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
John stares out a window; Aeryn enters: "They're getting their maps." John's been getting fucking drunk, which is absolutely the only way you can watch this happen and not turn off the TV. The only way this makes sense is if you're drunk or crazy, and in John's time he'll resort to both. "Pilot says he's going to be okay. It's only one of his arms -- hell, he's got four." Which makes John and Aeryn the "odd men out." How odd, to care. To see this most gorgeous sign of our intimacy with Moya shit on so casually. "That means they're going home, and we're not." And they're fucking welcome to it. John and Aeryn are going somewhere better. Aeryn turns to leave, because this is only judgment and not a plan. What Aeryn needs is a plan to save someone she loves: several concepts we're not ready for. " Even with the maps it's still going to take them some time to make the trips," John offers to her back. "And then it's just you and me," she realizes.
"I'm not entirely useless here, you know," John complains. "I happen to be learning." She grabs his hooch and begins to drink. "Aeryn, what's the matter?" They're all going home. And someday, he will, too. Don't make wishes; don't even imagine it. Don't make wishes. He drunkenly chuckles: "If I ever find a way home, yeah." If the credits come true, instead of becoming more and more true. "I was born a Peacekeeper soldier. I've always been one among many. A member of a division, platoon, a unit, a team. I've never been on my own, John. Never been alone. Ever." But you could be more, and we know this because you hurt for Pilot. Not because he's in your regiment, but because he's in your heart. Because what's been done to him resonates across the show like Titania and Oberon: storms, and fire, and the nine men's morris all full of shit. Because they have disturbed in their darkness the natural order of things. "Me, on a planet full of billions of you?" (And again: show me to this planet of Crichtons and I will show you a man ready to go the fucking distance. In the meantime, we drink and we dream and we work on fucking stamina.)
D'Argo comes upon Rygel tossing crap out of his cell. Not that it ever meant anything but now it means nothing. "When I return home and reclaim my birthright, offal such as this will no longer be allowed to offend my sight." Things he's stolen, things he's hoarded. In this time of nothing, we can't even hold tight to Rygel's hoarding. Wishes and the things on the other side of wishes. And were these food cubes, D'Argo asks, in his possession...when we were out of food for nearly two weekens?" Guess thatâs weeks. Guess without Chiana's self-important lie of sexual freedom they had to do without. The evil inside. "You have not reclaimed your birthright yet, little man," D'Argo claims. As though this won't work out beautifully. As though something earned by horror couldn't possibly go wrong.