A Case of You

[itsallovernow]

Yummy thai food last night with my friend T., made even better by the fact that they were out of pig's blood soup. I consider myself open minded about culture and food, but I don't think I could have watched him eat this. But good for him for being willing to.

Then a trip to Amoeba. I bought an old Waterboys CD, Minibar Road Songs and Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now. I've always been a big Joni Mitchell fan, but never bought this album. It's really lovely, and traces a relationship through song.

And Warren Zevon's final album comes out today. I've talked about this before, but it's both eerie and remarkable to watch a man die in the public eye. And I meant to buy the new Nick Cave and forgot. I got distracted by the overwhelmingness of Amoeba, even though their Best of 2003 booklet mostly covers legions of bands I've never heard of.

Belle and Sebastian were on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic this morning. They'll be rebroadcast at 4 p.m. online and then the show will be archived. If you haven't heard Belle and Sebastian, they're a wonderful, quirky Scottish band that I absolutely adore.

whitelight1 has agreed to write my Rygel/Bender in exchange for some angry J/A. I think I can do that. Now I just have to think of a situation that I haven't already used:)

And finally, just to be consistent, spoilers for .

I have to admit that while the plant plot may not have been the most compelling, it seriously creeped me out because I have a weird fear of large plants. It stems mainly from an August Derleth story I read as a kid about this plant that would crawl into an open window and wrap around people, strangling them. My mother has a giant climbing vine in her bedroom and I've woken up in the throws of nightmares when I've slept in that room. I'm sorry, plants creep me out. This, however is personal, but is part of why that storyline didn't bother me.

The rest of it, the more I watch this ep, the better I like it. It's flawed, yes, but still, do I think it's one of their best, no, but there's a lot to like. The opening sequence, all the tension of everyone getting to play captain, the discordance of D'Argo's shilquin and John's obsessive wormhole watch, it builds and then nothing happens. Aeryn's pacing in the background, edgy and frustrated, and he finally comes over to her, they're about to talk and boom. Wormhole. Huge, symbolic wormhole smack dab in the middle of them. And John with the huge smile on his face, giddy, thinking everything's coming together - the girl's back and wants to talk, wormholes are dancing at his fingertips and reality intrudes.

And I'm sorry, yes, Aeryn does talk to Chiana, which may seem odd, but she's known Chi for a long time and she's obviously trying to change her manner, trying to find a new self to fit into, which makes sense. She's given up whatever she was in the break to remain on Moya and Aeryn has never been very good at deliberate change. She's nervous, tells Chiana about the baby, and realizes later it was a bad idea, and meanwhile, a ship full of antsy people with nothing to do finally have something to talk about.

And Aeryn is Aeryn. She is competent, forceful, concerned and ready to move forward in her relationship with Crichton. My favorite moment, I have to admit, is when she gets knocked out and he asks her where it hurts, and she slaps him away, saying, it hurts where it's bleeding.

But we also see other relationships build. Scorpy and Sikozu start being delightfully creepy, Chiana and D'Argo are talking, and D'Argo becoming captain is just one of my favorite things ever. Along with him and John in Lo'La talking about shooting things. I just love D'Argo. And Granny gets used effectively here.

And then that moment at the end. Something has changed for Aeryn, although not as much as we may think. I don't think she ever looked at either John as a copy, but they have come together in her mind, and that's not all that healthy, but it is one way to deal with things. Problem is, he's not the same man anymore and he's lost his ability to trust her, and so he leaves her there, without understanding, and without answers, forcing her to try and find a way to reach him that's foreign to her nature, based on what she knows of the man she lost. And John, walking away from the girl, and finally realizing that even innocuous wormholes carry with them unexpected danger.

Comments

[scapersuse.livejournal.com]

Great comments on NE, I like your insight to Aeryn and John in this ep, and your reaction to the 'ship-building of the other characters *g*. I find I'm liking the eps from the first half of Season 4 better in retrospect than I was upon first viewing them.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I really loved the bulk of Season 4, because I just enjoyed the show so much, and was so involved with the characters that they could have read the friggin' phonebook and I'd have been thrilled. It's not that I don't see the flaws, or the failings, but I'm a lot less critical than most people have been towards this season because I think there's just remarkable stuff there, still better than anything else that was on TV at the same time. But certain eps do seem to get better with further viewings, and for me, NE was one of them.