Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Believing The Strangest Things
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 05.07.1999
Lyneea calls in Elliott, having made breakfast, and John makes small talk, asking if she's an academic. "Military," she says. Another connection. "They provide me with most of my funding. What's left of it... According to them, it's highly unlikely that you even exist. My biggest concern is, I'm not quite sure how they'd treat you if they knew you were here. Our military's not the most compassionate, tolerant group." He smiles. "No, militaries rarely are. So I'd be quite a coup for you?" She agrees that she'd be funded for life with the "walking, talking evidence" of him. She calls Elliott to the table again, and brings John a plate. "I don't know if you eat! ...Hell, for all I know this stuff could be horribly toxic for you." The analyzer freaks out on the breakfast food, and Lyneea goes into Mama Bear mode, grabbing Elliott and long-jumping across the room. John babbles nervously about how it's just the analyzer, "a science tool," and that the thing he needs is close by. He scans the food and the analyzer goes nuts. "It's in the food? How can it be in the...." Lyneea stares, arms around her son, frightened to death as John talks faster and faster. "I'm looking for an element called chlorium, it's what I'm looking for and there's gotta be some somewhere in this..." He finds a jar of the stuff that's setting the analyzer off. "What the hell is this? What is this?" He finally realizes he's being all weird and erratic and Asperger's-y and apologizes profusely for once again scaring the shit out of Lyneea and her kid. He hands her the stunner, which he's been waving around crazily, and gives her some mad puppy-dog eyes. "Whatever is in this container, this is what my ship needs." Lyneea hears some cars and vans coming toward the farmhouse, and realizes the military is on their way. She and John lock eyes, and from outside, Ryymax calls to her. He's not the real estate guy, he's a military guy. She tells Elliott to get John upstairs, and makes a steely face. John starts to tell her she doesn't need to lie or screw herself over on his account, but she just yells at him to get moving.
Moya's lights are flashing, and she's making weird rumbly noises, in pain, and Zhaan is straining to stay upright as Moya twists. They are both in terrible pain -- and Rygel's still cutting. Pilot screams that Moya is "in intense pain!" in that hysterical way he says stuff. Zhaan finally howls and drops, unconscious. Rygel calls out to her, and, getting no answer, finally crawls out to check on her. "Pilot," he says urgently, "I think Zhaan is..." but the corridor is just dark, and Pilot's not responding, and Rygel is very tiny as we zoom suddenly back away from him, still screaming for Pilot. Muppets with feelings, unending angst, constant bodily fluids, complicated serialized storylines, the Crichton's magical male ass motif, and main characters dying at a furious and unchanging rate: the Six Forbidden Cargoes of television. So how come it's so good? Commercial.