Oh Luke MacFarlane, yee of the chiseled jaw and granite-like torso; what can I say about your portrayal of D’avin Jaqobis? Well, one thing that seems important to note is that you outperformed my wildest expectations.
When Killjoys began, D’avin was a cocky and evasive sort. He had issues and secrets, and his secrets had issues. He and Pawter’s situationship was messy as hell and hard to watch at times. He seemed cavalier about his severed connection with Johnny, and he immediately started meddling in Dutch and Johnny’s happy home. Early episodes like “Sugar Point Run”, where he was out of his depth but adapted and allowed a few of his layers to fall away, made me somewhat optimistic. But it wasn’t until “Vessel” when he took on the task of shepherding a gaggle of scared teenage girls to safety that I was fully ready to admit that I had rushed to judgment.
This was not the last time D’avin had to corral some civilians. In the Seasoon 5 episode, “Three Mutineers,” he found himself tasked with keeping two painfully stupid Qreshi siblings alive battling resistance from them every step of the way. One of the things that made, D’av a far more appealing character to me was how they stripped back some of his cockiness and let him show vulnerability. Then they deconstructed him even more, much like what was done with Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He went from being the dreaded Slayer of Slayers n Season 2 to some hapless vampire shmuck by the middle of Season 4. One need only observe D’avin getting zapped repeated by his own jury-rigged homing device to see that Mr. Cool has long departed the building.
Davin is valuable to the team because he’s led the socially acceptable life of a soldier only to be used and abused by the military and forced into society’s seedy underbelly. His inclination toward rigidity and valor has helped him steer the Team Awesome Force ship away from destructive tendencies. But his adaptability and compassion often shine through now that his guard is all the way down and he accepts his role in the TAF family.
D’avin has had great interactions and relationships. I loved his rivalmances with both Fancy and Alvis (RIP). He and Johnny have grown into a loving family unit. He tends to forge interesting relationships with guest stars; perhaps the best example of this is in “The Wolf You Feed” when he had to manage the responsibility of diplomacy for the war effort when Dutch dumped her army into his lap.
My favorite dynamic of his, however, is that which he shares with Dutch. They are my Killjoys OTP hands down. They’ve completely torn each other apart and built each other up in the past. They’re doing a lot more building as of late. They can’t hide from each other. They’re a raw nerve and a tender caress. The show is leaning into solidifying their romance, quantifying it with declarations of love and labels like “girlfriend.” They seem to be answering, “Will they or won’t they” with a resounding, “Yes, they already have been and they’re now healthy enough to admit that to each other.”
It’s with Dutch and D’av gazing at the stars musing about running away into the infinite black that the previous Killjoys episode began. It was never an option, of course, but sometimes it’s good to daydream and make the conscious choice to stay and fight side by side.
I will miss D’avin Jaqobis and Luke MacFarlane’s portrayal of him because as his good friend and costar, Aaron Ashmore said, he “nails it.” Thank you, sir and good luck on all of your future endeavors. I hope you get to work on another genre show I can dive into!
“Don’t Stop Beweaving” starts off with a bit of whimsy as Johnny gets reacquainted with his favorite girl, Lucy, set to music that sounds like the shopping soundtrack from The Sims. It doesn’t take long for the amalgam of Team Awesome Force and the present members of the Quad Squad to break out into smaller units and prep for the final assault on the Lady. The Brothers Jaqobis run a capture-the-flag LARP on the prison ship with Warden Rennicka riding their asses and her medical officer decrying the whole business as a dangerous waste of time. Dutch accompanies Zeph as they go steal some important information from her homestead on Leith and bask in her childhood traumas as a bonus. The situation on Westerley is veering into crisis while The Lady sickens and entreats Khlyen for help.
Some of the interactions are extremely satisfying, Turin hoping that Dutch is still alive but hedging his bets and demanding that Khlyen kill the Lady in her honor if she is actually dead was oddly touching. Their banter is, as always, cutting. And the grouchy warmth that Turin feels for Dutch and the rest of the gang is charming.
Some interactions are a bit frustrating. We should have encountered the Madaline’s before this. Their history is amazing and all we’ve had to go off of is Zeph’s vague fears about domesticity. I wanted so much more from this cult. But it’s possible the writers didn’t know exactly what Zeph’s background was until they were breaking this story. So, in that case, I’m just glad we got this lovely bit of world building. I do wonder what the Madeline’s relationship was like with xenophobic True Leithians like the Kotier family we met in the episode, “One Blood.” With these two separatist groups and the hock manufacturer putting bombs in people’s ears from “The Harvest,” one has to beg the question: Are there any Leithians that are just chill?
Some relationships take a deeper turn. When the Lady succumbs to the deterioration of her human host body, it gives Khlyen the perfect opening to end her once and for all. But his grieving mind is starting to see her as the child she appears to be especially since her new battery of emotions has her acting especially needy.
It’s startling to realize that the Lady learned how love works watching Khlyen with Yala. Certainly, she had billions of other examples in her millennia of life, but what Khlyen felt for Yala and Aneela fascinated her the most because it married the ruthless drive forward that her alien mind can fully comprehend with the sentimentality and obsession held over from Khyen’s humanity, which she cannot grasp completely. She tries to do the things to Khlyen that he did to Yala to bring them closer, and he gets to see how toxic his love was through a macabre mirror. In a way, Khlyen has lost everything but he may be able to father this ancient alien child, and by the looks of things, at the end of the episode, that’s exactly what he intends to do.
Roses
- The friendship between Dutch and Zeph is so incredibly special
- “I am 87% guns, violence, and destruction and I still have friends.”
- D’avin interviewing women for Johnny and Calvert taking it as an invitation to swing with him and Dutch LOL
- “Did that star have a name? … Maybe she’d like to have a name.”
- The scene when Khlyen almost kills the Lady is superbly acted
- It’s good to see Zeph so shook at home and see what her life was like first hand. It retroactively adds more subtext to her arrogance and bullheadedness from when she was introduced as a character.
- Remember how Johnny forbade D’av to go after Dutch and now they’re talking about how much he loves her. I’m crying.
- Leithian harvest meal with the “Brain” and “Brawn” tee shirts.
- Khlyen’s change of heart was done pretty well for such a limited time
Thorns
- “Who is Fancy?” indeed. It’s great to have an enigmatic character such as Fancy but I would have loved a LOT more instances like that professorial walkthrough of the cargo bay peppered throughout the series.
- Who are the Lady’s henchmen? They’re red-blooded humans but they follow her without question? There’s no mention of them being brainwashed. And cleansed hullen tend to flee from their former servitude.
- I wasn’t all that interested in the Supermax plot. I see it’s necessity to pull Mace and Calvert into the fold but wish it hadn’t taken up so much episode real estate.
- The doctor character could have been more impactful if we’d seen him throughout the last few episodes. He had a a good point from his perspective.
- I did love the table scene but maybe they could have saved that until all of QS were there too because it made me sad not to see Pree, Gared, or Turin. at the table with our new friends, Mace, Rennicka, and Calvert.
wordyblerd 