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dangermousieI've been marathonning Farscape today.
A Human Reaction
I can't really meta about AHR. It's one of my favorite eps ever, and most rewatched, but its pure amazingness just makes any meta very inadequate.
I'll try anyway.
First off, let me address the John/Aeryn of this ep.
Mr. Mousie was teasing me because when we got to the scene in the hotel, I literally squeed and grabbed his arm :) But I love this scene so much. John is so tense, so bitter with the way his dream is a nightmare. And he snaps at Aeryn but then apologizes. And they are drinking beer and sitting side to side, their shoulders touching and then...OMG...OMG.
I love the way he leans his face on her shoulder, the way he leans in to kiss her and he is so heart-breakingly gentle, and tentative and weary. As if she is fragile, as if he is too. As if he is resting on her, through her. That scene kills me (and the future mirror of it in both LGM1 and The Choice, kills me all over again).
I love FS for going there, for not stringing it out just for the heck of it. It makes so much sense. They are best friends at this point even if she won't acknowledge it. And they are crazy attracted and that is such a logical extension of The Flax: they might die and be captured tomorrow.
I also adore the morning after where John is 'the girl' and wants to talk and Aeryn doesn't.
That whole ep is beautiful on JA front. I love when he asks her to go with him to Earth at the beginning and she won't though you can tell how much she knows she will miss him and she feels it already. Made me think of BT and how she flew with him even though she knew there was a good chance she'll be stuck on Earth forever. And he is hesitant to go but does and we know later he will not ever leave Aeryn.
And then we have The Ancients. And Crichton gets frelled with again. His imagination can be quite grim, can't it? I wonder how influenced it is by the tough stuff he saw in UT. Crichton of e.g. I, E.T. would he be as paranoid? And the wormholes, though he doesn't know it yet. They see it as little gift to him but of course it will screw him up forever, won't it?
I wonder how much his reaction to real Earth in TF is not just because of his PTSD but also because of it being tainted by the horror fake-Earths of AHR and WGFA?
And I love his outraged decency at how his friends are treated. He mentions he gave his word and that never changes, ever. When he gives his word, he keeps it.
Let's see. Other things. I love how he figures it out. He is gooood. I love that we see him lose it, first with Wilson and then with the made-up world. Gosh, he is good at crazed.
And his helplessness and his horror and his outrage? We see him pistol-whip Cobb and that is the first time we see him hurt someone who isn't actively trying to hurt him physically at the moment. And you can feel he is so tempted to shoot him. He is sliding, sliding, sliding.
And I love Jack, even though he is fake Jack. This is Jack through the eyes of John and I love that through it all, despite the issues, John has faith in his father, as this person that will have his back, will try to save him. He loves his father. And his horror when he thinks Jack doesn't believe he is his son, when he has to prove it...is heart-breaking.
What else? He looks good in blue :P
I really cannot meta this.
Through the Looking Glass
TtLG is an excellent ep, but I am afraid I don't have too much meta about it, because AHR and ABL are so insanely awesome on a scale of awesomeness.
I have to mention how much I love that John saves everyone, yet again, through his brain.
I have to mention the awesome Rygel moments: "Handsome, with a great sexual prowess" is one of my fave FS lines, and so is Rygel's poems and John's 'enjoy the personality.'
I have to mention that Chiana is acting like such a rebellious teenager, and that it's consistent that she is closer to John than anyone and that he can both call her on her bullshit and understand and calm her fear. They are falling into protective awesome elder brother and trouble-making awesome younger sister.
And there are the bits with Aeryn. When Aeryn tells him she was afraid he'd left her by herself in the blue Moya (and I love that she can admit this to him) and he grins and tells her "I'd never leave you" and it's so fits in light of 'Nerve.' He never will. He is incapable.
And he calls her 'baby' :P
OMG.
I also love the dinner scenes in the beginning (with the bickering) and at the end, which is one of the rare happy joyful awesome moments Moya has and you feel they are friends.
Enjoy guys, soon the angst is going to hit.
A Bug's Life
OK. The leather.
THE LEATHER.
No matter how many times I've watched this ep, my breath always catches at the first sight of John in leather, those boots, pants, jacket, walking out the greet the commandos.
Oh my.
But ABL isn't an ep I enjoy just because of the leather or even because it's an ep that in so many ways sets up the future of the show.
I enjoy it because of Aeryn: we see that not all PKs are crazy bastards like Crais. Larraq isn't only just a hottie. He is, from what we can tell, a genuinely good superior officer. Aeryn is attracted by what he represents more than she is by him. It's nice to pretend she is who she says she is and pretend she can go back, can transfer into his unit.
And that is why the virus stabs her, isn't it? The virus seems to revel in pain, and that way he hurts both Larraq, or what is left of Larraq and Crichton. Because he's been in John's head too.
Of course it's a stupid move. It loses him a hostage, but more importantly, if there is one thing that will make John go insane it's someone hurting Aeryn. Just look at his face when he sees her stabbed.
Larraq is the first person John kills willingly (Hassan is someone he kills when possessed). True, it's not Larraq any more but the virus, but still, his quick, clever plan is less memorable than his watching the pod blow up and whisper 'boom,' eyes cold. I have to give huge props to BB btw: when possessed by the virus, he was excellent atconveying the wrongness, but not enough wrongness to be really obvious.
But John being John, he cannot be cold for long. He cannot kill and forget about it the way Aeryn and D'Argo, the soldiers, and Chiana the street girl can (btw, I want to wring Chiana and Rygel's necks in this ep: if it wasn't for them, this whole thing wouldn't have happened). So we get that tag, where he sits in Aeryn's room, waiting for to wake up, and he is looking at the pipe with which 'he' killed Hassan (I love that Aeryn was so attuned earlier, she knew what was bothering him). Oh John. I bet Hassan, the first person you killed, figures in your nightmares later.
And I love that he is there in Aeryn's room, anxious, because he has to make sure she is OK, and she knows it, and their eyes...
Nerve
If I have a favorite S1 episode, Nerve is it. Any ep that beats out AHR, THM and FT has got to be beyond awesome, and this is.
Watching it after seeing everything, I want to cover my eyes in parts of it. Tell John to run, to hide before scorpius gets to him, breaks him (because while in some ways, Crichton is never broken, in some ways he is irretrievably broken after Aurora Chair).
But there is so much in this episode to love that I am not sure where to start.
The scene where Crichton finds out that something is wrong with Aeryn and he won't leave her alone until he learns what. And then the stark denal in his face when he realizes she is going to die? The way he looks at her throughout is so enveloping, isn't it? And he touches her face while reassuring her she won't die as if to make sure she is still there but because Crichton is such a physical, touchy-feely person, isn't he? He will never lose that certain openness to touch that is a result of a free peaceful ubringing.
And I love that the reason the others agree to go to Gammak base isn't as much because they don't want to lose Aeryn (though that plays into that. Notice how D'Argo is unequvocal about not wanting Aeryn to die and how he comes up with a way to keep her alive for longer. What a difference from his equivocal statement in EfG) but because of Crichton: because this is the first time you see that they give in because Crichton is crazier than they are. And they can see it.
This is the first episode where we are presented with the fact, so starkly, that it is impossible for Crichton to let Aery die. Ever. Crichton is a laid-back enough guy, but there are a very few things (Aeryn first among them) where he will not give in, ever. And Moyans can sense that. Crichton's power of conviction is a fierce scary thing and I think they know they would have to kill him to prevent him from going to the Gammak base.
One of the many amazing scenes in the episode is the good-bye between Aeryn and John which is not a good-bye. The word 'good-bye' is not said even though John is going on a siucide mission and Aeryn will most likely die soon. This is the start to the series of their non-good-byes that ends so wrenchingly in DWTB. Once they are reunited after DWTB they never say even non-good-bye, do they? At the end of BT, they chose to die together, kissing, as together as they can be, rather than try to separate, jump overboard, survive. O that's a digression.
To get back to their non-good-bye scene. Their looks speak volumes, when their words do not. I love Aeryn's openness, evenvulnerability, in asking John if his people have any rituals for such situations and he looks at her with his heart in his eyes and tells her that there is a handshake and wishing of luck. And she does that and they hold on to each other's hands brifely and she wishes him luck and asks him how it was and he replies, in just that tone of voice: 'Perfect.' And he won't break their eye contact.
I love that Chiana goes with him. Part of this is because he genuinely likes Crichton and owes him, but I think also because she feels a little guilty because it's her actions that ultimately rresulted in Aeryn being wounded.
So Crichton goes down, wearing a dead man's uniform. And when he comes back, he will never be the same. When he gets caught on Scorpius' order, you know what I noticed? Even there, he won't fire at the goons. He hits them with the gun, but he won't shoot. Ohhhh. That rather broke my heart, as this is the last time we see this. Aurora Chair knocks it all out of him. From than on, he is never without a gun, never without the armor of the peacekeepers. He is damaged for good.
I love his pissed-off-at-the-world attitude as he flies into the base (and I cannot re-emphasize enough how crazy suicidal this whole thing is). Part is put-on as a PK attitude (and it's good for him he is pretending to be irregulars because you know they are a bit weird generally) but part is his genuine madness at the situation. But I think the bravest thing he does the whole ep is putting his hands into that bio scan.
And that brings me to Gilina. They meet again but how he's changed. He points a gun at her and he keeps pointing it, doesn't lower it when he sees who it is. And poor Gilina, your train has passed. Now Crichton sees no one but Aeryn and when Chiana tries to reassure Gilina, you can see even Gilina doesn't believe it.
And how amazing is it that Crichton stashes that thing for Aeryn and even though he is caught and horribly tortured, his priority is to get that thing to Aeryn. The first time Crichton puts Aeryn above any rational saving of self (though Gilina is wrong that he is acting this way because he loves Aeryn. That's it in part, but as we will see later, he undergoes so much torture to protect Gilina, and it's made all the more awesome because it's gratitude not love that motivates him).
The torture scenes are hard to watch. Farscape doesn't make torture pretty: John looks like hell when he is thrown back into the cell: red-rimmed eyes, falling apart, can barely move. And during the torture, he is crying and drooling on himself and (the worst of all) he cannot help but tell Scorpius: "Please." To beg.
I don't know what's worse for him: the physical pain or the psychic violation or the helplessness to stop from betrayal of his friends. One catches relief when Scorpius stops the torture, relief he cannot hide, and horror when Scorpius indicates it's a short break and he'll be back soon. And yet, terrified, in pain, a mess, (his despairing horror when he sees Stark and asks 'is this what the Chair did to you') he still fights back, small flashes of defiance, grim hysterical humor.
And then there is Crais, and is a monster but he is dwarfed by the other monster in the room: Scorpius, and John's despairing laughter at the senselessness of the Universe, of no way this is as bad as it is...his laughter has a thin tinge of insanity to it. And I love that Crais knows the one way to get John to cooperate is to promise him not his life but the lives of his companions and I love that even driven to the limits of his endurance, Crichton outthinks him, desperately.
I haven't even gotten to Stark whom I adore (but I really fell for him in the next ep). All I can say is 'My side, your side' is a frequent catch-phrase in the Mousie household.
And in completely non-connected news, here are My Girl vids. After thinking long and hard, it's my favorite kdrama, even more so than A Love to Kill. One of these days I'll finish Delightful Girl Chun-Hyang though it drags a bit now, but nothing will ever beat MG.
A Human Reaction
I can't really meta about AHR. It's one of my favorite eps ever, and most rewatched, but its pure amazingness just makes any meta very inadequate.
I'll try anyway.
First off, let me address the John/Aeryn of this ep.
Mr. Mousie was teasing me because when we got to the scene in the hotel, I literally squeed and grabbed his arm :) But I love this scene so much. John is so tense, so bitter with the way his dream is a nightmare. And he snaps at Aeryn but then apologizes. And they are drinking beer and sitting side to side, their shoulders touching and then...OMG...OMG.
I love the way he leans his face on her shoulder, the way he leans in to kiss her and he is so heart-breakingly gentle, and tentative and weary. As if she is fragile, as if he is too. As if he is resting on her, through her. That scene kills me (and the future mirror of it in both LGM1 and The Choice, kills me all over again).
I love FS for going there, for not stringing it out just for the heck of it. It makes so much sense. They are best friends at this point even if she won't acknowledge it. And they are crazy attracted and that is such a logical extension of The Flax: they might die and be captured tomorrow.
I also adore the morning after where John is 'the girl' and wants to talk and Aeryn doesn't.
That whole ep is beautiful on JA front. I love when he asks her to go with him to Earth at the beginning and she won't though you can tell how much she knows she will miss him and she feels it already. Made me think of BT and how she flew with him even though she knew there was a good chance she'll be stuck on Earth forever. And he is hesitant to go but does and we know later he will not ever leave Aeryn.
And then we have The Ancients. And Crichton gets frelled with again. His imagination can be quite grim, can't it? I wonder how influenced it is by the tough stuff he saw in UT. Crichton of e.g. I, E.T. would he be as paranoid? And the wormholes, though he doesn't know it yet. They see it as little gift to him but of course it will screw him up forever, won't it?
I wonder how much his reaction to real Earth in TF is not just because of his PTSD but also because of it being tainted by the horror fake-Earths of AHR and WGFA?
And I love his outraged decency at how his friends are treated. He mentions he gave his word and that never changes, ever. When he gives his word, he keeps it.
Let's see. Other things. I love how he figures it out. He is gooood. I love that we see him lose it, first with Wilson and then with the made-up world. Gosh, he is good at crazed.
And his helplessness and his horror and his outrage? We see him pistol-whip Cobb and that is the first time we see him hurt someone who isn't actively trying to hurt him physically at the moment. And you can feel he is so tempted to shoot him. He is sliding, sliding, sliding.
And I love Jack, even though he is fake Jack. This is Jack through the eyes of John and I love that through it all, despite the issues, John has faith in his father, as this person that will have his back, will try to save him. He loves his father. And his horror when he thinks Jack doesn't believe he is his son, when he has to prove it...is heart-breaking.
What else? He looks good in blue :P
I really cannot meta this.
Through the Looking Glass
TtLG is an excellent ep, but I am afraid I don't have too much meta about it, because AHR and ABL are so insanely awesome on a scale of awesomeness.
I have to mention how much I love that John saves everyone, yet again, through his brain.
I have to mention the awesome Rygel moments: "Handsome, with a great sexual prowess" is one of my fave FS lines, and so is Rygel's poems and John's 'enjoy the personality.'
I have to mention that Chiana is acting like such a rebellious teenager, and that it's consistent that she is closer to John than anyone and that he can both call her on her bullshit and understand and calm her fear. They are falling into protective awesome elder brother and trouble-making awesome younger sister.
And there are the bits with Aeryn. When Aeryn tells him she was afraid he'd left her by herself in the blue Moya (and I love that she can admit this to him) and he grins and tells her "I'd never leave you" and it's so fits in light of 'Nerve.' He never will. He is incapable.
And he calls her 'baby' :P
OMG.
I also love the dinner scenes in the beginning (with the bickering) and at the end, which is one of the rare happy joyful awesome moments Moya has and you feel they are friends.
Enjoy guys, soon the angst is going to hit.
A Bug's Life
OK. The leather.
THE LEATHER.
No matter how many times I've watched this ep, my breath always catches at the first sight of John in leather, those boots, pants, jacket, walking out the greet the commandos.
Oh my.
But ABL isn't an ep I enjoy just because of the leather or even because it's an ep that in so many ways sets up the future of the show.
I enjoy it because of Aeryn: we see that not all PKs are crazy bastards like Crais. Larraq isn't only just a hottie. He is, from what we can tell, a genuinely good superior officer. Aeryn is attracted by what he represents more than she is by him. It's nice to pretend she is who she says she is and pretend she can go back, can transfer into his unit.
And that is why the virus stabs her, isn't it? The virus seems to revel in pain, and that way he hurts both Larraq, or what is left of Larraq and Crichton. Because he's been in John's head too.
Of course it's a stupid move. It loses him a hostage, but more importantly, if there is one thing that will make John go insane it's someone hurting Aeryn. Just look at his face when he sees her stabbed.
Larraq is the first person John kills willingly (Hassan is someone he kills when possessed). True, it's not Larraq any more but the virus, but still, his quick, clever plan is less memorable than his watching the pod blow up and whisper 'boom,' eyes cold. I have to give huge props to BB btw: when possessed by the virus, he was excellent atconveying the wrongness, but not enough wrongness to be really obvious.
But John being John, he cannot be cold for long. He cannot kill and forget about it the way Aeryn and D'Argo, the soldiers, and Chiana the street girl can (btw, I want to wring Chiana and Rygel's necks in this ep: if it wasn't for them, this whole thing wouldn't have happened). So we get that tag, where he sits in Aeryn's room, waiting for to wake up, and he is looking at the pipe with which 'he' killed Hassan (I love that Aeryn was so attuned earlier, she knew what was bothering him). Oh John. I bet Hassan, the first person you killed, figures in your nightmares later.
And I love that he is there in Aeryn's room, anxious, because he has to make sure she is OK, and she knows it, and their eyes...
Nerve
If I have a favorite S1 episode, Nerve is it. Any ep that beats out AHR, THM and FT has got to be beyond awesome, and this is.
Watching it after seeing everything, I want to cover my eyes in parts of it. Tell John to run, to hide before scorpius gets to him, breaks him (because while in some ways, Crichton is never broken, in some ways he is irretrievably broken after Aurora Chair).
But there is so much in this episode to love that I am not sure where to start.
The scene where Crichton finds out that something is wrong with Aeryn and he won't leave her alone until he learns what. And then the stark denal in his face when he realizes she is going to die? The way he looks at her throughout is so enveloping, isn't it? And he touches her face while reassuring her she won't die as if to make sure she is still there but because Crichton is such a physical, touchy-feely person, isn't he? He will never lose that certain openness to touch that is a result of a free peaceful ubringing.
And I love that the reason the others agree to go to Gammak base isn't as much because they don't want to lose Aeryn (though that plays into that. Notice how D'Argo is unequvocal about not wanting Aeryn to die and how he comes up with a way to keep her alive for longer. What a difference from his equivocal statement in EfG) but because of Crichton: because this is the first time you see that they give in because Crichton is crazier than they are. And they can see it.
This is the first episode where we are presented with the fact, so starkly, that it is impossible for Crichton to let Aery die. Ever. Crichton is a laid-back enough guy, but there are a very few things (Aeryn first among them) where he will not give in, ever. And Moyans can sense that. Crichton's power of conviction is a fierce scary thing and I think they know they would have to kill him to prevent him from going to the Gammak base.
One of the many amazing scenes in the episode is the good-bye between Aeryn and John which is not a good-bye. The word 'good-bye' is not said even though John is going on a siucide mission and Aeryn will most likely die soon. This is the start to the series of their non-good-byes that ends so wrenchingly in DWTB. Once they are reunited after DWTB they never say even non-good-bye, do they? At the end of BT, they chose to die together, kissing, as together as they can be, rather than try to separate, jump overboard, survive. O that's a digression.
To get back to their non-good-bye scene. Their looks speak volumes, when their words do not. I love Aeryn's openness, evenvulnerability, in asking John if his people have any rituals for such situations and he looks at her with his heart in his eyes and tells her that there is a handshake and wishing of luck. And she does that and they hold on to each other's hands brifely and she wishes him luck and asks him how it was and he replies, in just that tone of voice: 'Perfect.' And he won't break their eye contact.
I love that Chiana goes with him. Part of this is because he genuinely likes Crichton and owes him, but I think also because she feels a little guilty because it's her actions that ultimately rresulted in Aeryn being wounded.
So Crichton goes down, wearing a dead man's uniform. And when he comes back, he will never be the same. When he gets caught on Scorpius' order, you know what I noticed? Even there, he won't fire at the goons. He hits them with the gun, but he won't shoot. Ohhhh. That rather broke my heart, as this is the last time we see this. Aurora Chair knocks it all out of him. From than on, he is never without a gun, never without the armor of the peacekeepers. He is damaged for good.
I love his pissed-off-at-the-world attitude as he flies into the base (and I cannot re-emphasize enough how crazy suicidal this whole thing is). Part is put-on as a PK attitude (and it's good for him he is pretending to be irregulars because you know they are a bit weird generally) but part is his genuine madness at the situation. But I think the bravest thing he does the whole ep is putting his hands into that bio scan.
And that brings me to Gilina. They meet again but how he's changed. He points a gun at her and he keeps pointing it, doesn't lower it when he sees who it is. And poor Gilina, your train has passed. Now Crichton sees no one but Aeryn and when Chiana tries to reassure Gilina, you can see even Gilina doesn't believe it.
And how amazing is it that Crichton stashes that thing for Aeryn and even though he is caught and horribly tortured, his priority is to get that thing to Aeryn. The first time Crichton puts Aeryn above any rational saving of self (though Gilina is wrong that he is acting this way because he loves Aeryn. That's it in part, but as we will see later, he undergoes so much torture to protect Gilina, and it's made all the more awesome because it's gratitude not love that motivates him).
The torture scenes are hard to watch. Farscape doesn't make torture pretty: John looks like hell when he is thrown back into the cell: red-rimmed eyes, falling apart, can barely move. And during the torture, he is crying and drooling on himself and (the worst of all) he cannot help but tell Scorpius: "Please." To beg.
I don't know what's worse for him: the physical pain or the psychic violation or the helplessness to stop from betrayal of his friends. One catches relief when Scorpius stops the torture, relief he cannot hide, and horror when Scorpius indicates it's a short break and he'll be back soon. And yet, terrified, in pain, a mess, (his despairing horror when he sees Stark and asks 'is this what the Chair did to you') he still fights back, small flashes of defiance, grim hysterical humor.
And then there is Crais, and is a monster but he is dwarfed by the other monster in the room: Scorpius, and John's despairing laughter at the senselessness of the Universe, of no way this is as bad as it is...his laughter has a thin tinge of insanity to it. And I love that Crais knows the one way to get John to cooperate is to promise him not his life but the lives of his companions and I love that even driven to the limits of his endurance, Crichton outthinks him, desperately.
I haven't even gotten to Stark whom I adore (but I really fell for him in the next ep). All I can say is 'My side, your side' is a frequent catch-phrase in the Mousie household.
And in completely non-connected news, here are My Girl vids. After thinking long and hard, it's my favorite kdrama, even more so than A Love to Kill. One of these days I'll finish Delightful Girl Chun-Hyang though it drags a bit now, but nothing will ever beat MG.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 03:35 am (UTC)Eeee!
Also, you know this already, but "My Girl" is my favorite kdrama of all time too, because it has everything you could ever want. Love polygons? Hilarity? Dream sequences? Cracktastic plot? Time jump that features changes in character hairstyles? Androgynous male love rival? Psycho ex-girlfriend? It's got it all!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 03:37 am (UTC)And MG is just perfect. And unlike a lot of kdramas, it doesn't drag at all (I started out loving DGCH but then it started dragging and I wanted to kill people). So good. And the cast is amazing. I have Green Rose (because angst!) and it will be interesting to see 'Yu Rin' in a different role.
Btw, did you know, the raw for THnK is out at d-addicts. I've been scouring the net like a nutter.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 04:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 07:26 am (UTC)I haven't even gotten to Stark whom I adore (but I really fell for him in the next ep).
...this means we're getting an ENTIRE post of Stark-meta, RIGHT??
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Date: 2006-12-17 07:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 04:58 pm (UTC)