xparrot | more on "Last Man"

xparrot

My last post got into a discussion on this, and then I started piling on comments on

seperis's post, so I figure I should make my own post. It's either that or write a fic, and as

naye and

gnine informed me, I have way too many other things I ought to be writing. (Though I might anyway. In which case this will be a warm-up.)

So in several reviews of "Last Man" I've seen a particular interpretation of canon come up, that apparently ticked off a lot of other McSheppers, to the point that many dislike the episode. To wit: resentment that "Rodney didn't even try to bring Sheppard home until he realized Keller was going to die. Great way to forget about the team and concentrate on a forced romance" and "John just became a tool to save Keller".

What's odd to me is that I didn't see it this way at all. In fact, it honestly didn't even occur to me that it could be seen this way until I started seeing the interpretation on other posts, and folks agreeing. To me, "Last Man" is one of the McSheppiest eps of the entire show.

I saw very little romance or 'true love' between Rodney & Jennifer, just two people holding onto one another and the last bit of happiness they could find. It was hard for me to see Rodney as loving Keller when he never says "love," to Sheppard or to her, even at the end; when neither of them are wearing rings; when he so blithely ignored her last wishes, and exhibits absolutely zero angst at the prospect of never getting together with her - just excitement that the circumstances that brought them together would never occur. He's talking to her on her deathbed, telling her that what made "us" happen will never happen, and he looks thrilled. Yes, he's telling her that she'll live - as part of a list: "I'm going to make it so none of this ever happened - you won't get sick, Teyla won't die, Michael won't complete his research, none of it." Of course he mentions her first - she's on her deathbed! But saving Jennifer's life isn't the point, it's a happy byproduct. (I think it's important that Jennifer's death is a direct consequence of Pegasus - if she had died of cancer or a car accident, then Rodney fetching John to save her might've been harder to take. But Keller was yet another victim of everything he's trying to put right.)

I don't see Keller's death as Rodney's motivation, but the catalyst. It's the final straw, as Joe Mallozzi says (he's not the writer, that was Mullie for this ep, but considering how closely the writers work together he can probably speak for all of them):

Jennifer’s death isn’t the only reason Rodney decides to try to undo the timeline. But it is the final straw. Prior to that, he considered the possibility that he could actually come up with a solution next to impossible. But, with Jennifer dead, the last positive thing in his life died with her and he was finally able to wholly commit himself to the seemingly impossible task.

This reads differently to different fans. To me, Keller's death is what snaps Rodney, finally breaks him - and he needed to be broken, to come up with the plan he devised. "That's when I had my idea". Not that he had the idea all along and rejected it; it had never occurred to Rodney how to do it before (given the pressure he was under, that's hardly surprising.) Once he does figure out how, once he gets that lunatic inspiration, nothing stops him, not Jennifer's deathbed plea, not Jeannie's concerns.

It's not like Rodney knew how to save Sheppard but was too lazy to get around to it until Keller died. The episode never implies that Rodney decided that Sheppard wasn't worth the effort, but Keller was. Saving Sheppard and the rest of the galaxy wasn't just a matter of hard work; it was a feat that everyone believed was impossible. Including Rodney himself - and Rodney no longer had the one person who always pushes him to do the impossible. John wasn't there. And Rodney, after failing to save friend after friend after friend, probably had little confidence that he could ever manage such a thing. Until it got to be so bad that he couldn't take the failure anymore, and cracked. "I thought I was going to lose my mind...and that's when I had my idea." That's just semantics - his idea is insanity; his mind is lost. Only an insane man believes he can rewrite history, can bring the dead back to life.

Jennifer's death was the straw that broke him - but it didn't have to be that. A lot of folks seem disturbed that if Jennifer hadn't died, Rodney wouldn't have saved John. I didn't see that. Rodney's fragile, in all the flashbacks (from the moment John's declared KIA - and Rodney refuses to call him dead, even a year later, even helpless to save him) until that flash of inspiration; he's a shadow of his true self, quiet and somber, calm (Rodney? Calm? Ever?) - beaten down; reduced. His holographic persona tells John, of him and Jennifer, "It was great" - but a very conditional "great" that seems, a brief moment, less than a year, that they both try to find happiness. Would it have lasted, even if Jennifer had lived? Would he truly have been able to put Pegasus behind him? We don't know - we don't see. I don't think it would have taken much more to break him - and if something else had sparked that inspiration, he would've turned his back on Keller, as he did with Jeannie.

There was no particular emphasis on Rodney/Jennifer in the episode. It was one event of many (and an event Rodney didn't even care to mention to Sheppard, until pushed; an event that he had no particular wish to have remembered). It's the final straw by virtue of there being nothing else left - Rodney loses John, Teyla, Ronon, Sam, and Atlantis before Keller. (One can argue those things are going from most to least important...) If Keller had died first, right after John, would Rodney have had his brilliant stroke of madness then? Or would it still have been after everything else, after he'd been driven to the edge and then off it? I could see the episode playing out with any of them being that catalyst; it's only Jennifer because she lasted the longest.

If Keller's life really had been the most significant thing to Rodney, wouldn't he have mentioned her death to Sheppard earlier? Gone to the trouble of specifying how to save her, to keep her away from the Hoffan drug? That info's presumably on the data crystal with everything else, but it's not important enough for him to mention until Sheppard pushes him on it. He doesn't mention Keller (he refers to "Jennifer" once, early on, but that's it) until the end, and then - he has boatloads of regrets, but no regrets about possibly never hooking up with her.

Of course, John's reaction to hearing about Rodney & Jennifer had to be one of the most frighteningly romantic things I've ever seen. He's heard that the team died, Atlantis was lost, Pegasus fell to Michael - and he still hesitates about changing the timeline, if it's going to screw up Rodney's happiness. I mean, it's one thing when you love someone enough to let them go and find happiness with someone else - it's another thing to love someone so much you are willing to let an entire galaxy fall for them. And that's what John offers. Man! Oh, John, the depth of your love is terrifying.

But is Rodney's any less? What gets me is the trust Rodney has - John is the key to his brilliant idea, the linchpin of the entire plan. Rodney believes that if he can save John, the galaxy will be saved - that John will be able to save them all. And yes, he's going to tell John what to do, what to stop, but he utterly trusts that John can do it.

And the sacrifice Rodney makes is incredible. Twenty-five years and everyone who's left, even his sister, finally has to abandon him to his madness, but "I never wavered." It's one thing to give your life for your friend's in a brief, impulsive blaze of glory. It's another thing to live, alone and obsessed and never faltering, for over two decades - when everyone is telling you that what you're attempting is impossible; when, even if you succeed - you'll never actually know. Rodney's plan was such that he knew that he would never see John again himself - that the universe he was saving, he was saving for another Rodney in another timeline. It's a sacrifice that John himself never would have asked Rodney to make - never would have wanted him to make (though I don't know if John fully realizes that, alternate timelines are hard to wrap one's head around, and John's got a lot on his mind). I guess, maybe, Rodney could have spent those twenty-five years thinking about Keller, about saving her. But that's not exactly the impression I got. (One would think he'd have a picture or two of her around for inspiration, in that case.)

He's not doing it just for John, no; he's doing it for all of them, for two galaxies (hey, it's Rodney McKay; he never thinks small.) But John's the one he's counting on to save all of them, to make his sacrifice worthwhile. Now or twenty-five or forty-eight thousand years in the future, they're a team, and together they do the impossible, even when no one else believes it can be done.

(And one last thought - now with added McSheppiness!)

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From:

dovil.livejournal.com

Thank god! I'm lazy and inarticulate so the fact that you took what I was thinking and put it into words, what a relief! But yes, that's pretty much exactly what I took from that episode as well.

From:

excavations of a fangirl mind

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