I think it's so interesting that you say this, because I've come to see Jason's role on the show as embodying innocence -- not in the older and arguably truer sense of not doing wrong or causing harm, but in the kind of interesting and possibly sketchy sense of children being innocent, or of humanity in general being fundamentally innocent in some way before we were corrupted by knowledge and sophistication.

And I think you provide some great examples of the way the show has complicated the idea that purity from complex motivations or deeper understanding of the world is some kind of moral ideal, because, I mean, Jason Mendoza: can be really heartfelt and kind, and can also just blow up somebody else's boat because he felt like it.

If you leave out all the layers of rationalizations and inhibitions and polarizing ideologies that define so much of what's forked up about human beings... you get somebody maybe a little more honest -- if only because it seems to be beyond him to keep up any deception more involved than "I don't talk, ever" -- but otherwise no easier to be around, because it's not like the basic impulses we're built on are any more perfect or infallible than the rest of us.

So on the one hand, I agree with you that there's a certain amorality to Jason, in that he'll just as easily do something supremely selfish (and/or dangerous) as something really sweet. But I don't see that as indifference to other people's concerns, so much as just a genuine inability to think of anything beyond whatever leaps to the forefront of his mind, and I feel like that complete absence of consideration or calculation is something the show's deliberately playing with.

With all that said, though, wow but I watched that whole Jason/Janet romance like a hawk, trying to figure out if she was acting out of anything other than cheerful compliance. And ultimately I think I've come down on a different side of that question than you may have, but I'm glad I wasn't the only person keeping close track of the nuances there!