justalurkr | SPOILERS SGA "Common Ground"

If you're not a Shepaholic, there's an excellent chance this episode did nothing for you, or very little.

1. Hey, Kolya. I missed you. Well, I missed the guy from Brotherhood. I won't be missing this petty-assed whiner who really did cross a line for no good reason when he could just as easily gone back to the Genii homeworld and taken over from with Ladim's administration. Someone needs to kill the hell out of this guy.

2. John Sheppard as Moby Dick, harpooned yet unbowed. This tickled me in ways I really can't explain, given that Kolya was really after Ladim. Was it just me, or was there a swipe at all the fanfiction out there where Kolya moves heaven and earth, raises hell and high water to get at Rodney McKay?

3. I get that a lot of people like to pick at Joe Flanigan's "interesting choices" as an actor. Really, I do. I think he did an amazing job with the arc from "boy, I'd love to kill my cell-neighbor a whole lotta lot" to "there's a lot you don't know about humans." He didn't have a lot of time, and still managed to sell me on it.

4. I'm sorry; after the events of Coup d'Etat and Allies, I don't see anyone on Atlantis trusting anyone at all the way Elizabeth and Teyla trusted Ladim. The writers really should have seeded the "alliance" between Ladim's government and Atlantis a little more. The Lanteans were coming across as naive idiots, even though Ladim turned out to be OK.

5. Yes, I saw the "giving life" thing about ten parsecs out, since we obviously can't afford the makeup bill on keeping Joe aged up for the rest of the series, and Carson couldn't pull the fountain of youth out of his ass (though I wouldn't have put it past Rodney,) so there pretty much had to be a Wraith reset button. I don't care. That whole scene from Ronon knocking the Wraith (the first one not to acquire a dumb-ass moniker from Shep; did anyone else notice?) to Sheppard leaving him on an unknown planet was very, very cool.

Yeah, all bets are off. Riiiight. The Wraith With No Name will be delivering the head and hands of Michael before the season's up, is my bet.