Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
Episode 12 — Jan 11, 2003
“Kansas”
Vacation, All I Ever WantedFirst, the bad news: It’s been four months since the last new episode of Farscape, which is precisely long enough for me to forget every single plot point of the first half of the season.
The good news, obviously, is: Who cares about the plot points?
All we need to know at this stage is that at the end of the last episode, a white guy in a suit taught Crichton that you can use wormholes to travel through time — but going back in time is very, very dangerous. To prove this point, the white guy sent Crichton back through time, and left him there. Because, well, um. Ahem.
Okay, I’ll start over: Crichton is back on Earth, which is great, except he’s in a spacesuit and hovering just past the upper atmosphere, which is not so great. Luckily, his friends manage to contact him through the wormhole, and they all fly through and pick him up.
They pick up a radio signal, which is conveniently tuned to that Instant Plot Point Channel from Gilligan’s Island. The radio mentions President Reagan, which means they’ve gone back in time — and Crichton knows that travelling back in time might screw up his whole timeline. So what do they do? They fly down to Earth and go to Crichton’s house. D’oh!
Which brings us to this week’s lunatic plot contrivance: If there’s a problem with the timeline, it’s going to start close to Crichton, who’s currently a disaffected teenager living with his family in a suburban development in Florida. Crichton scouts around his family’s house, and finds them having a party to celebrate his dad’s imminent takeoff as the captain of the Challenger space shuttle.
Now, can I just take a moment to enjoy that? Cause, for me, It’s 1986, and my dad’s the captain of the Challenger! is one of your more amusing life issues. I have to wonder what other 1980’s-themed problems the producers considered. Maybe It’s 1981, and my dad’s in love with Jodie Foster! or It’s 1984, and my dad’s fighting over Cabbage Patch dolls! or possibly It’s 1985, and my dad’s getting money for nothing and his chicks for free!
But, okay, the Challenger. Fine. Let’s go with that. (Did they think of It’s 1980, and my dad’s writing The Official Preppy Handbook? No? Okay, never mind.)
So that’s the deal; Big John has to make Little John persuade his dad to rethink the whole get-killed-in-an-explosion career track. The problem is that Crichton’s dad is the only marginally intelligent person in the whole family. John’s sister is a shrieky-voiced little Valley Girl. His mother does absolutely nothing but sit around on the patio all day aimlessly flipping over Tarot cards, and she apparently needs someone to remind her to go to the doctor when she has cancer. And Young John is the type of kid who sticks three fingers up at his dad and shouts, “Yo, hero! Read the middle finger!” If I had a family like that, I’d be itching to get on the Challenger too. I’d be saving my pennies for a window seat.
Here’s another example of why the Crichtons are a bit smartness-impaired — they live next door to a trashed, abandoned house, just right for a troupe of heavily-armed aliens to move into for a few days. The only person who notices is the neighborhood’s standard-issue Gladys Kravitz, who sends over some hapless cops.
Aeryn immediately sits down in front of the TV to learn English from Sesame Street, which is a cute inside-joke for the Muppet fans, but it brings up the whole “translator microbes” issue for me again. I can’t quite figure out what the show’s rules are about language. Aeryn apparently can speak and understand English, which I get, because she’s been studying it. And D’argo can’t speak or understand it, which I also get, cause he’s an alien. But then Chiana seems to have no problem talking to the natives, and the Old Woman manages to hypnotize the hapless cops, giving them instructions in English. I feel like I’m getting mixed messages on this. (Note to Farscape fans: I am not asking you to send me e-mails explaining this to me. Your technobabble will only confuse the issue.)
Anyway, all of this is just here to distract us from the main point of the episode, which is that Teenage Crichton is pretty. Everybody keeps touching him and kissing him through the whole episode. As soon as Chiana sees him, she starts coming on to him, and they end up having sex in the abandoned house. Even John himself gets into a whole weird physical area with his younger self in the scene pictured here. I’m not complaining, mind you. This is my favorite part of the whole episode. I mean, if you’re going to go to the trouble of going back in time to fix history, then you’d want to take the opportunity to do this kind of thing, wouldn’t you? I sure would.
By the way, how about It’s 1985, and my dad’s inventing New Coke? No? All right, forget it.
Anyway, it all works out okay. At the last minute, Crichton remembers that when he was a teenager, he had sex in his neighbor’s abandoned house, which then burned to the ground, and his dad rescued him. (This is the way every brilliant rocket scientist spends their teenage years, right? I wish I had a dollar for every time a member of the graduating class of MIT had sex in a burning building.) This made his dad stay home and not get killed on the Challenger, so that’s the new plan. Honestly, any excuse to have sex with a teenager and burn down somebody’s house for these clowns. No, that’s fine, kids. You go ahead. Don’t mind me.
So they do the sex thing, they knock Young Crichton out cold, and they light the house on fire. Crichton’s dad comes running into the building, and instantly bangs his head against a light fixture and knocks himself out cold. They’re a hardy breed, these Crichtons, aren’t they? Rocket scientists. What are ya gonna do. I presume the NASA training program includes a lesson on not knocking yourself unconscious when you’re in a burning building. No wonder the Challenger blew up.
Anyway, Crichton saves his dad, and his younger self, and everything’s supposed to be fine now, except that they still screwed up the timeline and the world is ruled by Tribbles. Or something. I figure they’ll fill us in on the details next week.
To sum up, I have to say that everything about this episode pretty much tallies up with my personal memories of 1986. Guys wore pink shirts, trick or treating children were allowed to go into abandoned houses unsupervised, and it was really easy to hypnotize cops.
In fact, if I found myself transported back to 1986, I’d probably do all the same things: I’d watch Sesame Street, knock my dad over the head, and burn my neighbor’s house down. So this is what it sounds like when doves cry. What a feeling.
by Danny Horn
