Competence and plot coherency are two of my biggest [ETA: annoyance] triggers if they're thwarted (obviously, heh). I've since gone looking for other reviews, and I didn't find much, but I did find someone who asked Graham specifically about a few items here, and I really wish I hadn't found that post in a way, because the answers were so unsatisfying as to irritate me. (That, and she loves "Rising" for something I'm pretty sure never happened, because it makes Atlantis itself all "for" ~John Sheppard~, and ... gah.) And yeah, the show may have had its moments, too, but I'd criticize them on equal merits; "the characters/plots were equally bad [sometimes] in canon!" is never a valid excuse to me.

For that one particular scene, we're luckily given only his opening salvo in narrative realtime; the part I've quoted was his father's summary to him. But given that he contested none of that characterization, nor his father's contention that he drove Linda to tears, I'm pretty sure that's meant to be close to literal at least. What I don't get is what the narrative means us to understand from that passage; John is pissed off and thinks his father is unreasonable for cutting off his tuition until he apologizes to her and spends one whole visit civil to her. No matter how much of a dick the father is being (and he is), that is precisely the course of action I'd say the father should take. So I'm left with John portrayed as impulsive, sure, and immature and flawed; I just can't quite trust that I'm meant to take those latter two attributes from the scene. I just don't know.