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
Further into the building, Aeryn knocks out a soldier, and John approaches Cobb in the break room: "Hey, Cobb. You find out who won the Super Bowl, yet?" Again, Cobb doesn't look up: "What do you want, Crichton?" Aeryn enters from a side door, Crichton holding Cobb's eyes, and points her gun at him. She speaks to him in her language, and this time we don't get any subtitles, because we don't need them: "Don't fucking move, bitch." Cobb's confused, and Aeryn speaks again, checking all the exits. John: "She says that she wants to shoot you, Cobb." No doubt. "I don't know if it's a good idea, or not, but I figure since you've pushed us this far, it doesn't really matter, does it? Where's D'Argo?" Cobb looks over at Aeryn, and then smiles at John: "They flew him to another base. He's gone, Crichton. You can't save him." It's only a test. Aeryn bonks Cobb's head with the butt of her gun, and John muscles him into a sitting position and rips off his ID badge: "If you'd only been reasonable!" He takes Cobb's gun: "You're wrong in what you're doing here, Cobb. You're wrong." Cobb asks politely that John not shoot him. John knocks Cobb out, and heads for the door, gun still trained on him. "You're wrong!" He kicks him brutally. "That's for Rygel." That's a human reaction too.
Then comes the very best part of this episode, and maybe one of the best of the series, and the secret reason I was so happy you guys picked this one. John and Aeryn are walking down a sidewalk, in the rain. "Aeryn, pick it up," says John. "I want to get out of this rain." She opens her mouth, smiling, and tastes the raindrops on her tongue. When John offered to bring her home with him, this was the Aeryn he imagined. Beautiful, delighted. She grew up in steel and concrete and plastic, her whole life lived in soldier readiness. This is the more that she could be: this woman, a child for a moment, in love with the wonder of the rain. In love with the universe, outside the walls of Peacekeeper Carriers and Moya, in love with all its mysteries. Even if John's not feeling particularly welcome at home right now, Aeryn can carry it for him for a time, because this is the home he was missing, and the home he tried to give her. Aeryn: "Rain. Is that what you call this? I like it." John's scarier half, his warrior half, the part of him he'll always fear, is falling in love with Earth, touching her, tasting her, even as John's pulling away. And that's what you get for jumping into a wormhole: everything.