Indeed. I watched due to a friend's mad love. I got caught up around mid-4th season, and was continually amazed at the pacing of eps being so OFF to what I'd expected since all the setup was done in previous eps and not in Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2.
When the show was good, it was SO good. When it was fun, it was SO fun...but it suffered SO MUCH (especially in terms of dialogue), imo, from JMS insisting on writing ALL THE EPS himself (without, as Aaron Sorkin had had, the aid of Lots Of Cocaine...). He created a great universe, a great story, a great arc, a great story structure...and, for me, it didn't live up to its build-up (for lots of real-world reasons, including the psychotic obssession with It Must All Be Exactly My Way, imo).
And I was, ultimately, watching for Susan (and, secondarily, for Delenn), and so when they accellerated the storyline and squashed so much of the rest of the S4 and S5 plot into S4 because they were in danger of being cancelled...I was really frustrated by the FOUR YEARS of lead-up only to end with the amazing anti-climax of, "We don't need you!" "Oh. Huh. Well, then, I guess we'll just be off. Sorry for the bother." I was just like W.T.F.???? And then, when they were cancelled for a month or two and contracts expired before the last-second-reprieve-renewal came through, meaning folks had started getting other work and (according to the account I read) they couldn't GUARANTEE that folks who came back to B5 after signing other contracts would be able to be made available for the stuff they had contracted to do in between their B5 contract expiration and the surprise renewal for S5...)...when that mean that Susan wasn't back...I just was gone. They'd told the end of the major storylines. I wasn't going to get the dish on Susan and the Psi Corps (though wiliqueen has pointed out to me that Lyta's S5 storyline probably would have been Susan's, which wouldn't have been satisfying either...)...I just didn't watch.
By that time we had gone from Captain Skippy to President Skippy to Prom King and Queen of the Universe Skippy (and Mrs. Skippy)...and so I was pretty much done with that storyline. They'd already spent the amazing storyline with Londo, with Alpha Centauri, with Vir, already resolved the Shadow stuff...everything I wanted to know or see had been answered, except for SUSAN...and she was gone. So I actually did see S1 through S4 and then "Sleeping in Light" and that was it...SiL definitely did work for me, and I suspect that was helped by not having to endure the neverending-bald-Garibaldi-going-nuts stuff I saw advertised.
So...yet another show that, for me, didn't quite land. It landed, but it was a forced, emergency landing that resulted in much dramatic damage to the craft. :-(
[Last paragraph references my icon, which is made from lines of a filk called "We Can Take You Flying (But We Don't Know How To Land)"]
technically, they WERE cancelled. They had enough advance notice to make "Sleeping in Light", and only afterwards did TNT come forward and offer the money to host the final season. By which point JMS had to scramble to come up with a story to tell in S5, which is why S5 is so uneven compared to the rest of the series.
So, yeah, I'm with you: I never saw most of S5, although mostly because I didn't get cable at the time, and I'd never really missed it. (Although I'm currently re-watching it with danceswithwords, so I guess I'll end up watching the EmoTelepath storyline after all... ::sigh::)
I'm still cranky about Claudia Christian dropping the ball on her contract renewal. It was stupid, and she's never done anything nearly as interesting since.
There are a few bits of season 5 that are, I think, well worth watching. Not that your life would be incomplete for having missed them, but it's not completely made of fail, particularly toward the end of the season. Perhaps it helps that G'Kar and Londo were my favorite characters and theirs my favorite relationship, and they remain in pretty good form in season 5--Londo especially.
Unfortunately, there's an awful lot of EmoTelepath storyline to slog through before "The Fall of Centauri Prime"...
I can see how at the time it might have seemed to Claudia Christian like a good idea to move on to other things. In retrospect however, and in light of the other things that she hasn't really done, it does seem a mistake. And season 5 felt the lack of Susan quite acutely.
I didn't hate season 5. I think it was actually better, overall, than I was expecting. I think it was largely saved for me because my two favorite characters in my favorite relationship--G'Kar and Londo--remained fairly true to form, and most of the actually interesting things that happened in season 5 happened to them. It was hardly a stellar season, by any stretch, but it didn't bother me as much as I feared it might. On one hand, I never got quite invested enough in this show to feel personally slighted when it didn't go as I might have wished; I enjoyed it very much, but it never found a position of mad love with me. And on the other, I don't like to dwell on aspects of a show I dislike if I can help it. When I find that I'm complaining more than I'm enjoying, I stop watching; and because I don't like to stop watching, I tend to hunt out the positive as much as I can.
So on the whole, yes, season 5 was a disappointment, and I probably will never watch it, or at least most of it, again. But I'm not sorry I did watch it in the first place, and there were bits of it I actively enjoyed.
I think in the show as a whole, it was the unevenness of the writing of dialogue, romance, etc. that bothered me far more than season 5 falling flat. I sort of expect shows to fall a little flat at the end, especially when subject to the kinds of external dictates B5 was subject to; really what's remarkable is how they did manage the plot arcs they did on television, and particularly at that time. So I'm actually not all that fussed that it didn't quite work out in the end like it perhaps could have. But JMS's writing ups and downs throughout the series bothered me far more. The clunky dialogue, every failed attempt to give Stephen characterization, writing John and Delenn as though they were 16-year-olds, etc. As I told danceswithwords just the other day, I really wish JMS had had a writing partner because just think how much better this show might have been with more well-rounded writing. Yet at the same time, I have affection for the awful clunkiness as well. It's almost part of the charm!
When the show was good, it was SO good. When it was fun, it was SO fun...but it suffered SO MUCH (especially in terms of dialogue), imo, from JMS insisting on writing ALL THE EPS himself (without, as Aaron Sorkin had had, the aid of Lots Of Cocaine...). He created a great universe, a great story, a great arc, a great story structure...and, for me, it didn't live up to its build-up (for lots of real-world reasons, including the psychotic obssession with It Must All Be Exactly My Way, imo).
And I was, ultimately, watching for Susan (and, secondarily, for Delenn), and so when they accellerated the storyline and squashed so much of the rest of the S4 and S5 plot into S4 because they were in danger of being cancelled...I was really frustrated by the FOUR YEARS of lead-up only to end with the amazing anti-climax of, "We don't need you!" "Oh. Huh. Well, then, I guess we'll just be off. Sorry for the bother." I was just like W.T.F.???? And then, when they were cancelled for a month or two and contracts expired before the last-second-reprieve-renewal came through, meaning folks had started getting other work and (according to the account I read) they couldn't GUARANTEE that folks who came back to B5 after signing other contracts would be able to be made available for the stuff they had contracted to do in between their B5 contract expiration and the surprise renewal for S5...)...when that mean that Susan wasn't back...I just was gone. They'd told the end of the major storylines. I wasn't going to get the dish on Susan and the Psi Corps (though wiliqueen has pointed out to me that Lyta's S5 storyline probably would have been Susan's, which wouldn't have been satisfying either...)...I just didn't watch.
By that time we had gone from Captain Skippy to President Skippy to Prom King and Queen of the Universe Skippy (and Mrs. Skippy)...and so I was pretty much done with that storyline. They'd already spent the amazing storyline with Londo, with Alpha Centauri, with Vir, already resolved the Shadow stuff...everything I wanted to know or see had been answered, except for SUSAN...and she was gone. So I actually did see S1 through S4 and then "Sleeping in Light" and that was it...SiL definitely did work for me, and I suspect that was helped by not having to endure the neverending-bald-Garibaldi-going-nuts stuff I saw advertised.
So...yet another show that, for me, didn't quite land. It landed, but it was a forced, emergency landing that resulted in much dramatic damage to the craft. :-(
[Last paragraph references my icon, which is made from lines of a filk called "We Can Take You Flying (But We Don't Know How To Land)"]
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technically, they WERE cancelled. They had enough advance notice to make "Sleeping in Light", and only afterwards did TNT come forward and offer the money to host the final season. By which point JMS had to scramble to come up with a story to tell in S5, which is why S5 is so uneven compared to the rest of the series.
So, yeah, I'm with you: I never saw most of S5, although mostly because I didn't get cable at the time, and I'd never really missed it. (Although I'm currently re-watching it with danceswithwords, so I guess I'll end up watching the EmoTelepath storyline after all... ::sigh::)
I'm still cranky about Claudia Christian dropping the ball on her contract renewal. It was stupid, and she's never done anything nearly as interesting since.
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Unfortunately, there's an awful lot of EmoTelepath storyline to slog through before "The Fall of Centauri Prime"...
I can see how at the time it might have seemed to Claudia Christian like a good idea to move on to other things. In retrospect however, and in light of the other things that she hasn't really done, it does seem a mistake. And season 5 felt the lack of Susan quite acutely.
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So on the whole, yes, season 5 was a disappointment, and I probably will never watch it, or at least most of it, again. But I'm not sorry I did watch it in the first place, and there were bits of it I actively enjoyed.
I think in the show as a whole, it was the unevenness of the writing of dialogue, romance, etc. that bothered me far more than season 5 falling flat. I sort of expect shows to fall a little flat at the end, especially when subject to the kinds of external dictates B5 was subject to; really what's remarkable is how they did manage the plot arcs they did on television, and particularly at that time. So I'm actually not all that fussed that it didn't quite work out in the end like it perhaps could have. But JMS's writing ups and downs throughout the series bothered me far more. The clunky dialogue, every failed attempt to give Stephen characterization, writing John and Delenn as though they were 16-year-olds, etc. As I told danceswithwords just the other day, I really wish JMS had had a writing partner because just think how much better this show might have been with more well-rounded writing. Yet at the same time, I have affection for the awful clunkiness as well. It's almost part of the charm!
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