Aquarium 4.15 -- "Outcast"
Posting this after my first viewing, which I rarely do (I usually watch one time for the fun of it, then a second time with the pause button and something to take notes with, which then become the basis of my lj comments and YES, I KNOW, IT'S ABSURD HOW SERIOUSLY I TAKE THIS SHOW. I have no defense.) I'm just saying, in case this is all jumbled and I later contradict myself completely or something, it's because I haven't taken a lot of time yet to process.
I'm just basically too tired -- currently and in a larger, existential kind of way -- to get into how pissed off the replicator plotlines make me all over again. I've said it before, it's not a shock to anyone who reads these things on a regular basis, they've never made any kind of case for why exactly the replicators aren't a sentient species. They haven't done it chiefly because it can't *be* done: THE REPLICATORS ARE CLEARLY A SENTIENT SPECIES. They want things, they fear things, they care about continuing to exist, they reflect on who and what they are, they feel affection and regret and carry grudges and make moral decisions. They're fucking people by any rational standard, and our heroes have been offing them right and left since the goddamn day we met them in Progeny, which is still the most vile and offensive episode of any tv show I've ever liked ever. And I was an Oz fan.
So, whatever. Whatever, I give. Who cares, I'm tired. Dr. Frankenstein creates a person and then tries to kill him off so he doesn't get caught and get in trouble. The person in question reacts PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY LIKE YOU WOULD, if you were in his position: he escapes, he goes to ground, he tries to disappear. And he kills some guys in the process, and if you say you wouldn't do the same thing under those circumstances, I'm not sure I believe you, and if you say *Sheppard* wouldn't do the same thing I fucking KNOW you're making shit up. But somehow this proves that he's some kind of crazy renegade, so we can't wrap the episode up until we set him on fire. Whatever.
So we spend the whole episode chasing down this poor bastard who was built as a "military model" with a desire to continue living -- essentially a soldier who's become a liability and was about to be disposed of -- and I continue not to understand in what fucking universe this show takes place where I'm supposed to see *us* as the sympathetic characters here. I mean, obviously, given the situation at the point where Sheppard and Ronon enter it, I don't even know *what* you'd do -- everything has already gone to shit by then and there pretty much is no good solution. But that means that by the time they've introduced the plot at the fifteen minute mark, they've already guaranteed that anything and everything that happens from there on out is going to make me unhappy. Maybe letting the guy go wasn't viable; having our heroes head up his execution squad wasn't especially entertaining for me to watch. Lose/lose situation, aka MADE OF FAIL.
(I don't know if you were supposed to or not, but I found the scene with Dr. Frankenstein and the replicator in the warehouse really wrenching, as he tries to convince this guy to submit to his own destruction by promising that it would totally be like every other time before, and the Dr. would be there to help him come right back, just like before. Could he possibly have been delusional enough to believe that's what was going to happen, or was it just an outright attempt to manipulate and betray his frightened creation in order to prevent more combat casualties? Either version is kind of agonizing, in its own way. It actually reminded me very intensely of the climactic scene in *Alpha Dog,* which I cannot possibly explain to those who haven't seen it without a lot of convoluted crap that still won't really convey it, but if any of you have seen it, wasn't it basically exactly like that scene? I mean, a cut-rate, bargain-basement version of that scene, but in essence, the same scene. Except in *Alpha Dog,* they expect you to realize that something overtly horrific is happening and to be furious and shocked and saddened by it. Also, they don't set Anton Yelchin on fucking fire at the end of that movie, which in retrospect, I appreciate about it.)
So, you know, in that way that only ever happens on SGA, outside of the utter assholery of the plot, I kind of liked the episode.
Oh, they wasted almost every opportunity, don't get me wrong. WTF was with getting like a minute and a half with his brother? I thought the entire point of the episode was supposed to be dealing with John's estrangement from his family (hence the flippin' title of the episode). I mean, it was a *great* minute and a half -- both scenes with his brother were very well done, incredibly fraught and fragile and agonizing with the weight of all the terrible things they've both quietly been thinking about each other all these years: John that David and his father were relieved to be rid of him and that he was being made unwelcome because of the life he chose to lead, David that John fucked off and didn't give a damn what happened to any of them as long as he got to fulfill his own dreams, then bounced right back in when there was a chance he could collect some money without the hassle of making up with his dad. It's particularly awesome because, well, we don't know what David and PopShep did or said to convince John of the first, but we know exactly why David feels the way he does, and it's not in the slightest bit unreasonable. John very deliberately chose, over and over again, to be as absent as humanly possible from his family. Whether he felt he was driven to it or not, he chose that, just as much as Rodney chose to be absent from Jeannie's life.
Only of course Rodney gets a whole episode where he's castigated for that choice until he sees the error of his ways and tries to make amends, and John gets like one and a half minutes and God knows what going on off-screen at the end credits. I truly do not understand why John Sheppard, the ostensible hero of the fucking series, can't have his own "McKay and Mrs. Miller."
I think what the episode does do well with John is kind of hold a mirror up to him, to show him and us what he looks like to these people he's let down. With his brother it's complicated by whatever the fuck happened between John and his father; with Nancy it's complicated by the secrecy of his job. In both cases, though, what you have is total radio silence from John -- an inability to give, a deep unwillingness to speak, a man that, no matter how much you love him, is impossible to reach.
The other thing the episode does well is to show that, at heart, John hasn't changed all that much. He's still unwilling to speak with Rodney or with Ronon -- two people who, just like his father and his wife apparently did, would fucking love one thin chance to be there for him, to be allowed to be generous with all this love they have for him. But John doesn't allow that. He never has, and he's not starting now. It's enough to break your heart.
And OH MY GOD THEY LOVE HIM SO MUCH. And they know, they know he's like this. When Rodney asks if he wants to talk, it's obvious before the words are out of his mouth that he *knows* John isn't going to talk with him, but he's Rodney, so what's in his head comes out his mouth; he has to ask, even knowing it's a doomed effort. And Ronon is Ronon, and he knows just as well that it's just so much wasted breath, and he's not a fan of wasting breath, so he hovers all through the episode, present and worried and wanting to offer comfort just as much as Rodney does and no better equipped than Rodney to win John's acceptance of it. THEY BOTH LOVE HIM SO MUCH. It's probably a good thing that Rachel's off having her wee baby, because I don't know if I could have SURVIVED a Team Love hat-trick.
They know he's like this. They know and they love him anyway -- but so did his father and so did his wife, and look how that turned out, and John really hasn't changed at all since then, and it's so fucking depressing, so it's a good thing I like fucking depressing stories. What's awesome, however, and what makes me not *suicidal* over this episode is that even though neither Rodney nor Ronon can figure out how to make John submit to being loved, they are very, very good at one thing, and that's refusing to ask his permission. I LOVE -- I can't even say how much I LOVE the fact that neither of them asked John if he wanted them to go with him. Rodney went to apply for permission to go before he ever went to see John; he just *did* it, he didn't ask. And Ronon didn't even bother to warn John in advance he was coming, which conveniently saved him a boring and pointless conversation where John said you don't have to, it's fine, and Ronon said, shut up, I'm doing it anyway. He just cut straight to the inevitable conclusion. Ronon, once more, not a fan of the wasted breath. *g* But the salient point is that they both made plans to do this for John without giving a good goddamn what John had to say about it, which is a terrible way to treat normal human beings but a fucking survival skill when you're trying to be John Sheppard's friend. They both rock my world.
And Ronon was underused in this episode, which became vastly more about Ava Dixon than I think anyone could ever be expected to care about (I liked her as a character, but am really having a hard time getting past how she ate John's backstory episode, dammit), but he still does what he does incredibly well -- peeling John open just a little, tiny, microscopically incremental piece at a time with gentle questions about the house, about his father, about why he does the things he does. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing like the catharsis I would have liked to see, but the cool thing about Ronon is that he never seems the slightest bit impatient. You get the feeling that he's already guessed that this is a serious long-term project, this thing he's working on building around himself and John, and that he's going to take absolutely as much time as the job requires. If it takes fifty years, Ronon will be right there, asking the next question, coaxing the next genuine answer out of John. It's not the slightest surprise to me that every time John has deliberately revealed something about his emotional life and his past on this show, it's been in conversation with Ronon. Ronon doesn't push him so hard it's scary for John, and he doesn't let up long enough for John to wriggle away. John remains 99.44% impenetrable mess, but Ronon has the closest thing we've yet seen to a viable strategy for dealing with it. If only I could believe that it *won't* take the next fifty years.
I think there's a lot I want to say about Nancy, but I don't have it all together yet, and I'm not even sure if I want to say it in commentary or if I want to cut straight ahead and write fic -- so either way, I'll get back to you on that. *g*
The other thing I want to say -- hell, the ONE THING that I really want to say, the thing that affected me most about the episode -- I don't even know. I don't know what *to* say about it, I'm caught totally flat-footed and I can't even describe my response adequately. The ONE THING that matters most to me about this episode is that moment when he introduces Ronon to his brother, which I swear to fucking God, is probably the most resonant queer moment I've ever seen on television. (Resonant for me, that is. I'm not saying every queer person will see it this way at all -- I know I'm way more into subjective territory here even than usual, but hey, it's my journal, yeah?)
It doesn't matter if Sheppard is a queer character. It doesn't matter if he's involved with Ronon in any way. That's utterly irrelevant to this scene. What matters is that HIS BROTHER CLEARLY THINKS HE IS, and John *knows* that his brother thinks he is. David's not remotely surprised that John shows up at a major family event with a ridiculously beautiful man whom he can only identify vaguely as someone who works with him. David isn't quite sure what to *say* about it, but he's not surprised, and he's doing that *thing* that relatives do when your queerness is something that's known but never really discussed, where the conversation is loaded with dead spots and detours and this weirdly elliptical way of talking about it without talking about it, of trying to convey acceptance and utter helplessness at the same time. David doesn't know what to do with his angry, withdrawn, unreachable brother at the very *best* of times, and right now it's the very worst of times and he sure as fuck doesn't know what to do with his angry, withdrawn, unreachable gay brother. He's every family in the fucking world that wants to love the queer sheep among them, but doesn't know what to say or how to be or what to do with any of this. It's so right there; it's so stunningly recognizeable and painful and sympathetic and sad.
And John knows it. He's watching David struggle and he knows exactly how he looks through his brother's eyes -- has probably looked long before this, given how not shocked David appears by this development -- and he can't say anything. Whether he is or isn't queer, it's not going to work to jump in and be all This Isn't What It Looks Like; obviously you can't do that, you'd look ridiculous. You'd look gay AND insane. He can't respond to what David doesn't say, so as long as David doesn't say anything, they're at the same old impasse, having the same non-conversation that John has probably been having with his family in one way or another his whole life. Even if they're wrong and John is as straight as a ruler, he's obviously still imprisoned in this long drama of nobody understanding and nobody able to address it honestly enough to get on the same page. That's bad enough. And that's only if they're wrong. If they're right, the situation is clearly compounded a hundred times over; it becomes that much more impossible in every way.
Like I said. Of all the Very Special Episodes I've seen, all the queer-friendly cable programming, all the Buffys and Torchwoods and Homicides out there, this one scene hit me in a way that nothing else has. Sheppard standing there, not knowing what to say about who he really is, someone who wants to love him standing there, unwilling to reject him but still incapable of pretending this doesn't change what he sees when he looks at Sheppard. Jesus Christ. I don't even know what to say. It would be, for me, the rawest, most incisive queer moment I've ever seen on television, whether or not Sheppard's ever been with a man or ever wanted to. Either way, that moment is still genuine. Either way, it still literally stole my breath.
So did I like the episode? I dunno, you tell me. *g* Let's say yes.
I'm just basically too tired -- currently and in a larger, existential kind of way -- to get into how pissed off the replicator plotlines make me all over again. I've said it before, it's not a shock to anyone who reads these things on a regular basis, they've never made any kind of case for why exactly the replicators aren't a sentient species. They haven't done it chiefly because it can't *be* done: THE REPLICATORS ARE CLEARLY A SENTIENT SPECIES. They want things, they fear things, they care about continuing to exist, they reflect on who and what they are, they feel affection and regret and carry grudges and make moral decisions. They're fucking people by any rational standard, and our heroes have been offing them right and left since the goddamn day we met them in Progeny, which is still the most vile and offensive episode of any tv show I've ever liked ever. And I was an Oz fan.
So, whatever. Whatever, I give. Who cares, I'm tired. Dr. Frankenstein creates a person and then tries to kill him off so he doesn't get caught and get in trouble. The person in question reacts PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY LIKE YOU WOULD, if you were in his position: he escapes, he goes to ground, he tries to disappear. And he kills some guys in the process, and if you say you wouldn't do the same thing under those circumstances, I'm not sure I believe you, and if you say *Sheppard* wouldn't do the same thing I fucking KNOW you're making shit up. But somehow this proves that he's some kind of crazy renegade, so we can't wrap the episode up until we set him on fire. Whatever.
So we spend the whole episode chasing down this poor bastard who was built as a "military model" with a desire to continue living -- essentially a soldier who's become a liability and was about to be disposed of -- and I continue not to understand in what fucking universe this show takes place where I'm supposed to see *us* as the sympathetic characters here. I mean, obviously, given the situation at the point where Sheppard and Ronon enter it, I don't even know *what* you'd do -- everything has already gone to shit by then and there pretty much is no good solution. But that means that by the time they've introduced the plot at the fifteen minute mark, they've already guaranteed that anything and everything that happens from there on out is going to make me unhappy. Maybe letting the guy go wasn't viable; having our heroes head up his execution squad wasn't especially entertaining for me to watch. Lose/lose situation, aka MADE OF FAIL.
(I don't know if you were supposed to or not, but I found the scene with Dr. Frankenstein and the replicator in the warehouse really wrenching, as he tries to convince this guy to submit to his own destruction by promising that it would totally be like every other time before, and the Dr. would be there to help him come right back, just like before. Could he possibly have been delusional enough to believe that's what was going to happen, or was it just an outright attempt to manipulate and betray his frightened creation in order to prevent more combat casualties? Either version is kind of agonizing, in its own way. It actually reminded me very intensely of the climactic scene in *Alpha Dog,* which I cannot possibly explain to those who haven't seen it without a lot of convoluted crap that still won't really convey it, but if any of you have seen it, wasn't it basically exactly like that scene? I mean, a cut-rate, bargain-basement version of that scene, but in essence, the same scene. Except in *Alpha Dog,* they expect you to realize that something overtly horrific is happening and to be furious and shocked and saddened by it. Also, they don't set Anton Yelchin on fucking fire at the end of that movie, which in retrospect, I appreciate about it.)
So, you know, in that way that only ever happens on SGA, outside of the utter assholery of the plot, I kind of liked the episode.
Oh, they wasted almost every opportunity, don't get me wrong. WTF was with getting like a minute and a half with his brother? I thought the entire point of the episode was supposed to be dealing with John's estrangement from his family (hence the flippin' title of the episode). I mean, it was a *great* minute and a half -- both scenes with his brother were very well done, incredibly fraught and fragile and agonizing with the weight of all the terrible things they've both quietly been thinking about each other all these years: John that David and his father were relieved to be rid of him and that he was being made unwelcome because of the life he chose to lead, David that John fucked off and didn't give a damn what happened to any of them as long as he got to fulfill his own dreams, then bounced right back in when there was a chance he could collect some money without the hassle of making up with his dad. It's particularly awesome because, well, we don't know what David and PopShep did or said to convince John of the first, but we know exactly why David feels the way he does, and it's not in the slightest bit unreasonable. John very deliberately chose, over and over again, to be as absent as humanly possible from his family. Whether he felt he was driven to it or not, he chose that, just as much as Rodney chose to be absent from Jeannie's life.
Only of course Rodney gets a whole episode where he's castigated for that choice until he sees the error of his ways and tries to make amends, and John gets like one and a half minutes and God knows what going on off-screen at the end credits. I truly do not understand why John Sheppard, the ostensible hero of the fucking series, can't have his own "McKay and Mrs. Miller."
I think what the episode does do well with John is kind of hold a mirror up to him, to show him and us what he looks like to these people he's let down. With his brother it's complicated by whatever the fuck happened between John and his father; with Nancy it's complicated by the secrecy of his job. In both cases, though, what you have is total radio silence from John -- an inability to give, a deep unwillingness to speak, a man that, no matter how much you love him, is impossible to reach.
The other thing the episode does well is to show that, at heart, John hasn't changed all that much. He's still unwilling to speak with Rodney or with Ronon -- two people who, just like his father and his wife apparently did, would fucking love one thin chance to be there for him, to be allowed to be generous with all this love they have for him. But John doesn't allow that. He never has, and he's not starting now. It's enough to break your heart.
And OH MY GOD THEY LOVE HIM SO MUCH. And they know, they know he's like this. When Rodney asks if he wants to talk, it's obvious before the words are out of his mouth that he *knows* John isn't going to talk with him, but he's Rodney, so what's in his head comes out his mouth; he has to ask, even knowing it's a doomed effort. And Ronon is Ronon, and he knows just as well that it's just so much wasted breath, and he's not a fan of wasting breath, so he hovers all through the episode, present and worried and wanting to offer comfort just as much as Rodney does and no better equipped than Rodney to win John's acceptance of it. THEY BOTH LOVE HIM SO MUCH. It's probably a good thing that Rachel's off having her wee baby, because I don't know if I could have SURVIVED a Team Love hat-trick.
They know he's like this. They know and they love him anyway -- but so did his father and so did his wife, and look how that turned out, and John really hasn't changed at all since then, and it's so fucking depressing, so it's a good thing I like fucking depressing stories. What's awesome, however, and what makes me not *suicidal* over this episode is that even though neither Rodney nor Ronon can figure out how to make John submit to being loved, they are very, very good at one thing, and that's refusing to ask his permission. I LOVE -- I can't even say how much I LOVE the fact that neither of them asked John if he wanted them to go with him. Rodney went to apply for permission to go before he ever went to see John; he just *did* it, he didn't ask. And Ronon didn't even bother to warn John in advance he was coming, which conveniently saved him a boring and pointless conversation where John said you don't have to, it's fine, and Ronon said, shut up, I'm doing it anyway. He just cut straight to the inevitable conclusion. Ronon, once more, not a fan of the wasted breath. *g* But the salient point is that they both made plans to do this for John without giving a good goddamn what John had to say about it, which is a terrible way to treat normal human beings but a fucking survival skill when you're trying to be John Sheppard's friend. They both rock my world.
And Ronon was underused in this episode, which became vastly more about Ava Dixon than I think anyone could ever be expected to care about (I liked her as a character, but am really having a hard time getting past how she ate John's backstory episode, dammit), but he still does what he does incredibly well -- peeling John open just a little, tiny, microscopically incremental piece at a time with gentle questions about the house, about his father, about why he does the things he does. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing like the catharsis I would have liked to see, but the cool thing about Ronon is that he never seems the slightest bit impatient. You get the feeling that he's already guessed that this is a serious long-term project, this thing he's working on building around himself and John, and that he's going to take absolutely as much time as the job requires. If it takes fifty years, Ronon will be right there, asking the next question, coaxing the next genuine answer out of John. It's not the slightest surprise to me that every time John has deliberately revealed something about his emotional life and his past on this show, it's been in conversation with Ronon. Ronon doesn't push him so hard it's scary for John, and he doesn't let up long enough for John to wriggle away. John remains 99.44% impenetrable mess, but Ronon has the closest thing we've yet seen to a viable strategy for dealing with it. If only I could believe that it *won't* take the next fifty years.
I think there's a lot I want to say about Nancy, but I don't have it all together yet, and I'm not even sure if I want to say it in commentary or if I want to cut straight ahead and write fic -- so either way, I'll get back to you on that. *g*
The other thing I want to say -- hell, the ONE THING that I really want to say, the thing that affected me most about the episode -- I don't even know. I don't know what *to* say about it, I'm caught totally flat-footed and I can't even describe my response adequately. The ONE THING that matters most to me about this episode is that moment when he introduces Ronon to his brother, which I swear to fucking God, is probably the most resonant queer moment I've ever seen on television. (Resonant for me, that is. I'm not saying every queer person will see it this way at all -- I know I'm way more into subjective territory here even than usual, but hey, it's my journal, yeah?)
It doesn't matter if Sheppard is a queer character. It doesn't matter if he's involved with Ronon in any way. That's utterly irrelevant to this scene. What matters is that HIS BROTHER CLEARLY THINKS HE IS, and John *knows* that his brother thinks he is. David's not remotely surprised that John shows up at a major family event with a ridiculously beautiful man whom he can only identify vaguely as someone who works with him. David isn't quite sure what to *say* about it, but he's not surprised, and he's doing that *thing* that relatives do when your queerness is something that's known but never really discussed, where the conversation is loaded with dead spots and detours and this weirdly elliptical way of talking about it without talking about it, of trying to convey acceptance and utter helplessness at the same time. David doesn't know what to do with his angry, withdrawn, unreachable brother at the very *best* of times, and right now it's the very worst of times and he sure as fuck doesn't know what to do with his angry, withdrawn, unreachable gay brother. He's every family in the fucking world that wants to love the queer sheep among them, but doesn't know what to say or how to be or what to do with any of this. It's so right there; it's so stunningly recognizeable and painful and sympathetic and sad.
And John knows it. He's watching David struggle and he knows exactly how he looks through his brother's eyes -- has probably looked long before this, given how not shocked David appears by this development -- and he can't say anything. Whether he is or isn't queer, it's not going to work to jump in and be all This Isn't What It Looks Like; obviously you can't do that, you'd look ridiculous. You'd look gay AND insane. He can't respond to what David doesn't say, so as long as David doesn't say anything, they're at the same old impasse, having the same non-conversation that John has probably been having with his family in one way or another his whole life. Even if they're wrong and John is as straight as a ruler, he's obviously still imprisoned in this long drama of nobody understanding and nobody able to address it honestly enough to get on the same page. That's bad enough. And that's only if they're wrong. If they're right, the situation is clearly compounded a hundred times over; it becomes that much more impossible in every way.
Like I said. Of all the Very Special Episodes I've seen, all the queer-friendly cable programming, all the Buffys and Torchwoods and Homicides out there, this one scene hit me in a way that nothing else has. Sheppard standing there, not knowing what to say about who he really is, someone who wants to love him standing there, unwilling to reject him but still incapable of pretending this doesn't change what he sees when he looks at Sheppard. Jesus Christ. I don't even know what to say. It would be, for me, the rawest, most incisive queer moment I've ever seen on television, whether or not Sheppard's ever been with a man or ever wanted to. Either way, that moment is still genuine. Either way, it still literally stole my breath.
So did I like the episode? I dunno, you tell me. *g* Let's say yes.