just to put this on the table...
This was, far and away, the best episode of SGA ever made. Leaves the rest in the dust. I have loved a lot of episodes, most notably in season three and four - Doppelganger, and Tao of Rodney, and Travelers, and Tabula Rasa, these are all up there. But The Last Man is the best thing they've ever done. If they had this much careful structure, this much care and thought for the characters, this much ACTUAL SCIFI AESTHETIC - if they had all these things all the time, SGA would have my heart in a whole new way.
If this is what's coming for season five, then I am buying a ticket and standing in line.
Things of love:
1) I went into the episode knowing the basic idea, and assumed that John was the last man of the title. When it turned out that the last man is Rodney - Rodney, burying empty casket after empty casket, Rodney old and alone and struggling to fix everything - well, that buys my soul.
2) Related: in an interesting switch, everyone EXCEPT JOHN gets to give up their life for their people, in this episode. (Of course Teyla doesn't, as she's the absent centre of the episode, but, y'know.) Sam gives up her life for her people (she beams them to safety first). Ronon gives up his life for his people. Keller gives up her life to have treated the people of Pegasus (and has no regrets). Rodney gives up his life - twenty five years teaching physics at a COMMUNITY COLLEGE? Tell me that isn't a profound sacrifice - for the sake of everyone he's loved who has died and gone missing. I find it more profound, even, than the AMAZING courage and strength of Ronon and Sam and Jennifer, because they died; they got the easy way out. Rodney gave up his life in a different sense, one that gets me right where I live.
3) Ronon! Ronon Ronon Ronon! With his own strike force! Why isn't this true of the show now? Why does this part have to be AU? Why can't Ronon lead his own missions as well as being on team sheppard? I love it. so. much. And the scenes with Todd were gold. GOLD! They face off gun-to-gun, they face off knife-to-knife, and then just that simple "Are we done" and the nod and Ronon's little smile as he presses the detonator, like he's made his peace and goes out with a little ironic bow. I teared up at that part, guys, and I have never ever before gotten even a bit teary at an SGA episode. Except maybe Tao of Rodney, but whatever.
4) In fact, I kind of wish that this whole episode were the real show - not in the sense of people dying all over, but in the sense of the desperation of it, the overwhelming odds and people struggling to get food and supplies and being cut off from help from Earth . . . I wish that were the show all the time, because these characters under pressure are beautiful and strong and funny.
5) Rodney! Rodney Rodney Rodney! There is CRAZY John/Rodney going on in this episode, I cannot EVEN, and I will let others cover the bulk of it, but first of all the John/Rodneyness of the whole thing is heart-clenching, even in a John/Rodney-best-buddies way. And the way they thematize the way that Rodneygram can't touch John, with John falling through his body and then being unconscious and in need of help on the floor? WOW. Mostly, though, what I want to say is that THIS is the Rodney I love, the one I wish were in evidence more - it's not that he's not anxious, it's not that he doesn't go to the infirmary for a splinter, but he's not a caricature, he's a serious person with serious trauma and a brave little toaster who cares about the people in Pegasus and always gets the job done, even when everyone's abandoned him or died, even when Jeannie stops coming round.
6) I await eagerly the first vid that intercuts Atlantis-in-the-sand with Atlantis-in-the-water.
7) It's just so structurally beautiful! The way that every single character gets play, like the way that Lorne is the one to lose Sheppard at the beginning and so perhaps feels guilty enough to help out in his old age (Lorne = #1 absolutely the person you want working in the SGC bureaucracy). The way that the whole episode is about avoiding deaths, about changing the future, about the need to FIX THIS, and then in the very fixing of it we find that the future is immutable, to a degree - they use the exact same shot of Ronon and John entering the maternity room in the warehouse, for example, to signal that perhaps not so much has changed. And then, after all this setup, all this work, Rodney's entire life given up to keep everyone from dying, and . . . boom, the building collapses, everybody dies anyway. It's amazing!
8) Of course everyone doesn't die anyway, and I'm sure they'll be saved somehow next year (the best would be if Teyla saved them somehow, changing her from the rescuee in this episode to the rescuer in 5x01) but the moment that that building collapsed, I cheered, because YES, this is what happens when you fuck with the future, this is the risk you take. And it's an acceptable risk, to me and to John and to Rodney, but I love it all the same.
9) This? This is science fiction. This is what science fiction can do for you. This is how to use science fiction, as your guiding metaphor and your dominant structure, not as a plot device that allows you to get from point A to point B. SGA has been doing scifi more and more this season (Doppelganger and Tabula Rasa have that Philip K. Dick paranoid feel, for example) and seeing it culminate in this way was fabulous. Hard scifi often gets billed as for the boys, while soft scifi gets billed as for the girls (because it's about characters, whatever) but this was the ultimate fusion of both kinds of scifi - the kind where the scifi metaphor is the important thing, but where the scifi metaphor shows us these amazing characters. The episode was a great synthesis of these, I think.
9) I love it unconditionally. I would not change a single thing about it. It made my heart clench in the way that the best gen fanfiction does - really, that's what it felt like, fanfiction that knew the characters and loved them and made them complicated and wonderful people struggling to do the best they can. Ten out of ten, SGA writers. Do that some more.