Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Kiss Of The Spider Woman
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 14 | Aired on 01.23.2003
Chiana, who was about to wander off, turns around at this, and offers some obnoxious exposition about what's going on, like the altruism anvil just now weren't doing her job for her. "Aeryn is...falling apart," she says, noting everybody else's weirdness, and then there's a stupid beat where D'Argo acts all pacifist -- "I have no reason to be angry...with dialogue and compromise..." -- and Chiana stomps his foot a couple of times and grabs his mivonks and proves that something weird is going on, which Scorpius and Noranti have been saying since the episode started. I hate this kind of crap. If you honestly feel like you haven't shown us, the next step isn't to tell us, it's to try harder. So I won't recap. Chiana puts D'Argo's hands on her breasts and he gets goofy about how he can't make out with her in front of John -- and we'll save the whole dissertation on that for right around never -- and she pronounces that the "tralk" has stolen her sex drive.
"I'm the indomitable one! I whistle stupid songs and make dumb plans but somehow I muddle through! America! Fuck yeah!" "I'm the horny one! I'm a sexy girl with no brain or thoughts or feelings! Dress like me at your next convention!" "I'm the anal-retentive! I have a gun! If I ever stopped clenching I'd turn inside out! Women are stupid crying babies! So I'm not a woman!" "I like stuff! Having it, taking it, whatever! I'm just thumbs up on stuff!" "RRRRR! I'm so angry all the time! My oppression and wrongful imprisonment are whatever! Without my rage, I am just a pussy joke about the sensitive New Age male!" I like the show and I like the characters too much, so we're going to say that this is auto-critique, done on purpose, to show the holes and gaps and persona-caulk they're all going to have to shed to get this season over with. I can admit that it reads just as likely the other way, but: love means never having to say, "You're retarded."
Lots of queasy angles -- the camera work is very subtly off-kilter the whole episode, but this scene in particular adds a grotty tinge to the unbalanced whole -- as Noranti and Scorpius squish Sikozu's severed limbs back into place. She's the objective correlative, and that's the reason she doesn't need to come up against Talikaa like the rest: she's not an arm, or a hand, or a leg, or a foot. Take them away, she's still Sikozu. The thing about this show is the ease with which they take the abstract and shove it, nastily concrete, down your throat. It's like Buffy to the infinite power, but with a serious (and unsettling!) biological focus. And since Sikozu is the only one that can literally have a new physiological trait every week, the burden falls to her: Remove an arm, a leg, a hand, a foot. Remove the lie of sexual wholeness, the lie of rage -- how could D'Argo, of all people, how could Lo'Laan's husband, ever think rage was his strongest trait? -- take the lie of bravado, the lie of consumption without strategy. She's still Sikozu. You're still you.
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