sgatazmy

We watched Tao of Rodney and The Game last night. I keep asking bestie if she wants to watch something else but she is apparently in love with the series and adoring watching it. We noticed a lot in these two episodes:

1. In Tao, I was really upset at the team for talking behind Rodney's back about his weight and how he feeds his unhappiness. I cheered really loud when Rodney confronted them about the whole conversation. Rodney looks like he is a healthy weight so I'm not sure what they're problem is. Not everyone is supposed to look like a model.

There is this part of me that is still in disbelief that Rodney doesn't exercise. I was watching ahead into season five a few weeks ago and there is this scene in Trio where Keller reveals Rodney's physicals show he is not in the best of shape. He even mentions later that he should be better by now after five years and all I can think of is that he really should be. If John is as protective of Rodney as we know he is than he shouldn't let Rodney out on the field without at least getting him to work out and ready himself to fight. Sure, Rodney's job isn't to fight, but it's not like he's never been kidnapped or under siege before.

In fact, why doesn't the whole expedition have mandatory physical readiness guidelines for both military and science personnel? I've always pictured the military offering different classes to the science members including shooting practice, general physical readiness, and basic fighting. If I were in charge of the expedition, I would order such classes as mandatory. (I do remember there is an episode where Rodney is getting some training from Ronon at least. Not sure which episode that is.)

2. When The Game starts out, they are all in the mess hall and Rodney is posing a hypothetical about a train, ten people, and a baby. We realized this conversation perfectly summed up the team. They don't deal with no-win scenarios. They each, in their own way, find whatever solutions might be hidden in the problem.

3. Rodney was eating a salad at the beginning of The Game while everyone else had different foods on their plates. Since this episode immediately follows Tao of Rodney, I wonder if there is a connection? I realize they probably didn't mean for there to be, but it really works out well. Also, John is eating an orange in front of Rodney.

4. Tao is a great episode. I am still wondering if most of SGA is: Let's see how often we can bring Rodney or John to be brink of death. No wonder this show attracts whumpers! There were some precious scenes here. I think my favorite is when Rodney asks Ronon about his scars. It's such an insightful question and completely awesome. Are they a badge of courage or something he'd rather forget? I had assumed they'd be the prior but Ronon's answer leads us to believe the latter. I can't help but smile when Rodney heals them for him. Then there is Elizabeth saying, "We love you" and Rodney bringing that back later. So much team love in this episode.

5. Team love continually draws me back to this show. For all the fandoms I've embraced, never has there been such a team as this. There is an essay written by Robert Louis Stevenson about The Musketeer series (my second favorite team in all of everything. He writes specifically of the last book: The Vicomte de Bragelonne). In this essay he explains how some characters stick with us and become our friends. We must revisit them over and over again because we cherish their precious friendship in our own lives. He talks of leaving behind many books unread just so he can read The Musketeer Series again. I feel this way about both The Musketeers and about SGA. I imagine I will continually come back to this fandom at different points in my life.

He writes my own feelings of revisiting these friends:

"My next reading was in winter-time, when I lived alone upon the Pentlands. I would return in the early night from one of my patrols with the shepherd; a friendly face would meet me in the door, a friendly retriever scurry upstairs to fetch my slippers; and I would sit down with the Vicomte for a long, silent, solitary lamp-light evening by the fire. And yet I know not why I call it silent, when it was enlivened with such a clatter of horse-shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, and such a stir of talk; or why I call those evenings solitary in which I gained so many friends. I would rise from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the snow and the glittering hollies chequer a Scotch garden, and the winter moonlight brighten the white hills. Thence I would turn again to that crowded and sunny field of life in which it was so easy to forget myself, my cares, and my surroundings: a place busy as a city, bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with delightful speech. I carried the thread of that epic into my slumbers, I woke with it unbroken, I rejoiced to plunge into the book again at breakfast, it was with a pang that I must lay it down and turn to my own labours; for no part of the world has ever seemed to me so charming as these pages, and not even my friends are quite so real, perhaps quite so dear, as d'Artagnan. "6. Lorne and Radek playing The Game=Awesome.

7. While I am thinking about Dumas and The Musketeer Series, the team love there really does remind me of some of SGA. I think some of the dynamic with Athos and D'Artagnan hit the same spot as John and Rodney do. In fact there is this beautiful scene with D'Artagnan that would make a similar amazing scene for Sheppard.

I would pay to see such a story or fan art: There is this precious scene in one of the latter Musketeer books (there are 3-5 depending how you count them) where D'Artagnan is ordered to arrest Athos and D'Artagnan offers Athos a horse to escape. Athos refuses and forces D'Artagnan to arrest him anyway. D'Artangnan then returns to the king and says "Athos is in prison, due to no fault of my own."

The king is of course upset and says, "What do you mean no fault of your own. Did I not send you to arrest him?"

So D'Artagnan explains how he sent a horse to try and help Athos escape but Athos refused because he was too honorable.

"Do you wish to outdo your friend in insolence?" asks the king.

"Oh, I plan to go much further than he did, sire."

It continues and D'Artagnan basically demands the king have him arrested just so he can keep Athos company in the bastille.

It is my all time favorite scene in ALL of literature. I have read it so many times over than no less than four copies of the book have lost those particular pages.

If you want to see the quote from the chapter I love so dearly, this is it:

"I have come to say to your majesty, 'Sire, M. de la Fere is in the Bastile.'"

"That is not your fault, it would seem."

"That is true, sire; but at all events he is there; and since he is there, it is important that your majesty should know it."

"Ah! Monsieur d'Artagnan, so you set your king at defiance."

"Sire—"

"Monsieur d'Artagnan! I warn you that you are abusing my patience."

"On the contrary, sire."

"What do you mean by 'on the contrary'?"

"I have come to get myself arrested, too."

"To get yourself arrested,—you!"

"Of course. My friend will get wearied to death in the Bastile by himself; and I have come to propose to your majesty to permit me to bear him company; if your majesty will but give me the word, I will arrest myself; I shall not need the captain of the guards for that, I assure you."

The king darted towards the table and seized hold of a pen to write the order for D'Artagnan's imprisonment. "Pay attention, monsieur, that this is forever," cried the king, in tones of sternest menace.

"I can quite believe that," returned the musketeer; "for when you have once done such an act as that, you will never be able to look me in the face again."

The king dashed down his pen violently. "Leave the room, monsieur!" he said.

"Not so, if it please your majesty."

"What is that you say?"

"Sire, I came to speak gently and temperately to your majesty; your majesty got into a passion with me; that is a misfortune; but I shall not the less on that account say what I had to say to you."

"Your resignation, monsieur,—your resignation!" cried the king.

"Sire, you know whether I care about my resignation or not, since at Blois, on the very day when you refused King Charles the million which my friend the Comte de la Fere gave him, I then tendered my resignation to your majesty."

"Very well, monsieur—do it at once!"

"No, sire; for there is no question of my resignation at the present moment. Your majesty took up your pen just now to send me to the Bastile,—why should you change your intention?"

"D'Artagnan! Gascon that you are! who is king, allow me to ask,—you or myself?"

"You, sire, unfortunately."

"What do you mean by 'unfortunately'?"

"Yes, sire; for if it were I—"

"If it were you, you would approve of M. d'Artagnan's rebellious conduct, I suppose?"

"Certainly."

"Really!" said the king, shrugging his shoulders.

"And I should tell my captain of the musketeers," continued D'Artagnan, "I should tell him, looking at him all the while with human eyes, and not with eyes like coals of fire, 'M. d'Artagnan, I had forgotten that I was the king, for I descended from my throne in order to insult a gentleman.'"

"Monsieur," said the king, "do you think you can excuse your friend by exceeding him in insolence?"

"Oh! sire! I should go much further than he did," said D'Artagnan

So I want a story where John is supposed to arrest Rodney or something because of some bureaucratic BS (or something) and instead Sheppard tries to give Rodney a heads up to go into hiding or something. Or John insists on going to jail with Rodney. Or some sort of team love along those lines because I think that would be awesome and hit all the right buttons for me.

8. I'm almost to Sunday. I think I keep asking Bestie if she wants to slow down on watching the show if only to avoid Carson's fate. :(