In the fourth episode of the second season of Farscape, WHAT THE FUCK. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Farscape.
Trigger Warning: For discussion of rape.
Good lord, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
This specific trope – where a group of friends turn on one another because of a magical force or a drug – is extremely common in genre television. There are numerous examples of it in Whedon’s work. I’ve seen an example of it on Star Trek. (What little I’ve seen, that is!) The X-Files did it, too. (AHHHH “WETWIRED” AHHHH SCULLY). So did Supernatural. Oh, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. And at this point, I’m sure y’all can continue this list with at least a hundred more examples. The use of forced paranoia and distrust as a plot device is nothing new at all, and up to a point, Farscape does absolutely nothing to deviate from this trope. It was fun to watch these actors get to be absurd and strange, sure! But then the writers decide to drastically deviate from the normal pattern in a few fascinating, disturbing ways and one COMPLETELY NOT OKAY way. As I said in the video for “Crackers Don’t Matter,” this episode went so much further than I thought it would because usually, there’s a very direct line that no one crosses in terms of what the characters do to one another.
Farscape saw that line, and they leapt across it.
Let’s just get the uncomfortable part out of the way: I hate that this show makes Crichton threaten Chiana with rape. I hate it because you can’t ever take it back. I hate it because it feels like the writers did it solely to give this episode a darker, bleaker feel. Which is especially egregious because they didn’t need this to make it feel dark. Crichton shot D’Argo in the fucking leg. THAT’S PRETTY DARK. The reason I suspect this is the justification for the scene is because of how it’s treated in the final scene. After the crew disposes of T’raltixx, they awkwardly try to apologize to one another, and it’s clear that what happened in this episode is not going to be forgotten. D’Argo is embarrassed and ashamed by trying to kill Rygel. Both Aeryn and Crichton are clearly upset that they shot at one another. And at no point does Crichton apologize to Chiana for threatening to rape her.
I’m guessing that rape and sexual assault is still a part of this universe, and I don’t think that this was the first time Chiana had ever been threatened by a man like this. But even if rape is not a common aspect of this fictional universe, it’s still a very real thing in our world, and using it as a way to make the plot seem grim is careless at best. If the end of this episode is trying its best to show us that this was not a disposable plot, that what happened here mattered and will affect the future, then it’s extremely fucked up that there is no recognition of how horrible it is that Crichton did what he did. Even worse, Chiana compliments Crichton for some of the things he said. I’m sorry, do you expect me to believe that she is COMPLIMENTING THE MAN WHO THREATENED TO RAPE HER?
Fuck that forever.
Here’s the thing: Take that entire bit out of “Crackers Don’t Matter” and you’ve got a bold and frightening take on this trope. If people who are naturally prone to distrusting others are manipulated into distrusting their friends, what would happen? How would they react? Farscape posits that despite that Crichton is more aware than the others of what’s going on, they would all violently turn on one another. That’s precisely what happens, and as their normal moral barriers begin to erode, they increasingly lash out at one another. Initially, it’s fairly common ground for the genre. There’s a lot of paranoia. They accuse others of hoarding food. They believe every conspiratorial thought that enters their brains. And this includes Pilot, too, who is manipulated by T’raltixx throughout the episode so that T’raltixx can construct his chamber of light within Moya.
I know I’ve had a few issues with the way that this show does its exposition (or completely ignores it), but I loved that we never find out what it is that T’raltixx actually is. His species is dormant somewhere, but all we know is that they require light. Lots of it! Why do they use Leviathans for this purpose? WHO FUCKING KNOWS. The mystery of his character works so well because it makes him a lot more creepy and intimidating. Until Crichton details his plan to kill T’raltixx, we have no idea how this crisis is ever going to be resolved. So, in this case, the strangeness of his species creates a palpable sense of tension.
It was (generally) a delight to see how weird this show was willing to go. Having them all act paranoid wasn’t enough. Crichton channels Jack Nicholson in The Shining throughout “Crackers Don’t Matter,” and I’d say this episode is almost like an homage to that film. The characters all experience an exaggeration of sorts of their worst qualities, from their violence to their selfishness to their belief that they’re superior than others. It’s not like what they do or so is necessarily disingenuous, you know? It’s why the ending is so awkward; they all knew that what they’d said and done had some truth in it. (Again, that’s why it’s so grating that what Crichton did to Chiana wasn’t addressed.)
But it’s in Crichton’s hallucinations that we get the one thing in this episode that’ll always stand out more than anything else: Scorpius in a Hawaiian T-shirt, telling Crichton that it’s time for margarita shooters. It was incredibly risky to take the show’s main villain and portray them so absurdly, and yet the show went ahead and did it anyway. (Y’all can laugh at me asking if this was a Scorpius episode during the cold open. I HAD NO IDEA.) They did it, and IT’S SO INCREDIBLE. It’s a writing choice that takes the premise and then sprints into the next galaxy with it. It shows that the creators are willing to push the boundaries of what’s depicted on the show and how far they can go, both for good storytelling and for humor. (I loved that moment when Aeryn and Crichton asked the other if they had an extra bullets. BLESS.) I suppose I’m also never going to forget Crichton slathered with Zhaan’s bile, wearing a haphazard suit to block the light, charging in on T’raltixx and screaming about the superiority of humans. That… that was a beautiful moment.
There’s definitely a huge, glaring flaw in “Crackers Don’t Matter,” and I definitely don’t think it should be ignored. The show has to be responsible for what it introduces to us, and I think they missed the mark with Chiana here. Other than this, I enjoyed most of what happened here! It’s the first episode this season that fulfilled the greater sense of potential I referenced prior to this, and IÂ do want to see more stories like this one.
Also, did anyone else think those crackers looked delicious? Lord, they looked like those buttery Keebler crackers we have here in the US. I WOULD LIKE SOME.
The video for “Crackers Don’t Matter” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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