Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mothers & Fathers and Brothers & Suns
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 06.24.1999
D'Argo puts Rygel down softly: "You must hold still! We're up in the mountains and the air is very thin!" Rygel's like, "Mountains now. Crazy fucking freak." D'Argo chides him for "making things very difficult" for his "old man," and Zhaan and John enter Command. D'Argo only sees Lo'Laan. He kisses Zhaan: "The more I know you, the more I love you; the less I understand you. How could you give up everything to love someone like me?" What's not so fun is pretending that D'Argo's not crazy: he loves Rygel like a shitty little kid, he loves Zhaan like perfection. Like whatever Aeryn is to John. He distrusts John as the male in his cage. "Yes, sweet D'Argo. I do so love you too," smiles Zhaan. D'Argo pledges that he will never let her go, and she asks him, seriously, for help. "Anything! We are in no danger here. Not here, they aren't looking for us anymore. We're safe. You, me and Jothee." Even without knowing anything, you know enough to know that this is terribly sad. We've seen him angry and we've seen him horny and we've seen him sad. This love and joy and hope are so much harder to take. "We are not safe. Our ship..." D'Argo interrupts: "Our ship is gone. I destroyed it soon after we landed. There is no way they can trace us here." Which is where, Zhaan asks, but John interrupts: "D'Argo." It's a new voice. John pushes D'Argo harder than anybody else, because John understands D'Argo, in certain ways, better than anybody else onboard. He knows when to push, when to pound. When the blood's not running clear.
"What are you doing here? With her? You keep your hands off my sister!" Rygel's flummoxed by this new Crichton. I'm impressed and also quite sad. John spends way too much time trying on the Peacekeeper mask, especially in the first season. It's such an unhealthy way to get this job done, this becoming more that he's gotta do, turning into his opposite, but I think he knows it, which is why he only does it for love. "You have nothing to say on this, Macton!" says D'Argo. "I have everything to say on it. I reject you and I reject your marriage." Note, please, that Moya dips in space now. "No, you think yourself worthy of her when you cower from her memory." The cost of that, the love in that. It's not that John's less than masculine, it's that he has little opportunity to show it off, when all he does is love. Thank god for D'Argo, who he gets to push and pound. "Her memory burns in my very soul," says D'Argo, getting vaguer. To Zhaan: "You...you're dead." John begs him to remember; not sure whom it's hurting more. "I don't want to," D'Argo pleads. "You must," in that voice again, "You must remember. Everything." D'Argo tosses John around some more, scaring Zhaan. Even broken, John begs him to remember. "You killed her! To keep her from me, you killed her!" Zhaan starts to put it together: Her own brother killed her. Peacekeeper purity.