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dr-futbol-blog · 7 days ago

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The Pegasus Project, Pt. 3

Colonel Mitchell seems to be the first one to exit the meeting room after the meeting is concluded, and it is not because he is excited to explore the city further like Jackson seems to be, it is just to get away from the meeting itself. He needed to get away from the eggheads because this over-compensating Action Jackson seems to need to make it clear to everyone that might be watching that he would rather be out there doing some soldiering than solving maths problems, or what ever it is that Carter had intended to do with McKay. Mitchell walks out of the room with a clear need to reassert his manhood.

I have discussed before how people used to see this dynamic of jock vs. nerd between Sheppard and McKay where Sheppard later actually turns out to be a prep who is trying very hard to hide this fact about himself, Sheppard is in more closets than one. Mitchell, on the other hand, is the quintessential jock, at least insofar as Sheppard is able to get a read on him, and while Sheppard is fairly confident that since they need McKay to do calculations for them that he is going to be relatively safe on this mission, he is worried about how Mitchell is going to treat him for the duration. To understand what happens in this scene, we have to recognize the fact that Sheppard knows Mitchell is the person he is having to trust McKay's life and well-being with, is the one who is going to ultimately guarantee his safety on the mission. And Mitchell seems like a capable warrior, that does not concern him. It is the masculine posturing and bravado that worries Sheppard, the dick-swinging swagger with which he walks in his city.

Mitchell: I gotta tell you, Sheppard… it's a nice place you got here. Sheppard: Thanks. We just painted.

We see Mitchell exemplifying this trait as he saunters out of the meeting room, all buddy-buddy with Sheppard. He has the air of someone who is seeking to masculine-bond with Sheppard, to bond with someone who is like him as opposed to the other people in the room who are not like the two of them. The people still in the room are girls, geeks and nancy boys or some combinations thereof, and Mitchell seems to feel the need to assert himself as not any of that to Sheppard, whom he similarly sees as not being any of those groups.

Mitchell does not seem particularly good at reading people, and seems to have no inkling that Sheppard is not just a closet geek and most definitely is a nancy boy, but in addition to that he had been born with that silver (or gold) spoon in his mouth, he comes from generational wealth and preparatory schools. If they were in high school, the two might actually have hated each other, and guys like Mitchell might have ended up driving cars and running security for guys like Sheppard's father, the Mitchells of the world bitter about their station in life and the Sheppards of the world overlooking the Mitchells, barely aware of their existence. But they are not in high school, Sheppard is the commander of this operation that is really quite something, and he had received the post because someone had been enough of an ally to him to have risked her not inconsequential career to have him run it, not caring who he loves so long as he allows her to retain civilian authority over the mission.

The other thing is, which I have seen people discuss before and which I had pointed out with regards to Sheppard and O'Neill's character (in many ways, O'Neill is who people think Sheppard to be), which is that Mitchell is who Sheppard pretends to be, Sheppard projects an image similar to Mitchell as a defensive strategy. As mentioned, when Sheppard had joined the Air Force, the most homophobic branch of the military (and this seems to have happened around the same time as when he married a woman, as he had been doing Black Ops missions during his marriage -- which is something married guys usually don't get to do), he had been in the closet in more ways than one. Not only had he wished that it would curb his desire for other men, knowing he had to keep his eyes front and mind his own business not to risk someone lashing out with violence, but he also had to hide his social background from the people he served with.

Sheppard seems not to have gone to West Point, where the future Generals are educated, as his father likely would not have had a problem with that. Sheppard had gone into service to fight actual wars, to earn his stripes on the actual battlefield where men shed blood, sweat and tears for their country, and he had risen in the ranks based on his merits, not because of who his daddy was (as far as he knows). Sheppard had felt the need to disassociate from his old man to make his own way in the world, which had meant not bringing up his family background unless it was absolutely necessary. We as the audience don't even find out about it until the latter half of the fourth season, and even though the actor seems to have had this background in mind for the character the whole time, an outcast scion of generational wealth with more than a small need to prove himself as "one of the guys," the hints we get for this being the case over the years are extremely subtle -- but they are still there.

In contrast to Sheppard, McKay seems to be middle class, possibly the lower spectrum of the same since he seems to have started piano lessons and gotten a dog as a child, but his father likely did not have the means to support him continuing his hobby or keeping the dog, which might even indicate that his family had experienced downward class mobility when he had been a child, and the tightness with money might well have been one of the topics that had caused his parents to fight that a child might not have fully understood at the time. McKay seems well aware of Sheppard's family background and he knows enough about Sheppard's relationship with his father to know that he needed to offer to go with him to the old man's funeral later on, but while this may have caused some strain in their relationship over the years, for the most part they had managed to put their differences aside.

As for Mitchell, he seems to come from a much more meagre background than Sheppard, and seems to have been a military brat whose family had to get by on a veteran's pension after his father's injury, basically groomed for this occupation and to serving his country his whole entire life. Given that Mitchell's father had been a test pilot who had been injured on a flight with experimental flight craft, Mitchell having grown up in the shadow of his sacrifice, he might have been even more likely to think that Sheppard was "playing soldier" if he had known about his background -- precisely the reason why Sheppard does not want people to know many things about him. Sheppard has always been extremely stingy sharing personal things about himself.

Of course they do somewhat deconstruct Mitchell's character on the show because watching a straight-laced G.I.Joe would be boring and not make for great television, and since he was meant to fill the boots of the rogueish hero O'Neill while being the "straight guy" (in the theatrical sense), and still be somewhat original not to be a simple carbon copy of him, they were walking a tightrope with the character as it was. What is more, because both the actors for Mitchell and Vala had been brought over form another popular sci-fi franchise, they also needed to make sure that they were somehow distinct from their predecessors, that they had not just transferred John Crichton and Aeryn Sun from one show to another -- even though the intention had obviously been to bring the viewers over to this franchise.

The whole point of us getting this scene between Mitchell and Sheppard is for us to see the two protagonists side by side, and to get the opportunity to compare them. They do have many things in common just on account of being protagonists, and again as early middle-aged North American white guys in the military, both of them Lt. Colonels. But where Mitchell is straight, or at least we have no reason to think otherwise, Sheppard is decidedly not, and he does not know Mitchell well enough to know how he feels about "the queers" in the military, how he has dealt with DADT in his own career as an officer. Sheppard is subtly testing the waters, and this song and dance was one that was familiar to most non-straight servicemen and officers in the military at this time. But just to be on the safe side, he very obviously does not look anywhere near Mitchell's shapely posterior as he bends over the railing to take in the city, his eyes actually comically scanning the ceiling in a clear attempt at not looking at it. You needed to be really pretty sure about how the other person thought about these things before even thinking about disclosing anything. We had seen how long it had taken Sheppard to even trust Weir with the truth of it.

And Mitchell is what Sheppard has been projecting his entire career, back when he actually was trying "not being wraith," was trying to play it straight and when he had tried convincing himself that having sex with a ridiculously beautiful woman wasn't a chore to him, and later on when he had been forced to admit that he could not help being who he was, what he was, when it had no longer been about wanting guys but when, without meaning to, he had fallen in love and had tragically lost the man that he loved in spite of violating direct orders in an attempt to save him, after which pretending to be someone he wasn't had suddenly not seemed so important anymore. He was still grieving when we find him on the Antarctic at the start of the show, trying to figure out who he was after he had lost everything about himself apart from the Air Force.

But because Sheppard does not know what kind of a man Mitchell is and suspects him to be a "Sir, yes sir!" Kansas farm boy who had grown up going to church every Sunday and whose grandmother had almost certainly hated the gays, he does not quite know how to behave around him. Even if Mitchell had been able to overcome the baggage of his social background somewhat, Sheppard has no way of knowing that. There is nothing to suggest to Sheppard that he could trust this man with the truth -- much to the contrary. But it is possible that his reference to painting is a subtle way of trying to find out whether he is "a friend of Dorothy" too, since what Sheppard actually does here is make a comment on the interior decoration of the place, something that he actually does seem to have an interest in. Mitchell picking that up would have been a hint but alas, he does not.

Never one to know how to take a compliment but very much agreeing with Mitchell's assessment of Atlantis being a sight to behold, Sheppard makes his quip about them having just painted, having put on a fresh coat of paint, which is also something that a guy might say to another guy who had just complimented his car or his house, just two guys shooting the breeze. It is the kind of reply that is designed to take the edge off the compliment, to show the guy receiving the compliment as being a humble salt of the Earth kind of guy and not an arrogant ass, and most certainly to desexualize the interaction, to make sure that the guy who had given the compliment knows that he is not gay and that he knows that knows that he is not gay even though he had said something nice to him. The life of a heterosexual man is an exhausting theatre where one's masculinity needs to be constantly asserted but also in a way that cannot accidentally be construed as gay, where one has to project enjoying traditionally masculine things and striving to be a manly man but where one's enjoyment of manly things cannot cross that ever-shifting fine line between enjoying manly things and enjoying manly things a little too much. Sheppard's comment here, it is trying to walk this tightrope, to show Mitchell that he appreciates the compliment but that he is not a nancy boy who needs compliments or who cares about receiving them, whatever, man.

But. The thing is. This episode is taking place on the eve of Sheppard and McKay moving back in together. In the following episode, Sheppard accidentally lets slip that he had been cleaning McKay's quarters, and the reason he had been cleaning McKay's quarters was because he was moving back in, or had recently done so. And we have noted before how Sheppard has a tendency to say things in a sarcastic tone, as he does here, his tone indicating that obviously they had not painted and he was joshing about it, it was just something he was saying. But Sheppard does not use sarcasm like that, he often says things that are true in a tone that implies that they are not true or that he does not really care about things that he cares about as a means of getting emotional distance to these things. And this suggests that he might actually be telling the truth here. They might actually have been painting recently.

And it is not likely that they (his "we" more often than not referring to himself and McKay in particular) had been painting the gate room or the meeting room, it is much more likely -- given when this is taking place -- that they had been painting McKay's quarters in preparation for Sheppard moving back in with him. And having Sheppard confess this on the other show, in this tone that suggests he is joshing when he is, in fact, telling the actual truth, is pretty clever. No one is going to bat an eye and yet it is just reinforcing what happens in the next episode. And Sheppard is so excited about getting to move back in to the quarters where he had enjoyed some of the happiest moments of his life before it had all gone so terribly wrong that he just cannot shut up about it. He feels the need to shout it from the rooftops that he is in love with the greatest guy he has ever met and that they are about to start their domestic partnership because he is so happy.

And it is because he is so happy about where he is with McKay right now that the fact that this man has come to steal him away for a mission he hopes is going to take less than a day is making him unhappy. It is making him tetchy and testy, and because Sheppard can only deal with emotions by projecting them on other people, he seems to be projecting all of this unhappiness on McKay here. Mitchell -- and the viewers of SG-1 who had not watched the other show (and let us recall that this was meant to invite people from the mothership to check the other show out, hence the need to make Sheppard seem too cool for school) -- do not know what Sheppard is like or why he is behaving the way that he is. Many people who did watch SGA had trouble understanding his motivations here. Even McKay barely understands why Sheppard is being like this, and because McKay does not understand his own worth, he is probably interpreting Sheppard's behaviour as resulting from being upset over Carter rather than the fact that he is being whisked away, Sheppard misses him already, and he is always worried for his safe-being. It is because Sheppard is so bad with "I don't know what you'd call it, feelings" that he does what he does next.

Sheppard: Well, good luck. And listen, if McKay gives you a hard time, just… Mitchell: Shoot him. Sheppard: Also, he's mortally allergic to citrus. Mitchell: Really?

We have noted many times before that Sheppard is not great with goodbyes. In fact, he hates saying goodbye and tries to avoid it to the best of his ability. He is perfectly aware that this is a send-off, that they are not only going to say goodbye to the visitors but that they actually are taking McKay with them. And much though McKay himself likely would want to say goodbye to Sheppard, to just make sure that if anything were to happen that everything was good between them, Sheppard has no intention of doing anything of the like. He knows that McKay has to go but he is in denial about it.

But regardless of this, he seems to behave like a mother sending his beloved son to summer camp for the first time here. He is making sure that McKay is taken care of. Obviously Sheppard is not advocating that Mitchell shoot McKay if the runs his mouth -- which they both know he is going to do, Sheppard better than Mitchell and hence having no doubt about it -- and in fact, note that Sheppard cannot even bring himself to say it. He is meant to be wisecracking with his colleague here and he cannot bring himself to say it, making Mitchell finish the sentence for him. The only thing he can do is give him a thumbs up because even though he is joking, McKay's safety is not a joking matter to him.

What is more, even though Sheppard is pointing with his two fingers as though he had been miming a gun, we do not actually know that he was going to say what Mitchell thought he was going to say, that Mitchell had extrapolated from what Sheppard had said to Carter back in the meeting. Sheppard had said it to Carter for a reason that did not really apply to Mitchell, so it is possible he was going for something else entirely here, and that the finger gesture that Mitchell seemed to interpret as symbolizing the barrel of a gun was something else -- being that the index finger together with the middle finger are often used in anal play, to prepare participants for penetration.

And again, just as obviously, it is not Sheppard's intention to say that if McKay gives him trouble that Mitchell should give McKay "a good seeing to" because we had just seen what a jealous, possessive man Sheppard is back in the meeting room, he does not share well nor does he have a sense of humour about that. But at the same time, it is possible that entirely subconsciously Sheppard may know that when his "spinning top" is spiraling toward a nervous breakdown, Sheppard does know of ways to bring him down, and while some of those ways are not ones that he is willing to share with virtual strangers, the gesture may just be a visceral reaction to what ever thought he was having about McKay giving them trouble -- which likely translates to McKay needing to be talked down from "reacting to certain doom in a certain way."

What is more, the gesture is very erotic due to the frequent association of weapons and phalluses. Sheppard further gives Mitchell a thumbs up, and we may recall that this gesture was one that he adopted from McKay in Critical Mass (S02E13) where McKay had first done the finger guns at Zelenka and Sheppard then repeated his gesture without the "barrel" of the finger gun, likely not wanting to point even a mock weapon at someone unless he intended to use it. And this may in fact suggest that Sheppard's intention with the fingers had been something other than how Mitchell interpreted it, because Sheppard does not joke about things like that, not with anyone but certainly not when it comes to McKay.

It seems that as Sheppard is walking Mitchell along here, he is both testing him to make sure that he can actually trust McKay with this man but he is also giving Mitchell advice he is going to need in managing McKay -- not because McKay is a lot of trouble but because he needs to be sure that Mitchell understands McKay's special needs. Sheppard mentioning McKay's deadly allergy may seem like a joke, especially because Sheppard is trying very hard to make it sound like a joke by once more using an incongruous tone, but this is something that Mitchell absolutely needs to know about McKay. We had seen Vala eating a tangerine for breakfast back on the Odyssey so we know that there are citrus fruit on board. Citrus is a known staple on seafaring ships due to the danger of scurvy when ships are long at sea and have no access to Vitamin D, and hence on a space ship that travels three weeks between the galaxies, it would make sense for them to pack them for the voyage, and even to bring them to Atlantis since we do not know how many plants with Vitamin C they have up in Pegasus.

It is not just possible but actually likely that the Odyssey, who had been unloading their cargo before the meeting, had brought over more than a few citrus fruits, which would explain why Sheppard has one in his possession right now. Even though he explicitly says so, it is obviously not that he keeps a citrus fruit with him at all times because he likes the bully McKay with it, that was never the intention of the writers (otherwise, the Chekov's Tangerine in the beginning of the episode has no purpose), even though many people believed that they did -- and this scene was one of the scenes that made viewers of the spinoff show feel like the writers on SG-1 had no idea how to write these characters. For some viewers, this was the stupidest thing that had ever happened on the show, it was downright offensive. Only. A ship had just come in the city bearing cargo that is deadly to the man that Sheppard loves. It only makes sense for him to have confiscated, commandeered, snatched away every citrus that had come to his path because he cares about McKay.

He is warning Mitchell here about McKay's allergy because he wants him to know about it when they are shut inside a ship bearing citrus where the cooks might not always respect McKay's warnings, where they might not understand the severity of his allergy and where having an allergic reaction would be bad when they are millions of light years away from the nearest hospital. By having collected the citrus, Sheppard is making sure that it does not cross paths with McKay in the city that they live in and where his best friend is a medical doctor, and by mentioning it to Mitchell he is making damn sure that no citruses cross his path on the Odyssey either. Mitchell's response, "Really?" betrays the fact that he does not quite understand why Sheppard is telling him this curiosity about the guy, but he guesses it is good to know. But Sheppard is actually making sure that he remembers it, that it does not go in one ear and out the other. Sheppard needs Mitchell to pay attention to this because the fact that Sheppard is walking around with the lemon now suggests that it had been in the nick of time that he had managed to save McKay from where ever the citrus had been originally heading. Sheppard runs interference for McKay more than he will ever know, Sheppard tries to keep him safe with everything he's got.

Sheppard: I keep one with me at all times. It's just a comfort to know… it's there. Mitchell: That's good intel. Thanks.

So, Sheppard is not doing prop comedy here. He does not keep a citrus with him at all times, he is saying something that is not true. Sheppard says counterfactual things, he is known to lie kind of a lot, and while what he tells Mitchell here is not true, he is not even attempting to lie to him here. He is not saying this with the expectation that Mitchell believes him, he fully expects Mitchell to understand that he is joshing. Yes, Sheppard has a citrus with him here and he had a citrus on him during the meeting but as mentioned, he had very likely removed it from some situation that was threatening to make its way to McKay somewhere down the line.

Given that they were having a meeting, someone squeezing lemon into the water pitcher may for example have been in danger of happening. Maybe Vala, whom we had seen eating a citrus earlier and she, in fact, had not been able to finish eating her tangerine, had been about to commence in some citrus eating in McKay's vicinity and Sheppard had put a stop to that. There are a thousand reasons for Sheppard to have confiscated the lemon so that it would not pose a threat to McKay. And whether or not Mitchell actually gets what he is doing, it is not Sheppard's intention to give Mitchell the lemon so that he can threaten McKay with it. He is giving it as a tangible reminder of what he had told him. As long as Mitchell physically has the lemon with him, he is much more likely to remember what Sheppard thinks (hopes) is going to be the most dangerous thing to McKay on their journey.

What is more, we can see that Sheppard is getting rid of the lemon he had been holding on to here. Sheppard may have no intention of (ever) saying goodbye to McKay but he is intending on putting his hands on McKay before he leaves, of pushing his own body against McKay before he takes off, and hence even though he probably had removed the citrus from circulation for good reason, he does not need it smushing up between the two of them, not with what he intends to do next. He is unloading the lemon to Mitchell as a reminder, yes, but also just to get rid of it because he needs to be lemon-free for the next few moments, maybe even expecting McKay to follow him to where ever he was going to wash his hands next.

Now, if Sheppard was truthful about keeping a lemon with him at all times just because of McKay, it would only go to show that McKay is always on his mind, that he wants to keep a reminder of McKay with him where ever he goes. And while the lemon thing is not true, we never see or hear of it again, Sheppard keeping McKay with him at all times is true. And Sheppard is obviously not comforted by the lemon he carries with him at all times or by the thought that he has something deadly to McKay on his person, what comforts him is the knowledge that McKay is safe, and right now he is trying to quell that seedling of feat inside him, is trying to deal with the fact that Weir had just volunteered McKay to go on a mission without him.

There is nothing about McKay leaving that is comforting to Sheppard whatsoever, it is the opposite of that. He is discomfited by the knowledge that he has to place McKay's life in this man's hands, and although he cannot just come out and say it, he is trying very hard to make Mitchell understand how important McKay is not just to him, but to everyone in the city. He is going about it in a surreptitious way but he is obligating Mitchell to take on the responsibility of returning McKay to him alive and well.

What is more, we learn later on that this was not the whole conversation they had about McKay but that Sheppard had told him many more things, had said to Mitchell things about McKay that we did not get to hear. Sheppard is trying very, very hard to stay upbeat here, even slapping him on the upper arm in what is likely meant to be a friendly way as he takes off, and he may do it because Sheppard seems wholly incapable of talking anymore at that point because this is getting way too close to saying goodbye to McKay for his comfort, he is getting emotional. Letting McKay go alone to where he cannot help him and to know he is going with Carter is killing him, and the only thing he can do is to take off without saying another word before it overwhelms him.

McKay: Heh heh. That's, that's, that's a good one. We're actually… we're quite close. Mitchell: You packed your bags? McKay: Hmm? Oh, right, right.

McKay seems to catch the tail-end of his significant other being weirder than usual, and seems to feel the need to make excuses for his behaviour the way spouses often do. Note first of all that McKay is coming out of the meeting even though the others are still lingering in the room, and he has not stayed back to spend more time with Carter. Likely they had some details to iron out, and once they were finished, McKay had left the others very likely to go after Sheppard because it is to Sheppard that he is making his way just as Sheppard takes off. This is an important scene in establishing that McKay is not attracted to Carter because a man who was attracted would not only take every opportunity to spend time with the object of their affection, lingering back just to be with them, they would also turn back to take that "one last look," wanting the object of their affection to be the last thing they see. We do not see whether Sheppard had turned to take this look at McKay as he was further on, but we have seen him do it before.

What McKay says here is important. He says that the two of them are close. This is true, of course. They had started off like a house on fire back when Sheppard had heaved McKay off of a balcony in Hide and Seek (S01E03), and they have grown ever closer through shared joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Mitchell does not know either of them and hence does not understand Sheppard and his motivation for behaving this way as well as McKay does, even if McKay likely does not comprehend the full extent of it, not for lack of knowing how to read Sheppard but purely through not understanding his own value. The two of them are close, and they are even closer during this time because they had just spent several weeks reconnecting and seemed to be ready to take the next step in their relationship by moving in together. Not knowing the two of them and assuming that McKay is universally loathed by the Lanteans like he pretty much had been back at the SGC (who had sent him to Siberia just to get rid of him), it might be easy for Mitchell to interpret this as McKay needing to convince himself of the two of them being close, that Sheppard is just joking here. Good one, that Colonel is always kidding around.

And yes, Sheppard does have a tendency to yank McKay's chain but it is most often because he simply needs attention from McKay, he needs to be pulling his pigtails to get assurance that McKay really really likes him like that. And of course given that it was assumed that at least a considerable part of the audience of the mothership had not watched the spin-off show, they too needed to be made aware of the fact that Sheppard was kidding, that the two of them actually are close, even though it is difficult from this scene alone to see just how close they are, how they have a bond that is deeper than words, how they would be willing to both die and to kill for the other man, and how they are basically able to read each other's thoughts without needing words to communicate. Being close is an understatement. But it is still important for McKay to get to say it, and to say it to this virtual stranger.

If Sheppard had hated Carter making McKay look like he had back at the end of the meeting, McKay also likely did not enjoy seeing Sheppard patting Mitchell's arm the way he himself had patted Sheppard's arm back in Allies (S02E20), when he had likely been using this gesture to invite Sheppard to join him for a moment before he had to leave, and while the gesture is the same, we can be fairly sure that Sheppard was not extending any kind of invitation to Mitchell. As a matter of fact, while he does not look at McKay, his invitation was likely meant for McKay (for all we know, patting the arm is their signal for "sex now, please"), and it seems to take McKay a beat to realize that.

Mitchell wants to cut the conversation short by asking (telling) McKay whether his bags are packed, which reminds McKay that he does have things to do before leaving -- packing being one but not the only one of them. Note the way McKay packing his bags and going after Sheppard are connected here, as though McKay was going after Sheppard to pack his bags. And it is entirely likely that he would have found Sheppard in his quarters waiting for him, whether it was freshly painted or not. Sheppard and McKay are actually quite close. And now that Sheppard had gotten rid of the lemon he had commandeered to keep it away from McKay and McKay had caught up to the fact that he was meant to follow him, they were going to be even closer. There would be no daylight between them until McKay had to leave.

Continued in Pt. 4

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