Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Human Reaction
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 08.19.1999
John questions his father outside. Like it or not, these are Jack's people doing this and Jack's been pulling this crap since John was little, and even if you know better, as an adult, there's still the feeling that your dad is still somehow picking them over his son. "What's going on?" John demands. "What's takin' so long?" Jack begs John to relax, but John's getting tired of all this mumbo-jumbo: "And do what, Dad? Read a magazine? They're all seven months old, Dad! They don't want me to have any idea what's going on." John stares at the table as Jack speaks: "If what you say about those aliens is true, they can help us unlock the universe. You're positive they're not here to harm us?" John almost rolls his eyes at the idea that any person on Moya could possibly have it that together. "They came looking for me," he says. "They were worried." And if the accent always comes back when John's with Jack, is that because it's hard, or because he still idolizes him? Was it a trout, or a bass? "You trust them?" asks Jack. John's like, "A fucking bomb more than Wilson, duh." "I like them," he tells his father. "They're my friends." There's a bit of an edge here, like when your work friends meet your regular friends or whatever: "I know they have a bunch of tattoos and tend to talk about Star Wars more than normal people, but come on, they're nice."
Cobb shows up and, for no reason except to further the plot/experiment/ritual, brings John to the medical unit. John sees something awful on the table, and comes closer. Lying on the table is Rygel's corpse, vivisected, his entire abdomen cut and stretched open. You know Inanna? Sumerian goddess, an Ishtar/Aphrodite type. Don't yell, I'm going somewhere with this. She went to see her sister Ereshkigal, or Death, and at each of seven gates she gave up her clothing, her jewels, everything that made her her, until she finally got to the bottom, naked, to be tested and reborn. In John's trip through the wormhole, this holy test of him, he's lost Zhaan and he's lost Chiana, and Moya and Pilot, due to the plot concerns. He enters without faith, without youth, without a home, without a compass. And now with Rygel dead, he's lost worldly concerns, body, all thoughts of pleasure. John has his anger, and he has love, and he has his father, and that's all he's got. It's a fairy tale. (I know I tend to get like this, but it's only with the stories that tell these truths: it's a fairy tale. Just be happy I never recapped Buffy. Or, speaking of stripped Inanna, Wonderfalls. My God.) John's face goes soft, and hard. You can see Rygel's organs, his body laid open to dissection, the gross matter of his body gone cold. He's a walking stomach, and that stomach is laid open. John's lips go all woggly and he sees Wilson, spying through the window.
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