B5 4x16-17 in brief

[sholio]

But first, a word from my id.


I just need to pause for this screencap of Londo's little smile after G'Kar walks away at the end of the bar scene in "No Surrender, No Retreat." He's just so happy about it! (Also, this is like the first thing that's gone his way with no terrible repercussions since like - season one? If that?)



(Screencap from Babylon 5 at cap-that, which I suspect I will be visiting again.)



Moving on, brief thoughts on "The Exercise of Vital Powers" and "The Face of the Enemy."


Ouch, ouch, and also ouch. Well, Bester, I don't think B5 is going to be interested in helping you with your robogirlfriend problem anytime soon. (Also from everything currently happening with Franklin and the resistance, it doesn't look like curing the Shadow-manipulated telepaths is really in the cards anymore anyway. Orion's comment on the Most Awkward Catacomb Dinner with Franklin, Lyta, and Number One: "I don't think the doctor's getting any tonight.")

I still love the lawful evil thing Bester has going on; I really enjoy not knowing which way he's going to break in any particular scene. The whole sequence where he's speculating on whether or not to kill Garibaldi, leave him a prisoner in his own mind, etc, when presumably he's already decided (well, about 90% decided) to release him - peak Evil Weirdo. And he goes ahead and gives him his memories back when it would probably have been a lot simpler and less problematic for him to just leave him blocked or wiped. Bester, you'll be building escapable deathtraps with saws next.

Garibaldi betraying Sheridan was absolutely brutal. (I'm guessing this would have been even more brutal if it was Sinclair, which presumably was the original plan - the guy who gave him his last chance and who he was quite a bit closer to than Sheridan.) And Ivanova's kill order for Garibaldi! That being said - as much as I hate it, I can see her doing it without it being OOC: she's very oriented to Sheridan, and I think the whole command crew is in War Mode right now.

I am hoping the next move is a jailbreak. Fingers crossed! I kept getting familiar flashes through most of the first half of season four, but I'm definitely well into episodes I haven't seen now; I have no idea at all where any of this is going.

Comments

[sovay]

(Also, this is like the first thing that's gone his way with no terrible repercussions since like - season one? If that?)

He earned it!

(Thank you for sharing the screencap. I love everything that flickers across his face as he takes in what the emptied glass means.)

- peak Evil Weirdo. And he goes ahead and gives him his memories back when it would probably have been a lot simpler and less problematic for him to just leave him blocked or wiped.

And it fascinates me that Bester explains his choice as the lesser cruelty, because while it is true that leaving Garibaldi locked helplessly in his own body would have been monstrous, he could easily have rationalized the decision not to restore Garibaldi's memories as a kindness, the full knowledge of his violation and his crimes being so obviously excruciating. Killing him would have been the safest thing to do; leaving him in his overwritten state would have been the next safest. But no, he puts him back in his right mind, and it's completely opaque to the audience what he actually means by the gesture.

Garibaldi betraying Sheridan was absolutely brutal.

I mean it with appreciation but also seriously: that scene really fucked me up. Turning Sheridan's drugged arrest into an alternative music video is even worse and weirder than soundtracking Refa's murder to thematically apt gospel—it doesn't matter that it occurs to me now that whoever was in charge of writing that song was doing their best PJ Harvey, it's distorted and industrial and cinematographically disturbing with its slow-mo strobe-lit freeze-frames of violence that seems to blur on forever in snaps of awful clarity in a way that no other scene I can bring to mind in the show approaches, even the hammering quick cuts of the memory download in "Dust to Dust." I can understand why they weren't pulling out those kind of stylistic stops every week. But it slugs the audiences as hard as it does Sheridan and even hunting down the track and listening to it over the years has never totally desensitized it for me. It's like one of the snuff recordings from of Strange Days (1995).

And Ivanova's kill order for Garibaldi! That being said - as much as I hate it, I can see her doing it without it being OOC: she's very oriented to Sheridan, and I think the whole command crew is in War Mode right now.

Agreed. I think it would have hit even harder in the alternate-history season where we could have spent real time building the distance between Garibaldi and the rest of the command staff, but it snaps into place in that moment that none of them have any idea any longer who the hell he is. And now that Bester's told him what was done to him, he doesn't know who the hell he was, either.

[sheron]

Garibaldi T.T

[aelfgyfu_mead]

These episodes broke my heart! Yes, I think Ivanova's kill order is absolutely in character for her and yet cost her a lot. But Garibaldi betraying Sheridan was a total gut punch.