smg01 | my own little Window of Opportunity meta (Reply)

sg_fignewton did a little piece on the episode. It prompted me to write the following in the course of the comment discussion:

I've been thinking about it this afternoon, and that whole exchange between them [Jack and Malachi] is really, really good. It gets at the desolation and isolation that grief can bring. There's a certain selfishness to it. I don't mean that in a pejorative way--it's just human. But when you're in the depths of grief and pain, there's a tendency to believe that no one has felt as badly as you do, no one can possibly understand, and sometimes there's a little feeling of entitlement that goes along with it. Grief passes. But it does so in its own time and leaves behind a language of its own. I think that was the language that Jack was speaking to Malakai.

Then, as sometimes happens, my brain wouldn't shut off. Stupid brain. So I wanted to flesh out some thoughts on the seriousness of what's usually regarded as one of Stargate's most comic episodes.

I don't know if this was the intention when the episode was created, but it strikes me that the time loops are deeply symbolic. What we have is a man (Malachi) who is stuck in a very dark place of grief.

The thing about pain/grief is that it has to be accepted in order to move through it. By accepted, I don't mean wallowing in it or succumbing to it. What I mean is recognizing that it's a process that can't be short-cut or skipped. Which is what Malachi was trying to do. He was so desperate to find a relief from his grief that he inadvertently put himself into an unending morass of pain. He couldn't go forward. He couldn't go back. He was just... stuck. And along with him, he stuck fourteen other worlds. And he was so far down, that while the news of what he had done made him pause for a few seconds, it didn't touch him.

And then we come to Malachi's and Jack's pivotal conversation. Why Jack? Why not Daniel who has the similar experience of losing his wife? As talked about in the other discussion, there are some good reasons for it:

*It would be likely to devolve into a "who loved his wife more" debate
*Jack was the one who was living with the frustration of reliving the same day over and over. The others (save Teal'c) were, from their perspective, living the day for the first time. They didn't have quite the emotional investment in ending the loop that Jack does.

And there's one more thing: a shared response to profound grief. Jack has also been in a dark place: not caring what to himself and not caring much about what happens to anybody else. Therein I think lies the key to Jack getting through to Malachi.

In the overall scheme of things loss of a child trumps the loss of a spouse. It's not to say that the wound of losing a spouse isn't deep and long lasting. But the loss of a child is bigger. It just is. And that was the card that Jack had to get Malachi's attention.

I know! I lost my son! And as much as I--I could never go through that again.

Here's what I think Jack's words, tone and body language are not saying: I've suffered a bigger tragedy than you, so suck it up and get over it.

Here's what I think he is saying:

I've been where you are. It's not a good place. It's not a healthy place. You can't change what happened. You won't make yourself feel better by living in the past. Break the cycle. Love your wife. Remember your wife. Accept the pain and allow yourself to move out of this dark place.

I think the pain in Jack's past allowed him to make a connection to the pain in Malachi's present. In the end, I think that's what got through to Malachi. What allowed him to make the decision to break the cycle. Ending the time loop is symbolic of taking the first step out of the dark abyss in which Malachi had trapped himself. It is a first step toward true healing.

So yes. WoO is a great deal of fun. Funny and gleeful. But there's also a minor thread that runs through it. In the end, it may be as much about breaking with the past and making new starts as it is about wacky hijinks while stuck in Groundhog Day.