a few words about "Be All My Sins Remember'd"

[hth]

Overall I thought it was pretty dull, but then I inevitably feel that way about the later parts of their multi-part episodes. They did that thing where they just kind of threw everything and the kitchen sink at the plotline and ran around like chickens with their heads cut off for an hour, so that things that you'd imagine might have some genuine weight -- Atlantis forging an alliance with the Travellers, Rodney and Radek getting into the AI biz -- only got about two and a half minutes of screen-time. It's especially a letdown after "This Mortal Coil," which managed to kick the Replicator plotline forward and still also be a good story about something difficult happening to people and what they do about it. Oh, season 4, why are you sometimes so freaking good and sometimes...you know, you again?

I do think, awkwardly dropped into the middle of the episode as it was, the John/Teyla/Ronon pregnancy scene was great. (I love how cliquey the three of them are together. There should be a million times more threesome fic with them than there is.) OBVIOUSLY John flipped out and yelled about it. There was roughly a 99.992% chance that John was going to flip out and yell. (I started a story, ages ago, about Teyla getting pregnant. It's been so badly jossed in so many ways by now that I'll probably never finish it, but take my word for it, I had John yelling at her, too. It's a GIMME, characterization-wise.) I do kind of wish the writers had let her yell back at him, because Teyla really shouldn't be the kind of person you can bully around that way -- but at the same time, I'm willing to buy it, because I can see her being just so startled that her dear friend, who's normally this lazy, laid-back kind of guy, is all of a sudden about to blow a gasket. It could take a few minutes to process that and bounce back, I suppose.

And then of course Ronon was AWESOME, because alone among the entire cast of this show, Ronon is actually at his best when someone around him is in emotional distress and needs a warm, comforting presence -- for the very reason that he's the guy who can go check up on Rodney after Carson's death and quietly try to convince him that this isn't Rodney's fault, of course he's the guy who can stay by Teyla's side and quietly try to convince her that Sheppard's just being dumb and that actually, this is kind of neat and it's okay to be happy about it. He should totally be her lamaze coach.

The new all-time winner of the Bizarre Line-Reading Decisions by the Flan has got to be at the end when he says "all's right with the world," or however he phrases that. Because he doesn't sound snarky, he sounds INSANE. He sounds like he's about to go on a shooting spree from the spires of Atlantis. And, you know, I could buy that he's really feeling that stressed, but it's weird because *the rest* of the scene doesn't really feel like he is. More and more, I come to believe that John has *no idea* what he's feeling at any given moment, that he just doesn't even have a mental vocabulary to use on the big ball of undifferentiated Feelings he keeps in the pit of his stomach. He doesn't really know the difference between "angry" and "scared" and "helpless" and "lonely" and "hungry," so whenever he feels any of them, he just heads down to the cafeteria and gets a sandwich. It's easiest, and sometimes it fixes the problem!

Oh, John. You make life so difficult on both of us.

Comments

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

My unpopular fannish opinion?

John had every right to flip out.

Teyla lied to him--not just as a friend, but as her team leader. She had information that could have affected her ability to respond in a combat situation, and she deliberately concealed that from him.

Yes, she says that she tried to tell him, but someone needs to smack the writers upside the head until they understand that from the audience's point of view, if we don't see it, then it didn't happen. If Teyla had tried to tell John and he blew her off, then show that. Speaking of which, I'd bet money that we'll never see Teyla or anyone else telling Rodney--next episode, he'll just know.

It also makes a lot of sense to me that John's fucked up more than usual. He's just had it confirmed that Elizabeth is dead, and being John, he's probably beating himself up for not disobeying Sam and trying to go off after Elizabeth after episode 3. He's also recently made a seriously questionable ethical decision that's probably keeping him up nights. And to top it all off, he's gone from being the top-ranking military guy on Atlantis to having Sam and now Ellis and Caldwell, both of whom outrank him and one of whom wanted his job.

Of course, the writers can't mention any of that ever again, because that would mean character development was more than just filler, but I like to think that after everything that's happened this season, John's stretched to the breaking point. Since he never knows how to deal with that, he ignores it--it'll sort out eventually, right? Right? Hey, Rodney, let's go eat!

Why do I think that Rodney's not the one eating because he's unhappy...

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

You're right, I bet that is an unpopular fannish opinion. *g*

It's my general philosophy that when a woman is dealing with an unexpected and problematic pregnancy (and I think her discomfort as she told him should have *clearly* revealed that she was unhappy and conflicted about the situation), yelling at her is not on. It's a bad deal all around; it's a real issue. And John is not *just* her boss, he's a guy who has told her in the past that he thinks of her as family, ergo I think he's a person she might reasonably have expected to be *concerned* about her before he went straight to "well, this makes my job a hell of a lot harder, doesn't it?" Or at least to ask at some point what she needed.

Now, that being said, I do think everything you've said about the stresses John is under is dead right, and I don't find it hard to believe that he *is* upset about a lot of things, and that this coming on top of it would just seem like too damn much to deal with. I also think that John's overprotectiveness would be sent into fucking *orbit,* faced with the possibility of being responsible not just for the fates of his soldiers and grown, volunteer scientists, but with the responsibility for making sure nothing bad happened to a *baby* on Atlantis. There's no way that wasn't going to make his head explode.

But that makes it reasonable that he would flip out, which is not the same thing as giving him the *right* to.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

But that makes it reasonable that he would flip out, which is not the same thing as giving him the *right* to.

Fair enough. I should have rephrased that: it's understandable for him to have flipped out. She lied to him, and I have a certain amount of sympathy for his anger over that, because that's the one thing I find hard to forgive myself.

What's puzzling about it all is that I thought all along that it was uncharacteristic of Teyla to handle it that way. The reveal, in particular--I'm sorry, but I do think that it was as much the way she did it as the news itself that made John flip like that, and that was her fault (or the writers, because what the hell was that?) They just got back from a mission, for crying out loud, and got stunned and are trying to plan a fucking battle, and she picks that moment to casually toss over her shoulder, "Oh yeah--did I mention I'm pregnant?"

I said in my journal that this episode should have been "Everyone But Ronon Acts Like A Complete Moron". Both Teyla and John are certainly included in that. I almost wonder if there was some subconcious stuff going on around the fact that the writers apparently were less than thrilled when Rachel kind of blindsided them, and John's reacting in the way that they wanted to react when told that one of their lead actresses, who's known for kicking ass and looking really hot in her midriff-baring tops, was pregnant.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree.

Frankly, *no one* besides the woman and the baby daddy get to react by flipping out. *No one*. Even if you want to, a *lot*. You may (if you're good) get to flip out at her later -- or go off and flip out with a friend, that's certainly OK -- but you may not start by flipping out. No matter what. Even if she's a drug addict, even if she's 14, even if she has cancer. Supportive first, flip out later.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned above, upon further reflection, I don't think John was right, but I do think it was understandable. Pregnant or not, Teyla handled that very badly, and I honestly don't think it would have been believable for him to just smile and say, "Congratulations!"

I guess I look at it and think about how I'd feel if someone that I was responsible for, and that I considered a friend, had lied to me--and that is what she did--and then sprung something on me like that, after I'd just been injured and she had as well. John reacted badly, but I'm sorry: Teyla handled it very badly.