Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 403 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Bass
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 17 | Aired on 2003.02.14
"For every instant when we may be lulled into accepting these alien visitors as perhaps nothing more than peculiar-looking versions of people we know here on Earth, there comes another moment on these startling videotapes that seemingly shatters any illusion of potential coexistence."
Bobby hounds D'Argo down the corridors of Moya, begging for something as he says again no. Why not? "For the same reasons that I've been saying to you ad nauseam. Why is it so important?" Bobby begs him to admit that it's "cool," which I completely agree is reason enough. D'Argo nods sheepishly: "It's cool." He asks Bobby to promise not to tell anybody, and to turn the camera off. Bobby, behind the camera, puts the camera on Moya's floor and lies that he's turned it off. "You ready?" He hisses, and lashes out with his tongue. Bobby grunts and drops to the floor, knocking the camera so that it only shows D'Argo's boots. Which tap their toes a couple of times, as D'Argo looks down, and then run off hysterically to get Noranti on the case. "I would have to say that we need to prevent these sorts of encounters from happening outside a research facility," says one of the kinder pundits; Buddhist guy points out that it was a learning experience: "The boy did not die. He is wiser." Anderson returns again to the worry about the aliens having "the run of our planet," without getting the full data on their psychology. Which was, of course, self-explanatory even in that brief clip, which is the point.
I hate this part. Chiana stands before a mirror in a bath towel, a lipstick in hand and blobs of color and blush all over herself. She looks kind of amazing. "What is this for?" Bobby tells her lipstick is for lips. "...I ask because my grandfather says you're a great bellwether on who we are as a species." She takes a huge bite of the lipstick and smiles at him around it: "Bellwether. Do males put these on their faces?" Bobby says that in his particular family, no, but for a second cousin no one talks about. Cruelty and kindness and all the monsters outside the house you decided to build. Chiana calls it a waste, and rubs the lipstick across the top of her head. "Make-up?" She points to the makeup all around the sink: "Why are there so many colors?" She holds up a compact of eye shadows; Buddhist guy calls it a condemnation of materialism. "One must look past the physical and see the spiritual side." He calls her "highly evolved," which is still not the point. Dr. Edmund "Actually Brian Henson" Johnston, Professor of Cognitive Behaviorism, Stanford University: "Remembering for a moment her otherworldly origins, Chiana's perspective is consistent, well-thought-out and, in my view, correct." She continues to lecture Bobby, about to spin Cognitive Behaviorism spinning on its ass. "I've seen water rooms like this that have two toilets, two showers, a sink and a tub...and a bubbling tub, bubbling." She laughs, dancing around, wild, explaining this to Bobby. On Moya, Chiana and Rygel sit watching the video together.