Congrats on post 1000, sofie! 
So... Hot Zone. Seriously, I wanted to smack both John and Elizabeth.
In all the discussion about the breakdown of their working relationship in this episode, the one thing that seems to have slipped through the cracks is that John wasn't the only one who screwed up. Elizabeth did, too. This started out as a medical emergency, but it snowballed into a security situation that was clearly out of Elizabeth's control. In fact, it was actually Rodney, not John, who was the first person to point out to Elizabeth that someone needed to stop Peterson:
WEIR: Yes, OK, I think we have him. He's trying to make his way back. It should be OK -- Grodin is locking all the doors in the hallway and killing power to the entire section.
McKAY: You need to send someone to stop him.
WEIR: It's under control, Rodney.
McKAY: No, Elizabeth, it's not under control. He knows almost as much about Ancient technology as I do. At the very most, what you're doing will just slow him down.
If someone didn't go after Peterson, he would've continued hacking the doors open. Eventually, he would've reached an area where the viral sensors were still operational, and the citywide lockdown would still have been triggered. Granted, they didn't know about the lockdown protocol at the time, but even without that knowledge, they knew they needed to stop Peterson before he reached the populated section of the city and put everyone there at risk, and Peterson had demonstrated pretty clearly that simply cutting power to the doors wasn't enough to stop him.
If a more proactive approach to dealing with Peterson (or anyone else who decided to make a break for it) had been used from the beginning, John might have felt more comfortable that the situation was still under control and that he did not need to get directly involved. But by insisting on taking a more passive "wait and see" approach and arguing with both Rodney and John on that point, Elizabeth may have cost them valuable time in dealing with Peterson and preventing the outbreak from spreading further, and ultimately forced John's hand.
What John did wasn't right, but I think Elizabeth could have done more to address John's concerns, which, under the circumstances, were very well-founded. Elizabeth made such a point at the end about John needing to trust her, but real trust goes both ways; it seemed from the very beginning of this episode that she didn't trust him. And after John's daring rescue of her in The Eye, I have to wonder what caused this mistrust on her part. (Yet another reason why I had such a hard time doing my smutficathon entry for this episode-- John just wouldn't shut up about feeling hurt that she didn't trust him.)
The episode wound up leaving their disagreement unresolved; Elizabeth got to chew out John, but he never got to call her on her own failure (though he was allowed to complain to Teyla about it), and both John and Elizabeth were never given the opportunity to reach any sort of mutual understanding, which I found rather unsatisfying.
So... Hot Zone. Seriously, I wanted to smack both John and Elizabeth.
In all the discussion about the breakdown of their working relationship in this episode, the one thing that seems to have slipped through the cracks is that John wasn't the only one who screwed up. Elizabeth did, too. This started out as a medical emergency, but it snowballed into a security situation that was clearly out of Elizabeth's control. In fact, it was actually Rodney, not John, who was the first person to point out to Elizabeth that someone needed to stop Peterson:
WEIR: Yes, OK, I think we have him. He's trying to make his way back. It should be OK -- Grodin is locking all the doors in the hallway and killing power to the entire section.
McKAY: You need to send someone to stop him.
WEIR: It's under control, Rodney.
McKAY: No, Elizabeth, it's not under control. He knows almost as much about Ancient technology as I do. At the very most, what you're doing will just slow him down.
If someone didn't go after Peterson, he would've continued hacking the doors open. Eventually, he would've reached an area where the viral sensors were still operational, and the citywide lockdown would still have been triggered. Granted, they didn't know about the lockdown protocol at the time, but even without that knowledge, they knew they needed to stop Peterson before he reached the populated section of the city and put everyone there at risk, and Peterson had demonstrated pretty clearly that simply cutting power to the doors wasn't enough to stop him.
If a more proactive approach to dealing with Peterson (or anyone else who decided to make a break for it) had been used from the beginning, John might have felt more comfortable that the situation was still under control and that he did not need to get directly involved. But by insisting on taking a more passive "wait and see" approach and arguing with both Rodney and John on that point, Elizabeth may have cost them valuable time in dealing with Peterson and preventing the outbreak from spreading further, and ultimately forced John's hand.
What John did wasn't right, but I think Elizabeth could have done more to address John's concerns, which, under the circumstances, were very well-founded. Elizabeth made such a point at the end about John needing to trust her, but real trust goes both ways; it seemed from the very beginning of this episode that she didn't trust him. And after John's daring rescue of her in The Eye, I have to wonder what caused this mistrust on her part. (Yet another reason why I had such a hard time doing my smutficathon entry for this episode-- John just wouldn't shut up about feeling hurt that she didn't trust him.)
The episode wound up leaving their disagreement unresolved; Elizabeth got to chew out John, but he never got to call her on her own failure (though he was allowed to complain to Teyla about it), and both John and Elizabeth were never given the opportunity to reach any sort of mutual understanding, which I found rather unsatisfying.
, need cheering up.
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