Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT ...And Wash Away The Rain
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 04.01.1999
So Aeryn and Matala stand on the mat and assume lovely, angular stances, and begin to fight. "I suppose Peacekeepers don't need to know that much. Their females have no need for science or culture...even the art of attracting males," says Matala. See what I mean? They're evenly matched, so it's not like she has even a competitive reason to start by calling Aeryn ugly and frigid. Aeryn stands on the red wedge, Matala in the soft white place. "Unlike females who can only achieve their goals by seducing male after male?" She knocks Matala's shit to the floor, and then helps her up. "I guess we both have our unique talents." See, introducing girl weirdness into this just confuses the issue, because it makes Aeryn seem like she needs to become a woman. That's not it at all, she needs to become a person. I mean, still, it's meant to reverse the D'Argo/John stuff (Matala is a real woman, Aeryn is not; but really it flips and Matala is a lie, Aeryn is the truth) so it works on that level, but it's weird when all of a sudden you see Aeryn get pulled into some kind of Betty and Veronica bullshit out of nowhere. Especially since she's already said like five times she's jealous of the weird sex vibe going on with Matala and John. I guess she's allowed to be jealous. I don't know what my problem is. I think I just hate Matala and I hate this episode and I love Aeryn, and that makes me what? Biased. "Are we through here?" asks Aeryn, since the scene has served its entire purpose, as far as we know, but then Matala does this kind of terrifying cobra scorpion thing with her hand in the air, striking down on a shoulder nerve, knocks Aeryn out. "I thank you for the exercise," she says, and stalks off. And she's not talking like Matala anymore. She's talking like a hissing horrible snake. It's just as obnoxious but it kind of apologizes for the other voice. Matala's interesting, I guess.
Back to an overhead shot: Aeryn unconscious, almost completely contained within the red PK wedge, one hand thrown over the line and into the white. It's the percentage of her that's so far out of her black radius: the hand he's holding. And as though that wasn't enough of a slap to the head that you should pay attention (no camera angle is by accident; it's weird how you eventually have to realize that nobody ever just dropped the camera and let it roll, except student filmmakers), one leg is cocked up (there's a discontinuity here as well, slightly, that tells you she was positioned this way for the shot and I'm not always making this shit up): Trump XII, the Hanged Man. (Originally "the Traitor," okay.) The Hanged Man's about going through turmoil and storm in order to change: not because you're strong enough to ask for it, but because the universe demands it of you. The saint who looks demonic, unrecognizable, anathema to the people she leaves behind, heading out of the red and into the white, dragged by that one tiny hand. The woman becoming something different, something better; the woman dying in her change. The woman just beginning her tutorial. The woman who could be more.