Hi everyone!
I do reviews for the Farscape BBoard, and after a long weekend of traveling for auditions, I can home and finally popped my tapes in the VCR to watch all the shows I missed. When I then went back to review Farscape, I found myself back at the beginning of Tiresias.
I figured, hey why not? I’ve been enjoying IM, might as well give reviewing an episode a try!
So here it is. My review. Of course, it contains huge honkin’ spoilers for last weeks episode, and I did not take anything from anyone else’s review, so all this is my own thoughts. If we happen to say the same thing, well then chalk it up to great minds thinking alike. :-)
Overall:
I must say first I loved Ralph, and while this was a very good episode I enjoyed Ralph more. It was very necessary episode and worked really well on two levels; we are starting to see how the relationships are evolving on the show between the main characters, and the quicksilver madness is fully explored along with exactly how Darien feels about this new part of his psyche. It’s a scary thing to be faced with loosing one’s mind. Add the extra fear of going crazy in such a violent way where you would easily kill even friends, and it’s easy to see why Darien would rather take a bullet then go nuts and hurt someone.
It also appears there are three "stages" to the madness, each with their own degree of red-eye and danger signs. Stage one is the bloodshot look, and Darien gets some killer headaches. Stage two is where the color part of his eyes are red, and while Darien gets scary, he can still control it (see towards the end of Ralph). The third stage is where his whole eyes are red, and this is where you run for the phone and call the Keeper ‘cause he’s gone totally psycho and no matter what you do DON’T offer him a donut!!
The Good
-I like the voice over’s at the beginning and at the end. I also liked them in the first few episodes when they were also DURING the show. It’s great to hear Darien’s thoughts like that.
-Scarborough is one freaky guy...and with a voice that’s at the same time soothing, hypnotic, and demonic.
-So the next time the IRS audits me, I now know what I have to do to get the agent to let me off the hook. And all these years I’ve been trying brownies. :-)
-So our first fun scene is at the beginning when Darien first tries to get a fix from the Keeper. The banter between the two of them is fun to watch. They are still trying to figure each other out, and how to work together. Plus there’s the added tension that not only does the Keeper not give her name (not helping in the trust category) but holds Darien’s sanity in her fridge next to the yogurt.
-Wow, Hobbes’ signature is as bad as some of my doctors! :-)
-"I’ll need a lock of your hair."
"Ain’t got much of that left here old man."
-When Scarborough switched from talking about Hobbes to Darien, I really wanted to see Darien’s reaction to the blind man being so on about him. But at the end when Darien finally becomes visible, the look on his face is priceless. We didn’t need to hear him say "Oh crap" ...it was clear on his face!
-Speaking of that scene, watching Hobbes spar with Scarborough was too much fun; denying everything, even about wearing his mom’s dresses. Man, with memories like that of his childhood, no wonder Hobbes is not a happy camper.
-Fun scene number 2 is any between Fawkes and Hobbes. The Official was right when he said the two of them are starting to get along, and it’s great to watch! The two have their own talents to bring to the partnership besides the whole "cop and thief working together" thing.
-So it’s either Penthouse or Blacks Law Dictionary eh? It’s kinda interesting...and funny...Darien went for the Law book. Or was it just ‘cause the waiting time on Penthouse was too long? :-)
-I got very excited when we saw Darien’s apartment...you can learn a lot from a person’s place. Unfortunately when I finally was able to tear my eyes off Vincent all I learned was Darien has the Keeper on speed dial, owns some boxing gloves, and has the cute little bonsai tree.
-So when you work for the Agency you can either drive a rusty van or a cheep MIB knockoff car?
-So not only does DarienTheRat kill HobbesTheRat...but he EATS HIM!! Eeewww...and no I am NOT going to make a Survivor joke!!
-"We wish you’d learn how to knock."
-Fun scene number 3, when Darien confronts the Official about getting some counteragent. One of the things that Darien hates is not being in control of his life (or sanity for that matter) and he’s been fighting the control of the Agency since day one...so it’s not surprising the Official would have to knock him down fairly often by reminding him who holds the power. But it’s wrong for the Official to see Darien as just a punk with a $16 million dollar gland in his brain. Darien is a smart guy, and he’s only going to take that kind of derision and control for so long before he figures out a way to get the counteragent on his own.
-And the winner for the slowest car chase in tv history... :-)
-Oh that’s not just a snake tattoo, that’s a Ouroborus. The mythical snake eating it’s own tail. The symbol of the unending cycles of the universe, of life devouring itself, and when I have more time I’ll just go nuts talking about the symbolism involved there with the cycle of sanity and madness with the quicksilver and as a sign that Darien’s old life is really over and he now really is stuck with the Agency and all that... For now I’ll just wonder if Chris Carter is having a small heart attack right now :-)
-And the winner of the most forgiving partner award...
"Sorry about trying to kill you."
"Hey, you didn’t even come close. No big deal."
The Bad
-So the cop leaves her son, ALONE, in the car for who knows how long? He couldn’t sit in the living room or something?
-Out of an entire burnt house, just by accident, Hobbes just HAPPENS to find the one bit of evidence that links the daughter to the crime scene? Talk about finding a needle in a haystack!
-So it was never really explained what was going on with Darien’s dreams. Was he having some psychic, fortune telling dreams? Was Scarborough manipulating events to fit his dream? Was the quicksilver making Darien see the future? Some combination of a bunch of things? Is Darien going to continue to have nightmares about the future? Is it really a nightmare if in the middle Hobbes comes up and offers donuts? :-)
The Crap Count: OK I couldn’t help it. I’ve been saying "Oh Crap" long before good looking invisible guys were running around on my TV. But I was very happy to find a character after my own...uh...vocabulary. So I figured I’d keep count. Of course this week didn’t offer quite as many as the last few episodes but we did get:
"That’s a bunch of crap, you care about me like you care about that rat." -Darien
and
"People actualy fall for this line of crap?" -Hobbes
and
"Your prophecies are crap." -Darien
The Nitpicky
-Someone settle a bet between me and my friend. Was Scarborough really Willie Nelson or one of the guys from ZZ Top?
-The office of the Agency may be way underfunded and staffed, but when Eberts walks away to get the list of suicide victims it’s a snap! In the 15 seconds it takes Darien to give his little law lecture, Eberts logs on (you can hear the computer go through the Internet log on noises), look up how many suicides the town has had, how big the town is, prints it out, and find out how many suicides are average for a town that size. Man, and it takes me at least a minute to just get connected to the Internet!
-Rejected Dialogue-> Darien "So what’s his name, EZ286?" Keeper "No, actually it’s THX1138"
-The guy Hobbes took the donuts from at the end...was that NEWMAN?!
"Nah, you were just screwing with my head. I’ve got other people doing that...believe me you don’t even play in their league." - Darien
