"It should be easy. It's never easy."
Standard disclaimer: this post and/or the comments may and probably will contain spoilers for the entire series. Previous episode posts here.
"Home on the Remains" is another Season 2 episode I feel I like more than I should, and for somewhat arbitrary reasons. Farscape has some elements of complete over the topness that, even if they don't completely work, never fail to hit me where I live-a place of dark and macabre humor-and let's face it, they did a Western-themed episode set on a giant corpse and called it "Home on the Remains." I am there.
Although I talked more about what I see as Zhaan's increasing function as plot adjunct or device in my post on "Picture If You Will," this is the episode where I gave up on making sense of her as a character with a coherent ongoing story-she's a carnivorous plant who has reverence for all life and, when hungry, reverts to a primitive, violent state from which she can only be cured by eating meat. Okay!
But I think that Zhaan-the-plant-as-plot-device would annoy me more were it not for what this episode tells us about the way the crew on Moya is living so close to the edge, and about Chiana, her past and present, what she was and what she is and what she'll do to survive and protect those she loves. It's another reminder that our heroes are eking out an existence as best they can, and that running out of food and going hungry, having little to trade and not liking what's asked as the price but having to go along anyway, is a very real possibility for them.
The mining camp on the budong is a window into Chiana's past, a parallel situation; she was once there with Nerri and formed a relationship with Timmon that eased their way, and now she's willing to do the same for Zhaan. The Chiana of the past was capable of forming genuine friendships and of having real affection for those she stole from. She knows what she has to offer and she doesn't hesitate to use it, and in this she is far more pragmatic than D'Argo with his rigid ideas about honor and his instinctive possessiveness. John falls somewhere in the middle here, because on the one hand, he doesn't like the situation one bit, but on the other, he seems very aware that Chiana knows the lay of the land better than he does, and that he has no business making choices for her, that she will do what she does because it's part of who she is. And I think it says something about who Chiana is, of what she's become, that she's willing to accept B'Sogg's treatment, to go along and get along, until he hurts her friends, that that's what tips her over into violence. The scene in the mine where she takes her gruesome revenge, where B'Sogg claims that he knows her, that she's a thief and a tralk but not a killer, and she responds by burning his arm off, tells him she's growing as an individual, is both wonderfully ambiguous and very telling. Because she is capable of terrible violence if the threat is great enough, and ultimately, we still don't know whether she killed Salis. She may once have been what B'Sogg claimed he knew, but circumstances have shaped her in this way, and ironically, her time on Moya has not made her a "better person" in the stereotypical sense, she's still fiercely loyal to those she loves and places no limits on what she will do to protect them or herself, and it's a morally problematic quality that we the audience can't help but to regard as a positive because it helps the crew out again and again. She does what she does to survive, will keep on doing it unless she feels safe, and although D'Argo gets his wish and she comes to feel safe with him and the other people on Moya, it's ironic that her ad hoc family is actually one of the least safe things in the universe; her association with John Crichton makes her hunted.
There are other little things I like about this episode as well, the way John recognizes the familiar Western scenario in this alien landscape when he calls B'Sogg "marshall," the way he automatically loads up on weapons for the expedition, the way Aeryn's military training shows itself in everything she does-her functioning as a team player, even if she doesn't like her part in the plan, and making a difficult life-or-death decision, weighing risk and value and coming down on the side of the greater good, not looking back once the decision is made. And I like the fact that although the keedva is ultimately just a big dumb dog, a tool in someone else's hands, and pretty gross-looking to boot, the folks on Moya are poor and hungry and it's meat, and sentimentality and pickiness are luxuries they can't afford.
"Home on the Remains" is another Season 2 episode I feel I like more than I should, and for somewhat arbitrary reasons. Farscape has some elements of complete over the topness that, even if they don't completely work, never fail to hit me where I live-a place of dark and macabre humor-and let's face it, they did a Western-themed episode set on a giant corpse and called it "Home on the Remains." I am there.
Although I talked more about what I see as Zhaan's increasing function as plot adjunct or device in my post on "Picture If You Will," this is the episode where I gave up on making sense of her as a character with a coherent ongoing story-she's a carnivorous plant who has reverence for all life and, when hungry, reverts to a primitive, violent state from which she can only be cured by eating meat. Okay!
But I think that Zhaan-the-plant-as-plot-device would annoy me more were it not for what this episode tells us about the way the crew on Moya is living so close to the edge, and about Chiana, her past and present, what she was and what she is and what she'll do to survive and protect those she loves. It's another reminder that our heroes are eking out an existence as best they can, and that running out of food and going hungry, having little to trade and not liking what's asked as the price but having to go along anyway, is a very real possibility for them.
The mining camp on the budong is a window into Chiana's past, a parallel situation; she was once there with Nerri and formed a relationship with Timmon that eased their way, and now she's willing to do the same for Zhaan. The Chiana of the past was capable of forming genuine friendships and of having real affection for those she stole from. She knows what she has to offer and she doesn't hesitate to use it, and in this she is far more pragmatic than D'Argo with his rigid ideas about honor and his instinctive possessiveness. John falls somewhere in the middle here, because on the one hand, he doesn't like the situation one bit, but on the other, he seems very aware that Chiana knows the lay of the land better than he does, and that he has no business making choices for her, that she will do what she does because it's part of who she is. And I think it says something about who Chiana is, of what she's become, that she's willing to accept B'Sogg's treatment, to go along and get along, until he hurts her friends, that that's what tips her over into violence. The scene in the mine where she takes her gruesome revenge, where B'Sogg claims that he knows her, that she's a thief and a tralk but not a killer, and she responds by burning his arm off, tells him she's growing as an individual, is both wonderfully ambiguous and very telling. Because she is capable of terrible violence if the threat is great enough, and ultimately, we still don't know whether she killed Salis. She may once have been what B'Sogg claimed he knew, but circumstances have shaped her in this way, and ironically, her time on Moya has not made her a "better person" in the stereotypical sense, she's still fiercely loyal to those she loves and places no limits on what she will do to protect them or herself, and it's a morally problematic quality that we the audience can't help but to regard as a positive because it helps the crew out again and again. She does what she does to survive, will keep on doing it unless she feels safe, and although D'Argo gets his wish and she comes to feel safe with him and the other people on Moya, it's ironic that her ad hoc family is actually one of the least safe things in the universe; her association with John Crichton makes her hunted.
There are other little things I like about this episode as well, the way John recognizes the familiar Western scenario in this alien landscape when he calls B'Sogg "marshall," the way he automatically loads up on weapons for the expedition, the way Aeryn's military training shows itself in everything she does-her functioning as a team player, even if she doesn't like her part in the plan, and making a difficult life-or-death decision, weighing risk and value and coming down on the side of the greater good, not looking back once the decision is made. And I like the fact that although the keedva is ultimately just a big dumb dog, a tool in someone else's hands, and pretty gross-looking to boot, the folks on Moya are poor and hungry and it's meat, and sentimentality and pickiness are luxuries they can't afford.