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Farscape - Season 3 - Episode 19

Farscape - 3x19 - I-Yensch, You-Yensch - Originally Aired: 2002-4-5

My Rating - 8

Fan Rating Average - 4.58

Rate episode?

Rating: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# Votes: 31 11 1 15 7 22 6 7 22 12 9

Synopsis
Rygel and D'Argo meet with Scorpius and Braca in order to negotiate Crichton's safe passage onto the Command Carrier. As a safeguard against double crosses, Scorpius suggests that Crichton and Lt. Braca should wear matching I-Yensch bracelets that will synchronize their nerve impulses so that they experience one another's pain. However, before the deal is completed, two heavily armed crazies burst in and hold up the diner. Meanwhile, Talyn himself is in an uncontrollable and dangerous mental state, and the only way to heal him is to shut him down and completely erase his personality. [DVD]

Filler Quotient: 0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- Numerous major long term plot threads are serviced here.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- D'Argo and Rygel attempting to negotiate with Scorpius only to be quickly double crossed.
- Talyn attacking the approaching Peacekeepers then turning on the medical ship and destroying it too.
- Scorpius demonstrating the synchronized nerve impulse bracelets to Rygel and D'Argo using Braca as a target.
- A surprise robbery of the restaurant during the negotiations with Scorpius.
- Talyn firing on Moya.
- The hired goons taking out the restaurant owner.
- Rygel shooting Scorpius.
- Crais shutting down Talyn.
- Rygel and Scorpius taking out the robber aliens.
- John: "Some things you die for." Aeryn: "I just can't watch that happen again. It was perfect. We were so perfect and you're just like him. I mean, you are him." John: "No, I'm me. I was here. I missed that dance."

My Review
A surprisingly entertaining episode. I groaned when negotiations with Scorpius were interrupted by aliens of the week, but the fact that the aliens of the week were highly amusing more than made up for the distraction. Their quirky behavior and yelping added a delightful physical comedy to their incompetency and their impromptu hostage plot made for quite a satisfying impromptu alliance between Rygel and Scorpius. On top of that, I truly felt bad for the waitress at the end of the story when her husband was killed for botching his secret insurance fraud plan, of which she had no prior knowledge.

Likewise, Talyn's freakout was also quite moving. I enjoyed Moya's more direct role in the story, even if it was accomplished by such simple things as shaking the camera a bit and having the actors look around a lot on set. The decision to invasively subdue Talyn is a nice revisit of the late season 2 plot to disarm Talyn for his prior erratic behavior. The cast's inability to address this throughout season 3 has finally caught up with them. Finally, while the negotiations with Scorpius ended up being prolonged perhaps longer than necessary, the result was fantastic. This episode was great setup for what's sure to be even better story to come.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Lennier on 2010-07-11 at 12:52pm:
    This review (and indeed the episode) reminds me of "Bone to be Wild".

    Once again we have a build-up to season-ending events. Once again this is interrupted by aliens of the week. Once again you at first are apprehensive about them; once again you end up appreciating their characters. And finally, while this is going on, there's a Talyn plot.

    I, however, did not care at all for any of the four guest characters. The robbers maybe had one or two amusing moments, but for the most part just seemed gratuitous.

    Anyways, this was nevertheless a decent episode. I'm looking forward to the rest of your Season 3 reviews.

  • From zirtoc on 2013-08-21 at 5:02pm:
    I found the peacekeepers' entire attitude to be unbelievable in this episode. From Scorpius 'pretending' to order Rygel and D'Argo to be executed, to allowing the Luxan to knock out all the guards, to Scorpius allowing the takeover of the area by two nitwits...the whole thing just seemed way out of character.
  • From hugo on 2016-03-11 at 2:29pm:
    Those aliens didn't work for me, but I liked Rygel and Scorpius, and their interaction. Also - I didn't find Talyn's shutdown very emotional - I have actually never cared much by either Moya's or Talyn's well-being.
  • From Margaret J on 2019-07-18 at 6:31pm:
    Really did not like the stuff on the planet regarding the cook and his hired alien thugs. It felt like filler just trying to postpone the the good stuff the Scorpius/John/wormhole stuff.
    The Talyn stuff was interesting but even that was mostly establishing a problem we already knew about.
    Sadly this one has been given one of my lowest ratings. I gave it a four (4)

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