Episode Report Card Keckler: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Sexperiment in Criticism
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.10.2004
In the ship's gym, Reed Flashdances in front of the wall mirror like a maniac, maniac on the floor. Hayes walks in, sees that Reed's otherwise engaged, and starts to leave. "Are you leaving so soon?" Reed pants. Hayes says he didn't want to distract Reed from oh, oh, dancing with himself. And since there's nothing to lose and nothing to prove, Reed invites Hayes to join him as his partner, "if you're up for it." Hayes unzips himself. "Always," he promises. Okay, so he unzips his jacket, but still. It's a zipper and he unned it. They spar. Hayes compliments Reed on his pas-de-berets and round de jambes and then asks Reed to show him the combination. After the jazz hands, Hayes gets Reed on his back. Actually, more like Reed's stomach, but anyway. Hayes keeps talking dirty -- I mean, "talking down to" Reed until Reed clocks him in the jaw and says, "You wanna keep that left up." Hayes gets steely-eyed and fights with anger instead of respect. Reed keeps taunting him with the same compliments Hayes had been condescending out. Reed even gets Hayes on his stomach and hisses, "See, you were looking at my hands when you should've been looking at my eyes." Hayes gets up, and Reed twiddles his hands in the intergalactically recognized "come and get me" gesture. They fight some more. Reed finally confesses his deep-seated fears that Hayes is after his job. Hayes denies it. Reed spits out that Hayes just can't stand taking orders from him. Hayes knocks Reed to the mat and says, "After lunar survival training, I can handle just about anything."
Keckler: LUNAR survival training? It that supposed to be impressive or something? I mean, any potential hazard on the moon will just kill you -- right? It's not like, "I'm thirsty," or "A giant bug bit my head," or "Gee, I really thought that python was toilet paper," it's like, "Oh, my space-suit ripped and now I'm dead."
The Mad Dr. Mathra: Yeah, I'm readying my syllabus for my Lunar Survival Midterm: "Don't run out of air, don't break the globe-thing on your helmet, and don't eat yellow moon rocks. Class dismissed."
Hayes picks up his jacket and walks out. Reed screams, "Hayes!" and comes flying through the door at him. Aw, he misses him already. They fight some more in the corridor. A startled Red Stripe checks them out. "As you were," Reed tells him as he gets knocked down by a punch to the jaw. The Red Stripe squints and backs away. To tattle, presumably. More fighting. More sweat. More orders of Corned Beef Slash being run up on the Register of Latent Desire. Reed does some flippy thing that doesn't look any different from any of the other flippy things, but Hayes lies there, rolls his eyes, and asks, "What was that?" "It's a little Klingon move I picked up," Reed growls. Oh, right. The Klingon Krash Kourse. Damn, I hated that episode. Hayes staggers to his feet, and Reed primes his fists, but Quantum interrupts their forearm play with a tactical alert. They run away.