sgareview - the tao of rodney, s3e14

Huh.



Huh. I'm still at the huh stage, mostly because I thought we covered this territory in McKay and Mrs. Miller. OTOH, Ronon and John both got a WE LOVE YOU MORE THAN LIFE episode, so really, Rodney was probably due.

Anyway.

Ancients suck. We all know this. They were extremely smart, arrogant, annoying, desperately short-sighted, and self-absorbed to the point of stupidity. Which is intersting in that way that reminds me vaguely of something Star Trekky involving the concept of a baby Q. But to me, their biggest crime was their sheer *lack* of knowing this about themselves. They created a universe and abandoned it when things got rough, leaving the Pegasus galaxy to something worse than slavery and the Milky Way to a armed detente. And they left all their mistakes behind to perpetuate, without seeming to care what would be left behind.

Yes. I may be a little bitter since The Return. A bit.

There's a lot that got on my nerves and a lot I loved, but what seemed superawesome was Rodney's sudden ability to relate to other human beings well. During his final goodbyes, which were awesome beyond awesome beyond words awesome, he also chose his approach to each one in a way that made sense. Radek, professional to professional, boss to subordinate, also friend to friend. Teyla, carefully formal, almost ritual, careful space between them, honoring a tradition she treasured. We talk about John's--er, phobia against touch, but Teyla's not exactly a Touch Me Elmo either, and I liked how Rodney respected that. Ronon is by far the most physically affectionate of anyone in history, so that had the more physical approach, with bonus healing! Elizabeth, respectful subordinate to leader, friend to friend, respect for her position in both his words and his gift. Each one, he gave what they wanted, what they needed to make the connection he wanted, to show them he cared about them, his friends, family, people.

John he gave a problem to solve.

I keep wondering about that. John does not drink tea, does not hug, would be amused if Rodney tried to write a book, and I have this horrible suspicion if Rodney had come in muttering things about their feelings John would have done an amazing dive from the balcony in sheer horror. So John gets to coach Rodney to meditate (blind guy leading blind guy) and quickly muttering "We're okay, right?" and John's affirmative, which is as close as John will ever get to a declaration of emotion without Teyla carefully translating Johnese into English. But that was--their connection. They *fix things* in their different fields. And he gave John what he needed to make that connection--a task, a problem, something to solve and think through, like this is something fixable when he knows it's anything but. And it's not until the end that Rodney starts cracking--which he didn't before, not with anyone else--and John, comfortable in their not-talking about what John is absolutely convinced will not happen, is totally taken aback, being asked to do what he has no idea how to do, which is offer comfort. And buck up probably won't work this time.

I mean, the moment with everyone around the bed broke my heart, and watching John about to cry was absolutely shattering, but that second that sticks, other than John glassy-eyed watching his best friend died, is them facing each other beside the bed and Rodney--who has a passing acquaintanceship with the John Sheppard Method of Coping--wants comfort, from *him*.

In my imagination, in the AU they have really awesome Ascension-inducing sex. *sighs* Or Rodney dies traumatically during, because I am sick like that. And John keeps his claim to only sleeping with Ascended or Pre-Ascended people.

Anyway, liked a lot but did not love, mostly because it felt too short--like McKay and Mrs Miller, actually, with more--I don't know. Rodney needed to *fly*. And use his powers for evil just *once*, dammit, and oh, I don't know. Superpowers! GOD HE HAS SUPERPOWERS USE THEM! How cool is *that*?

Maybe more later. I'm still grumpy, despite a breakfast buffet and my Dillards bear being purchased after work. Grrr.

Comments

[mckays-girl.livejournal.com]

They were extremely smart, arrogant, annoying, desperately short-sighted, and self-absorbed to the point of stupidity.
Why does Elizabeth always insist on coming to their defense, even after all the horrifying mistakes the ancients have made?

use his powers for evil just *once*
The look on his face when he was using the chair, the pure joy of having that much power and control . . . I can see that going too far if John and Elizabeth didn't tell him about the whole ascend or die thing. He could take over the city with John as his sex slave sidekick.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It would be a very short, very bloody reign. *grins*

[mckays-girl.livejournal.com]

very bloody, yet oddly amusing ;)

[bathsweaver.livejournal.com]

Rodney needed to *fly*

I remember thinking, during the scene where Rodney was working in the control chair--that that was him flying. That's him, feeling what John feels when he's in the air.

Also, I loved newkidfan's comments on the scene between John and Rodney, that there wasn't any gap between them that needed to suddenly be bridged; they were cool. Instead, Rodney left John with--as you said--puzzles, tasks. Things to be done, like the eulogy and his body; the stuff a spouse is supposed to take care of. What'd she call it--the most trusted? That's who John is for Rodney, and that made me so happy.

Also, Ronon's pounce and twirl at the very end. Buddy!

::squishes them all::

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I know, but--seriously.

RODNEY AIRBORNE! So cool.

[bathsweaver.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Carson would gladly have traded with him. His hair looked like it was in shock. ;)

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Carson's hair always looks like it's in shock. I don't know why it's John who gets the hair snark, because what the hell is that on Beckett's head?!

[pentapus.livejournal.com]

I loved the moment when Rodney has this look on his face--because of course can make the line between hugging and violence very blurry--like, "Crap, I knew I shouldn't have messed with his gun!"

[pentapus.livejournal.com]

of course Ronon can, even.

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

And use his powers for evil just *once*, dammit

He stole Radek's doughnut with telekinesis! Totally evil!!!

So much awesome Radek, especially playing The Four Yorkshiremen, with his candles and his tent, and I bet his father used to beat him and make him eat glass. Hee!

Elizabeth's apologies for the Ancients make me grrrr (because as an SG-1 fan first, I really can't stand the fuckers). However other than that moment, I liked her better than I usually do.

John wanting to take a whirl on the superpowers machine makes me giddy with glee. :-D

[druidspell.livejournal.com]

Re: Ancients are Big Giant Asshats and We Hate All of Them:

I have this theory in my head as to why there are cults of Wraith worshipers out in Pegasus, where (to my knowledge) there are no willing Goa'uld worshipers in the Milky Way. And it mainly has to do with the fact that the Goa'uld were never interested in seeming like benevolent gods; they'd enslave your ass and you'd like it, or they'd kill you. Whereas the Ancients made worshiping them seem like a great idea, and then they up and left when they found out that hey, genetic experiments? Not a good plan, because those always come back and suck the life out of you later.

[enname.livejournal.com]

Rodney--who has a passing acquaintanceship with the John Sheppard Method of Coping--wants comfort, from *him*.

Yes, to pretty much the entire paragraph before hand. All these comments on 'but why didn't he get all like emotional with John' are annoying me. I mean, how can he? John can't even cope when Teyla does, or Elizabeth or in the heat of 'omg gonna die' so ... yeah. Are people not aware of their characters? Wait, don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

Actually I have to say Rodney being so ... verbosely emotional got me very uncomfortable as well. Not that I am sure he can't or won't, but it felt a lot like the writers were short cutting through a great deal of stuff to try and pack an emotional punch. Instead of you know, building up. The transition from arrogant blustering Rodney to sweet and good Rodney kinda.. too fast. Head spin.

Heh. It is what I said precisely. Why do we need two M&MM? Sure, go for the Rodney character pieces (we had two last season) but, uh make sure they are different in someway. It is not like we didn't get it the first time around and erm ... some of this was just hamfisted in comparison. Learn to differentiate your themes and, well. If at first you don't suceed, don't write it out again in another format.

:P

Shutting up now.

Use his powers for Evul!11!!!

[katelennon.livejournal.com]

I'm so down with that... A fic perhaps??

And I'm real sick of the Ancients are teh evul.. It's sooo boring.

[sorrelchestnut.livejournal.com]

but Teyla's not exactly a Touch Me Elmo either

::laughs self sick::

I'm all weepy now.

[katelennon.livejournal.com]

I did end up watching ToR and I have to say, if those futards don't keep moving this character forward, I swear, I'm going to do the most evil thing I can think of: Go to bridge and egg their cars. This would have been an incredible episode for Carson, not Rodney. Yes, we know, the writers LUV Rodney, but this would have been fab as character development for Zelenka, Chuck or Carson. Shite, even Janet got a couple of great eps- Grrr.

Oh, and just to note: Evil Rodney? such.a.good.idea. I'd love to see an AU a la "through a mirror darkly" (enterprise) all of our characters, only evil! Ah, the possibility.

[thespatz.livejournal.com]

OTOH, Ronon and John both got a WE LOVE YOU MORE THAN LIFE episode, so really, Rodney was probably due.

Which makes it Teyla's turn, now, hah! *lies in wait*

[nightspring.livejournal.com]

what seemed superawesome was Rodney's sudden ability to relate to other human beings well

I've been wondering if he used his mind-reading powers to figure out what would work best for each person? Maybe not consciously, but perhaps he'd unconsciously absorbed stuff before he turned off the mind-reading powers. OTOH, it's equally plausible that he is in fact normally perceptive enough to pick up other people's emotional needs, but he just doesn't do anything with that kind of info, either because he doesn't think it's important, or because he's afraid of breaking down the emotional barriers he's built up to protect himself.

Is this a repeat of M&MM? To me, not quite. M&MM made Rodney face his insecurities and inadequacies, but not in a proactive way. Jeanie told him what was wrong with their relationship, he didn't figure it out himself. In ToR, Rodney takes one step further by figuring out himself what he has to do to make peace with each person. Yes, it would be better if we didn't have both M&MM and ToR crammed into the same season, just like I would have preferred not to have Duet, The Hive and GuP all in the same season -- I tell you, by the time we got to GuP, I was so sick of yet another crazy!Rodney episode, I was ready to throw something at my TV -- but apparently, planning things beyond a season at a time is beyond the abilities of the Stargate production team, so I've learned to live with it. *sigh*

[mklutz]

Which means that John can totally do Daniel, except that it would be terrible because Daniel would be all, "Look, I think we should talk about this" and John would either pout or run away or maybe blow something up and the relationship would be over. How sad.

[ghfan-98.livejournal.com]

Okay, so the tao of rodney was 3.14. I have to get my SGA fix from the net and I couldn't figure out why the episodes were jumping from 3.13 to 3.15. I didn't want to download/watch until I had all the current eps in order. Thanks for the summary. Going to watch now.

[mcalex22.livejournal.com]

It certainly was an interesting ep! I didn't find it to be too short though. I loved the interactions and I loved his parting gifts to all his friends. I agree - if Rodney had gotten anywhere near "mushy" with John, he would have run away!

I also wished we'd seen Rodney and maybe John up to some tricks with the super powers! :)

I also confess that I honestly did not notice that John's eyes were red - possibly because the first time I saw the ep, it was a low quality version. It wasn't till others mentioned it that I went back and looked at the higher quality version to confirm.

:)

[nymphaea1.livejournal.com]

I didn't actually love it, which is why I'll probably not write a review. Being the cranky one when everyone else is in love is not the most fun thing to be.

OTOH, Ronon and John both got a WE LOVE YOU MORE THAN LIFE episode, so really, Rodney was probably due.

I don't know that he was due, which is the primary thing that kept me from liking this ep. Rodney's had episodes that others haven't. Which is completely cool. The team is four distinct characters. They should get four distinct stories, not the same thing repeated four times. Also, Sateda and Common Ground were very much about the Ronon and John love, sure, but they were about more than just the central character. In Sateda, we got more on both John and Rodney's relation to their team, we got some insight into the Satedan culture and we learned a little about the whole Runner thing. In Common Ground, we had Kolya, which is a bonus to any episode, we got insight into the Wraith, we got some Pegasus politics and we got Elizabeth as political leader. In contrast, both M&MM and Tao were very all Rodney all the time for me, and while one of those eps a season is tolerabe, two is not.

I thought everyone except Rodney came off very well, especially Elizabeth. The Ronon scenes didn't feel particularly earned, given Rodney's relationship with him thus far, but I thought Ronon himself was particularly loveabe so whatever.

Rodney though--I thought we were getting fanon Rodney here, and I'm not a fan of fanon Rodney. We were getting both the uber-bitchy why would anyone be friends with this guy Rodney and we were getting woobie, victim of the mean girls Rodney. Where was all of this sudden insight into his team members coming from? If he does have all of this ability to read people and barrels ignoring that anyway, I actually think less of him than if he's just too self-involved to notice in the first place. The transition to saccharine Rodney didn't feel organic and really, the only scenes I really believed were the ones with John just because they were restrained.

I actually felt a lot more sad for Rodney at the end of GUP. Rodney at the end there was very much written as an adult who was responsible for his own flaws and his failed relationships with people and was looking back at his last actions in life and not liking what he saw. That guy, dying alone forced to look at the worst of his personality, felt depressing and real. This one, not so much.

Also, we've done Rodney learns a lesson episode three times now. The fact that he's still the same guy doesn't reflect well on him. It's time they found a new theme.