SG-1 "200"

[justalurkr]

200 ---like, dudes. They couldn't even be arsed to come up with an actual title?

The good:

1. It's over.

2. They mocked themselves before they did the fans.

3. See #1.

The bad:

1. There's fanservice, and then there's servicing the fans, as anyone who has worked with livestock knows.

I think that covers it, short of going into some really painful detail.

The ugly:

The crew clearly had a lot more fun with this than we did.

All that said, I did groove on the "invisible Jack" bit.

Comments

[nialla]

You know, I'm seeing a lot of squee over the slashy side of the wedding scene, and I'm just not seeing it. I tried, really.

Jack and Daniel are obviously standing there as groom and his best man, waiting on Sam the bride and Vala the bridesmaid (what crackvan would cause that to happen?). Daniel says, "You know, if she doesn't show up, people will think..."

That's it. They cut out all the scenes MS and RDA adlibbed giving it a truly slashy sense, such as Jack handing the flowers to Daniel. There wasn't any banter or anything, so if we hadn't known about it, would it have really registered? As it was, I was still finishing Daniel's sentence with weird stuff.

"People will think... we're standing next to each other."

"People will think... Sam ran off with Thor."

"People will think... Sam ran off with Vala."

"People will think... Sam ran off with Vala and Thor, and they're off to have a fourgy with Hermiod. Rodney's filming it, and plans to retire and live like a king on the proceeds. 'Alien Autopsy' has nothing on this."

I was reminded of the breakup scene with Kerry the Very Convenient Girlfriend, where the writers purposely left out any reference to gender when she was asking Jack if rules and regulations were the only thing keeping "them" apart. They'll never actually make a m/m reference onscreen unless it's a joke. The best they can do is a gender neutral reference or an incomplete sentence.

The thing is, I really don't want them to try. Slash is a whole lot more fun when they don't, because they don't understand it at all. Like ship, you can't force it, even if you're tapdancing around it.

It comes across like a kid trying to grin and bear it when Aunt Martha who smells of gin pinches their cheeks and gives them noogies. They're trying to at least fake their way through being nice and going through the motions, but they'd really rather not.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

I'm in on the squee for Jack/Daniel and their little trip to Canada. Of course, my TV shorts out at odd times, and never have I seen this USS Sam'n'Jack people keep yammering on about (that's my story & I'm sticking to it,) so I could be biases. ;)

I was not aware there was all sorts of slashy goodness in the adlib. What it tells me is that the PTB can't even laugh at that offscreen (I mean, as if it were humorous) and this episode was really, truly about what amuses them.

[nialla]

My squee was more over the two of them in suits than anything else. I can see slash in the flicker of an eyelash, but this was pretty dead. It was just tossed in there to get the obligatory slash out of the way. I'd really rather they didn't. I've seen how badly they write ship, and I can get a hell of a lot more slash out of things when they're not trying to fake it.

[paian]

I've been feeling a little bad that my squee isn't quiiite as stratospheric as what I'm seeing on my flist, so I'm not sorry to see some balance, altho I wish it'd been more fun for you. I do totally agree that The crew clearly had a lot more fun with this than we did -- the parts that were slow-moving or disappointing for me I'm sure were parts the ptb were chortling to themselves over, which is a sad time for what I view as flaws to turn out to be deliberate. But I did have fun with it, so I won't begrudge them their fun. (I'll still criticize it, tho. *g*)

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

I was actually having quite a bit of fun with the episode until the "interviews" at the end, most of which seemed to be hacks at fans...all fans, any description, when it wasn't fairly un-veiled jabs at the actors themselves. Had I but stopped watching at "Ten Years Later," things would have been ever so much better.

It was that "screw the fans, screw AT et al, screw the show,, we just want to play in Atlantis now," that soured the experience.

The puppets ran way long, but I quite enjoyed "Invisible Jack" and the new-kid bits with Vala and Mitchell.

[paian]

ducks_in_a_row's commentary clued me in to that perspective on the mock interviews and made me realize that my brain had just decided it never saw the AT one, which made me uncomfortable (and wasn't funny). In retrospect I think the MS one was really nasty, too; it made me laugh at a couple of points and seemed so unlike MS that while I was watching I parsed it as Generic Actor Being Satirized, but its digs were too pointed for that. Martin's 'screw the cast' interview doesn't help at all; he doesn't seem to be the producers making fun of themselves, he seems to be speaking for them. My revised opinion is 'ick' and I can see where it soured you on what came before. But I'm glad for the bits you did enjoy!

[nialla]

I think the reason I couldn't have much fun with it (besides the vicious ending) is they haven't learned anything.

Sure, they acknowledged all the things that have bugged fans over the years, especially recent years, which probably gave many viewers a feeling of vindication and/or a "they know we're here and they're listening!" buzz. But to them it's nothing but a joke. Next week, it'll be back to the same old thing.

[paian]

I think that's one of the best serious points I've seen about this episode: that now that they've acknowledged the flaws by laughing about them, how about fixing them? But there's no sense of any intention to try to do that. I keep coming back to the 'hang a lantern on it' concept. A huge amount of '200' deliberately hung a lantern on the series' shortcomings and mistakes, as if the ptb's demonstrating self-awareness of their own shortcuts and laziness and dumb writing will make the audience forgive it. It's a trick of narrative you use when you're desperate or you don't care or both. Now that I think about it, that isn't much of a way to celebrate an achievement, is it, unless the achievement is ten years of inexplicably lovable mediocrity. Which ::sob:: maybe it is. Or maybe the ptb just really didn't realize that the stuff they were joking about being lame? Really is.

Ah, well. I cling to what I can of what still makes me happy ...

[nialla]

They've known for years the stuff that's annoying fans (namely the poor writing), but they show no interest in changing. Probably because the ratings have been relatively steady so they didn't see any point in changing. Why fix it if it ain't broke?

Now, apparently there's been a 25% loss in viewership from last season to this one, but I don't think that will cause any change either. They've hit the record books with a tenth season and episode 200, and they've really been phoning it in to SG-1 from SGA's sets, so I don't think they truly care if they're cancelled. Well, they are if both shows were cancelled. And even if they did want to change, it would be next season before we'd see it; too little, to late for this year.

They're definitely hanging a lantern on their skills. It almost seems like they're saying, "Yeah, we may not be the greatest, but you're the ones who've been watching it for years, so what does that say about you?"

Oh, and I think the joking about stuff being lame really means we're supposed to be the lame ones for not getting their wit.