A mild mannered barber picks up an intricately carved stone from a yard sale and begins to have visions of the epic adventures of a group of humans who travel between worlds via a wormhole and defend the Earth from invading aliens. Unbeknown to Joe he is telepathically linked to Jack O’Neill and is seeing his experiences as he writes the official reports for the various missions he went on beginning with Abydos right through to the current time where Jack reads reports rather than writes them.
Joe begins to narrate these visions to his barber shop customers and family as scifi tales and everyone is enthralled but after a while they become repetitive and plot points are exposed and his obsession soon puts a strain on his business and relationship with his wife and son.
Citizen Joe is in essence another very clever slip show and once again the Stargate producers and writers prove they’ve got this style of episode down to a tee combining the clips into an interesting story with good characters.
Dan Castellaneta plays Joe wonderfully well, likeable and friendly and his descent into depression is well played and while it’s obviously done quickly to fit into a single episode it all seems organic. The scene where he is flopped on the chair with his tv dinner spilled across his lap as he stares at the static filled television seeing the attack on Anubis by a X-302 piloted by Jack is both disturbing yet compelling.
And Then Depression Set In
A similar scene takes place in the park while Joe talks to his wife and “sees” the attack on the Prometheus and the Ancient weapons platform in the Antarctic, it is enough to drive anyone to rash actions which includes breaking into Jacks home and holding him a gunpoint.
The episode is well worth it’s place in a very strong eighth season of Stargate SG1, a good combination of humour and drama with a great guest cast and top notch performances all around even though the main cast have little to do but when they each meet Joe it’s a bit of a riot.
Yes I’m looking at you…
Many thanks to Jeff for joining us this week and we got some feedback this week from Brad, he emailed an mp3 which anyone can do (hint hint) but the post show discussion for Before I Sleep was rather more restrained than I expected, perhaps the writers were right and Weir wasn’t that strong a character or perhaps we simply didn’t do a good job with the episode:)
This weeks promo is Hexed Sisterhood of the Supernatural and next week we’ll be covering the SGA episode The Brotherhood as the team visit one of the worlds taken from the list they got from the alternate Weir in the previous episode.
Promo…
Links…
- Citizen Joe IMDB
- Citizen Joe Wiki
- Dan Castellaneta
- Deborah Theaker
- Eric Keenleyside
- Louis Chirillo
- Chad Krowchuk
- Alex Ferris
- Beatrice Zeilanger
- Andy Thompson
- Mark Hansen
Mentions…
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