sholio | SGA 4x15: Outcast

Still not feeling like doing long reviews, so itty bitty comments instead!

BATES!!!!! I was totally unspoilered for that ... and thrilled to death to see him, and find out what he's been doing over the last couple of years.

I liked the episode a lot. Sheppard's early life ... REVEALED! *g* I was a little bit spoilered for this, to the extent that I knew he had an older brother and that his dad was (probably) dead -- but I really loved those bits, and I ended up liking his brother a lot more than I was expecting to at first. The plot was pretty good this time -- Terminator, not exactly a new idea, but I didn't expect the twist with the female scientist and I loved how they solved the problem, in the end, using actual science! Score! (I'm really fond of clever uses of the technology they have. The whole thing with the knife-beacon and beaming an enemy into re-entry -- that was smart!)

I did really love that we got a little scene at the beginning with Rodney making a stab at being comforting and wanting to go along for moral support; I think I would've been very disappointed if the episode hadn't had anything along those lines. Having said that, I do like the way that they've been mixing up the characters this season into different combinations -- last week, we had a ton of Rodney/John interaction, so it was nice to get Ronon/John this week, for balance.

And I do love, love, love how we're getting a deeper understanding this year of who John is. Last season basically did that for Rodney, and this season is doing it for John. One thing I find really interesting, after this episode, is how much of his isolation pre-Atlantis is apparently self-imposed. What I mean is, it's not that he didn't have people who liked him and cared about him -- it's that he pushed them away. It wasn't just John, of course; it takes two to have a fight -- but I really liked that aspect of this episode, that we saw it was at least as much him walking away from them, as them walking away from him. It makes him much more human, and less of a woobie victim than he's often written in fic that deals with his past.

Yep, liked the episode very much. Want tags now. :D

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Prior to this episode, the version of John's parents that I have loved the most -- and the one that I felt rang truest -- was in a story I read some time back, in which John had gone most of his life believing that his parents hated him, when in reality they simply didn't know how to deal with his emotionally closed-off nature. My description really doesn't do justice to it, because it was really a wonderfully drawn character portrait -- his parents being naturally open and somewhat pushy about it, John being very private and close with his emotions, and the three of them going their whole lives ... well, up to the time of the story ... with his parents believing that John didn't love them, and John shutting them out because he couldn't live up to what he thought he had to be in order to be loved. It really stuck in my head because it made me think "Yeah, that's just so right!" I think it'd become a sort of personal canon for me, and one thing I loved about this episode is that it actually came pretty close to that.

That said, I do wish they would do the same sort of thing when other characters are not in an episode...say a scene with Ronon in last weeks episode or at least a mention of Teyla in either.

Yeah, I agree. Just a throwaway line of dialogue would do ...!

...This wasn't a slash story, was it? Because if so, I'm pretty sure I know what story you mean, and yeah, I was thinking of it watching the ep myself...

Yep; it was one of Astolat's, and I know you've read hers, so it's probably the one you're thinking of. ^_^

If there is one story that I want to point to as "Yes, THOSE are John's parents and THAT is his relationship with them!" that's the story. Of course, now we have a better understanding of what the story actually is, but it's not too far off from that.

Yeah, I was thinking the parents from Astolat's story as well. Also, it reminded me an episode of the West Wing, "Ellie", where the President and his middle daughter are fighting, and he accuses her of doing something just to make him unhappy. When she denies that, he says that she sure wasn't doing it to make him happy, and she yells back that she doesn't know how to make him happy, he has her sisters for that.

And there's this moment where they stare at each other, kind of shocked at what's just been said. I feel like maybe John's relationship with his father ended up permanently stuck in that same emotional moment, only unsaid, of two people completely misunderstanding each other's feelings and motivations.

Of course, in the West Wing, it gets fixed because the President is able to see past his own anger and frustration and hurt, and tell his daughter that the only thing she has to do to make him happy is come home at the end of the day. And Outcast hurts me because it implies that maybe John's father wanted to say that to his son, but now never will. And John will never know.

I really love that sort of ambiguity in human relationships -- it draws me as both a writer and a viewer. No bad guys or good guys, just flawed people doing the best they can. I haven't seen West Wing at all, so I can't speak to that, but I'm really glad that SGA took the less easy path and didn't make John an abused child or orphan -- someone for whom the easy answer would be walking away. Instead, he went from a (superficially) easy life to one much harder and riskier, and that's more interesting to me.

I don't haven't read that particular story but I agree that would be a close version of how I saw John's family life.

And I agree that is type of story I am drawn to. The ones where there aren't villain and victims, but people who have made mistakes and sometimes need a push to swallow their pride and do what is needed to mend fences. Or are clueless what the other person really thinks.

SGA 4x15: Outcast

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