Jack's behaviour during Exit Wounds is soooo interesting to me. I want to know why the writerly decisions were the way they were for this episode. Like on one level it's not very good writing but on another level it's actually really cool characterisation decisions.
At the start of the episode, Jack and John are both playing two roles at once. John is Gray's puppet --which Torchwood don't know yet-- but through trying to make his actions seem genuine he's also trying to hint that they're not. Jack is for the most part trying to be the leader of Torchwood, but also trying to connect with John in some way in order to get him to stop, because he thinks his actions are genuine. Even when the ruse is revealed Jack is still aggressive and hostile to John -- because he doesn't know Gray's role in all this.
As soon as Gray appears, Jack regresses. For the entire rest of the episode until Tosh's death, Jack is not leader of Torchwood, he's not a dashing hero, he's not John's partner, I don't think he's even Jack Harkness. He regresses entirely back to a teenager who feels guilty for his brother's abduction.
I think from my guess, Jack was probably about 14 when Gray was taken. And he regresses straight back to that. All he can say is that he's sorry, all he can do is say that he tried to find him and couldn't, he can do absolutely nothing but confess his feelings of guilt over and over. He lets Gray yell at him and says nothing because he believes he deserves it. Gray stabs him and Jack doesn't struggle. When they're in the field in 27 AD, Gray only stops because John tries to intervene, and he pushes Jack into the grave. And as John observes at the end of the episode, Jack just accepts his burial as well. He takes it on as penance, as though the past 150 years of immortality and all the time before that he spent trying to find Gray weren't enough.
But I think what interests me most are his actions when Gray finds him in the morgue. The drawer slides back and the first thing Jack says is "I forgive you." And then he walks away as Gray yells at him. When he turns back he says tearfully "I forgive you. I gave you absolution. Now do the same for me."
Jack has spent his whole life looking for Gray, unable to find him, horrifically guilty and desperate to be relieved of that guilt. But Gray isn't looking to be forgiven, because he doesn't feel guilty about what he's doing. He's looking for revenge, for torture. (And honestly considering what he says to Tosh after he shoots her, I think he's hoping someone will kill him.) He doesn't care about Jack forgiving him because he wants Jack to feel guilty and he wants Jack to suffer.
In the uncut version of the script, John tells Jack that when he found Gray, Gray thought John was Jack and seemed so happy, like everything would be all right if Jack appeared. But that didn't happen. Someone else rescued Gray. And in Gray's eyes, Jack has lived for so long and has had so much time and never found him, and I think he's full of pain and rage at that and at all the things he endured.
And then there's Jack, who just wants to be free of all the guilt and grief he's suffered over Gray. But "I forgave you, now you forgive me" just can't work. Because Jack is willing to accept that guilt and that penance and he believes that it is his fault, whereas Gray doesn't think he has anything to be forgiven for. And it feels to me like such a childlike thing to say, to insist on: "I did this for you, now it's only fair that you do the same for me, even though our circumstances are not equal."
Jack's dialogue throughout his interactions with Gray are simple sentences, apologies, pleading, ineloquent explanations, while in contrast Gray's dialogue is made up of monologues of weirdly poetic and flowery prose, even though it's gruesome and violent. Jack, confronted with his brother in a position of power over him, regresses back to a younger version of himself and his extreme emotion means words fail him, while Gray has grown and learned from I assume both his torturers and the victims around him, so his extreme emotions have been honed in entirely towards anger and revenge, and he has years of things to say.
I think Jack's confrontation with the source of his own guilt means he is almost entirely unable to act. I think if he'd had to subdue Gray in a more violent way, he wouldn't have been able to do it. That he can do it in a way that begins with an embrace is important, because I think it was almost his only option. As soon as Gray is unconscious, Jack is back to being Captain Jack Harkness as he releases John and Gwen and Ianto from the cells.
But with Gray, in front of Gray, because of Gray, he is not Captain Jack Harkness. He's a scared, guilty, grieving, desperate teenager who wants his father back and who feels like this thing that was completely out of his control was all his fault, and that feeling of guilt has been building for 150 years into this huge thing that is the basis of most of his motivation. So confronted with its source, he goes back to that teenage self and says and does desperate and almost ridiculous things, because he's a teenager who wants to stop feeling like the whole world is on his shoulders and like he did such a bad thing and like this thing he couldn't fix was his fault, not because he's an adult who is able to carry the weight of responsibility.
turnnoffyourmind
jacobvanloon
dededos
andulkaphoto
theartofmadeline
