Bashing certainly. But thoughtful, yet not repetitive, critics will always be welcome. In my world anyway....
Sooooo.... 200. I have to wonder just whose idea this episode was in the first place. We know who the writers were, but who was up at 2:35 in the morning after a long day at work and a few too many drinks that came up with this bit of insanity?
What wasn't a classic, was the entire last 10 minutes, when they were interviewing Wormhole X-Treme cast members and DeLuise the frustrated actor acting like an arse on camera... W...T...F... I can't believe they actually aired that.
I find lots of things funny... but Peter DeLuise acting like a moron at the end of a ridiculous embarassment of an episode... I don't find funny. The 'younger hipper' SG-1 was funny, the Farscape bit was funny, but the whole premise of the episode was awful. PdL having his 10 seconds worth of swears beeped out is an unfunny WTF moment. I think anyway. Hearing about how the 'Sam' actress meant to play tennis or have a baby...? Hearing the Daniel actor talking about nothing? Meh, terrible. The previous 30 minutes were terrible, but slightly bearable. This Wormhole Xtreme bit was stupid. And I LIKED the actual 'wormhole x-treme' episode from season 5. It was silly, but the serious action/adventure nature of the show was still present throughout.
I can't stand that final line in the episode. This is no Jose Chung's From Outer Space (or Doomsday Defense). There's never any deeper meaning to the happenings of 200, just a lot of cheap laughs. Some of them good laughs, even great laughs. But this line doesn't serve to punctuate anything that has been set up over the course of 42 minutes. And for a series that, in many ways, has become a trivial shoot-em-up, I wonder if Asimov would have felt this way about Stargate at all. But, of course, others will disagree.
It does make you wonder. I didn't like the ep. I wasn't amused. Like Kpnuts, DeLuise's rant was just juvenile. But that's my opinion. Obviously many of you enjoyed it.
It's symptomatic of the dumbing down of the franchise over the last few years. SG-1 used to take itself far more seriously back in the good old days, then just became a downhill running joke by seasons 8, 9 and 10. In fact the O'Neill character seems to have mirrored this fall from grace perfectly. 200 was the icing on the cake.
How about what Stargate SG1 had set up over the last ten years of the show and science fiction in general?
I still think the last line of Anders is great, simply because it distills everything you need to know about SF in one sentence. Uh, two sentences. 200 isn't about Stargate as much as being about making a TV show. All the pitfalls, all the restrictions, all the fan whining, all the interference from suits. Taken ion that level, it's very cool, the production team kind of saying "this is what we have to go through to bring you something to watch". I think it's a very good ep. Yes, there are a few dodgy bits, like the aforementioned Peter deLuise swearing bit, but overall came out fine.
I enjoyed the episode especially with the puppets..classic (IMO). Yet, I didn't like the rant at the end, I felt that it was out of place, and it made me feel uncomfortable. I wonder why they decided to stick it in there for? Overall, it was a fun little episode that was different and light hearted. Also I want to say that season 10 was good, I think that they all finally felt comfortable with the changes.