1x05, "Ballistic"

[el_jefe]

Glad I checked here, I had forgotten all about easter eggs.

Which should tell y'all how good this one was.

[Elizabeth Bear]

Make our day, guys. Thank you!

[glinda_w]

Glad I checked here, I had forgotten all about easter eggs.

Oh good, at least I'm not the only one!

Which should tell y'all how good this one was.

Oh yeah. Lots of things going on in my mind about it, especially about Frost, and what she's said and done.

[rekre8]

I have to agree that Brady would have been out of character - tail end charlie should not have left his partner alone.

To give the guy a break, he's a little off his game from the visits with the fearmonger.

[qwertyzero]

Wow.

Completely fascinated with Brady and Lau, immersed in and interested in the character development -- and then in the last act you bring in Frost and suddenly she's more than the detached voice of knowledge and pretty fascinating herself -- and while this revelation starts getting tantalizing, you oh-by-the-way also write an intense climax. And then the closing memos, and I think people commented on Frost's last word, but Lau's second-last is really interesting too.

I wholeheartedly salute your episode-plot-arc/season-plot-arc balance&interaction and can't wait to tune in again week after next.

[kayjayoh]

Oh wow. This was an amazing episode. Possibly my favorite so far. So much to think about, so many twists and turns. And the Easter egg!

Poor little Maddie. Poor little Melinda. And the Henley's.... So many characters have my sympathy in this one. I loved the inclusion of Frost. And the Danny-Daphne-Chaz interlude.

<applause>

[raincrow]

Dug the episode, as always. Really enjoyed learning that Frost isn't completely absent her humanity. Liked learning about Lau's position in her family, about Brady's view of his role on the team. Good red herrings all about, though I'm skeptical of Lau's facile diagnosis of the first skinny girl. Kind of obvious intermezzo with Frost's examination of the Gamma, though a nice twist that it turned out to be happening in situ rather than on the slab post facto.

But Worth in the back half of Act 3? Inappropriate question, indeed. In the easteregg when she comes out in the office and in this episode when she probes Brady, I felt jarred out of the "fictional dream," as my old creative writing professors would have put it. Unless the author is trying to show that Worth is conspicuously concerned about sexuality -- her own, others who might be sympathetically aligned -- both of those scenes rang untrue to me. Bad timing? Cringe-inducing ignorance of personal and professional boundaries (people I know would have long since told her to get over herself)? Inelegant exposition pushing character development too quckly? Failure to advance the story at hand? Something about both scenes felt like one of William Faulkner's darlings needing slaughtered. Not at all like learning about Brady in the previous episode, or the other part of Act 3 where we see Chaz succumb to one of the caveats of Beta-hood.

Thanks for another entertaining Sunday evening.

[MadGastronomer]

But Worth in the back half of Act 3? Inappropriate question, indeed. In the easteregg when she comes out in the office and in this episode when she probes Brady, I felt jarred out of the "fictional dream," as my old creative writing professors would have put it. Unless the author is trying to show that Worth is conspicuously concerned about sexuality -- her own, others who might be sympathetically aligned -- both of those scenes rang untrue to me. Bad timing? Cringe-inducing ignorance of personal and professional boundaries (people I know would have long since told her to get over herself)? Inelegant exposition pushing character development too quckly? Failure to advance the story at hand? Something about both scenes felt like one of William Faulkner's darlings needing slaughtered. Not at all like learning about Brady in the previous episode, or the other part of Act 3 where we see Chaz succumb to one of the caveats of Beta-hood.

It's pretty standard queer bonding, really.  Yeah, a bit awkward, but only because the situation is, and would be in real life, too, in those circumstances.  She's not showing an undue concern about sexuality, she's saying to a teammate -- someone with whom she ought to have a close and trusting bond -- "Hey, I see you.  We have this thing in common.  I understand you better now that I know that.  Would you like to understand me a little better, too?"  And he, in a rare moment of vulnerability, is responding to that.  She's behaving according to the etiquette of queer society, which is at that moment in opposition to the etiquette of their shared workplace.  She carefully offers him a way to stay within the workplace framework, and not move into the queer framework, because she knows that they're in opposition and Brady may be more comfortable in workplace mode, but it's not inappropriate within a queer framework.  Indeed, within a queer framework, it's an act of compassion.  Daphne knows coming out is hard, and she's trying to be supportive of him.
Because I've been in similar situations, the discomfort of that scene made it feel much more real to me, drew me in in a way that nothing else in this episode did, except for the gamma's POV stuff (which was very powerful for me).  I imagine that most straight people aren't ever aware of conversations like this taking place, and I can see how, without an understanding of the social mechanisms involved, it might seem jarring and feel out-of-place.  For me, it works very well.

For the record, I'm over being peeved with Danny.  Now I'm just worried about him.

[SCoran]

I really, really identified with the gamma in this one. Wow. If you can make me desperately hope that a character doesn't actually die, when that character appears in a single episode, kills people, and is obsessed with the military, you're definitely doing something right. Creepy.

Excellent sight of Frost as slightly more human.

Thanks for the insight into Lau.

That's about all I can think of now, after that.

Very good episode. Like all the others.

[Bunny M]

Okay, was I the only one that found Frost even more creepy because of the flashes of actual humanity in this episode? Because, really, something about her showing that she can be a little more human just made it all worse.

Also, (especially after reading the easter egg), I have to wonder if the good Dr Frost actually made a mistake, and failed to save the gamma, or did she deliberately stuff up this physician's attempt to relieve pressure on the cardiopulmonary system? *shivers*

Good to get some insight into Lau's head, and more of an insight into Brady's.

Poor little Maddie. Poor little Melinda. And the Henley's.... So many characters have my sympathy in this one.

Indeed. The depth of detail in Lau's interview with Maddy and her mother. My heart defintely went out to Maddy, Lau, and even Maddy's mother by the end of that scene.

But Worth in the back half of Act 3? Inappropriate question, indeed.

I dunno, I found it fit just fine, and was a good reminder that important things were happening back in DC, as well as in Maryland, just slightly less life&death things. I have only a (very) peripheral involvement with the LGBT community, but it rang true to me.

And as for Chaz's little stunt, to me it felt more like he was trying so hard to pull something out of the data that he crashed himself. Trying to force a breakthrough, perhaps? Almost worked, too, is the impression I get.

Or, of course, I could be barking up totally the wrong forest. 

For the record, I'm over being peeved with Danny.  Now I'm just worried about him.

Odd. I'm also over finding him so annoying/unsympathetic, but my attitude towards him is moving more towards pity, rather than worry. It seems like so much of his troubles and isolation are self-inflicted, and deliberately, possibly even consciously so. Something's gotta give, and it feels like he's going to be able to hide the breaches in the dam until it all goes at once. I hope he survives when it does, and so does everyone else. Poor lunk.

[Edited to add:] Duh! 

Bravo to all of you, Emma, Bear, Amanda and Sarah, this episode is at least as good as all the others so far. Once again, I couldn't stop reading until I had finished, found and read the easter egg(s), and checked the board/posted about it.

*stands and applauds*

[nebula]

I liked this, especially the concept of a child pointing the equivalent of 2 fingers at someone and saying "Bang Bang You're Dead" - and it working. You don't need a (functioning) gun to kill someone.

The continued fleshing out of Brady and Worth in this episode endeared them more to me and I've had a soft spot for Frost since the beginning . . . I appreciate her.

I still can't warm to Lau though. And the scene with Madelyn and her mother jarred with me.

[raincrow]

It's pretty standard queer bonding, really. 

I'm not denying that such discussions happen, but in the middle of a case? Later, when you're not immediately worried about the Magic Bullet Gamma, when you're relaxing with beers at the end of the BBQ, would be a whole other ball of mud. What I'm unconvinced of is either scene's utility in advancing either the story at hand or the story at large or in developing the characters at the right time. I tuned out until Chaz started acting all Beta-crashy.

[seabream]

Quick post because I'm sort of in the middle of things, but well done, nothing really struck me as off. Brady and Lau splitting up felt odd-ish, OTOH, it was necessary for a number of scenes which I would feel worse for missing had it not happened.

I still wonder occasionally why Chaz doesn't carry a hip flask of sugar water around like some diabetics do for emergencies. Or even just so that he has a low protein, low fat, etc... energy source. (Yes, if one isn't careful, high glycemic index foods make it easy to get wide swings in blood sugar levels which make one a good candidate for type II diabetes, but his superpower lends itself to mitigating the effects since he can do the calculation and data tracking for consumption of calories much more readily than an alpha.) I mean reasons aside from the anomaly being seriously scary and his understandable desire to control how much it takes over his life.

I'm also curious about what actual days in September the events in Ballistic occur in. Previous episodes, some teasers and deleted scenes have been much more specific in their dating of events, and since we're moving into the time when the LJ's start, it's getting more relevant for the purposes of comparing them.

Re: Bunny M's comment above about Dr. Frost. One does wonder about her own father issues here too. Oh the tensions that arise from the use of tight third person. (As opposed to whatever one calls the omniscient third that gives away what's going on in everyone's head that would so not work in this project.)

Nice seeing more information filling in about things we've seen in the blogs. Like with Jessica Kelly.

I was sort of looking forward to finding out what kind(s) of crazy Melinda was referring to with respect to her grandmother, but there's not enough to know for certain.

[Elizabeth Bear]

Chaz has hard candy on hand. However, it's still pretty easy to goof, especially if you suffer from borderline hypoglycemic unawareness* and you get caught up in something else.

*A condition that develops in people (often but not exclusively diabetics) who have had frequent enough hypoglycemic episodes that their body no longer lets them know their blood sugar is low until it has crashed.

[AndrewJ]

What I'm curious about is: was giving the gamma the last name "Grossman" a tip of the hat to retired Army Col. Dave Grossman, who wrote Killology (about how to make humans kill each other, and what it does to our heads when we do) and a couple of enjoyably pulpish SF novels (The Two-Space War and Guns of Two-Space) for Baen?