Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Live Through This With Me
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 04.15.1999
Rygel -- who will always take a deep breath when he has to -- comes into the Zelbinion on his Jazzy. I admit I didn't expect him to follow through this time, because I don't want him to be all upset. I mean, I don't care at all if he lives or dies, but he's so intractable and full of himself that seeing him weird like this is really kind of upsetting. Like if you saw Donald Trump fall down on his old man ass. You'd laugh, but it would be really unsettling.
D'Argo runs off with some 'babble and Aeryn says they'll meet him or whatever, and takes the lead. Behind her, John and Gilina are having a chat about how he's really not Sebacean. "Human. It's kinda like Sebacean, but we haven't conquered other worlds yet so we just kick the crap out of each other." Funnier -- again -- seven years ago than it is right now. Gilina thanks him for, you know, stopping Aeryn from killing her dead before. "I try to save a life a day. Usually it's my own." And in that case it's usually somebody else doing it, Mister Man.
They come into the middle of a big awesome bay with lots of science all over the place, and John stupidly exclaims about what if the Peacekeepers used their science and technology to do good instead of evil, and Aeryn, feeling more Sebacean than she has in a long, long time, and who could blame her, gets right up in his face. "To do what? To fulfill your vision of who we should be? We are Peacekeepers. Other cultures hire us to keep order. To keep harmony." Honey, "we" are not doing any of those things. Just because it smells like home doesn't mean you're twenty again. Also: context, like with the PK stuff last week, is everything. Art shouldn't imitate life if it's in the future; it's too sad. I do love her in her pride here though, showing us what a real live Peacekeeper, one of them that really believed, would say. She's the only one. Put her in this environment, burned out and horrible just like her life, and she'll backflip away from John's corrupting influence so fast. Back from science to war, back across the line to less. But also and finally, I like how this triangle has three sides: instead of telling John not to talk to Gilina, she's siding with Gilina, obliquely, against him. Which is like AP Mean Girl shit and takes a fine and detailed hand because it's easy to fuck up. I'm proud of her for trying, but also for being so fucking scary this whole episode that nobody's going to call her on it.