Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Right Now I'm A Race Car
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 04.08.1999
John and Aeryn hide from the rampaging D'Argo -- in the room where the pressure buildup will vent -- as D's screaming that they are cowards. This, of course, causes Aeryn to bolt for him, because she is still an eight-year-old boy, and John grabs her. They wait a second, and then Aeryn dashes out, launches a teasing shot, and runs back to the room. "Peacekeeper coward!" Somehow, Aeryn is now on the floor, with John on top of her the entire length of his body. Drink. D'Argo walks in with some scary growling, and John gives Pilot his mark. Nothing happens. D'Argo screams about "challenge my command" and "do it to my face" and "show me what a savage you are" and all this, and the whole time John is yelling at Pilot to do whatever the thing is, and finally the excess super-coolants jet out, knocking D'Argo down and sending him woozy. John falls on his back, Aeryn now on top of him. Lordy. Drink! Other than an excuse to show them in as many intimate positions as possible, I don't know what the "plan" actually was, except to note that Plan A was about sleep, the science of sleep, and Plan B was about thugging it up. Which, in this episode, was always going to work better, because this episode is Very Special and all about how 'loids are bad, but also awesome. "That was your plan?" Aeryn asks, and John congratulates himself. "That is the last time I go along with one of your plans!" she snorts, and he promises that she gets to make the plan next time. John agrees. I fervently agree, because she's nuts but she gets shit done. John takes the gauntlet off D'Argo and they leave.
On Tavloidia, there's crazy electric grinder guitar that plays over an elegant shot that follows one Tavloid through a military camp, people talking and stuff, and then into a barracks-y jail, past the row of cells, and Rygel speaks as we get nearer to him, his voice echoing in the jail. He is half-buried in mud, in the middle of his cell, which I bet happens to Muppets more than other people. At least it's part of the story. He has said before that he hates getting stuck in mud, and I think there's a strength to the motif of getting his lower body stuck in stuff all the time beyond the obvious puppetry cheats, because he's a paradox of movement. He's the saddest one because he's the only one that never accepts his actual life: it's always deferred, unto the end of the show and beyond, to when he gets back his kingdom. Everybody else confronts these dreams -- over and over and over, heartbreakingly -- and comes to different kinds of terms with it, but Rygel is the only one who sits in pride of place no matter where he goes, because his imagination makes him a king. He's like Zhaan that way: they spent hundreds of years in jail, and they both built these amazing castles in the clouds of how powerful and strong and special they were, how God had chosen just them above all others, and it is both their strength and their tragedy. What makes you awesome is always, always the same thing that makes you suck. What keeps you alive in extremity can also warp you so far past normal that you'll never really be able to live regular life. It's great to say that John would turn down Earth because of the wonders that he's seen, but it's also true that he'll never be fit for Earth again, because of all the horrors the show visits upon him.
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