Recap / Stargate SG 1 S 8 E 15 Citizen Joe

"You ruined my life!"

— Joe Spencer

O'Neill is confronted by Joe Spencer, a barber from Indiana who claims he's been having visions of O'Neill's life for the last seven years.

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"Citizen Joe" provides examples of the following tropes:

• Aborted Arc: Lampshaded after Joe finishes telling one of his customers the plot of "A Hundred Days" and informs her that she will "just have to wait for the sequel" to find out if Laira was pregnant with O'Neill's child. The episode in question never had a sequel, with the issue remaining unresolved.
• Actor Allusion: In a roundabout way—Joe mentions that Colonel O'Neill likes Mary Steenbergen. Though she doesn't appear, Mary and Joe's actor, Dan Castellaneta, previously worked with each other in the short-lived cartoon adaptation of Back to the Future that aired in the early '90s, where Dan played Doc Brown—though Christopher Lloyd reprised his role in live-action segments that bookended each ep.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Joe's son Andy, to begin with.
• Audience Surrogate: Joe's reactions to various events in the series often correspond to things that have been said by real-life fans.
  • It's also easy to imagine the things he says to Sam, Daniel, and Teal'c at the end as being the things a fan would say upon meeting SG-1 in real life.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Joe's wife Charlene initially encourages him to write his stories down, claiming that he's gotten in touch with his "inner muse." She later comes to regret this when his obsession with the visions starts to take over his life.
• Big "NO!": Joe does this after receiving a vision of Daniel's death in "Meridian".
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Lampshaded when Joe tries to explain the Goa'uld life cycle to his co-workers:
  Bert: The bad guys. You said they got snakes in their heads?
  Joe: Symbiotes, yes.
  Gordie: And what about the fellas with the ones in their bellies?
  Joe: They're different; they're called Jaffa. They incubate the symbiotes until they're ready for implantation.
  Fred: Now, you see Joe, that's confusing.
  Bert: He's right, boss. Why can't there just be one kind of bad guy? You know, snake goes in the head, he's evil, the end.
• Call-Back: After hearing the premise of "Failsafe", Fred remarks that he's "seen this movie, it hits Paris," the exact same line delivered by O'Neill in the episode.
• Cannot Tell a Joke:
  Joe: So there's this fella who walks into a bar, and he sees an ape sitting there. Sorry, no: he sees a gorilla. That's it. Right, there's this gorilla sitting there, drinking a Coke. So he says to the bartender, "Hey, what's with that gorilla drinking that drink?" Well, the bartender says, "Yeah, that ape usually orders a Coke." (long pause) I mean a beer. He usually orders a beer.
  Bert: Boss, is it an ape or a gorilla? 'Cause they're completely different species, you know.
  Joe: It doesn't matter, it could be a monkey. The point is—
  Fred: The point is, Joe, it's a good thing you can cut hair.
• Celebrity Paradox: Jack is a huge Simpsons fan, but doesn't react at all to starting Dan Castellaneta in the face.
• Clip Show: The show's fifth and final clip show episode, following "Politics", "Out of Mind", "Disclosure" and "Inauguration".
• Continuity Nod:
  • Joe watches a commercial for Wormhole X-Treme!
  • Daniel mentions that this is the "second week in a row" that somebody has broken into O'Neill's house.
  • It's mentioned that the SGC stone was found on the planet where Daniel went through the quantum mirror.
  • Joe references Teal'c's recent change in appearance, asking whether he used to be "more gold-colored". Additionally, a flashback to O'Neill activating the stones, taking place sometime early in season 2, shows Daniel with long hair.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After everything he's seen and experienced for seven years, Joe gets O'Neill to talk to his wife and assure her he's not crazy.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: When Joe confronts O'Neill and rattles off a long list of facts to convince him that he's been having visions of O'Neill's life:
  Joe: You're Brigadier General Jack O'Neill, head of Stargate Command at Cheyenne Mountain. You used to command SG-1, which is now led by Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter. You once visited a planet called Argos, and the nanites in your blood caused you to age artificially. You had the entire repository of the Ancients' knowledge downloaded into your brain. Twice! You have a thing for The Simpsons, fishing, Mary Steenbergen, the color peridot, and you're a terrible ping-pong player!
  [...]
  O'Neill: Well first of all, Joe, I'm not a terrible ping-pong player.
• In Medias Res: The first scene of the episode has Joe breaking into O'Neill's house and claiming that he "ruined his life", before flashing back to show the events of the last seven years from Joe's perspective.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: After he's taken to the SGC at the end of the episode, Joe begins to promise O'Neill that he "won't say anything about his feelings for..." Cue Carter entering the room.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Introduces the Ancient Communication Stones, telepathic devices that SG-1 will later use to make first contact with the Ori in Season 9, and become an important plot device in the sequel show Stargate Universe.
• It's Been Done: Joe's son points out Wormhole X-treme and launches into a jaded teen diatribe on how "there's no such thing as original thought anymore".
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Joe worries that this will be his fate if anyone important finds out he's been getting insight into classified information.
• Lampshade Hanging: Carter points out what the audience had likely already considered before that point: that the link could work both ways, allowing O'Neill to see visions of Joe's life. Well, he was. He was pretty certain that he told someone about it at some point over the years, but he didn't.
• Lower-Deck Episode: The protagonist of the episode is a barber from Indiana, with the main cast only showing up in the opening and closing scenes and clips from previous episodes.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: The first thing Joe says on being introduced to Carter is that he was "particularly impressed with the time she blew up that sun".
• Running Gag: When Joe first tries to contact O'Neill through the Air Force, he clarifies that it's "Colonel Jack O'Neill, two 'L's".
• Sand In My Eyes: Bert claims that he has "something in his eye" when he starts crying at the ending of "A Hundred Days".
• Sanity Slippage: When Joe thinks Charlene has thrown out the stone and begins frantically searching for it in the trash.
  Andy: Whoa. [nervous laugh] Has he totally lost it or what?
• Self-Deprecation: The show has some fun mocking several of its less successful episodes though the context of Joe trying to get the events published as stories.
  Gordie: See, I'm not sure you should have sent in this one about Seth. It wasn't one of your best.
  Bert: They rejected "Hathor"?! Oh, but it was gold!
  • Later:
  Charlene: I read "Holiday", "The Light", "The Sentinel"...
  Joe: Okay, I admit those may have been a few small missteps, but on the whole they're getting better, aren't they?
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: The first time we see Joe's son Andy after he starts having the visions, he's a small child who looks to be around seven or eight. Three years later, he's inexplicably a teenager who has to be at least sixteen.
• Stating the Simple Solution: When discussing how to stop people from breaking into O'Neill's house:
  Daniel: [on meeting Joe] Broke into your house?
  O'Neill: Yeah.
  Daniel: Second week in a row.
  O'Neill: Mm-hmm.
  Daniel: Alarm.
  O'Neill: I'm thinking dog.
  Joe: You could try locking your front door.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Joe tells O'Neill that he agrees with his analogy of Burns as Goa'uld. Incidentally, Dan Castellaneta, who plays Joe, also provides the voice for Homer Simpson.
• Those Two Guys: Bert and Gordie, the two guys who work in Joe's barber shop.
• Trust Password: Joe reels off a whole slew of these to convince O'Neill that he isn't crazy.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: Joe actively writes stories based on his visions and submits them to magazines; he gets nothing but rejection letters. Jack actually expresses some disappointment that all of Joe's stories were rejected, taking it to mean that no one does want to see their adventures.
• The World Is Always Doomed: Lampshaded:
  Fred: Look, no offense, but how many times can these folks save the world from Apophis? What's it up to now? Five, six times?
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: For seven years, while Joe was seeing what O'Neill was seeing, O'Neill could see events in Joe's life and never told anyone. He, in fact, stated he found the images relaxing.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Joe's increasingly desperate efforts to get his family and friends to believe him.