They certainly had me convinced this was a relationship that was going somewhere. They gave us a lot of episodes where it certainly SEEMED to be going somewhere. We got Sam and Martouf getting closer each time they met. We got Sam telling Janet she might have had a crush on Jack in the old days but she was over it now, then telling Narim she couldn't get involved with him because of 'feelings' that were a result of her being blended with Jolinar.  Well, excuse us for thinking this was supposed to be relevant to something!

Then just like that Martouf is dead. Suddenly out of nowhere Sam and Jack have had feelings for each other all this time, they've just been hiding it reely reely well. But if they had ever taken Sam's character seriously for even a New York minute, they would never have killed off a character that was so big a part of her character then never given any follow-up. 

Anise being dragged in as some dolly bird to prop up Jack's machismo is annoying enough, but doing that to Sam is diabolical. I don't see them turning Daniel into Jack's bimbo so why did they think it was okay to do it to Sam? At least with Daniel it would have won them a few cool points with outside viewers for being innovative. 

(And his actor could have had the fun of EVERY single interviewer starting interviews by totally ignoring every other aspect of a character he'd spent three years building up and just asking him how he felt about the Daniel-Jack romance. Let a guy try that for a change...) 

But what was different or interesting about the Sam/Jack stuff the way they ended up writing it?

I think the trouble is that with the exception of the Daniel-Sha're storyline the writers on this show can't write romance, full stop. Every time they try it they end up making episodes that are totally mediocre and use every cliché in the book. The scenes between AU Carter and Jack in 'Point of View' were like something out of a soap opera. 'Past & Present' had lots of cute Daniel moments but it was still Bimbo of the Week stuff. Same with '100 Days'. They were doing that storyline on the Ponderosa in the 60s and it was old then.  They never did anything interesting with Teal'c splitting up from his wife.  They didn't even have it happen on camera. 

And in S4 we get three really lame J/S episodes that use every fanfic device on Heliopolis (fanfiction archive) and two 'old girlfriend' episodes, one where the girl dies at the end and one where she gets turned into a Goa'uld. (Something that has never happened to any woman of Daniel's before, right?) I don't hate the episodes in either case but they're still big fat TV clichés.

In fact looking at the evidence, I think the only reason Martouf died was because the point had come with Sam and Martouf's relationship where the writers actually had to write a proper love scene for them, and they found the prospect so scary they just freaked and killed the poor guy.

Annalee
Still pissed off about D&C but hiding it SO well

(c) 2001 Annalee.  All rights recognised.  No copyright infringement intended.