I did leave out a couple episodes. I think you have been, understandably, embroiled in car fiasco. I sure hope you get some decent news on that front.
I didn't review Smoke & Mirrors. I whipped through it a while back. Probably right before my trip. The little disc that the NID guys were wearing to impersonate and slander the character of O'Neill is eventually discovered and disabled. Kinsey is a jerk, at least from the perspective of SG1. Of course, as a representative of the taxpayer, he comes across as knight on white charger defending the commonweal from profligate spending and goofy alien boondoggles that have the potential to expose citizens to harm from the offworld adventures. The distinction of pod people (evil men who look like good guys) by Carter seems to have depended more on instinct than anything else. No matter how bad things get, they're usually resolvable in under an hour.
For Paradise Lost: Maybourne somehow is like Godzilla. You know. He's like this evil force that becomes homely and then a force for good as the monster is embraced by the Japanese. Then the sequels begin: Godzilla vs Mothra, Godzilla vs Rodan, Godzilla vs King Kong, Godzilla vs (your favorite new monster's name here), etc. So there seem to be endless occasions for Maybourne to come post mischief to help out with some annoying entanglement with alien tech or beings or another. Or when NID bad guys act up. So like a good Japanese citizen, I, too, embrace Maybourne. He's good for comic relief on occasion and helps Jack get out of scrapes from time to time. Just as often, he falls into role of trickster and drags the lot of them into some kind of new mayhem that he's inadvertently created. Somehow, though, we don't really have cause as we initially did, to despise him. He's more like a fun bad penny who shows up on occasion.
So Maybourne who, as disillusioned by his stint in special forces or his pentagon desk job at NID or whatev' wants some aspect of his former life to pay off so he can go somewhere good and not be condemned to a life of infamy and disgrace in relative poverty. So he's a greedy little golly, like many of his countrymen. O'Neill chases him when he goes through some gate into parts unknown. Was that a good idea? Nope.
They end up marooned on the moon, but don't know that it's the moon for about 35 minutes. Maybourne eats some psychoactive plant that makes him despondent and paranoid. O'Neill has to get him to quit chomping on the stuff. Finally, Carter figures out where they are and Maybourne gets to go somewhere nicer than earth to hang out. Maybe he can take the Trumps with him. I wasn't overly impressed with either of these episodes which is why I didn't initially bother to write about them. Also, I often finish late at night and sometimes I just go to sleep and don't weigh in, which explains why I omitted them.
I don't know about the business with finding Carter a know it all. I think she's more like a nerd who rarely veers away from a pure professionalism, a strategy that seems entirely appropriate as a self defense mechanism by a woman who must work in a male dominated environment like she does. How many women do we encounter on a regular basis as her peers? Not many, I'd say. There's Carter, the doc, and the occasional guest star, more often than not an exotic citizen of another planet or evil Gou'ald. Carter rarely shows emotion, although she clearly cares about the other members of the team. It's hard to say whether she (except for the one episode in which her alternate from other reality was married to and widowed from the other O'Neill) actually harbors feelings for O'Neill. I think the writers like to mess around with that for titillation from time to time.
