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dr-futbol-blog · 1 month ago

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Epiphany, Pt. 7

Having ventured out into the sanctuary, Sheppard was about to come across the Jabberwocky, the local boogeyman, the beast that plagues the Paradise. He hears some kind of an animal screeching or bellowing somewhere in the underbush and has his weapon at the ready. While he is concerned, given that this is literally alien terrain and there could be anything waiting out there for him, and the beast sounded pretty big besides, he is prepared to take it on. While there has probably not been a day in his life that John Sheppard has not felt fear, this is not the type of thing that frightens him, not really. This he can deal with.

Sheppard: Well, you're either gonna eat me... or I'm gonna eat you!

Sheppard quips at the beast, and this is a classic case of him using wisecracking in relieving tension. He is not actually saying it to the beast, he is saying it to himself, to boost his confidence. Similarly he does not lick his lips here because his mouth is watering over the image of him eating this tasty animal, it is his self-soothing tick, being a thing that soldiers are wont to do. Tyrteus, writing about the Spartan warriors during the Second Messenian War, described them preparing for battle: "But let everyone stand fast, with legs set well apart and both feet fixed on the ground, biting his lip with his teeth." And obviously he is saying that he is going to eat the thing that is coming at him, he is hungry enough to do just that.

What he says here is interesting in two regards. First, because the beast is actually a psychic manifestation of the sum total of the fears of the people living in the sanctuary, in a sense being "fear itself," Sheppard is essentially saying that either he must conquer his own fears or they will eat him up alive. It is very poetic, and pertinent to his character. But also, because Teer had sent her brother Avrid to meet Sheppard and he was about the spring from the bushes to meet him, Avrid being a man whose companionship Sheppard really seems to yearn for before long, promising to eat Avrid or let Avrid eat him is also fitting. It is innuendo either way. Also, there is a transition from Sheppard saying this to McKay talking about loading supplies, being consumables, meaning that both of them are thinking about eating. But at the same time, it also sort of makes McKay the "you" of the reference here because we see neither the beast nor Avrid yet.

On Atlantis, McKay, Weir and Beckett have changed their t-shirts into fatigues and seem to be on their way to the jumper bay to take off. While later on McKay questions whether it is wise for Weir to accompany them to the other side, it is entirely possible it was McKay's idea to convince Weir to come with them as far as the portal, to translate the Ancient text they had discovered there. Her skills as a diplomat are not really relevant for this mission, so it is her ability to translate Ancient that must be the reason she is even coming along. Unlike McKay and Beckett, she is not wearing a tactical vest, and is probably unarmed too.

McKay: We've loaded weeks of supplies and everything I could think of. Beckett: What are we not thinking of? Weir: Now take a minute, and be certain. If your theory is correct, you won't be able to make many of these trips. McKay: I am painfully aware of that. Weir: I remind you only because from what you've told me, rushing is what got Sheppard into trouble in the first place.

Because McKay's entire brain is on saving Sheppard, he seems to have been going over scenarios that might happen, had tried to load their jumper up with anything at all that they could need to get him out. He feels terrible about what happened and blames it entirely on himself, and for some reason Weir decides to pile it on him some more. And while she may have good intentions--she claims to want to make sure that they have everything necessary because she is so very, very worried about Sheppard--what she is actually doing here is wasting their time. She even mentions taking a "minute" here, which could mean hours for Sheppard (one minute equals around 4 hours in the sanctuary, as per Teyla's calculations).

McKay's response to Weir is the same as it had been for Sheppard in Trinity (S02E06), when he had reminded him that a member of McKay's team was in the morgue: "And I am responsible for his death, yes. I am painfully aware of that. I sent him in there and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life." His voice does not crack here as it did then but he is similarly, if not even more, affected by this, by what he sees as his own hand in things turning out this way. However, let us note that he leaves the latter part of what he said then unsaid here. If we learned something from The Hive (S02E11), it is that McKay does not think that he can live without Sheppard. He would rather give up his life in an attempt at saving him than continue living in a world where there is no Sheppard, and hence his omission here is concerning.

McKay: This was not his fault, it was mine. I should have looked more closely at the video. The clues were there before he even stepped through. Look, all I can hope to do now is fix this within his lifetime. Beckett: His lifetime? McKay: If it takes us a week to ten days to fix this, then it won't matter, because he will probably have died of old age. Weir: Oh my God.

While it is not entirely clear which one of them Weir was blaming for this (or even if he put the responsibility on both of them), it is clear as day whom McKay blames. But even so, he jumps to Sheppard's defense here, tolerating no insinuation that what had happened had in any shape or form been Sheppard's fault. And what people say about someone when they are not around to hear it is important. McKay defends Sheppard when he is not there to defend himself because that is what you do for a partner, for a significant other. And let us note again that McKay takes full responsibility for what he perceives as his mistake, naming the thing that he had done wrong. And yes, McKay probably should have looked more carefully at the video but he was clearly distracted by Sheppard's presence and this is something that gets worse and worse over time, coming to a head just before the events of Sunday (S03E17).

As discussed in connection with Weir and McKay's exchange in The Hive, when McKay was trying to tell Weir about what had happened to Sheppard and Weir was unable to understand what he was saying because he was talking about Ford instead of Sheppard, McKay had tried to tell her through circumlocution what had happened because talking directly about Sheppard seemed to be too painful for him. Here, we see why he generally does that in similar situations: when he says the words "died of old age," his voice does not just crack, his voice trembles like he was about to break out in tears right then and there. That is what he really feels, what he tries to keep from spilling out with all of his considerable ability at concealing his emotions. We see it only briefly, but the look in his eyes has such deep fear and sorrow in them that it makes him look almost childlike.

What he says here is also interesting given later events. McKay says that he is going to do everything in his power to fix this within Sheppard's lifetime. In The Last Man (S04E20), we see him spend his own entire lifetime, all the days of his life, to get Sheppard back from the future even though what had happened then was not even remotely his fault. He spends the rest of his life figuring out how to get Sheppard back to his own time when only seconds have passed for Sheppard, making it almost an inversion of what happens here. Forward, backward, compressed, dilated, submerged, theirs is a love that crosses dimensions and time.

McKay: Yeah, hence the rushing. Now, you ready? You don't look ready. Beckett: I'm ready. Weir: I need to pick up a few of my books to help with the translation. McKay: Well, we'll pick them up on the way, and I hope you've got us a real jumper pilot because I don't trust him and I can't fly the damned thing in a straight line.

It seems as though Beckett and Weir had just as hard a time wrapping their heads around this as Ronon and Teyla did, and it was only McKay painting a picture of what is about to happen that made them understand the full severity of the problem. But even in spite of that Weir wants to get a few more books just to cover her basis, and it seems to have been this book-run that gave Teer the time to enact her plan of seducing Sheppard, which will be discussed in more detail later. Also notable here is McKay's call-back to The Defiant One (S01E12) and Sheppard teaching him how to fly, which just confirms that McKay is thinking about Sheppard like that was in any doubt here, like he doesn't think about Sheppard like it's his job on the regular.

Sheppard had pointed out that McKay cannot fly in a straight line. Neither Sheppard nor McKay can navigate on the ground, meaning that while Sheppard can fly straight, he cannot walk in a straight line to save his life. McKay not flying straight is a metaphor for his sexual orientation. And since this whole episode is basically an ode to Sheppard's bisexuality, it is fitting that we rejoin him as he seems to be utterly adrift on a treeless clearing. He is about to run into Avrid, sent to receive Sheppard by his sister who seems to have known precisely what would happen here and had hence placed her brother purposefully into jeopardy. But all is fair, and all that.

Avrid: Help! Help! Help me, please! Sheppard: Where is it? Avrid: It's there! In the trees.

First of all, the meadows that Sheppard is walking on here resemble the meadows that he and McKay had had their private chat on at Ford's planet in The Lost Boys (S02E10), where he had followed McKay as though he had been a piece of metal towed by a magnet. It would be only natural for Sheppard to be thinking about McKay as he is taking a stroll through the hay here. He does miss McKay something terrible and it is not irrelevant to what takes place then.

Avrid is the first person that Sheppard runs into in what is going to become his home for six months, following probably a week of not having had any human companionship that he had desired to the point of wishing he had a volleyball to talk to. It is understandable that Avrid becomes rather important to him. Avrid gets right into Sheppard's personal space, excused by the fact that he seems very afraid of what ever appears to be chasing him. He is a beautiful man, seems to have the Ancient gene like all of the people in the sanctuary (the folks living here seem to be the closest thing to living Ancients in the galaxy), dressed in flowing white linen. He runs right up to Sheppard in need of him, and let us just take a moment to appreciate the fact that instead of sending herself or an innocent little girl to fetch Sheppard, Teer seemed to know that Sheppard's protective instincts would be triggered best by her brother here.

Sheppard: What is it? Avrid: The Beast! Sheppard: Alright, is there a safe place for us to go? Avrid: No, no, the Cloister is too far. It is upon us! Sheppard: Stay down, and stay behind me. Avrid: You can't fight it! Sheppard: Maybe we can scare it away.

What we see here is an instant rapport. They have a back-and-forth going on and they seem to move as one when Sheppard tells Avrid to duck with him, meaning that there is also a physical resonance there. Sheppard also explicitly tells Avrid to get behind him, and so does something that that we have seen him do with McKay but that has never been verbalized (and we have seen multiple examples of Sheppard not putting his body in harm's way for other people than McKay, so this is not a small thing that happens here). Also, in these few moments he has already asked Avrid more questions than he asked Neera the whole time they were locked up in a cell together. But maybe it is that Sheppard is just bereft of human company. Maybe he hopes that he can employ this man's help in getting out of here. What ever the reason, Sheppard prepares to face any kind of beast for this man and this set-up is undeniably romantic.

We have seen this exact scene play out with a man and a woman countless of times, and it has never not been romantic. Not seeing the same dynamic here when it is so readily available is largely caused by heterosexism, not just refusing to see the romantic undertones but refusing to acknowledge a man in need of and seeking physical protection from another man.

Also, it is ironic that Sheppard's plan is to scare the beast away given how the beast is comprised of the fears of the people living in the sanctuary. But alas, it appears as though this beast cannot be killed using conventional weapons. The beast seems also to be invisible to the naked eye, making it that much more difficult to conquer, and given that we just got a reference to Conan the Barbarian, we would be amiss not to mention the beast's resemblance to the Predator, another classic (unintentionally homoerotic) Arnold Schwarzenegger feature.

Sheppard: Get out of here!

This whole scene seems to be fanservice and needless eroticization of Sheppard. He is flung to the ground by the invisible beast and the way he looks behind him over his ass is a classic gay pin-up pose, and there is not a chance on God's green Earth that the director was not aware of that. Also, the camera lingers on Sheppard's package here again which the cinematographer seems to like zeroing in on. And let us also note the tantalizing stretch of skin shown as his shirt and jacket ride up here, which eroticizes Sheppard in a way few male protagonists are ever eroticized, objectified -- but just like Marty McFly was in Back to the Future, as discussed in connection with Before I Sleep (S01E15), doing the same ass-up pose and everything.

And then there is the invisible rodeo bull that Sheppard rides here with his ass up, conquering what is a rather obvious symbol of male sexuality and virility. It is made even more homoerotic by the fact that the bull is invisible and he is hence shown riding just on top of Avrid. The gay rodeo is actually a pretty interesting phenomenon, harking back to those Reagan-era attitudes toward homosexuality that both Sheppard and McKay had matured under.

The gay rodeo was established at the height of a national crisis in masculinity... A lot of Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric was about manning up after the social and cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The gay rodeo pushed back on the metropolitan chauvinism of queer culture, offering exiled gay people in rural places a new home... in part because the ingrained hypermasculinity of the rodeo countered the notion that gay culture was inherently urban and effeminate.

The scene, that is, presents Sheppard in both effeminate and hypermasculine light at the same time, which is actually rather characteristic for him. He is both these things. And while Sheppard is symbolically wrestling with his fears as he literally wrestles the collective fears of the villagers here, this is also symbolic of sex. We are not shown Sheppard having sex with Avrid (we are not shown him having sex with Teer, either, it is implied), but this rough-and-tumble is definitely sexual. Sheppard uses all of his weapons, each and every one of them phallic ("This is my riffle, this is my gun, one is for fighting, one is for fun..."), in attacking the beast, definitely going at it. It also invites us to wonder what had happened between Sheppard and McKay on the meadows at Ford's planet that made it so very, very difficult for Sheppard to sit for like two episodes straight.

Alas, Sheppard loses the battle and is rendered unconscious, although he does not look unlike someone falling asleep from sheer exhaustion here. The battle took a lot out of him. He is drained. He is out of juice. He is spent. But also, let us put a pin on the fact that his tac vest, jacket and t-shirt were all torn to shreds by the claws of the beast. This will become important later on. His own tight-fitting black t-shirt is done for.

Continued in Pt. 8

#sga #stargate atlantis #john sheppard #sga meta #sheppard is bi #rodney mckay #rodney is gay #mcshep #ep. epiphany #ep. trinity #ep. the hive #ep. sunday #ep. the last man #ep. the defiant one #ep. the lost boys

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dr-futbol-blog · 8 months ago

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Before I Sleep, Pt. 1

The episode Before I Sleep (S01E15) is a Weir-centric episode that follows the events of Sanctuary (S01E14), which is even referenced at the beginning of the episode. It also deals with the fall-out from Hot Zone (S01E13), Sheppard attempting to mend his relationship with Weir. But it also allows us glimpses at the building intimacy between Sheppard and McKay.

The theme of the episode is the passage of time and of growing older, and hence we begin it with Elizabeth Weir apparently musing on it alone on one of the balconies. Her private moment is interrupted by Sheppard:

Weir: Hey. Sheppard: There you are. Weir: I was just snatching a breath of fresh air.

I want to point out that Sheppard greets her with the words he heard Rodney say to her previously on the intercom (The Storm, S01E09), verbatim. Adopting the mannerisms and vocabulary of someone you like is not consciously done but it happens, nonetheless. He also doesn't even look at her as he walks in.

There was a reason he had sought her out:

Weir: Thought you were off exploring the city. Sheppard: About to. Picked this up on the mainland. The Athosians made it. Happy birthday. Weir: Hmm. It's beautiful. How did you find out? Sheppard: Mum's the word.

He is careful not to touch her as he hands her his gift. Like, by the placement of his hands on the top and bottom of the vessel he's making sure that no physical contact happens here. We can call that respect or whatever.

This is clearly an attempt on his part to fix the broken trust between them resulting from his undermining of her authority in Hot Zone. We never learn how Sheppard had discovered that it is her birthday. Her surprise tells us that it's not something he was supposed to know, even it we might assume that, as the highest ranking military officer, he might have access to personnel files. It does tell us that he has, once more, done something without her authorization--which might well even be his intention, here. To show her that while he does things according to his own moral compass, does things a little different, he means well. He has good intentions. He is also being charming since this is as much of an apology as Sheppard is capable of making but, comparing it to his attempt at using charm to get his way in the previous episode, it's very mild.

Sheppard is not looking at her face as she unwraps the gift, he's looking at the vessel all the way up until she speaks. He also does not look up as she says "it's beautiful", there's a noticeable pause before he looks up at her so as to make sure that neither we (as the audience) nor Weir think that it's him associating the word with her face. When you give gifts to people close to you, you usually watch their face for their reaction because it's seeing their joy that brings you pleasure. What ever his reason was for doing this, seeing her pleasure was not it.

He tells her "mum's the word," which is literally saying that she can trust him to keep her secrets if she can keep his. And given how openly, how blatantly, he behaves with regards to McKay in this episode, it seems as though he has decided to show her that he does trust her with this.

As a man, he doesn't understand what birthdays often mean to middle-aged childless professional women, and why she might have sought out some time for solitary reflection on this particular day. But she appreciates his gesture, nonetheless.

Yes, some people are going to view this in a romantic light. But emphasizing her aging is not a strategy mainstream television would take in establishing a romantic relationship between two characters -- one of whom is still in a relationship with someone on Earth, mind you. They even emphasize this with Sheppard's line "Doesn't look a day over nine thousand!" later on. Also, he takes off real quick because he clearly wanted to be somewhere else.

We cut from this scene to Sheppard doing what he was supposed to be doing: exploring the city. Sheppard's voice is on the intercom and we see McKay watching his life-sign on the screen. And this is the beginning of the motif of strange intimacy between Sheppard and McKay in this episode. It's all very suggestive but, true to form, left open for alternative interpretation.

As I've mentioned before, the audience is invited to re-interpret the episodes of the first two seasons through the lens of what we learn in The Game (S03E15), and if one is so inclined, one can simply read this developing closeness and familiarity between them as a result of their game-play. We learn in the following episode, The Brotherhood (S01E16), that McKay and Sheppard have shared a lot of personal information with each other by this time. But we can also read "the game" as an euphemism for something else that has resulted in their knowing each other very well, knowing strange details about one another, being physically comfortable in close proximity, the unending banter or back-and-forth, of the creation of this private universe between them, and of their worlds surrounding one another. They did play that game a lot, after all.

Once more, we return to Sheppard and McKay's conversation in the middle of it. With Weir, we saw the beginning, the middle, and the end of their exchange, brief as it was, all of it on screen. With Sheppard and McKay we are often coming in at the tail-end of their exchange. Sheppard is with Teyla and Ford down in the city while McKay is talking to them (and by them, I mean pretty obviously Sheppard alone) on the intercom. Apparently, their exploration of the city has been going on for a while already:

Sheppard: Alright, we're done with the living quarters. Moving on. McKay: Woah-woah-woah, before you go, you see anything better than our current quarters? Sheppard: A few. Some of them are pretty nice, actually. McKay: Well, what kind of square footage are we talking about? Sheppard: What am I, your realtor, Rodney? We're here to unlock the secrets of Atlantis. McKay: Yeah, well, I'm looking for a one-bedroom with a den, preferably with a balcony, but I'm not married to it. Look, we might as well be comfortable until the wraith get here--

So, one can interpret "our quarters" as referring to the quarters currently used by the expedition at large. One could also interpret it as "your quarters and my quarters" separately, in which case it assumes that Sheppard knows what McKay's quarters are like. That's fine. But.

Sheppard answers his inquiry with "What am I, your realtor?" as though he's not interested in looking for new quarters for (or with) McKay and is just there to do a job. Only, we find them together later looking through quarters, so this is something they are and have been doing together for some reason. But this discussion on the intercom is at least semi-public, what with McKay out in the open at the control room and Sheppard with the rest of their team, so Sheppard is clearly trying to remind McKay of this fact. He actually says "We're here to unlock the secrets of Atlantis," quoting their mission statement, to not-so-subtly remind the man that keeping up appearances is a thing that is necessary. He also emphasizes the word 'secrets' because sometimes McKay needs help getting a hint.

McKay isn't hearing it, though (although he does look to his side before he asks about the square footage as though to make sure he's not being overheard on his end, which Sheppard of course does not see). He's undaunted, prattling on about the quarters he would prefer (for them; this is literally what he says). It's possible that they've been having this conversation in another context that he's excitedly picking up since it's easy to forget one's surroundings when talking with someone familiar, just like people often forget that standers-by can hear them when they are on the phone in a public place. Also, why does he look so... turned on here?

The thing about quarters on Atlantis is that we see precious little of their private living spaces over the seasons. The quarters most often visited are Sheppard's, with his Johnny Cash poster and his comically small bed. Like, the bed is so small that it suggests the room either belonged to a Lantean child or that the Lanteans were considerably shorter than humans, which does not seem to have been the case, as we get to see the original Lanteans in this episode.

Sheppard's bed is not comfortable for him to sleep in and we are meant to get a Spartan, military vibe from it. Sheppard is a soldier, he prefers to keep his living space simple. Beds are for catching shut-eye and shut-eye only, and minimal amounts at that. Comically small.

We see McKay's quarters considerably less on the show, and the first time is in Duet (S02E04). In the episode, we also see his bed. On earth, you might think this is a single. But by Lantean standards, it's the biggest goddamn bed we ever get to see on a man on the show on Atlantis. I'll return to this with the rest of the episode later but I just want to point out this fact here, as Sheppard and McKay are having a discussion about the size of something later:

Sheppard: Too big, huh? McKay: I'm not saying it's too big, I'm just pointing out its dimensions. Sheppard: Huh. It's not that… [big]

Innuendo aside (Sheppard likes 'em big), they can only be talking about either quarters or something in them. But why would anyone care about the size of the quarters or something in them? They all seem to be living in really small spaces, cramming their human lives into Lantean frameworks, so why would Sheppard think that McKay finds some quarters too big? He owns a whole-ass house on earth, as seen in Home (S01E08). Since Lantean quarters seem to be fairly uniform in size, it's more likely that they're referring to something in the quarters they've been looking at, as quarters are plural and they used 'them' to refer to them previously.

And who thinks a bed is too big? Granted, we also learn in Home that McKay feels most comfortable sleeping on the sofa i.e., in a relatively narrow space, but it's not like they're finding any Alaskan King Size beds in the city, and even if they did -- it's just more space to roll in even if you're alone. You got a whole empty city at your perusal, you have space to live large. If Sheppard's bed is a twin, McKay's bed is only a full double. What even is the issue here?

Keeping up appearances is the issue. DADT stated that in order for someone to be investigated, they had to "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" and provide "credible evidence of homosexual conduct". I cannot overstate how much of an actual thing this was when the show was on air, and the USAF was one of the worst branches of the military when it came to pursuing allegations of this nature given the profusion of Southern Baptists in the leadership. Even if a non-heterosexual member of the military could be convinced that they were allowed to have feelings without having to justify them to anyone, acting on those feelings was not a simple matter. There could be no evidence of it.

If an officer cannot be found fraternizing with members of his sex, one of the ways it can be demonstrated that he does not is that his quarters are General Issue. The bed is for sleeping only and you couldn't entertain company there even if you wanted to. Investigating his quarters, you would have to conclude that he is, in the words of Johnny Cash, a solitary man. It's plausible deniability. But then. No one would care about the size of the bed of the head scientist.

It's interesting that McKay's bed is small enough to be interpreted as the bed of someone sleeping alone and yet it is big enough to fit two people that are both used to sleeping in tight quarters (one being the Spartan military type and the other likely comforted by the narrow space of the sofa). Again, just to point out its dimensions, McKay's is the biggest bed we ever see on the show on Atlantis (I'll return to the case of Heightmeyer's and Lt. Cadman's beds later). So.

We are actually reminded of McKay's ability and natural inclination for sleeping in a tight space in this same goddamn episode:

With the two of them sleeping in the same room, essentially sleeping together, in seemingly uncomfortable positions in an episode that begins with them hunting for something better than their current quarters. With reference to the title of the episode, you need a bed before you can sleep and here we're shown both of them, both of them, in want of a bed. Subtle.

Now, it's not my intention to claim that they had been living together secretly all these years. Clearly, there were long periods when they had fallen out and we even see Sheppard ban McKay from his quarters during Trinity (S02E06). But there are still hints. They give you just enough to speculate. The only time we see Sheppard asleep in his room is in The Shrine (S05E06), and this is, perhaps not coincidentally, the only time we see him in pajamas that, for a military man, are probably not common sleep wear. And also, just throwing it out there: Sheppard must have like a dozen plain black t-shirts he could sleep in so the panda shirt might actually belong to someone who is fond of novelty t-shirts and not even be his. In the episode McKay barges into his quarters, waking him up:

McKay: John! You were there, and-and then you-you-you-- Sheppard: Rodney, Rodney, I'm right here! What-what's wrong? McKay: I woke up, and [***] Sheppard: Oh, buddy. I'm sorry. I thought you'd fallen asleep. McKay: Oh… I was… I got so scared.

Sheppard had been there in McKay's quarters ("Let's get you back to your quarters") when he had fallen asleep and he had woken up in the middle of the night to find him not there anymore, which had scared him. Since McKay is losing his faculties, he's slurring enough that it's extremely difficult to make out what he actually says in [***]. Some transcripts render it "and Ronon had left" which it's definitely not. Some with "and everyone had left" which sounds a bit more like it, but not quite. It's more like "and I'm the only one--had left!" or "and I'm all alone--had left!". He's so agitated he's swallowing many of the words, his speech is jumbled. His final "had left!" seems to be a continuation of the thought that he couldn't get out right the first time regarding Sheppard: "You--you--you--". John, you were there and then you had left. I woke up and was all alone. That's certainly the sentiment Sheppard is reacting to.

He's extremely contrite, telling McKay that he left because he thought he'd fallen asleep, as though that's a reasonable explanation for him leaving (which McKay seems to accept). This could indeed be something someone (who canonically needs less sleep than the other) might be forced to do if they can't be found frequently coming out of someone else's quarters in the morning.

Tell me the dialogue doesn't sound like Sheppard had been there with McKay when he had gone to bed. Sure, it could be a one-off, looking over a friend in need as he's basically dying, but McKay's reaction very much speaks against this. McKay is losing his memory and it's only the most ingrained, most important things that are left to him. They're also both wearing pajamas, which is something you might insist on when someone you love is regressing basically to a childlike state (and further, there's a medical professional in charge of his care that has suddenly taken a special interest in him while McKay had, by this time or shortly thereafter, very definitely even forgotten what her name was).

What we learn from this scene is that Sheppard doesn't usually sleep in his quarters wearing pajamas. Finding him not there with him was something so unexpected that it frightened McKay. He's losing his memory, he's losing his faculties, but he's also falling into a state of raw honesty. He needs John Sheppard there, with him, in his quarters that are his alone in name only and are actually shared by them, and he needs him to be there when he falls asleep and he also wants him there when he wakes up--even if that was something that ordinarily rarely happened.

There's also a whole thing in Doppelganger (S04E04) where Sheppard is sitting on his tiny bed unable to relax and then heads out of his quarters with purpose, runs into Teyla as he opens the door and then claims he had just been meaning to go find her as he was supposed to be sequestered and not leaving his quarters. He gives her a comforting hug, for just having lost--let's say--a friend, very obviously touching her bare skin, with Teyla currently hosting 'the entity'. And then, in the next scene, we find out that the entity that jumps via physical contact from person to person is not in Sheppard, as we were meant to suspect, but is suddenly and inexplicably in McKay.

There are... a few steps there that were obviously skipped but we can fill in the gaps with Sheppard, not in his tiny bed, touching the bare skin of the next host who apparently thinks that Sheppard frequently has nightmares about hot girls like it's a conversation they've had several times before. But anyway, we'll circle back to that later. Point is, over the years, we learn that they both know way too much about how the other person sleeps ("Only when he's awake" = Not when he's sleeping). But, as stated previously, you can attribute it all to 'the game'.* Or whatever. They're just good friends who are concerned about the other's sleep.

It's also interesting that McKay mentions the word marriage here. Obviously, he's not talking about literal marriage, using it as a turn of phrase. But his choice of vocabulary is not insignificant, given the domesticity in this episode. It speaks of subconscious desires (to marry someone in general, if you wish). But I will also point out that Canada was very much in the process of recognizing marriage equality when this episode originally aired, several provinces introducing it during the first season. This was the hot potato issue of the day. Anyway, as McKay is hunting for a bigger bedroom with his buddy boy pal, marriage is literally what he had on his mind.

But alas, their search is temporarily halted as Atlantis has to do what Atlantis does best. Ford stumbles onto something weird.

Continued in Pt. 2

-* But if you twisted my arm, it's between The Defiant One and Hot Zone that they first 'hooked up', to coin a phrase from the show. By this time, they've been there for months with slim hopes of ever getting back to Earth and have all run out of distractions. Which just makes Sanctuary that much more tragic, as they hadn't just been sleeping together but, as we learn in the following episode, had by this time been sharing intimate details about each other's lives.

#stargate atlantis #sga #sga meta #john sheppard #sheppard is bi #rodney mckay #rodney is gay #ep. before I sleep #ep. sanctuary #ep. hot zone #ep. the game #ep. the storm #ep. the shrine #ep. doppelganger #ep. duet #ep. trinity #ep. the defiant one

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