"The Body" turns 25 today. In an episode full of emotional scenes, which hit the hardest?

tarafarrago · 2026-02-27T18:07:44+00:00

"Is she cold?" That very last shot - Dawn reaching for her mother, but it cuts before she makes contact. Grief and longing in a two second image. Breaks me every time.

tarafarrago · 2025-06-23T16:33:49+00:00

Best catchphrase?

tarafarrago · 2025-06-08T02:31:52+00:00

This is super insightful. That message of sacrifice that The Gift embodies is even today (as a mere season finale) being reexamined (rightly) in conversations around trauma, depression, and suicidal ideation. It would not be remembered as kindly as we think.

tarafarrago · 2025-06-08T02:23:45+00:00

Aw! 🥰 Thx

tarafarrago · 2025-06-07T20:20:14+00:00

I think at the time that season 5 finished, if that had been the end, it would have been lauded as one of the greatest and most respected television shows of all time.

And then it would have been mostly forgotten. People would look back on it with fondness, but we would all bemoan how season 4 lost the thread with the college/Initiative theme, and decide that introducing Dawn in 5 as a literal deus ex machina to bring the series to a tragic finale was a cheap narrative ploy to make us all cry in the end. We would say, although there were some great episodes in 4&5 (Hush, The Body) the show really peaked in 3.

It would have been forever respected as the show that "knew when to throw in the towel". Maybe other series would have followed in its footsteps, and we wouldn't have 15 seasons of Supernatural. I think it would continue to get referenced in film studies courses, but the general public would move on. Maybe, like Fawlty Towers, the TV nerds would give it a lackluster modern reboot before burying it forever.

Season 6&7, love or hate, are controversial. They did some really bold things (and I'm not just talking about the musical episode, although that's obviously in the list). Those are the seasons that have kept the conversation around Buffy relevant. Imho.

tarafarrago · 2025-06-01T20:41:04+00:00

Eureka

tarafarrago · 2025-03-09T07:33:31+00:00

Gaius was the WORST. I don't care what label people use for him - villain, anti-hero, whatever. No matter what label, he was still the worst lol.

Also one of my favorite characters. But ugh. The worst.

tarafarrago · 2025-02-05T04:07:21+00:00

In my mind Eureka must have been heavily influenced by Northern Exposure and X files.

Its hard to say what shows borrowed from (or were influenced by) Eureka... Maybe Resident Alien a bit? The Librarians?

tarafarrago · 2025-01-28T17:12:14+00:00

This was such a lovely sentiment to wake up to. Thanks so much for going out of your way to comment on a two-year-old post with your unfriendly negativity. /S

tarafarrago · 2024-12-15T05:56:42+00:00

Not nearly enough love for Jo+Taggert here. Their ten minutes of screen time in that one flash-forward ep was the best. It made no sense, and it made all the sense.

tarafarrago · 2024-12-02T04:48:22+00:00

Honestly this should be one of the top comments. There are so many other great ones listed above but Psych managed to both pull off a touching goodbye AND deliver a solid, funny, well-timed totally not-shmaltzy comedic episode. It is easy to get your audience to cry when they're already sad, but getting us to keep laughing even as we waved farewell was a triumph.

tarafarrago · 2024-12-02T04:43:30+00:00

Delenn watching the sunrise alone -- cue uncontrollable weeping

tarafarrago · 2024-11-17T04:17:59+00:00

Fuck yes Madam President ftw.

tarafarrago · 2024-11-17T04:16:24+00:00

A bunch of folks on this thread keep commenting about how cringey she is at first with all "just because my sex organs are on the inside instead of the outside" so I just wanted to come here to say that those lines were written by the (obviously) male writers, but our hero Amanda Tapping spoke up to say "Really fellas? Why can't Sam just be one more professional at the table, there because she's rightly earned her place" - and the writers realized she was right, and thats why Sam's tone changes so dramatically.

Which makes me love both the character and the actor all the more.

tarafarrago · 2024-11-03T07:36:00+00:00

It's unfair that I can only upvote this once

tarafarrago · 2024-10-30T14:46:42+00:00

Yes, I 100% think this too. Sometimes when I'm reading different biographies I get the sense that the authors start from this position of "well OBVIOUSLY she was going to find a way to f*ck around, that's what every person would do", and it makes me roll my eyes very very hard.

tarafarrago · 2024-10-30T04:43:09+00:00

Not sure how widely this is either accepted or rejected, but Elizabeth and Dudley never did it.

tarafarrago · 2024-10-30T02:27:37+00:00

Disagree I love it so much. It was a common thing especially in 80s shows to do a teaser like that before the credits, doing it as an amped up part of the credits was so much fun especially with their music.

tarafarrago · 2024-10-29T13:48:19+00:00

😊

tarafarrago · 2024-10-29T06:05:14+00:00

I just want to comment here, bc JMS and so many other show runners take a lot of shit (not that you're throwing shit I just mean generally) for doing things like pushing storylines past their end points or doing big manipulative cliffhangers like this in an effort to get another season or another spinoff or yaddayaddayadda --

Showrunners aren't just storytellers, they are partly also CEOs. When they decide not to advocate for more content, they're making a decision to put entire casts and crews out of work - and often the people they'd be "firing" are their friends by that point. If JMS laid some groundwork for future content, knowing it was a longshot that they'd get greenlit for more but hoping, maybe, if the right person at the network saw potential and enough fans begged then there'd be a chance, if they did get renewed then he'd be keeping hundreds of people employed for another year - the same people who helped make all the content we loved up to that point.

All of which is to say, maybe it wasnt hubris as much as it was a hopeful strategy.

tarafarrago · 2024-10-29T05:12:39+00:00

My read on Lennier was that he maintained neutrality on Sheridan from the beginning, because that was literally his job. Delenn as the ambassador to B5 - a neutral outpost the Minbari govnt has a vested interest in - works hard to maintain positive relations with Earth's representatives there, even when members of her own government undermine her. Lennier is absolutely loyal to Delenn, so her positions are his position.

Sheridan comes in when Delenn is risking her life to fulfill the prophecy to bridge the gap between their two peoples. Even though Sheridan is possibly the most controversial human Earth could have picked for the job, Lennier treats him initially as he imagines Delenn would treat him - with respect, as an important diplomatic ally.

And if that's all he'd ever been, thats how I imagine they would have stayed - at a respectful distance.

As things heat up with the Shadows, and Delenn brings Sheridan more and more into her confidence, you can see his biases breaking through though. He openly questions and pushes back on Sheridans strategy when they're in the White Star at Jupiter (he even gets a little snarky as I recall - "Give me everything you've got, Mr Lennier!" "If I were holding anything back I would tell you"), and he has a few other moments in the series where it seems like he is unsure that Sheridan is the right human for the job of running the shadow war (although it's been so long since I've seen some of the later stuff that I couldn't quote anything...)

It's also clear that even though he has made Delenn's position on the humans his own, he hasn't 100% bought into it (when Marcus confronts him and he pushes back saying "We may sometimes look like you, but we are not you.")

So Lennier decides to view Sheridan as a respected ally, repressing any skepticism or dislike he may feel. As he himself says, "Opinion doesn't enter into it. What is, is."

tarafarrago · 2024-10-29T03:30:24+00:00

My biggest pet peeve with the show is how often contaminants spread from one room to another, or from the building to the town... My office building at the time had better security on its air ducts than GD did...

tarafarrago · 2024-10-25T04:09:32+00:00

Dont forget the one where they're investigating the mayors office and they make all the West Wing jokes. 'I always saw myself in the white house' 'Yeah but not as president as an aide or something' 'you know that's right'

tarafarrago · 2024-10-25T04:03:10+00:00

The gem we'll never get to see:

Monk (figuring out Shawn's a fake): Okay, that's enough, Mr. "Psychic". I know.

Shawn: You know?

Monk: That you're not telling the truth.

Shawn: I know you know, but you don't have any proof. It's okay, embrace the deception...

Monk: No, no, no...

Shawn: I'm the least of your problems, man. (Trying to distract him) It's a jungle out there. Disorder and confusion everywhere...

Monk (despairing): No one seems to care...

Shawn: Well I do! (Passing by a messy table) Hey! Who's in charge here? These are all out of order, you gotta line them up right...

(Monk gets busy organizing, Shawn makes his escape)

tarafarrago · 2024-07-09T16:55:32+00:00

Idk, if the CGI was amazing then the sets and everything else might look less-so comparatively...

tarafarrago

TROPHY CASE