Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 366 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT A Human Reaction
By Jacob | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 1999.08.20
Jack and John enter a large room, the lights dimming and brightening. Several odd sacs hang from the ceiling. As John looks up, one of them opens its eyes. We cut and fade from lots of angles, this side and that side, one alien and then another, John upside down. Their lovely eyes. "Though space is without boundaries," Jack intones, "there are but a few planets where we can live." John assumes, given what he's seen in the last fifteen episodes, that they're looking to take over. "Not take over," says Jack. "Cohabitate. To replenish our hive. The Ancients have stories of a world that will welcome us. We can only hope they're true. You can move closer." John's fucking cool where he is, thanks. "We had to find out whether humans would welcome us, or fight us." Images of John's life float across the screen, the walls, his face. It's very wack. It's worth noting that Browder came to utter hotness fairly recently. "You stole my memories," he complains. "I'm sorry to have taken this form," says Jack. "But I thought the best spy would be a father, as seen through his son's eyes." And he's right, especially with this particular son. Throughout the rest of the series, John will always love this Ancient; not as a father, but as a thing that knows him, knows his heart. The only thing he really wants. "You stole my memories," he says again, and Jack protests that they had no choice.
"Show me," says John. The first and last question. "What you really look like." Jack nods, and crosses to the side -- John walks away, around, keeping the chrysalises between him and the real deal. A bright light shines down from above as John blinks. The most important thing in the entire series happens right this second, but we don't know it yet, and we won't know it for a long time. A veil has been broken. Once you've taken the plunge, jumped into wormholes, you have knowledge of wormholes. Maybe not in a place you can put into words, maybe not in a way you can explain to Steve Carell, or even Steve Dedalus, but it's there. And you can't know what your father really looks like, underneath all the memories and lies and disappointments, until that day. Just because it happens every day, to every person, doesn't make the jump any less momentous, or any less terrifying. Other people's bodies are the scariest thing in the world until you've done it before. A sillier man than John might think of it as "conquering," as "exploring," but either way it's learning territory. It's moving out into the mystery, it's crossing the boundary from what's known to what isn't. Which is what astronauts do, as like, their whole job. This is a boy story; this is a boy's fairy tale, so it's about astronauts and wormholes and guns and the whole bag of boy bullshit. But it's still true, no matter your circumstance.