Episode 3.11: Ceremonies of Light and Dark

I feel more torn about this episode than maybe any other in the entire series. It is empirically excellent: it pays off old things, it sets up new things, it has the only Londo scene I’ve ever genuinely loved, it has Marcus beat an entire room of criminals senseless and then Lennier defeat Marcus with a gesture, it has Sheridan’s confession of love for Delenn, and it has short, trenchant, perfect summations of each lead character’s inner turmoil. On the other hand, it is also filled with missteps: it reduces the Nightwatch even further into evil caricatures than they already were, it has one of them with less than zero acting ability give an unwatchable speech about torture, followed by the most poorly filmed song in TV history, it has a pointless talking computer that’s trying to be funny, it expects us to care about a Marcus backstory without any prep or foreshadowing, it has a boring punching scene (though at least it’s short), and it ends with the melodramatic reveal of some almost hilariously bad new uniforms. The parts of it I loved, I loved, but the overall vibe was unsettled and unsatisfying. When it ended I had to sit and remind myself about all the good stuff. I honestly don’t know what to think.

Let’s talk about Londo first. He sits down with Refa, has a deeply private conversation RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A CROWDED CAFE, LIKE AN IDIOT, and tries to get Refa to stop dealing with Morden. One of the things I love about this show is the way the public scenes always feel public—it feels lived-in, in a way that Deep Space 9, for example, never did—but for some reason the directors or the cinematographers or whoever never think to clear some of those people out of the background when they’re filming what is supposed to be a private conversation. Maybe those aren’t extras, just homeless people squatting on the set? Maybe they CAN’T get rid of them? Or, more likely, the show simply has no concept of what effective security even is, let alone how to portray it. In a later scene, the three highest-ranking officers on the station are rebuilding their security framework, and give their top secret command codes in what turns out to be an unlocked room: Delenn walks in literally without knocking, just a rando off the street, and if she’d been five seconds earlier she would have heard everything; if she’d been anyone else the entire security of the station would have been irretreivably compromised. Anyway: back to Londo. He and Refa are hanging out (in what I assume is Hot Rod Billy’s Totally Safe Bar For Very Important Ambassadors Who Don’t Have Bodyguards), and Refa laughs at the very idea that he would stop dealing with Morden, and Londo casually reveals that he has poisoned Refa’s drink. Do what he says and everything’s fine; don’t, and Refa dies. It was exactly the kind of thing that first-season G’Kar would have done, but at the same time absolutely Centauri; Londo even makes the point that the old ways of Centauri ruthlessness are returning, and he’s just going with the flow that Refa started. I never love the Centauri more than when we see these hints of them as an ancient, debauched culture, and watching Londo be a cold-hearted killer in the service of good is a cause for celebration. I mean, he tells him he's poisoned him and threaten to kill him IN THE MIDDLE OF A CROWDED CAFE, but whatever. This whole scene is fantastic (and then we never see Londo again in the episode).

Meanwhile, of course, the A-plot is happening: a bunch of comically evil Nightwatch goons are watching Sheridan through rifle scopes and plotting secret overthrows and gnashing their teeth like silent movie villains. The episode began with transport ships full of ex-Nightwatch people flying back to Earth, and Garibaldi says “that’s all of them I could find,” and then we meet the ones he couldn’t find yet and wonder how he could possibly have missed them. Did you maybe think to look for the ex-military member of your own security force who has a well-known loyalty to Earth and the voice and face of a mob enforcer? What about the former special-ops psychopath with a history of violence and who, by your own admission later in the episode, you’ve already been watching because he’s nothing but trouble? DID YOU LOOK FOR THEM, GARIBALDI? The Nightwatch, as I have previously discussed, are already so one-sided and evil that I can’t take them seriously as an organization, let alone a covert one. Now we’re expected to believe that the last remaining members are a) the absolute dregs of society, and yet b) so run-of-the-mill that Garibaldi can’t figure out which of his criminally insane former security personnel joined the Nightwatch and which didn’t. I doesn't work. Later in the punching scene, Sheridan is ready to kill that "knee bone's connected to the rib bone" guy, and it's supposed to be a Moment when he stops and takes stock of his anger and tries to figure out what could prompt him to such personal rage, and it doesn't land because the whole audience is ready to kill the guy. He's an over-the-top, irredeemably evil, racist psycho killer who sings off-key children's rhymes to himself; it would be virtually impossible to code him as a more disgusting and distasteful person without him literally abusing a child on-screen. Sheridan--I mean, everybody, but Sheridan MOST OF ALL--should be totally happy to punch that bastard right in the face-hole and send him packing. But we're supposed to buy that his anger is such a shock to him that he reconsiders his whole life and his relationship to Delenn.

Is it too much to ask for some complexity? Is it impossible to believe that someone would want to preserve the coherence of the only government they've ever known for, I don't know, good reasons? Why can't we see a Nightwatch guy who says "Yes, the president is corrupt, but that's what elections are for. Don't tear apart the Earth Alliance on a whim: let's stick together, stay strong in the face of our enemies (Centauri is attacking everyone in sight, after all), and solve this problem within the law instead of outside of it." That's a guy who, yes, Sheridan could feel bad about wanting to murder--he's clearly a bad guy, but with believable, non-supervillain motivations. And maybe this is unfair of me; maybe I have a different opinion today, during the Trump presidency, of what a collaborator looks like, than I would have twenty five years ago. Our political climate is pretty wildly different, and much closer to a President Clark situation than we've been in living memory. So there's that. On the plus side, it looks like we might be done with the Nightwatch for now, if not forever. Hooray! Pour one out for the one-eyed, gravel-voiced Batman-villain who is apparently indistinguishable from the rest of the former cops on Babylon 5.

The B-plot is a little more interesting. Delenn wants to re-center the station's collective psyche with a ceremony similar to (or exactly the same as) the one from Season 1's PARLIAMENT OF DREAMS, characterized by the relinquishing of personal baggage and unhealthy secrets. It's a cool idea, and for the most part she handles it really well, though her invitation to Londo is delivered in such an insulting way I have to wonder if she was actively trying to discourage him from attending. On the other hand, she's oddly insistent that Marcus join them, despite his strong hints--and eventual overt statements--that he doesn't want to. I think we're supposed to suspect something about Marcus's adamant disinterest in the ceremony, but a) it's Marcus, and I hate him, and b) his reasons, once he gives them, are dumb. Maybe they're not dumb, and I'm blinded by my hatred? One thing I know for sure is dumb: he joined the Rangers because his brother wanted him to and he didn't and then the brother was killed; later in this episode when Delenn is kidnapped, he says something so on-the-nose that I assume it was a parenthetical in the script and he wasn't supposed to say it out loud:"It's happening again! I wasn't where I was supposed to be and someone I care about got hurt!" Thanks for pointing out that emotional beat, Babylon 5, there's no way we could have connected that dot to the one you just showed us five minutes earlier.

At this point in the series I just need to admit that I hate Marcus for probably-irrational reasons and move on. I hate everything about him, and I don't even know why. Probably because he's unaccountably good at everything he does, walks around in full "I'm a secret commando" clothing 24/7, and meets with the command staff in full view of everyone at all hours of the day despite being allegedly unknown to the entire rest of the station. Or maybe because he keeps trying to crack jokes that don't land. Or maybe because he has the most smugly punchable face I've ever seen. See? That last one wasn't even a real reason; my hatred is irrational. I even like the actor: Jason Carter played Hans on "Hans My Hedgehog," the best episode of Jim Henson's best series (yes, I said it). So I'll give all kinds of extra credit to Jason Carter. But Marcus is not likely to win me over anytime soon, so I'm just going to establish a safe word--let's say "hedgehog"--and go on with my life. Anytime you see the word "hedgehog," know that what I'm saying is probably hate-fueled rhetoric rather than considered analysis.

Marcus is, on the other hand, part of one of the best fight scene's in the series so far. Marcus sits down at a table full of gangsters and threatens them "tell me where to find Delenn, or five minutes from now I'll be the only one in this room still standing." They all stand up, and we know it's on, and then the camera cuts away to some other characters in another scene somewhere, and then we go back to the bar and Marcus knocks down the last guy, and he's the only one standing. He said he'd do it, and he did it, and we didn't need to SEE him do it because none of the actors are trained fighters and they couldn't have lived up to our expectations anyway. This is exactly what I've been griping about for several episodes now, and it was beautiful to see the show get it so right: we know Marcus beat them all up, and our imagination can fill in the rest. Contrast this to the big fight scene at the end, when Sheridan and everyone jumps the mustache-twirling kidnappers in what looks like a cargo hold, and we get a scene of laser blasts and face-punching so generic they could have spliced in a similar scene from a previous episode and it wouldn't have mattered. Even when Delenn gets hit with a knife we don't care, because she's Delenn: we know she's not going to die, so there's no tension. Wounds only carry over from one episode to the next when the actor is injured during filming (which is why Garibaldi has a cast on his arm in this one). I think the point of this scene is supposed to be the "oh no Sheridan's going berserk" moment, but it doesn't work because of reasons we've already discussed: it never occurred to me that Sheridan was going berserk, because a) he ALWAYS hits back harder than the bad guys, metaphorically speaking, and b) the guy he's punching is so overwhelming evil that of course he deserves to get punched. I didn't even think about "Delenn's in danger and Sheridan's going all caveman to defend her" until the final scene in the hospital when he said it out loud. So maybe that's a case where we do need the script to connect all the dots for us, because the script numbered them wrong and we can't do it ourselves.

But: back to Marcus. He beats up all the gangsters, and we don't have to see it to know that he's good at it, and then Lennier comes to him and goes all Warrior Monk and it is SO PERFECT. Marcus touches him, and Lennier warns him away, and Marcus goes for him again and Lennier does the Darth Vader pick-you-up-by-your-neck thing, and it looks so much more incredible because of the context of Marcus having just dispatched that entire room of bad guys. To top it off, Lennier gets the official JMS Badass One-Liner of the episode, while holding Marcus in the air: "We may look like you, but we are not you." Seeing that unexpected display of power, coupled with a statement of such alien-ness to underline that Lennier and Marcus are fundamentally different beings, was incredible. Lennier, already one of my favorite characters on the show, gained a bunch of extra points today.

Let me talk about the hospital scene now. There's a scene in the final season of Deep Space 9 where a supergenius wakes up from a coma and hangs out with the man cast for a bit, and then as she's walking away she describes each of them in a single sentence that hits each character so perfectly, and encapsulates them so completely, that my roommate and I were blown away. It's still one of my favorite bits of dialogue from the show. This hospital scene is completely different, but reminded me of it in the way that each character, one by one, reveals something so perfect about themselves. It was vulnerable and honest and I loved it. Starting with Sheridan, they come to Delenn to carry out the Minbari ceremony: they relinquish something valuable (their old Earth Force uniforms) and then share a secret they've never told anybody. Sheridan tells her he loves her. Garibaldi tells her he's always afraid. Ivanova tells her she thinks she loved Talia--and that "think" thrown in there is what makes it extra poignant, because it's not a confession of lost love, it's a current realization of a love that was already lost, which is so much more sad. Franklin tells her that he has a problem, almost certainly referencing his addiction to stims. I admit that when Sheridan gave his heartfelt confession of love and then immediately turned to leave I almost yelled at the screen--what kind of a loser confesses his love to someone and then instantly leaves before she can say anything back?--but then I realized what they were doing and I was kind of sort of okay with it. I still think that was a time for a conversation, not a ceremony, but okay. I can overlook it, because the rest of the scene was so wonderful.

The hospital scene ends with Lennier saying "I think she anticipated your actions," presumably speaking of the uniforms and not the heartfelt confessions, and then tells them she left gifts in her quarters. Which was easy to do, I assume, because they apparently don't have locks on their doors. And it's obvious that the gifts are new uniforms, and I was half-excited, half-cringing to see them, and then yes, the cringing half was right, and the uniforms look ridiculous. Doggonit. How long are those things going to stick around before we get back to the good stuff?

Oh wait! I didn't even talk about the computer! They need to reboot the station computer, because Earth Force has all the access codes, but when they do it comes back with an annoying AI. Leave it to Babylon 5 to present a "self-aware AI takes over the station" story that has no tension, no conflict, and no purpose. It has just enough lines for us to dislike it, and ends with Garibaldi shooting it, and then it never matters. I thought that maybe they did this because the episode--despite feeling abnormally long--was somehow about 45 seconds under time, and they needed a pointless D-plot to pad it out and threw this together at the craft services table, but no: it turns out the voice of the computer was Harlan Ellison, so I have to assume this was done either as a favor to him or as a favor from him to JMS. Which means it was planned, which means it's even more inexplicable that it doesn't matter in any way. It's like the business with the teddy bear: a "comedic" cameo that has no bearing on the show, but holds meaning behind the scenes.

In the end, this episode has me back to my old worries: is this show really for me? If I only like its really high points, and find its day-to-day episodes unsatisfying and occasionally grating, am I really a fan? I don't think I am. It's like with Marcus: obviously people liked him--a lot of people love him--but I just don't, and that doesn't make them wrong or me wrong, it just means the show and I are on different wavelengths. And that concerns me, because I'm writing this whole blog about it, and I want to be honest but I don't want to whine about something that's obviously good but increasingly not for me.