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Babylon 5 - 5x02
I'm sure everyone will be shocked, SHOCKED that "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari" gets its own extremely screencap-laden post.
Before I get going on the Londo of it all, Vir is also a total MVP in this! I adore his goodbye with Lennier.
I am unbearably, helplessly charmed by Vir clumsily doing the Minbari hand gesture back at him ...
... and then just going for a hug. VIR. BABY. <333 (Lennier's storyline in this episode is sad but fitting. I don't want him to go, but I can see him not being able to stay, and I like the touch that Sheridan clearly understands his reasons better than Delenn does.)
There's also the scene with Vir and Garibaldi where Vir just completely *loses his shit* because he's desperately worried about Londo and absolutely Done with B5 and its constant nonsense.
"Can't you people get hobbies? Read a book or something?"
(I also like that Garibaldi is the one to come get Vir; he's clearly been sitting with Londo in the medbay, or at least checking in on him.)
Anyway, the Londo of it all! So I knew this episode happened, more or less; I had osmosed a vague idea of what happened in it (although, as it turned out, not exactly what happened; I didn't know he gave himself a heart attack through sheer stress from guilt - LONDO, HONEY) and I knew that he apologized in this episode, which on the one hand I guess would have been a stratospheric punch to the id if it had happened completely unspoiled, but on the other hand, it meant that I was following the track of Londo's non-apologies through the whole rest of the series because I had a general idea it was leading up to this.
And he really doesn't! You get the first textual indication that Londo, fronting like a boss, absolutely refuses to apologize for anything waaayyyy back in the technomage episode in early season two, when he actually comes right out and *says* that he doesn't apologize (talk about a long spear/Chekhov's gun) and in that episode, he is only pushed to apologize because they're literally going to kill him otherwise, or at least torment him to the edge of sanity. Not a single thing was learned from this experience. And then in his conversation with Vir in 4x05, he asymptotically approaches the concept of apologies with "Vir, I was very unkind to you" ... but that's as close as he can get.
And then again with G'Kar in his quarters in 4x15 - Londo circles around the concept but once again, he doesn't get there; he wants to be given credit for not enjoying G'Kar being hurt, he wants his friendly gesture to be reciprocated, but he just doesn't recognize that for all he thinks he's offering, he's approaching but then veering away from any sort of culpability for himself in this. He won't open up. He never does. He'd rather say that he needs no one than admit that he has a heart that could break. G'Kar in 4x05 tells him that his heart is empty - but it's not, it's just walled up, because hearts that are untouchably encased in glass cannot break.
(Things I never thought I'd see on a sci-fi show from the 90s: a character sobbing while beating with his fists at the glass separating himself from his own heart. WHAT IS THIS SHOW EVEN.)
I love that Londo, even in his comatose state, is clearly responding to what's happening in the real world - he hears Delenn, he hears Vir asking him not to die, and incorporates that into his guilt-fueled dream world (or afterlife/purgatory, or whatever is going on there), and the shift into the scene with him and Sheridan in the bar talking about being dead - which I really enjoyed, by the way - is presumably triggered by hearing Sheridan and Franklin talking in the real world. But there's also the secondary layer of the Centauri folktale he and Vir discuss in the coda - is this just a dream, or is it more? We don't know for sure.
I love the repeated motif of "turn around, turn around." He can't turn around, he knows what he'll see, and what he'll see is the blood his hands are drenched in, the constant specter of a dream-G'Kar who will make him face it.
And I can't get over that what eventually does make him turn around and face it is dream-Vir telling Londo that he'd miss him. Just that, just one person, one single person telling him that he cares about him and he'd miss him if he died that makes Londo turn towards the thing he fears most, the thing he's been running away from - his own guilt, his shame, the very deserved punishment he is afraid of - rather than accepting the death that he's starting to feel he deserves.
Meanwhile back in the real world ...
I really enjoyed Delenn sitting with Londo - I mean, just that she did it for as long as she could 'til Sheridan points out that she needs to sleep too; but also, her conversation with Sheridan about realizing that, for all the frustration Londo has caused her, she'd really miss him if he died. "I never felt sorry for him before today."
You know shit's gettin' real when the big needles in the heart come out.
I really like the scene with Franklin collapsing on the floor after they get Londo stabilized again, when Vir walks up behind him and asks if it's a death watch now. And Franklin can't tell him yes or no.
VIR. ♥ (His little "Don't die" kills me.)
Anyway, dying and trapped in the dreamworld of his own mind, galvanized by dream!Vir telling him that he'd miss him (but fueled by what he can subconsciously hear of real Vir asking him to live), Londo finally turns around, finally faces the thing he fears most: his own guilt and culpability in the fall of Narn, in G'Kar's torture, in everything that came from his pact with the Shadows.
One thing that has come up repeatedly in past discussions is B5 being more brutal, bloody, visceral than scifi normally is - in G'Kar's violation of Londo's mind, in the space battle scenes, and now in this episode, when Londo finally takes the final fall in his own head into his pit of well deserved guilt, and codes in the real world, where the resuscitation scenes are brutal.
I think it's especially interesting because most of the earlier medbay scenes weren't like this - we've even seen Franklin trying to revive patients before and it was a lot more bloodless than this, more scifi tech and less real-world defib and loved ones (Vir) losing it in the background and Franklin himself furiously yelling at Londo not to do this.
And this is underscored by cutting back and forth between the med team trying to resuscitate him IRL (with an utterly distressed Vir in the background) and Londo trapped in the dream world of the shock whip dungeon torture scene where he's both spectator and victim this time, cutting back and forth between torture in the dream world, the med team trying to resuscitate him, but either way he's a passive victim.
Except - he's not.
Dream!G'Kar (his heart, or his conscience, or the bit of G'Kar trapped in him, or all three) tells him, of course, what he didn't do, what he could have done, what he's been turning away from all this time.
(On a side note here, I feel like this episode is perhaps the strongest textual evidence so far that there *is* some kind of lingering connection between them after the Dust incident, because there's really no other explanation for G'Kar showing up in the medbay when he does, in the literal middle of the night, just about the time Londo actually crashes physically in the real world.)
Anyway, the episode pivots on this:
"One word, Mollari. One word was all that was required of you."
"It would not have mattered. It would not have changed anything. It would not have stopped!"
"You're wrong, Mollari. Whether it was me or my world, whether it was a total stranger or your worst enemy, you were a witness. It doesn't matter if they'd stop! It doesn't matter if they'd listen! You had an obligation to speak out."
The thing that is literally killing him is that he knew all along what right and wrong was. He knew what he was doing was wrong. He just didn't do anything about it, because he told himself it didn't matter, he told himself there was nothing he could do and he could only destroy himself by trying to stop it, he told himself going along with it in the service of a greater cause was worth it. And in the end, the repeated motif of "one word" means two things: one word is the word he could have said at the time, not to stop what was happening, but to openly acknowledge that he knew it was wrong; and it's the word he could say now to admit that he's culpable and he regrets it, and he finally, finally gets around to a place where he can say that he's sorry and really mean it.
And he breaks the glass separating himself from his own heart.
And he wakes up.
He wakes up gasping out that he's sorry, he wakes up saying it even when he has no breath to do anything other than form the words with his lips, and when he can finally speak, it's all he can say. "I'm sorry, G'Kar. I'm sorry."
And here's another thread from past episodes: the ongoing thread of Centauri apologizing to G'Kar for what their people have done, and the way it lands. There was the Emperor's apology, and G'Kar's visible shock and reaction, the way it sent him looking for Londo for the first friendly overture they'd ever had and the last one until late in season four: the first big betrayal. And there was Vir apologizing to him in late season two, very genuinely but also with no actual power to do anything about it. ("I tried to tell them. They didn't listen.") Vir at least did say something. It didn't help. And G'Kar, at that point, was in no place to listen either.
And then finally this.
It lands now in a way that I think it couldn't have before; it's not Vir's fault that his heartfelt apology wasn't the one G'Kar needed, or that none of them were (then) in a place then where it even could matter.
But now they are.
(Also love the coda scene in which we find out via Centauri folktale that there is every chance Londo has a celestially glorious soul chained to ... well ... him ... that he is slowly growing into being worthy of. There is a scene from Diana Wynne Jones' The Lives of Christopher Chant that I will never get over, in which the protagonists must rescue the ally/traitor Tacroy from his own treacherous people and they are given a challenge in which they must pick out Tacroy's soul from a selection of his people's souls, and they recognize Tacroy's soul out of all of his people because it is the only beautiful one - even though he has betrayed them, even after all that he's done - and this makes me think of that. It's not just what it is now, it's what it could be.)
Caps from here as always.
Before I get going on the Londo of it all, Vir is also a total MVP in this! I adore his goodbye with Lennier.
I am unbearably, helplessly charmed by Vir clumsily doing the Minbari hand gesture back at him ...
... and then just going for a hug. VIR. BABY. <333 (Lennier's storyline in this episode is sad but fitting. I don't want him to go, but I can see him not being able to stay, and I like the touch that Sheridan clearly understands his reasons better than Delenn does.)
There's also the scene with Vir and Garibaldi where Vir just completely *loses his shit* because he's desperately worried about Londo and absolutely Done with B5 and its constant nonsense.
"Can't you people get hobbies? Read a book or something?"
(I also like that Garibaldi is the one to come get Vir; he's clearly been sitting with Londo in the medbay, or at least checking in on him.)
Anyway, the Londo of it all! So I knew this episode happened, more or less; I had osmosed a vague idea of what happened in it (although, as it turned out, not exactly what happened; I didn't know he gave himself a heart attack through sheer stress from guilt - LONDO, HONEY) and I knew that he apologized in this episode, which on the one hand I guess would have been a stratospheric punch to the id if it had happened completely unspoiled, but on the other hand, it meant that I was following the track of Londo's non-apologies through the whole rest of the series because I had a general idea it was leading up to this.
And he really doesn't! You get the first textual indication that Londo, fronting like a boss, absolutely refuses to apologize for anything waaayyyy back in the technomage episode in early season two, when he actually comes right out and *says* that he doesn't apologize (talk about a long spear/Chekhov's gun) and in that episode, he is only pushed to apologize because they're literally going to kill him otherwise, or at least torment him to the edge of sanity. Not a single thing was learned from this experience. And then in his conversation with Vir in 4x05, he asymptotically approaches the concept of apologies with "Vir, I was very unkind to you" ... but that's as close as he can get.
And then again with G'Kar in his quarters in 4x15 - Londo circles around the concept but once again, he doesn't get there; he wants to be given credit for not enjoying G'Kar being hurt, he wants his friendly gesture to be reciprocated, but he just doesn't recognize that for all he thinks he's offering, he's approaching but then veering away from any sort of culpability for himself in this. He won't open up. He never does. He'd rather say that he needs no one than admit that he has a heart that could break. G'Kar in 4x05 tells him that his heart is empty - but it's not, it's just walled up, because hearts that are untouchably encased in glass cannot break.
(Things I never thought I'd see on a sci-fi show from the 90s: a character sobbing while beating with his fists at the glass separating himself from his own heart. WHAT IS THIS SHOW EVEN.)
I love that Londo, even in his comatose state, is clearly responding to what's happening in the real world - he hears Delenn, he hears Vir asking him not to die, and incorporates that into his guilt-fueled dream world (or afterlife/purgatory, or whatever is going on there), and the shift into the scene with him and Sheridan in the bar talking about being dead - which I really enjoyed, by the way - is presumably triggered by hearing Sheridan and Franklin talking in the real world. But there's also the secondary layer of the Centauri folktale he and Vir discuss in the coda - is this just a dream, or is it more? We don't know for sure.
I love the repeated motif of "turn around, turn around." He can't turn around, he knows what he'll see, and what he'll see is the blood his hands are drenched in, the constant specter of a dream-G'Kar who will make him face it.
And I can't get over that what eventually does make him turn around and face it is dream-Vir telling Londo that he'd miss him. Just that, just one person, one single person telling him that he cares about him and he'd miss him if he died that makes Londo turn towards the thing he fears most, the thing he's been running away from - his own guilt, his shame, the very deserved punishment he is afraid of - rather than accepting the death that he's starting to feel he deserves.
Meanwhile back in the real world ...
I really enjoyed Delenn sitting with Londo - I mean, just that she did it for as long as she could 'til Sheridan points out that she needs to sleep too; but also, her conversation with Sheridan about realizing that, for all the frustration Londo has caused her, she'd really miss him if he died. "I never felt sorry for him before today."
You know shit's gettin' real when the big needles in the heart come out.
I really like the scene with Franklin collapsing on the floor after they get Londo stabilized again, when Vir walks up behind him and asks if it's a death watch now. And Franklin can't tell him yes or no.
VIR. ♥ (His little "Don't die" kills me.)
Anyway, dying and trapped in the dreamworld of his own mind, galvanized by dream!Vir telling him that he'd miss him (but fueled by what he can subconsciously hear of real Vir asking him to live), Londo finally turns around, finally faces the thing he fears most: his own guilt and culpability in the fall of Narn, in G'Kar's torture, in everything that came from his pact with the Shadows.
One thing that has come up repeatedly in past discussions is B5 being more brutal, bloody, visceral than scifi normally is - in G'Kar's violation of Londo's mind, in the space battle scenes, and now in this episode, when Londo finally takes the final fall in his own head into his pit of well deserved guilt, and codes in the real world, where the resuscitation scenes are brutal.
I think it's especially interesting because most of the earlier medbay scenes weren't like this - we've even seen Franklin trying to revive patients before and it was a lot more bloodless than this, more scifi tech and less real-world defib and loved ones (Vir) losing it in the background and Franklin himself furiously yelling at Londo not to do this.
And this is underscored by cutting back and forth between the med team trying to resuscitate him IRL (with an utterly distressed Vir in the background) and Londo trapped in the dream world of the shock whip dungeon torture scene where he's both spectator and victim this time, cutting back and forth between torture in the dream world, the med team trying to resuscitate him, but either way he's a passive victim.
Except - he's not.
Dream!G'Kar (his heart, or his conscience, or the bit of G'Kar trapped in him, or all three) tells him, of course, what he didn't do, what he could have done, what he's been turning away from all this time.
(On a side note here, I feel like this episode is perhaps the strongest textual evidence so far that there *is* some kind of lingering connection between them after the Dust incident, because there's really no other explanation for G'Kar showing up in the medbay when he does, in the literal middle of the night, just about the time Londo actually crashes physically in the real world.)
Anyway, the episode pivots on this:
"One word, Mollari. One word was all that was required of you."
"It would not have mattered. It would not have changed anything. It would not have stopped!"
"You're wrong, Mollari. Whether it was me or my world, whether it was a total stranger or your worst enemy, you were a witness. It doesn't matter if they'd stop! It doesn't matter if they'd listen! You had an obligation to speak out."
The thing that is literally killing him is that he knew all along what right and wrong was. He knew what he was doing was wrong. He just didn't do anything about it, because he told himself it didn't matter, he told himself there was nothing he could do and he could only destroy himself by trying to stop it, he told himself going along with it in the service of a greater cause was worth it. And in the end, the repeated motif of "one word" means two things: one word is the word he could have said at the time, not to stop what was happening, but to openly acknowledge that he knew it was wrong; and it's the word he could say now to admit that he's culpable and he regrets it, and he finally, finally gets around to a place where he can say that he's sorry and really mean it.
And he breaks the glass separating himself from his own heart.
And he wakes up.
He wakes up gasping out that he's sorry, he wakes up saying it even when he has no breath to do anything other than form the words with his lips, and when he can finally speak, it's all he can say. "I'm sorry, G'Kar. I'm sorry."
And here's another thread from past episodes: the ongoing thread of Centauri apologizing to G'Kar for what their people have done, and the way it lands. There was the Emperor's apology, and G'Kar's visible shock and reaction, the way it sent him looking for Londo for the first friendly overture they'd ever had and the last one until late in season four: the first big betrayal. And there was Vir apologizing to him in late season two, very genuinely but also with no actual power to do anything about it. ("I tried to tell them. They didn't listen.") Vir at least did say something. It didn't help. And G'Kar, at that point, was in no place to listen either.
And then finally this.
It lands now in a way that I think it couldn't have before; it's not Vir's fault that his heartfelt apology wasn't the one G'Kar needed, or that none of them were (then) in a place then where it even could matter.
But now they are.
(Also love the coda scene in which we find out via Centauri folktale that there is every chance Londo has a celestially glorious soul chained to ... well ... him ... that he is slowly growing into being worthy of. There is a scene from Diana Wynne Jones' The Lives of Christopher Chant that I will never get over, in which the protagonists must rescue the ally/traitor Tacroy from his own treacherous people and they are given a challenge in which they must pick out Tacroy's soul from a selection of his people's souls, and they recognize Tacroy's soul out of all of his people because it is the only beautiful one - even though he has betrayed them, even after all that he's done - and this makes me think of that. It's not just what it is now, it's what it could be.)
Caps from here as always.
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My husband has a lot of travel coming up this summer, and maybe I will rewatch.
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