Recent discussion about 'Small Victories' has got me thinking about Jack in S4 and some of the reasons why perhaps so many of us went off him in such a big way early to mid-season. To me he appeared unlike the Jack of previous seasons from the moment he walked down the ramp in SV. In that first scene he seems irritable, smug, shows no concern for Daniel, and is generally about as appealing as the way he is meant to smell. Even at the end of the season, I still have no idea what that was supposed to be about. It doesn't feel like a logical progression from any character development in the previous season, and it didn't seem to lead onto anything in this season either. Twenty-two episodes later it just feels like what it seemed to be at the time and what caused most of the problems in S4 for many of us: writing, acting, and directing purely for the moment, for the cheap laugh, or the cheap thrill, and with no genuine sense of character continuity.

Before people all leap to Jack's defense, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a Jack fan. I adore the man. I think he is one of the most fascinating characters on television, and his relationship with Daniel is one of the most complicated and interesting I have ever encountered. While on a strictly hormonal level, I will defend his hotness to the death (except when he's wearing those godawful clothes wardrobe kept putting him in this season). But, despite the very attractive packaging in which he comes, I still do think Jack was written and played as if he only had two gear/stickshift changes for far too much of the early part of S4. Neither Cranky Old Jack, nor Moronic Teenage Jack did a whole lot for me. And I rather suspect you don't get to be a serving officer in the United States Air Force having the attitude Jack displayed in either of his least attractive incarnations either. In previous seasons being a colonel in the USAF felt as if it was a significant part of not just what Jack did but who he was, whereas in S4 I didn't get any consistent sense of Jack as a USAF officer until The First Ones, eight uneven episodes into the season.

I would personally have liked a lot more reminders sprinkled throughout the early episodes that this was a man who was once in Special Ops. That this was a man who was married for (presumably) at least a decade. That this was a man who was once a father. That this was supposed to be the same guy we'd been watching in S1, S2, and S3, FCOL...

In SV, for me, Jack lurched between annoying teenage moron, and bona-fide-accept-no-substitutes-the real-McCoy O'Neill. In TOS we never really got to find out why he was acting as if his underwear was riding him for three-quarters of the episode, or why he was so rude to Sam and Daniel. (Do really like this episode, though, but apart from when he is apologizing to Daniel this is not Jack at his most lovable). In Upgrades he is *supposed* to be acting like an annoying teenager so one can't really complain about him doing so, but I hate the way he and Sam (two USAF officers!) are made to appear totally ineffectual on the ship, and after Jack's initial attempt to get into the control box just stand around like lemons waiting to die. 

In Crossroads he didn't really seem to be there at all for most of the episode. (I rather like Crossroads myself, despite its slowness, as Teal'c is so damned hot in it, and we get Daniel looking at Jack and saying 'Our love will not end in death', (which was nice), but Jack was very muted in it.) D&C: not even going there as that clunker has long since joined Emancipation on my Way Too Stupid To Waste Another Forty Three Minutes Watching This One Ever Again pile. 

WOO: I do like this episode but Jack is a dumb, cranky, or both for far too much of it, and only really feels like Jack in the last ten minutes to me. However he is so Jack in the last ten minutes that I could have forgiven it everything except the last ten seconds when the only thing that would have made me warm to it again would have been Sam jamming Jack's head in his oatmeal to wipe that annoying smirk off his face. Hope she feels *him* up next time they have a time loop, or better yet totally ignores him and goes off and has a really good time with Teal'c. (Who is clearly a much better kisser anyway.) In that last ten seconds it felt as if we got a horrible reversion to Sexist Git Jack from the scene in the pilot where he and Sam first meet. (Remember that scene we all fast-forward through every time we watch COTG because it is so godawful? The one where Sam spouts a load of drivel that no woman would ever say and only a man would write? Unfortunately in S4 we found out that some of the writers who came up with that sexist twaddle were alive and well and still writing for Stargate, and had not been humanely smothered and buried under the floorboards as we were all hoping...) And I can get irritable about sexism in Stargate at great length, so I'll move along now...

Beneath The Surface. Sheesh, Jack! Throwing Daniel over his shoulder one minute (and not in a good way), then totally bovine the next; is supposed to have nice feelings for Sam but sits there like a block of wood looking as if he is about to lapse into a coma of boredom while she puts her head on his shoulder. Even as someone else that person should have had some consistency. And let's not even start on Jack when he's actually supposed to be Jack again, and first shoots out a (glass!) skylight a whole bunch of people are standing underneath, and then once again arbitrarily decides who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in ten seconds flat. If it wasn't for the skin shots of Daniel and Teal'c, I would have taped over this one, but I'm just shallow enough to keep it for the scenery. (Thanks to PDL (LG), btw, *for* the scenery, which did help take ones mind off that dire script). 

PONR: very annoying episode in that it seems to me to be the opposite of BTS, which I thought was a good idea which had been turned into a lousy script. PONR feels to me like a bad idea upon which a pretty good script has been squandered. Jack is wonderfully Jack in the opening scenes, and in his scenes with Martin (especially the scene in the diner where I thought Jack was smokin'). But then later he doesn't bother to see if Sam and Daniel are okay despite the fact they were both drugged, in Daniel's case unconscious, and might have been tortured for all he knows, but just runs out of the building leaving them to follow (or in Daniel's case stagger) when there is a bomb scare. I mean what the hell was that? Oh yes and this is the one where he doesn't exchange a single word with Daniel, something he's never done in any previous episode, although has now done twice this season because of Prodigy. (Definitely not the writers' fault in that latter case but still think they should sit in a corner and think about what they did in PONR). 

The Curse. He's fine in the opening scene. If they'd cut the line where Jack asks who their fourth is going to be in the briefing scene (why on earth would they go on a mission without Daniel when Daniel is only supposed to be going away to a funeral, something that usually takes about a day at the most??), and had stopped sticking in self consciously 'comic' bits at the expense of consistency of characterization I would have said this was a pretty near perfect episode. But I find it very hard to believe the Jack of any previous season wouldn't have asked Daniel how he was when he phoned up when he knew he'd just been to a funeral, and I don't believe he would drag Teal'c off to go fishing with him and not provide the guy with a chair. Nor do I think a serving officer in the USAF would throw his cellphone away. It's fun from a slash viewpoint, of course, as we can read it that Jack gets very tetchy when Daniel wants to talk to Teal'c instead of him, but in the real world, it just looks like the S4 characterization being sacrificed for the cheap thrill (or lame joke) effect again, and from a HC viewpoint it fails miserably because once again Daniel isn't given any comfort. (The lack of comfort in S4 being a whole different post someone else can write...)

Entity. The return of Dumb Jack and oh how we'd missed him. Oh dear actually we hadn't missed him at all, had we? In fact we would be very happy never to see him again for as long as we live. We get Dumb Jack and Cranky Jack in this one, but we do also get Very Darned Air Force Jack too. Still think he should stop trying to kill his teammates though. It's not clever and it's not funny. It's just lucky for Jack, that Sam and Daniel are patient and forgiving people who still love him, but you've got to admire their tolerance through some of his incarnations this season.

However, for me Jack *was* Jack in The First Ones (superbly so). Watergate (apart from the Holy frozen badguys bit which was a funny line but not really a Jack line; you could have given it to anyone, but he was great with Maybourne and Teal'c). Scorched Earth (sorry, know lots of people don't like this episode and I know it has problems re. Jack going against Hammond's orders and the SGC not sending a diplomatic team in, but I still thought Jack was in character when he was angsting over pressing the button, and I love that scene). Tangent (he thinks of a solution, it maybe doesn't work but it was still a damned good idea, great bonding with Teal'c, and love him remembering his manners with Jacob at the end, and of course, there's the 'Hey...'). Serpent's Venom (he manages to still appear effective even though he didn't have a lot to do and, yes, there's the glasses scene). Chain Reaction (nice references to Jack's murky past from Maybourne, and have I mentioned how smokin' hot Jack was in this episode?). 2010 (Did you see him slide down that wire? Wasn't that cool?). Absolute Power (loved both considerate caring Real Jack who had exactly the same persona as that most adorable of Jacks, Jack in Maternal Instinct, and Helpless Moth To Evil Danny's Flame Dream Jack too, both were sexy as hell). The Light (now that's what I call angsting...). Prodigy (was anyone ever more Air Forcey?). Double Jeopardy (oh so Jack, oh so twice). And Exodus (*finally* the guy gets some lines that are actually funny and don't make him appear to be an idiot). 

But I do think there was serious overplaying of the 'I'm so dumb and you two are so smart' stuff with Sam and Daniel even in the good episodes. It makes Jack appear to be someone with some kind of crushing inferiority complex, which, given his rank, doesn't make a lot of sense. There is a certain amount of self-confidence that goes with being in a position of command, surely? They don't hand out promotions like lollipops, they take a hell of a lot of earning, and Jack must know that as well as anyone. So, okay, Sam knows lots of things about astrophysics that Jack doesn't, well whoopy-do; but he's still a Colonel, while she's a Major; he was in Special Ops, she wasn't; he has far more experience in the field than she does; he has far more *life* experience than she does; even on the most basic level, he has been married and a parent; she hasn't. Also, he isn't interested in astrophysics. He acknowledges its usefulness but he probably still thinks knowing all that stuff is a serious waste of available brain space rather than something that makes him go 'Oh boy, I feel like such a moron by comparison with you, Carter' which is how he was coming across in some scenes.

Same goes for Daniel. Yes, Daniel knows how to speak lots of different languages and is wonderful at archaeology and anthropology, and is a sweet human being to boot (most of the time); but he's also someone who knows almost diddly about weaponry (because he has made it clear he tunes Jack out whenever he talks about it); can be very vague at times; has never commanded people in a military field unit; has demonstrated in the past that he has the reflexes of a throw pillow; and has always been quite upfront about expecting Jack to do the saving them all bit when they're captured, pinned down, or whatever. I love it when Sam and/or Daniel pick up a gun or staff weapon and put themselves in harm's way for the rest of the team, as much as I love it when Jack comes up with the solution to a problem, and for the same reason: it doesn't happen often enough; but most of the time, without Jack, SG-1 would be screwed, and they know that. So as Sam and Daniel are both people who look up to Jack, why was Jack played and written in S4 as someone who looked down on himself?

I don't mind Jack twitching about looking bored, or even getting a little irritable, when Daniel or Sam are launching into one of their the-audience-needs-to-know-this-or-else-the-plot-won't-make-sense explanations, but I don't like the hamming it up on the 'I'm not getting any of this' business. Apart from anything else it's very distracting when they're saying something that is vitally important to the plot. (And let's face it, if Sam's saying it, it's usually vitally important to the plot because she is always the one who has to pass on the plot information, so RDA mugging away next to her while we're trying to take in the astrophysics stuff is doubly annoying...)

Jack in S5? I would love not to see Dumb Jack *ever* again, or teenage Jack (unless it's in a flashback, but the guy is supposed to be forty four so it would be nice if he acted his age). Funny one-liners are great, him not getting things the others do is fine, him getting a bit crabby with Daniel Sam or Teal'c is fine, but in the past there was always a sense that even when he acting like a bad-tempered git, or someone who was playing it dumb so he wouldn't have to think, underneath it all he was a compassionate, considerate and intelligent human being with lots of hidden depths. At times in S4 it felt as if even Jack's shallows had shallows. I would really like to see him showing Daniel the same affection, concern, and respect he used to. Ditto with Sam. In fact would like to see him showing a lot more consideration for all of his teammates in S5 than he did in S4. I would also like to see him acting the way a good leader should and utilizing his teammates' individual strengths to bring about a successful result in their missions, instead of ending up looking like an idiot by forcing Sam to go over his head to General Hammond or getting into slanging matches with Daniel.

(Incidentally, why on earth would two people who found out in S3 how well they worked *together*, suddenly decide in S4 that constantly squabbling with one another would be a good idea? Unless Jack really is supposed to be a guy in denial of his sublimated desires for Daniel – which somehow I doubt will turn out to be the 'canon' version of events unless this show is suddenly going to astound us all with its daring – then what the hell was *up* with those two this season?)  [This is a rhetorical question, Ankh, Ali, Sue, et al, and does not require an answer. No, especially not that answer...] 

I would also very definitely like to see Jack utilizing his own strengths, which, given his rank, should be many, and always were in the past. In fact I would just like to see him acting like a Colonel in the United States Air Force, something that was managed perfectly well for the previous three seasons and hopefully will be again in the next three seasons.

And, yes, I'm an optimist, but seven seasons sounds like the perfect number to me, with a few movies, of course. After that Jack can retire to keep house with Daniel, although I won't be insisting on an onscreen wedding in the final episode. They can just cohabit in a way that might be perfectly platonic, to keep everyone happy. Well almost everyone happy anyway... ;-)

Lori

(c) 2002 Lori.  All rights recognised.  No copyright infringement intended.