Patiently Waiting For A Reason To Care
Originally posted by Hatshepsut
The point is that T.P.T.B. have chosen to present Quinn as totally undesirable. They didn't have to; it was a free choice.
Now, they're piously demanding that we play fair and give him a chance to prove himself. What a cheek!!!
Why should we? If they wanted us to like him, why in Heaven's name didn't they depict him in a more favourable light in the first place? They could have done that - couldn't they?
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Coming from S4 to S6 I have no history for Jonas before "Redemption." I've been mulling over his character ever since. It isn't so much why should Jack or Sam or T'ealc care about him, or why should Hammond give him a place on the team. Why should I care about him? What makes any of us care about a character?
So far, Jonas has been overly eager to please -- understandable under the conditions presented -- but it isn't winning me over. He has shown a heroic side, but mostly to gain a place on the team. I didn't see a genuine life-risking desire to save his friends, just a need to prove himself.
The tough choices still aren't there. Consider "New Ground" when 3 of the team are prisoners. Daniel's interrogator fires at Sam and Jack; a second shot will kill them. Daniel knows this and has to choose between allowing them to die or giving up the existence of T'ealc, blinded and hiding in the woods. Jack's training is to make those tough choices, but Daniel's is not. Yet he holds his ground, refusing to acknowledge a 4th team member -- and the questioning ends in the nick of time, of course.
What would Jonas do? We don't know and so far the writers haven't placed him in a situation where he has to make a difficult choice that is not to his own benefit. Consider all the situations that the team has been in -- capture, interrogation, torture, isolation, only one outcome possible and it isn't a good one -- and then imagine how Jonas might handle it. Regretably not much comes to mind.
I need to see how the writers choose to use him. It might be interesting to have him as an uncertain element, but then there's no way he could be on the SG1 team. He has blithely won the grudging respect of the SGC, but after all the writers can control the reactions of the other characters. There is no such control over the audience.
So, to like Jonas Quinn, what's my motivation?