic and so forth.
I liked the young man in the first story, a car accident victim recovering from paraplegia who falls for his physical therapist (Monica Bellucci). The radio announcer character who introduced the film spoke of how sometimes you can see Eros in people's eyes, and we promptly met this guy, Nicola, with a shot of his eyes, green like Jude Law's, though overall he much more closely resembled that guy from Entourage everyone had a crush on a few years ago, what's his name, not Adrian Pasdar. *looks it up* Adrian Grenier. He had just the right mix of lust, humor, youth and humanity for the character.
The weakest part, I thought, was the third couple, a pair of gay men about to fly to Spain to get married. They were too cliché overall for comfort; effete, one in conflict with his intolerant father, a transsexual friend who calls them "honey," a big fight, tears, slaps, a gay bashing, a touching reconciliation. But even they had their moments, particularly the Tony Danza-sort-of partner who has always entertained and bonded with his sister by doing hilarious imitations of E.T.
Overall, definitely recommended. I've never seen the first one, so I don't know how this compares, whether it's better or as good or worse, or whether it's more enjoyable if you haven't seen the first because they work from the same premises, etc. I can say that you definitely don't need to know anything about the first one to like this one; there aren't any of the same characters, so far as I know, so much as there is just the same concept for the film.