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I'm trying not to be online too terribly much because I'm in the middle of a big project that will last the rest of the month -- but I do want to talk just a little, wee bit about "Kindred" (and presumably the season finale, as well -- but that's it! Other than that -- work!)
Because honestly, I do want Teyla stories -- and hey, I'm even cool with horrible, soul-sucking, misery and despair stories, which you probably have already realized about me by now -- but seriously, please, stop. Please, God, stop doing this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I complained about not enough Rachel on-screen, it was very wrong of me. This arc is sapping my will to live. Make it go away, PTB. I promise I'll be good.
I honestly cannot fucking take any more evidence of how little the writers care about Teyla. Y'all, it's not that they can't write women. It's not that they're not good at it. It's not that they don't know how. I mean, it may be all those things, too, but principally? THEY DON'T WANT TO. They don't fucking care. They don't find her interesting or important in any way, and both of these episodes are soaked in their petulant boredom.
And you know what, while I'm here, I might as well call out fandom, too, because the reason I'm pissed off by "Kindred" is one of the same reasons I've 99% sworn off of SGA fanfiction -- I'm just so fucking sick of the creepy colonialism of a bunch of Western scientists and military crashing into a New World, and then nobody -- nobody, not the characters, not TPTB, not the fandom as a whole, nobody giving a good goddamn about the people who, Jesus fucking Christ, actually live there. The characters are importing bottled water and playing video games in their spare time, turning the Lost City of the Ancients into a fucking dorm. The writers are trying to fob off a half-baked "Athosians in jeopardy" plotline on us, without going to the enormous bother of ever giving us one scene with, well, Athosians, like how would having seen their faces sometime in the last two years possibly make the danger of losing them more resonant in any way? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, fans are always going on about how Pegasus Galaxy is, like, totally John and Rodney's home now -- they'll probably never go back to Earth, because they love it here so much!
Let's be really clear, here: they don't love Pegasus, and all the feigned concern they show for the galaxy when IOA threatens to recall them is total bullshit. What they love is Atlantis, and they love it because it's a big, empty tree fort with central air. If they gave one one-millionth of a fuck about anything in the galaxy, this whole arc wouldn't be about, "Teyla's people are gone, jeez, that's gotta be pretty hard on Teyla, sure hope Teyla finds those people of hers!" If they gave one one-millionth of a fuck, they would know some of those people, too. After three years, they'd be a little bit concerned about the fate of the neighbors -- not just because Teyla seems pretty down in the mouth about the whole thing, but because *they would just care.* Human beings can frequently suck, but they also tend to have a lot of empathy when people they know and have regular contact with and do business with and generally have a relationship with, even a casual one, are attacked. Our characters have treated this whole thing like a terribly unfortunate thing they read in the paper. They haven't given the slightest sign of being personally sad or scared or angry or moved in any way at all; it's all Teyla's problem, and their only reaction to it has been a certain moderate sympathy with Teyla.
A sympathy that, apparently, doesn't extend to doing her any fucking favors. Seriously, show? Going to a planet that is a perfectly safe trading hub and asking a couple of questions should be a complete non-starter, controversy-wise. So it's just a dream. So fucking what? I mean, yes, it would be nice if it had sunk into their skulls that Teyla has limited psychic powers that have inevitably turned out to be useful and correct in the past (dude, how many times are we going to play this game? I'd think after Echoes, someone might grok that when Teyla says she's seen a vision, *someone should take notes*). But okay, you know, I do understand the skepticism -- Teyla is sad, frightened, desperate, and frustrated over her own helplessness; it's exactly the kind of mindset that *might* lead to wish-fulfillment dreams where the answer falls into place, yay! It's not hard to see what psychological need the dreams of Kanaan telling her he's still waiting to be reunited with her might fill.
So what? Seriously, SO THE FUCK WHAT? You don't need to tell her that, even if it is true. If she tells you that this was her dream and she wants to go to this planet and find this thing, you know what you do? You put your vest and your boots on and you say *okay.* If the writers wanted to make such a fucking *issue* out of it, there are ways to do that -- you could have the planet she wants to go to be dangerous in some way, in the middle of a political upheval or some such thing, so that John and Sam have to kind of play the odds: is the worth of this supposed vision such that it's a risk they can afford to take? But if she just wants to go TO THE FUCKING MALL, you say okay. You don't talk down to her, you don't try to coax her out of it. You stay alert, sure, so that if this doesn't work out someone is there to help her handle her disappointment -- I mean, I'm going to just make a leap of faith and assume that Teyla has either friends or a new therapist who have been helping her all this time in the emotional support department, which is something else that would've been nice to see, but whatever, we at least know that Teyla is capable of making friends, even if they frequently explode or fall off buildings or are John Sheppard. (Though it's probably not a good sign that the first person she talks to about this is Rodney. Don't get me wrong, it's a hella sweet scene -- Rodney, trying to prepare Teyla's sprog for a life of scientific achievement! And he got it wrapped and everything! But honestly, she doesn't have *anybody* to confide in except...Rodney? I'm just saying, warning sign.)
If they'd just fucking *gone* the first time, then when Teyla wanted to go back, it would've made some sense and not been a totally dick move for them to say, "Uh, you know, Teyla, we really already did that. Are you sure you don't maybe want to...talk about your feelings, instead of obsessively going over the same fruitless ground again and again?" But they didn't just go the first time, and nobody ever really explained why they couldn't, except that it didn't seem worth the minimal effort of stepping through the Gate to them, whether or not it would make Teyla happy. It's bullshit, and I don't know what to make of Teyla's character, knowing that she's willing to take that kind of treatment from people who expect her to consider them friends. Who would put up with that? I mean, in the short term, maybe, because she does need help if she's going to make any headway here, so I could see choking it down -- but who would stay with these people, knowing that's how far beneath their own convenience they rank your deepest emotional needs?
And then, you know, of course Michael captures her and straps her to a table and tries to experiement on her while she begs him for mercy, because that never gets old. I don't know, I guess it's the kind of thing that either it bothers you or it doesn't, but I personally? Have seen enough female bodies laid out in ways that make them look extra-special vulnerable while they're menaced by psychopaths that want to invade the boundaries of their bodies to last me a lifetime. I've really seen it before. I'm really, really over it. It doesn't feel suspenseful to me, it just makes me feel sad and sick and tired, much more so than if the story was overtly about rape. Because at least then -- you know, there's a certain gravitas that attaches to the subject of rape, for the majority of your audience; it becomes a serious thing. What Kindred 2 does -- what a lot of televison does -- is to exploit all the fear and power dynamics of rape and then hand-wave it off by making it just this week's action-adventure encounter with the villain. And we'll all expect Teyla to shake it off afterwards, because hey, everybody gets kidnapped and injured and stuff like that around here. Just another day in outer space, indeed.
I had to crack out my Ethics Scorecard for these episodes, though, because I got a little confused. Trying to eliminate the Wraith is good. Check. Pinpointing the Wraith need to eat live humans as the specific thing about Wraithness that needs immediate correcting is totally reasonable. Check. The noble science of genetics can help us do the good work of creating a galaxy without Wraith. Check. The noble science of genetics isn't going to get very far without some bodies to experiement on, so it's fine to go get one of those. Check. But nobody wants to be turned into some kind of creepy hybrid creature who doesn't have their own brain or personality anymore and has lost all ties to friends and family from their past! That's...bad! *checks scorecard* Bad? Right -- totally bad! That's why we hate Michael! No -- wait -- that's why we.... Hang on, now.
I kid. I actually kind of like the huge moral muddle this whole plotline has turned into -- I think it's a perfectly good story way of having, you know, an actual theme of some kind, which in this case is that the best of intentions go awry, that the ways we rationalize protecting ourselves can completely fall apart when we're confronted with other people who want to protect themselves just as badly, that simple solutions are hardly ever as simple as they seem at first blush. Hell, Michael could be a perfectly good Iraq War metaphor if they put their backs into it a little: all Atlantis ever wanted to do was fight tyranny and defeat terror! And how long does it take you to figure out that you've made things vastly more complicated and are now in totally over your heads? It sometimes freaks me out a little that the writers don't appear to be aware of that connection, though -- that they seem to be operating solely out of "Michael's a psychopath! Look at all those crazy things he says and does!" and only very, very intermittently out of, "He's not always exactly wrong about the things he says" and "What he's doing now is kind of an exact parallel to what we did in s2." I mean, it really would be nice if I didn't have to sit around wondering whether the writers have noticed that stuff or not, but you go to fandom with the show you have.
Maybe if they'd stop calling him "Michael," he wouldn't be quite so cranky. That's not actually his name, you know. (No, seriously. I'm not sure the writers know. I think they may have forgotten.)
So, on a not entirely unrelated note, Carson is a clone now. I'm kind of baffled by this, because just this season, they set up a perfectly reasonable means of creating human simulacra that have all the memories and personality of the original person, and even wrote a fairly solid episode about how it's reductionist and wrong to view those simulacra as "fakes" or "copies." So I think I was not the only person who expected the return of "really real Carson, we honestly swear to God" would...have something to do with that. But...no, cloning? Cloning, really? You're going to stick with that? Ooookay.
I could point out the scientific problems, but seriously, you know what? You guys aren't fucking stupid; you know it doesn't work like that. And if you watch this show, you don't watch it for the science, so at this point, at the end of s4, it all seems fairly pointless. Sure, fine, cloning. They cloned his memories, too -- fine, great, whatever you say. I mean, it seems like if Michael can do that, then he already knows a lot more about genetics than Carson does, so I'm not sure why he'd really need-- But you know what? Okay! Cloning! Whatever!
I'm not sure whether this plotline benefits or suffers from being so similar to "This Mortal Coil," which is an episode that I don't think I posted about, but that I really did like. (Or if it benefits or suffers from its close proximity to "Adam," which is a recent Torchwood episode also about whether memories are *real* in and of themselves, even if you actually didn't experience the thing you remember.) I do think I was more prepped to buy into the fairly quick acceptance of this Carson as The Real Carson -- it might have taken me longer to think through all the implications if I hadn't already done so during "This Mortal Coil." (Well, or at least I would've had to cast my mind all the way back to s5 Buffy and recall the process of deciding that Dawn was Buffy's *real* sister because they shared the memories of each other, which were ipso facto memories as real as anyone else's memories of their experiences.) So sure, yeah. Cloning, y'know, doesn't work that way, but if it *did* work that way, there would be nothing inherently false about the subsequent Carsons it produced, any more than there was anything inherently false about the RepliLanteans. The issue that complicated "This Mortal Coil" was, what do you do with *two* of everyone, isn't that a lot fucking weird to expect people to live with comfortably? They even made the explicit distinction between the team's situation and Elizabeth's -- that Elizabeth was *the only Elizabeth there was,* just like Carson is now the only Carson there is. So there's groundwork in place, which is more than I can say for a lot of SGA's wonky plot twists.
As sort of a general viewer, I found myself just a little bugged by the pointlessness of Carson's return -- he's back! He...doesn't do much! Now he's gone again! Like, narratively speaking, why did that just happen? On the other hand, as someone who always loved Carson and has never really stopped being ticked off at the pointlessness of his removal from the show -- hey, if pointlessly is the only way they can bring him back, too, then so be it. At least this way I can hope that when they thaw him out in s5, it'll be during a decent episode.
By the way, I've noticed that every time I post something positive about Carson on lj, people have this weird tendency to comment in order to politely explain to me at some length why they think Carson, in fact, sucks balls. Dear fandom -- I know, okay? I know a lot of you can't bear him, and I've been told why, and I think there are some good reasons to begrudge his existence and some crappy ones, but ultimately, whatever. If you don't like him, it's because you just don't like him. What I'm saying is, I do like him, and it's not because I haven't heard enough manifestos on Why Carson In Fact Sucks Balls yet. Look, I like him for the exact same reason you like whichever frequently annoying and ethically problematic characters you like on SGA: because I just do, okay? I like Paul's energy and chemistry with the cast, I like how human Carson seems, I like the sweetness and humor and thoughtfulness he often displayed. For God's sake, if you're tempted to tell me in comments why you don't like Carson and aren't remotely happy he came back for an episode, please stop and ask yourself who would benefit from that, and in what way. If you can't think of anything, please consider just not bringing the subject up.
They hit all the character notes I would've hoped they would for Carson, so on that level, as a fan, I was really pleased. I liked his intital conversation with Rodney a lot -- how they managed to write it as this intense, difficult moment that it should be, having him learn all of this, but without being mawkish about it. It was a really great use of humor, not to undercut a scene, but to humanize it -- how else would you feel, learning that you'd been declared dead while you thought someone was trying to rescue you, except fustrated and a little retroactively scared? And Rodney's mixture of defensiveness and guilt is perfectly understandable, and so the way that they kind of bicker at each other over it just felt like a really smart choice, as opposed to brushing it all off or having a big, operatic Emotional Scene. I liked Carson's phobic response to the stasis pod, which kept using the stasis pod from feeling like a contrivance and made sending him into it kind of dramatic instead of just a moment like, "it's 10:50, so let's just table this and get back to it some other season, okay?" And I really liked Carson's *desire* to be part of the strike on Michael's compound, because I felt like it falls under the heading of believable change over time for a character: he's a harder person than he once was, and he's always been especially fond of Teyla, and he has a personal need to finally grab the chance to hit back at someone who held him captive, tormented him, blackmailed him, and engineered him to *die* if he slipped out of Michael's control. One of the things I've always liked about Carson is that it always seemed like the things that happened to Carson had an actual effect on him, and it felt right that this is the person he is at this stage of his life.
And I have to admit that I seized up a little bit in delight over the last scene, because again, they did pretty much everything I needed them to do with Carson's goodbyes. He never had much relationship with John, so I was glad that instead of manufacturing one, he connected to John as someone he could rely on to follow through on the job of rescuing Teyla -- in spite of all my issues with that plotline, of course the two of them would recognize their own brotherly protectiveness of her in each other. Obviously he had practically no connection to Sam, so again, sensible to use that moment to pick up that other significant thread of Carson's character, his connection to his family. (I haven't read much Kindred 2 commentary specifically because I'm just not in a place where I could respond productively to a resurgance of Momma's Boy Carson fanon; I don't even know what to do with anyone who thinks it's remotely strange to take this opportunity to write out your goodbyes to a beloved parent -- why the hell wouldn't you? Surely one of the many disadvantages to dying abruptly in an accident is exactly that issue of all the things you would have liked to say, and I think giving Carson a second chance to say those things was really nice.)
And oh, MAN, if nothing else that scene reminded me of how I want so, so much more Ronon/Carson fic than the world will ever provide me. I've always loved them togther -- the ever-popular odd-couple vibe of nebbishy science nerd and gunslinging superhero combined with how at heart, they're exactly the same big, giant softies. And I bet Carson's family was really sweet to Ronon, and his mom stuffed him full of food, and Ronon felt sort of shy around them because he's not really supposed to say anything about anything, but he went to Carson's mom and kind of looked at the floor and said that Carson saved his life -- three times -- and was a really nice person. And then Carson's mom probably hugged him, and Ronon never gets enough hugs, ever. Carson was just always one of the very, very few people on this show that I could easily see being as emotionally supportive and a good enough listener to be a really *helpful* boyfriend for Ronon to have around, and I'm not gonna lie, I made some very loud, very happy noises over their goodbye. Because they hugged! And Ronon's voice was all broken up, like he was about to cry! And Carson called him Big Man, OMG!!!!
(I want there to be a law -- it'll be like Snackey's or Godwin's -- it'll be Hth's Law, and it shall mandate that any time one tv character uses a canonical nickname for another, lo, a shipper fandom shall arise around them. Come on! Who's with me? It may take a little time to hammer out the details -- is one usage sufficient, or does it have to be an established pattern? Do diminutives of their actual name count? But come on! If you have grown men running around calling each other Chief or English or Big Man, there is no way in hell that's not grounds for slash! I realize this will keep the Lost fans pretty busy, but they'll just have to, er, take one for the team. Or several. Or something.)
And then of course the Rodney/Carson friendship always gets to me, and man, never more than Rodney putting on his Brave Toaster hat to promise Carson over and over, in an only very slightly desperately pleading way, that this was going to work great! Totally great! Like taking a nap! Yep, this is the perfect solution! Everybody wins! Things couldn't be more super -- honestly! God, poor Rodney. The fear that he could get a second chance with one of the few really trusted, intimate friends he's ever had and then not be able to preserve it, that he's fated to (metaphorically or literally) bury Carson over and over and over again -- that's just not something that *most people* are equipped to cope with, let alone poor, control-freaky Rodney McKay. It's a fantastic payoff to -- again, back to "This Mortal Coil," when he has that beautiful moment when he says "this is Carson all over again, I can't deal with this." And here it is, actually Carson all over again, and by God, he's *got* to deal with it, because the one thing that he knows would be worse would be to make this harder than it is on Carson. So he pulls up his socks and tries to deal, and it's as generous and brave an effort as it is transparent, and it's just awesome. David Hewlett, how are you so awesome?
So...I guess the Athosians are back? Yay, I suppose! It was nice of them to let Christopher out of the Wraith makeup for a day, and actually, Halling is kind of *hot* without the Qui-Gon hair. Hotter than Kanaan, actually -- or maybe he would be hot, too, if we ever saw him under marginally less creepy circumstances, like begging for help or being a zombie. (Is Kanaan still on the ship with Michael and Teyla? I think he must be, but it wasn't 100% clear to me.) That would be a pretty moving victory, if the show, as previously mentioned, ever thought much about the Athosians one way or another -- if they weren't just a plot device that was relevant only inasmuch as we sort of care about Teyla's feelings. Given that Teyla is still pretty much feeling like shit right now, they've kind of rendered saving the Athosians meaningless, which, accordingly, is exactly how the episode treats it. So at least they're consistent.
Only one episode left to go, and I'm sort of baffled from the spoilers as to...how it relates to any of this in any way. So I guess I'm not all that spoiled after all.
Because honestly, I do want Teyla stories -- and hey, I'm even cool with horrible, soul-sucking, misery and despair stories, which you probably have already realized about me by now -- but seriously, please, stop. Please, God, stop doing this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I complained about not enough Rachel on-screen, it was very wrong of me. This arc is sapping my will to live. Make it go away, PTB. I promise I'll be good.
I honestly cannot fucking take any more evidence of how little the writers care about Teyla. Y'all, it's not that they can't write women. It's not that they're not good at it. It's not that they don't know how. I mean, it may be all those things, too, but principally? THEY DON'T WANT TO. They don't fucking care. They don't find her interesting or important in any way, and both of these episodes are soaked in their petulant boredom.
And you know what, while I'm here, I might as well call out fandom, too, because the reason I'm pissed off by "Kindred" is one of the same reasons I've 99% sworn off of SGA fanfiction -- I'm just so fucking sick of the creepy colonialism of a bunch of Western scientists and military crashing into a New World, and then nobody -- nobody, not the characters, not TPTB, not the fandom as a whole, nobody giving a good goddamn about the people who, Jesus fucking Christ, actually live there. The characters are importing bottled water and playing video games in their spare time, turning the Lost City of the Ancients into a fucking dorm. The writers are trying to fob off a half-baked "Athosians in jeopardy" plotline on us, without going to the enormous bother of ever giving us one scene with, well, Athosians, like how would having seen their faces sometime in the last two years possibly make the danger of losing them more resonant in any way? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, fans are always going on about how Pegasus Galaxy is, like, totally John and Rodney's home now -- they'll probably never go back to Earth, because they love it here so much!
Let's be really clear, here: they don't love Pegasus, and all the feigned concern they show for the galaxy when IOA threatens to recall them is total bullshit. What they love is Atlantis, and they love it because it's a big, empty tree fort with central air. If they gave one one-millionth of a fuck about anything in the galaxy, this whole arc wouldn't be about, "Teyla's people are gone, jeez, that's gotta be pretty hard on Teyla, sure hope Teyla finds those people of hers!" If they gave one one-millionth of a fuck, they would know some of those people, too. After three years, they'd be a little bit concerned about the fate of the neighbors -- not just because Teyla seems pretty down in the mouth about the whole thing, but because *they would just care.* Human beings can frequently suck, but they also tend to have a lot of empathy when people they know and have regular contact with and do business with and generally have a relationship with, even a casual one, are attacked. Our characters have treated this whole thing like a terribly unfortunate thing they read in the paper. They haven't given the slightest sign of being personally sad or scared or angry or moved in any way at all; it's all Teyla's problem, and their only reaction to it has been a certain moderate sympathy with Teyla.
A sympathy that, apparently, doesn't extend to doing her any fucking favors. Seriously, show? Going to a planet that is a perfectly safe trading hub and asking a couple of questions should be a complete non-starter, controversy-wise. So it's just a dream. So fucking what? I mean, yes, it would be nice if it had sunk into their skulls that Teyla has limited psychic powers that have inevitably turned out to be useful and correct in the past (dude, how many times are we going to play this game? I'd think after Echoes, someone might grok that when Teyla says she's seen a vision, *someone should take notes*). But okay, you know, I do understand the skepticism -- Teyla is sad, frightened, desperate, and frustrated over her own helplessness; it's exactly the kind of mindset that *might* lead to wish-fulfillment dreams where the answer falls into place, yay! It's not hard to see what psychological need the dreams of Kanaan telling her he's still waiting to be reunited with her might fill.
So what? Seriously, SO THE FUCK WHAT? You don't need to tell her that, even if it is true. If she tells you that this was her dream and she wants to go to this planet and find this thing, you know what you do? You put your vest and your boots on and you say *okay.* If the writers wanted to make such a fucking *issue* out of it, there are ways to do that -- you could have the planet she wants to go to be dangerous in some way, in the middle of a political upheval or some such thing, so that John and Sam have to kind of play the odds: is the worth of this supposed vision such that it's a risk they can afford to take? But if she just wants to go TO THE FUCKING MALL, you say okay. You don't talk down to her, you don't try to coax her out of it. You stay alert, sure, so that if this doesn't work out someone is there to help her handle her disappointment -- I mean, I'm going to just make a leap of faith and assume that Teyla has either friends or a new therapist who have been helping her all this time in the emotional support department, which is something else that would've been nice to see, but whatever, we at least know that Teyla is capable of making friends, even if they frequently explode or fall off buildings or are John Sheppard. (Though it's probably not a good sign that the first person she talks to about this is Rodney. Don't get me wrong, it's a hella sweet scene -- Rodney, trying to prepare Teyla's sprog for a life of scientific achievement! And he got it wrapped and everything! But honestly, she doesn't have *anybody* to confide in except...Rodney? I'm just saying, warning sign.)
If they'd just fucking *gone* the first time, then when Teyla wanted to go back, it would've made some sense and not been a totally dick move for them to say, "Uh, you know, Teyla, we really already did that. Are you sure you don't maybe want to...talk about your feelings, instead of obsessively going over the same fruitless ground again and again?" But they didn't just go the first time, and nobody ever really explained why they couldn't, except that it didn't seem worth the minimal effort of stepping through the Gate to them, whether or not it would make Teyla happy. It's bullshit, and I don't know what to make of Teyla's character, knowing that she's willing to take that kind of treatment from people who expect her to consider them friends. Who would put up with that? I mean, in the short term, maybe, because she does need help if she's going to make any headway here, so I could see choking it down -- but who would stay with these people, knowing that's how far beneath their own convenience they rank your deepest emotional needs?
And then, you know, of course Michael captures her and straps her to a table and tries to experiement on her while she begs him for mercy, because that never gets old. I don't know, I guess it's the kind of thing that either it bothers you or it doesn't, but I personally? Have seen enough female bodies laid out in ways that make them look extra-special vulnerable while they're menaced by psychopaths that want to invade the boundaries of their bodies to last me a lifetime. I've really seen it before. I'm really, really over it. It doesn't feel suspenseful to me, it just makes me feel sad and sick and tired, much more so than if the story was overtly about rape. Because at least then -- you know, there's a certain gravitas that attaches to the subject of rape, for the majority of your audience; it becomes a serious thing. What Kindred 2 does -- what a lot of televison does -- is to exploit all the fear and power dynamics of rape and then hand-wave it off by making it just this week's action-adventure encounter with the villain. And we'll all expect Teyla to shake it off afterwards, because hey, everybody gets kidnapped and injured and stuff like that around here. Just another day in outer space, indeed.
I had to crack out my Ethics Scorecard for these episodes, though, because I got a little confused. Trying to eliminate the Wraith is good. Check. Pinpointing the Wraith need to eat live humans as the specific thing about Wraithness that needs immediate correcting is totally reasonable. Check. The noble science of genetics can help us do the good work of creating a galaxy without Wraith. Check. The noble science of genetics isn't going to get very far without some bodies to experiement on, so it's fine to go get one of those. Check. But nobody wants to be turned into some kind of creepy hybrid creature who doesn't have their own brain or personality anymore and has lost all ties to friends and family from their past! That's...bad! *checks scorecard* Bad? Right -- totally bad! That's why we hate Michael! No -- wait -- that's why we.... Hang on, now.
I kid. I actually kind of like the huge moral muddle this whole plotline has turned into -- I think it's a perfectly good story way of having, you know, an actual theme of some kind, which in this case is that the best of intentions go awry, that the ways we rationalize protecting ourselves can completely fall apart when we're confronted with other people who want to protect themselves just as badly, that simple solutions are hardly ever as simple as they seem at first blush. Hell, Michael could be a perfectly good Iraq War metaphor if they put their backs into it a little: all Atlantis ever wanted to do was fight tyranny and defeat terror! And how long does it take you to figure out that you've made things vastly more complicated and are now in totally over your heads? It sometimes freaks me out a little that the writers don't appear to be aware of that connection, though -- that they seem to be operating solely out of "Michael's a psychopath! Look at all those crazy things he says and does!" and only very, very intermittently out of, "He's not always exactly wrong about the things he says" and "What he's doing now is kind of an exact parallel to what we did in s2." I mean, it really would be nice if I didn't have to sit around wondering whether the writers have noticed that stuff or not, but you go to fandom with the show you have.
Maybe if they'd stop calling him "Michael," he wouldn't be quite so cranky. That's not actually his name, you know. (No, seriously. I'm not sure the writers know. I think they may have forgotten.)
So, on a not entirely unrelated note, Carson is a clone now. I'm kind of baffled by this, because just this season, they set up a perfectly reasonable means of creating human simulacra that have all the memories and personality of the original person, and even wrote a fairly solid episode about how it's reductionist and wrong to view those simulacra as "fakes" or "copies." So I think I was not the only person who expected the return of "really real Carson, we honestly swear to God" would...have something to do with that. But...no, cloning? Cloning, really? You're going to stick with that? Ooookay.
I could point out the scientific problems, but seriously, you know what? You guys aren't fucking stupid; you know it doesn't work like that. And if you watch this show, you don't watch it for the science, so at this point, at the end of s4, it all seems fairly pointless. Sure, fine, cloning. They cloned his memories, too -- fine, great, whatever you say. I mean, it seems like if Michael can do that, then he already knows a lot more about genetics than Carson does, so I'm not sure why he'd really need-- But you know what? Okay! Cloning! Whatever!
I'm not sure whether this plotline benefits or suffers from being so similar to "This Mortal Coil," which is an episode that I don't think I posted about, but that I really did like. (Or if it benefits or suffers from its close proximity to "Adam," which is a recent Torchwood episode also about whether memories are *real* in and of themselves, even if you actually didn't experience the thing you remember.) I do think I was more prepped to buy into the fairly quick acceptance of this Carson as The Real Carson -- it might have taken me longer to think through all the implications if I hadn't already done so during "This Mortal Coil." (Well, or at least I would've had to cast my mind all the way back to s5 Buffy and recall the process of deciding that Dawn was Buffy's *real* sister because they shared the memories of each other, which were ipso facto memories as real as anyone else's memories of their experiences.) So sure, yeah. Cloning, y'know, doesn't work that way, but if it *did* work that way, there would be nothing inherently false about the subsequent Carsons it produced, any more than there was anything inherently false about the RepliLanteans. The issue that complicated "This Mortal Coil" was, what do you do with *two* of everyone, isn't that a lot fucking weird to expect people to live with comfortably? They even made the explicit distinction between the team's situation and Elizabeth's -- that Elizabeth was *the only Elizabeth there was,* just like Carson is now the only Carson there is. So there's groundwork in place, which is more than I can say for a lot of SGA's wonky plot twists.
As sort of a general viewer, I found myself just a little bugged by the pointlessness of Carson's return -- he's back! He...doesn't do much! Now he's gone again! Like, narratively speaking, why did that just happen? On the other hand, as someone who always loved Carson and has never really stopped being ticked off at the pointlessness of his removal from the show -- hey, if pointlessly is the only way they can bring him back, too, then so be it. At least this way I can hope that when they thaw him out in s5, it'll be during a decent episode.
By the way, I've noticed that every time I post something positive about Carson on lj, people have this weird tendency to comment in order to politely explain to me at some length why they think Carson, in fact, sucks balls. Dear fandom -- I know, okay? I know a lot of you can't bear him, and I've been told why, and I think there are some good reasons to begrudge his existence and some crappy ones, but ultimately, whatever. If you don't like him, it's because you just don't like him. What I'm saying is, I do like him, and it's not because I haven't heard enough manifestos on Why Carson In Fact Sucks Balls yet. Look, I like him for the exact same reason you like whichever frequently annoying and ethically problematic characters you like on SGA: because I just do, okay? I like Paul's energy and chemistry with the cast, I like how human Carson seems, I like the sweetness and humor and thoughtfulness he often displayed. For God's sake, if you're tempted to tell me in comments why you don't like Carson and aren't remotely happy he came back for an episode, please stop and ask yourself who would benefit from that, and in what way. If you can't think of anything, please consider just not bringing the subject up.
They hit all the character notes I would've hoped they would for Carson, so on that level, as a fan, I was really pleased. I liked his intital conversation with Rodney a lot -- how they managed to write it as this intense, difficult moment that it should be, having him learn all of this, but without being mawkish about it. It was a really great use of humor, not to undercut a scene, but to humanize it -- how else would you feel, learning that you'd been declared dead while you thought someone was trying to rescue you, except fustrated and a little retroactively scared? And Rodney's mixture of defensiveness and guilt is perfectly understandable, and so the way that they kind of bicker at each other over it just felt like a really smart choice, as opposed to brushing it all off or having a big, operatic Emotional Scene. I liked Carson's phobic response to the stasis pod, which kept using the stasis pod from feeling like a contrivance and made sending him into it kind of dramatic instead of just a moment like, "it's 10:50, so let's just table this and get back to it some other season, okay?" And I really liked Carson's *desire* to be part of the strike on Michael's compound, because I felt like it falls under the heading of believable change over time for a character: he's a harder person than he once was, and he's always been especially fond of Teyla, and he has a personal need to finally grab the chance to hit back at someone who held him captive, tormented him, blackmailed him, and engineered him to *die* if he slipped out of Michael's control. One of the things I've always liked about Carson is that it always seemed like the things that happened to Carson had an actual effect on him, and it felt right that this is the person he is at this stage of his life.
And I have to admit that I seized up a little bit in delight over the last scene, because again, they did pretty much everything I needed them to do with Carson's goodbyes. He never had much relationship with John, so I was glad that instead of manufacturing one, he connected to John as someone he could rely on to follow through on the job of rescuing Teyla -- in spite of all my issues with that plotline, of course the two of them would recognize their own brotherly protectiveness of her in each other. Obviously he had practically no connection to Sam, so again, sensible to use that moment to pick up that other significant thread of Carson's character, his connection to his family. (I haven't read much Kindred 2 commentary specifically because I'm just not in a place where I could respond productively to a resurgance of Momma's Boy Carson fanon; I don't even know what to do with anyone who thinks it's remotely strange to take this opportunity to write out your goodbyes to a beloved parent -- why the hell wouldn't you? Surely one of the many disadvantages to dying abruptly in an accident is exactly that issue of all the things you would have liked to say, and I think giving Carson a second chance to say those things was really nice.)
And oh, MAN, if nothing else that scene reminded me of how I want so, so much more Ronon/Carson fic than the world will ever provide me. I've always loved them togther -- the ever-popular odd-couple vibe of nebbishy science nerd and gunslinging superhero combined with how at heart, they're exactly the same big, giant softies. And I bet Carson's family was really sweet to Ronon, and his mom stuffed him full of food, and Ronon felt sort of shy around them because he's not really supposed to say anything about anything, but he went to Carson's mom and kind of looked at the floor and said that Carson saved his life -- three times -- and was a really nice person. And then Carson's mom probably hugged him, and Ronon never gets enough hugs, ever. Carson was just always one of the very, very few people on this show that I could easily see being as emotionally supportive and a good enough listener to be a really *helpful* boyfriend for Ronon to have around, and I'm not gonna lie, I made some very loud, very happy noises over their goodbye. Because they hugged! And Ronon's voice was all broken up, like he was about to cry! And Carson called him Big Man, OMG!!!!
(I want there to be a law -- it'll be like Snackey's or Godwin's -- it'll be Hth's Law, and it shall mandate that any time one tv character uses a canonical nickname for another, lo, a shipper fandom shall arise around them. Come on! Who's with me? It may take a little time to hammer out the details -- is one usage sufficient, or does it have to be an established pattern? Do diminutives of their actual name count? But come on! If you have grown men running around calling each other Chief or English or Big Man, there is no way in hell that's not grounds for slash! I realize this will keep the Lost fans pretty busy, but they'll just have to, er, take one for the team. Or several. Or something.)
And then of course the Rodney/Carson friendship always gets to me, and man, never more than Rodney putting on his Brave Toaster hat to promise Carson over and over, in an only very slightly desperately pleading way, that this was going to work great! Totally great! Like taking a nap! Yep, this is the perfect solution! Everybody wins! Things couldn't be more super -- honestly! God, poor Rodney. The fear that he could get a second chance with one of the few really trusted, intimate friends he's ever had and then not be able to preserve it, that he's fated to (metaphorically or literally) bury Carson over and over and over again -- that's just not something that *most people* are equipped to cope with, let alone poor, control-freaky Rodney McKay. It's a fantastic payoff to -- again, back to "This Mortal Coil," when he has that beautiful moment when he says "this is Carson all over again, I can't deal with this." And here it is, actually Carson all over again, and by God, he's *got* to deal with it, because the one thing that he knows would be worse would be to make this harder than it is on Carson. So he pulls up his socks and tries to deal, and it's as generous and brave an effort as it is transparent, and it's just awesome. David Hewlett, how are you so awesome?
So...I guess the Athosians are back? Yay, I suppose! It was nice of them to let Christopher out of the Wraith makeup for a day, and actually, Halling is kind of *hot* without the Qui-Gon hair. Hotter than Kanaan, actually -- or maybe he would be hot, too, if we ever saw him under marginally less creepy circumstances, like begging for help or being a zombie. (Is Kanaan still on the ship with Michael and Teyla? I think he must be, but it wasn't 100% clear to me.) That would be a pretty moving victory, if the show, as previously mentioned, ever thought much about the Athosians one way or another -- if they weren't just a plot device that was relevant only inasmuch as we sort of care about Teyla's feelings. Given that Teyla is still pretty much feeling like shit right now, they've kind of rendered saving the Athosians meaningless, which, accordingly, is exactly how the episode treats it. So at least they're consistent.
Only one episode left to go, and I'm sort of baffled from the spoilers as to...how it relates to any of this in any way. So I guess I'm not all that spoiled after all.
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THANKS!
Date: 2008-06-28 02:04 am (UTC)From:I picked up SGA really quickly, ran through the seasons on a tide of squee, but the further I got through season four, the more disgusted I became. I think it's the quickest I've fallen out of love with a show, ever... and this was primarily due to the treatment of Teyla. I honestly don't know whether I'll watch Season 5 or not.
Maybe Rachel is an author in her own right? *Somebody's* got to care about that character other than us...
-K