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

[witling.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the standout scene was the Teyla reveal. I loved Ronon and John's responses--it's particularly nice to see Ronon get to do something other than look grim and warlike. Momoa has a beautiful smile (sez I). Nice to see it.

John, on the other hand--yes, we saw that blowup coming. Abrupt revelations don't sit well with him, particularly when he doesn't have Rodney there to step in and technobabble them down a notch. I sincerely hope there's going to be an apology scene in John's future, after he's had some time to kick it and brood about what a jerk he was to his good friend and ally.

Agreed, it would have been nice if they'd written Teyla's response a bit stronger. I'm willing to let it go, as long as they revisit this at some point. (And I guess they're going to have to, since I think Luttrell is in basically the whole season, expanding steadily.)

I have no idea why JFlan emotes the way he does. We actually rewound a couple of times in his scenes with the Truly Awful Laren. The scene where she points her breasts at him, and he basically flinches, and then the one in the meeting where she hits on him in front of everyone and he gives her this look that's totally transparently Oh God ew what the fuck who are you do I have to? He looks trapped and miserable and uncomfortable, even when he's flirting (?) with her in the last scenes. Compare with how he is with Rodney, a scene later--relaxed, at-ease, familiar (if somewhat stilted, yeah.) Srsly, JFlan, the hell? Is one of those complex Sheppard backstories in your head the one where Sheppard is GAYGAYGAY?

Not that I'd be complaining, if it were. I just wish they'd stop throwing Laren and Katy Brown at us in a desperate attempt to straighten the place up.

Anyway, yeah. The Teyla reveal was great--I've forgotten everything else already.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

His smile is pretty killer. *g* Something I've noticed about Ronon is that he has a very distinct mission-mode and an at-home mode. In the offworld episodes, he tends to be gruff and suspicious (not usually unjustified, given what happens in all the offworld episodes!), and I think those are the episodes, with the hand-to-hand combat and whatnot, where people notice him most. However, if you watch him in the episodes where he's sort of sidelined while things go on in Atlantis, he smiles and jokes quite a lot. (Oh, though, seriously, for the BEST SMILE EVER from Ronon, rewatch "The Ark," where John promises to fight him to the death. He just gives John the sweetest, most affectionate smile I've ever seen. It's quite possibly my Favorite Ronon Moment Ever -- he's so lovely, and the two of them have such a sweet friendship!)

I don't necessarily see why the very act of having female love interests on the show comes off somehow desperate or gay-panicky. I do think Laren is miscast, and I do think JFlan can't or won't fake sexual chemistry with her -- but in the theoretical, you know, it makes sense to me as a writer to introduce the Travelers as a nation that has to be negotiated with, and try to complicate it slightly by making John attracted to her. And I personally LOVE Katie, both the fact that Rodney is the single person on Atlantis who can have a normal love life, and also the way they play together. Watching Rodney deal with his girlfriend in "Tabula Rasa" -- I mean, there's no way to compare that to Sheppard's caution and reserve around women. Rodney *clearly* adores Katie. I don't know, I guess I just don't see female guest stars, even ones that the guys seem to take an interest in, as some kind of manipulative gambit.