Aquarium 2.15 -- Tower commentary

[hth]

WTFing F?

Seriously, guys. I put up with a lot from this show. I’m not asking for medals or merit badges or anything like that – I got myself into this and I continue of my own free will; I take full responsibility. But I mean, seriously. Can I just – do they have to – what did I ever – why do they hate me so much? Am I being punished for something? Is this because I won’t stop calling the show Stargate: Aquarium?

So this is The Tower of Terror. Everything about this episode just hurts my feelings.

Should McKay be grabbing the blade of a rusty scythe like that? I think he’s read the script, and he’s already decided that death by tetanus is preferable to being in the rest of this episode. I do think that Rodney should go to the Atlantis Halloween party as the Grim Reaper, however. The costume is easy, and it would be therapeutic. Other people could fear his inevitable, remorseless descent upon them as they innocently go about their business and– Oh, wait.

If they haven’t even been through introductions yet, did somebody give Sheppard that not-potato to peel and eat while they wait, or did he just bogart it from that house? I do like that he passes his potato on to Ronon once they’re on the move again, however, and Ronon kind of tosses it in his hand. I realize this is a pretty small moment, but you know what? If I’m going to sit through a whole hour of this, again, in order to recap it for y’all, I need to take whatever I can get. Ronon is cute when he’s tossing John’s potato, dammit! (And that sounded kind of dirty. Ah, once more, the shadow of gay porn salvages the nigh-unsalvageable television disaster. It’s like being a Sentinel fan all over again.)

Is that chicken literally the first animal we’ve seen on this show? I’ve often noticed that the Villages and Woodlands they hike through seem weirdly devoid of megafauna of any kind – probably because animal handlers are expensive and they blow most of their budget on the crack the writers shoot into their eyeballs before they get down to the day’s business.

Teyla, reduced to the John Sheppard school of negotiating: “Can we have what we want for no particular reason? I’m adorable! Look, I’m smiling because I like you!” He’s such a bad influence on an otherwise perfectly rational woman.

And now, for this week’s digression, we shall talk about McKay! (I know, and I will accept your flowers and cards of gratitude.) Something I think is fun about McKay’s character is that he is the walking, talking, living, breathing incarnation of the Enlightenment, for better and for worse. He believes in a strictly rational universe where all mystery is due to be eliminated just any second now (thanks to the intrepid work of people like him and his associates – mostly him), and he blames most human misery on human irrationality but seems to take no pleasure at all from the happier aspects of human irrationality (with the arguable exception of his thing for Star Trek) – in fact, he seems frequently baffled by things like faith, altruism, and pointless hobbies. He’s unbelievably culturally imperialist with a linear view of history (which admittedly the Stargate universe tends to support), wherein all cultures are on an inexorable march from the darkness of ignorance and savagery to civilization via the miracle of the scientific method – but on the other hand, he’s highly democratic and fair-minded, the kind of person who expects any hierarchies to be strictly based on merit (I wonder if that sense of promotion through merit is part of why he seems so comfortable with the military – in spite of a fanon sense that he has some kind of problem with the military, he chose to work there for many years rather than academia or private enterprise, and I always thought his choice to call Sheppard by his military title showed a certain ingrained respect for that type of structure). He’s that entire philosophical movement writ large, and I think I have the exact same mix of gratitude for him and skepticism toward him that I have toward, well, the Enlightenment. You just wouldn’t want to imagine life without him, but on the other hand, you’re profoundly glad he’s not the only game in town.

I like Ronon’s slouchy, are-we-really-working-today-or-what? posture. Is this Sheppard’s influence, too? Is the whole team just slowly turning into John and the Sheppards?

I find it hard to take Sheppard’s heroics seriously while he’s wearing those sunglasses. Whose idea were those sunglasses, and why after all this time has he not lost them on some adventure somewhere? Does he have an endless supply of those ugly sunglasses? Does the Daedalus bring them in by the crate?

We know he’s the bad guy, because of the British accent. I think they’re subject to a fine of some kind if they skip a cliche in this episode.

Teyla just used a contraction – “We didn’t exactly have much of a choice.” Is this because she’s rattled – is this like the Teyla equivalent of “shut the fuck up, Rodney”? Or, wait, is it possible the writing just sucks and everybody temporarily forgot that for the last thirty-five episodes, she hasn’t been doing that?

I love those tack-ass Renaissance Faire banners. The *extra* crack required to write this episode meant they had to cut back a little bit on set decorations.

So, can the Atlantis chair do that too? Can Sheppard (or whoever) see anyplace in the city, on the planet with his brain? Why isn’t there more porn about *that*?

Possibly the best moment in the episode is Ronon being the final holdout for this hand-holding business. I love how awkward and repressed everyone on this show is; I’ve been watching a lot of West Wing reruns lately (courtesy of the good and generous cesperanza, who sent me 2nd and 3rd seasons on tape), and the men on that show have their own raft of emotional problems, God knows, but I keep being amazed by how much they touch each other. They’re forever hugging and pounding each other on the back and shoulders in sympathy or congratulations or whatever, and it struck me all over again how noticeable it is that the characters on Atlantis, in spite of having constant reasons to, never do that kind of thing. The only hug I can remember on Atlantis is in Hot Zone, when Ford sort of inflicts hugs on Beckett and I think somebody else, and Zelenka and McKay act for a second like they think they should hug and then abandon the notion. It’s a really funny little bit, like the hand-holding here, and I think it just goes to show how well Ronon fits in around here.

I have to confess, I was feeling very smug after this dinner scene. This is exactly the Sheppard I expect to see when women are involved. I like how sweet he is to the bimbo; she’s publically insulted and looks upset about it, so he’s immediately all like, “Hey, don’t worry about that! You can be my friend, okay?” Because Sheppard is just a big old sugar cookie and can’t resist being sweet to somebody who looks all deflated like that. Then the woman on the other side grabs his ass, and we get possibly the best reaction shot of the season – Sheppard’s shock and horror at being molested. It can’t happen to him that often, at least not in this form: I’m as much Sheppard’s girl as the next person, but he hasn’t got much of an ass.

Okay, you know what else is cute about Ronon? (I realize that I’m at risk of turning these commentaries into the weekly Top Forty Things That Are Cute About Ronon, but let’s be honest, in an episode like this, I only have so much to hang onto to justify why I watch this show at all, and Ronon? Is most of them.) The little smile he gives the girl who tries to refill his drink, and how he kind of checks her out as she leaves. I realize SGA doesn’t like to tell us very much about everyone’s sex lives – and truthfully I’m grateful as hell, because that’s one very important detail I don’t have to worry about them fucking up irreparably – but, God, I hope that boy is getting laid eight ways from Sunday. I hope his voice always sounds kind of raspy like that because every single time we see him on screen, he’s just rolled out of bed, and he’s a screamer. I mean, I don’t think that’s more than the universe owes him, do you?

Oh, and SPEAKING of getting laid.

Okay, here’s what I have to say about the Extraterrestrial Superheterosexual Adventures of Lt. Colonel John Sheppard: I give up. Seriously, I quit. I quit! You win, SGA. Because every time I spend my valuable time going through these episodes over and over again, analyzing text and subtext and context and acting choices and writing choices and directing choices in search of a defensible unified theory of a character’s motives and the way they deal with various situations, I end up wondering, what exactly was the fucking point of that?, at right about the time when canon makes the characters do some other goddamn thing for no apparent reason. Why do I even work this hard to make sense out of it? Why can’t I just do the same thing the professionals do and make these people act however I please for whatever I want them to do in my story?

Although there are a couple of cute things about the scene. (I really can’t help being this way; I swear I try really hard to stay bitter, but I am sort of a weak person.) Of course his little thing about never seeing this coming is adorable, and it does jibe with me, because I have always had that sense that when he’s being schmoozy, he’s not actually thinking about getting anywhere and it’s not technically about sex. On a quirkier note, I like when she asks him if there’s anything wrong with the room, and he looks around and says in this totally impressed voice, “No! No, it’s great” – not in a polite way, but like he’s actually bowled over by that ugly harem bedroom and can’t imagine what he could possibly ask for to improve on it. I don’t know what’s up with that, but I found it kind of adorable.

Now, the down-side of the scene? What the fuck? Even if I were willing to completely renounce my theory that Sheppard finds being in sexual situations with strangers profoundly uncomfortable, or to say that naked girl-parts trump said profound discomfort in the final analysis, I still maintain that almost any man in the world, no matter how much of a horndog he is (temporarily, today, from out of nowhere), would find it creepy to be propositioned with “I want your babies! And then you can stay forever and be married to me and be the king of this crappy place with no airplanes or spaceships whatsoever!” Sheppard, if he were being Sheppard, and not ridiculous, implausible Tower!Sheppard? Would have been out of that room so fast there would have been architectural changes in the shape of his hair. (If you’ve ever seen the movie Peter’s Friends, I defy you to watch this episode again and not think of Emma Thompson dropping her robe and saying “Fill me up with your little babies!” And if you haven’t ever seen Peter’s Friends, I advise you to do so forthwith, because it is a great movie in the bittersweet British romantic comedy tradition, not unlike Four Weddings and a Funeral or Love Actually, except with Rita Rudner and Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson back when they were still married. Two thumbs up.)

I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you can really tell from television or if it’s all just Hollywood (and by Hollywood I mean Vancouver) magic, but from over here? Sheppard looks like a really good kisser. I’m a little bit impressed. But not enough to make me not want to spork my eyes out over the very existence of this whole silly business.

Yeah, yeah, the Force is strong with this one. I don’t know who once said that Sheppard was Han Solo forced against his will to be Luke Skywalker, but whoever that was wins at fandom, because there will never again be a metaphor quite that apt.

Ronon! Being all gentlemanly and volunteering to carry heavy things for the small men around him!

I like how oddly little irony Rodney seems to use when saying “my trusty guide.” I think most of us would have said it with a certain amount of ironic distance, or at least verbal air-quotes, but not Rodney. And then he gets his little White Man’s Burden moment knocked out of him by said trusty guide, which is freaking hilarious. “I thought it was a superstition thing....” Hee, yeah, Rodney, because why would they know anything about their own planet that you don’t already know? You’re such a colonialist pig.

The theme for the second half of this season has been, and will continue to be even more so, our heroes blithely offer to (and/or insist upon) profoundly transform an alien society about which they know about three hours’ worth of circumstantial information, and then are startled and confused when the offer is not so much appreciated. You know, I’ve always been very disdainful about the Prime Directive, but they’re starting to make it look good. Can’t we interfere when we, oh, know the situation and the players and have some intelligence of our own – by which I mean the Intergalactic Intelligence Community kind of intelligence, and also just the opposite-of-stupidity kind? I mean, he could have suggested that he might possibly have a way to induce the effects of the gene within some kind of context of knowing who Poor Man’s Ben Kingsley does support for the position, rather than being all like, “You know how you’ve devoted your life to the service of this particular form of government which is the only kind you know? What if I knocked the whole thing down and replaced it with, I don’t know, anarchy or whatever? Would that be cool with you?” Because, yeah, people love that. And you thought we were mismanaging Iraq.

Technically no? There’s really only one exit door from an important control-room section of Atlantis? That’s just a fire hazard. The Ancients are such bad parents.

Here’s another theory I have about Ronon. (I sometimes worry that I romanticize him, because of how I LOVE HIM SO MUCH IT HURTS TO BREATHE, but hey, it’s a beautiful world in my head, so what the hell.) I think he’s very, very, very intensely affected by the idea of the strong preying on the weak – and I don’t know if that’s part of some kind of code of honor he learned in his own culture, or if that comes more out of his own experiences being turned loose unarmed (having gone over the flashbacks in Runner many times now, it’s fairly clear to me that he isn’t carrying the ubergun or the sword or anything at all in the first shots of him being turned loose by the Wraith – in fact, he seems to be wearing Wraith clothing, which strikes me as kind of niftily creepy) and hunted down by large numbers of people with guns and spaceships and regenerative powers and the ability to kill by touch. But in addition to this little bit here where he’s all “pick on somebody your own size, motherfucker,” whenever I watch his fight scene with Ford in Runner, it strikes me that he really seems *pissed off* at Ford, particularly when he’s been forearmed with the information that he’s supposed to be bringing the guy back to these people who he’s sort of allied himself with, which should mean that he doesn’t view Ford as somebody he needs to kill savagely, and yet he kind of looks like he wants to kill Ford savagely. Now, you could read that as Ronon’s semi-feral state after all these years living at the animal level, and I did read it that way for a while, but there’s another take that interests me, wherein he’s pissed off at Ford because he’s clearly getting ready to kill this unarmed person who’s hanging helplessly from a tree begging for his life, and Ronon really hates that kind of shit. I’m just throwing it out there; it might be a bit of a longshot, but wouldn’t it be great? It also puts a fabulous (and by fabulous, I mean “satisfying for all five of us with a Ronon/Rodney kink”) spin on the arc of Ronon’s first season, where he begins and ends it putting himself bodily between a helpless Rodney and mortal danger – which I probably shouldn’t have said since that’s a bit of a spoiler for Allies, but. A vague one? And it’s too fabulous to delete; I just can’t bear to.

And water-pitcher girl/damsel in distress is the first villager who shows some backbone; now you know Ronon is turned on by her, and I hope they fuck each other’s brains out immediately after this episode is over. It’d be a shame to waste all that near-death adrenaline.

Perhaps it’s foolish even to bring this up, but for the record, I just want to say that Princess Fertile has evidenced absolutely no qualities that anyone would find endearing, unless you count her tits, and while it’s probably supposed to seem honorable that Sheppard doesn’t want to abandon his fiancee-by-lack-of-refusal-to-marry-her, I think it just makes him look like a yutz, because there’s nothing to differentiate her from any of the other people they’re abandoning, unless you count Sheppard having seen her tits.

And oh, by the way, she’s a co-conspirator. I know, it’s shocking! I mean, I was shocked. You think you know a person....

Another random reference: when the Squire of Gothos is all like, “Do I look like somebody who knows things about poisons or whatnot?” I had a brief but delightful flashback to the British Queer as Folk, with Stuart playing the fragile twink and being all, “Darling, I don’t know how to boil an egg; how the fuck am I going to blow up a car?” Which, if you haven’t seen it, he totally did blow up the car. Also, if you haven’t seen it, damn do you ever not know what you’re missing. (McKay is kind of like the horribly misbegotten love child of Stuart and Vince, isn’t he? If he tragically inherited Stuart’s self-importance and Vince’s babbling nerdiness?)

Poor Man’s Ben Kingsley slaps the Squire for implying that he’s a dumb motherfucker for being easily swayed by his bimbo sister’s availability. Sheppard does not appear to have the sense to notice that he should be insulted.

I love the entire Teyla/Rodney scene, but particularly her eye-roll at the very end. I adore the way Rachel uses her face as an actress, I really do. She’s too fabulous. Also, there should totally be more Teyla/Rodney fic out there. They’re completely mismatched! What about that doesn’t say “awkward, needy, semi-ashamed but unbelievably hot sex that we don’t want to talk about but by no means intend to stop having”?

Was there any point on earth to the scene with PMBK settling into the throne chair, other than the chance to deliver one of the cheesiest stock villain lines of all fucking time?

Here is what I really, really don’t understand about this episode. Now that we know that the Squire didn’t actually poison his father (at least, given that he accused PMBK, who more or less admitted to it) and apparently hasn’t committed any crime at all, other than dressing like a wedding cake and being a lot more British than any of our heroes, why, Mother of God, why do they lock him back in the jail cell with an Ancient city crumbling on top of his head? I mean, I get that they aren’t going to bother escorting him to safety, but can’t they at least leave the door open and let him take his chances? I guess it’s possible that the door isn’t locked, but then, what would be the point of closing it behind them, or of Carson apologizing? What the hell do they have against this poor schmoe that merits leaving him trapped like a rat, when it actually takes less time not to close the door on their way out? I’ve seen this episode four times now, and I’m devoutly hoping this will be the last go-around, so I’m unlikely to figure this out on my own. If anyone can make sense out of this, please, I’m pining to know.

Teyla is too well-bred to say it out loud, but that look she gives Ronon as the drones head toward them is totally “This is your fault, you know.” Hee. Well, she’s not the one who’s gonna be getting it on with the water-pitcher girl tonight, now, is she?

Is it just me, or does PMBK’s death scene remind anyone else of Tim Curry’s in Clue?

Elizabeth, like most of us, totally thinks John is gay. That’s why she sounds so befuddled when she says, “You got the girl?” There has been some debate about whether John “turning down” Princess Fertile means that he fought her off at the time, or that he declined to bring her home to Atlantis as his trophy. I frankly don’t give a damn; it’s a terrible episode either way. I have so little willingness to live after sitting through this damn thing for the fourth time, I literally just don’t fucking care where John puts his dick – and this is very unlike me! That’s what I spend most of my time caring about! Also, what does it mean that they offered to “help them find a new way of running things, when the time comes”? When the hell is the time? Who’s in charge now? Also, instead of just saying that he turned the job of King of BizarroAtlantis down, wouldn’t it have been great if he’d said, “Are you kidding? I’m already in charge of way, way too many people for the safety of this galaxy. Have I mentioned I’m just a pilot?”

This episode is so bad I didn’t even want to marry McKay *once* during the course of it; therefore I have to turn in my Heather Hearts McKay moment unredeemed this week. I don’t want to marry *any* of these morons, although don’t worry, I would totally still sleep with Ronon – I’m traumatized, not possessed.

Comments

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Holy god, I just had a flashback to OZ and Ryan O'Reily and his Tackass Boudoir o' Lurve in that fantasy fuck with Gloria.

Bwah! It totally is the same bedroom! OMG, fucking men. What's *wrong* with them?

Although, hey, doesn't it intrigue you even a little bit, the idea that Ryan and John may share a, let's say, *compatible* sense of what's a turn-on? Because it kinda does me.