#...but at least we got the damn miniseries and an ending. small mercies.

[it-may-be-dull-but-im-determined]

is Farscape the sort of thing that takes a few episodes to find its groove? should i be patient if we're not besties right away?

(i'm prone to snap judgements and don't want to make a mistake here)

Ahhhh so Farscape can be a WILDLY interesting study in complete contradictions. I agree with everything Cat Valente says is brilliant about it in this thread and this very long and detailed essay about why you should watch Farscape and yet also I will sit there fast-forwarding great chunks of season one especially because the quality control from episode to episode is so wildly variable. When I say variable, I mean some episodes feel embarrassingly amateur at times, especially after twenty something years of higher budget, vaguely more evolved TV SF. Occasionally it doesn't know what show it's trying to be, or what show it was the previous episode. It has a terrible weakness for bad puns in episode titles. It can be trite. It can feel weirdly childish, for a show that is frequently about aliens fucking. It's really really very silly on occasion and I have a particularly very low tolerance for second hand embarrassment. Farscape can be frequently embarrassing, but the fact I'm still flailing about it after twenty something years despite that is kind of significant.

Because when it's good, it's so incredibly fucking high quality excellent. It's got all the chemistry, all the high stakes heists and the high melodrama sacrifice, all the dealing with grief and trauma and how do you deal with a legacy of repeated genocide and fascism. Everyone is a space criminal on a stolen sentient prison ship. What the fuck even is the greater good. How do you deal with being a parent. Most of the cast are emoting through inch thick layers of foam latex and the other half are wearing fetish gear (OR THEY'RE PUPPETS. OR CGI ORGANIC SENTIENT SPACESHIPS), but they're really fucking good at said emoting and it's still heartbreaking. It's been twenty years and I will still start crying if I so much as hear the season three version of the theme tune (oh god the theme song evolution).

The silly episodes throughout season one are even weirder because it does pretty much find its feet straightaway with the pilot ep - it's snappy and emotional and charming and clever, and yes the tropes are there but the tropes didn't have quite the same level of tired significance back in 1999? I watched that first ep and was cackling over how fucking fantastic it was. It was such a refreshing change in 1999 that it sailed me through any of the occasionally dodgy stuff that followed.

It's also very very... Aussie, which to me covers a lot of the humour and the sheer demented glee of what the creators wanted to run with? The cast has chemistry, in spades, and the characters flirt and fuck (and... one of them is a hot blue zen plant priestess who orgasms in bright light. Obviously.) and everything is just a little bit.. extra. It has an episode where everyone is a loony tunes cartoon. It has an episode inspired by A Clockwork Orange. It has small stabby robots. It's squelchy and makes fart jokes ALL THE TIME (mostly because one of the main puppets is a former emperor who farts helium and okay yep it's pretty funny. The other puppet is wise and kind and troubled and possibly complicit in war crimes. This fucking show I can't even).

...I'm just going to apologise for this essay, and say probably go read the Cat Valente thing because it includes much more key whether you should in fact watch Farscape information such as:

“They’re all gonna be Australian or Kiwi! Except for one guy! It’s basically gonna be a tour of Sydney’s underground club scene, even for the smallest parts! And I mean that, everyone is going to be wearing leather BDSM gear 24/7, even the heroes. I’M TELLIN’ YA WE GOT MAGDA SZUBANSKI! THIS THING IS GOLD! Literally, the whole color palette is like really gold. With most of a Crayola box taped on top of it. SPACE IS AUSTRALIAN NOW. ALL OF IT. DEAL WITH IT.”

there will be an almost unbelievable amount of goo involved. Like if there is a Goo Department, and anyone is left over after Nickelodeon’s job fair last week, we need all the goo.”

“Because of all the sex and violence that just barely doesn’t cross the decency lines we’re still kind of feeling out right now?”

“That, too. But mostly because we need all the makeup and then after we’re done turning regular humans a TON of nutbar colors, everything else is going to be just…dripping. All the time. Just drenched in slime. Good slime, bad slime, it will constantly be hard to say. But it’s like Coco Chanel always said, before you leave the house, look in the mirror and upend a bucket of colorful sludge over your head.”