"It's the bad-guy equivalent of cordon bleu."
I personally would have gone with a more turducken-based analogy.
Stargate 10.19 - "Dominion"
I am very much watching this show through cancellation-colored glasses, but this was a little bit more of a quick wrap-up of the Adria storyline than I expected. (Or is it?) Nevertheless, it was really emotionally affecting because it brought the conflict down to the realm of the personal, to Vala's past as a host and her life on the run and the friends she'd found, the fight she'd taken up, and her final acceptance of what she and Adria were to each other-not really a mother and daughter, not really a family, not in the way she's come to understand these things work.
It's a measure of how much Vala's life has changed, how far she is along that journey, that in the opening, where she was back to gambling and cheating, I assumed it was an undercover operation; the alternative explanation, that she'd somehow run afoul of SGC and returned to her old life, would be such a loss for her-not just of stability but of emotional connection-that it was too terrible to contemplate. And so it was difficult to see her glee and enthusiasm at having, she thought, solved the mystery of the location of the key to eternal treasure get shot down by reasonable doubt, worse still when they tested her solution and the test failed, when they all walked out of the briefing room in disbelief and she discovered that she still wasn't really one of them, that the lingering distrust was enough to lead to her captivity. For this to have been the real situation would have been a terrible betrayal, a line drawn between insiders, the real "team," and her, and only the fact that it was Vala's idea all along erased that line.
It was interesting that Cam was adamant that he and Teal'c weren't the ones explaining to her what had happened, too, that it was Sam and Daniel. I suspect it's because they would be the more intense focus of Vala's feelings of personal, as opposed to professional, just-doing-my-duty, betrayal. She threatened never to talk to Daniel again. But Cameron was the one to do the gut-check, to make the unspoken assumption-that their mission could very well end in killing Adria-explicit and verify that she was prepared for it. He doesn't really lead the team, can't tell them what to do, but he does shepherd it, make sure the pieces are in place and everyone is okay, and that's a form of leadership.
So, yes, it was neat that there were a whole host of parallels between Adria and Vala, that both women were vessels of the Ori in some ways and both had the experience of becoming a host, that Vala had survived the Tok'ra operation and has survived everything since and in the end was willing to pull the gun on Adria and try to end her, that she understood the difference between the family of your body and the family of your heart, that the old enemy SG-1 had fought for so many seasons and the new one it faced in the end became melded together. And it all came back to the team, the family. I will plug my ears and say "LALALA" when my brain points out that, really, Sam and Vala should both have been able to sense Baal's presence in Adria.
An ascended and pissed-off Adria, without those ties of the flesh to at least one human being, could be a formidable thing indeed, and I don't for a moment believe she's gone (in fact, I'd expect to see her in the next episode, or another Baal, or both if they plan to end the show on a cliffhanger). An ascended Adria would have the added bonus of not being played by Morena Baccarin, who-don't get me wrong-I loved on Firefly, but who has not been able to pull off the supervillain menace once Adria moved from partly confused little girl to assured and powerful woman.
* * * * *
I'm not having a particularly good time with The Black Donnellys, I'm afraid. Because, really, for the show to be emotionally true to the scenario it's fleshing out, there's only one way for this to end: in blood and tears. The rest of the brothers are too stupid and self-destructive to live; Tommy, being the only one smart enough to have other opportunities, is also the only one smart enough to extract himself from the situation, and because he's paying the price for his brother's leg, he can't, he's the one who cuts up the bodies and burns the van and watches the inky black creep over his own soul bit by bit. (The sex with Jenny in Monday's episode was, in my opinion, a piece of inexplicable point-missing on the part of the writers-Tommy is already paying that price, with his future, with each murderous and violent thing he does to cover for his brothers, and that, that dimming of his prospects, that leaching of his humanity, will make him unfit for love, and make him "lose" Jenny-it's all of a piece with that price. Her jumping him with no warning and then blowing him off is not "losing" her.) There is no rooting for anyone in this situation, just watching the trainwreck unfold. That makes for a fascinating two-hour story with an unhappy ending, but isn't sustainable as a weekly drama where we're supposed to become deeply involved with these characters. The other brothers are annoying and awful and Tommy is trapped and that's pretty much it.
Also, while I liked the narrative device of Joey Ice Cream in the pilot, having the writers bring up the fact that he shouldn't have been able to witness the events he was describing so that they could wink at the audience about the implausibility was something I found incredibly irritating last night.
Paul Haggis can tell a wonderfully complex story, if due South is anything to go by-he wrote some of the best episodes I've seen so far-and the show is beautifully made, I'll give it that, so I'll probably watch a couple more episodes to see if it engages me. But they have to give me a reason to actually want to spend an hour a week with these people for the foreseeable future..
* * * * *
With the notable exception of work, this week is shaping up to be much better than the last...uh... month and a half has been. Highlights include:
* A miracle occurred last night and I managed to do something social on a weeknight! I spent a couple of hours hanging out with thedeadlyhook and toysdream and some fans, both local and visiting, that I got to meet for the first time--herself_nyc, willowgreen, witling, jolielaide, and two others whose LJ names completely escape me at the moment, and they were all lovely and funny and smart. We met at the Hi-Lo on the Embarcadero, which lived up to its name by having high-end food like my snapper sandwich with Cajun remoulade on the menu, and distinctively low-end 5-watt lighting and raucous noise levels that made actually seeing and listening quite the challenge.
* As an added bonus, I imparted to thedeadlyhook and toysdream news about the exploding tumor, and we all cackled like loons for about five minutes, because-EXPLODING TUMOR. Created by exploding tumor technology! I'm sure once I actually see the episode, it will be sad and affecting, because I liked Beckett. But oh, SGA, you are so cracktastic, and it is not always the good crack.
* Home Repair II: The Retiling is a flimsy house of cards built on tight coordination of a tile guy and a plumber, and the plumber fell through, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I found an excellent emergency backup plumber and I think this thing is actually going to get done.
* I have the makings for salade niçoise in my refrigerator for dinner tonight-mixed greens, boiled red potato, hard-boiled egg cooked so that the yolk is still a little dark and soft in the middle, blanched green beans, pear tomatoes, mustardy red-wine vinaigrette, and an excellent Italian oil-packed canned tuna (I find that letting it sit on a few layers of paper towel for about half an hour wicks almost all the oil away). This is good, since we finished a development milestone last week and those cheap bastards aren't ordering dinner in this week at the office.
* I have Friday off! Yes, it's because I'll lose vacation time unless I take it, and I'll be even more behind at work on Monday, and I'm using the time for The Retiling and taking my car in for service and my annual eye exam, but still.
* * * * *
So... ABC has ordered a sitcom pilot based on the GEICO caveman? Really?!?
Stargate 10.19 - "Dominion"
I am very much watching this show through cancellation-colored glasses, but this was a little bit more of a quick wrap-up of the Adria storyline than I expected. (Or is it?) Nevertheless, it was really emotionally affecting because it brought the conflict down to the realm of the personal, to Vala's past as a host and her life on the run and the friends she'd found, the fight she'd taken up, and her final acceptance of what she and Adria were to each other-not really a mother and daughter, not really a family, not in the way she's come to understand these things work.
It's a measure of how much Vala's life has changed, how far she is along that journey, that in the opening, where she was back to gambling and cheating, I assumed it was an undercover operation; the alternative explanation, that she'd somehow run afoul of SGC and returned to her old life, would be such a loss for her-not just of stability but of emotional connection-that it was too terrible to contemplate. And so it was difficult to see her glee and enthusiasm at having, she thought, solved the mystery of the location of the key to eternal treasure get shot down by reasonable doubt, worse still when they tested her solution and the test failed, when they all walked out of the briefing room in disbelief and she discovered that she still wasn't really one of them, that the lingering distrust was enough to lead to her captivity. For this to have been the real situation would have been a terrible betrayal, a line drawn between insiders, the real "team," and her, and only the fact that it was Vala's idea all along erased that line.
It was interesting that Cam was adamant that he and Teal'c weren't the ones explaining to her what had happened, too, that it was Sam and Daniel. I suspect it's because they would be the more intense focus of Vala's feelings of personal, as opposed to professional, just-doing-my-duty, betrayal. She threatened never to talk to Daniel again. But Cameron was the one to do the gut-check, to make the unspoken assumption-that their mission could very well end in killing Adria-explicit and verify that she was prepared for it. He doesn't really lead the team, can't tell them what to do, but he does shepherd it, make sure the pieces are in place and everyone is okay, and that's a form of leadership.
So, yes, it was neat that there were a whole host of parallels between Adria and Vala, that both women were vessels of the Ori in some ways and both had the experience of becoming a host, that Vala had survived the Tok'ra operation and has survived everything since and in the end was willing to pull the gun on Adria and try to end her, that she understood the difference between the family of your body and the family of your heart, that the old enemy SG-1 had fought for so many seasons and the new one it faced in the end became melded together. And it all came back to the team, the family. I will plug my ears and say "LALALA" when my brain points out that, really, Sam and Vala should both have been able to sense Baal's presence in Adria.
An ascended and pissed-off Adria, without those ties of the flesh to at least one human being, could be a formidable thing indeed, and I don't for a moment believe she's gone (in fact, I'd expect to see her in the next episode, or another Baal, or both if they plan to end the show on a cliffhanger). An ascended Adria would have the added bonus of not being played by Morena Baccarin, who-don't get me wrong-I loved on Firefly, but who has not been able to pull off the supervillain menace once Adria moved from partly confused little girl to assured and powerful woman.
* * * * *
I'm not having a particularly good time with The Black Donnellys, I'm afraid. Because, really, for the show to be emotionally true to the scenario it's fleshing out, there's only one way for this to end: in blood and tears. The rest of the brothers are too stupid and self-destructive to live; Tommy, being the only one smart enough to have other opportunities, is also the only one smart enough to extract himself from the situation, and because he's paying the price for his brother's leg, he can't, he's the one who cuts up the bodies and burns the van and watches the inky black creep over his own soul bit by bit. (The sex with Jenny in Monday's episode was, in my opinion, a piece of inexplicable point-missing on the part of the writers-Tommy is already paying that price, with his future, with each murderous and violent thing he does to cover for his brothers, and that, that dimming of his prospects, that leaching of his humanity, will make him unfit for love, and make him "lose" Jenny-it's all of a piece with that price. Her jumping him with no warning and then blowing him off is not "losing" her.) There is no rooting for anyone in this situation, just watching the trainwreck unfold. That makes for a fascinating two-hour story with an unhappy ending, but isn't sustainable as a weekly drama where we're supposed to become deeply involved with these characters. The other brothers are annoying and awful and Tommy is trapped and that's pretty much it.
Also, while I liked the narrative device of Joey Ice Cream in the pilot, having the writers bring up the fact that he shouldn't have been able to witness the events he was describing so that they could wink at the audience about the implausibility was something I found incredibly irritating last night.
Paul Haggis can tell a wonderfully complex story, if due South is anything to go by-he wrote some of the best episodes I've seen so far-and the show is beautifully made, I'll give it that, so I'll probably watch a couple more episodes to see if it engages me. But they have to give me a reason to actually want to spend an hour a week with these people for the foreseeable future..
* * * * *
With the notable exception of work, this week is shaping up to be much better than the last...uh... month and a half has been. Highlights include:
* A miracle occurred last night and I managed to do something social on a weeknight! I spent a couple of hours hanging out with thedeadlyhook and toysdream and some fans, both local and visiting, that I got to meet for the first time--herself_nyc, willowgreen, witling, jolielaide, and two others whose LJ names completely escape me at the moment, and they were all lovely and funny and smart. We met at the Hi-Lo on the Embarcadero, which lived up to its name by having high-end food like my snapper sandwich with Cajun remoulade on the menu, and distinctively low-end 5-watt lighting and raucous noise levels that made actually seeing and listening quite the challenge.
* As an added bonus, I imparted to thedeadlyhook and toysdream news about the exploding tumor, and we all cackled like loons for about five minutes, because-EXPLODING TUMOR. Created by exploding tumor technology! I'm sure once I actually see the episode, it will be sad and affecting, because I liked Beckett. But oh, SGA, you are so cracktastic, and it is not always the good crack.
* Home Repair II: The Retiling is a flimsy house of cards built on tight coordination of a tile guy and a plumber, and the plumber fell through, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I found an excellent emergency backup plumber and I think this thing is actually going to get done.
* I have the makings for salade niçoise in my refrigerator for dinner tonight-mixed greens, boiled red potato, hard-boiled egg cooked so that the yolk is still a little dark and soft in the middle, blanched green beans, pear tomatoes, mustardy red-wine vinaigrette, and an excellent Italian oil-packed canned tuna (I find that letting it sit on a few layers of paper towel for about half an hour wicks almost all the oil away). This is good, since we finished a development milestone last week and those cheap bastards aren't ordering dinner in this week at the office.
* I have Friday off! Yes, it's because I'll lose vacation time unless I take it, and I'll be even more behind at work on Monday, and I'm using the time for The Retiling and taking my car in for service and my annual eye exam, but still.
* * * * *
So... ABC has ordered a sitcom pilot based on the GEICO caveman? Really?!?