Sam Carter/Amanda Tapping Discussion/Appreciation

[Skydiver]

by 'didn't push' with pete i meant that, my impression of him is, after chimera and he got spanked, if sam said 'honey, i gotta work' he didn't fight over it. He didn't get angry if she wasn't home or if she cancelled. and if he didn't fight with her about anything, she'd have no reason to get angry and no reason to question


to me, pete in the second half of chimera was there for nothing more than to break the black widow's curse. they never intentioned for him to come back. he was a throwaway character that could/would have been dismissed with a line 'eh, it didn't work out' but then s8 happened and they were stuck with him (burdened no doubt by his relationship to Peter DeLuise and the desire to take care of a friend's brother)

I don't think pete was ever conceived to be a recurring character, so they didn't pay attention to his bad writing

biggest failing of rob & co., they don't look into the long term life span of these characters,. every single one is made to be disposible adn thus are flawed from their inception

[ReganX]

biggest failing of rob & co., they don't look into the long term life span of these characters,. every single one is made to be disposible adn thus are flawed from their inception

Ironically, Vala, one of the one-episode characters with real potential, ended up being reduced to little more than a walking sex joke when she was brought back.

[majorsal]

We didn't? I'm not being sarcastic here: I thought that's exactly what we saw in Grace and again (after they decided to resurrect and re-discard Pete) in Threads.

i got the impression that she chose jack too. BUT, i also see what min is saying and put that into the equation. but i feel it goes heavily into the jack area for her choice.




sally

[majorsal]

while i didn't like it and it did grate...i also know that poor pete fell in teh plot hole of a writer's incompetance and has never -and will never - dig himself out.

they tried to make two separate stories co-exist then converge,and they did a poor job of it.

and, apparantly, none of them were capable of looking down teh road, seeing how people would interprete pete and fixing it before it was too late

poor pete was another victim of coop's 'short term only' vision. They massacred him to fix their poor writing then stood back and scratched thier heads at the irrational fans that called them on thier mistake

Chimera coulda flowed seamlessly had Daniel introduced Pete to sam instead of mark. Then, after pete and sam's little dustup, pete coudl have concevable been going to talk to daniel, saw the stake out, got curious and the rest happened as it did

They screwed up and Pete will always pay the price

and you know what fueled my ire more than anything else? when the ppl that made this show told me there was nothing wrong, and *i* was the one with the problem. that was the ingredients for a molehill becoming a mountain.



sally

[Skydiver]

Ironically, Vala, one of the one-episode characters with real potential, ended up being reduced to little more than a walking sex joke when she was brought back.

yep. vala from PU could have been sustainable. but then they turned her into the bustier clad wet fanboy wetdream and ruined her.

and now, i guess they realize that the sex kitten isn't popular, so i guess they're youthifying her with those damn pigtails and thinking that'll show us

she's more of a joke than she'll ever recover from and it's sad. like cameron, she could have been really good. rogue,loyal only to herself, conflicted and scarred. needing to trust and believe but afraid to be that vulnerable.

[JenniferJF]

i got the impression that she chose jack too. BUT, i also see what min is saying and put that into the equation. but i feel it goes heavily into the jack area for her choice.
sally

I don't think she ever didn't chose Jack. I think she always knew how she felt, hence the subconscious kiss in Grace. And why she didn't go running to him after New Order. But because of the Air Force rules, and because she'd never looked outside the box far enough to think of a way around them, and because, to be honest, she feared rejection and losing her friendship with Jack, she decided to pursue the safer more conventional relationship. The epiphany, as I believe mini put it, was in realizing she could *have* Jack (or might have Jack at the time before he came to her) by ignoring the rules, both of the Air Force and what a conventional relationship might look like (thanks to Jacob) and try for happiness regardless of possible cost. Thus, what changed was the way, the man just followed.

[Skydiver]

i think sam was also raised in a 'appearances matter' lifestyle with jacob. and likely had to avoid being the general's daughter who only got ahead because daddy did it for her

thus any relationship with jack would be 'tainted' by the same stain, so she avoids it

i also think that, given her emotionally screwed up track record, she ws afraid to screw up a good friendship for a relationship that may never last. so she sticks with the 'safe' bet - jack as friend, rather than risk losing that friendship in the pursuit of something more

[majorsal]

Yes, I believe that as competent as she is in her professional life, Sam is not as sure in the love department. I don't have a problem with that. Though I think the writers let the Pete thing drag on too long. As clumsy as she may be, she would have realized she couldn't settle down with him. I don't believe she would have accepted his marriage proposal.

for me, i think sam would have broken up with pete after the 'lost city' incident. i feel that sam finally knew she was truly in love with jack (not just infatuation), so i don't see her continuing with the relay *even* if she wasn't sure if jack's feelings were 'in love'. i just don't see her continuing with it, and the 'lost city' episode really gave me the vibes that sam was in a different mind set because of the events playing out before her.

i think they kept on the sam/pete relay to just stretch out the sam/jack one (for another season).



sally

[Skydiver]

i think pete was a 'better' adn different excuse from 'the regs' and they grasped it to just have a change of pace

[majorsal]

I wonder if the writers ever had the idea in the back of their heads while writing "Chimera" that, should they find themselves storyless at any point in Season Eight, they could turn Pete into either a bad guy or the hapless dupe of a bad guy.

i had this idea in the back of my mind (it's a scary place back there ) where pete never actually existed. he was created by the aliens in 'grace', and was all in sam's mind... there was a lot of evidence to work with this, all the way up to 'threads'.





sally

[majorsal]

'I'm gonna super cal my fragilisitc on your ass'

to stay completely on topic....

seeing as sky won't make me an amanda-rick avatar from their FMA thinger... will someone?





sally

[majorsal]

i think pete was a 'better' adn different excuse from 'the regs' and they grasped it to just have a change of pace

*nods*

and how many shows do this too? like, EVERYONE that's picked a one-true-love pair and has to sustain it for a time.




sally

[Mandysg1]

to stay completely on topic....

seeing as sky won't make me an amanda-rick avatar from their FMA thinger... will someone?





sally

I would Sal, if I could, but like you, I don't know how to

Will someone please make Sal the avitar she wants?

there 2 posts are better than 1

[ReganX]

i think sam was also raised in a 'appearances matter' lifestyle with jacob. and likely had to avoid being the general's daughter who only got ahead because daddy did it for her

I'd say that she would have had that to contend with all throughout her career. Sadly, in many fields it's no exaggeration to say that a woman must perform twice as well as a man to be considered his equal. In Sam's case, between her gender and her dad, she would have had to work at least three times as hard to protect herself from suggestions that her high scores at the Academy and her performance evaluations were due, in whole or in part, to Jacob's influence or that he would have helped ease her way into top assignments.

i also think that, given her emotionally screwed up track record, she ws afraid to screw up a good friendship for a relationship that may never last. so she sticks with the 'safe' bet - jack as friend, rather than risk losing that friendship in the pursuit of something more

I think that there was a strong element of that involved. Emotionally, Sam is far less confident than she is physically or intellectually. Between losing her mother as she was entering into her teens - I don't see young Sam feeling that she could approach Jacob for advice about dating and the like - and the fact that her only long-term relationship (pre-"Chimera") we know of was with Jonas Hanson and did not work out, that isn't surprising.

As well as being afraid of losing Jack's friendship, I also think that Sam would have been afraid of breaking up the team if she approached Jack about a potential relationship. Whether he shared her feelings or not, one of them would probably be transferred and unless Jack retired Sam would most likely be the one, meaning that she would be separated from Daniel and Teal'c too. She knew that they worked best together and how important it was that they continue to do so, I don't think that she wanted to put Earth at risk either.

I think that Pete was an important step for Sam. I think that she needed to have a normal relationship before she made a decision about what she really wanted, what really mattered - the fairytale wedding, dream house and white picket fence, or the person she would share them with.

[Strix varia]

and now, i guess they realize that the sex kitten isn't popular, so i guess they're youthifying her with those damn pigtails and thinking that'll show us

Pigtails are part of an even worse (to my mind) sexual fantasy than the dominatrix look. Pigtails feature prominently in amature/teen X-rated fantasies. They stick the girls/women in pigtails to make them look younger, but there's nothing innocent about it at all. It's exploitive and... oh, don't even get me started on that rant. At least with the dominatrix look, the woman has a degree of sexual power. Pigtails? No.

Suffice to say, in terms of sexual innuendo, putting Vala/CB (as an adult female) in pigtails is just as bad if not worse than sticking her in skimpy leather. What I do find hard to believe is that TPTB are completely unaware of this connection. Somebody at Bridge has to have peaked at internet po*n sites at some point. I find it actually somewhat appalling, disturbing, and wrong.