"What do I do here? I should have written it down."
Babylon 5 2.05 - "The Long Dark"
There were a lot of downright creepy things going on in this episode. Our old friend from the Alien franchise, the mysterious creature getting into the life support capsules to feed off of defenseless sleepers, is horrifying precisely because the victims are so helpless. That the feeder is so hard to see, and hard to kill, and patient, is even more so. I completely adored Garibaldi in this episode, because he once again carried out a solid investigation and put together the scattered clues, but more than that, because he did so by actually listening to people. Everyone else dismissed Amis as crazy, but Garibaldi's seen enough impossible things to believe he might be telling the truth. He doesn't fit people into boxes; he always seems to be evaluating and re-evaluating based on current information, rather than making assumptions. And Garibaldi ties his belief in Amis explicitly to his experience during the war; it seems like it's starting to dribble out, what all of these people were doing ten years ago, the before and after snapshots, the ways the war changed them. Amis feels the creature's call; he thinks they have unfinished business from that time.
There seems to be a lot of unfinished business from that time. The scope of the threat is really interesting, because it's not only geographically big--from out on the rim of the known universe--but also old, old enough to have become a part of the Narn religion, and in the case of the this particular shadowy creature, patient enough to have taken out an Earth listening post during the war and traveled on, back towards that rim. The scene of G'Kar in his quarters, paging through the book of G'Quan, coming across the drawing of something that looked very much like what they'd killed on the station, was chilling. And since the attack on the listening post was attributed to the Minbari, it raises the question of what else was going on during that time, obscured by the fog of war.
Although Mariah never seemed to be a serious suspect in her husband's death, it was realistic that the first hypothesis involved her--she was the only other one on the ship--and that as the person closest to the source of calamity, the Council distrusts her. I like that Sheridan won't allow the Council to expel her from the station, but privately weighs the evidence against her carefully--he asserts his rank, and asserts the role of due process over panic, but Mariah doesn't get automatic extra credit because she's human and her accusers aren't.
But perhaps the most genuinely--and unintentionally--creepy aspect of the episode was Steven. Way to move in on an emotionally vulnerable patient in the most skeezy way possible, Steven. Of course, it makes perfect sense to lay her out on your couch instead of taking her to a medical facility after she faints! I'm sure there aren't any ethical issues with romancing someone under your medical care.*shudder*
Babylon 5 2.06 - "A Spider in the Web"
The actual plot of this episode was such a minor part of what happened in it; every single thing was a vehicle for describing things that were happening elsewhere, offscreen.
The negotiation between Isogi and Carter was an excellent way of illustrating that the Mars rebellion, and Earth's relationship with its colonies, is as much about corporate interests as it is about political control. There's a strong hint, at one point, that Mars Conglomerate has enough sway with the Senate to shape Earth's response to the rebellion; Senator Lucille Bluth's arm-twisting of Sheridan to report on the negotiations takes on a bigger meaning in that context. (And yes, that wasn't her name, but Jessica Walter will never not be Lucille Bluth in my mind.) These are the hazards of empire, the grasping and the corruption as a means of maintaining control. I am also intrigued by the glimpse we get of San Diego, the destroyed husks of buildings, the signs of some terrible and probably fairly recent disaster.
We also got more information about the PsiCorps. Sheridan tells Ivanova that telepaths are people, individuals, and that he trusts individuals, not organizations. We the audience have seen enough of Talia to know that she's as trustworthy an individual as any, ethical and professional, someone who has strong ties to others--her mentor in a previous episode, Isogi here, and possibly Garibaldi in the future, since they seem to have developed a friendly rapport. (That Garibaldi chooses the time and place of his skeezy womanizing, and offers uncomplicated friendship to her here, speaks well of him. This is how it's done, STEVEN.) But she is part of that organization, and the story she told about the woman who'd guided her through her first year of the program when she was a child, told with affection and nostalgia and not a speck of awareness about how dysfunctional and institutional her handling had been, was a vivid reminder that these individuals, for all of their personal differences, have been consciously molded from a very young age.
And the institution, or part of it--the mysterious Bureau 13--has literally made Abel Horn into a machine that does its bidding, has wiped his mind and reprogrammed him in a more literal sense. The villain of this episode isn't the murderer at all.
After last week, with the increased complexity of the plots and all of the layers and pieces starting to come together, I find myself getting actively excited about the show.
* * * * *
I have finally had a chance to finally catch up with The Office.
The Office 4.13 - Job Fair
It was actively painful to watch Jim make himself push that client so hard. (That Andy and Kevin, and Andy's hypercompetitiveness and Kevin's burgeoning gambling problem, are his wingmen on this golf outing is just the horrifying icing on this cupcake of humiliation.) When Jim actually cares about the outcome, he opens himself up to the possibility of failure; this is, one suspects, part of the reason he's been slacking his life away at Dunder-Mifflin in the first place. That and Pam, and I think this episode marks a sea change for their relationship; staying near Pam once made him pass on other opportunities, but now he seems to have some definite future plans in mind, and the relationship has become an engine, not an anchor. So it was both encouraging to see Pam ask about graphic design opportunities and a little frightening to see how intimidated she was by the news that most of those opportunities are somewhere besides Scranton.
Michael, on the other hand, always tries too hard, always cares too much. The high school job fair isn't just a job fair; it's an epic popularity contest, and Dunder Mifflin--and Michael Scott, World's Best Boss--are losing. And, of course, part of the reason they're losing is that Michael sabotaged himself, by being too picky at first, by being superficial and judgmental and, one suspects, judging potential interns like Justin against his inflated view of Ryan. Then again, Michael has wonderful things to say about Pam behind her back, but he'd never say them to her face; his people skills, they are unique.
And Dwight strikes out too; nobody listens to him when he tries to make them stay, and Michael doesn't even care when Dwight tries to rat them all out, because in Michael's mind, why should anyone want to stay in the office when he isn't there to be the center of the universe? That Angela stays, and puts in her full day of work, is just another sign, in my mind, of how much she and Dwight are meant for each other. Those two kill me.
The Office 4.14 - "Goodbye Toby"
I have very little coherent to say about this episode; mostly, it made me do little flappy hands of delight for the entire hour.
There were a lot of downright creepy things going on in this episode. Our old friend from the Alien franchise, the mysterious creature getting into the life support capsules to feed off of defenseless sleepers, is horrifying precisely because the victims are so helpless. That the feeder is so hard to see, and hard to kill, and patient, is even more so. I completely adored Garibaldi in this episode, because he once again carried out a solid investigation and put together the scattered clues, but more than that, because he did so by actually listening to people. Everyone else dismissed Amis as crazy, but Garibaldi's seen enough impossible things to believe he might be telling the truth. He doesn't fit people into boxes; he always seems to be evaluating and re-evaluating based on current information, rather than making assumptions. And Garibaldi ties his belief in Amis explicitly to his experience during the war; it seems like it's starting to dribble out, what all of these people were doing ten years ago, the before and after snapshots, the ways the war changed them. Amis feels the creature's call; he thinks they have unfinished business from that time.
There seems to be a lot of unfinished business from that time. The scope of the threat is really interesting, because it's not only geographically big--from out on the rim of the known universe--but also old, old enough to have become a part of the Narn religion, and in the case of the this particular shadowy creature, patient enough to have taken out an Earth listening post during the war and traveled on, back towards that rim. The scene of G'Kar in his quarters, paging through the book of G'Quan, coming across the drawing of something that looked very much like what they'd killed on the station, was chilling. And since the attack on the listening post was attributed to the Minbari, it raises the question of what else was going on during that time, obscured by the fog of war.
Although Mariah never seemed to be a serious suspect in her husband's death, it was realistic that the first hypothesis involved her--she was the only other one on the ship--and that as the person closest to the source of calamity, the Council distrusts her. I like that Sheridan won't allow the Council to expel her from the station, but privately weighs the evidence against her carefully--he asserts his rank, and asserts the role of due process over panic, but Mariah doesn't get automatic extra credit because she's human and her accusers aren't.
But perhaps the most genuinely--and unintentionally--creepy aspect of the episode was Steven. Way to move in on an emotionally vulnerable patient in the most skeezy way possible, Steven. Of course, it makes perfect sense to lay her out on your couch instead of taking her to a medical facility after she faints! I'm sure there aren't any ethical issues with romancing someone under your medical care.*shudder*
Babylon 5 2.06 - "A Spider in the Web"
The actual plot of this episode was such a minor part of what happened in it; every single thing was a vehicle for describing things that were happening elsewhere, offscreen.
The negotiation between Isogi and Carter was an excellent way of illustrating that the Mars rebellion, and Earth's relationship with its colonies, is as much about corporate interests as it is about political control. There's a strong hint, at one point, that Mars Conglomerate has enough sway with the Senate to shape Earth's response to the rebellion; Senator Lucille Bluth's arm-twisting of Sheridan to report on the negotiations takes on a bigger meaning in that context. (And yes, that wasn't her name, but Jessica Walter will never not be Lucille Bluth in my mind.) These are the hazards of empire, the grasping and the corruption as a means of maintaining control. I am also intrigued by the glimpse we get of San Diego, the destroyed husks of buildings, the signs of some terrible and probably fairly recent disaster.
We also got more information about the PsiCorps. Sheridan tells Ivanova that telepaths are people, individuals, and that he trusts individuals, not organizations. We the audience have seen enough of Talia to know that she's as trustworthy an individual as any, ethical and professional, someone who has strong ties to others--her mentor in a previous episode, Isogi here, and possibly Garibaldi in the future, since they seem to have developed a friendly rapport. (That Garibaldi chooses the time and place of his skeezy womanizing, and offers uncomplicated friendship to her here, speaks well of him. This is how it's done, STEVEN.) But she is part of that organization, and the story she told about the woman who'd guided her through her first year of the program when she was a child, told with affection and nostalgia and not a speck of awareness about how dysfunctional and institutional her handling had been, was a vivid reminder that these individuals, for all of their personal differences, have been consciously molded from a very young age.
And the institution, or part of it--the mysterious Bureau 13--has literally made Abel Horn into a machine that does its bidding, has wiped his mind and reprogrammed him in a more literal sense. The villain of this episode isn't the murderer at all.
After last week, with the increased complexity of the plots and all of the layers and pieces starting to come together, I find myself getting actively excited about the show.
* * * * *
I have finally had a chance to finally catch up with The Office.
The Office 4.13 - Job Fair
It was actively painful to watch Jim make himself push that client so hard. (That Andy and Kevin, and Andy's hypercompetitiveness and Kevin's burgeoning gambling problem, are his wingmen on this golf outing is just the horrifying icing on this cupcake of humiliation.) When Jim actually cares about the outcome, he opens himself up to the possibility of failure; this is, one suspects, part of the reason he's been slacking his life away at Dunder-Mifflin in the first place. That and Pam, and I think this episode marks a sea change for their relationship; staying near Pam once made him pass on other opportunities, but now he seems to have some definite future plans in mind, and the relationship has become an engine, not an anchor. So it was both encouraging to see Pam ask about graphic design opportunities and a little frightening to see how intimidated she was by the news that most of those opportunities are somewhere besides Scranton.
Michael, on the other hand, always tries too hard, always cares too much. The high school job fair isn't just a job fair; it's an epic popularity contest, and Dunder Mifflin--and Michael Scott, World's Best Boss--are losing. And, of course, part of the reason they're losing is that Michael sabotaged himself, by being too picky at first, by being superficial and judgmental and, one suspects, judging potential interns like Justin against his inflated view of Ryan. Then again, Michael has wonderful things to say about Pam behind her back, but he'd never say them to her face; his people skills, they are unique.
And Dwight strikes out too; nobody listens to him when he tries to make them stay, and Michael doesn't even care when Dwight tries to rat them all out, because in Michael's mind, why should anyone want to stay in the office when he isn't there to be the center of the universe? That Angela stays, and puts in her full day of work, is just another sign, in my mind, of how much she and Dwight are meant for each other. Those two kill me.
The Office 4.14 - "Goodbye Toby"
I have very little coherent to say about this episode; mostly, it made me do little flappy hands of delight for the entire hour.
- Jim playing a phone prank on Dwight, with Pam giving an assist, was hilarious and fitting and very much like something out of the beginning of Season 2; no matter how much things between Jim and Pam have changed, they'll always have Dwight and his unswerving single-mindedness and inability to adjust fast enough.
- I'm very pleased that Pam is going off to a design program, and that she and Jim both know the separation will suck, but that they're both invested in her working toward a goal. It's the opposite of Roy's reaction, the mirror image of where she was at this point at the end of Season 2, breaking down in front of the camera as she lied through her teeth, to us and to herself, that that was really what she wanted. My biggest fear, when she and Jim got together, was that the writers would drop that part of her character arc; I should have had more faith.
- Michael's courting of Holly, complete with Yoda impression, is equal parts sweet and horrifying and inappropriate. (Especially when he was so prepared to dislike her, to think of her as the "female Toby" and frame their relationship in terms of the epic struggle between hero and nemesis that he's had with Toby.) I like that Jim's his wingman, and that Jim, while standing back from the trainwreck, gives him real advice. And I love that Michael was forced to choose between his fantasy of crushing Toby in an exit interview and keeping Holly's good opinion, and that he made the right choice, as he does on a surprisingly large number of these occasions. And Holly seems genuinely sweet and well-adjusted, which is why the Dunder-Mifflin crowd is going to steamroll her (starting, apparently, with Kevin), and she's not even going to know what hit her.
- Dunder-Mifflin infinity really was Ryan's white wale, wasn't it? It was the way he was going to remake the company, the thing he was going to do to distinguish himself from the mediocrity around him, and he got caught up in his own harpoon line. And here I was so sure, when we first saw the police dragging him away, that the cocaine had finally caught up with him.
- Phyllis's party planning, her dogged desire to make the darn thing actually work, if for no other reason than to stick it to Angela, was lovely, as was the result: a genuinely fun party. She took an imaginary antigravity machine and turned it into a ferris wheel. To the musical stylings of Darryl's band!
- Speaking of Dwight's inability to adjust fast enough, poor Dwight, listening to and following Michael's overt instructions rather than picking up the subtle hints that he was backpeddling on the Holly issue. Planting a raccoon in someone's car is indeed a masterstroke of hazing, although I was a little concerned that Meredith was watching the raccoon-wrangling so closely, given her recent brushes with rabies. I sort of hate that Michael always throws Dwight under the bus in those situations, when Dwight is doing exactly what Michael wants, and doing it with his own brand of zeal and thoroughness.
- But it's hard to stay annoyed with Michael after watching Jan break his heart. How unbelievably sad for both of them, that Jan was never invested enough in her relationship with Michael, that he was good enough to sooth her pain and help her over the breakdown of her life in New York and loss of her career, and that he's apparently good enough to help her through the lamaze classes, but he wasn't good enough to actually be the father. It looked for a second like she even realized that, like when she had to explain what she'd done, she realized how awful it sounded. I didn't really expect Michael to hold firm and walk away, but it was good to see that he at least had the instinct, before his gaping need for a family, for impressionable children who will love him unconditionally, took over. Oh, Michael.
- OMG DWIGHT AND ANGELA! And poor Phyllis, walking in on that. That was another very excellent parallel to the end of Season 2, the frantic embrace between two people who are in love, one of whom is engaged to someone else. Angela, doing what's expected instead of what she wants to do when she says yes to Andy's hilariously inappropriate proposal; Dwight, seizing the moment to show her how he really feels. Oh, show.