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
John comes upon Jack, who sits alone in a chair, in the middle of an empty hangar. They are quiet with each other for a moment. "Who are you?" asks John. The question he's been asking since he was five; the question without an answer except for what his newly sci-fi life might provide. "You did well, John," says Jack, not looking up. "Most species don't do as well." John asks what the whole world really is, in this dream. "Everything here is a physical creation from your memory," Jack says, and John responds that Jack's not real. "Well," he says, and looks up. He's not totally proud of the shit he has been perpetrating. "I'm not your father." It's telling that John has processed that -- what's less surprising than another disappointment? -- and goes right to "And what about my friends?" Jack, to an increasingly close-to-freakout John, says, "They were investigating the wormhole we'd created from your memory, so we decided to use them in our trial." D'Argo and Rygel appear in glass compartments off to the side. "Crichton, enough is enough," says D'Argo, who's in no mood. "Get us back home." John's so relieved that Rygel is still alive, but of course, since this is the real Rygel, he couldn't care less about all the John-related bullshit: "Kill me? These people treated me splendidly!" Jack looks at John, hoping he'll chill out. See? "They gave me marjools, Crichton! Lovely Hynerian marjools! Mmmm!" Fucking Rygel. He slurps down some kind of disgusting spiny snails. "Whoever you are, I thank you!"
"Of course we didn't kill him," says Jack, like this wasn't cruel enough either way. "We created his corpse." John's hair is now totally fucked up, as Strega would want me to point out; he looks like a little kid. "Why? Why would you make me think that he was dead?" Jack stands: "We needed a human reaction, John. Your reaction." John grabs him by the shirt and throws him up against a pillar. "You made me think you were my father!" he screams. There it is. The last lie. A chunk of Jack comes off in John's hands, revealing some kind of gross alien shit. John drops the chunk, totally in shock, looking at his hands. This is where he loses Jack. We won't really see him again, unless we see him for real. "I'm sorry. For the trial to have value, you had to believe everything. Let me show you." Jack steps away, and John gives in to the craziness of all this. "Are we anywhere near Earth?" he asks. "Actually, we're not far from Moya. We brought you here to recreate your memory." John's all caught up. "Well, if you can make all this, why not just make a wormhole to take you to Earth?" Jack shakes his head: "That would use all our remaining power. We only have enough left to transport our race one last time. We had to be certain of how we would be received." Any other show, this wouldn't matter: aliens kidnap main character, fuck with him, lie to him, realize that Earth isn't ready for their jelly, let him go. But because this show is awesome, it's actually the beginning of the entire quest. Jack walks through yet another in a series of meaningful doorways, and John follows after. Have you ever seen The Truman Show? The ending always makes me cry. Something about that door, out into the world, and the man at the edge of the sky, stepping out, into the next level of the game, the one that matters. It's too big.