Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Human Reaction
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 08.19.1999
John stands outside the building, leaning over a balcony, ripped apart, as Jack approaches. "I gave them my word, Dad," says John. "I told them I'd take care of them." The accent's at a 10. "You were naïve to think you could protect them from people like Wilson," says Jack. John turns around and looks away from his father, too naked: "I need a favor, Dad." Jack nods, and, simple as anything: "Name it." John asks Jack to call in "every marker" he has, "every General, every Undersecretary, every Pentagon mistress," and tell them what's happening to his friends: "And you get them to stop it." He turns back toward the building. Even Jack knows the eyebrows and jaw: "What are you gonna do, son?" John lies that he's going to plead with Wilson, beg for their lives, but Jack knows better: "You be careful." John smiles, because nobody knows what the last seven months have done, what he's capable of. It's heartbreaking, to see this and think how far across the line from scientist he already is; to respect and mourn that, knowing how far he'll still go. Jack doesn't know. Jack thinks John will get hurt. John, with a tiny hard smile, says, "I'm just gonna make him understand, Dad." Jack, scared now: "Son, are you willing to die for those creatures in there?" John levels Jack with the unassailable simplicity of his response, speaking the language they both know: "I gave my word." Jack is sad; John leaves him.
John walks through the hangar -- we see the Farscape, parts all over, a guy with a gun -- past the cell, and into the medical unit. The exam table is covered with fresh white towels. So clean. Like Rygel was never even there. John walks around the table, noticing a soldier's feet, a man lying on the floor. He crouches to check on him, holding his feet, thinking fast. Aeryn cocks a rifle at his head, silent and stealthy: "Did I kill him?" She didn't. "Are you with me? Or them?" she asks. So fast, and she's back to the Aeryn John first met. To be exiled by your home culture is one thing -- to be jailed and dissected by the culture you'd considered joining is to realize your worst possible fears. This is a woman raised in a soldier crèche, contact with her parents not allowed, raised to live and die by her army, a person who has no concept of solitude. And this woman has been bounced twice, out of that, in the last year. And now she's attacked a fellow soldier. "I'm with you, Aeryn," says John. "Trust me. Put down the gun." She slowly angles it away from his face. "Do they know you're out?" he asks. She nods: "They took D'Argo somewhere, and when the guard came back for me, I was ready for him." She's still choking on it. That's two down. We won't see D'Argo again. John lost his anger sometime between the scene with Jack and now -- and if not his anger, his rage, because it's not about him anymore and it never really was -- and only now does he have the peace to calm Aeryn, his hand on her knee, almost holding her up, holding her steady: "Where'd they take him?" Aeryn's like, "I don't fucking know and I'm not sticking around to find out." John nods: "All right, then. Let's move." John exits and Aeryn follows, with adorable and almost hilarious Peacekeeper precision, heels clicking, gun in hand. She knows this part.
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