Daddy issues

Friday night's episode of Stargate SG-1 was completely abysmal.

Does anybody remember when this was an action show?

Know what's nice about action? You can put people together in dangerous situations and watch them fight against their desires to accommodate their responsibilities. Yeah, that didn't happen in this episode. What happened was a lot of talking and silly music meant to make me think the forced jokes were funny.

SPOILER WARNING

The "Family Ties" episode was about father issues. I know it was about father issues because it told me so. Every character told me so multiple times. It was all anybody talked about. And there was a lot of talking. Every scene was a discussion about how Vala feels about her dad, or how General Landry feels about his ex-wife.

There wasn't a whole lot of subtext, is what I'm saying here.

The premise was that Fred Willard's character has some information for Earth, but he just so happens to be Vala's father. I don't even remember what the information was because it was a mcguffin to get Vala to confront her father issues. How did she confront her father issues? By talking about them. It was like an episode of Gray's Anatomy but without the sex.

Nothing happened in this episode. I was so bored I started writing this post before the episode was over.

Know what would have been better? Vala's father gets himself in trouble from his bad behavior on an alien planet and he is the only person who knows how to save earth from an attack, so Vala has to save him even though she doesn't want to. She's convinced he's not worth saving, but she must swallow her pride and disgust for the good of the family she really cares about. If it were my story that would be where I'd stop it, by her realizing she shouldn't care if he loves her or not because her real family is the Stargate team.

But I have daddy issues.

If you want to go with redemption, maybe once she saves him, she gets in trouble and he does something selfless and sacrificial in order to save her. Only then does she realize he actually cared about her.

Instead her father disappointed her like he always does. She learned nothing new. He learned nothing new. Nobody ever made any difficult choices. It was an empty story.

But here's a thought. Vala is an absent parent too. Granted, her child is a mystical priestess bent on world domination, but still. Vala isn't exactly around to guide her. Yet that was never even brought up in an episode filled with dialogue.

Maybe her father could have been held hostage by her daughter. Now THAT would bring out the conflict.