#ep. aurora

It seems like Ronon's idea was to spar lightly with Sheppard by playing a game with him that may or may not be an authentic Satedan game. This seems like a children's game, something that might be used to prepare young boys for combat and that could easily be escalated to actual combat training when the boys matured. The game seems simple enough, and so it is not even impossible for Ronon to have thought it up on the spot -- and it resembles many games played also on Earth, flag sparring being typical of martial arts classes for children. The question we need to ask here is about Ronon's motivation for doing this, which is not necessarily just because he found Sheppard's chosen pastime tedious.

There are two alternatives we need to consider, which is that Ronon is oblivious to Sheppard's relationship with McKay and the fact that it is recently ended -- or that he knows. For all Ronon may suggest that Sheppard and Teyla might have had something going on between them later, there is no one that has observed Sheppard more keenly than Ronon, and he certainly has paid attention to how important keeping McKay safe is to him. We should also note that later on, at the end of the episode, it is Ronon who goes check up on McKay who has been left alone in his grief, almost as though he had felt the need to perform an action he knew belonged to Sheppard, that Sheppard would have done normally, previously.

Ronon is not Mr. Sensitive and for all they are similar and mostly get along, he and McKay are not bosom buddies. Ronon checking up on McKay seems to be him acting as Sheppard's proxy, doing the thing that he knows Sheppard would have done and may even have wanted to have done but which he was incapable of doing at the time, which was to make sure that McKay was safe -- the job that Sheppard seems to have hired Ronon for. And so if Ronon knows what has occurred and has also been able to put two and two together on what Sheppard means with insisting to hang out with him now, how Sheppard is using him to nurse his broken heart when he had brought it all on himself, it is not out of the question that Ronon had arranged for this particular sparring session to literally knock some sense into him, not as an intervention but as payback for all of them having to suffer the consequences of his unilateral decision.

Sheppard seems reluctant to participate in this, even more so than Ronon had been dragging his feet when he was forced to try out golf earlier, and we can see that his shoulders are sagging as he is having to accept his fate and go through with this, knowing that this beats anything else that this day of leisure might have had in store for him -- avoiding McKay and getting black out drunk probably. Sheppard asks Ronon about the rules morosely, not because he is interested or cares about them but mostly to make small-talk, to show token interest because it is not often that Ronon offers to share personal things with him, and he must on some level recognize what a treat this is.

Sheppard asks about hair-pulling and biting in particular, and while there is nothing sexual about his question in the context, we should note that both acts are something that frequently take place during sexual encounters and which he might even enjoy -- given that we have seen how his now former partner had paid special attention to this hair, as seen in Aurora (S02E09) and Sateda (S03E04), and how we have often seen Sheppard with mussed up hair that has hinted at someone having had their hands in it. And the reason that Sheppard may enjoy these things is that he has somewhat of a masochistic streak -- we may recall his (possibly) black handkerchief in his left back-pocket in Irresistible (S03E03) -- the fact that Sheppard seems to need for it to hurt a little. It is possible that he feels like he deserves to be punished on account of what he had been subjected to in his youth if there is anything to these hints of him having experienced conversion therapy at the behest of his father. There could be a part of him he might not even be aware of that feels like having sex with a man is wrong somehow, and so he might need to experience this punishment, even if just symbolically, to be able to let go, to give himself permission to enjoy it.

Regardless, his reason for bringing up this punishment is not sexual now but it is not unrelated to his childhood, the way he had been brought up and his core traumas. Quite likely Sheppard had been punished as a child when he had done something wrong, especially after his mother had passed away and he had been left in the hands of nannies and nursemaids, having resulted in Sheppard crafting this charming, angelic persona to get away with stuff. Sheppard knows that he had wronged McKay, he knows that he had hurt McKay, and so he must feel like he really deserves to be punished now. A part of him is inviting Ronon to kick his ass because what ever Ronon can dish out at him is nothing compared to what he thinks he really deserves, the pain he is anticipating to be visited on him in response to his choice. Sheppard seems to harbour some amount of magical thinking when it comes to the consequences of his actions, and it could be explained by him having experienced the death of his mother so intimately at a young age, having internalized causing it somehow even if in reality he had just happened to be there. He is hurting but he is still waiting for the real hurt to hit him, he is waiting to hurt even worse, and so getting his ass kicked might even strike him as getting ahead of the curve.

For all we know Ronon can tell that Sheppard feels like he needs to be punished right now, trying to give the man what he needs to feel better.

Ronon: Bite back. Sheppard: Right. Ronon: You ready? Sheppard: Ready as I'll ever be. Ronon: That's one for me.

By mentioning biting and pulling hair -- something that are frequently see as effeminate and underhanded ways of fighting -- Sheppard had also been doing what he normally does, which is to wisecrack his way through uncomfortable situations. We have to acknowledge the fact that Sheppard is constantly comparing himself with Ronon who is younger, faster and stronger than he is, and in fact even if Sheppard was the same age as Ronon is, the young Sheppard would hardly have stood a chance against him -- and he knows this.

Sheppard is an accomplished warrior and if the two of them were ever to truly go against each other, it is impossible to say how the bout would turn out, even if the few times they have had to contend with each other, Sheppard has come out on top -- like in The Runner (S02E03) and The Long Goodbye (S02E16). The end result of a bout between the two of them would depend on a number of factors and neither one of them is keen to find out what actually would happen, it is a question that both of them would be satisfied to leave unanswered. But even so, Sheppard seems to frequently feel inadequate comparing himself with Ronon and his physical prowess. Ronon makes him feel his age and his mileage, and so Sheppard's wisecracking here is meant to take the edge off, to acknowledge these feelings in himself. He is joking about possibly having to resort to such underhanded and effeminate means to beat Ronon, definitely not above biting or pulling hair if he had to fight someone for real. When anything goes, everything goes. Sheppard fully expects to get his ass kicked here, and he is joking about it preemptively to make it seem less serious, to make himself take this less seriously -- to remind himself and Ronon both that he is not on a battlefield but that this is a game. And yet he does seem to feel emasculated by this, his only respite here that no one is actually around to see him suffering this humiliation.

Sheppard: Two out of three. Ronon: Round two. One-handed. Sheppard: What? Ronon: After every round, the level of difficulty is increased. It's to simulate battle. After every encounter, there's the possibility of injury. Round two—one-handed. Sheppard: Why don't you let me get better at round one before we move on to the harder part? Okay, round two.

For all he may have anticipated a loss, Sheppard is a sore loser or at the very least has a strong drive for winning and besting his opponent, something that we had definitely seen in The Game (S03E15). Just as soon as Ronon beats him and grabs his flag -- effortlessly -- Sheppard offers him "two out of three," not willing to give up so easily. We may recall that McKay had similarly demanded a "best out of ten" from Sheppard when they had been playing Chess, and being sore losers or needing to come out on top (excluding in the bedroom) is something that the two of them share, and them both enjoying the contest seems to have been one of the things that had facilitated the relationship between them. They both enjoyed competing with each other, even if neither liked losing, and it seems like losing had only spurred them on to play more.

Whether or not he is coming up with this on the spot, Ronon informs Sheppard of there being additional levels to this game, explaining that the level of difficulty is increased with each round to simulate real battle -- and it is not impossible that he is digging all of this up from memories of when he had been a child since this very much seems like a children's game. Sheppard is not happy with this given how easily he had been defeated at the easiest setting, complaining about the rules of engagement. It is noteworthy here that what he says about being allowed to "get better" at the first level of difficulty before moving on to "the harder part" could also easily apply to relationships -- it is possible that he and McKay had moved in together too quickly, especially the first time around when they had been hooking up probably for only weeks at the most before looking for those "bigger and better" quarters together in Before I Sleep (S01E15), the two of them moving in together having been facilitated both by their exceptionally dire circumstances and by having freely available living quarters all around them. If they were spending most of their time together anyway, it made sense to start shacking up together -- but that does not mean that it had been a good idea to do so. It is possible that they had rushed over some milestones in their relationship due to being under constant and impending doom, and that if they had been given the opportunity to go about their courtship in a more ordinary fashion that they would have been able to lay the foundations of their relationship on more solid ground.

What Sheppard tells Ronon here is something that he could easily have also told McKay, even if it is unlikely that he had ever just come out and said it -- especially in so many words. It is possible that Sheppard -- and it is ironic, since he is usually the one of the two who prefers to do things quick and dirty -- had needed some time to get used to just being together, especially since he had been coming into the relationship from the tragic death of his lover in Afghanistan, and it could be that their domestic partnership had started chafing on him on some level. I had noted in connection with Tao of Rodney (S03E14), when Sheppard seems to have told McKay that he loves him, had used the "L-word," that is is typical of men to get cold feet after this happens, that there is a pattern of taking one step forward and two steps back when a relationship gets more serious. Often a confession of love from a man is followed by them pulling back, needing to assert their independence in some way, feeling suffocated by the relationship -- and so Sheppard breaking things off just as he had finally told McKay that he loves him is actually a fairly typical thing to happen in a relationship, especially in romantic stories. This temporary disruption follows "the course of true love" that never ran smooth -- even if for the two of them experiencing this ending of their relationship it is all too real, it feels like the end of the world, like they might never recover from it.

Both of them had certainly suffered injury after their most recent encounter. But it is possible that some part of Sheppard had felt like the two of them had been "moving too fast," like it had gotten way too serious way too quickly, what with McKay acting like the two of them had been married when he had been dying, wanting Sheppard to be the one to read his eulogy and to look up his sister, which he of course would have done for McKay, no question. But even though Sheppard loved McKay more than he had ever loved anyone or would ever love anyone -- he knew that much already -- he was not ready to become a widower. He was not ready to become a widower before they had even been married, and that was a whole problem and a half for them. He wanted the two of them to have a relationship before having to think about what would come after because he was not ready for it to be over -- which is of course why he needed to end the whole thing here. There is a part of Sheppard that thinks that he cannot become a widower if they are not together, and so McKay can never die. It may not be rational but no one has ever accused Sheppard of thinking too rationally about these things.

Ronon:  Uh, that's two for me. Sheppard: Three out of five. Ronon:  You know, I could do this all day. Haven't even broken a sweat yet. Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ronon: Round three. Sheppard: Oh, come on. Oh, you are making this stuff up. This is not a traditional Satedan sport. This is an excuse to make me look dumb and kick my ass. Ronon: If you want to quit…  

Ronon appears to be toying with Sheppard, intent on teaching him a lesson but not of actually injuring him, of making him experience some pain but not of actually really hurting him -- the way one might with a child. And Sheppard even seems to recognize this, at least on some level, even though he is not one to give up even when the odds are stacked up against him. Maybe especially when the odds are stacked up against him.

Ronon kicks Sheppard either in the stomach or in the family jewels, causing Sheppard to curl up on himself, but he still forces out the words "three out of five" -- the words coming out in a string as though he spoke them out as one word threeoutoffive instead of five separate words to comic effect -- Ronon's cheerful disposition only making him feel worse. And it seems like Sheppard catches on to what Ronon might be doing here -- intentionally serving him humble pie. But the thing that is left into the subtext here is Ronon's motivation for humbling Sheppard here, which is not Sheppard having tried to lord it over him with golf. As mentioned, it is entirely possible that Ronon had known about both Sheppard's relationship with McKay and that Sheppard had ended it recently and abruptly -- and, not that it was any of Ronon's business, unfairly.

Ronon is not taking sides here, and he knows that his allegiance is with Sheppard, but if he were taking sides then maybe his sympathies would be with McKay on this one, if just a little bit -- and at the very least, that is how Sheppard feels here. Sheppard feels like maybe Ronon is kicking his ass on behalf of McKay, and even like maybe he deserves it. McKay may not be a fair maiden and Ronon is certainly not her dad or uncle, but somebody has to kick Sheppard's ass about this -- and even he feels like he needs this right now. Sheppard needs to have his ass kicked about what he had done because he is kicking his own ass about it mentally anyway. Sheppard explicitly names Ronon's behaviour here -- the only thing that is left unsaid is why Ronon is doing this.

Ronon: Ah, sorry Sheppard: This game sucks. Ronon: Well, you need to focus. Sheppard: I don't know if that's going to be possible again.

We get round three and "the rule of three" -- the same thing is repeated for a third time with a slight variation. It looks for a moment like Sheppard might get the hang of it, like he might actually come out on top -- but only for a moment. Not only does Ronon get the better of him, but he actually hits him "for real" -- he knocks Sheppard down a little too hard, not actually having intended to get him as hard, hitting him "too hard" mostly on accident. The irony here is that by pushing harder Sheppard causes Ronon to forget that he is toying with Sheppard for a moment, he pushes Ronon to "take it seriously" for a moment, which then drives him to knock Sheppard flat on his ass. This was Ronon's game and he was always going to win it, they both knew it, but Sheppard being a sore loser causes him to be humbled. Ronon had not meant for Sheppard to get hurt and so he apologizes, which Sheppard accepts with all the grace of a sore loser -- grumbling about how this game sucks instead, the fault lying naturally in the game and not in Sheppard. If the game did not suck so much then maybe Sheppard would have been better in it.

We then get the coup de grâce, the confirmation of what all of this had actually been about. Recognizing that he had gone too far Ronon not only apologizes but extending his sympathy to Sheppard, softly offering that he needs to focus -- and it is possible that Ronon is genuinely worried about Sheppard's ability to focus at this time, not knowing what it means for their team and its ability to function that the two core members have ended their relationship. Something like this can spell doom to a military outfit, which is one of the reasons why intimate relationships are eschewed by militaries -- even if militaries have historically also sometimes taken the opposite strategy and even encouraged homoerotic relationships between warriors, believing that it would make them more likely to have each other's backs. When members of a team have been in a relationship, it is not just a private matter between the two of them but actually affects the entire team -- and so Ronon may feel he is well within his rights to kick Sheppard's ass out about this. But Ronon both respects and loves Sheppard at the end of the day, and he does not actually wish for anything ill to befall either one of them, and so by reminding Sheppard of his need to focus he is trying to let him know that it is going to be alright. What he is feeling now, this pain, it is transitory. It too will pass.

And for all Sheppard may or may not get Ronon's meaning here, and even if ordinarily he might even agree, he is not feeling very reasonable right now. Sheppard is in pain -- and not just or even predominately in the place where Ronon had struck him -- and he wants to wallow in his misery, if just for a moment. He knows that he has hurt McKay terribly but he too is in pain, and he does feel like he should be allowed to feel sorry for himself for a little while. He may not think that he is allowed a full on tub-of-ice-cream and chick flicks day out about it and he remembers what his father had taught him about big boys not crying -- but he sure feels like crying about it. Sheppard sounds miserable as he admits to Ronon that he does not know if he is able to focus (on anything) right now, and note that while the mainstream audience is invited to interpret him as meaning that it is all because of the blow he had just received -- and for sure an elbow in the face is prone to make it difficult to focus -- he is not just talking about that. He may not even mostly be talking about that. Sheppard is having a hard time focusing right now, and that is because his heart is broken.

It is real difficult to focus on anything when he has ended a wonderful relationship with the love of his life because he had felt like his need to make sure that McKay was safe split his focus, Sheppard talking about the exact same thing here as what Weir had mentioned as her reason for not pursuing a relationship with the handsome man out on her lunch date just a few scenes ago (even if this scene takes place chronologically before it). It is ironic that Sheppard would have ended his relationship with McKay with the excuse that he cannot focus on doing his job, performing his duty, because his love for McKay splits his focus -- when now that he had broken up with the man he finds himself unable to focus on anything. It is ironic to the point of circling back to being hilarious, and Sheppard is feeling like he might even laugh about it right about now if his face was not smarting so much. Sheppard is not saying to Ronon that he does not think he can focus on the game after being hit in the face with an elbow, he is confessing to him that he does not think if he can focus on anything ever again after what he had done to McKay. And he knows that he deserves this. He deserves worse pain than this because none of it can match the ache in his heart right now.

Sheppard: Here, help me get up. I got an idea. Ronon: Ow! Sheppard:  Yeah, it hurts, doesn't it?

But as much as having someone kick his ass right now appeals to him, Sheppard thinks that he is "too old for this shit," feeling miserable enough as it is. As much as he thinks he deserves it, he thinks that maybe he should be nursing his broken heart some other way -- maybe in some more conventional way.

Sheppard seems to get an idea of what else the two of them might be doing on their day off today, and so he tells Ronon to help him get up. While he could likely have gotten up on his own, he appreciates having someone there to help him get up. And it may be because he appreciates Ronon being there for him so much that he then takes the opportunity to get in a lick of his own, taking a cheap shot at Ronon by smacking him with the wooden stick as Ronon helps him up and is not expecting being hit, having his guard down -- teaching the young pup a lesson about love and war at the same time. Sheppard may feel like an old dog here, one that is not in the mood to be learning new tricks today -- but as an old dog he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve and he reminds the young pup the worth of never forgetting this. For sure Ronon may have given him a lesson here but it is only fair that he repays the lesson -- and for all this is just cementing the fact that Sheppard is a sore loser for the ages, he is also making sure that there are no hard feelings between them as they move on to more pleasant leisure activities that he had just thought of.

And all of the activities of this day are not unrelated to how Sheppard has usually spent his downtime until now, because while golf may have been something that he had at least sometimes been able to play with McKay, so has tumbling together in the gym been something that they had done with each other just based on McKay having "gotten good at" forward rolls like he had confessed to Teyla in The Siege (S02E01) and McKay himself having noted that Sheppard had been giving him combat training in Coup d'État (S02E17), even if again the way Ronon does it is just a little bit wrong for Sheppard, he is expecting Ronon to behave differently because he is really expecting him to be someone else. But playing games and sweating together in the gym were not the only things Sheppard and McKay seem to have done together, and there was one more thing Sheppard needed to see whether he could ever enjoy doing again now that the two of them were no longer together.

As mentioned, Teyla later says that she had seen the first echo around the time that McKay had spotted his whale friend swimming outside of the city. Whether or not McKay actually had been whale-spotting the previous night when Teyla had seen the echo for the very first time, this scene seems to coincide with Teyla encountering the echo of a badly burned Ancient in the hallway with Ronon. We join McKay just as Sheppard walks up to him, McKay standing on the edge of a balcony of some kind, resting his leg on the railing -- indicating that he may have been there for a while. Because he is observing what seems to be a whale that is swimming around the city, it would make sense for him to have taken up position at the end of one of the promontories, far away from the central spire. And Sheppard has come all that way to meet him because apparently McKay had asked him to, without even knowing what for.

Later on in The Shrine (S05E06) we learn that Sheppard and McKay used to enjoy beers together hanging out at the edge of the city because Sheppard tells McKay that he likes beer a lot, and his intention seems to have been to recreate something familiar for McKay, something that the two of them had done often. In Sunday (S03E17), we also learn through the parallel of Weir and the random scientist that is introduced in the episode for this specific purpose that Sheppard and McKay used to have dates out by the water. We had seen Sheppard romancing what he had thought was an alien priestess with food and drink that he knew were McKay's favourites while being mind-controlled by her in Sanctuary (S01E14), and because she seemed jealous of McKay, her creating something that Sheppard had done with McKay following the two of them getting together at the end of The Defiant One (S01E12) would not be out of place. All of this is to say that Sheppard might have assumed McKay had invited him to come out for beers, even if it is the middle of the day and he seems to be working, even if he had told him that he had something to show him. Sheppard was not going to say no a mid-day rendezvous with McKay even if he was on duty. But it does not seem like McKay has any beers with him, instead peering out into the sea with a pair of binoculars.

Sheppard walks up to McKay and parks right next to him -- and pay attention to how close he comes to stand. Even if it was Sheppard's intention to try to see what McKay is seeing, there is no need for him to stand that close. A heterosexual man would not choose to stand this close to their platonic friend or co-worker, or what ever we are meant to think that the two of them are to one another. As a matter of fact, Sheppard comes to stand slightly behind McKay, boxing him in between himself and the railing, and the the reason he does not touch McKay is because he had made the decision to tease the boy that he likes by not announcing his coming, wanting to surprise him, to see how long it would take McKay to realize he was right there.

I have mentioned before that we get few scenes where Sheppard and McKay are alone together (this episode seems to contain more of them than any other), and there is always some attenuating circumstance that precludes them from acting the way they normally might around each other. And here it is Sheppard's kidding that makes him approach McKay in a different way than he might normally do when the two of them were alone together at a place where no one is able to oversee them. Sheppard does not touch McKay because he wants to surprise him since McKay had been so engrossed as to not even notice his coming.

And as we have noted before, Sheppard is a jealous, needy man who does not like to share McKay's attention. He had confessed in Aurora (S02E09) that he does not like to be ignored and in Epiphany (S02E12) that he has serious abandonment issues, and he was not kidding about that. Both in The Hive (S02E11) and Common Ground (S03E07) we had also noted that Sheppard is hurt when McKay does not welcome him enthusiastically, when he does not tell him he had missed him, tell him that it is good to see him, that he is glad to see him. And this explains Sheppard's need to tease McKay here, his need to pull at his pigtails. Sheppard is slightly hurt by not being welcomed with open arms by McKay and being ignored by him in favour of something else when he had come all this way just because McKay had asked him to, and so he decides to act like a child about it. Note the way he lifts up his jaw as he looks out into the distance here. He is actually hurt not being acknowledged by McKay. This is not him thinking he is being funny but him trying to hide his hurt.

Note also that the railing they are standing by resembles the bow of a ship, and this seems to be on purpose. I will return to this later.

McKay: Huh! Hey. How long have you been standing there? Sheppard: Hour or so. McKay: What? Why didn't you say anything? I feel like a... Oh. It's the kidding. Sheppard: What did you wanna show me? McKay: Right there.

McKay pulls back from the railing and almost certainly bumps into some part of Sheppard that we cannot see inside the frame of the shot given how close Sheppard was standing half behind him. McKay actually seems surprised that Sheppard had been able to sneak up on him, witnessing only to how engrossed by the whale he had been since we have noted that the Ancient gene seems to give him some form of latent telepathy and that he has an especially strong connection to Sheppard, seeming almost able to sense him. And it is entirely possible that he thinks here that he should have been able to sense Sheppard coming. While McKay had been expecting Sheppard to come, apparently having invited him here specifically, he clearly had not been expecting Sheppard to be able to sneak up on him like this.

Instead of welcoming Sheppard or telling him how nice it is to see him, which is what Sheppard longs to hear, McKay asks him how long he had been standing here, which is not categorically different from him greeting Sheppard with "Why aren't you dead?" in The Hive, to Sheppard's obvious upset. This results from the two of them having a never-ending conversation that they only ever pause, and again while McKay does say "Hey" to Sheppard, it is not intended as a greeting to restart a conversation so much as it is a term of affection, a caress in verbal form. But Sheppard is hurt enough to respond to McKay facetiously with "An hour or so," which is an obviously untrue statement even though it takes McKay a beat to parse it as one. While Sheppard is being sarcastic, this is not how he usually uses sarcasm -- usually he very much means what he says and merely needs some distance to his emotions whereas here he has not factually been here for an hour or so. It is, however, possible that he had been bereft of contact with McKay for an hour or so or that it felt like he had been there for ever being ignored by McKay, so while he is not being factual, his assessment may still be truthful.

It may result from McKay expecting Sheppard to be truthful with him, to never lie to him, that he expects him to be telling the truth even when he is clearly not. We have also seen that McKay tends to interpret things fairly literally and it has been only his acquaintance with Sheppard that McKay has started understand sarcasm. Regardless, it takes a beat for McKay to understand that Sheppard was not being truthful, and he is able to name what Sheppard is doing as "the kidding." This suggests that Sheppard has done this before, and has done this enough times that McKay has had to name and shame the practice. It is quite possible that they have had to talk about this before because it runs the chance that Sheppard has wound up hurting McKay unintentionally in the past, his emotional constipation and McKay's emotional incontinence naturally coming to clash. Sheppard needs some distance to his emotions lest he be overwhelmed, and the way he accomplishes this using sarcasm can be quite hurtful if one does not understand what he is doing. Combined with McKay's difficulty understanding things that are not intended to be interpreted literally, this may easily be a recipe for disaster. But McKay seems to understand that this is what Sheppard is doing here and that he has a tendency to do this, and while it may frustrate him and he may not appreciate it, he does get it. Sheppard is kidding. Sheppard tends to kid around. He does not mean anything by it.

This episode has to be one of those whiplash-inducing episodes for the general viewer where they cannot be quite sure what Sheppard thinks about McKay, what their relationship is like, how Sheppard regards him. Does Sheppard suffer McKay or does he actually like him deep down inside? If Sheppard finds him annoying and irritating to be around, why does it seem like he is seeking out McKay's company voluntarily? It is strange that McKay had assumed Sheppard would care about something that he cares about. It is strange for McKay to have invited Sheppard here in the middle of nowhere just to check out something that he finds interesting. It is pretty presumptive for McKay to invite the military commander of Atlantis to take time out of his day to come check out something that interests him personally. And it is even more strange that Sheppard would do that, that he actually had taken time off his day to come check something out without a hint as to what it is, why McKay had wanted to meet him up out in the boonies.

This, what happens here? Really only makes sense in the context of an intimate relationship between the two of them. McKay is able to invite Sheppard on the assumption that he is going to care about what he has to show him on account of them being in a relationship. When two people are in a relationship, there is an unspoken agreement that you care about things that are important to the other person -- or at least you pretend to care (but when you actually love someone, you do care about the things they care about because they become a part of you; when two people are together they form one organism and try to make their disparate parts fit together). This is not McKay assuming that Sheppard is going to care about something just because he cares about it and Sheppard just indulging him because the poor guy does not know any better, he is so bad with human relationships that he does not even get that people do not like him -- as suggested in his conversation with Rod in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08). This is not Sheppard indulging McKay's particular interest in his role as team leader and someone who wants to keep McKay happy because they need his genius to save them from tight spots on the regular. Sheppard is here because he wants to be where McKay is. Sheppard cares about the things McKay cares about because he loves him. It is just that simple.

And because it is just that simple, Sheppard ignores McKay trying to apologize in his own way for not having acknowledged Sheppard, launching right back into that never-ending conversation of theirs, picking up a thread of conversation they had clearly already been having. We do not know how McKay had invited Sheppard here, whether it had happened over radio (we cannot see either of them wearing their radio and while they probably should have them on as leaders of their respective departments that people might need to reach for any number of the reasons, we have also seen before e.g., in The Gift that they have chosen not to wear the radios when they are in each other's company) or whether McKay had asked Sheppard to join him here later back when they had been together earlier in the day -- perhaps even when they had been in their shared quarters before starting the day, what ever the logistics of that had been.

Important is that Sheppard knew to come here because McKay had asked him to accompany him, and it is because he knew McKay had wanted to show him something. He holds out his hand for McKay to give him the binoculars without asking for them, this being a part of the wordless communication between them. When they are alone together they speak using words but they also speak not using words, multiple channels open between them. Note also that while the binoculars are a rather wide object, their fingers almost touch when McKay hands them over because both of them are are almost as though trying to stretch their fingers out to make contact with the other on purpose, whether they actually connect or not.

Sheppard: Wow! McKay: Hmm! Sheppard: All that... water! McKay: Just wait for it. It's my friend. He's back.

Taking the binoculars without another word or question Sheppard looks at the direction McKay is pointing at (and we should note that he hands them over with his right but points with his left hand, left seeming the more dominant of the two), and while Sheppard trusted that McKay had invited him for a reason and was asking him to actually look at something, he cannot resist teasing the boy that he loves some more. And this is Sheppard trying to be funny, this is him flirting by poking fun at McKay. Although Sheppard sees nothing but water, he is pretending like seeing all that water had been well worth him coming all this way and that even if this had been the beginning and the end of it, McKay's company itself would have been well worth the trouble. But of course McKay had not invited him to come look at all that water but had an actual reason for wanting him to come, and Sheppard is soon able to see what McKay had wanted him to see. And here we again see their fundamentally different timetables, Sheppard anxious to get to the good part already where McKay urges him to have patience, that it is well worth the wait when something amazing is in store for them.

McKay had been observing a whale-like creature swimming outside the city, and he suggests that it is the same as had led Zelenka and Sheppard to him in Grace Under Pressure (S02E4), which both of them had actually seen swimming above them when Sheppard had been helping McKay from the crashed jumper into the one that they had come to rescue him in. McKay calls the giant fish his friend, and we see that Sheppard turns his face toward McKay, probably ready to make some kind of a quip -- but he then thinks better of it, and actually keeps what ever he had intended to say to himself. Something about McKay's tone stops Sheppard dead in his tracks.

Sheppard smiles fondly hearing the soft tone that McKay uses, and it is obvious for anyone to hear that this is important to him. Sheppard may need to wisecrack to get some distance to his own emotions, to keep from feeling mushy, quite possibly to keep that voice that sounds suspiciously like the voice of his father inside his head from calling him a big girl or something worse. But Sheppard loves McKay and wants only the best for him, he wants to be a good partner and a boyfriend for him, and whether it results from lessons he had learned through his divorce or not, he knows when to keep quiet. This is not about him, this is a chance for him to be there for someone else.

But make no mistake, hearing McKay talk about someone or something else with these tones does also make Sheppard feel mighty jealous. Sheppard is jealous of the fish. We see later just how jealous of the fish he is. No one had ever accused Sheppard of being too mature, rarely even of acting his age. And yet another reason for Sheppard to choose to say nothing is that what McKay says, "He came back" must pull at his heartstrings a lot what with his abandonment issues. It had been McKay coming back for him in The Defiant One that had made him give in to his growing love for his new friend, had made him decide to give it a chance, and that keeps him coming back again and again for McKay even at the bottom of the ocean, never wanting to let him go. He would always come back for McKay but what had astonished him was that McKay had kept coming back for him.

McKay for his part sounds wistful to the point of being awed as he calls the fish his friend, certain that it is the very same one that had saved him. And it is entirely possible that he is right about that since they seemed to have formed some kind of a psychic rapport at the time, him and the fish. Teyla's wraith DNA makes her sensitive to their psychic powers and McKay's Ancient DNA seems to give him latent telepathy so it makes sense that the two of them would be the first to sense the giant fish attempting to contact them using their psychic powers, even if McKay never does see the echoes himself. Teyla and McKay are the first people in the city that the fish manifest themselves to and slowly but surely they all succumb to their attempts to communicate.

McKay mentions the grounding station on the south pier which had been shot up during the events of The Storm (S01E10), back when McKay had sent Sheppard to separate the grounding rods so that McKay might be able to harness the power of lightning to energize the city's shield. Sheppard had been ambushed by Kolya's men whose indiscriminate shooting had damaged the station that McKay had then spent The Eye (S01E11) trying to fix. The moment had been significant because in Sheppard telling Kolya "you damaged the switch before I could separate the grounding rods, which I'm sure you're gonna get an earful from McKay for" at the same exact moment when McKay had done the very thing Sheppard had told him he would do had betrayed how well Sheppard knows McKay and just how important McKay is to him, unable to keep the man's name out of his mouth even at a time like that.

Kolya has been using this piece of information to twist a knife in Sheppard's gut ever since, his first order of business having been to tell Sheppard that he was aiming a gun at one of the senior staff without telling him which. Important here is that McKay says "It wasn't our fault" here, and while Weir had been a part of the team, he is almost certainly referring to himself and Sheppard here. He is speaking for the two of them like Sheppard is so often speaking for the two of them, which is only natural on account of the two of them making a cute couple. McKay is also refusing to take blame for what had happened and we have seen how important it is for him to not get unfairly blamed for things that had not been his fault -- possibly due to his childhood where his parents had hated each other and blamed him. He is not shirking responsibility here, he just wants to state it for the record that it was not on them -- even if somewhere deep inside he might be blaming himself for having come up with the idea and sending Sheppard there in the first place.

The Captain does not seem to even be listening to McKay's instructions being her species are both arrogant and condescending, seeming to just want the hunter-gatherers out of their feet so that they can mourn the loss of their civilization. Another thing seems to occur to McKay but we never get to hear what he might have said when Weir calls out for him from downstairs in the gate room, the trio of Weir, Beckett and Sheppard seeming to all be watching and waiting for him to come. The three of them had stayed there specifically to wait for him so that they might step through to Earth together, and while for Weir the reason seems to be that she wants to be the last to step through -- thinking of herself as the "captain of the ship" -- both Beckett and Sheppard actually were waiting specifically for McKay, the first for his best buddy whom McKay had told earlier he would meet at the gate, and the latter because they are together. At this point in time, Sheppard and McKay are as together as two people can be together.

McKay: Uh, right, yes, well. I gotta go. Teyla: You have been good friends -- to all the people of this galaxy.

We see Weir, Beckett and Sheppard looking up at McKay but out of the three of them, it seems like Sheppard had not removed his eyes from McKay for a moment and had kept his gaze fixed on the man, partially because he does not trust the Ancients as far as he could throw them but mostly because he likes looking at McKay. His eyes are drawn to McKay just like the eyes of the Daganan Allina had been drawn to him in The Brotherhood (S01E16), and we even see him smiling slightly as he watches his favourite person in the whole universe, his smile wistful for the reason that McKay is being very McKay at the moment.

Sheppard does not remove his eyes from McKay until Teyla says her goodbyes to them, and we see Sheppard lower his gaze at her words because he is really not good at goodbyes, just like he had told them earlier. He seems to be trying very hard to keep his face from betraying any of his emotions but he does look melancholy regardless. Sheppard lowering his gaze in front of Teyla's words may also be partially due to guilt since he does feel responsible for all the people of this galaxy that he had personally jeopardized when he had killed the wraith queen that had woken them up in numbers greater than ever before. He does not precisely feel like a friend to all the people of this galaxy even though he has tried to do his best to atone for what he had done, he had worked hard to fix his mistakes. And it is precisely because Teyla reminds him of the events of Rising (S01E01) that he then approaches her, to show her that he does feel solidarity for the people of Pegasus.

Teyla: Farewell. Sheppard: Take care.

Sheppard touches his forehead to hers just like they had when Sheppard had only been getting to know the Athosians, and whether this is a custom particular to them or practiced by other peoples in the galaxy is not made clear, even though we do not see other peoples perform it -- albeit we have seen several Pegasus natives be weirded out by the Earth custom of shoving their hands up in their personal space for greeting, finding the practice of touching others by hand upon first meeting both queer and quaint. Ronon at the very least does not seem to participate the custom, even if he understood its meaning. He does give them a look here that is difficult to decipher. He tells Sheppard in Sunday (S03E17): "I always thought you and Teyla would, uh… you know," which may have resulted in him having observed moments such as this, but it is also possible he was digging for information on Sheppard's personal life with someone other than Teyla at the time, merely using her to tell him that he had no problem with Sheppard being romantically involved with someone in the team just like Sheppard had just implied that he would have no problem if Ronon was interested in men like that. But regardless of what Ronon might think, this is not a romantic gesture.

The Athosian gesture is intimate and meaningful but while Sheppard is communicating his deep caring for Teyla as his friend, he is most of all making a statement about his feelings toward the Pegasus galaxy. As I have discussed, it seems like Sheppard had taken up quarters near the Athosians when they had first moved into the city as a sign of solidarity, wanting to lead by example and to show others that the Athosians were people like any other. While Sheppard may not be a part of the Athosian council like Rod had been in his world, I had mentioned at the time that this is possibly more due to Teyla having given up her leadership position among them than their lack of appreciation for Sheppard. Sheppard had sided with them even when it had not been easy, even when it had come at a personal cost to himself. Teyla also basically tells Sheppard goodbye, which he hates, and he cannot bring himself to say it back to her, opting for "Take care" instead. He does hope that they will take care of themselves now that he can no longer be there to watch over them. However, it is just as important to note here that Sheppard is not heartbroken here. He is... curiously neutral about all of this.

McKay: Bye. Hi.

McKay finally makes it down the stairs, and he has no trouble telling Teyla "Bye," possibly having taken what Beckett had told him earlier to heart. We do not know if this was their actual goodbye or if McKay had been present for Sheppard's beer, pizza and popcorn shindig the previous night, but we have seen that being given the chance of saying goodbye seems to be important to McKay -- especially to the people he loves. McKay wants to be able to hear it almost as badly as Sheppard wants to avoid saying it, and it is lucky for both of them that while this may be goodbye to many people, this is not goodbye for them.

In fact, what McKay tells Sheppard as he walks up to him is "Hi." As I had discussed in connection with Aurora (S02E09), they do not say "Hi" to each other as a form of greeting because theirs is a conversation that never ends and so they do not need to re-start it. It is a way of reconnecting and acknowledging the other, "Hi" is one of a thousand ways that lovers communicate their love, express their delight at seeing the other after an absence. Pay attention to how Sheppard is turned toward McKay all the way until the man has walked up to him, looking almost like a nervous school boy waiting to walk with his crush. Sheppard is waiting for McKay, he is welcoming McKay with his entire body here. He actually matches his stride with McKay, and this is a romantic gesture. The two of them walk like a couple. We even see how Sheppard holds up the hand he has on McKay's side for no other reason than to keep it from forming a barrier between them. McKay has his hands full and is mostly oblivious to the social undercurrents of the situation but Sheppard's body language speaks very loudly here. McKay is his partner. They are together. They are walking through the gate back to Earth with one another and even though they know their lives are going to change on the other side, as long as they have each other, maybe it won't be so bad.

McKay says that he had the machine, which had previously been used in connection with the Anubis clone, "shipped" from the SGC, which once more raises the issue of the timeline and the sequence of the episodes. Either three weeks have whizzed by since Zelenka's accident while McKay has been slowly evolving, which is not impossible, the gate bridge is finally operational, of which we have no indication, or the SGC has a ZPM as I had suggested before because the events of McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08) were always meant to follow the mid season in The Return (S03E10-11), completing the transition from the old to the new by finally giving Sheppard his leather coat and removing one of the free-floating ZPMs from the playing field. The number of ZPMs floating about at this point is unclear. And the position of this episode with regards to both episodes is likewise unclear, although I would hedge a bet that it works best between them as a prelude to McKay reconnecting with his sister and depleting their ZPM -- which is not nearly as dramatic if there is an extra one going around, and would also explain the slap on the wrist McKay got for depleting it. An argument could be made for a sequence of The Return > Echoes > Tao of Rodney > McKay and Mrs Miller > Sateda > Common Ground > Irresponsible > Phantoms > Sunday -- at least insofar as it comes to the B plot of the character journeys, but the A plot of the season is also confused by the episodes being out of sequence. As it is, Sheppard and McKay's moods in any given episode are inexplicable and seem to come out of the blue, their disposition toward each other inconsistent.

Regardless, McKay had told Weir that he had read everything in the database that had to do with ascension, which suggests that he is at this time their ascension expert, and at the very least he feels like he knows more about the topic than anyone else. Of course there is a no small amount of wishful thinking guiding his actions but McKay seems to genuinely believe that this is going to work -- that he can cheat death by ascending and taking human form. He is definitely coming across as both arrogant and condescending with his treatment of Beckett here but we have to account for the fact that he is deep in denial, and a part of him must feel like if he can brow-beat Beckett into going along with this then it has to work.

Beckett: I really don't think we're going about this the right way. McKay: If you're a highly-evolved super-genius, put up your hand. Oh! Beckett: From everything I read about the subject area-- McKay: Look, when you get down to it, even mental states are actually only physical states, are they not? I mean, the brain is just a chemical super-computer.

Beckett remains skeptical and voices his concerns, and he is doing this not only as a medical professional but as McKay's best friend. This is not the first time that McKay has tried to talk him into going along with something that raises concerns, and because Beckett is as risk-averse as McKay is prone to taking risks, they often balance each other out. McKay is trying to convince Beckett by using arguments that could convince him, reminding him of things about human physiology that he must have known since grad school.

McKay describes himself as a "highly evolved super-genius," and while this too sounds undeniably arrogant, it does not seem like it is inaccurate at this time. McKay makes what to him seems like a true statement and it is easy to interpret it as having an inflated ego because people usually do not say things like this -- people often do not say things like this even if they were factually true because false modesty about one's skills is more socially acceptable. McKay seems socially inept enough not to recognize that there are usually social sanctions for this kind of behaviour, there are social scripts people are supposed to follow about these things. But on the flip side of this coin, McKay is also honest and truthful -- guileless even -- in a way that most people could never be. Rod had called McKay brave for not caring what other people think about him but it is more that McKay, just like Ronon, does not let things that he cannot influence bother him, and, whether accurately or inaccurately, he believes how other people see him to be one of these things.

Beckett: Well, I suppose an incredibly complex... McKay: "Yes" is all you need to say, my friend! Look, the universe may seem mystical to those without understanding, when in truth anything and everything can be quantified. Look, all the hocus-pocus stuff is just a way of getting the brain into the proper electro-chemical state to allow the final physical evolution, at which point the matter that makes up this body will turn into pure energy. Look, what mere mortals would refer to as the... mystery of ascension is actually just a scientific process -- it's just protons and electrons.

For all Beckett may not agree with McKay and for all he may be concerned for his friend, he is still helping him with his project not just because McKay is a brilliant scientific mind who has saved their asses so many times that people have started to trust his calls and tend to do what he asks them to do without question. More importantly, Beckett is doing this as McKay's friend, because that is what friends do.

McKay peppers what he says to Beckett with the command "Look" several times, and we have seen at the very least Sheppard develop a Pavlovian reaction to hearing the word because McKay often speaks it in a moment of crisis when he really needs someone to pay attention to what he is saying, needing to see their face so that he can be sure they have understood. But again there is a sense that he is most of all trying to convince himself, that he is actually talking himself into believing that this is going to work because the alternative does not bear thinking. He is also trying to strip the whole process of the "woo woo," to make it all seem perfectly rational and natural. We have noted before how McKay has a real need to both understand things and for things to make sense, so if he can explain this to himself by explaining it to Beckett, he might even come to believe it himself.

McKay: Protons and electrons! Beckett: If you say so. McKay: Now, if you don't mind, can we... Yeah, that's it. Now, based on what I've extrapolated from the Ancient research, I have been able to set measurable parameters for achieving the proper mental state. Once I reach ninety six percent synaptic connection, as measured by this device... all I need to do is maintain an EEG frequency of zero point one to zero point nine Hertz and presto. I arise to a higher plane of existence.

McKay explains to Beckett what he hopes to achieve by using this machine, and what is interesting is that even though what he says should be much more up Beckett's alley as he is using medical terms, we have seen McKay actually studying brain wave patterns even before this, chiefly at the start of the season when Beckett had been drugged by Lucius Lavin in Irresistible (S03E03) and it was up to McKay to find an antidote to the potion that had enslaved most of Atlantis. The two of them had been puzzling over brain-wave patterns also in Phantoms (S03E09), albeit I hold that the episode should have come only later in the season and definitely well after this episode.

McKay had detected gamma activity in the prefrontal cortex in the prior and an "ultra low frequency" in the latter. in Aurora (S02E09), when McKay had been monitoring Sheppard's brain he had kept track of his delta waves, the same as what Beckett had been observed in Michael in Michael (S02E18). Gamma frequency is the highest and delta frequency is lowest. Gamma activity is upwards of 25 Hz (sometimes upwards of 30 Hz), meaning that McKay is currently in the low Gamma range, and prominence of this wave leads to anxiety, high arousal and stress, meaning that McKay probably spends most of his waking hours in this range of brain activity. By aiming at a range below 1 Hz McKay is suggesting a low Delta frequency, which is usually associated with people who are asleep. Beckett points this out for him.

Beckett: OK, let's assume for one completely insane moment that you are right. Those frequencies are associated with near-comatose patients. No-one who's actually awake can just will themselves anywhere close to that, no matter how bloody relaxed they are. McKay: No unevolved person. Beckett: Give it a rest, Rodney. McKay: Just turn it on! Beckett: Your synaptic activity's abnormally high. Over sixty percent.

Beckett seems knowledgeable about brain waves and points out to McKay how nuts his plan is, not just in general but for McKay in particular. He is like quicksilver at the best of times, thinking quicker than his mouth can speak out his thoughts even ordinarily. McKay suggests that his evolved state should give him a leg up in this, and this is wishful thinking on his part. And again while it may not be McKay's intention to come across as smug but just to call things as he sees them (and to cling on to his copium), he does manage to take a swing at Beckett's own ego because he too is an educated man of science, and does not enjoy his friend treating him like a simpleton.

But it also speaks of their friendship that Beckett is able to tell McKay when he has crossed the line, essentially telling him to get over himself. Beckett knows what McKay is like and allows him to cling to his delusions most of the time but McKay does occasionally manage to say hurtful things -- Beckett himself occasionally says hurtful things because banter is his chosen method of male bonding -- but it seems like both of them are quickly able to get over themselves, which is one of the things that has facilitated this friendship between them. What is more, McKay seems to trust Beckett, he trusts Beckett to both know what he is doing and to tell him the truth and not to sugarcoat things, and McKay needs that in his life -- both in general and right now in particular. Beckett conveys to McKay the readings he can see, and he is able to observe immediately that McKay's synaptic activity is abnormally high -- superhuman, just like they knew it to be. It also seems to be increasing from the readings Beckett had taken of him previously, and this does concern him.

McKay: Yes! I don't have much time left. As I said, by my calculations, when I reach ninety six percent, I either ascend or die. Now, what's my EEG? Beckett: Twenty nine Hertz, which is about average for someone in an extremely heightened wakeful state. McKay: OK, so I just need to, uh, clear my mind and relax.

McKay sounds blasé as he mentions to Beckett that according to his calculations, he does not have a lot of time left before he has to either make this plan of his work or die. His tone does not betray how afraid of dying he really is because just like Sheppard had confessed to his wraith companion in Common Ground (S03E07), about having a lot to go back to and damned well going back to it, McKay too thinks that he has a lot to live for right now, and he would very much like to continue living. McKay would not like to die at the worst of times, but especially not now that he has found love and a home and a family. He has friends and a meaningful job where he can make a difference.

Beckett gives him the verdict, which states that his brain is currently either in the Gamma or Alpha state, and Beckett throws some shade on him by pointing out that not only is he nowhere near the range he needs to reach, his activity is high even for a normal person because he is so agitated. I have mentioned many times how Ronon and McKay seem very much alike on a deeper level, and we had seen the trouble Ronon had in trying to learn how to meditate with Teyla in Echoes (S03E12). He too has real trouble staying still and not thinking about anything, and while Teyla might be able to achieve a state of lower brain frequency by calming her mind in meditation, neither Ronon nor McKay are able to get to this place. They are restless and unwilling to stay still because ceasing their movement and being alone with their thoughts would mean having to face up to some truths about themselves and about the world that neither McKay nor Ronon are willing to face. Ronon had been a Runner whose paramour had warned him, as we had seen in the flashback in Sateda (S03E04), that he could not run forever. This may be true of Ronon but it is also true of McKay and Sheppard -- and all of them seem determined to keep trying anyway.

McKay takes a breath and closes his eyes, trying to force himself to calm down and to reach a state of mindfulness but he can only keep himself still for a moment before he needs to ask Beckett to give him a reading, to tell him how he is doing.

McKay: What's that now? Beckett: Thirty. McKay: What? Oh, come on, that's impossible! You must have me hooked up wrong. Beckett: No I didn't, thank you very much. We're getting a clear reading. Rodney, the Ancients that eventually learned to ascend dedicated their entire lives preparing for this moment. McKay: Trust me, this will work. I just need some more time. Now stop talking so much. You're -- you're rippling my pond.

There is a comedic beat to the scene as there often is in connection with McKay in that even as McKay is trying to relax and clear his mind, his brain activity (signaling his agitation) only increases. Because it had been McKay's honest attempt at trying to relax, he suggests that the reading must be wrong, not him.

Beckett points out that the Ancients who had been able to make the transition had spent their entire lives preparing for ascension, and while we do not know whether this had been the case with all of them, at least the "pansy wannabes" that Sheppard had spent time with in Epiphany (S02E12) had done that, actually having spent generations trying to ascend, and they seemed to do little else but meditate in their free time. And I have suggested that it is because their lives, and likely the lives of the Ancients, were spent on this pursuit to ascend but they still needed to ascertain the survival of their species until they would be able to achieve it that either by the process of natural evolution or genetic manipulation they had developed a powerful sexual desire toward one another, compelling people to have sex and procreate even when meditation and the pursuit of ascension were the only things that interested them anymore.

In fact, we have seen with Orlin in SG-1 and Athar in Sanctuary (S01E14) that they felt a powerful sexual desire even after ascension. While we know nothing of the Furlings, it seems like three of the Great Races had all developed different strategies for the survival of their species, all of which seem to have failed in the end. As the Fifth Race, we do not know what strategy humanity would yet take, but they were still young on the evolutionary ladder. Important here is that the people possessing the Ancient gene seem to have inherited something of this natural pull between members of the species, and it also follows that as McKay continues evolving, he may actually start both feeling more desire and becoming more attractive for people with the gene, irresistible and compelling. While it does not seem like there has ever been sexual desire between Beckett and McKay (apart from the time a woman had possessed McKay's body, the attraction rising from the physical body and not the mind since both Cadman and Beckett seem to have lost interest when she was no longer possessing a body with the gene), Beckett does seem to give in to McKay surprisingly easily, doing what he wants Beckett to do.

McKay finishes with commenting that Beckett is "rippling his pond," which seems to be an euphemism for disturbing his calm. While it is unlikely that McKay has studied Taoism, given the title of the episode, there seems to be a reference here to Tao Te Ching by Laozi where the pool of water is frequently used as a metaphor and a tool for teaching. In fact, its description of what sages are like seems befitting of McKay:

Sages have depth of character. Like a deep body of water, sages are tranquil and composed. A pool of water is not only the surface but also everything below it. Likewise, there is more to a sage than meets the eyes. It may take a while for people to realize this, but the more they get to know the sage, the more they discover. Water provides its benefits and moves on, without waiting for any benefits in return. Sages benefit others in the exact same way. They give only to give, not because they want recognition or payback. When they provide teachings, assistance or guidance, they do so with no conditions, no strings attached, and no expectations. Water reflects its surroundings. It does not try to hide or change anything in its reflections. When sages speak, it is with this same sense of integrity and sincerity. People come to trust the sage, because they realize the sage will give them the truth when no one else will.

It is possible that McKay makes the comment as a generic jab at "Eastern Philosophy," betraying how unseriously he is taking this even though he is dying because he does not really believe in what Weir had figured he would call "mumbo jambo." But at the same time, describing inner peace as a still pond is a powerful metaphor, and given how McKay seems to be getting smarter by the moment and had read up everything there was to learn about ascension, it is possible that he had also educated himself on such concepts. But knowing about something on an intellectual level is very different from experiencing it, as McKay is about to discover.

Even though there is literally a woman between them as the scene starts, they are again shot from an angle that makes it look like the two of them are sharing a bed, like they are laid down in a queen-sized bed together. There is a domesticity to the scenario coming from McKay being preoccupied with his device while Sheppard is trying to engage him in conversation as though they were a married couple where the wife is trying to talk to the husband who is reading a book or a magazine before they go to sleep and they have been married for so long that the wife's chatter barely penetrates the husband's awareness, a pleasant and comforting background noise for their regular evening activities. Of course here it is not McKay's intention to ignore Sheppard, he actually cannot hear him on account of his perforated eardrums.

Sheppard is telling McKay how he is doing not because he enjoys talking about himself or likes the sound of his own voice. On the contrary, we have seen that Sheppard rarely shares personal information about himself with others, preferring to keep them guessing. Sheppard is an extremely private individual who does not want people to know things about him that they might be able to use against him. He has spent most of his life hiding who he really is, caught up in more closets than one, terrified of people seeing the real him. He is not and never has been Mr Overshare, so the fact that he is readily and willingly sharing about himself with McKay speaks of their closeness, of how much he trusts McKay, how he actually wants McKay to see him for who he is.

What is more, Sheppard is not just talking about himself here but he is also asking McKay how he is doing, concerned for him, genuinely wanting to hear from him. Sheppard and McKay have a never-ending conversation going on that had started quite possibly when Sheppard had given McKay a response to his question of whether he had any idea how many combinations there were for the gate symbols in Rising (S01E02) and that they have only ever temporarily paused since that day. But glancing at McKay Sheppard is able to see that McKay is not engaged in this conversation right now, quite probably because the man cannot hear him. But the fact that McKay is focused on his device and not even trying to hear him gets to Sheppard. It gets to him a lot.

Sheppard had told the guard in the Ancient warship in Aurora (S02E09) that he really does not like being ignored. He had further confessed to Norina in Inferno (S02E19) that he hates it when McKay does this, when McKay ignores him in favour of focusing on tinkering with something without explaining to him what he is doing, without keeping him in the loop. Sheppard is a needy man who needs McKay's attention more than he needs breathing and it is not just offensive but hurtful to him that McKay does not seem to be paying him any attention now. And just like Sheppard hides himself from most people, this need for attention seems to be limited to McKay.

We had seen Sheppard laid down in the hospital with Weir in a very similar fashion in The Long Goodbye (S02E16), both of them recuperating from recent events. Although Sheppard had welcomed Weir to the land of the awakened, he had been focused on his palm device for most of the time we had seen them there, seeming partially to be hiding behind it. But he also seemed to be in communication with someone while using the device if his smile while he read and wrote on it is anything to go by. He had been responding to Weir but not that concerned or curious about how she was doing, and he certainly had not wished to share anything about himself with her. His device had been a barrier he had raised between the two of them.

We see something similar happen later in Search and Rescue (S05E01) when Sheppard is laid down in the hospital with Teyla, recuperating from being impaled by a metal rod where she is recuperating from just having given birth. Earlier in the episode in Sheppard's nightmare we had heard both of them say how much they enjoyed getting to spend time alone together and in the hospital we see that that is simply not true. The whole time they were there Sheppard was hiding behind a Nintendo DS palm device, this time quite possibly playing a game with it, not so much to pass the time as to have something to hide behind, something to hold up as a barrier between the two of them and to shield himself from intimacy, not wanting Teyla or anyone to dig into his emotions that were at the time more of a mess than his internal organs that Keller had just told him she was going to play with.

Sheppard wanted nothing better than to be left alone but he was trying his best to be a supportive team leader and a friend to Teyla in her time of need. In both of these cases it was more than obvious that Sheppard had wanted to be anywhere else, would have wanted to be alone, and was using the device to shield himself from forced intimacy, from these women that he considers good friends forcing him to emote. The contrast between these scenes and now could not be starker. Here, Sheppard is voluntarily sharing with McKay how he feels. Here, it is McKay who has a device come between them and Sheppard wants it gone. He wants McKay to stop giving his attention to the device and to give it to him. He wants McKay to engage with him. He wants McKay to tell him how he is doing and he wants McKay to acknowledge how he feels. The way Sheppard looks at McKay as he speaks his name here, it is possibly the most open we have ever seen Sheppard. There are no walls, no projection, no sarcastic distance to his emotions, just naked longing.

Sheppard: Canadian football league's a joke. Celine Dion is over-rated. Zelenka is smarter than you are!

Because Sheppard is unable to get McKay's attention using conventional means, he decides it is time to start playing hardball. While he is really quite sure McKay is simply not hearing him, Sheppard needs to make sure and he does this by saying increasingly offensive things, the kinds of things he knows would trigger a response from McKay ordinarily. His intention is not to hurt McKay but to make him sputter in indignation, and we have actually seen Sheppard do something similar many times during their missions when he has been trying to manage McKay's anxiety, focusing all of his emotions into indignation toward himself so that McKay forgets to be afraid and is able to work on solutions instead.

The scene is comedic not just because Sheppard tries to come up with more and more offensive things to say to McKay but because they start off as being particularly Canadian, like Sheppard is trying to bait him to react out of national pride. He starts off commenting on Canadian football, calling back to McKay one-upping his comment about the mother fish being the size of a football field earlier. It is possible that he had this thought already then but had not spoken it at the time because when one is in a relationship, saying things to offend one's partner is counter-productive. We have seen that American football is important to Sheppard to the point of his only personal effect he brought on their first tour having been a recording of a particular football game in Hide and Seek (S01E03). In the episode we had seen Sheppard start teasing McKay about his Canadianness, pulling the pig-tails of the boy he was developing a crush on, but using Canada's national pastime ice hockey for the purposes then. It is possible Sheppard had not even known about Canadian football before they had entered a relationship, and may have learned some intricacies of the game through McKay. Even though he would always prefer "real" football, it is possible that he had started appreciating the game having become more familiar with the Canadian man, and his intention here is just to use it to tease McKay, not to actually tell him what he thinks of Canadian football. These are not meant to be Sheppard's opinions, these are meant to be things he think will trigger a reaction from McKay.

The same is true of his second item, Celine Dion. A national treasure in Canada, he uses her name to provoke McKay to make a counter-argument out of sheer national pride. This does not mean that Sheppard personally thinks Celine Dion is overrated, just that he thinks McKay might believe otherwise. What McKay actually thinks of Celine Dion or Canadian football is unknown to us, we learn only that Sheppard thinks that these are things that McKay might be inspired to defend. Of course it is possible that he is personalizing his attempts at provoking McKay and that McKay actually is fond of Celine Dion -- we have little indication of what kind of music McKay actually listens to. But it is just as possible that Sheppard is projecting here -- that he enjoys Celine Dion even if he would never admit as much. And it is interesting that he should be thinking of Celine Dion in this moment because while his chain of association seems to go McKay > Canadian > Canadian football > Celine Dion, it is possible he had actually been thinking about Celine Dion already earlier on account of their experience in the promontory having resembled a very famous scene from a very famous movie.

Perhaps the most iconic scene from the motion picture Titanic (1997) features the protagonist Rose and her love interest Jack at the bow of the ship as the sun is setting, Jack showing Rose what it feels like to fly. This is paralleling a scene earlier in the film when Jack had been at the bow with a friend screaming "I am king of the world!" wanting now to share this feeling with the woman he was falling in love with. This is one of the most romantic films of the 20th century, and one that Sheppard is almost certain to have seen. And the film is inexorably connected with the song that had been featured both in the film and in its advertising, being Celine Dion's iconic My Heart Will Go On. It is impossible to think of the film without remembering the song and it is impossible to hear the song and not be reminded of the film. They are forever linked -- just like Sheppard and McKay are. Hence it is possible that Sheppard's thought process had actually been McKay > ocean > kissing on the bow of a ship > Celine Dion > Canadian > McKay, since it seems like McKay is the beginning and the end of all of his thoughts and his mind will always return to McKay.

We had also learned from the alien Phoebus in The Long Goodbye (S02E16) that Weir thinks of Sheppard as a hopeless romantic, and given his love of romantic literature this may be a correct assessment of his character. Of course the story in the film centres around the tragic loss of a lover, which would be quite traumatic for Sheppard to even contemplate given his personal history, but this can only mean that he would have been deeply touched by the song recapping the narrative -- which, as a big boy wearing his macho pants, he could never admit to anyone out loud. But it is just as obvious that Sheppard mentioning Celine Dion by name, even if he is claiming she is overrated (but not awful), he is tacitly confessing that he had been touched by her song:

Every night in my dreams I see you, I feel you That is how I know you go on Far across the distance and spaces between us You have come to show you go on Near, far, wherever you are I believe that the heart does go on Once more, you open the door and you're here in my heart And my heart will go on and on Love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime And never let go 'til we're gone

The reason why Sheppard would have been thinking about Celine Dion is obvious in light of their adventure by what is effectively the bow of the good ship Atlantis, but him using it now to tease McKay is either because he thinks that McKay cares about Celine Dion or because he likes Celine Dion himself -- whether or not he would ever admit to it, and he would not -- because Sheppard's tendency to project would make him transfer his liking of her music to McKay liking her music, even if McKay himself was completely nonchalant toward it. But since Celine Dion also fails to grasp McKay's attention, Sheppard is forced to bring out the big guns.

The most provocative thing Sheppard can think to say to McKay in hopes of getting him to pay attention to him -- and Sheppard is going full Notice me, Senpai! here -- is that Zelenka is smarter than him, and while this is something that McKay might take offense to, by this time Sheppard is fairly certain that McKay cannot hear him and he is just saying it to make himself feel better, not to hurt McKay. We had noted earlier that Sheppard seemed to feel dumb listening to Zelenka's explanation of what he had been doing earlier, not understanding a word he had said, and it is easy to interpret impenetrable language as intelligence when it results from education and socialization to a field. But Sheppard does not really think that Zelenka is smarter than McKay, he only thinks that saying it would make McKay sputter in indignation in that cute way (to Sheppard) that he does. Sheppard thinks that McKay is the smartest man he has ever met and he appreciates that McKay is able to explain complex things to him in a way that he can understand.

But of course intelligence and being smart or having smarts are not the same thing, and one could argue that Zelenka is smarter than McKay in that he may have more common sense because both Sheppard and McKay know that in spite of his intelligence McKay has occasionally made errors in judgement that have made him feel like the dumbest man in two galaxies. it is also, as we have noted with Sheppard and McKay, that because intelligence is not just one thing that Zelenka probably is smarter than McKay in some things. But that is not Sheppard's point here, his intention is just to land on something that McKay would not be able to ignore, to say something that he would be forced to respond to. And Sheppard knows McKay well enough that if he had been able to hear Sheppard, he would have surely responded. And the fact that even this does not provoke a response from McKay is supremely frustrating to Sheppard because he does not know what he is going to do if McKay does not look at him soon. He might whither away and die from lack of attention.

McKay: Hey! I found mention of a bio-lab in the database! Ancient scientists used it to study animal life. We should check it out! Sheppard: OK! ...Meredith.

McKay suddenly yells "Hey!" and for a moment Sheppard probably thinks that he had managed to provoke a reaction in him, that he was actually indignant about Sheppard thinking that Zelenka is smarter than him and that he would have some counter arguments to give to him, meaning that his focus would be on Sheppard as he would make his case.

But to Sheppard's continuing disappointment it seems like McKay had not heard one word that he had said to him -- and we do not know how long Sheppard had been trying to talk to McKay before the scene started -- because McKay was just filling him in on what he had found in his research, what he had discovered when he had been paying attention to something that is not Sheppard. McKay is shouting, testament to the fact that his hearing has not improved as much as Sheppard's who seems to hear McKay just fine here, filling him in on the bio-lab he had discovered in the Ancient database. It seems like the whole time they had been recuperating McKay had been trying to solve the mystery of the whales meaning that he had been focusing on Sam and not Sheppard, even if McKay's need to take care of Sheppard is at the heart of why he had been feverishly doing the research.

We see Sheppard turn his gaze away from McKay when he realizes that they had not been having a conversation and McKay had been ignoring him, seeming to roll his eyes but actually wanting to hide how much it actually hurts that he is seemingly not at the centre of McKay's world the same way as McKay is the centre of his. McKay glances at Sheppard to gauge his reaction and what he sees is Sheppard ignoring him, looking up the the ceiling morosely like maybe he could not hear McKay in spite of him yelling. But McKay is too engrossed in his discovery to let Sheppard's apparent lack of enthusiasm harsh his joy. Surely Sheppard would join him on this adventure to find the lab because this is the kind of thing that both of them enjoy. Because McKay does not know how much Sheppard needs his attention he does not know anything is amiss, oblivious to the miniature drama that had taken place around him.

Sheppard acknowledges Mckay's discovery, knowing that it is probably important and that they need to check it out but he cannot help airing his grievance, which he does by calling McKay by the name that he knows he hates. Sheppard had learned that McKay's birth name was Meredith in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08) when his sister had unwittingly revealed a detail about his partner and lover that he had not known that Sheppard had felt was vitally important. Sheppard had been hurt that McKay had not trusted him with the information largely because he had feared that Sheppard would react precisely how he had then proceeded to react, making a big deal out of it. McKay's line "Sam is a boy's name too!" with the face he had pulled earlier suggests that "Meredith is a boy's name too!" is something he has had to say more than a few times in his youth.

By this time, Sheppard is absolutely sure that McKay cannot hear him as he speaks the name, mumbling it to himself more than anything, and his need to speak the name betrays Sheppard's deep hurt here. He is saying the name because he wants to McKay to understand how much being ignored by him hurts even though he does not really want to hurt McKay. Least of all it is Sheppard's intention here to imply that he thinks McKay is girly because he knows that if anyone is acting like a teenage girl here, it is him -- even if Sheppard is prone to projection on an industrial scale. He just cannot help himself with McKay. Sheppard's behaviour during this scene has to come out of the left-field if the viewer does not understand how much Sheppard needs McKay's attention and how he deals with difficult emotions through projection. If one does not know where Sheppard is coming from, he comes across as a dick for no reason -- like he was picking on McKay just because he does not like him and hates that he is having to spend time with him, maybe even figuring that it is McKay who has demanded Sheppard's attention throughout the episode where Sheppard's upset this whole time has not been having to spend time with McKay but having to share his attention with the fish.

But it may not be just Sheppard's hurt that drives him to speaking the name -- it is possible that Sheppard has wanted to call McKay by his name just because it is his name, to sound it out and see how it feels in his mouth. He had called him Meredith once before to his face but that had been just to show how hurt he was about McKay having kept secrets from him, to teach him a lesson about trust and partnership since McKay had just been demanding that he acknowledge how well he knows McKay compared to this stranger when the appearance of his sister had made Sheppard feel like he did not know McKay at all. But of course Sheppard had gotten over his hurt eventually and had worked hard to fix the damage that him throwing a tantrum while McKay had been spiraling into a full-on existential crisis at the time had caused McKay, sympathetic to how he must have felt when he had realized that Rod was actually a lot more like himself than he had been like McKay, holding an uncomfortable mirror in front of his own face.

But Meredith was the name of the man that he loves and he has wanted to speak his secret name too, a name that only a privileged few even know. He is in love with a man called Meredith, and because he knows that McKay probably carries a lot of trauma related to the name, especially having known and loved the Johnny Cash song The Boy Called Sue, speaking it when he knows the other man cannot hear him say it may be the only occasion he will get to say it to him. Yes, him saying the name communicates Sheppard's hurt feelings here but it also communicates how well he knows McKay, how intimately they know each other. Sheppard may have started with the general -- Canadian football -- but he had ended with one of the most private pieces of information on McKay, being something that he truly treasured among the trove of details pertaining to McKay that he has memorized and that he keeps locked up in his heart. There is no one who knows McKay better than he does and there is no one he knows better than he knows McKay, and that is what this scene is all about. Whether Sheppard knows that Meredith has the meaning of "Lord of the Sea" and whether he had made the connection between his name and the "King of the world!" scene in Titanic aside, Sheppard's heart is singing a Celine Dion song every time that McKay looks at him and, as he had discovered here, even when he does not look at him.

Sheppard calls the queen a "girl," the sarcasm evident in his tone. Not only is the wraith queen not very girly to the point of coming across mannish with her tall stature and deep voice, but she is not even human. We never learn what Sheppard thinks of drag queens but dressed in white leather, she seems like a reversal or the opposite of Sheppard's kink or preference for partners, revealed later on in The Game (S03E15), of hypermasculine balding leather daddies -- and it is not a coincidence that we later also get McKay clad in black leather. This is actually lampshaded in This Mortal Coil (S04E10) where they have McKay himself remark on his new black leather uniform:

Regardless, even though Sheppard's comment makes it sound as though he is thinking about the wraith queen in the context of sex, that he were interested in knowing what passes as recreation among the wraith, it is unlikely that he is actually thinking about how the wraith get down. The implication is there but both Sheppard and McKay probably feel that what the wraith do for fun is best not to think about, Sheppard having been disgusted enough to have learned about the humans who have chosen to willingly serve the wraith. Neither of them say it out loud but what a "girl like her" does for fun probably makes the Hellraiser films seem like a church potluck, probably involving babies and puppies. He really does not want to know.

Note that when McKay steps up to Sheppard, he steps right into Sheppard's space. And Sheppard not only allows but welcomes him there, his murmured comment as McKay approaches him inviting McKay into his intimate space, into his confidence. With the comment Sheppard is not just sharing his thoughts with McKay in this moment -- and Sheppard is a very private person, he does not do this often or with just everyone -- but he is drawing McKay to him, to share in himself. Note also that Sheppard can tell that McKay has approached him without looking at him. Sheppard is watching the queen leave, his eyes fixed on her but he still knows where McKay is in the room and he knows precisely the volume to use as McKay comes near him, aware of his physical presence.

Make no mistake: even though Weir is in the room, this is a private moment between Sheppard and McKay, and note that although we are shown it only after the fact, when Sheppard makes the comment Weir has her back turned to them which had created a pocket of privacy for the two of them. This might be the reason Sheppard feels like it is intimate enough for him to make the private comment to McKay even though they are not truly alone. But let us note that this is also an example of Weir being an ally, of Sheppard trusting her following her facilitating their 'honeymoon" that he allows her to overhear this. But regardless of whether she can overhear them or not, this is not a comment for her. This is guy talk, "locker room talk," the kind of comment he would never make to her not only because she is his superior but also because they do not have that kind of a relationship, they are not that intimate. He is saying this to McKay to relieve his own tension and to make McKay feel better but also to make him laugh, to amuse him, to elicit a reaction out of him. He is making a comment to the boy that he loves hoping that he will like it and will like him, this is a moment for them to bond over, to re-establish their connection. Although they are not in private, this is nonetheless a private exchange. And note that although McKay does not speak in words, this is very much an exchange.

McKay responds to Sheppard with a soft hum that might seem noncommittal to an outside observer but which Sheppard likely can interpret with no difficulty. Sheppard is commenting on a woman here and we have noted many times before that McKay does not like Sheppard paying attention to women. McKay has had full-blown jealous snits over Sheppard seeming to pay attention to women and while more often than not it has been the women pursuing Sheppard rather than the other way around, just the thought that Sheppard might find a woman attractive is enough to raise his heckles. We had seen this happen with a wraith previously in Aurora (S02E09), when a wraith had taken the visage of a beautiful Ancient woman and McKay was suspicious of why Sheppard had revealed secrets to her. While it never seemed like Sheppard was particularly interested in her, McKay believed that he was, which had caused him to comment on her being hot, seriously hot later. While McKay likewise never found her attractive (gleefully commenting "Not so hot now!" about the wraith later), he had confessed to Sheppard that he disgusted himself sometimes, thinking about the wraith in sexual terms. This was in effort to elicit jealousy in Sheppard.

We had also seen Sheppard trying very hard to elicit jealousy in McKay in Inferno (S02E19), but that is not what this is -- neither here thinks that the queen is even remotely attractive, the comment isn't about that. If anything, Sheppard is implying that the opposite is true. Not for the first time the two of them are being the "mean girls", talking about others behind their back as a way of bonding. But it is also important that McKay's reaction tells us that he is not feeling that reflexive jealousy over Sheppard paying attention to someone else here which suggests that the two of them have discussed the topic of women and boundaries during their weeks alone together. McKay had made the remark "Let's talk about it for a long time, that'll help for sure" earlier, indicating that they had talked some things over so thoroughly, so exhaustively, that he was tired of talking about it. Sheppard and the women may well have been among the things they had talked about, and McKay's reaction to his comment here may betray a better understanding on McKay's part for where Sheppard is coming from.

Also important to note here is that McKay does not seem to have a compulsive need to talk, to fill the silence with Sheppard. McKay is a verbose fellow who has a very obvious need to be heard and to reclaim space by making himself heard, but it seems that with Sheppard he is comfortable also being quiet. He does not need to talk with him. I have noted many times that they seem have this ability to communicate without using words, this unsettling ability to look at the other man and to know their thoughts, and while we have seen several times that Sheppard has communicated without words to McKay (most prominently in Trinity (S02E06), where they have a whole conversation where Sheppard says not a word), Sheppard is also able to read McKay's thoughts, to know what he is thinking just by looking at his face.

We have seen both of them do it, both communicate thoughts wordlessly and read the other's thoughts from looking at the other's face. And this seems to form an important channel for their communication, Sheppard needing to see McKay's face especially when something is going down, in intense situations. Another example of where it is Sheppard talking to McKay and McKay responding wordlessly is in Critical Mass (S02E13), where we catch a glimpse of a private moment between them, Sheppard musing on taking the weekend off and McKay responding merely through a chuckle. They can both read the other's expressions and interpret their different grunts and moans, which just evinces this intimacy between them, betrays the fact that they know each other very, very well. And this is precisely why McKay seemed apprehensive saying what he felt like he needed to say, to tell Sheppard what he had decided to do. He already knows how Sheppard is going to feel about it.

Sheppard: Really? McKay: I know it's uncharacteristically brave, but I've hacked a lot of their systems under the guise of repairing them. I've convinced them that I should be there to supervise their systems if anything goes wrong. Weir: And they agreed to this? McKay: Yes.

While Sheppard manages to say only a single word, his tone is incredulous. Although McKay describes what he had intended to do as "uncharacteristically brave" -- where, in fact, it is right on brand for him, Sheppard certainly thinking McKay is brave beyond the telling of it -- McKay (and undoubtedly a portion of the audience as well) may well interpret his "Really?" as communicating dubiety, that Sheppard has doubts about McKay taking on such a daunting task. But that is not what is bewildering Sheppard. Everything in Sheppard, from the tips of his hair to the toes on his feet, is against this plan. He does not want McKay to do what he is proposing to do. Sheppard's gut reaction is to shut that down and tell McKay no, to forbid him, to order him not to go.

Sheppard does not think it is uncharacteristically brave of McKay, he thinks that McKay is the bravest man he has ever met. He is a much braver man than Sheppard could ever be because this, just the thought that McKay is placing himself in danger, is putting his own life on the line for the greater good fills Sheppard with dread. It is Weir who sounds incredulous with her "Excuse me?!" Sheppard is afraid. After his first visceral reaction we see that he stops to look at McKay, that he is looking at him mutely and unable to say anything, unable to look away. McKay may be talking to both Sheppard and Weir, trying to make a case for why he needs to go -- probably still trying to convince himself that it is a good idea at this point. But for Sheppard, the whole rest of the world had ceased to exist when McKay dropped the bomb. McKay is having a conversation with Weir where Sheppard seems to just be silently pleading for McKay to tell him it isn't true, that it was a mistake.

Their hands are very close to begin with and we see McKay do the self-soothing fist-pumping thing he often does when he is feeling nervous. He lifts his hand to start gesticulating and it is possible that if he had not drawn his hand away that Sheppard would have grabbed it, that he was close to grabbing McKay's hand even though they are not in private. It is possible that both of them felt the need to take the other's hand and hence McKay draws his hand up, removes the opportunity and temptation. But this is how close they are standing here, how close McKay had come to stand to Sheppard to say what he needed to say.

Sheppard continues standing with his hands hanging limply at his sides watching McKay with a sad, miserable look on his face but he does not say anything. He and McKay seem to have had ample opportunity to discuss the things that had been respectively bothering them, that had grown into a wall between them, and Sheppard had made the decision to try to live up to what ever promises they had made to each other during their time on the Orion. They had managed to hammer out a fragile peace between them, and because through all the adversity and after all the pain and sorrow they had finally arrived at a place where they were more or less good, he was not willing to jeopardize that. And so Sheppard was trying. He was trying very hard to be the supportive, loving man that he knows McKay deserves and he wishes he could be. But we can still see that it is bothering him. It is whole-body bothering him.

McKay: Plus, now we can freely beam stuff on and off their ships... I've written a programme that will immediately beam me out of there the second I activate this emergency transponder. Weir: You're sure you wanna do this? McKay: Of course I don't wanna do it! I just... I think it should be done.

Sheppard looks at Weir when she keeps hounding McKay about whether this is such a good idea, possibly hoping that she will do what he feels like he cannot do at the moment, which is to put a stop to this. Sheppard does trust that Weir has McKay's bests interests at heart, and he appreciates that. But it seems like McKay has actually thought this through and is able to convince her, and if it was a question of rational decision-making to Sheppard, maybe he could see it their way. But it is not. Sheppard folds his arms defensively and almost seems to hug himself, needing to comfort himself in the situation.

But not only is McKay aware of how difficult this must be for Sheppard -- he too very much does not want to place himself in jeopardy. He does not want to be hurt or die, and certainly not at the hands of the wraith, and so he has taken precautions for safeguarding his own life. Seeming able to anticipate Sheppard's objections, he produces a thingamajig that is supposed to beam him out of the hive the moment he is in trouble -- and something interesting happens then. Sheppard folding his arms defensively and turning his face away from McKay like an aggrieved, put upon spouse is telling. But even more curious is the way his eyes follow the movement of McKay's hand pointing at the transponder, almost like he is hypnotized by McKay's hands. He has watched those hands do many things. Those hands have done many things to him and for him. McKay has the hands of a magician and Sheppard is watching him like he is about to do a trick. It is a Pavlovian reaction in Sheppard to pay attention to what ever McKay is calling attention to.

Sheppard: Ronon goes along. McKay: Wouldn't have it any other way. Weir: And I'd like you on the Daedalus. Sheppard: No place I'd rather be. Weir: OK, good. Let's get this done. I'm about ready for our house guests to leave.

At last we get confirmation for the fact that it had been out of Sheppard's behest that Ronon had accompanied McKay on the hive previously because here, just as it must have been the first time, his one stipulation is that Ronon is there to protect him, to look over him. He is not letting McKay go there alone and he trusts that Ronon will be able to protect him because that was the whole point of him having recruited Ronon in the first place, that had been Sheppard's intention from the get-go. Ronon had become a valued member of his team over the course of their time together as a team but it had never been for himself or for Atlantis that Sheppard had needed Ronon, it had been for McKay. Sheppard did not need a bodyguard for himself, even though Ronon seemed to have gladly taken on that task for himself -- he needed a bodyguard for McKay. And while he wished that McKay would never have to face a situation such as this, it was precisely for this kind of thing that had made Ronon a Godsend.

Since they are both compromising here, McKay assents to Sheppard's stipulation even though he does not exactly seem thrilled about it. But in order to have a relationship, they both have to give and take, and they both have to let go of control like Heightmeyer had suggested in Duet (S02E04). Their dialogue here is significant in that the way they pronounce these phrases very much sounds like they are quoting something to each other, like they are making intentional references. McKay says "I wouldn't have it any other way" in a tone that brooks dissent, like he would rather have it some other way but because they had made an agreement, they were both trying to compromise and be accommodating, were trying to be considerate of the other man's feelings, then he was willing to do this for Sheppard. But he is making it known that it is for Sheppard that he agrees to take Ronon with him.

It is not that he does not think that he could use security or that he does not feel safer with Ronon there -- for the most part -- but having witnessed what he had before, he is also concerned about him. Some part of him is worried that Conan and his brawn-before-brains ways are going to get him kn trouble. He likes to believe that a cerebral approach is going to keep him out of trouble, keeps him from needing muscle to protect him when that is manifestly not true. But the way he says it here sounds like he is making an ironic reference to sappy love song lyrics, and while we know next to nothing about his particular taste in music, it has to be in reference to something that the both of them would know, a shared cultural artifact. One alternative is Wouldn’t Want It Any Other Way by Tim McGraw which seems not just to hold meaning for Sheppard and McKay's relationship (we may recall McKay's comment in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17) about having a friendly face to come home to) but which connects to this particular scene with the tender touching they finish off with:

Without me, maybe you'd find somebody else A little wiser, with a lot more wealth [for Sheppard, the wealth is not monetary but wealth of character] And without you, it's true I'd be free To go chasing all my dreams, without any strings But I wouldn't want it any other way Having you to come home to at the end of every day Your tender touch puts a smile back on my face Wouldn't want it any other way Hard times may never let up on us And maybe all we'll ever have will barely be enough And babe you know how cold the wind can blow Love's never let us down when we needed it the most

But it is not just McKay who seems to be quoting song lyrics, it is also Sheppard. Weir tells him that she wants him on the Daedalus and his response is not just to Weir but also to McKay. He tells Weir that there is no place he would rather be, and that does not seem to be exactly true. There are many places he would rather be, the chief among them the Orion and specifically the bed within its captain's quarters. But at the same time, he does very much want to be on the Daedalus if McKay is going to go ahead with this and get on the hive because on the Daedalus he is going to be as close to McKay as possible, he will be near McKay in case he needs him. Sheppard is thankful to Weir for suggesting this, for easing his worry just a little bit.

There is a similar scene later on in Be All My Sins Remember'd (S04E11) when they have all gathered to plan their attack on the Replicator home-world and Larrin asks Sheppard to take command of the Ancient warship the Travelers had commandeered, for the duration of the battle. They have the following exchange:

Larrin: I could use you in my Chair, Sheppard. We have an arsenal of drones but none of my guys can fire them quite like you can. Sheppard: No place I'd rather be.

While the scene is similar, even the face Sheppard pulls is similar, it is not the same. When Sheppard tells her that there is no place he would rather be, he means the exact opposite. He would rather be almost anywhere else but it is because it needs doing, it is because for McKay's plan to work they need to keep the Replicators occupied, that he agrees to do something that literally seems to make his skin crawl. The situation is similar in that he is asked to do something that goes against everything he holds dear. He is asked again to allow McKay to do something very dangerous, to go down to the replicator home-world on his own to plant their destruction. It is also similar in that Sheppard insists that Ronon goes with McKay -- along with a squad of marines. Sheppard does the same as in here, only more. He is even more worried than he is here. And it is possible that he is remembering this precise moment as he reluctantly gives his assent to her then.

It is not just the fact that Sheppard seems to be saying this in response to what McKay had just said to him that suggests this is in reference to a song lyric but also the way McKay looks at him, like he just caught on to something Sheppard was doing. Like he caught the reference. So what song is Sheppard referring to? There are a bunch of songs with the phrase as a title but most of them are either later than the episode or otherwise not well-known enough to be the kind of cultural artifacts that allow for the making of references. However, the phrase is used prominently in the song For the Love of You by the Isley Brothers from 1975 that is the kind of sappy love song that would be fitting for the occasion and that they both might know. It goes:

Drifting on a memory, ain't no place I'd rather be Than with you, yeah, loving you Day will make a way for night, all we'll need is candle lights And a song, yeah, soft and long Glad to be here alone with a lover unlike no other Sad to see a new horizon slowly coming into view, yeah I wanna be living for the love of you All that I'm giving is for the love of you Lovely as a ray of sun that touches me when the morning comes Feels good to me, my love and me Smoother than a gentle breeze, flowing through my mind with ease Soft as can be, when you're loving me Love to be right in the waves of your love enchanted with a touch and it seems to me we could sail together, in and out of mystery Paradise I have within, can't feel insecure again You're the key, well, and this I see Now and then I lose my way Using words that try to say what I feel Yeah, love is real

This song seems to be like a soundtrack to what ever had happened when they had been on the Orion alone together -- perhaps in a very literal sense of them having played this song, soft and long, while physically reconnecting.

Later on in Search and Rescue (S05E01) we see Sheppard hallucinate a scene in which he is having a candlelit dinner with Teyla where they both confess to enjoying the time they have alone together, and which the end of the episode shows is not at all true for Sheppard and Teyla because they both seem very uncomfortable having to spend time with each other alone together. The scene that Sheppard had hallucinated seemed to be a memory of time that Sheppard had spent together with McKay, one of the best memories of his life, and his mind had transplanted McKay with Teyla because he believed that their attempt at rescuing Teyla had just killed McKay and he seemed to be unable to deal with this thought. I have written about the scene before and I will return to it again; important here is that Sheppard and McKay seem to have enjoyed time together that we never got to witness during which they had dinner, wine, candle light, the whole romantic nine yards of it -- and their "honeymoon" on the Orion is one of the times that this could have taken place.

The song seems to clarify some of Sheppard's motivation, of why he is behaving the way he is here. He is trying very hard to trust that McKay will be able to take care of himself, to not let his fears get the better of him and destroy this thing that is so very important to him, the best thing that has ever happened to him. He is trying to be a better man for the man that he loves. When Sheppard says that there is no place he would rather be, he means McKay. The reason he wants to be on the Daedalus is to be near McKay.

McKay leaves and we see him patting Sheppard's arm as he goes, again a moment that has been giffed countless of times. While we do not get many touches between Sheppard and McKay, this is the third one to take place at the end of this season. And let us be clear: this touch is completely unnecessary. There is no reason for McKay to touch him beyond wanting to do it, beyond needing to do it. It seemed like McKay was about to grab Sheppard's hand earlier, he had been holding his own hand because he needed to touch and now that he leaves, he is about to embark on a dangerous mission, he has to take comfort in touching Sheppard and also to give his comfort, knowing that this cannot be easy for Sheppard. I have discussed before how McKay does not seem to touch Sheppard without his consent and here we see the way he is cautious in approaching him. While the soldiers had gone with the queen they are still in public and they are in the presence of Weir, so this is a pretty bold thing to do, all things considered.

What is interesting about the touch is that people seem to see different things in it, depending on how they view the characters and their relationship, their dynamic and interaction. I have seen Sheppard's look described as "suspicious," like he has suspicions of McKay's motivations to touch him, and I have seen it described as "confusion," like Sheppard does not understand why McKay touches him. What seems incontrovertible is that Sheppard has two separate reactions: one oblivious and one cognizant, one is just his body reacting before he has had time to think about anything and the other is after he realizes what had just happened. And the thing is, he certainly does not seem displeased at first, he seems to think nothing of it. It is a natural occurrence. It is only after he has time to formulate a thought that he frowns, first looking at the place where McKay had touched him and then presumably looking at McKay as he was making his way out of the room.

The upper arm is a perfectly socially acceptable place to touch a friend, even when both friends are male:

It is not where McKay touches him that confuses Sheppard because we had seen McKay touch him in the exact same spot in Coup d'État (S02E17), in the context of communicating during a mission, and again in Inferno (S02E19) for no reason at all. We have seen Sheppard touch McKay much more intimately, for example in Coup d'État and The Lost Boys (S02E10) where the intimacy did not come so much from where Sheppard touched him but from how long he maintained the contact. We had also seen Sheppard yank himself away from Beckett in The Tower (S02E15), and given that Beckett is his primary care Physician, it suggests that Sheppard is not comfortable with other people touching him, McKay is the exception. More likely than anything is that it is the touch happening right in front of Weir that causes Sheppard to frown because he is still unsure of how much he can trust her with. Only a few weeks ago he had told her that he did not pay attention to guys (Sorry!), and now he was thankful that she had enough understanding to allow him to accompany McKay on this mission by putting him on the Daedalus.

Touching Sheppard where anyone can see them, even in a socially accepted way between men through a pat on the upper arm, betrays the fact that they have been touching each other more than usually lately. McKay seems to have trouble adjusting to living the lie again, returning to the life where they are not allowed to share casual touches or to be seen touching each other. And we see the same being true of Sheppard because it seems to take him a beat to recognize that something is off. Like the touch was so natural that his brain takes a moment to catch up to the fact that they are not supposed to be doing this in public. The initial reaction from Sheppard is being pleased, of seeing the touch as perfectly natural. It is only after his brain has caught up with him that he frowns, seeming slightly confused. At first Sheppard seems to nod and mouth the word "Yeah," like he very much approves of McKay doing this but as McKay takes off he seems to scan the open space outside of the meeting room to check whether anyone had seen them. He also looks after McKay as he leaves, possibly wondering whether that had been an invitation to follow him.

It is likely a feature of Jeannie as a civilian that is new to this whole wide world, unaccustomed to dealing with things like people from a parallel universe and finding out that she had been the direct cause of the destruction of an entire universe, that she then tries shifting the blame of what they are being told had happened as a result of their experiment entirely on her brother. Jeannie is at least partially to blame because like she had pointed out herself, if it had not been for her theory McKay would never have been able to do the experiment -- and like McKay had pointed out, without his work, her theory would have been useless. They had done this together, and where McKay had tried retaining the final responsibility for himself to protect both his staff and his baby sister, in reality Jeannie did bear a part of the burden of responsibility.

But it is not easy to hear that she had jeopardized the lives of untold billions or trillions of lives (depending how much McKay had told her about the Stargate Programme in the MIlky Way) since it seems like their experiment threatened not only the Pegasus galaxy but the entire universe. And so, clearly as a defensive mechanism, Jeannie resorts to mocking her brother, even digging up old stuff to lay on him the way siblings tend to do. With siblings, just like with lovers, it is never just one conversation and one argument, but the conversation is never-ending and every argument is an iteration of one prototypical argument where old grievances are dug up and aired periodically to the effect of "And then there was the time you..." And it may be a feature of McKay dating someone prone to projection that he is able to simply brush off her accusation, sidelining it entirely with a nonchalant "Yes." Yes, yes, he was the destroyer of universes but they had more important things to discuss here like how this man who for all intents and purposes appeared to be him had skipped, hopped and jumped only to arrive in their own universe.

Something that we should address here is that, especially in light of the graph they show later of the bridge connecting the universes looking like a shoot that is being penetrated and filled with exotic particles very much resembling sexual congress, that there is some symbolism at play here. It is as though Sheppard and McKay are the two universes that have been connected by a bridge, being their cohabitation at this time. Even though the "experiment" of them living together had been a success on one side, it had some unexpected consequences and serious repercussions on the other side -- as dangerous exotic particles that don't belong in either of their universes were now being created on Sheppard's side of the bridge, in Sheppard's part of the relationship. Even though their universes were bridged, Sheppard's fears were beginning to take hold of him for reasons that had nothing to do with either of them but were the result of sheer happenstance, the circumstances of their lives. And they had now started creating a tear in their relationship that would grow in size up until slightly before the beginning of Sunday (S03E17), showing us the aftermath of the breakdown of the bridge connecting them. There is a metaphor for their relationship hiding somewhere in here.

Rod: Ah. Well, we detected the anomaly about twenty hours ago in space above the planet. We manoeuvered one of our jumpers in close and tried to broadcast a signal to whoever was on the other side. McKay: Yes, but of course we would be unable to detect that signal from within the containment chamber. Rod: So Sheppard and I came up with a plan to beam a person into the anomaly.

Rod likely mentions Sheppard, giving him credit for coming up with the plan with him, not just because he wants to make a record of what had actually taken place but because Sheppard had likely been instrumental in implementing the idea that he had come up with, just as McKay is often instrumental in implementing the ideas Sheppard has in our world. And like Sheppard is with McKay, Rod also seems incapable of keeping Sheppard's name out of his mouth for very long.

Interestingly, assuming that they had detected the anomaly immediately after they had started the experiment up in this world, it had been around twenty hours ago that Sheppard had also detected an anomaly -- he had learned Jeannie call McKay "Mer" and had become curious as to what this thing that McKay clearly did not want him to know about had been. Jeannie calling McKay by an unexpected name that he had quickly brushed off as a "pet name" was an anomaly that Sheppard was dying to know more about. And although Sheppard had tried asking both Jeannie and McKay about it, McKay had been unwilling to elaborate and had further not been able to hear Sheppard's attempts to contact him from within his containment chamber, indicating indeed that the two of them had spent the night not together but in different locations. Not having spent the night together, Sheppard alone in his old containment chamber, he had been unable to dig for more information about this.

But because he was dying to know, he had come up with a plan of accosting a person, Jeannie, in the morning to pump her for the information. And he had discovered a lot. By having inserted himself right into the containment field of the secrets McKay had been keeping from him -- out of embarrassment and feeling humiliated -- Sheppard had at least been able to reconnect with McKay. Sheppard was feeling resentment over McKay's apparent betrayal but he was hoping that now that he knew -- and he hoped he had been able to teach McKay a lesson about keeping secrets from him -- that they would be able to put it behind them. He did not want to be quarreling with McKay after they had just spent weeks away from each other. He did not want to spend nights alone in his containment chamber.

Rod: They would be protected by an Ancient personal force-field that we discovered. McKay: I depleted ours. Jeannie: Still, it was an incredible risk.

It is important that they mention the force field and that McKay had depleted it here because although McKay seems like he would be reluctant to give up his own life to save others, we know based on Hide and Seek (S01E03) that when he is called upon to do the right thing, when it is within his power to save others, McKay is going to take the leap and try to do the best he can every time. McKay had been willing to sacrifice his life not to save the universe but the save the people he was starting to get to know on Atlantis, the foremost among them the man he wanted to get to know a lot better.

And Jeannie explicitly mentions what an incredible risk this McKay had taken jumping blindly into an alternate universe but the risk McKay had taken walking into the darkness with a Naqadah generator had not been a small one either. They are also reminding the audience of the existence of the force field in preparation for Irresponsible (S03E13) where it becomes an actual plot point. McKay mentions that he had depleted theirs as though he was reluctantly admitting to doing something bad, something he had not supposed to do, even though what he had done was very heroic. To McKay he had depleted the force field because he had been unable to think of anything better whereas to Sheppard, realizing that McKay had been ready and willing to sacrifice his life to save him had changed everything. Sheppard had seen McKay as a Big Damn Hero ever since that day.

Rod: Well, it was Sheppard's idea. We decided it might allow one of us to cross the bridge you'd created and bring the problem to your attention.

Sheppard's smug, self-satisfied smile as Rod mentions his counterpart from the other universe is not dissimilar to the way the other McKay had smiled when he had first appeared, seeming all too pleased with himself for having been able to pull what seemed like a very dangerous stunt. Not only is Sheppard happy to hear from this man who looks and sounds like McKay that he had a brilliant idea that might save the day, he also really likes to be able to come up with ideas to help McKay, he does not want McKay to have to shoulder the responsibility of saving them alone.

But even more than that, Sheppard is pleased as a punch to hear praise from McKay. McKay willingly giving credit to Sheppard for having a good idea makes him feel fulfilled. And it is not that he never hears McKay praise his ideas in their own universe, McKay is frequently willing to give Sheppard credit for his ideas and to call him clever when the situation calls for it. Even if he might not always remember to say it, McKay appreciates Sheppard and his ideas, and we have seen many times that McKay would not be able to do half the things he does if Sheppard was not there to feed him ideas. The two of them work well together, and it pleases Sheppard to be acknowledged, even if he is not even the Sheppard the other McKay is talking about. But hearing McKay essentially talking about him to other people and not even knowing he is listening in and still being willing to give him the credit makes him feel so good Sheppard can barely contain it, he can barely control his face.

And note how he has completely forgotten that Weir is even there, totally engrossed in watching what is unfolding beneath him. The faces he is making here are not the kinds of faces he would usually let anyone see him make because he is revealing much too much of his authentic self. But we have seen how easily both Sheppard and McKay fall into a world of their own where others simply do not exist. From his face, it is obvious that Sheppard is right there in that world, McKay the full extent of his awareness. And here, as Sheppard bites down on his lip, he is not doing it to quell a negative emotion which is what he is doing most of the times that we see him chew on his lip. Here, he is doing it because he is feeling pleasure. It is rarely if ever that we have seen Sheppard this genuinely happy and content and being so unguarded about it.

Rod: There was very little time, and, well, there seemed to be no other way. We drew straws. McKay: You lost. Rod: I won!

Rod explains first how he had appeared here and then why it had been him instead of Sheppard, the two of them having come up with the plan together. He says that they had very little time and could think of no other way that had caused them to draw straws, and we may recall that a similar thing had happened in Sheppard's mental probe in Progeny (S03E05). The situation had been similar: they had been running out of time and it was a life or death situation, and so as Sheppard had offered to stay back to arm the self-destruct mechanism, McKay had offered -- had insisted -- that they flip coins for which one of them should stay back. Sheppard had told McKay that he appreciated the offer but told him to get going.

And while the parallel to what had happened in the other universe is obvious, we have to account for the fact that it had not actually been McKay who had offered to flip coins for it, it had been Sheppard's idea of McKay. The McKay in his mental probe seemed created partially out of what Sheppard expected him to behave like and partially how he wished McKay behaved like, and this, McKay making the offer so that Sheppard could turn him down seemed designed to alleviate Sheppard's feelings of guilt for having to give up his life for McKay only to leave the man mourning for his passing, designed to ascertain that McKay would think of him fondly rather than with bitterness for the rest of his life. Sheppard knew that he had hurt McKay deeply in The Siege (S01E20) when he had taken it upon himself to sacrifice his life so that McKay might live without consulting him, and even though he was never not going to try to save McKay, he wished that through this action he might make the aftermath easier for him. He wanted McKay to be able to live with the decision he was forced to make because that was the whole point of staying back and giving up his life -- so that McKay might live.

Now, we do not know whether the McKay of the real world would have made the same gesture as the McKay of Sheppard's mental probe. As seen with the depleting of the Ancient personal force field, McKay has been more than willing to risk his life to save Sheppard. In Aurora (S02E09), McKay told Ronon that he and Sheppard had gotten into "the habit" of saving each other's lives and that it was his turn, as though either of them actually kept count of had saved whom the most. Loving each other, trying to save the other man seems to come reflexively to both of them. Of course we have also seen McKay portrayed as a scaredy-cat, and even here it is implied by McKay himself that that is not something that he would do, that he would not argue with Sheppard about which one of them would get to sacrifice their life for the other. But it is possible that McKay would not have offered to flip coins for it but would have tried his damnedest to get Sheppard off the planet. Sheppard believes that McKay is able to work absolute miracles under the threat of impending death, and death was never more impending that when the timer was counting down their demise.

But we should also note that we have actually seen McKay prepared to draw straws before to determine who should take on a dangerous mission back in The Siege (S01E19). When he had been on the LaGrange Point satellite with Peter Grodin and the pilot Miller (no relation, probably), one of them needed to make a space walk without a tether to fix something on the outside of the satellite and none of them were too keen to go. They had the following conversation:

McKay: OK, so who goes? Grodin: We could draw straws. McKay: Oh, brilliant! OK, Miller, break out the straws! Grodin: It doesn't have to be straws! Miller: We could do rock, paper, scissors.

They had ended up doing rock, paper, scissors instead but finding out that it does not work with three people, they had come back to the straws, drawing pieces of pencil instead since they had forgotten to bring their straws. McKay pulls the shortest piece and agrees, reluctantly, to go. However, McKay's reluctance to go had nothing to do with him not having been willing to give up his own life if the situation has called for it, and certainly not that he would not have been willing to risk his life for Sheppard -- Sheppard is a big reason for why he had left for the mission in the first place, to save him and everyone in Atlantis.

But McKay had no desire to throw away his life at that time because he and Sheppard had been together and desperately in love with each other, and McKay had only just gotten off the comm link to Sheppard because the two of them missed each other so damn much. Sheppard agrees to do the space walk for Sheppard but it is also for Sheppard that he was reluctant to volunteer for it. He suspects quite correctly that Sheppard would not want him to do something so dangerous just like he would not enjoy hearing about Sheppard having needlessly risked his life. While willing to risk their lives for each other, we had seen a marked aversion to risking their lives for other people around this time, living embodiments of the Bertolt Brecht poem where he confesses to his lover that now that he has fallen in love and his lover has told him that he needs him, he fears that every drop of rain might kill him.

And once more this is intended as a comedic scene. McKay is such a scaredy-cat, such a wuss, that of course he would try to weasel out of doing something dangerous. And this other cooler, edgier McKay in his leather jacket and thigh holster is a swash-buckling hero who, in contrast to our McKay, does not run from danger but runs toward it. And in this we are again meant to see the similarity between Rod and Sheppard, especially in light of what we had witnessed Sheppard prepared to do in Progeny and The Real World (S03E06). Saving others is a no-brainer for Sheppard too -- especially if we do not acknowledge the part that McKay plays in motivating him to make these decisions again and again.

However, let us note that McKay's "You lost!" is not necessarily intended as a confession that he personally would not have wanted to go. The last time that McKay had lost, he had been the one to go and so it is a natural assumption for him to make that who ever had come through had been the loser regardless of their personal feelings on the matter, of whether they had wanted to go or not. Also, the fact that Sheppard and McKay had drawn straws and McKay had gotten the longer piece takes us back to the question that Sheppard seemed to be wondering about earlier, as his eyes swept across McKay's junk in the observation room, of whether this McKay is packing the same as his own McKay. Sheppard has a shorter straw than McKay but we do not know which of them has the shorter straw in their universe. Where for McKay himself the length of the straw or the size of the boat is all the same, we know that Sheppard prefers the longer straw.

But just by agreeing to draw straws about attempting a dangerous and unprecedented jaunt into another universe tells us that the Sheppard of the other world who resembles McKay had also been a brave little toaster. It could be that the light we see in McKay's eyes as he says "You lost!" is him remembering that time he had lost the draw and how he had been able to gather his courage and go through with the dangerous mission. He might also have been reminded of Grodin, someone that seemed to know him much better than a simple co-worker has any business knowing him.

Rod: What, the prospect of saving an entire universe? No-brainer. McKay: Oh, sure. Jeannie: I can't begin to say how sorry we are. Rod: Yes, well, you could start by shutting down the experiment? McKay: Already done. And after hearing what you've told me, I see no reason why we'd start it back up again. Rod: Great. Then my work here is done. Mission accomplished.

Rod calls undertaking the dangerous one-way mission a no-brainer, meaning that he had not even needed to think about it twice, but the way he points at his head at this puts a self-deprecating spin on the words. Later on he tells Sheppard that the Sheppard of his world is extremely intelligent and reminds him of this fact all the time -- not unlike the McKay of our world -- being able to demonstrate that he is the smartest man in the room a building block of McKay's ego that is a direct result of his wounded self-image. Rod too may feel like he is not as intelligent as the Sheppard of his world when, like the characters we know, the two of them just seem to have different but complementary forms of intelligence and they most certainly do their best work together -- or with Sheppard under McKay.

Jeannie tells Rod that they are sorry in "that cute Canadian way," seeming sincere about it. Later on McKay tells Sheppard that he has a hard time apologizing and that he thinks that it is because he is so seldom wrong -- and it seems like here it does not even occur for him to apologize because he had not intentionally done anything wrong. McKay had been careful and diligent in setting up the experiment and making sure it was safe for the city and everyone living there before launching it, and them having chosen at random a universe that was inhabited out of the myriad possibilities was not really on him. Carter had even agreed with him that it was a risk well worth taking. He might feel sorry for them that their universe was being torn apart but he saw no reason to be sorry for his own actions here, so it does not even occur for him to apologize. However, he is willing to put a permanent kibosh on the experiment. Limitless energy was important but it was not worth human lives even in another universe for him.

The way Rod says "mission accomplished" is further indication that he is a military man. Given that he also gives the thumbs up, this is reminiscent of the famous George W. Bush speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 in connection with the Iraq war. McKay making the reference may indicate that he is not actually Canadian in his universe but is from the US -- possibly making Sheppard the Canadian, given how their roles have been reversed. This may also imply that one of the differences between the worlds is that Bush was the president in theirs whereas Henry Hayes was the president of the SG main universe, implying that this McKay had actually come over from our world, the world of the viewer.

Another famous "Mission accomplished" scene is at the climax of Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) when Rambo shoots up all the computers at the mission control room and sinks his knife into the table next to the head of the bureaucrat responsible for his recent harrowing experiences, holding him responsible.

This may suggest that McKay, who seems to be a SERE trained soldier just like Sheppard is in our world, had been prepared to do some damage here if these people did not agree to stop the experiment willingly, and hence he may not even have been telling the truth about him and Sheppard drawing straws about it in his world. Sending the one man army on a one-way mission to take care of the problem on the other end suggests that he was ready to do anything to save his world on the other side, and it is fortunate all around that it now seems like he does not have to go all Rambo on them. This McKay is a dangerous man who had agreed to spar with Ronon later implying that he spars with Ronon in his own world regularly, so he is clearly capable of doing a lot of damage.

McKay: Uh, well, yes, but how did you plan on getting, you know, back -- I mean, to your own universe? Rod: The matter bridge you created is unidirectional. Jeannie: But that means... Rod: Yes. Yes, it does. Jeannie: Huh.

Having started workshopping the problem in his mind, McKay lands on a potential hiccough -- he can think of no way that they could get this guy back to his world even if they had now managed to save his entire universe by halting their experiment. Rod confesses that he knew it was a one-way trip going in, this having been a part of what he had agreed to do when they had been drawing the straws -- assuming something like that had ever happened and Rod had not just made an executive decision to spare his Sheppard's life. And while they do not spell it out here for the audience, the inference is obviously there for everyone to make.

To read something else to the metaphor of the bridge between universes, in the Charles Eisenstein sense of every person being a universe unto themselves, the unidirectional matter bridge here might also refer to confessions of love and affection -- things that matter. As discussed, it is likely that McKay has told Sheppard that he loves him by this time but he has also resigned to never hearing it back from him. Sheppard seems incapable of expressing honest and genuine emotions without a sarcastic distance, hence opting for some variation of Han Solo's "I know" in response to McKay's seemingly one-sided expressions of affection. But as they discover here, even though it is going to deplete all of their energy (and McKay comes close to dying), it is not impossible for matter to travel the opposite way and it is not impossible for Sheppard to let McKay know how he feels -- even if it takes extreme circumstances in Tao of Rodney (S03E14) for him to do it. McKay says "But that means..." without completing the sentence here because what he says does not just mean one thing. There are levels to the story here.

In the aforementioned Rambo film, the final scene is between his former commanding officer Colonel Trautman and him, the Colonel asks Rambo how he will live from now on. And Rambo ends the film with a cool one-liner, telling him "Day by day" as he walks away. That seems to be Rod's sentiment also. He had come to this world with the full knowledge that he would never be able to go back home, and now he was going to have to get used to his new world moment by moment.

The computer had alerted them to the presence of a "foreign object" in the containment field, and we should note here regarding the shape of the containment field that "rectal foreign bodies" are so common as to have their own medical category of clinical relevance, being that people are fond of inserting things through their anus for the purposes of play and pleasure, the incident rate being much higher in men than in women for obvious reasons. "Foreign object insertion" is also a whole category of gay porn. Since penetrative sex is predominately seen as heterosexual intercourse, the insertion of the male phallus can also be seen in the context of foreign objects in the rectum, making the appearance of a man with the visage of McKay in the ring of vertical folds symbolic of sex between him and another man. The fact that the character who appears seems to have smashed Sheppard and McKay's characters together is only icing on the cake.

Regardless, the foreign object that they discover in the containment field appears to be McKay -- or someone looking like McKay -- and he too appears in a glowing green force field, making him "green" just like everything else in McKay's check-list, signaling that he too is ready to go. What we can tell about this McKay immediately is that he is dressed in black -- in a black leather jacket in particular, which we had seen Sheppard wearing in Sateda (S03E04) and Common Ground (S03E08). He is further wearing combat pants, a thigh holster with a pistol, a loosely tied pair of combat boots and that his hair is longer and messier than that of the McKay that we had only just seen. He also calls Radek by his given name where McKay had called him Zelenka previously when talking about him to Jeannie -- even though we had heard Jeannie herself call him Radek, implying that McKay had told her his full name at some point. It is the little differences between them that are significant.

Because McKay is holding his hand to his forehead and is bent on one knee, he also resembles the popular fashioning of the statue called The Thinker (1904) by gay or at the very least bisexual sculptor Auguste Rodin whose life had inspired the silent film Michael (1924), being one of the first films with a gay love affair that I had discussed in connection with Michael (S02E18). Rodin had started the project as a part of a larger commission called The Gates of Hell that had been inspired by Dante's The Divine Comedy, also discussed in connection with Inferno (S02E19).

But men are frequently found bent on one knee in the iconography of western culture in two other contexts: as knights bending the knee to their liege and as men who are proposing to someone's hand in marriage. Because his other hand is hanging down in a fist, his pose also somewhat resembles the "superhero landing" pose, usually observed from the front and not from the side. And Zelenka's question to him of what he is doing calls attention to this posture, invites us to ask what he actually is doing in the containment field.

Rod: I need to speak to whoever's in charge of this project. Zelenka: But... that's you. Rod: Well, then... I guess I need to speak to me.

Something that should alert us to the fact that this is not the McKay we know is that he has to confirm he is speaking with Zelenka as though there was a possibility that he was someone else. This McKay seems only too happy to discover that Zelenka is still Zelenka but he also seems to make the inference that Zelenka is not the one who is in charge of the science corps because Zelenka is not in charge of it in his world.

This McKay sounds pleasantly surprised when Zelenka informs him that he is in charge of the project himself (and surely he should know that already, all of them likely concerned that McKay has hit his head or is suffering from some kind of amnesia caused by what ever had taken him into the containment field -- all of them have stopped asking about McKay's motivations for doing things a long time ago). In his world, Sheppard is the chief scientist of Atlantis and likely McKay had been expecting to talk to him because in his world, if someone had been running an experiment of this kind if would have been Sheppard. Because the episodes seem to have been reshuffled and this is not the first time we see the leather jacket, having seen Sheppard wearing one before, it is actually much more obvious to the viewer that even though this person looks like McKay, he actually is the Sheppard of his universe. In this alternate universe, their roles have been reversed.

For all intents and purposes this man is Sheppard even though he has McKay's body and his name, their universe being something of an Opposite World to the main universe of the show. And his smug smile here as he discovers that he is the smarty-pants here is not dissimilar to Sheppard's own smug smile later when he discovers that the Sheppard of the other world is a smarty-pants, this McKay sounding all too pleased now to discover that the McKay of this world is the one in charge of the project. He seems unable to wait to get the chance to talk to himself -- and he is further enjoying the pun he gets to make here, seeming also to share Sheppard's sense of humour. But this is something that we need to keep in mind as we delve further into the episode: even though this man has all the appearance of McKay, he is actually Sheppard. This man is McKay who had lived Sheppard's life. Despite what everyone seems to think, this man is not Meredith Rodney McKay.

McKay: What is this? Sheppard: Hey, Meredith!

For all the McKay-looking man may be excited to meet McKay, he is not the only one eagerly waiting to meet him. Sheppard is also more than keen to meet McKay, in some ways feeling like he is meeting McKay for the first time because a part of him feels like he had never known McKay at all, that the man he had been sharing his bed and his life with was a complete stranger to him. In this scene Sheppard is acting out because he is feeling hurt and betrayed for not having known the most fundamental thing about his lover, which is the name his father had given him. It is crucial to understand where Sheppard is coming from here. He is not gleeful because he has discovered something amusing, he is injured.

The scene starts with McKay walking into the commissary to the sound of raucous laughter coming from inside, and we hear especially the laughter of Sheppard -- Sheppard laughing in a way that we have never heard him laugh before, like his sides were splitting. This has been described by many as sounding like a donkey braying, and it is not entirely off the mark. But the thing to note about this is that it is not a visceral belly laugh, this is very much a fake laugh. This is not the way Sheppard sounds when he is happy and honestly tickled by something, this is Sheppard pretending to find something hilarious, high-larious. The actor is not acting like the character is finding something hilarious and just failing in acting like it, the actor is acting like the character is pretending to find something hilarious and being very good at his job. There is no part of finding out that his lover has been hiding a secret from him that Sheppard finds funny. There is nothing about the man he thought he knew better than anyone in the world having a whole other life before the two of them had met that tickles his funny bone.

The laughter we hear from Ronon and Teyla welcoming McKay into the commissary, those may well be expressions of genuine amusement. McKay is a member of their team that they like well enough but who inarguably has some idiosyncrasies that make him an easy target for ridicule, and they are taking the chance to laugh at someone they consider a friend because he tends to take himself too seriously, and they are glad to see him brought down a peg or two. Their laughter is not mean-spirited, even though the bunch of them are behaving like school bullies here, their laughter is coming from a place of fondness. They like McKay, and hence it is amusing to learn things they had not known about him. It is amusing to hear that he too had once been a child who had done embarrassing things, it humanizes him to them when as someone who is vastly superior to them in both intelligence and knowledge, McKay frequently makes them feel foolish without even intending to. Discovering new sides to someone familiar can be endearing, and that is what this experience is for Ronon and Teyla, that is what explains their behaviour here.

Not so for Sheppard. For Sheppard this is something altogether different. Sheppard is hurt and angry, and he wants McKay to hurt in return. For Sheppard, this is a performance and his intention is to pay him in kind. Both Sheppard and Jeannie love McKay and feel betrayed by him, united in their pursuit of payback, albeit for different reasons. But it is because they both love him so much that they feel so hurt by him.

But let us start from the beginning. McKay walks into the commissary wearing the same uniform as he had worn in the previous scene where he had retired for the night, and we do not actually know how much time has passed between the two scenes. Jeannie is wearing different clothes from when they launched the project and she told him she was going to her quarters, which suggests that this is the following morning and she had been able to receive her effects from the Daedalus, having at least showered and changed in the interim, although it could still be the same night as before -- assuming it had even been night time when they had launched the experiment since McKay and Jeannie had been coming from a different timezone and may just have been exhausted from the journey. But Rod tells them that had detected an anomaly above their city twenty hours ago so this could also be the following evening, and it seems like neither Jeannie nor Sheppard have seen McKay all day -- he had possibly been so exhausted that he had simply slept around the clock.

But although Sheppard had clearly really wanted to know more about this "Mer" business that she had let slip upon their initial meeting, he may not have accosted her immediately upon her coming out of the lab, so the reasonable assumption is that this is mid-morning or afternoon of the following day with both Jeannie and McKay having turned in very early the previous night, and that Sheppard had been able to find Jeannie and show her around the city because he -- and, it seems, Jeannie -- wake up much earlier than McKay does. It is all but confirmed later on that McKay sleeps in much later than Sheppard, and regardless of whether the two of them had been sleeping together -- McKay may or may not have insisted that Sheppard stays in his old quarters for the duration of his sister's visit -- it seems to be a rare occurrence for the two of them to ever have breakfast together. We see them have or mention having lunch and dinner together frequently enough to make it a common occurrence but never breakfast, and we get no explanation as to why they do not have (and probably cannot be seen having) breakfast together, not ever.

Because McKay's entire team appear to be behaving like school bullies in this episode and there is the appearance that they are frequently in the commissary without him, as though they were purposefully disinviting him from eating with them, this creates a sense of McKay being somehow ostracized by everyone in Atlantis. This is of course not true, even if we had seen him eating all by his lonesome also in the aforementioned Michael, when Sheppard was avoiding McKay's company for a whole other reason. But while we see other people eating together without inviting McKay to eat with them several times in this episode -- even though they actually welcome him in every single time, even here Sheppard's words "Hey, Meredith!" is an invitation to join them because he cannot not invite McKay in with open arms when ever he lays eyes on the guy -- that is not something that can be generalized as a common occurrence for McKay, this being the truth of his life in Atlantis. In spite of his occasionally abrasive personality McKay has not only made friends during his time there, he has found something of a family in these people and many people appreciate his company. He is not some bullied egghead who the cool kids make fun of on the regular and avoid when ever they can, the appearance of that happening here has been purposefully orchestrated by Sheppard for a reason.

Sheppard wants to teach McKay a lesson about keeping things from him on purpose here. Sheppard is out for blood and he is not above using underhanded tactics. Sheppard is the epitome of "hurt people hurt people," hence going directly for McKay's jugular with his greeting of his lover. Sheppard welcomes him in with a "Hey, Meredith!" because that is the thing that McKay had kept from him when that is, quite literally, the first thing that he should have told him. It should have been the first thing he learned about McKay when they had first met. Sheppard feels like he does not even know him, like their entire relationship and over two years of knowing each other was based on a lie and the man he had learned to know and love was a complete stranger to him. This is a big deal to him. He cannot let this go until he has had a chance to feel his feelings and to say his piece about it, and him basically humiliating McKay in public about his name is just the beginning of what he intends to do to him.

One thing to note here is that Meredith is a "girl's name" only in the North American context, and so most of the internationals in the expedition -- not to mention the two resident aliens -- do not and would not get what is so amusing about it. If McKay's real name is Meredith, that basically means nothing to Ronon and Teyla. If the translation algorithm is able to translate the name to them, discovering that their team mate is actually called "Lord of the Sea" is not precisely a target for mockery for them, and if anything Ronon at the very least might think that it is a cool warrior name. Meredith is only amusing for people who think, just like McKay and probably the kids he had gone to school with as a child, that it is a "girl's name," something that McKay has likely -- just like The Boy Named Sue -- suffered from his entire life. McKay is humiliated to learn that his sister has told everyone he knows and works with his most shameful secret, when most people in the city would think nothing of it, and more than one person there probably have their own hang-ups about their own names.

But his sister had basically deadnamed him, McKay having shed his identity as Meredith McKay a long time ago and he felt like he was not that person anymore, he had not been that person for a long time, and he certainly was never Meredith McKay when he was getting to know Sheppard. He did not feel like he had been lying or omitting anything from Sheppard because that is not who he was. As an adult professional he was Rodney McKay, M. Rodney McKay at worst, and that is how he wanted to present himself to others. That is who he had chosen to be, and he would have wanted others to respect his choice and his gender presentation. There are a lot of parallels in this to having a drag name, and his sister having told everybody his government name when he was presenting in full drag. It was rude and in bad taste, even if it was the name he had grown up with and she had known him as his entire life. He did not want to be called that, and he most of all did not want his lover calling him that in front of everybody he knows. This was like a nightmare come true for him. But it was about to get so much worse.

The tone in which Sheppard speaks the name makes it seem like he is making fun of McKay particularly for having a girly girl name, for being effeminate -- instead of just being gleeful that he had learned something new about his favourite person, he had learned something about McKay that he had purposefully tried to keep from him. It is obvious that Sheppard is hurt by the seeming betrayal, of McKay not having trusted him with his secret. But the onus of Sheppard's mockery is not actually in the gendered aspect of the name because someone who loves Johnny Cash as much as he does would get it, would be sympathetic to the kind of experiences he must have had as a child.

Furthermore, Sheppard loves cock, like a lot. As a bottom who loves this man's very manly cock in particular, he knows that he is not in a position to be casting aspersions on anyone's masculinity. And what is more, Sheppard had likely been close to crying himself to sleep while his teddy bear was away for the past several weeks, knowing the kinds of self-confessed abandonment issues he has -- and Sheppard having clung to Ronon and Teyla for company when he is bereft of McKay explains why he has suddenly taken up hanging around them all the time, and we see this pattern repeat later in Sunday (S03E17). But we should not forget his implied history of having undergone some form of conversion therapy in his youth during which his own masculinity had probably been thoroughly questioned. Sheppard is not in a position to call anyone a great big girl, let alone the man that he loves. But the fact that he loves McKay has everything to do with what is happening here.

McKay: Oh, wonderful. Jeannie: John here was kind enough to show me around, offer me a warm meal, and introduce me to some of your friends. McKay: What have you told them? Sheppard: We weren't talking about you. McKay: Oh, you weren't?

McKay sounds defeated as it becomes apparent to him what his sister has done. It is bad enough that she would have told what he considers one of his most shameful secrets to everyone he works with but Sheppard is the one person whose opinion of him matters the most to McKay. McKay had looked up to Sheppard long before they had become intimate with each other, and we have seen McKay change and grow to make himself feel worthy of Sheppard's love and attention. To find him here now, seemingly laughing at him, is devastating, and this would be true regardless of whether they were in a relationship.

We do not know what events had led them to this place precisely, whether McKay had seen Sheppard before retiring for the night, whether they had slept together and Sheppard had merely woken up earlier, or whether, which is more likely, they had agreed that they would sleep in separate rooms for the duration of Jeannie's visit even in spite of having been separated for many weeks, for longer than they had ever been apart since meeting each other. Both of them must long for the other, the inability to reconnect (and the simple fact of not having sex) making them frustrated and irascible, and we should not let Sheppard's generally playful demeanour here fool us into thinking that he is not mad as hell.

Jeannie tells McKay that John -- using his given name -- had been kind enough to do three things: show him around, offer him food and too introduce her to his friends. And the thing to note here is that Sheppard is doing to Jeannie essentially what Kaleb had done to McKay in offering to take him in for dinner -- that is what in laws are supposed to do when they are meeting family for the first time. They are also purposefully calling this "a warm meal" to obscure what time of day this is meant to be, whether it is morning, day, or night.

But the first thing she mentions is that Sheppard had offered to show her around, and this means that it had been Sheppard who had sought her out. Sheppard had been dying to know what she had meant with the "Mer" business and he was going to get it out of her by any means necessary, and he was not above using his practiced charm in getting what he wants. He needed to know not only this but everything else that she might know about McKay. He wants to know things about McKay that McKay is not going to tell him himself because he wants to know all of McKay. McKay is the love of his life and he wants to know everything about him so that he might love him even more. Sheppard had been under the impression that he already knew most things about him but it turns out there were a lot of things McKay had not told him, and he was going to pump her for the information using charm and bribery. Seeking Jeannie out and offering to show her around had nothing to do with him being attracted to her or wanting to pursue her (or to pretend to pursue her just to fuck with McKay), or what ever the mainstream audience might think -- even in spite of Jeannie laying her hand affectionately on his upper arm -- his whole motivation was McKay, and getting to know him better.

And we get confirmation of this fact in that, even in spite of Teyla's objections, it seems like their whole topic of conversation here has been McKay and his antics, they have been pumping Jeannie for stories of McKay's childhood. Sheppard was using her to get intel on his man and it seems like Jeannie has no idea what his agenda was. McKay is Sheppard's favourite topic of conversation even generally, when ever he is not with McKay he likes to talk about him with other people and cannot keep from mentioning his name. The only thing he and Jeannie have in common is McKay, and so it is natural for their conversation to focus on the topic. And Sheppard's motivation for digging for this information is not malicious, he is not looking for kompromat on his man, something that he can hold against him and use to make fun of him later. He is looking only to know him better. It is precisely because McKay so obviously had not wanted him to know that he is dying to know more.

McKay asks her what she has told them with a tight voice, knowing that there are all manner of things that he would wish to keep his friends and colleagues and most importantly his lover from knowing. It seems like Jeannie does not quite know how to answer him, possibly only now realizing precisely what she has been regaling McKay's friends with. Sheppard is so charming that she probably did not even realize that he was probing her for information and was working her over, making her trust him and creating atmosphere of camaraderie. Sheppard had even introduced her to McKay's friends -- and her calling them "some of your friends" means that Sheppard must have introduced them as McKay's friends to her -- and it is easy to get carried away in good company when everyone seems to be having fun.

Jeannie does not hate her brother even though she is miffed about how he had treated her, but under normal circumstances she probably would not have revealed such intimate details about him to virtual strangers. Jeannie is the younger sibling so it is possible that McKay has embarrassing stories to tell about her too, siblings often living in a balance of terror with each other, both siblings having material to hold over the other -- just like lovers do. That is why some things are kept private between lovers and why siblings adhere to a code of compromise. All of this suggests that Sheppard had manipulated her into talking about McKay and revealing things about him that she would normally not have done just because he wanted to know. She looks confused and at a loss of words trying to explain herself to him. Relevant as comes to Rod is also the fact that by keeping the focus of the conversation on McKay, Sheppard had been able to keep it off himself so that Jeannie had been given the impression like she was getting to know Sheppard while learning nothing about him.

Sheppard, on the other hand, is not at a loss of words but tells McKay a bold-faced lie that they had not been talking about him, and he says this in an exaggeratedly shifty manner which is actually meant to convince him of the opposite -- obviously they had been talking about him. But the way Sheppard says it, his tone and body-language are precisely like a "mean girl" at a high school cafeteria who had just been talking behind someone's back and not being too subtle about it because the whole point was to let the target of gossip know that they were being talked about. We have seen Sheppard and McKay both act like the "mean girls" of Atlantis before, even though Sheppard has a clearly meaner streak than McKay does -- noted especially in Critical Mass (S02E13) when he leaned over to comment about Zelenka to McKay in Weir's office like the two of them were school bullies. And this, Sheppard acting like a teenage girl, gives him a definite effeminate air, like he is purposefully intimating himself as her girlfriend. Likely he is doing this because he does not want Jeannie to think that he is interested in her romantically, which is something a woman might easily do if a man sought her company and gave her focused attention, both of which Sheppard was doing on account of wanting to know more about McKay.

But he wanted to make her feel safe around him, and so hamming up the gay best friend act that it seems Weir would like him to play with her seems like the safest course of action. Jeannie never finds out that her brother is gay on the show, but it is more than possible that she thinks that Sheppard is -- this being an impression that he had given her on purpose. Later on, we find that Jeannie has allowed Sheppard to accompany her to her room alone together, which is not something that a married woman would do unless she knew she was perfectly safe. And it is a fine line to walk, implying that he is gay but that her brother is not, and that they are not in a relationship with each other because for some reason it is important for McKay to keep his sister thinking that he is straight. Sheppard is also still more than likely hurt about McKay having called him Kirk and so behaving like he was the opposite of Kirk, safe for women to be around because he has no interest in them, is also motivated by him feeling slighted by McKay. If McKay wanted him to be Kirk, he was going to be the gay porn parody version -- this too being a whole genre of gay porn.

It seems obvious that Sheppard is fibbing with his shifty eyes and twiddling his thumbs on the table like a caricature but McKay grasps at the straw that maybe he was telling the truth and they had all been laughing about something entirely different, and partially this is also because he simply cannot fathom of Sheppard lying to him. But of course he is never that lucky.

Teyla: Uh, no. We were discussing many things. Sheppard: Now, when the issue of bedwetting happened to come up, she may have mentioned something about your childhood. McKay: That is not true! Dex: Relax. We all have embarrassing childhood stories. Sheppard: Of course we do.

The way they are arranged around the table is actually rather interesting. It seems like there is only one tray of food, which Jeannie gestures indicating that it was hers, and it is the wrong way around on the table. This suggests that she had originally been having breakfast or dinner alone with Sheppard sitting opposite from him and had only moved to sit on his side of the table when Teyla and Ronon had joined them. It is possible she had felt safer sitting next to Sheppard than next to Ronon, whether or not she was hip to the fact that he was a space alien. However, the two of them are not sitting particularly close to each other, Jeannie keeping a respectable distance likely in consideration to her husband, also not wanting Sheppard to get the wrong impression of why she enjoys his company. Sheppard had more than likely purposefully intended to make her feel at home, creating a sense of familiarity for her.

Teyla attempts to let McKay off the hook, having a shred of empathy for him, and while she may not be entirely lying -- she may have tried to talk about other things -- it seems like Sheppard had probably tried very hard to keep the topic in the things that mattered to him, being McKay. She takes Sheppard's lead here and tries to assuage McKay that they had not been making fun of him because even though they clearly had been talking about him and having fun at his expense, it had never been malicious in intent to her. She had enjoyed their conversation because she likes McKay, and also enjoys learning about sides of him that she had never known. But where Teyla's intentions may have been good, it is clear that both her and Ronon had been roped in by Sheppard into what ever stage play he had been arranging here.

Sheppard tries to come across as casual as he mentions, as though off-handedly, that they might have been talking about him and bedwetting just before he had walked in, but there is nothing casual about him bringing it up. It is likely that they really had talked about McKay's childhood for most of the time they had spent together because that is what Sheppard was most curious about and that is something that she would know better than anyone. Sheppard wanted the inside scoop and given Sheppard's both natural and augmented capacity to convince other people to see things his way, he had more than likely found it easy to direct the conversation into topics that interested him, being that McKay was their only point of connection anyway.

They do not mention the age in which McKay would still have been wetting his bed -- bedwetting being something that most children do at some point before they are potty-trained, which is perfectly natural. The way he says it suggests that he had been older than expected when he had wet his bed -- whether regularly or just once -- but once more there may be a darker undercurrent to a scene that is meant to come across as comical. Bedwetting or nocturnal enuresis is a trauma response, one of a common indicator of child abuse -- especially in children who have suffered sexual abuse. Wetting the bed past the age of 7 can indicate that a child is under tremendous stress, possibly that they are made to feel overwhelming fear that they have no tools to deal with.

We have heard so many disturbing details about McKay's childhood that it makes sense for him to have suffered of enuresis, and it is anything but amusing. It is not something that should be made fun of, definitely not used in public humiliation and most assuredly not by one's partner. Hearing Sheppard talk about it in the tone that he does is harrowing to McKay, and he sounds injured as he tries to deny it. Only, Sheppard isn't buying it. His whole contention here is that McKay had basically lied to him throughout their entire relationship and he is not letting that go any time soon. McKay may deny it all he wants but Sheppard does not believe him on this, trusting what ever Jeannie had told them about it more. And Sheppard is curiously interested to know. He wants to know everything about McKay. He wants to know his deepest darkest secrets and he thinks that he is entitled because he had shared his secrets with McKay. They were not meant to have any secrets between them, and so he was willing to go through his sister to get at them because as far as he was concerned, McKay had reneged on their deal.

Ronon is likely none the wiser to the undercurrents of the conversation, telling McKay to relax because it is not such a big deal for real but at the same time being amused by the anecdotes he has been listening because he thinks that McKay can be a little full of himself and could use being brought down a notch or two. But Sheppard agreeing with Ronon as he admits that everyone has embarrassing childhood stories -- which is true, children are literally in a developmental stage and there had been a time in everyone's life when they did not know how to do anything but crap themselves and cry about it, Sheppard and Ronon included -- but Sheppard's intent here is not to actually be sympathetic toward McKay. Sheppard does not sound sincere because he is not being sincere about being able to sympathize with someone having their most embarrassing moments splayed out for everyone to see.

Sheppard knows that everyone has embarrassing childhood stories and he knows that some of them even have horrendous childhood stories, himself very much included, but his whole contention with McKay here is that he had told McKay his embarrassing stories and he thought he knew McKay's in return, but it turned out that McKay had not shown him his when he had shown McKay his, and he felt betrayed. Never in the history of human affairs had anyone felt as betrayed as Sheppard does here, which is why he is being an asshole for real. Both Teyla and Ronon's teasing of McKay may be good-natured but Sheppard's is not. It is vicious. And it is because Sheppard loves him so much that he was so hurt that he would lash out this way. And even so, listen to how gently he speaks the word "childhood," clearly thinking about McKay as a child. For all that he might feel slighted and unable to deal with his emotions, Sheppard loves him so damn much.

Dex: There was one time the school bullies made me eat lunch with my underwear on my head. Oh, wait, that was you. McKay: Oh, hardy har-har. And this is revenge for what, exactly? Jeannie: You don't even know, do you?

Ronon offers McKay false sympathy only to pull the rug from underneath him, which does seem mean-spirited but that is probably coming from a place of fondness. Ronon had called McKay his family recently, McKay had saved his life not long ago and the two of them have been getting along very well -- there is no reason for Ronon to mock McKay other than as a form of social bonding. While Ronon had probably not been bullied at school, he too must have embarrassing childhood stories, made all the more tragic by the fact that he thinks that there is no one alive to tell those stories about him. He wishes he had a sister like that to make fun of him, and it is because McKay has become like a little brother to him (while actually being older) that he feels close enough to rib on him like this.

McKay is not the most socially aware person, and so he does not detect many of the undercurrents in social situations. He had clearly held on to hope that maybe Ronon was being candid with him, and he seems almost comically hopeful when Ronon starts his story because finding in Ronon someone he might relate to, someone who might understand him and share his experiences would have meant a lot to him. Ronon is so cool and capable that if he had experienced similarly embarrassing things as a child and still come out like this, maybe there was hope for him yet. McKay gets his hopes up only to have them quickly dashed to pieces, feeling even worse about it all now that Ronon's joshing had revealed that his sister had told that story about him too, that they had apparently gone through the greatest hits of his humiliation as a child.

We learn here that McKay had been bullied at school -- possibly on account of his name but possibly also for his sexual orientation because McKay seems like the kind of gay man that had "always known" -- and being made to eat lunch with his underwear on his head also brings a sexual aspect to his humiliation. What is more, his abusive childhood environment and his above average intelligence may both have contributed to him being bullied -- as would have been made to jump grades so that he was always younger and smaller than other children. McKay's life has been quite tragic, and it is testament to his resilience that he is able to take even this in stride. However, his tendency to respond to harrowing experiences by dissociating from them makes a lot of sense in light of what we learn about his childhood here.

As Ronon makes mention of McKay's underwear luncheon situation we may note that Sheppard ducks his head as he tries to contain his smile, and even though is meant to be mad at the guy it seems like he is almost blushing here -- he looks every inch a girl in front of her crush at school, unable to keep from giggling when her crush is the focus of everyone's attention. It is likely that his response intends to be some variation of "Oh, burn!" like he was faking being embarrassed for him for having experienced it, and a part of Sheppard probably finds it adorable when he imagines McKay as a child. But another part of him wants to hurt the people who had made him suffer, and because they are in an intimate relationship, in some ways what ever is being done to McKay is also being done to him. And it may be because Sheppard's own adolescence had been spent in boarding schools that are known for various and intricate hazing rituals that he had probably been subjected to that he does not fully understand how damaging experiences like that can be to children, how they carry the humiliation on the adulthood. For his social class, it is a part of the culture, it is how boys become men.

While Sheppard ducks his head and smiles, Jeannie looks right at McKay when he angrily demands to know why she is doing this because he does not feel like he deserves this -- likely having taken care of her her whole life. Jeannie makes a cryptic comment about McKay not even knowing, and this was always one of those curious lines where the viewer is not actually given an answer. Jeannie makes it seem obvious why she would be telling embarrassing stories about his childhood but it is anything but obvious. One option is that she means that it is payback for the way he had treated her in the lab, not allowing her to push the button and bossing her around, which would be petty. Another explanation is that she means that it is not intended as revenge at all, that all of them had gathered around the table because they like him, he was the glue that brought all of them together, and so it was natural for them to talk about him because he was the only topic of conversation they had in common. Jeannie loves her brother, and it seems like the others do too, and so while it might be obvious to her why they had been talking about him, him not getting it would make sense because McKay has such poor self-esteem that he cannot imagine people taking time out of their day to talk about him because they like him.

But Jeannie might also be referring to feeling abandoned by her brother when he had stopped communicating with her when she had been "knocked up by some English major," seeking revenge as a way of soothing her own hurt feelings because she misses her brother. And the way Sheppard looks at her when she says "You don't even know, do you?" indicates that he knows perfectly what she means. Sheppard is feeling just as hurt as she does by being abandoned by him, even if Sheppard's abandonment had only felt like years to him. What had been around four weeks to Sheppard had been four years to Jeannie, but for Sheppard they might just as well have been years.

Combined with the way McKay had responded to him when they had beamed down, ignoring and sidelining him instead of welcoming him and telling him how happy he is to see him means that Sheppard understands perfectly Jeannie's need for revenge, and that they were united in this pursuit. Sheppard's behaviour here is coming from hurt feelings, just as hers. They both love him and desperately yearn for his acknowledgement, they want to be seen and appreciated by him, and when they cannot get attention from McKay through conventional means they are taking it any way they can. This is classic Sheppard behaviour, the only difference being that he had now discovered an accomplice, someone who felt just like he did. He felt like the two of them were going to be great friends.

McKay responds to them with a "Hardy-har-har" being a the epitome of a fake laugh. Speaking the words hardy-har-har means that he is anything but amused, and this only calls attention to Sheppard's earlier very obvious fake laugh. But what is interesting is that Hardy Har Har is actually a cartoon character from his childhood, something he almost definitely would have seen on television. Hardy Har Har is a hyena who is companion to Lippy the Lion, being the eponymous characters of the Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har show. They are two bachelors who like hanging out together.

But what I find fascinating about this is that in Jellystone! they have gender-swapped Hardy Har Har and the two of them are married. Their dynamic, in other words, was like that of an old married couple so they were eventually made into an old married couple. Also perhaps relevant here is that there is an episode of the series called Genie is a Meany, which might even be what had prompted McKay to make the comment. I had discussed in connection with Aurora (S02E09) that McKay had likely also watched I Dream of Jeannie as a child, and while the Genie of the show had his sister's name, it was the beautiful blonde in love with an Air Force Major that McKay had dreamed of being. But when he was a child, he never dreamed it being quite like this.

Note Sheppard's face when McKay's attention is focused on his sister and he thinks that no one is looking at him. He first smiles along with Jeannie, as though he very much agrees with her, like the two of them had united against McKay. But he then schools his face and puts on that angelic expression that he has likely used his entire life to get out of trouble. He is aware that what he is doing here is doing nothing to get him out of the dog house, he just feels the need to act out. But Sheppard does love McKay and does not actually want him to hurt, does not want anyone to think less of him. McKay is his favourite person and the sadness we see briefly flicker in his eyes suggests that he is starting to regret this, wondering if he had gone too far with it. His intention was to teach McKay a lesson, not the traumatize him.

Weir: Colonel Sheppard and Doctor McKay to the Isolation Room immediately. McKay: Isolation Room? Come on.

Their joyous festivities are interrupted by the voice of Weir hailing them through the intercom and we see that McKay sobers up immediately because he is actually an adult and a professional, and someone who shoulders a lot of responsibility in the city for keeping things safe and functional for others. Weir also requests both of their presence which suggests that it may be a security issue.

And it is ironic that their presence is required in the isolation room when it seems that they have been able to find precious few moments to spend alone together and Sheppard especially would love nothing better than to spend some time in a room in isolation with McKay. McKay says "Come on!" rather testily and gestures for someone to come with him -- but it is unclear whether he meant this to Jeannie or Sheppard. Jeannie certainly understood him to mean her since she gets up and goes with them, but McKay is also irked enough with his partner that he might easily have intended it to Sheppard. And it seems like at least a part of Sheppard felt like he deserved it, there being the quality of a chastised dog as he gets up from his seat and follows McKay. Sometimes things go exactly the way you plan and you still lose.