Stargate SG-1 1006 200

[fignewton]

Well, I laughed until I cried... but some parts of it were more cruel or ugly than funny. Be warned: long review/comments beneath the cut.

They gave us Koala-bear Furlings in an Ewok-like village with a Daniel-gripping-Furling-hand to match the lovely Jack-gripping-Asgard-hand from The Fifth Race. Then they blew them up. As a "previously." The laughing started from there, and continued throughout the show.

The fourth wall has been smashed so thoroughly that we're still picking through the rubble. Oh, yeah, this one is going to be the crack!show to end all parodies. :) Setting aside the sheer ridiculousness of Martin moving so freely through the SGC and the premier team (with Vala as tag-along... doesn't anyone remember that she's not actually a member of the team?) being saddled with such a ridiculous project, it was great fun to officially suspend disbelief for a forty-minute span and just sit back and enjoy.

I'll divide the ep into three sections: the "imagined" parts, the "real world" parts, and the "Wormhole Extreme!" closing.

The sci-fi parodies, presented as utter silliness in the first place, were easily the best bits. I winced at the zombie scene, because I'm not a horror fan, and there was way too much zombie blood flying around for my taste. OTOH, there was Walter getting eaten by zombies. And brave Mitchell heading up the ramp as it spins, so he'll be obliterated in the kawoosh. And coming out of the fantasy, still pretending to shoot his BIIIIG guns. And his blank look when Daniel asks where the rest of them are during the scene. And Mitchell's plaintive reference to continuity with the Telchak device. Mitchell as SG-1 fanboy is one of my favorite aspects of the guy. :)

Moving on to InvisiJack, which was so hilariously funny that I really, really wish they'd actually made this an ep. Sooo easy to visualize Jack quietly sneaking off and leaving Carter pontificating to an empty chair, and Daniel's frustrated request that everyone poke around until they find him when he's snoring at the briefing (yeah, where they'll discover the greatest secrets of the universe if they translate the tablet - fun riff on Daniel's enthusiasm from earlier seasons). Teal'c and Jack walking down the corridor? Solid gold. The shower thing irritated a little, except that Carter knew that Jack would most likely pull such shtick, and he cheerfully admitted it before any damage was done. And I loved Daniel's matter-of-fact statement that they lied to Jack in order to make him agree to reverse the process. :)

We catch a brief glimpse of Martin's script; the guy clearly believes on saving the budget by cutting out special effects. I cried with laughter when Martin brightly suggested "thirty-eight" seconds instead of a nice round number; someone, at least, remembers that the wormhole cuts off after 38 minutes.

The Oz sequence was only funny, to me, because of Jack's continual Oz references. Although Daniel-the-Lion with his cup of coffee was delicious. :)

Sooo, Martin plans to end Act II by blowing up Cheyenne Mountain? Poking fun at huge explosions, yes, but delightful because poor, stoic Siler is ordered by Sam to go into the dangerous Gateroom and "shut it down manually" and, of course, goes flying across the room when he's electrocuted. Poor Siler. Maybe he shouldn't have promised to include Jack in his will. :)

The Star Trek parody was too funny for words. The hairstyles like the original show…! Didn't recognize Daniel at first, had to go back and watch it again. And the actors had the speaking patterns of the Star Trek characters dead on. Sam is a little too perfect as Uhura, which I'm assuming the writers didn't actually intend: that is, a brilliant, talented, skilled woman reduced to a mini-skirt and chirping "Hailing frequencies are open, sir!" Complete with sound-effects for her eyelashes. Weren't looking too closely in the mirror, were you, PTB?

The teen!SG-1 left me utterly cold. The closest I've ever gotten to teen angst shows was 21 Jump Street, back when I was a callow teen myself, and the "teenagers" in question were adults pretending to be teenagers. At least the looks of sheer horror on SG-1's faces showed they agreed with me. ;)

I was amused by Vala's attempt to find something obscure and Martin's acknowledgement that "he didn't know that one." I'm guessing that was Farscape, and I'm assuming that Vala and Mitchell played the characters they were when they were part of that show. I have no idea how accurate the parody is, but Thor with that drooping mustache and goatee was hilarious. ETA: read other reviews and discovered that MS was playing "Chrichton" rather than BB. Cute touch, that.

The puppet!SG-1 was another scene that had me absolutely crying with laughter, with two exceptions. First of all, the parody wasn't COTG as much as it was the movie itself; and not only didn't Sam belong there in the first place, but the Sam puppet had the longest exposition psycho-babble, which was clearly "cut" for time (meaning it was even longer!) and neatly took credit for the work Daniel did in the movie. After her prologued sequence, I honestly expected the camera to pan over to the Hammond and Walter puppet and find them asleep. This leads nicely into my other grumble over the puppet sequence, which is that it was way too long.

OTOH… Puppet!Daniel as Spader (but with brown hair, too bad), scribbling on the whiteboard and monitor like he did in the movie, only with the uncoordinated scrawl of a marionette. Hammond's insistence on a spinning 'Gate to explain why Earth's Stargate is the only one in the universe that actually, well, spins. Walter!puppet's dramatically flat, "Chevron seven… also lit up." Puppet!Jack almost more realistic and animated than real-life Jack. And, of course, the severing of the marionettes' strings: not only a flashback to Torment of Tantalus, but too delightfully logical for words. Puppet!Teal'c sniggering was the crowning moment.

Loved hearing Hammond's voice. Sigh.

Teal'c as grim and gritty PI… Hee! "Indeed." Oh, yeah, Martin, go and pitch that one. :)

Mitchell and Vala just have to shoehorn in and ruin Jack's happy ending at the pond… which leads us to the wedding.

Now, I'd only been spoiled for three things: the Wizard of Oz, the original Four walking up the ramp, and the picture of Sam and Jack at the wedding. But honestly, when Thor beamed in, my first thought was that Jack and Daniel were best men for Thor, who would be marrying Sam. My mind is clearly twisted, although probably not nearly as twisted as a lot of writers out there. ;) Seriously, I despise the S/J thing; not because I necessarily think the characters lack chemistry (never thought about it, really), but because I think it cheapens the characters, weakens their storylines, and dishonors the oaths they took in service of their country. A fantasy wedding like this, complete with Jack's startled look afterwards, didn't bother me; it was vague enough to allow shipper fans and non-shipper fans to make their own interpretations.

I'll rewind a bit here and go back to the "real life" sequences, which were a lot more hit-and-miss for me. If we're expected to accept that the briefing room scenes were "real," then a little more effort should have been made to make the character reactions' realistic. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the fourth wall had remained intact for those sequences, rather than inserting all the meta jokes. Yes, I agree with Mitchell's assessment on audiences' intelligence, as well as Teal'c's disgust with everything blowing up. Yes, it's funny to see Mitchell seeing nothing wrong with simply replacing the lead character, when he himself did that to Jack, and for Vala to airily dismiss body-swapping when she did it herself twice. Yes, I do applaud all of Daniel's arguments with bad plotlines and Sam's grumbles about lousy science and the general poking at lousy scriptwriting. But it makes those scenes as unreal as the parodies. That may have been the point, of course, but I wish the writers had placed the "real life" sequences more solidly as either parody or reality. I didn't mind the segue from failure to activate the Gate in "real life" to blowing up the mountain in Martin's Act II, but I cannot figure out if the cake/streamers/balloons and Landry's and Walter's tagalong shtick was supposed to be real or not. If it was real, and they sent all their teams off-world just to celebrate Mitchell's 200th time through the Gate, that's just… eep.

OTOH… Loved Mitchell's fanboy enthusiasm at counting every single trip through the Gate. Loved Sam's indignant "No!" when drooling Martin asks her to repeat her technobabble. Loved, loved, loved the straight-faced send-up of Mitchell and the time-travel in 1969. I am convinced that our Wonder Twins made that up on the spot, really. :) Teal'c has absolutely no trouble keeping up with them, does he? And not actually admitting, in the end, that they were making it up… Hee! 

While Martin's scornful reference to "jumping the shark," as well as Vala's utter cluelessness, was funny, I do question if Martin has been immersed in Tau'ri culture long enough to actually know the reference himself. 

Would it have killed them to give us a single "Jack," "Daniel," exchange? No one even seem pleased to see him, although it was amusing to watch Fanboy!Cam leap to attention and surreptitiously smooth his uniform… possibly wondering just that little bit about his parentage. ;) And then ask Jack to join him on his 200th trip. Oh, yeah, Jack misses it. And "orifice" from the same guy who once referred to the Gate as "flushing sideways" didn't bother me in the least.

Okay, everyone gears up to go through the Gate. Landry brightly agrees to go through, as does Walter, who hasn't stepped through the Wormhole since Homecoming. Is this "real" or "parody"? Certainly Walter's magical donning of BDUs seems to indicate the latter, but too hard to tell. 

The most beautiful moment in the episode, bar none, was seeing Jack, Daniel, Teal'c, and Sam walking up the ramp together, with the newbies following behind…

And then they utterly ruined it for me. I almost screamed with frustration when they gave us the Atlantis wormhole effect. AAHHHH! Couldn't they once, just this once, give us back the lovely, wonderful, original effect? 

Which leads to the final section, which I disliked most and left me with a rather bad taste in my mouth: the WE! Mockumentary. 

Poking fun at the silliness of overused plotlines, sci-fic cliches, and even the more ridiculous aspects of the show are all well and good under these circumstances. But when the "WE! actors" started mocking both the actors and the fans, it wasn't funny any more. It passed the threshold from funny to cruel. The language thing was ugly and apparently pointless; the mocking of RDA's "phoning it in" in his last season, and MS's year off and Daniel's fans at SDJ.com, was uglier. And why is it funny to sneer at a woman actor who wants to have a baby? AT did just that at the start of S9, and the writers are getting back at her for that? (ETA: apparently RDA used to swear a lot during takes, from what I read in other reviews. Still not funny.) 

You want gentle mocking of the actors and the writers? They did a lovely job of it in the special, even if the Walter-wanting-to-know parts were over-the-top and boring. Here in the show, though, it came across as smirking ugliness. I really didn't like it. 

The worst part of the mockumentary bit can't be blamed on the writers, but on Sci-Fi. Here, we get Martin gleefully announcing at the 200th WE! episode party that the show has been picked up for a movie; in RL, we get Sci-Fi announcing at the SG-2 200th episode party that the show has been cancelled. Irony at its ugliest, to put it mildly.

Things I missed: You gave us Jack. You gave us puppet!Hammond with Hammond's voice. We got mentions of the Goa'uld, the Replicators, even brief cameos of the Ancients and the Tok'ra. No Janet? No Jacob? No mention of the Nox, or Martouf or Sha're or Skarra? Not even Bra'tac, who at least can claim to still be alive.

And yeah, I still think the 200th episode shouldn't have been a comedy, but rather a good, high-quality story with all the best highlights of what makes SG-1 such a special show. Not complaining too much, though. All things considered? I'm happy enough with what we got.

 

Comments

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Janet was there. Pay attention in the background during the puppet scene. ;-)

I'm not sure why they were going through the Stargate at the end. Maybe for Mitchell's thing, maybe not. It did mesh reality and meta too much, but I was having such a romping good time, I didn't care.

Invisible Jack was awesome and, technically, canon. Sam was relating a real mission then...why did Teal'c have hair?...um, I dunno.

I've almost given up catching all the references to other shows. Back to the Future, 24, Farscape and apparently Star Trek meta (outside the sequences), Firefly, Happy Days, Gilligan's Island, etc. Plus all the cameos of the crew. Holy cow. It's like a Where's Waldo game.

You forgot Teal'c P.I. "In-deed." I loved that!

The W-X meta was totally taking off from AT, MS, and RCC interviews and I agree was a bit harsh for my taste (and I loved W-X), but most everyone involved has laughed good naturedly at it, and it didn't sour the overall experience.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Janet was there. Pay attention in the background during the puppet scene.

Do you mean the out-of-focus woman standing next to puppet!Sam?

You forgot Teal'c P.I. "In-deed." I loved that!

Nope, didn't. :) I included it among the parodies. I concede that dividing them according to parody/"RL" scenes probably made my review less easy to follow. But my parody reactions were mostly positive, and I had a lot of uneasy moments with the RL sections, so I preferred to separate them.

I understand that the W-X! meta was a takeoff from various interviews by the actors. The difference is observations by the fans, who can grumble to their hearts' content without crossing over the edge to nastiness, and the producers/writers themselves making sneering observations - not only about the actors, but also the fans ("savedoctorlevant.com"). I guess the actors are more forgiving than I am... or a little too conscious of their contracts. :/

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Oh I missed your Teal'c P.I. comment! LOL.

Yeah, I wasn't in fandom during the SDJ days, but I know some people who were involved in SDJ. They've mostly laughed at the comment and didn't take offense.

I still would rather have seen them all eat cake...even if made no sense at all.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I've only been a fan about thirteen months myself. Maybe it's because I'm such an outside observer that it bothered me so much?

And yeah, I would have liked to see Daniel and Jack in a food fight. Much, much better ending. :)