3. It Was Cruel To Its Characters, Physically And Mentally
"Joss Whedon, Steven Moffat, and George R. R. Martin walk into a bar... and everyone you've ever loved dies." A time honored internet joke, this encapsulates what makes certain showrunners and writers so notorious and loved - they ruthlessly kill of characters. And while Farscape is nowhere near as ruthless as any of the three mentioned above, they subject their main characters to such a degree of pain that it is indeed comparable to the tumblr-proclaimed masters of cruelty themselves. A few seasons in, the show develops a habit of messing with John Crichton's mind. What makes the (increasingly frequent) departures from reality so gut-wrenching is how this man has lost everything - his home, his life - so the only thing he has left to cling to is his sanity, his memories of earth. This is his stronghold, and the show is merciless about attacking it with episode after episode of fever dreams, reality distortion and surrealism that recalls the weirdest of Twin Peaks. A pattern the show gets into after its first season was ending every season's main conflict one episode before the finale, allowing opportunity for a fantastic cliffhanger at the end. While this could be a gimmicky or irritating trope, the show uses this habit as an opportunity to end a season right when the characters are at their most pained or distraught, actively screwing with any sense of closure or comfort one would get from a traditional season close. (ironically enough, this tradition came back to bite them when the show was cancelled and they were forced to end it on a cliffhanger)
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
