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Brief thoughts on B5 through 4x03
Get in, losers, we're going to Z'ha'dum.
Okay, I have definitely seen this part! The rest of the stuff I remembered from the show was in this run of episodes (including Sheridan on Z'ha'dum, Londo and G'Kar in the torture dungeon, and a little of Garibaldi's storyline as well).
I knew Sheridan was planning something sneaky and wasn't really taken in by not!Anna, but HOLY MOLY, that was a lot of kaboom. (And then a lot of general afterlife weirdness.) I feel a little cheated that we didn't get the full reunion with Garibaldi when Sheridan turned out not to be dead, but the hug with Ivanova was nice!
So the Vorlons are going darkside! I find myself missing Kosh (the first); the contrast with Kosh the second is so fascinating. T_T Poor Lyta, having all her furniture taken away except a mattress, and the way you can see the toll that having the Vorlon ambassador in her head is taking on her. And they blew up a planet! Victory at any cost!
Poor Garibaldi, too, because everyone was too busy with everything else to really deal with him being gone until he's back. I liked the whole sequence with Marcus and G'Kar searching for him, and bonding. "I never had a friend who wasn't a Narn before." "I never had a friend who was a Narn." (Also, we really see very little of the inhabited galaxy outside of B5 and a couple of regular locations like Centauri Prime, so it was nice to see a little more of that!) No idea what's up with Garibaldi's interrogators yet, or the hints that he's been brainwashed.
(I also can't get over that there's so much going on right now that Garibaldi possibly having been suborned in some way is like the bottom of their list of current problems.)
But most of all, unsurprisingly, I am ALL OVER the Centauri Prime storyline, in which we are working our way through a whole entire trope bingo card ("forced to hurt ally while undercover", etc). The last part of that storyline in the episodes I watched tonight was G'Kar being shock-whipped in front of Londo and Vir until he breaks. THAT SCENE!!! I don't even know what to say, except it really is pure distilled id. I love how you can see that Londo is alternating between starting to look away and then looking back in a kind of, I guess, mix of trainwreck fascination and desire to bear witness, and starts mouthing "Scream!" at him as the count escalates, while Vir covers his mouth and halfway hides his face against Londo's shoulder.
Also, just. Londo and Vir's expressions, especially Vir's, during the whole scene where Cartagia is casually chatting with them while his hands are red to the wrists with G'Kar's blood. (And Vir to Londo, after: "You know how I said there must be another way? I changed my mind. *Kill him*.") I love how Londo is getting what he always thought he wanted - G'Kar hurt, humiliated, broken in front of him - and you can see him realizing in realtime that he doesn't want it at all. Londo, if you go back on your promise to free the Narn homeworld after all of this, you will absolutely deserve G'Kar pushing you into a fusion reactor.
(In spite of all of this, G'Kar's sympathy for Londo in the recap voiceover at the start of 4x01 is really interesting - "I think he is more alone than anyone else in the universe." And Londo asking Vir to help him kill Cartagia because "A conspiracy needs more than one" - LOLOL - and also because he has no other friends. T_T)
ETA: Also, since this was apparently the last run of episodes I watched back in the 90s, I can definitely see why Londo and G'Kar lodged in my id so thoroughly that they were the main thing I remembered about the show all these years later.
Okay, I have definitely seen this part! The rest of the stuff I remembered from the show was in this run of episodes (including Sheridan on Z'ha'dum, Londo and G'Kar in the torture dungeon, and a little of Garibaldi's storyline as well).
I knew Sheridan was planning something sneaky and wasn't really taken in by not!Anna, but HOLY MOLY, that was a lot of kaboom. (And then a lot of general afterlife weirdness.) I feel a little cheated that we didn't get the full reunion with Garibaldi when Sheridan turned out not to be dead, but the hug with Ivanova was nice!
So the Vorlons are going darkside! I find myself missing Kosh (the first); the contrast with Kosh the second is so fascinating. T_T Poor Lyta, having all her furniture taken away except a mattress, and the way you can see the toll that having the Vorlon ambassador in her head is taking on her. And they blew up a planet! Victory at any cost!
Poor Garibaldi, too, because everyone was too busy with everything else to really deal with him being gone until he's back. I liked the whole sequence with Marcus and G'Kar searching for him, and bonding. "I never had a friend who wasn't a Narn before." "I never had a friend who was a Narn." (Also, we really see very little of the inhabited galaxy outside of B5 and a couple of regular locations like Centauri Prime, so it was nice to see a little more of that!) No idea what's up with Garibaldi's interrogators yet, or the hints that he's been brainwashed.
(I also can't get over that there's so much going on right now that Garibaldi possibly having been suborned in some way is like the bottom of their list of current problems.)
But most of all, unsurprisingly, I am ALL OVER the Centauri Prime storyline, in which we are working our way through a whole entire trope bingo card ("forced to hurt ally while undercover", etc). The last part of that storyline in the episodes I watched tonight was G'Kar being shock-whipped in front of Londo and Vir until he breaks. THAT SCENE!!! I don't even know what to say, except it really is pure distilled id. I love how you can see that Londo is alternating between starting to look away and then looking back in a kind of, I guess, mix of trainwreck fascination and desire to bear witness, and starts mouthing "Scream!" at him as the count escalates, while Vir covers his mouth and halfway hides his face against Londo's shoulder.
Also, just. Londo and Vir's expressions, especially Vir's, during the whole scene where Cartagia is casually chatting with them while his hands are red to the wrists with G'Kar's blood. (And Vir to Londo, after: "You know how I said there must be another way? I changed my mind. *Kill him*.") I love how Londo is getting what he always thought he wanted - G'Kar hurt, humiliated, broken in front of him - and you can see him realizing in realtime that he doesn't want it at all. Londo, if you go back on your promise to free the Narn homeworld after all of this, you will absolutely deserve G'Kar pushing you into a fusion reactor.
(In spite of all of this, G'Kar's sympathy for Londo in the recap voiceover at the start of 4x01 is really interesting - "I think he is more alone than anyone else in the universe." And Londo asking Vir to help him kill Cartagia because "A conspiracy needs more than one" - LOLOL - and also because he has no other friends. T_T)
ETA: Also, since this was apparently the last run of episodes I watched back in the 90s, I can definitely see why Londo and G'Kar lodged in my id so thoroughly that they were the main thing I remembered about the show all these years later.
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He has gotten pretty short-shrifted in our discussions to this point, but I love Vir and the show is really giving him a chance to shine.