Farscape Rewatch - 4.1 Crichton Kicks
My long drawn-out and frequently interrupted rewatch of Farscape continued with starting S4.
I have a very complicated relationship with this season - it may have been the show's last but it was my first. I came into the show via the last ep of S3 but didn't catch up with it until it was the last few episodes of S4 - Mental as Anything, I believe was the one. So I have a weird, shiny, "new" feeling when I watch that season - my emotional attachment is strongest.
I can appreciate that the first half of S4 is uneven but I believe the second half is the best Farscape out there.
However, we are a long way away from the second half of the season with S4's premiere ep "Crichton Kicks" - I did it as part of my rewatch earlier but it's been a while and I want to watch the whole season together, if it makes sense, so I rewatched it again.
It is my least favorite of all of Farscape's premieres (S3, S2, S1, S4 if we are talking premiere eps). It's not a BAD episode per se (though the only episode in all of Farscape I consider unwatchable, Coup by Clam is in this season and it's the nadir of the show) but it's rather dull. Nothing much happens except for:
(a) seeing Chrichton with that hideous beard - he's like a walking ad for clean-shaving, seeing the way he looks with facial hair and;
(b) meeting Sikozu, the latest and last addition to the cast. My loathing for Sikozu has dulled over the years but she is still far from likeable (like most Moyans), amusing (like Rygel), or complicated enough to be fascinating (Scorpius). Her bizarre later fixation on Scorpius is irritating to me. "He's a poor misunderstood woobie superior to you all" gets very old very fast - Scorpius is brilliant, fascinating, and his rage against the Scarrans is understandable, but this does not make him any less of a monster. Whatever Scorpius is, he is not a woobie. Of course, because Scorpius is a dark mirror to John and, in a way, John's maker (at least of the desperate, ruthless, dark John that Crichton becomes by the end of this show), one can level that monster tag against Crichton as well - after all, what kind of guy walks in with a nuke strapped to his body and then chooses to detonate it later in a space station of state? But to me, there is a fundamental difference between them, and no, it's not just that Crichton is devastated by his guilt and responsibility and Scorpius never thinks twice about such things - for Crichton, doing anything horrible is truly the last resort, a move of desperation, and his bad actions are done either to protect the innocents (Earth, the rest of the galaxies from the incredibly destructive powers of wormhole weapons) or out of personal love (offering to exchange wormholes for Aeryn). Scorpius does not think twice about doing ruthless, horrible things, and his motive is revenge and power. Crichton tries his best, even if it does not always work out, but Scorpius is the opposite of that. And that was a giagantic digression.
And of course, I am not an unbiased viewer - I happen to love the Moyans and Scorpius caused them much suffering - so Sikozu's liking for the latter is even harder for me to view sympathetically even if I find it realistic.
Not to mention that false superiority and snootiness is something I find very off-putting in a character. Sikozu ended up on a ship with two bonafide geniuses (Crichton and Scorpius), a member of an incredibly complex and evolved race (Pilot), and people with a lot more experience in life than she has (Aeryn, Rygel, D'Argo, Chiana), so for her to feel automatically superior to everyone is ridiculous. But even if she was the most experienced/smart/talented person in existence, the arrogance is off-putting.
Also, I have made no secret that Crichton is my favorite character and my POV - but even if that is the case, John is best when he plays off other Moyans. And this episode lacks that - there is no Aeryn or Pilot or D'Argo or Jool (not till the very end). Obviously Zhaan and Stark and Crais aren't there. For most of the ep he interacts with new characters and only some with arriving Rygel and Chiana.
The scene with John and Chiana and her telling him, sort of, about her experiences (I think she is indicating she was raped but being Chiana I am not even sure how she views that - the girl is both incredibly messed-up and ridiculously tough). It's an interesting parallel to John's later time with Grayza - both get swept under the carpet by the respective victims partially as a survival mechanism and partially because much much worse things have happened to them. There is a reason why Chiana and John bond so well in their big bro-little sis way - in some ways they are rather similar. (I occasionally wonder how it would have been if they became the couple of the show. It would have never happened, of course, seeing John's obsessive, even unhealthy, devotion to Aeryn, but it is an interesting what-if).
Anyway, next the two parter with the evilness of Grayza, Scorpius on a leash, Jool, Sikozu and Chiana working together, and a planet that will become ridiculously important in the miniseries.
I have a very complicated relationship with this season - it may have been the show's last but it was my first. I came into the show via the last ep of S3 but didn't catch up with it until it was the last few episodes of S4 - Mental as Anything, I believe was the one. So I have a weird, shiny, "new" feeling when I watch that season - my emotional attachment is strongest.
I can appreciate that the first half of S4 is uneven but I believe the second half is the best Farscape out there.
However, we are a long way away from the second half of the season with S4's premiere ep "Crichton Kicks" - I did it as part of my rewatch earlier but it's been a while and I want to watch the whole season together, if it makes sense, so I rewatched it again.
It is my least favorite of all of Farscape's premieres (S3, S2, S1, S4 if we are talking premiere eps). It's not a BAD episode per se (though the only episode in all of Farscape I consider unwatchable, Coup by Clam is in this season and it's the nadir of the show) but it's rather dull. Nothing much happens except for:
(a) seeing Chrichton with that hideous beard - he's like a walking ad for clean-shaving, seeing the way he looks with facial hair and;
(b) meeting Sikozu, the latest and last addition to the cast. My loathing for Sikozu has dulled over the years but she is still far from likeable (like most Moyans), amusing (like Rygel), or complicated enough to be fascinating (Scorpius). Her bizarre later fixation on Scorpius is irritating to me. "He's a poor misunderstood woobie superior to you all" gets very old very fast - Scorpius is brilliant, fascinating, and his rage against the Scarrans is understandable, but this does not make him any less of a monster. Whatever Scorpius is, he is not a woobie. Of course, because Scorpius is a dark mirror to John and, in a way, John's maker (at least of the desperate, ruthless, dark John that Crichton becomes by the end of this show), one can level that monster tag against Crichton as well - after all, what kind of guy walks in with a nuke strapped to his body and then chooses to detonate it later in a space station of state? But to me, there is a fundamental difference between them, and no, it's not just that Crichton is devastated by his guilt and responsibility and Scorpius never thinks twice about such things - for Crichton, doing anything horrible is truly the last resort, a move of desperation, and his bad actions are done either to protect the innocents (Earth, the rest of the galaxies from the incredibly destructive powers of wormhole weapons) or out of personal love (offering to exchange wormholes for Aeryn). Scorpius does not think twice about doing ruthless, horrible things, and his motive is revenge and power. Crichton tries his best, even if it does not always work out, but Scorpius is the opposite of that. And that was a giagantic digression.
And of course, I am not an unbiased viewer - I happen to love the Moyans and Scorpius caused them much suffering - so Sikozu's liking for the latter is even harder for me to view sympathetically even if I find it realistic.
Not to mention that false superiority and snootiness is something I find very off-putting in a character. Sikozu ended up on a ship with two bonafide geniuses (Crichton and Scorpius), a member of an incredibly complex and evolved race (Pilot), and people with a lot more experience in life than she has (Aeryn, Rygel, D'Argo, Chiana), so for her to feel automatically superior to everyone is ridiculous. But even if she was the most experienced/smart/talented person in existence, the arrogance is off-putting.
Also, I have made no secret that Crichton is my favorite character and my POV - but even if that is the case, John is best when he plays off other Moyans. And this episode lacks that - there is no Aeryn or Pilot or D'Argo or Jool (not till the very end). Obviously Zhaan and Stark and Crais aren't there. For most of the ep he interacts with new characters and only some with arriving Rygel and Chiana.
The scene with John and Chiana and her telling him, sort of, about her experiences (I think she is indicating she was raped but being Chiana I am not even sure how she views that - the girl is both incredibly messed-up and ridiculously tough). It's an interesting parallel to John's later time with Grayza - both get swept under the carpet by the respective victims partially as a survival mechanism and partially because much much worse things have happened to them. There is a reason why Chiana and John bond so well in their big bro-little sis way - in some ways they are rather similar. (I occasionally wonder how it would have been if they became the couple of the show. It would have never happened, of course, seeing John's obsessive, even unhealthy, devotion to Aeryn, but it is an interesting what-if).
Anyway, next the two parter with the evilness of Grayza, Scorpius on a leash, Jool, Sikozu and Chiana working together, and a planet that will become ridiculously important in the miniseries.