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Babylon 5 5x16 (more)
Now that the primary thoughts/screaming are done, a few more random items.
* The amended chapters of the Book of G'Kar that G'Kar gives to Delenn in case he doesn't come back, about which he tells her that he fixed some things he wrote "when I was a much angrier person" - he rewrote all the Centauri and Londo parts, didn't he? Because he doesn't want his early, angry, hateful thoughts on the Centauri to be the legacy he leaves behind. (And this is after the Centauri just betrayed everybody!)
* In retrospect it's kind of fascinating to me that this episode has Londo at about the worst he's been since he and G'Kar became friends. In his betrayal and hurt, he's reverted to his worse self - tearing up the evidence papers in front of the council, snarling out his counter-accusations. And it changes absolutely nothing between them. Delenn and Sheridan have to take a hard line with him (and we see how it's tearing up Delenn, staying up all night meditating over the candle and crying, although Londo doesn't see any of that - in public, and with him, she presents a calm face of accusation). But G'Kar stays very quiet in the meeting, standing with the council when they make a decision - he knows it's the right thing to do, and also that the Centauri very much are responsible - but he also *isn't* going to take a public, individual stand against Londo, the way most of Londo's friends have done. He knows the Centauri are guilty, he believes Londo isn't, but it's completely obvious throughout the episode that whatever else is going on, whatever worst and pettiest qualities this situation is bringing out in Londo, G'Kar loves that fucking idiot enough to die for him and follow him into hell, and nothing about this situation has changed that in the slightest.
* Even though he believes Londo wouldn't do the same. It's very clear in the final scene on Centauri Prime that Londo bucking his people's orders and facing down a threat of execution to protect G'Kar is a total shock to him. G'Kar knows full well that Londo is (or at least historically has been) a moral coward and he doesn't expect the same kind of die-for-you loyalty in return and still loves him enough to do just about anything and forgive just about anything for him. (While insulting him continually to his face, because they wouldn't be them without that.)
* I haven't really talked about Zack and Garibaldi at all, but that's a really interesting dynamic too - their fight in Garibaldi's quarters, Zack deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt and the reprieve he asks for, and this blows up epically in both their faces when Garibaldi's negligence shatters their very tentative attempt to prevent war between the Centauri and the Alliance. (Orion would like to point out that Garibaldi did not *cause* a war, he just failed to prevent one. Still, you had one job, literally! But like all of the other fatal flaws on display throughout this episode, we saw everything leading up to it and we know why it happened.) Zack has never been a personal favorite character of mine, but I really love that he's been with the security team, and he's been through enough with them and the other characters, that his scenes with Garibaldi feel earned.
* Vir, my darling. If I mention nothing else about the previous episodes, it's that the episode in which Vir comes into his own as the ambassador-elect feels like a proper precursor to Vir's role in this one. He doesn't have much to do other than backing up Londo, but he has been set up as a worthy successor. And possibly his innate kindness, honesty, and moral backbone is what they all need out of the local representative of the Centauri in the current mess, certainly better than Londo's politicking and fierce adherence to the party line.
* EDIT: Also, now that I've seen this far, the visible evidence in season three, that at the end of his timeline, Londo implicitly trusts the survival of his people to Delenn and Sheridan after they openly betrayed him here absolutely ENDS ME. And it's for the same reasons they cut him off at the knees in front of the council and he knows it: because they will do the right thing, no matter what.
* The amended chapters of the Book of G'Kar that G'Kar gives to Delenn in case he doesn't come back, about which he tells her that he fixed some things he wrote "when I was a much angrier person" - he rewrote all the Centauri and Londo parts, didn't he? Because he doesn't want his early, angry, hateful thoughts on the Centauri to be the legacy he leaves behind. (And this is after the Centauri just betrayed everybody!)
* In retrospect it's kind of fascinating to me that this episode has Londo at about the worst he's been since he and G'Kar became friends. In his betrayal and hurt, he's reverted to his worse self - tearing up the evidence papers in front of the council, snarling out his counter-accusations. And it changes absolutely nothing between them. Delenn and Sheridan have to take a hard line with him (and we see how it's tearing up Delenn, staying up all night meditating over the candle and crying, although Londo doesn't see any of that - in public, and with him, she presents a calm face of accusation). But G'Kar stays very quiet in the meeting, standing with the council when they make a decision - he knows it's the right thing to do, and also that the Centauri very much are responsible - but he also *isn't* going to take a public, individual stand against Londo, the way most of Londo's friends have done. He knows the Centauri are guilty, he believes Londo isn't, but it's completely obvious throughout the episode that whatever else is going on, whatever worst and pettiest qualities this situation is bringing out in Londo, G'Kar loves that fucking idiot enough to die for him and follow him into hell, and nothing about this situation has changed that in the slightest.
* Even though he believes Londo wouldn't do the same. It's very clear in the final scene on Centauri Prime that Londo bucking his people's orders and facing down a threat of execution to protect G'Kar is a total shock to him. G'Kar knows full well that Londo is (or at least historically has been) a moral coward and he doesn't expect the same kind of die-for-you loyalty in return and still loves him enough to do just about anything and forgive just about anything for him. (While insulting him continually to his face, because they wouldn't be them without that.)
* I haven't really talked about Zack and Garibaldi at all, but that's a really interesting dynamic too - their fight in Garibaldi's quarters, Zack deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt and the reprieve he asks for, and this blows up epically in both their faces when Garibaldi's negligence shatters their very tentative attempt to prevent war between the Centauri and the Alliance. (Orion would like to point out that Garibaldi did not *cause* a war, he just failed to prevent one. Still, you had one job, literally! But like all of the other fatal flaws on display throughout this episode, we saw everything leading up to it and we know why it happened.) Zack has never been a personal favorite character of mine, but I really love that he's been with the security team, and he's been through enough with them and the other characters, that his scenes with Garibaldi feel earned.
* Vir, my darling. If I mention nothing else about the previous episodes, it's that the episode in which Vir comes into his own as the ambassador-elect feels like a proper precursor to Vir's role in this one. He doesn't have much to do other than backing up Londo, but he has been set up as a worthy successor. And possibly his innate kindness, honesty, and moral backbone is what they all need out of the local representative of the Centauri in the current mess, certainly better than Londo's politicking and fierce adherence to the party line.
* EDIT: Also, now that I've seen this far, the visible evidence in season three, that at the end of his timeline, Londo implicitly trusts the survival of his people to Delenn and Sheridan after they openly betrayed him here absolutely ENDS ME. And it's for the same reasons they cut him off at the knees in front of the council and he knows it: because they will do the right thing, no matter what.
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It's as dramatic as his dictation of terms after the fall of Narn and it has something of the same awful commitment for me, in that whatever private qualms he may experience about the defensibility of his/government's position, on the public stage it's damn the torpedoes, full party line ahead. He doesn't want to believe that he has been effectively sold out by his own people, that all the while he was throwing himself into his sincere responsibilities as a charter member of the Alliance—a political role he could be finally, uncomplicatedly proud of—someone back home was setting the charges to blow all his bridge-building. Londo determined to suppress his second thoughts can be formidably difficult to get through to.
It's very clear in the final scene on Centauri Prime that Londo bucking his people's orders and facing down a threat of execution to protect G'Kar is a total shock to him.
YES. It isn't even moral cowardice for me in that moment, it's that Londo has historically, demonstrably never loved anything as much as Centauri Prime, for whose sake he most recently burnt every one of his bridges on Babylon 5 that wasn't Vir. It's what got him into his mess of moral event horizons in the first place. It's what kept him doubling down on them for far too long, sunk cost committed to his homeworld's greater good. All evidence and temperament should point to him once more presenting a united front against the enemies of his empire, even if they are his personal friends. But he doesn't even hesitate. He's right up in the defense minister's face about it, even before the ultimatum comes down. Even more than with Na'Toth, he's refusing to be a bystander. He failed G'Kar colossally on that front once (several times) before and now he just steps in.
(Orion would like to point out that Garibaldi did not *cause* a war, he just failed to prevent one. Still, you had one job, literally! But like all of the other fatal flaws on display throughout this episode, we saw everything leading up to it and we know why it happened.)
Both of you have good points! I appreciate that when the wheels come off, it's not because anyone is holding the idiot ball, it is probably too late for me to be trusted with metaphor.
Vir, my darling. If I mention nothing else about the previous episodes, it's that the episode in which Vir comes into his own as the ambassador-elect feels like a proper precursor to Vir's role in this one.
I love everything about that plotline, from the fast food to the absolute berserkering with the coutari while Londo beams approvingly. He's a great choice for ambassador and once again it's somewhere that wasn't at all predictable from his start point and makes perfect sense.
And it's for the same reasons they cut him off at the knees in front of the council and he knows it: because they will do the right thing, no matter what.
That sounds . . . agonizingly correct . . .
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Yes! It very much is the same vibe as his swaggering speech after the Narn conquest, riding over his private doubts and throwing himself wholeheartedly into doubling down on his government's response. It surely can't fail to remind G'Kar of it, and I really can't get over that it not only doesn't come close to damaging what's grown between them, it's not even a speed bump. After everything they've been through, after everything G'Kar's watched him do and everything he's done to G'Kar personally and everything G'Kar had to walk past when he finally fell headlong into loving the guy, Londo being an ass in public is hardly going to make a difference.
It isn't even moral cowardice for me in that moment, it's that Londo has historically, demonstrably never loved anything as much as Centauri Prime, for whose sake he most recently burnt every one of his bridges on Babylon 5 that wasn't Vir.
Oh yeah, you're completely right - that *is* what it is, and G'Kar knows that about him. (And relates to it - in the scene in G'Kar's quarters where Londo first starts to build bridges after Cartagia, he tries reaching out to G'Kar as a fellow patriot, because it's one of the things they have in common, that intensity of feeling for their worlds.) But yeah, he's finally found something he loves more, or at least, a moral line he won't cross even for the sake of his world, even if he's ordered to do it at gunpoint.
I appreciate that when the wheels come off, it's not because anyone is holding the idiot ball, it is probably too late for me to be trusted with metaphor.
I love that too! Nobody is really wrong in the episode - everyone messed up with Londo, Londo messed up his response, Garibaldi epically fucked up but in ways that make sense for him after everything he's gone through in the last season and a half, Zack fucked up too but we already know that he has trouble separating personal loyalty from doing what's right (and we also saw the flip side of that in the council chambers; Zack essentially took the opposite position from Sheridan and Delenn, siding with his friend over doing what would have been right for the station and the Alliance, and it didn't get him any farther). Sheridan could've pushed back harder on the declaration of war, but only at the risk of fracturing the Alliance completely. They've all had to sacrifice friends and principles (or choose between the two) to get where they are, and every mistake they've made is perfectly in character and perfectly heartbreaking.
I love everything about that plotline, from the fast food to the absolute berserkering with the coutari while Londo beams approvingly. He's a great choice for ambassador and once again it's somewhere that wasn't at all predictable from his start point and makes perfect sense.
Yes! He's grown into himself so beautifully. I had some idea of where Londo was going, but I did not expect Vir at all.
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