frelling_tralk | (no subject)

Just came across avclub doing Farscape reviews :D http://www.avclub.com/articles/premiere,93193/

This comment made me laugh "Crichton's pop culture references make him seem like the kind of dick who makes jokes that he doesn't expect anyone to get, then he becomes annoyed when those around him are bewildered. He is Earth's first hipster ambassador to the universe." Cause yeah it's kind of true. Like I get why he would try to center himself by making pop culture references to what he knows, but in the first season especially why is he always questioning how anyone could not have seen the same movies as he has, or saying stuff like how can you not have heard of John Wayne? Not a complaint exactly as I do love all of his pop culture references, just if you landed in space would you expect very alien creatures to have seen the same movies as you have!

And reading the comments reminded me that the supporting cast character-centric episodes never really worked for me. The writers got some criticism for later shifting the focus almost exclusively to John and Aeryn in seasons 3 and especially 4, but for me the show was at its best when it was John's experiences driving the narrative. It was nearly always less interesting to me when the entire focus of an episode was D'Argo, Zhann, Chianna, or Rygel. Yes the beginning of the series was better at spreading the focus, but did anyone ever really pine for episodes like "Taking The Stone", Vitas Mortis", "Rhapsody In Blue"?

One of the few episodes of that type I thought they carried off REALLY well was Incubator with Scorpuis. Maybe because it was more the case of focusing on the personal history of a character we already knew and were invested in, as opposed to some of the strange alien societies that we were supposed to care about in those one-off seasons 1 and 2 episodes, which generally had big roles for a guest cast that the audience didn't much care about? I always liked the Aeryn episodes though and I suppose she was as much alien as any of them, so I'm not sure what it was about episodes like "Mental As Anything" that send me to sleep, but gosh did they!

Reading the reviews really makes me want to rewatch Farscape from the beginning, but there's sooo many other shows I want to catch up on right now that there's just no way. It's a hard life :P

Threaded | Flat

The one with Pilot and Aeryn was good too, where we learn that Pilot was not Moya's original pilot. I forget the name, but it was very good; we got some of Aeryn's background as a Peacekeeper.

"Crichton's pop culture references make him seem like the kind of dick who makes jokes that he doesn't expect anyone to get, then he becomes annoyed when those around him are bewildered. He is Earth's first hipster ambassador to the universe."

D E A T H.

Btw, happy upcoming birthday!

Maybe a reason that made the whole Aeryn backstory /more centered eps easier on us compared to Zhan, D'Argo and company is because the Peacekeepers (hence Aeryn) look like any human would. To the mind's eye, we can relate more to them than we can the others... even if their ways is completely different then us, obviously. I don't know.

I will come back for a better comment, I love Farscape and I miss it totally and completely.

I really liked the alien-character-centric stories... well, with a few exceptions. I didn't hate Zhaan's episodes, but they never involved me much, because they always felt kind of superficial to me. "Oh, here's this character who's practically perfect in every way, so, uh, sprinkle some angst on top?" I think if there'd been more emphasis on her revolutionary firebrand past day to day, or on her day to day struggle to maintain the practically perfect facade, it wouldn't have seemed so detached when it did come up.