Dog with Two Bones - S3 Finale of Farscape
Jul. 8th, 2010 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSent off the electronic list-serve. Not as hot today as yesterday, but quite humid and there must be something in the air, everyone is edgy as all get out. And no one I've spoken too is sleeping well. CW and I keep trying to get our act together to go kayaking, but we keep procrastinating. And it's getting in the way of CW's soccer obsession. She'll win $1750 prize if Germany wins on Sat. I told her that at least her obsession is lucrative, mine not so much. I told it was Farscape. And she surprised me by stating: "Oh I love that show. That was amazing. Watched it was on that sci-fi channel. Good obsession."(CW is picky, she's old school Doctor Who, huge Big Bang Theory fan, loved Trek, and Star Wars (not the prequels, but did anyone?) enjoyed Lost, Xenia, Hercules, but found Buffy/Angel a bit juvenile and soap operaish (she's not a vampire fan, prefers zombies), Firefly a bit silly, and BSG was a bit too bleak.)
Watched Farscape S3 Dog with Two Bones last night and then the commentary with Ben Browder and Claudia Black - who by the way give the best commentaries on the planet. A rarity with actors. Another rarity with television actors in particular - is these two really knew their characters inside out and their take is the same as the writers' and directors. Part of the reason for all of this - is cultural. Australia unlike the US and *cough*Hollywood*cough* does not have a "star" system. Or hierarchy. The lead in a play or tv show - does not have much pull. Or at least that's what Browder and others state. While Sarah Michelle Gellar could get people fired on Buffy (and actually did), Ben Browder couldn't on Farscape. Also Farscape unlike the US tv shows -didn't have the same degree of cast turnover. It was more organic. As a result, Farscape was tighter plotted in the first three seasons (note have not seen S4 yet and my memory of it is too vague to comment), then the vast majority of US tv series. Plus it
had writers who were interested in creating four-part arc stories and a novel, and found ingenious ways around the network's desire for standalones.
A Dog with Two Bones is based on an old parable which a tortured and pained Crichton, whose friends and Aeryn (his family on Moya) are on the verge of leaving for separate climes,
tells to a alien witch. She states that she doesn't know the reference and he says: "A dog, an animal that is also a pet, is carrying around a bone in his mouth - he reaches a river and looks in to see another dog with a bone staring back at him. He reaches to grab that other bone and loses the one in his jaws, having nothing. I'm like that dog - I reached for wormholes - the way home and I've lost everything." And the old alien witch - who he calls Wrinkles, asks, can the dog learn? Can he change? It's not too late - choose which bone that you want.
What fascinates me the most about this season finale, which is entirely inside Crichton's point of view and mostly inside his head - is the risks they take and pull off. They break a lot of rules in this episode - as the actors point out in their commentary. They end the A plot line in the first act, the next two acts are really all about Crichton and his relationship with Aeryn and everyone on Moya. Most of it takes place inside Crichton's head - where he is playing out a fantasy of bringing his friends on Moya to Earth, and incorporating both worlds - yet they are incompatible. He can't bring his friends to earth, without losing both. He has to choose either his friends or Earth, he can't have both. At the end - he chooses his friends, Aeryn - even telling Aeryn, he wants her, nothing else - pick the world and I'll go and live with you on it. Your choice. But she turns him down - for a lot of reasons.
What the writers did in S3 is rather interesting - they doubled the character - sent him off in two different directions. One character took the traditional heroes journey with Aeryn, the romantic path, and his story is told almost entirely through Aeryn's pov and it is more Aeryn's journey than his - he's the supporting player in her tale. In that story - John Crichton is the traditional/classic hero - whose issues are resolved by an external force, only to have him make the classically right and heroic decision to sacrifice himself for the world. Crichton as Christ. He kills himself to save his friends from the Scarrens. And he is shrouded in light.
This is the Crichton who Aeryn forms a bond with. This is the Crichton - as we learn at the end, she gets pregnant by.
But it isn't really Crichton's tale here, it is Aeryn's. We see this Crichton through her eyes.
We are in her head. This tale does not culminate in his death, but rather in her mourning of him and letting go of both him and her dreams of her mother and father. The latter is as important as the former. At the end of The Choice - one of the most beautiful and amazing pieces of television I've seen - flawless in its execution, Aeryn confronts her mother - a bitter resentful and tortured woman, scarred by love and the loss of it, and watches her mother die. It is that interaction that informs Aeryn's choice in part to close herself off. She shuts herself down emotionally and tries to go back to the Aeryn of S1 and early S2, as well as the one who first came back to life again in S3. Aeryn died and was brought back to life by Zhan at the beginning of S3. And it cost Zhan's her life - something Aeryn can't quite deal with. Aeryn in this season loses everyone she loves - Zhan - her best female bud, Crichton - the love of her life (the two people she came back to life for, who brought her back at the beginning of the season), her parents, her memories and hopes and dreams regarding them, her illusions regarding peacekeepers, Talyn - the ship she named after her father and who she loved like one loves one's own child, and finally her nemesis, old commander, and dear friend Crais. The last straw may well have been her old pilot friend from her peacekeeper days on the Commandant ship - who is burned to death. This Aeryn has lost everything, and she's pregnant. God. Pregnant.
Cut to Crichton. The two Crichtons start out the same, and they are in a way at the end.
But. The surviving Crichton does not get the rewarding hero's path. The ancient's don't came down from on-high as his Dad and unlock the data inside his head. He doesn't get the girl.
Let alone sleep with her, form a romantic and almost perfect domestic relationship with her, and get her pregnant. He doesn't resolve his issues with Crais. He's not the one that Crais comes to respect. Even if - he knows and we know that if he had been the one to go - all of that would have happened. No, he is left behind. She leaves him for his other and possibly better self.
The love triangle in S3 is between Crichton, Aeryn and Crichton. The Crichton left behind grows increasingly obsessive, and insane. Half-crazed with suppressed desire for a woman who left him behind and formed a romantic bond with well his clone, who dies a heroic death.
Half crazed with a desire for home, yet the knowledge that even if he achieves it - it won't be home any longer and he'll inevitably bring ruine to it - unlike Dorothy and Alice, Crichton can't really go home again. Yet, he has Dorothy Gale syndrom - on earth he dreams of space, and in space he dreams of earth. This Crichton confesses that his dreams and his life have become blurred and both are nightmares. He's becoming increasingly hopeless. Unlike the Crichton with Aeryn - his star, his safe haven which had become Aeryn - is gone. And he holds desperately onto the hope she'll come back again. When she does - well, as he states, I was better off dead.
She couldn't be further away. He knows little of what happened to her. And cannot understand what she is struggling with - even if she told him. To deal with her absence, he obsessed over wormholes - delved into the scientific part of his brain - the part of him that scares her a bit and also enthralls her, the logical scientist - the brilliant strategist.
This Crichton - the one who Aeryn leaves at the end of this episode, is a darker hero than the one who died. Conflicted. Uncertain. Crazed. The realm of dream and reality has become blurred.
Aeryn's been gone so long - he's begun to idealize her, fantasize - as we start to see in Revenging Angel - where he tells Harvey (Scorpie) in his head - that it is Aeryn who keeps him going now. Note he no longer talks to his Dad, he is no longer really dreaming of home, he dreams of her. Or he tries really hard not to. He wants to control her - to keep her with him. To not lose her. As he tells her - if you leave, promise you'll stay gone and if you stay, promise you won't leave. Because I can't handle the time in between not knowing.
Does he love her? Beyond hope - he says. But it's also partly a need. A deep need. She's his friend, she gets him. He's lost without her. So she leaves. And worse still - he discovers after she's gone, that she is pregnant with the other Crichton's child, his child, his DNA.
The pain is to the gut. Before he can go after her - Moya is sucked away from him into a wormhole and he is left alone, by himself in a module that is almost out of fuel in empty space.
A fitting metaphor for his mental state. Crichton is alone with his own demons - fighting what he must feel to be a losing battle with them. Jealous of the dead Crichton - who died happy.
While he's stuck in a nightmare - that feels largely of his own making.
Few tv shows go this far into the dark psychology of the human mind. I think House may be the only other one that I've seen. Crichton's struggle with madness, his struggle to stay sane is on-going through the series, by the end of S3, one wonders if he has finally given in.
And what of Aeryn? It makes complete sense that she'd go. She has no other option. Staying with this Crichton hurts too much. It is a constant reminder of all the things she lost, all her dreams. All her hopes. All her broken illusions. And she just doesn't know if she can have this child. If she can be with him. She loves him. If she didn't it wouldn't be so painful. It's because she loves him that she leaves their future in the hands of fate. She tells him to let her go. And it is because he loves her - that he does let her go. That he doesn't insist on going with her. He doesn't push.
At the end of S3 - John Crichton is jaded, cynical, bitter, tortured and hopeless - the opposite of the innocent astronaut hero in the white IASA uniform at the beginning. A man with a broken heart. Pained. And fearful of what lies ahead.
All of this is shown to the audience brilliantly through a surreal intertwined lattice work of dreams and reality. We jump between Crichton's bright dream/fantasy of the gang on earth in Sydney, Australia - celebrating his brigh cheery wedding to Aeryn and all the problems involved with it, not to mention how they don't quite fit in with Earth culture and are almost completely incompatible with it, to Crichton on Moya watching and halfway participating in the burial of Talyn, along with saying goodbye to all his friends - going their separate ways. He's numb in Dog with Two Bones. In his dream - he loses Aeryn, she dies in his arms - as do all his friends - shot by peacekeepers and Scorpius, and in reality - he watches them leave him behind, nothing left or so they say to connect them - now that Scorpius is taken care of and the peacekeepers are no longer hunting them (although I'm not sure why they think that after taking out the base, if anything, I'd think they would be considered public enemy number 1 by both the Peacekeepers and the Scarrens, making Scorpius and Crais look like minor adversaries by contrast, but whatever.) If The Choice was Aeryn's episode, Dog with Two Bones is Crichton's. And at the end, both characters...feel bereft of hope.
Watched Farscape S3 Dog with Two Bones last night and then the commentary with Ben Browder and Claudia Black - who by the way give the best commentaries on the planet. A rarity with actors. Another rarity with television actors in particular - is these two really knew their characters inside out and their take is the same as the writers' and directors. Part of the reason for all of this - is cultural. Australia unlike the US and *cough*Hollywood*cough* does not have a "star" system. Or hierarchy. The lead in a play or tv show - does not have much pull. Or at least that's what Browder and others state. While Sarah Michelle Gellar could get people fired on Buffy (and actually did), Ben Browder couldn't on Farscape. Also Farscape unlike the US tv shows -didn't have the same degree of cast turnover. It was more organic. As a result, Farscape was tighter plotted in the first three seasons (note have not seen S4 yet and my memory of it is too vague to comment), then the vast majority of US tv series. Plus it
had writers who were interested in creating four-part arc stories and a novel, and found ingenious ways around the network's desire for standalones.
A Dog with Two Bones is based on an old parable which a tortured and pained Crichton, whose friends and Aeryn (his family on Moya) are on the verge of leaving for separate climes,
tells to a alien witch. She states that she doesn't know the reference and he says: "A dog, an animal that is also a pet, is carrying around a bone in his mouth - he reaches a river and looks in to see another dog with a bone staring back at him. He reaches to grab that other bone and loses the one in his jaws, having nothing. I'm like that dog - I reached for wormholes - the way home and I've lost everything." And the old alien witch - who he calls Wrinkles, asks, can the dog learn? Can he change? It's not too late - choose which bone that you want.
What fascinates me the most about this season finale, which is entirely inside Crichton's point of view and mostly inside his head - is the risks they take and pull off. They break a lot of rules in this episode - as the actors point out in their commentary. They end the A plot line in the first act, the next two acts are really all about Crichton and his relationship with Aeryn and everyone on Moya. Most of it takes place inside Crichton's head - where he is playing out a fantasy of bringing his friends on Moya to Earth, and incorporating both worlds - yet they are incompatible. He can't bring his friends to earth, without losing both. He has to choose either his friends or Earth, he can't have both. At the end - he chooses his friends, Aeryn - even telling Aeryn, he wants her, nothing else - pick the world and I'll go and live with you on it. Your choice. But she turns him down - for a lot of reasons.
What the writers did in S3 is rather interesting - they doubled the character - sent him off in two different directions. One character took the traditional heroes journey with Aeryn, the romantic path, and his story is told almost entirely through Aeryn's pov and it is more Aeryn's journey than his - he's the supporting player in her tale. In that story - John Crichton is the traditional/classic hero - whose issues are resolved by an external force, only to have him make the classically right and heroic decision to sacrifice himself for the world. Crichton as Christ. He kills himself to save his friends from the Scarrens. And he is shrouded in light.
This is the Crichton who Aeryn forms a bond with. This is the Crichton - as we learn at the end, she gets pregnant by.
But it isn't really Crichton's tale here, it is Aeryn's. We see this Crichton through her eyes.
We are in her head. This tale does not culminate in his death, but rather in her mourning of him and letting go of both him and her dreams of her mother and father. The latter is as important as the former. At the end of The Choice - one of the most beautiful and amazing pieces of television I've seen - flawless in its execution, Aeryn confronts her mother - a bitter resentful and tortured woman, scarred by love and the loss of it, and watches her mother die. It is that interaction that informs Aeryn's choice in part to close herself off. She shuts herself down emotionally and tries to go back to the Aeryn of S1 and early S2, as well as the one who first came back to life again in S3. Aeryn died and was brought back to life by Zhan at the beginning of S3. And it cost Zhan's her life - something Aeryn can't quite deal with. Aeryn in this season loses everyone she loves - Zhan - her best female bud, Crichton - the love of her life (the two people she came back to life for, who brought her back at the beginning of the season), her parents, her memories and hopes and dreams regarding them, her illusions regarding peacekeepers, Talyn - the ship she named after her father and who she loved like one loves one's own child, and finally her nemesis, old commander, and dear friend Crais. The last straw may well have been her old pilot friend from her peacekeeper days on the Commandant ship - who is burned to death. This Aeryn has lost everything, and she's pregnant. God. Pregnant.
Cut to Crichton. The two Crichtons start out the same, and they are in a way at the end.
But. The surviving Crichton does not get the rewarding hero's path. The ancient's don't came down from on-high as his Dad and unlock the data inside his head. He doesn't get the girl.
Let alone sleep with her, form a romantic and almost perfect domestic relationship with her, and get her pregnant. He doesn't resolve his issues with Crais. He's not the one that Crais comes to respect. Even if - he knows and we know that if he had been the one to go - all of that would have happened. No, he is left behind. She leaves him for his other and possibly better self.
The love triangle in S3 is between Crichton, Aeryn and Crichton. The Crichton left behind grows increasingly obsessive, and insane. Half-crazed with suppressed desire for a woman who left him behind and formed a romantic bond with well his clone, who dies a heroic death.
Half crazed with a desire for home, yet the knowledge that even if he achieves it - it won't be home any longer and he'll inevitably bring ruine to it - unlike Dorothy and Alice, Crichton can't really go home again. Yet, he has Dorothy Gale syndrom - on earth he dreams of space, and in space he dreams of earth. This Crichton confesses that his dreams and his life have become blurred and both are nightmares. He's becoming increasingly hopeless. Unlike the Crichton with Aeryn - his star, his safe haven which had become Aeryn - is gone. And he holds desperately onto the hope she'll come back again. When she does - well, as he states, I was better off dead.
She couldn't be further away. He knows little of what happened to her. And cannot understand what she is struggling with - even if she told him. To deal with her absence, he obsessed over wormholes - delved into the scientific part of his brain - the part of him that scares her a bit and also enthralls her, the logical scientist - the brilliant strategist.
This Crichton - the one who Aeryn leaves at the end of this episode, is a darker hero than the one who died. Conflicted. Uncertain. Crazed. The realm of dream and reality has become blurred.
Aeryn's been gone so long - he's begun to idealize her, fantasize - as we start to see in Revenging Angel - where he tells Harvey (Scorpie) in his head - that it is Aeryn who keeps him going now. Note he no longer talks to his Dad, he is no longer really dreaming of home, he dreams of her. Or he tries really hard not to. He wants to control her - to keep her with him. To not lose her. As he tells her - if you leave, promise you'll stay gone and if you stay, promise you won't leave. Because I can't handle the time in between not knowing.
Does he love her? Beyond hope - he says. But it's also partly a need. A deep need. She's his friend, she gets him. He's lost without her. So she leaves. And worse still - he discovers after she's gone, that she is pregnant with the other Crichton's child, his child, his DNA.
The pain is to the gut. Before he can go after her - Moya is sucked away from him into a wormhole and he is left alone, by himself in a module that is almost out of fuel in empty space.
A fitting metaphor for his mental state. Crichton is alone with his own demons - fighting what he must feel to be a losing battle with them. Jealous of the dead Crichton - who died happy.
While he's stuck in a nightmare - that feels largely of his own making.
Few tv shows go this far into the dark psychology of the human mind. I think House may be the only other one that I've seen. Crichton's struggle with madness, his struggle to stay sane is on-going through the series, by the end of S3, one wonders if he has finally given in.
And what of Aeryn? It makes complete sense that she'd go. She has no other option. Staying with this Crichton hurts too much. It is a constant reminder of all the things she lost, all her dreams. All her hopes. All her broken illusions. And she just doesn't know if she can have this child. If she can be with him. She loves him. If she didn't it wouldn't be so painful. It's because she loves him that she leaves their future in the hands of fate. She tells him to let her go. And it is because he loves her - that he does let her go. That he doesn't insist on going with her. He doesn't push.
At the end of S3 - John Crichton is jaded, cynical, bitter, tortured and hopeless - the opposite of the innocent astronaut hero in the white IASA uniform at the beginning. A man with a broken heart. Pained. And fearful of what lies ahead.
All of this is shown to the audience brilliantly through a surreal intertwined lattice work of dreams and reality. We jump between Crichton's bright dream/fantasy of the gang on earth in Sydney, Australia - celebrating his brigh cheery wedding to Aeryn and all the problems involved with it, not to mention how they don't quite fit in with Earth culture and are almost completely incompatible with it, to Crichton on Moya watching and halfway participating in the burial of Talyn, along with saying goodbye to all his friends - going their separate ways. He's numb in Dog with Two Bones. In his dream - he loses Aeryn, she dies in his arms - as do all his friends - shot by peacekeepers and Scorpius, and in reality - he watches them leave him behind, nothing left or so they say to connect them - now that Scorpius is taken care of and the peacekeepers are no longer hunting them (although I'm not sure why they think that after taking out the base, if anything, I'd think they would be considered public enemy number 1 by both the Peacekeepers and the Scarrens, making Scorpius and Crais look like minor adversaries by contrast, but whatever.) If The Choice was Aeryn's episode, Dog with Two Bones is Crichton's. And at the end, both characters...feel bereft of hope.