Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bass
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 17 | Aired on 02.13.2003
The way that John causes ripples in the world everywhere he goes, and we have to watch them and take responsibility for them, fast-forwarding to see that the best we could wasn't quite good enough and there was collateral damage. That's kind of like real life, if you're brave enough to admit it. Chiana dances on the deck at Chez Alien; asks Bobby to dance and he begs off. She laughs and does a silly dance for him: "I'm drivin', I'm drivin'...and reverse! Reverse!" She laughs and heaves. Still dancing, curious. Innocent: "Bobby, what do you think of sex?" He's bewildered. She tosses her hair: "Sex." He asks why she's asking, and she says she's curious. He's thirteen, he hasn't had sex. "Thirteen? What are you waiting for?" He protests that it's against the law, and she's shocked. "To have sex?" At thirteen? Yes. "Well, that's...frelled. Who cares when you have it?" Starting with his mom? She continues to dance, and a lightbulb goes off: "Okay, so why are all the little girls wearing all those clothes?" Like she's got him in a conundrum. She does. "Because they see it on the TV and in the magazines." But somebody, Chiana stresses, sold them the clothes, "so somebody wants them to have sex." It was never Bobby's innocence she was after, at all. Ever. Again. She's not talking about sex. It's heartbreaking. She's so subtle, dancing around this shit over and over. I love her so much. I don't want to talk about it except to say that the surface of what she's saying is also true, and also terrible. And not in a "what about the children" way, I mean in a real honest-to-God way that there are men who are happier with things the way they are. Buddhist guy cheers for her: "There is an innocence about her that is wonderfully contagious!" Bishop Vosko joins the list of assholes across the universe that lines up to call her a whore. Olivia Crichton scoffs at all comers: "Oh please. Don't make more out of that than is there. She was not coming on to Bobby." Even the xeno guy's like, don't be gross: "I'm not a psychologist, but that's rather innocent, hmm? ...You get more juice from Dawson's Creek." On which subject I have been warned to shut the eff up, so I shall. ["Not much else to say, is there?" -- Sars] The video goes dark.
Bobby stands alone in Moya, talking to the air: "Okay, it's working. What did you want to show me?" Sikozu's voice, kind and friendly -- for her, which it turns out is a lot -- and it occurs to me that this episode is a love letter to the supporting cast. Everybody comes off brilliant in this, I suspect because the episode is designed to make you recoil out of disgust and right back into love. "Curiosity causes you to look in unexpected places...and find unexpected rewards." Her hand extends down, gorgeously, into the shot from above, tossing him a comms badge. "Have a go." Bobby smiles and comms to "Uncle John," to "Commander John Crichton," and John comms back with a question: "What the hell are you doing with the comms?" It's such a great little moment, all of it. Grace and humor in the funniest places. I might like this part almost as much as I hate watching the Chiana bit before. "Uh, Sikozu let me try it?" Sikozu walks down the bulkhead, light as air, and hops to her feet. "Where are you?" John: "Australia. I'm workin', Bobby." The video replays: Sikozu, light as air. The xenobiologist has an orgasm, but you can't begrudge him. Hamilton wows: "I met this young female and had no idea!" Cut to Sikozu standing in the kitchen with a dog, as Dr. Anderson tells a truth of sorts, even in her ugly hate: "In my opinion, there is nothing about the alien Sikozu that is not infused with anger and disdain. E.T., she is not." But did you see the part with Bobby? So fun!
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