Rodney admits after his return that if John had asked him not to go to Antarctica, he wouldn't have known what to do. To go through it once, only to do it again, with the same risk that John would ask him to stay... I can understand why there wasn't a second goodbye.
Elizabeth sent Simon a videotape. Rodney could have done that -- but right now, we don't know why he didn't. We have no insight into his motivations or why (or why not) he makes the choices he does. Each choice he makes (the choice to see John, the choice to not see John, the choice to send videotape or not send one) all of these imply something about his character and how he views the relationship, and we don't get to see any of it. It's a lost oppertunity for me, and I am sad about it.
And actually, this story isn't a light-hearted story of romance and discovery it's pretty much a classical 'stranger' story, where the stranger comes into town, throws the lives of the characters out of whack, and leaves them again with their new insights. To grab stuff that easily comes to mind -- Something Wicked This Way Comes is like that, many of the old spagetti westerns follow this route, just, wow, tons of classic literature. It's where the story really ends for me because of that.
And then there's the epilogue, which is where I had my issues, but it does give a happy ending and many people prefer that. I just would have liked the full insight into Rodney's story -- the remix *g* -- that would have gone along with the John's story we saw. And it still could have had a happy ending with the two bookending each other. It's just that if she was going to play with the gene and John not going to Atlantis, I wanted to see that as well.
Re: part 1
Elizabeth sent Simon a videotape. Rodney could have done that -- but right now, we don't know why he didn't. We have no insight into his motivations or why (or why not) he makes the choices he does. Each choice he makes (the choice to see John, the choice to not see John, the choice to send videotape or not send one) all of these imply something about his character and how he views the relationship, and we don't get to see any of it. It's a lost oppertunity for me, and I am sad about it.
And actually, this story isn't a light-hearted story of romance and discovery it's pretty much a classical 'stranger' story, where the stranger comes into town, throws the lives of the characters out of whack, and leaves them again with their new insights. To grab stuff that easily comes to mind -- Something Wicked This Way Comes is like that, many of the old spagetti westerns follow this route, just, wow, tons of classic literature. It's where the story really ends for me because of that.
And then there's the epilogue, which is where I had my issues, but it does give a happy ending and many people prefer that. I just would have liked the full insight into Rodney's story -- the remix *g* -- that would have gone along with the John's story we saw. And it still could have had a happy ending with the two bookending each other. It's just that if she was going to play with the gene and John not going to Atlantis, I wanted to see that as well.