I really should have gone to bed already but never mind...
Yeah it does seem odd that Sam is so, uh, receptive to this kind of thing Personally I put it down to her general emotional naivete and awkwardness, but still, I do want to shake her when she doesn't just kick these weirdo aliens right into touch!
I'm not sure about this. It does make sense for that scene, but then again it doesn't quite square up with me with the following scene where Jack (and Teal'c) turn up at Sam's and he's so surprised she's got company. And I think it's equally plausible that he only really puts two and two together right at the end when Simmons is having a go - which could also explain his sudden switch from guilty and apologetic to defending her and saying he knew all along. But then quite what he did think she was going on about in this 'hypothetically' scene I have no idea!
I think it's a bit of both, and mostly is just a bumbling reaction to him turning up out of the blue just when she's been blindsided by Orlin's sudden corporeality. She's just gone through the whole hypothetically charade with Jack and has come to her decision she's going to hide Orlin for a while, then he goes and makes himself solid which makes that automatically more difficult, and then Jack appears with pizzas and movies and Teal'c as if this is totally normal. Not surprising she isn't exactly smooth in her handling of it. In fact, in some ways, this scene is a complete reversal of most of the scenes between Sam and Jack in this episode. Mostly we have Sam kind of in the supplicant position, uncertain, asking for reassurance, and Jack obviously wanting to escape the situation. Here it's exactly the other way around.
*nods* Yes, absolutely The offer being more important than the activity indeed.
Good point that it's true of all of them. And it really is an S5 thing, because in S6 he's far more relaxed and less distant again, which I think is a reaction to realising that his pulling back only caused hurt and didn't stop Daniel dying... but again that's a discussion for a future point!
Originally posted by Cagranosalis
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I'm not going to quote and comment on all the lovely observations you make about Sam and Jack here, except to say you've picked out everything I see too. There's one additional point here; when Sam is trying to tell Jack, in a round about way, that Orlin is still around and he gives his "authorisation" for her to continue gathering data about him. Of course neither of them outright say Orlin is still there but I'm fairly certain Jack knows exactly what Sam is saying. And it's the fact he knew and gave his roundabout approval of her actions, that gives him the chance to actively defend her against Simmons later on.
Absolutely my favourite scene here is the one where Jack and Teal'c turn up with the pizza. I just love the play of emotions across both Jack and Sam's face here. Jack is surprised, a little disapointed and distinctly put out that she's got someone to have a life with right there. Sam's all smiles but very forced. Is this because she doesn't want them to come in, see Orlin and force her to either fess up or outright lie to her CO? Or is it because it's Jack, standing there offering to spend free time with her and she's bummed she can't do it even though she really wants to? And yes, Teal'c is a very obvious chaperone here; the scene would have been far more romantically significant had Jack turned up alone, and much less so if Daniel had been there too but asit is, just right to drive home the point that it's Jack who wants to be there supporting her. Jack would never have turned up alone though; at this point they both know that leisure time alone is just not going to happen.
Just to go off on a little tangent about that, my feeling about all those fishing invites (subsequent to the first which I think was a genuine invite). I think part the reason Jack asks knowing Sam will say no is because it's his way of saying "We're ok" and maintaining the self-pretense that their feelings and platonic.
I do think this is the start of Jack pulling back from, not just Sam but all of them, emotionally, and I think this itself causes problems with his relationships with others, most notably Daniel who seems to butt heads with Jack a lot more over this season, to the point where I think, at is "death" things are quite difficult. Mre of that at the relevant time though
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