1x01, "Breathe"

[CJ]

I'm quite the opposite. I identified with the gamma, which scares me, but I'm radically antismoking myself, and glare with hatred at anyone who fouls my air while I'm walking down the street. It really seriously made me stop and think when the Reveal came around. The gamma was killing smokers? Ouch, that hit too close to my own prejudices.

Moral: We all have a crack. The anomaly could get into any of us. And we'd think it was perfectly reasonable to ratchet things up a notch with the anomaly pushing.

Very scary episode, good start to the series.

She wasn't just killing smokers (except when she went after the nurse who was heading for a smoke break), she was killing smokers with children (their own or under their care) with conditions that may have been caused by or at least made worse by second-hand smoke.  Plenty of justification in that.  Figure she had been seeing cases like this over and over again as long as she'd been working.  Including, I'll bet, kids who died because of it.  How much did she want to do something to these people before the anomaly got a hold of her?  How much of a push would it take to go from wanting to do something to doing it?  It's vigilante justice.  It's protecting the children. 

That step from angry observer to monster isn't that far. 

[lunarsara]

I never smoked, no. But nicotine is a mean mean tyrannical dominatrix of a mistress who does not recognize anybody's safe word

For someone who's never smoked, you seriously hit the nail on the head with that turn of phrase.

I'm a recovered smoker (once you've been a smoker you can't become a "non-smoker", it's like being an alcoholic).  I encourage my husband and friends to quit.  I would love to see world where people don't do that anymore.

Tarliman, I know where you're coming from, but I encourage a bit of sympathy.  Your glares will make no progress.  They honestly don't know that you can smell them a block away, and they probably won't believe you if you tell them.  Remember that these people are in the grip of a truly overwhelming addiction.  If you know anything about strong addictions (narcotics, alcohol, nicotine) you know that it takes over your life.  An addicted parent will love their fix more than their child (though they may never admit it).  Every cigarette smoked starts a timer and as that timer winds down your whole world begins to contract until you can think about nothing beyond how you'll get your next fix.  A nicotine fit is like a bout of extra severe anxiety times 10 in addition to an industrial strength rubber band wrapped around your brain.  It's a thing of pain and misery and sucking on a cancer stick will make it stop, instantly!  The only way to break the addiction is to go through that torture for about 72 hours strait with no relief and follow that by at least another month of regular recurring psychosomatic fits.  Quitting hurts, bad.  It takes an astronomical amount of motivation and will power.  There should be inpatient clinics for it and there aren't 'cause people that never smoked don't get it.

(sorry for getting so long winded there...)

[kayjayoh]

Squeee! Episode one! Episode one!

Oddly enough, it feels perfectly normal to be "reading my tv shows". Until *very* recently I never owned a tv set (and even now it is off most of the time) but for years I have kept up with a lot of shows (some of which I have never actually seen) by reading the recaps on Television Without Pity. The fact that this tv show doesn't actually happen to have a television version....merely a minor detail.

I'm also having a great deal of fun reading all the easter eggs, the LJs, and these message board. Of course, I am going to have to start pacing myself a bit.

Anyway, I'm enjoying myself immensely. Thank you all for putting this together.

[Lenora_rose]

Add one more to the squee. Good set-up episode; on the one hand, it was clear it was a set up episode (Let's introduce the team, the setting, the anomaly, the procedure - the structure showed through in a few spots). On the other hand, it was good and actiony and full of people I want to see more of and of course, most real tv shows don't do pilots half as good. Pilots are notorious for being weak, and this was very strong.

I realised at the end I was miffed at Brady, and not sure I'd be able to get to like him, though i could work with him... because of something he did that I had to concede probably made perfect sense. THEN I realised I was thinking of his actions the way i would a person's, not as "In character" or "Plausible motivation".

[Elizabeth Bear]

Which thing was that, Lenora?

The Cowboy, he's a little intense, it's true...

The other kids are all slightly scared of him.

[luciab]

And more of the squee.... I know you must be SO tired of it by now. Heh.

Not being an analytical thinker, I wasn't thinking about the details being part of the "pilot" as such, but I was really glad to get them. The episode put so many of the little snippets we've been getting into a structured whole, and I was  happy to see the characters introduced more fully than the bios can do. Yes, I do read the LJs, but that's a completely different side of them, and I was excited to actually see them in action.

In a serious fangirl moment I even printed out the bios that have pics to help keep everything together in my mind. Can't wait to see the rest of the portraits-- I loved the pencil sketches, too.

[MadGastronomer]

Okay, so this bit is bugging me:

"Or parasite and host," Reyes finished. "But that model suggests that the organism is co-opted by the parasite. In betas, the human is in the driver's seat, keeping the anomaly under control. So the host-parasite model doesn't hold there."

Why does a parasite-host relationship suggest that the parasite co-opts the host?  A tapeworm is a parasite, one that makes the host do unusual things (eat a lot), but no one would suggest that the tapeworm has co-opted its host.  It just sits there, creating a need in the host.

[Joe Sherry]

Okay, so this bit is bugging me:

"Or parasite and host," Reyes finished. "But that model suggests that the organism is co-opted by the parasite. In betas, the human is in the driver's seat, keeping the anomaly under control. So the host-parasite model doesn't hold there."

Why does a parasite-host relationship suggest that the parasite co-opts the host?  A tapeworm is a parasite, one that makes the host do unusual things (eat a lot), but no one would suggest that the tapeworm has co-opted its host.  It just sits there, creating a need in the host.

I don't think we have all the evidence yet.  Smoking Nurse was killing based on the crack that the anomaly got through...but the Agents got to her after only a handful of known deaths.  What happens when a Host goes unchecked?  Does Frost have evidence of the brains of an unchecked Host being significantly different than an Alpha?

Also, co-opting may not mean that the Anomaly is making conscious decisions, but rather that the Host has been so changed by the presence of the Anomaly that the Host isn't the same person and will never be again.  The Host has lost the power to really choose and make rational decisions.  Not necessarily, though maybe, that the Anomaly is driving the bus.  I *think* (based on one episode) that the Anomaly just makes the occasional sharp tug on the steering wheel and the Host can't steer. 

[Barton Fender]

To quote:
the Host has lost the power to really choose and make rational decisions.  Not necessarily, though maybe, that the Anomaly is driving the bus.  I *think* (based on one episode) that the Anomaly just makes the occasional sharp tug on the steering wheel and the Host can't steer. 


  I think one of the most insidious things about this anomaly, and make this just a great concept, is that it uses the host own beliefs to gain control. In this way I feel that the host is not aware of the anomaly. They just feel that their beliefs or dreams have come true. The host is given the power that they already believe in or believe they deserve to have.

  One of the best things about the first episode is that the person with the anomaly, in my mind, thought of themselves as a hero. In her mind she was saving the children from something she had already suffered.

 So i believe that the host is in control. They are just given more power than they, or maybe anyone, should have.

 Some of the best villains are the ones who think they are doing the right thing.

[CJ]

Also remember that the parasite/host analogy is an analogy (to the best of my understanding) and isn't a perfect one.  It seems to be the model that makes the most sense and is the most useful, but when what's going on with the anomaly doesn't make sense in the parasite/host sense, that's where the model doesn't fit. 

There is far too much unknown about the anomaly to be sure of what's going on.  I have the feeling that the agents (and therefore the audience) is just at the tip of the iceberg with this.  There are a lot of enormous questions that we just don't have the data to even guess at an answer for. 

[MadGastronomer]

While you all make good points, none of it really addresses my question:  Why would a host/parasite model necessarily mean, as the quote says, that the parasite is in control?

[Elizabeth Bear]

Basically, MG, Reyes is sliding over into a very specific parasite model there--he's talking about parasites such as Toxoplasma, or certain kinds of grasshopper liver fluke or ant fungus, which actually mind-control their victims into behavior counterproductive to the host's survival.

Chaz was talking about something similar recently on his LJ.

Dad made a logical leap, in other words, and expected the team to follow it, and we the writers either failed to notice that he was making the leap, and allow for it, or we failed to come up with a way to lead you through it with him without going all As You Know Bob.

[CJ]

Basically, MG, Reyes is sliding over into a very specific parasite model there--he's talking about parasites such as Toxoplasma, or certain kinds of grasshopper liver fluke or ant fungus, which actually mind-control their victims into behavior counterproductive to the host's survival.

Chaz was talking about something similar recently on his LJ.

Dad made a logical leap, in other words, and expected the team to follow it, and we the writers either failed to notice that he was making the leap, and allow for it, or we failed to come up with a way to lead you through it with him without going all As You Know Bob.

Oh, gawd, SGA did one of those last night and it made me cringe.  Ewwww.  Perhaps include this somewhere on the Jargon page or something of that ilk?  For those who don't follow the logical leap?

[txanne]

That "something similar" would have been the penny-dropping freakout?  I had no idea what he was talking about (in an "Oh, good, TPTB are Plotting Something" kind of a way.)

[Elizabeth Bear]

Yah. The bit where he was like, okay, fuck, parasites manipulate their host in ways that make it probable that more parasites will be produced?

And what opens people up to both garden-variety psychosis and to the anomaly?

Trauma.

What do those infected by the anomaly do anything to create?

Trauma.

I'm not saying he's right, mind you. It's no more likely a theory than the feeding-off-suffering one I've seen bandied about the BBS here. But it creeped me out when he said it. *g*