(no subject)
Babylon 5 4.17 - "The Face of the Enemy"
I had suspected all along that the Psi Corps was responsible for Garibaldi's missing time, and for his strange behavior when he returned. Still, even having seen what Bester is capable of, his ruthlessness and cruelty here are pretty stunning. Bester basically took all of Garibaldi's best characteristics, the things that have stood him so well in previous seasons--his loyalty to friends and lovers, his willingness to use his skills to further a cause he believes in--and twisted them into something horrible and unrecognizable. So even though Garibaldi doesn't like Edgars--and, I believe, knows somewhere down inside that something has gone horribly off in his life--he baits a trap for Sheridan using Sheridan's own father, by putting together the pieces of what he knows from Sheridan in order to locate him. He does it because he trusts Lise's judgment, and because he believes it's the right way to stop Clark. But most of all, he does it because Bester has twisted everything inside him just a few degrees off center, and warped all of his judgments and his relationships, and brought him to Mars so that Bester can get what he wants. I can't even describe how awful I felt for him at the end of the episode, when Bester left him knowing what he'd done. Oh, Michael!
The thing that's so interesting about the Edgars situation is that Edgars's plans are so monstrous--he talks about the telepath "problem" in explicitly genocidal terms--but that everything that happens in this episode from Lyta's stories to the revelation in the end that Bester was playing Garibaldi like a puppet reinforces the idea that telepaths, at least as embodied by Psi Corps, are capable of being every bit as monstrous.
Babylon 5 4.18 - "Intersections in Real Time"
This episode really killed me--especially coming right on top of the last one--because it's probably the most effective depiction of institutionalized torture I've seen on television. (I'm not sure that Farscape's "Nerve"/"The Hidden Memory" counts, since it quickly became so personal between John and Scorpius; what's horrifying here is that the interrogator is doing a job, a job that he knows well and is good at, but he's just an interchangeable cog in a bigger machine.) The taught helplessness and dependence, the distortion of time, the clearly offered reward for confession, the use of a fellow prisoner to assist the manipulation, the interrogator's seeming reasonableness; it's all there. I especially liked that the interrogator's tactics didn't really change over the course of the episode, but we saw how much more tempting surrender became over time as those tactics wore Sheridan down with their inevitability and repetition. I also think Boxleitner made some good acting choices here, dialing it down a notch or 12 as Sheridan quietly got both more determined and more hopeless. It was much more effective than his usual hyperemotionality.
One thing we learn from the interrogation is that Clark's plan for making this whole Sheridan problem go away continues to be blaming it on the aliens. He's consistent; I'll give him that.
Babylon 5 4.19 - "Between the Darkness and the Light"
Garibaldi's reintegration into the Babylon 5 crew seems a little too speedy, but I like the multiple ironies of his situation: that after betrying his friends because Bester got into his head, he has to rely on Lyta's scan to prove what happened and rejoin the team, when the whole plot and counterplot hinged on the potential dangers of telepaths; and that he uses his newfound status as a traitor to free Sheridan. Looking back, I can see how the last ten episodes or so served to put everyone in place to effect this rescue; that's some tight plotting.
I'm not surprised that G'Kar wants to throw Narn resources behind an effort to help Sheridan and keep Earth from descending into xenophobic paranoia, but I didn't expect to see Londo join him. It's a nice reminder that back in Season 1, even as he was slowly sliding into the dark places his ambition took him, Londo prized friendship and loyalty; this feels like another step toward the recovery of that former, better self. Plus, Londo and G'Kar working together: ADORABLE.
I also like that Ivanova enters the final battle full of moral conviction, bringing the weight of her history and her family and her religion into the fight. This is a civil war, and the show has been careful all along to show how most of the people fighting for Earth are in a difficult situation, one where keeping their military oaths and not taking up arms against their own government means defending a corrupt regime. In that situation, the moral position is the one that upholds the fundamental values those oaths were based on while trying to avoid loss of life wherever possible; it's the old conflict between ends and means. Clark has based his political takeover on stirring up xenophobia, and yet he's introduced Shadow technology in the military; there's a nice symbolism in that, of his regime's corruption, of his willingness to use anything to win. The good guys in this battle are the ones on both sides who see a reunification at the end, rather than an annihilation of the enemy, and who realize that some means make that impossible.
Babylon 5 4.20 - "Endgame"
Aha. The frozen telepaths go off in the fourth act, along with the resistance movement on Mars. Again, I am impressed by the tight plotting that got them into place over the course of more than a season. This episode again reinforces the theme of ends versus means. Sheridan's plan is based on disabling the Earth fleet with as little harm as possible, even though it means using the telepaths as weapons; Clark, on the other hand, plans to take the planet down with him. This episode was mostly action, and I don't have a lot to say about it, but it was nice to see all the pieces of four seasons come together here. They even brought back the healing device from the first season. Aw, Marcus. You were always a schmuck.
Babylon 5 4.21 - "Rising Star"
They had an enormous amount of story to tie up, and I guess the newscast is as good a device as any to do that with. It does feel like the show has come full circle from the beginning: from Clark's ascendancy to his fall, from a group of scattered, squabbling planets at the end of one war to an alliance that has the institutional mechanisms to guarantee a real peace, and all of the characters changed by what they've seen and done. I particularly like Ivanova's reaction to Marcus's sacrifice--that it's a terrible, terrible burden--and the fact that she got her own command, and took some time away from the station. And Londo and G'Kar are still bickering, but there's a force of friendship behind it now. Londo is going to become emperor, just like he dreamed he would; and when he goes back to Centauri Prime to see the aging Regent, he will presumably pick up the thing that has attached itself to him. Earth is restored to democracy; Sheridan's role as intermediary between peoples, and Babylon 5's place as neutral common ground, are made official. The actor who plays President Luchenko is terrible, capping off a long, fine tradition of terrible guest actors on this show. Garibaldi finally gets the girl.
Mostly, though, I'm glad that the League of Non-Aligned Worlds has turned into an alliance, because that name always bugged me. What does that even mean?
Babylon 5 4.22 - "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"
I see that somebody read A Canticle for Liebowitz. I know they thought the show was cancelled, and needed to try to finish the story, but what an infodump. Also, way to burn the entire planet with your short-sighted greed, human race.
Up next: Tracy Scoggins! Who, it turns out, is not at all the worst actor in Season 5. Dude who plays Byron, I'm looking at you!
* * * * *
Last night's episode of Leverage was completely absurd--more so than usual--but I forgive it it's ridiculousness because (a) PARKER! and (b) I am finally feeling invested in Sophie and (c) I am apparently a sucker for musical numbers based on science fair projects. Who knew? I also liked the relatively low-key stakes, and was actually a little disappointed that some assassins showed up at the end to punch up the violence quotient.
Jonathan Frakes directed the episode; it seems like that's becoming a regular thing.
* * * * *
I'm still exhausted from last weekend; here's hoping I can catch up on some sleep this weekend. In the meantime, have a baby aardvark. He's so adorable, while also looking like something that belongs in the cantina in Star Wars.
[X-posted to LJ and Dreamwidth. Or not, since LJ appears to be crunked.]
I had suspected all along that the Psi Corps was responsible for Garibaldi's missing time, and for his strange behavior when he returned. Still, even having seen what Bester is capable of, his ruthlessness and cruelty here are pretty stunning. Bester basically took all of Garibaldi's best characteristics, the things that have stood him so well in previous seasons--his loyalty to friends and lovers, his willingness to use his skills to further a cause he believes in--and twisted them into something horrible and unrecognizable. So even though Garibaldi doesn't like Edgars--and, I believe, knows somewhere down inside that something has gone horribly off in his life--he baits a trap for Sheridan using Sheridan's own father, by putting together the pieces of what he knows from Sheridan in order to locate him. He does it because he trusts Lise's judgment, and because he believes it's the right way to stop Clark. But most of all, he does it because Bester has twisted everything inside him just a few degrees off center, and warped all of his judgments and his relationships, and brought him to Mars so that Bester can get what he wants. I can't even describe how awful I felt for him at the end of the episode, when Bester left him knowing what he'd done. Oh, Michael!
The thing that's so interesting about the Edgars situation is that Edgars's plans are so monstrous--he talks about the telepath "problem" in explicitly genocidal terms--but that everything that happens in this episode from Lyta's stories to the revelation in the end that Bester was playing Garibaldi like a puppet reinforces the idea that telepaths, at least as embodied by Psi Corps, are capable of being every bit as monstrous.
Babylon 5 4.18 - "Intersections in Real Time"
This episode really killed me--especially coming right on top of the last one--because it's probably the most effective depiction of institutionalized torture I've seen on television. (I'm not sure that Farscape's "Nerve"/"The Hidden Memory" counts, since it quickly became so personal between John and Scorpius; what's horrifying here is that the interrogator is doing a job, a job that he knows well and is good at, but he's just an interchangeable cog in a bigger machine.) The taught helplessness and dependence, the distortion of time, the clearly offered reward for confession, the use of a fellow prisoner to assist the manipulation, the interrogator's seeming reasonableness; it's all there. I especially liked that the interrogator's tactics didn't really change over the course of the episode, but we saw how much more tempting surrender became over time as those tactics wore Sheridan down with their inevitability and repetition. I also think Boxleitner made some good acting choices here, dialing it down a notch or 12 as Sheridan quietly got both more determined and more hopeless. It was much more effective than his usual hyperemotionality.
One thing we learn from the interrogation is that Clark's plan for making this whole Sheridan problem go away continues to be blaming it on the aliens. He's consistent; I'll give him that.
Babylon 5 4.19 - "Between the Darkness and the Light"
Garibaldi's reintegration into the Babylon 5 crew seems a little too speedy, but I like the multiple ironies of his situation: that after betrying his friends because Bester got into his head, he has to rely on Lyta's scan to prove what happened and rejoin the team, when the whole plot and counterplot hinged on the potential dangers of telepaths; and that he uses his newfound status as a traitor to free Sheridan. Looking back, I can see how the last ten episodes or so served to put everyone in place to effect this rescue; that's some tight plotting.
I'm not surprised that G'Kar wants to throw Narn resources behind an effort to help Sheridan and keep Earth from descending into xenophobic paranoia, but I didn't expect to see Londo join him. It's a nice reminder that back in Season 1, even as he was slowly sliding into the dark places his ambition took him, Londo prized friendship and loyalty; this feels like another step toward the recovery of that former, better self. Plus, Londo and G'Kar working together: ADORABLE.
I also like that Ivanova enters the final battle full of moral conviction, bringing the weight of her history and her family and her religion into the fight. This is a civil war, and the show has been careful all along to show how most of the people fighting for Earth are in a difficult situation, one where keeping their military oaths and not taking up arms against their own government means defending a corrupt regime. In that situation, the moral position is the one that upholds the fundamental values those oaths were based on while trying to avoid loss of life wherever possible; it's the old conflict between ends and means. Clark has based his political takeover on stirring up xenophobia, and yet he's introduced Shadow technology in the military; there's a nice symbolism in that, of his regime's corruption, of his willingness to use anything to win. The good guys in this battle are the ones on both sides who see a reunification at the end, rather than an annihilation of the enemy, and who realize that some means make that impossible.
Babylon 5 4.20 - "Endgame"
Aha. The frozen telepaths go off in the fourth act, along with the resistance movement on Mars. Again, I am impressed by the tight plotting that got them into place over the course of more than a season. This episode again reinforces the theme of ends versus means. Sheridan's plan is based on disabling the Earth fleet with as little harm as possible, even though it means using the telepaths as weapons; Clark, on the other hand, plans to take the planet down with him. This episode was mostly action, and I don't have a lot to say about it, but it was nice to see all the pieces of four seasons come together here. They even brought back the healing device from the first season. Aw, Marcus. You were always a schmuck.
Babylon 5 4.21 - "Rising Star"
They had an enormous amount of story to tie up, and I guess the newscast is as good a device as any to do that with. It does feel like the show has come full circle from the beginning: from Clark's ascendancy to his fall, from a group of scattered, squabbling planets at the end of one war to an alliance that has the institutional mechanisms to guarantee a real peace, and all of the characters changed by what they've seen and done. I particularly like Ivanova's reaction to Marcus's sacrifice--that it's a terrible, terrible burden--and the fact that she got her own command, and took some time away from the station. And Londo and G'Kar are still bickering, but there's a force of friendship behind it now. Londo is going to become emperor, just like he dreamed he would; and when he goes back to Centauri Prime to see the aging Regent, he will presumably pick up the thing that has attached itself to him. Earth is restored to democracy; Sheridan's role as intermediary between peoples, and Babylon 5's place as neutral common ground, are made official. The actor who plays President Luchenko is terrible, capping off a long, fine tradition of terrible guest actors on this show. Garibaldi finally gets the girl.
Mostly, though, I'm glad that the League of Non-Aligned Worlds has turned into an alliance, because that name always bugged me. What does that even mean?
Babylon 5 4.22 - "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"
I see that somebody read A Canticle for Liebowitz. I know they thought the show was cancelled, and needed to try to finish the story, but what an infodump. Also, way to burn the entire planet with your short-sighted greed, human race.
Up next: Tracy Scoggins! Who, it turns out, is not at all the worst actor in Season 5. Dude who plays Byron, I'm looking at you!
* * * * *
Last night's episode of Leverage was completely absurd--more so than usual--but I forgive it it's ridiculousness because (a) PARKER! and (b) I am finally feeling invested in Sophie and (c) I am apparently a sucker for musical numbers based on science fair projects. Who knew? I also liked the relatively low-key stakes, and was actually a little disappointed that some assassins showed up at the end to punch up the violence quotient.
Jonathan Frakes directed the episode; it seems like that's becoming a regular thing.
* * * * *
I'm still exhausted from last weekend; here's hoping I can catch up on some sleep this weekend. In the meantime, have a baby aardvark. He's so adorable, while also looking like something that belongs in the cantina in Star Wars.
[X-posted to LJ and Dreamwidth. Or not, since LJ appears to be crunked.]