This page features one of my favorite bits of dialogue between Roka and Ril that really crystallizes their relationship. It’s been a running thing that Ril makes a lot of outlandish suggestions, but I really like how this explains the dynamic behind Roka being the one responsible for the actual decision making. It wasn’t anything I deliberately thought about between the two. It was just what came out of Roka’s mouth as I was writing the script and I thought it worked well and defined the two perfectly.
I also wanted to keep Ril as a consistent voice in his concern about Sky’s presence on the ship. In some ways, he’s a bit jerky about the whole thing, but in other ways, he’s not necessarily wrong to be worried. And it’s always more interesting when a character has a valid point, as opposed to a character being adversarial just to be adversarial for plot purposes.
If this just flowed out while you were writing the script I’d say that’s sign that you are in tune with your characters.
From the start Ril reminded me of Raphael (the first TMNT cartoon version). For him to say how it would be if he was the leader seals the deal for me. Not a bad thing, I mean at least he’s not like Starscream in his ambitions.
I think the ‘danger’ with Ril is that he is the main complainer and if that starts to outweigh his contributions to the team he will become the one they want to sent out for supplies and leave behind.
Honestly, Ril’s “Jerkass has a point” trope is one of the main reasons I adore him so. Even beyond the subject of Sky, pretty much all “jerky” points make total SENSE, logically and/or emotionally when you take the heroic rose tinted glasses off.
While Roka’s stuck in his own “Leader guilt” bubble, he’s also failing to see that he’s also wrong, Ril HAS had to suffer for his bad calls, too. A setup run had Ril watch one friend get his guts SLAPTTERED against the wall, RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, get shot himself trying to rescue Grissom, then leaving her behind for five years (Did they even know she’d made it out alive, either, from that?).
Now he’s cautious. He has every reason to be.
Cember and Bennesaud are brought in as replacements, and their backgrounds are mysterious and sketchy. Ril has every REASON not to be gun-ho buddy-buddy with them, but all his voiced concerns are shot down with “I trust them, don’t worry about it.”
(SURPRISE! We just found out one of them is an EX of a Dhama who’s still sore about it!…)
Something goes odd on a mission? Ril at first suggests they just ignore it, they don’t need to know, a creed Roka himself often preached, and then upon that getting shut down, he simply expects Sky to be dropped off somewhere civilized and be taken care of from there. By someone who’s not THEM. Notably, nothing… Actually brutal or obscene like “THROW HER OUT THE AIRLOCK!”.
This is also shut down, and now things have been sliding downhill ever since, FAST.
Putting trust in Bocce, enough to come to the logical conclusion the smartest idea would be to let him lay low and come back from him later? You want to leave a team member behind! Point out that you’re all going to STARVE if you keep getting conned out of money? Thinly veiled threat of bodily harm by the person he’s sure is responsible for all this in the first place! Find out you’ve been plunked into the middle of a MOB WAR, another SETUP, and how the best course of action would be to wash your hands of this ASAP? “Shut up, Ril.”
He makes a complaint in a heated moment of frustration? “You have it easy! YOU’RE not the one that has to deal with the fallout of any of this!”
…And yet, despite this, despite ALL. OF. THIS. And everything else: Ril has not, NOT EVEN ONCE, even threatened to walk out on Roka. (Unless next page is where he finally reaches his breaking point, lol!)
And it’s just- that wonderful “Showing, not telling” aspect of Ril’s character, how it all makes SENSE, even if you don’t necessarily agree with him on everything, and despite everything, that underappreciated loyalty he has underneath that jerky surface…
I just, I really do love Ril. So, so much.
Yes to all of this! And I really love Ril as well. By the end of the series, I think he will have one of my favorite arcs of all the characters.
While not intentional at all, their relationship kinda reminds me of the Rick/Shane relationship in the first couple season of The Walking Dead TV series. While Shane was set up as a foil to the “hero leader” of Rick, I never found Shane to be wrong, just offering a different plan in the absence of anyone knowing what the best plan was. And I really loved the dynamic of two would-be leaders arguing over best course of action, since it felt very different from most stories where there’s a single leader that everyone just falls in line behind. I was bummed they killed Shane off as quickly as they did (although he lasted longer than in the comic!), but at least I came away from it as a Jon Bernthal fan.