The Sarah Jane side-thread

[K-Box]

To start with, a Sci-Fi Channel crossover, of two great tastes that taste great together.

A few months ago, I followed Jesse's lead and submitted a commission to professional comics creator D.J. Coffman, for his ongoing Will Draw Anything For $2.

No one who knows me should be surprised at what I asked for from him:



Especially since Mary McDonnell and Elisabeth Sladen could pass for sisters, this was too perfect a pairing to resist.

[K-Box]

So, I've been watching Season 2 of The Sarah Jane Adventures online, to keep current with the episodes as they air in the UK, and here's what I've spotted so far:

Family Ties - A lot of mention has been made about certain childhood fears being played upon (most notably clowns in "The Day of the Clown" two-parter, whose guest-starring "alien monster" basically amounted to a simplified, less scary version of Pennywise from It), but I haven't seen anyone so far talk about this season's running theme of family members being separated from one another.

In "The Last Sontaran," the astronomer's daughter watches her dad get mind-controlled by the Sontaran, and the mother-daughter relationship that Sarah Jane and Maria have developed comes to an end when Maria moves to America. In "The Day of the Clown," Sarah Jane is just one of many parents facing the loss of their children at the hands of Odd Bob, and she opens up to Luke about her pain over losing her own parents before she ever got to know them. In "Secrets of the Stars," Rani sees her own mom get mind-controlled and swept up into a cult by Trueman, and Clyde (who's finally being presented as a full-fledged member of Sarah Jane's extended "family") is threatened with the same fate. "The Mark of the Berserker" offers a repeat of this threat for Clyde, this time at the hands of the father who abandoned him years ago (and whom we learn is running out on his pregnant wife now), who cuts Clyde off from both his friends and his mother ... and once again, Sarah Jane alludes to her own parents. And in "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith," which premieres next week, Sarah Jane is actually reunited with her long-departed mom and dad, but it looks like she'll have to lose them all over again to save the world.

Clyde Langer - Maybe it's The Curse Of Mickey And Martha, but it seems like it takes a second season before certain minority characters in the NuWhoniverse start getting (at least some) of the appreciation that they deserve. In SJA S1, Clyde was the wise-cracking, stereotypically guy-ish best friend of Luke, to give him someone to hang out with while Sarah Jane and Maria went off adventuring on their own. But what's funny about Rani's introduction is, in spite of being interested in journalism and coming on board after Maria has departed, Rani really isn't Sarah Jane's apprentice in the same way that Maria was, because Sarah Jane has actually wound up spending more time with Clyde this season instead.

And oh, how Clyde has grown. As is so often the case in real life, it's been revealed that his flippant quips and too-cool-for-school attitude serve as a mask for a kid who's dealing with a lot of issues about his identity and his relationships to others. He and his mom show a lot of love for each other now, but when his father returns, Clyde makes the bold admission that, for a while, he had blamed his mom for his dad leaving. He later tells his dad that, since one parent had already left him, he became afraid that he'd wake up one day to find the other one gone, too. The overly social "personality kid" is often the one whose worst fear is being alone, and given his personal history, Clyde has good reason to worry about being abandoned. As is also frequently the case with children of bad parents, Clyde is terrified of turning out to be just like his dad. He's already been expelled from one school, and he confesses to Sarah Jane that, if it hadn't been for her "family," he's sure that he'd be "weaker."

Another way Clyde has grown up? With the absence of Maria's dad Alan, Clyde has officially assumed the show's designated role of The Man Who Most Obviously Wants To Hook Up With Sarah Jane. Yes, he's too young for her, but like any teenage boy who develops a crush on a grown woman, that's not going to change how he feels. Just as Alan once gazed at Sarah Jane with affection and unrequited longing in SJA S1, so too does Clyde in S2. It's hard to know which feels worse - having your yearning get ignored, as Sarah Jane did by failing to notice Alan's blatant adoration of her, or having those feelings get misinterpreted as merely platonic, as Sarah Jane seems to be doing to Clyde. What must make it even worse for Clyde is how warm and snuggly Sarah Jane has gotten with him, constantly complimenting him and hugging him and squeezing his hand supportively, because she does love him ... just not in "that way," and speaking as a former teenage boy myself, that's an incredibly bittersweet experience.

Grown-Up Families on a "Kids' Show" - As much as I miss Maria and Alan and shipping Alan with Sarah Jane, since they would have been so smexy and adorkable and steamy, sizzling hot together, I really like the Chandras, not in the least because they're quite possibly the first fully functional "nuclear family" in the NuWhoniverse. I mean, it's good to show that families can still be loving and "real families" even if dad is dead, or mom and dad have divorced, or the kids are adopted, but there are families in which both parents manage to stay both alive and faithful to one another, and it's nice to show that, too. As parents, the Chandras are firm but fair, giving their daughter both goals and unconditional love, and as a couple, they have a genuine chemistry together. Whenever I saw Alan and Maria's mom Chrissie sharing a scene, I always wondered what could have possibly brought them together, since there was absolutely no spark between them at all, but with Haresh and Gita Chandra, I can easily imagine their playful banter translating into both romance and bedroom naughtiness. It doesn't hurt that Rani's mom Gita is super-cute. Her generous curves and bubbly personality make her definite MILF material.

And on the other end of the spectrum, we have the Langers. Clyde's mom Carla appears to have coped with her husband's betrayal a lot better than Martha's mom Francine, even though the blow dealt to Carla was, in some ways, arguably worse - being dumped by her husband for her own SISTER? On a KIDS' show? - and yet, Carla manages to be no-nonsense toward Clyde without adopting any of Francine's bitterness, or making her love conditional, as Francine's love for Martha all too often seemed to be. By contrast, Clyde's dad Paul is now officially tied with Donna's mom Sylvia for the title of Worst Parent In The NuWhoniverse. Even after Chrissie cheated on Alan and divorced him, she still kept in touch with him and Maria; the same goes for Martha's dad Clive. But just as Sylvia was nothing more than an abuser (in the emotional sense), Paul appears to be little more than a user. Yes, it makes me uncomfortable that both of the black dads in the NuWhoniverse left their wives and kids, and yes, I'm leery of seeing another woman in the NuWhoniverse get mind-wiped, but this is mitigated by the show's surprisingly adult acknowledgement that certain families simply can't come together, not even with the aid of alien artifacts, and that, no, Clyde, you don't need a dad like Paul in your life, and good for you for getting that you're better off, as a person, without him.

And your thoughts?