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dangermousieToday's episode is Green-Eyed Monster, one of the eps that elicits nothing but 'squee' from me (well, it elicits plenty of other, coherent reactions, but speaking metaphorically).
I am also amused that GEM is one of the shippiest eps out there and it was written by Ben Browder. Gotta love when actors are shippers.
You know another thing this ep made me think of? How eternally grateful I am to Farscape for not creating any stupid contrived love triangles. There is no one for Aeryn but John, and there is no one for John but Aeryn. They have plenty to overcome and deal with in their different lives and traumas without adding contrived, soapy complications to the mix.
Because there is, of course, a triangle here. But not the silly, standard Crais-John-Aeryn one you would imagine. No, the 'third' in the triangle is Talyn, the living ship (I confess to never warming up to erratic, adolescent Talyn, but in the final count, he is yet another victim of forces outside of his control: he has been created unstable due to PK experimentation). It is Talyn who is sticking spokes in the wheels of true love (yes, a bizarre metaphor, I know). Talyn, whose reaction is really that of a spoiled adolescent whose Mommy picked up with a man he doesn't like instead of Dad (I think Crais' own, not too happy feelings about John, sort of leaked and amplified into Talyn, who read them through haze of adolescence and jealousy and paranoid instability).
Any hint of triangles on FS was never soapy but about much larger, different things. Stark's interest in Aeryn was displacement for Zhaan, was because he almost made her be worth things because Zhaan died for her. Grayza to John was rape. Chiana with Jothee was about rebellion and inability to commit and Chiana being young and wild. Crais' interest in Aeryn was unspoken and about a kinship (through Talyn) etc etc etc.
And yes, John is vulnerable to Talyn's manipulation, the way he never is, except with Aeryn. And the recent attacks on his psychic selfhood hadn't helped. But oh, the way he slumps in relief, as if he can breathe again, when he finds out the truth. And I love that Aeryn tells him, matter of factly, that she had never been with Crais, and the enormity of his quiet ‘yes, it does [matter].’ Of course it does. Just look how his eyes look as if he is dying when he first sees the doctored vid. It is even worse because it’s Crais, someone who hunted and tormented and tortured him. It’s even worse than when, in S4, Aeryn brings Scorpy on board (even though then she didn’t have a choice), a feeling of betrayal.
And the awesome if mushy, very mushy tag, when he tells her she is his constant and he always names the reference star after her. You can tell she is afraid to hope for happiness but she does, anyway.
Of course, the other thing I love in FS is pace. Almost any other show, it would have taken the characters 10 eps to figure out that this was a frame-up job. Not here. Bam. Dealt with. At speed intelligent people would. Farscape never dragged (but never felt crammed either. It was perfectly paced).
I really do not care for Talyn's red design. Very discordant. Very PK and in character, but I bet living there, even if it didn't bother Aeryn and Crais who are used to PK red, really did create a dissonance.
Oh, what else. I love that Aeryn and John have an ugly fight there, early, but he still wants to be there when she receives the implant (but Talyn prevents him). I love that Aeryn now loves him enough to actually try to talk things out. I love that she admits she needs him. Of course, such daring openness, such opening up to love but also to hurt, will lead to devastation in IP.
I also love Rygel and Stark together. Especially Stark. If for nothing else, than for smacking Rygel. YES. And he can be clever and plan-full when push comes to shove.
Oh, and Crichton has a Lymond-like dislike of people outside the small circle calling him by his first name (he snaps at Crais not to call him John). His name=his identity=intimacy=selfhood. This is not the trusting John of S1, and he will never, ever trust and like Crais: once you’ve been hunted and tortured by someone, I think that person is permanently off-limits insofar as tolerance goes.
Caps from GEM (courtesy of Farscape-Caps):
Crais and Aeryn. Crais is so much more together than he was in S1. I love his intelligent untrustworthiness:
The Odd Couple:
YUM. Crihton is about to see the doctored tape:
He sees (I love how, in that moment, he really look like someone who can't process and whose heart is utterly stomped out):
Afterwards. Fight with Aeryn (interestingly, he knows normally 'recreation' is meaningless to her, but it doesn't matter that this is the case):
Trying to get into the room where Aeryn is receiving the implant and not being able to:
Wonderful Aeryn:
OHHH:
Love this!
Aeryn:
The final scene that makes me aww, sniffle and melt:
Losing Time is a lovely ep I like (don’t I say that about almost all of them, though). I love that you never stop believing that both Moya John and Talyn John are ‘equal and original.’
And Moya John is going stir-crazy insane. John displaces his anxiety over Aeryn, his loneliness and missing her, into his obsession with wormholes. He displaces it sideways, to take his mind off. Makes sense to me. The crew should be grateful there is Aeryn in the world because otherwise obsessive Crichton would probably take over everything in the world :D Heck, he is still wearing the same shirt she gave him, days later. She gave him the shirt to distinguish him and it’s so symbolic because for him, selfhood is tied to Aeryn, she is the arbiter of real. (And he clearly has anxieties of whether he is a copy, see this ep. In a way, it’s a blessing John is already severely damaged by the time of the twinning. He has so many complexes and issues, one more, even a very severe one, won’t break him, he can just try to put it aside).
I also really love the scenes on Scorpy’s command carrier, his new research facility. (Continuity, I love you!) This is where we first really learn about the Scarran threat (want to be it was Scorpy who told Scarrans PKs have wormhole weapons, because he thought he could get them, and now must put his money where his mouth is).
So here he is, studying the chip. I love how even the ‘bleed-over’ John is argumentative and opinionated and stubborn. Of course, if Scorpy was different, he would never have had that problem. When he got John on the Gammack Base in S1, if he’d only told him something to the effect of ‘OK, you are a spy. I will give you the tissue sample, and get Crais off your back, and help you use wormhole to go home, but you have to work in my research facility,’ John would have jumped at the chance (heck, he gave data to Furlow earlier). But to Scorpy, there is either subordinates or superiors, and utter abasement/domination. He doesn’t see others as autonomous beings. It took him years to see John that way.
Hmmm, what else.
I love Jool here, first time: scared and defiant and helpful. Quasisex with energy rider is funny. D’Argo rocks. St. John crack always makes me LOL.
Good ep, obviously.
Caps from LT (courtesy of Farscape-Caps):
Possessed by Rider which shows its power to John:
I am also amused that GEM is one of the shippiest eps out there and it was written by Ben Browder. Gotta love when actors are shippers.
You know another thing this ep made me think of? How eternally grateful I am to Farscape for not creating any stupid contrived love triangles. There is no one for Aeryn but John, and there is no one for John but Aeryn. They have plenty to overcome and deal with in their different lives and traumas without adding contrived, soapy complications to the mix.
Because there is, of course, a triangle here. But not the silly, standard Crais-John-Aeryn one you would imagine. No, the 'third' in the triangle is Talyn, the living ship (I confess to never warming up to erratic, adolescent Talyn, but in the final count, he is yet another victim of forces outside of his control: he has been created unstable due to PK experimentation). It is Talyn who is sticking spokes in the wheels of true love (yes, a bizarre metaphor, I know). Talyn, whose reaction is really that of a spoiled adolescent whose Mommy picked up with a man he doesn't like instead of Dad (I think Crais' own, not too happy feelings about John, sort of leaked and amplified into Talyn, who read them through haze of adolescence and jealousy and paranoid instability).
Any hint of triangles on FS was never soapy but about much larger, different things. Stark's interest in Aeryn was displacement for Zhaan, was because he almost made her be worth things because Zhaan died for her. Grayza to John was rape. Chiana with Jothee was about rebellion and inability to commit and Chiana being young and wild. Crais' interest in Aeryn was unspoken and about a kinship (through Talyn) etc etc etc.
And yes, John is vulnerable to Talyn's manipulation, the way he never is, except with Aeryn. And the recent attacks on his psychic selfhood hadn't helped. But oh, the way he slumps in relief, as if he can breathe again, when he finds out the truth. And I love that Aeryn tells him, matter of factly, that she had never been with Crais, and the enormity of his quiet ‘yes, it does [matter].’ Of course it does. Just look how his eyes look as if he is dying when he first sees the doctored vid. It is even worse because it’s Crais, someone who hunted and tormented and tortured him. It’s even worse than when, in S4, Aeryn brings Scorpy on board (even though then she didn’t have a choice), a feeling of betrayal.
And the awesome if mushy, very mushy tag, when he tells her she is his constant and he always names the reference star after her. You can tell she is afraid to hope for happiness but she does, anyway.
Of course, the other thing I love in FS is pace. Almost any other show, it would have taken the characters 10 eps to figure out that this was a frame-up job. Not here. Bam. Dealt with. At speed intelligent people would. Farscape never dragged (but never felt crammed either. It was perfectly paced).
I really do not care for Talyn's red design. Very discordant. Very PK and in character, but I bet living there, even if it didn't bother Aeryn and Crais who are used to PK red, really did create a dissonance.
Oh, what else. I love that Aeryn and John have an ugly fight there, early, but he still wants to be there when she receives the implant (but Talyn prevents him). I love that Aeryn now loves him enough to actually try to talk things out. I love that she admits she needs him. Of course, such daring openness, such opening up to love but also to hurt, will lead to devastation in IP.
I also love Rygel and Stark together. Especially Stark. If for nothing else, than for smacking Rygel. YES. And he can be clever and plan-full when push comes to shove.
Oh, and Crichton has a Lymond-like dislike of people outside the small circle calling him by his first name (he snaps at Crais not to call him John). His name=his identity=intimacy=selfhood. This is not the trusting John of S1, and he will never, ever trust and like Crais: once you’ve been hunted and tortured by someone, I think that person is permanently off-limits insofar as tolerance goes.
Caps from GEM (courtesy of Farscape-Caps):
Crais and Aeryn. Crais is so much more together than he was in S1. I love his intelligent untrustworthiness:
The Odd Couple:
YUM. Crihton is about to see the doctored tape:
He sees (I love how, in that moment, he really look like someone who can't process and whose heart is utterly stomped out):
Afterwards. Fight with Aeryn (interestingly, he knows normally 'recreation' is meaningless to her, but it doesn't matter that this is the case):
Trying to get into the room where Aeryn is receiving the implant and not being able to:
Wonderful Aeryn:
OHHH:
Love this!
Aeryn:
The final scene that makes me aww, sniffle and melt:
Losing Time is a lovely ep I like (don’t I say that about almost all of them, though). I love that you never stop believing that both Moya John and Talyn John are ‘equal and original.’
And Moya John is going stir-crazy insane. John displaces his anxiety over Aeryn, his loneliness and missing her, into his obsession with wormholes. He displaces it sideways, to take his mind off. Makes sense to me. The crew should be grateful there is Aeryn in the world because otherwise obsessive Crichton would probably take over everything in the world :D Heck, he is still wearing the same shirt she gave him, days later. She gave him the shirt to distinguish him and it’s so symbolic because for him, selfhood is tied to Aeryn, she is the arbiter of real. (And he clearly has anxieties of whether he is a copy, see this ep. In a way, it’s a blessing John is already severely damaged by the time of the twinning. He has so many complexes and issues, one more, even a very severe one, won’t break him, he can just try to put it aside).
I also really love the scenes on Scorpy’s command carrier, his new research facility. (Continuity, I love you!) This is where we first really learn about the Scarran threat (want to be it was Scorpy who told Scarrans PKs have wormhole weapons, because he thought he could get them, and now must put his money where his mouth is).
So here he is, studying the chip. I love how even the ‘bleed-over’ John is argumentative and opinionated and stubborn. Of course, if Scorpy was different, he would never have had that problem. When he got John on the Gammack Base in S1, if he’d only told him something to the effect of ‘OK, you are a spy. I will give you the tissue sample, and get Crais off your back, and help you use wormhole to go home, but you have to work in my research facility,’ John would have jumped at the chance (heck, he gave data to Furlow earlier). But to Scorpy, there is either subordinates or superiors, and utter abasement/domination. He doesn’t see others as autonomous beings. It took him years to see John that way.
Hmmm, what else.
I love Jool here, first time: scared and defiant and helpful. Quasisex with energy rider is funny. D’Argo rocks. St. John crack always makes me LOL.
Good ep, obviously.
Caps from LT (courtesy of Farscape-Caps):
Possessed by Rider which shows its power to John:
