What's impressive then is how organic it feels, which is as much of a tribute to Peter Jurasik as to JMS, but it could have been so precision-tooled as to feel airless and it just doesn't. Londo is one of the most living characters on the show. Kind of a benchmark for TV in general, frankly.
Yes! It's meticulously crafted, and yet, the character breathes and grows and never feels like he's being forced into a particular mold. Even my complaints about his storyline in late season five are about the other characters, not Londo. His every choice feels completely, devastatingly in character, even throughout the parts when you want to shake him and yell, "Londo, don't do it!" He lives and grows and falls and it's all very natural-feeling even as he hews to an overall predetermined track. Just brilliant writing. I can see why (as you said elsewhere) Peter Jurasik considered it the role of a lifetime.
so much of Londo in Season 4 comes back to making the choice to open himself up, however awkwardly or ineffectually, which is then naturally intertangled with his attempt to get back over his moral event horizon because he closed so much of himself off to make all of those decisions that led to the Shadows over Centauri Prime
*scream* Yes, this! The closeness that he eventually gets in late season four/season five (and this is also a post I've been thinking about; he's just so loved in season five by those dear to him) is something he earns. It's interesting to contrast this with how relatively easily he reached out for connection in season two/early season three, when everyone was rebuffing him for perfectly good reasons. Now the thing that makes it hard is that he realizes how profoundly he fucked up and how justifiably difficult it's going to be to get anyone to trust him again. And as you point out, opening himself up also means opening himself up to the emotional consequences of all the decisions he made in seasons two and three, which is going to come very close to literally killing him with guilt in season five.
But he does. Even when you can see him fighting past shame and nervousness and fear of rejection. In season two, he would rather become a monster than be humiliated; he'd rather leave first than be left. In season four he fights his way past the fear of humiliation and rejection again and again, and starts to win back what he lost, and then some.
Rewatching that scene at the end of the Cartagia arc when Vir hugs him, and he makes that little speech about how he never gets to be happy for even a night without the universe snatching it away from him. Leaving aside his wallowing in self-pity, it's true that he's mostly miserable for the first three seasons. But from mid season four onward until things fall apart in late season five, he's really, truly happy. He has friends, and a cause he believes in, and little victories that mean a lot to him. As much as karma will extract a steep cost in blood later, he gets to have that, and he has it because he clawed his way back from the darkness he fell into.
"No, I just need to borrow this for a minute, I'll be right back."
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Yes! It's meticulously crafted, and yet, the character breathes and grows and never feels like he's being forced into a particular mold. Even my complaints about his storyline in late season five are about the other characters, not Londo. His every choice feels completely, devastatingly in character, even throughout the parts when you want to shake him and yell, "Londo, don't do it!" He lives and grows and falls and it's all very natural-feeling even as he hews to an overall predetermined track. Just brilliant writing. I can see why (as you said elsewhere) Peter Jurasik considered it the role of a lifetime.
so much of Londo in Season 4 comes back to making the choice to open himself up, however awkwardly or ineffectually, which is then naturally intertangled with his attempt to get back over his moral event horizon because he closed so much of himself off to make all of those decisions that led to the Shadows over Centauri Prime
*scream* Yes, this! The closeness that he eventually gets in late season four/season five (and this is also a post I've been thinking about; he's just so loved in season five by those dear to him) is something he earns. It's interesting to contrast this with how relatively easily he reached out for connection in season two/early season three, when everyone was rebuffing him for perfectly good reasons. Now the thing that makes it hard is that he realizes how profoundly he fucked up and how justifiably difficult it's going to be to get anyone to trust him again. And as you point out, opening himself up also means opening himself up to the emotional consequences of all the decisions he made in seasons two and three, which is going to come very close to literally killing him with guilt in season five.
But he does. Even when you can see him fighting past shame and nervousness and fear of rejection. In season two, he would rather become a monster than be humiliated; he'd rather leave first than be left. In season four he fights his way past the fear of humiliation and rejection again and again, and starts to win back what he lost, and then some.
Rewatching that scene at the end of the Cartagia arc when Vir hugs him, and he makes that little speech about how he never gets to be happy for even a night without the universe snatching it away from him. Leaving aside his wallowing in self-pity, it's true that he's mostly miserable for the first three seasons. But from mid season four onward until things fall apart in late season five, he's really, truly happy. He has friends, and a cause he believes in, and little victories that mean a lot to him. As much as karma will extract a steep cost in blood later, he gets to have that, and he has it because he clawed his way back from the darkness he fell into.
"No, I just need to borrow this for a minute, I'll be right back."
I love that so much. VIR!!