Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Putting Out, With Dark Sunglasses
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 06.17.1999
I do like this episode, don't I? And not the least because of the failures: "I, of course, will return home first," announces Rygel. D'Argo grumbles. "I bartered for the coordinates to this asteroid," Rygel lays it out, "I made the first contact with Namtar, I struck the deal. I go home first." And who steps in but that paragon of unselfishness, that shell of a woman that carries within it all the beauty of Moya and more? "D'Argo and I have already spoken," explains Zhaan, as though it is self-evident. "Whoever's home is the closest, that is where we will travel to first." How about all of you proceed directly to hell instead? Home isn't even what you want. It's not planets you miss, it's people. We have Aeryn here. And John, and Moya, and Pilot. "You two have spoken?" Rygel paranoids. "Without consulting me? What am I, chopped mellet?" And Zhaan, the higher self to which we all aspire: "Of course not. I can stomach chopped mellet." I didn't put her there; she did that herself. All the farther to fall. "Blue-assed bitch," Rygel mutters awesomely, and she begs his pardon: "What did you call me?" You heard him. "A blue-assed bitch!" John smacks him, because come on. He asks if they're paying attention to the coordinates flying across the screen, and D says the inevitable: "We don't have to get all this. Moya is." Oh, is she? Pilot: "...Moya isn't." One hundred spacebucks across PayPal on delivery of that line. Fucking right she isnât.
Everybody turns to Pilot on the clamshell. Zhaan: "Pilot, how are you?" Suck it, Blue. Not having you this week. "Yotz with pleasantries," says Rygel. "What do you mean Moya isn't assimilating the data? Is that her doing, or yours?" Zhaan tries to access Moya as Pilot admits that it's not him fucking with them. As he should. "Pilot is right," says Zhaan from her console. "The data is being processed directly by Moya but there is too much." D'Argo bitches and Pilot tells him to fuck off: "Moya can do nothing about it. It appears your crystal is useless. Lucky for you, you didn't trade anything of real value to get it." Ouch. A little cheap, but ouch. Zhaan realizes that they can access only one map -- but even that at the price of the other two. Good. "Well," Rygel decides, they'll "just go to Namtar and ask for three individual crystals." D'Argo brings up that he'll ask for more if they ask him for more. I hope he chops all their shit off. Slowly. "If he should ask for it," asks Pilot, "What body part you willing to offer, Your Eminence?" (Body and mind; only together does Pilot's skill make sense. Only with both intact can the intuition work its magic.) Rather than answering this apposite and important -- not to say bitchy -- question, Rygel fully scoffs and takes off with the crystal, zooming out the room on his Jazzy. It's obvious where I stand here, but that was awesome. Zhaan and D'Argo run off chasing him, and hopefully the three of them fall in a very deep hole and get a chance to think about what fucking assholes they are.