MSgt. Ronald Greer Discussion/Jamil Walker/Appreciation

[cnnrstrav]

I'm glad the noob could contribute! I can't wait till tonights episode! only 2 hours for me over here. Sucks Canada won't be watching it tonight.....

[Oranos]

Epic!

Spoiler:

Greer versus Telford, Part Two.

[squirrely1]

wow thanks for the links and stuff.... I just continue to love Greer every episode....he by far is one of the most fleshed out characters of the show.... well Rush is probably running neck and neck on that....but Greer you just trust him and know he is a good guy down deep......Rush you are not so sure...so you watch him pensively with one eye open!! With Greer you can't get enough

[AndSoItBegins]

wow thanks for the links and stuff.... I just continue to love Greer every episode....he by far is one of the most fleshed out characters of the show.... well Rush is probably running neck and neck on that....but Greer you just trust him and know he is a good guy down deep......Rush you are not so sure...so you watch him pensively with one eye open!! With Greer you can't get enough

Excuse me but how is Greer one of the most fleshed out characters on the show? He is the least fleshed out character. We know nothing about him compared to the other principal characters.. We have gotten so much background on Rush, Scott, Eli, Chloe, Wray and Young. Through episodes of this season we have seen the people who are close to them who are back on Earth. We’ve seen them interact wit current wives, current girlfriends, former boyfriends, former girlfriends, deceased wives, mothers, fathers, foster parents, former colleagues, etc. We haven’t gotten any of this for Greer. The only thing we got for him were three minutes worth of flashback materials. That’s virtually nothing.


TJ hasn’t gotten that much either but that has been made up for the fact that she had a connection/relationship with Young. Plus she seems to be building relationships with Chloe, Lt James, Dr. Park, etc. And she has a good friendship with Scott. It would be nice to learn more about Greer through his interaction and relationship with other characters but the show doesn’t give him such moments. Who does Greer talk about if he needs to discuss something personal? Don’t know because the show hasn’t really provided us with any such situation like that involving Greer. You see how nuts that is? Its as if the writers aren’t treating him as a three dimensional person as they do the other characters. If some of you want to interpret that as Greer being a loner that still isn’t an excuse. TPTB, if they really care about the character, are going to have to give us moments in which we follow Greer and watch how he acts in solitude. They should present us moments in which Greer wants to talk to someone but finds that he can’t because of the wall that he has built up around himself and because of the persona he has established amongst his fellow crew members. Why doesn’t TPTB show us this because they certainly do it did for Rush especially early on.

Greer has no relationships on the ship that allows him to become more fleshed out as a character to the viewers. He supposedly has a tight bond wit Scott but their best exchange occurred on a Kino clip, not an actual episode. Besides Scott has people on the ship he’s closer to like Chloe, Young and perhaps TJ who he will share his problems with first before going to Greer. Greer really respects and likes Young but the two of them don’t spend any tie together when off duty. And that’s it. There is no one else on the show that has been established as having any relationship whatsoever with Greer.

I loved this past episode but I hated the parts with Greer. It was like a regression for that character. Greer’s attack on Telford was absurd. Yes, I realize that Telford had attacked Young and Greer wanted to stop that. But he could have easily have subdued Telford without being shown as some sort of animal without self control. Once he and Scott burst into the room it was 3 to 1 against Telford and any danger to Young was over at that point. The writers treat Scott as an actual intelligent character so of course he didn’t lose his wits. But Greer at that moment was emphasized as being crazy and unstable and, as a result, unreliable.

Hadn’t Greer already hit Telford once and gotten in trouble for it? So why is he doing it again? He isn’t learning from past mistakes. No matter how much of a creep Telford has been portrayed as being, there is no excuse for Greer to go all Abu Ghraib on the guy. He only needed to pull Telford off of Young, Subdue him rather than wailing away at the man when he was on the floor. Scott realized that. The writers don’t have Scott acting like a man without control but Greer, a guy who has apparently trained officers during his career, must be seen as a maniac. And as a result Scott not only had to get Young out of harm’s way he also had to stop Greer from clobbering Telford. But this is nothing new here. It’s as if every other scene involving Greer and Scott the writers have Scott either pulling Greer off someone or Scott giving instructions to Greer as if Greer is some sort of child. Don’t hurt the civilians, sergeant. Back off, sergeant. Turn your music down, sergeant. Stop beating up on the officer, sergeant.. Etc, etc., etc. What a condescending view the writers have of Greer who is a grown man and has an important role in the military. The fact that Greer is black and the more calm characters who keep him under control are white is frankly increasingly disturbing. The writers might not intentionally be trying to portray it this way but that’s how it comes across to people who are more sensitive of this characterization.

I would have loved it if Greer had rushed in with Scott and simply pulled away Telford without incident. But what we got instead was wild man Greer at work. Why isn’t Greer learning and developing as time passes like the other characters? During the whole episode with suspicions rising everywhere you had characters trying to be thoughtful, characters trying to resist their worst instincts and characters trying their best to give others the benefit of the doubt. And then there’s Greer whose only role seems to be to play Young’s thug enforcer. Other than taking commands from his superior officers he appears to have no purpose in life. Perhaps Greer’s attack could have been more justified if the writers had finally shown us why Greer has such contempt for Telford (and vice versa). It can’t be as simplistic as “Me Greer hate Telford” bullcrap. It should take more than hatred for a man for a professional like Greer to deck a commanding officer (as was established in the early episodes). This episode would have been a perfect time to finally explore what led up to their animosity and given us some insight into Greer. Putting Greer and Telford in a room together and exploring their history would have been interesting, especially with the roles reversed with Telford now being the one in confinement. But of course this potential interaction was ignored because I now believe the writers have no interest in fleshing out Greer. That type of stuff is only for the misunderstood Rush who they love to put in as many scenes as possible. Greer on the other hand seems to serve a purpose as the writers way of allowing a character to do something nutty and have fun with it. But that doesn’t lead to true complexity and right now Greer is basically being presented as a one dimensional bulldog.

This is rather disappointing because Greer has shown as much potential as any character on the show . Most notably Jamil Walker Smith has shown he is as good an actor as anyone on the show. He alone has made us give a you-know-what about Greer. It’s a crying shame the writers refuse to do their part.

[natyanayaki]

I think Greer is one of the most fleshed out characters, because of Jamil's work. We might have less background on Greer than on the other characters, but Jamil has done much more with a glance, with a sentence than even Robert Carlyle and Louis Ferrera have done for most of their character's developments (and they're pretty great actors, actually the entire cast is phenomenal). But Jamil's mannerisms, speech patterns, posture, smile, laugh etc etc all express who Greer is. When Jamil is Greer he is Greer he doesn't look like he's acting at all. So though we have less concrete information about him than we do most of the other "primary" characters (by that I mean the characters in the main promos), we still do know more about Greer because of the work Jamil has put into becoming the character and becoming the character's advocate.

Well, the above is my opinion and interpretation of squirrely1's comments, her reasons might be different though.

[EvenstarSRV]

On whether Greer is fleshed out or not, I think it depends a lot on what a viewer is looking for in terms of adding dimensions to the character. For my part, I mostly agree with natyanayaki though I do see AndSoItBegins's point.

To me Greer comes across as the most realistic character on SGU right now, and that's in large part because he hasn't been subjected to a lot of the melodrama (IMHO) that several of the other characters have. And as a result, I think JWS has been allowed act and react more naturally and consistently in various stories and relationships, which makes Greer feel more fleshed out to me than others who's personalities and reactions seem to vary depending on the requirements of the story or dramatic point being made in a particular episode. I don't think Greer is completely free of this (him beating up Telford in the last episode comes to mind) but I feel it's happened to him less than most of the other main characters.

That said, I think there does need to be more balance in exploring character back-stories and relationships in S2 than we got in S1, which was not helped by the fact that the characters I didn't care too much for got the bulk of the focus, though I suppose with 20 eps and 8-9 leads it's tough to fit everything in.

[AndSoItBegins]

I think Greer is one of the most fleshed out characters, because of Jamil's work. We might have less background on Greer than on the other characters, but Jamil has done much more with a glance, with a sentence than even Robert Carlyle and Louis Ferrera have done for most of their character's developments (and they're pretty great actors, actually the entire cast is phenomenal). But Jamil's mannerisms, speech patterns, posture, smile, laugh etc etc all express who Greer is. When Jamil is Greer he is Greer he doesn't look like he's acting at all. So though we have less concrete information about him than we do most of the other "primary" characters (by that I mean the characters in the main promos), we still do know more about Greer because of the work Jamil has put into becoming the character and becoming the character's advocate.

Hey, we agree that JMS makes the character. Its certainly not the writers who make Greer intriguing. Without Jamil’s talent Greer would be little more than LT. Ford with a nasty attitude. But my point is that Jamil’s performance doesn’t make Greer more fleshed out. Jamil can make Greer resonate more to viewers or make Greer seem quirky or unpredictable or intriguing. But only the writers can give a character true depth. I’m sure Jamil has come up with a backstory for Greer that is twenty times more interesting than what the writers have written but nonetheless we the audience are oblivious to it. We only know what the script tells us and so far outside of some basic personality traits the SGU scripts have told us very little about Sgt. Greer.

Now if we are agree that Jamil is a wonderful actor who does much with very little can you imagine just how great the character could be if the writers gave him the development they dished out to other characters? What really disappointed me about this recent episode is that months ago the director tweeted about his work on it and mentioned all the good stuff involving Richard Dean Anderson, Lou Diamond Phillips and Jamil Walker Smith. Well, unless I got my episodes confused I would like to know what the heck was he referring to when he threw Jamil’s name in there because Greer got nothing of substance to do in ‘Subversion.”

[cnnrstrav]

Hours of analysis will give each of us our own outlook, and since most people are stubborn about their subjective views, its a bit of a waste to go back and forth. Meh, Its always like people trying to move boulders with their minds, hahaha. Anyway, Greer was himself in that episode. Greer is fair. He isn't going to do anything mean to you unless you've done something mean to him or someone he likes. That being said, I don't think we should expect dramatic personality changes in the course of a week. Greer is a tough, fair, determined guy, who focuses on what he has to do completely, versus Scott being a tough, compassionate, sensitive guy, with problems handling his guilt (haha) That's why their reactions were so different.

[Pharaoh Atem]

what in the hell was that??

[squirrely1]

It's a bird...it's a plane....no it's.................... GREER!!!

[AndSoItBegins]

Hours of analysis will give each of us our own outlook, and since most people are stubborn about their subjective views, its a bit of a waste to go back and forth. Meh, Its always like people trying to move boulders with their minds, hahaha. Anyway, Greer was himself in that episode. Greer is fair. He isn't going to do anything mean to you unless you've done something mean to him or someone he likes. That being said, I don't think we should expect dramatic personality changes in the course of a week. Greer is a tough, fair, determined guy, who focuses on what he has to do completely, versus Scott being a tough, compassionate, sensitive guy, with problems handling his guilt (haha) That's why their reactions were so different.

Its not just Greer's reaction versus Scott's; its Greer's reaction versus everyone else on the ship. Greer is the only one who is ever shown as going bat-crazy.

[xxxevilgrinxxx]

Its not just Greer's reaction versus Scott's; its Greer's reaction versus everyone else on the ship. Greer is the only one who is ever shown as going bat-crazy.

okay, now I understand that you have some problems with how Greer is written but that just isn't true.
A good number of the characters have gone crazy. Rush has, on several occasions. Volker has. Young definitely has. Hell, even Chloe has.

[squirrely1]

okay, now I understand that you have some problems with how Greer is written but that just isn't true.
A good number of the characters have gone crazy. Rush has, on several occasions. Volker has. Young definitely has. Hell, even Chloe has.

I agree with this....but it maybe seems that Greer is getting abit "type cast" this way. I am grateful we got the backstory ep on him but I would like to see more of his character dealing with more of a wide range of issues...I would like to see Greer's emo side or his sensitive side *hee* I think it's there he just has to keep it in check

[NavyGater]

I like Greer I want to see him go toe to toe with one of those blue fish man lookin aliens!

[xxxevilgrinxxx]

I agree with this....but it maybe seems that Greer is getting abit "type cast" this way. I am grateful we got the backstory ep on him but I would like to see more of his character dealing with more of a wide range of issues...I would like to see Greer's emo side or his sensitive side *hee* I think it's there he just has to keep it in check

there are quite a few scenes of Greer like this. Off the top of my head - physically protecting Chloe in Air1, his concern for TJ and helping out in Sabotage, his concern for TJ in Faith. I would hate to think that the writers would mushify his character but there are flashes of it.