Episode 3.18: Walkabout
Maybe I’m in a weird mood, but I don’t think so: given the title of the episode, I think JMS agrees with me that the small, personal story about Franklin is miles better than the big flashy story about using psychics to attack the Shadows. The latter isn't bad, and it’s perfectly serviceable, but at the end of the day—at least for me—watching it didn’t add anything beyond what reading a summary would have: Sheridan decides to test the theory that psychics can jam the Shadow ships, and Lyta helps, and with G’Kar’s aid they manage to find and defeat some. The end. There’s a great scene between G’Kar and Garibaldi, but other than that it’s all pretty workaday stuff.
Franklin, on the other hand, shines in a weird little story that doesn’t even have a solid arc. He’s out wandering the station to try to find himself, starting with a wonderful little scene with, again Garibaldi. Franklin tells him that he’s been a doctor for so long, and so intensely, that he doesn’t actually know who he is now that he’s not a doctor anymore. He needs to find himself, and when he finds himself he needs to sit down and talk and talk until there are no more words left. “And that’s the important part, because the most important things can’t be said with words.” There’s a simple power in this concept, and in Franklin’s description of it, and this plot-focused show sometimes loses that while trying to keep the rest of its plates spinning. Getting a chance to slow down and just spend some time with interesting characters, even when the story doesn’t really go anywhere, was great.
Franklin’s wandering takes him to a nightclub where he meets Coco Hernandez from FAME, here performing a torch song in one of the only good “musical numbers in an SF TV show” I’ve ever seen. She does two numbers in the episode, and apparently both were written by JMS, so kudos to him; they’re not gonna be radio singles anytime soon, but Erica Gimpel hits them out of the park. Franklin is enthralled, and she comes over after the show to flirt, and their relationship is banal but somehow more fascinating because of it. They don’t do or say anything vital, and they don’t even really reveal anything profound about themselves, but they’re real people, having a real conversation, and I loved it. They end up spending the night together, and then the plot part of this A-plot kicks in, but it’s—again—small and simple. She asks him for drugs, he says no, and we start to wonder if that’s the only reason she flirted so hard with a doctor; when he’s asleep she takes his ID card and uses it to buy a recreational painkiller, and he wakes up to find her unconscious and assumes she ODed. But Attractive Doctor (uncredited) tells him the opposite is true: she’s dying of a painful, chronic illness, and uses the painkiller just to get by. So she wasn’t really playing him, and they’re connection was real, and they have a little talk at the end but it doesn’t tie off Franklin’s arc in any way, and imdb says she isn’t coming back again, and that’s really as far as it goes. It’s not setting up a new love interest or recurring character, and it shows Franklin being Franklin without shining any new lights on him or his journey, and I'm kind of okay with that because it was enjoyable and interesting. It was kind of like the old Incredible Hulk TV show, where Bruce Banner just wanders around meeting people and then moving on, and honestly I would watch a show about the life crisis of Franklin the space doctor just roaming the galaxy trying to find himself.
And this blog, like this episode, doesn't really have an ending. I said what I wanted to say, and now I'm done.
Franklin, on the other hand, shines in a weird little story that doesn’t even have a solid arc. He’s out wandering the station to try to find himself, starting with a wonderful little scene with, again Garibaldi. Franklin tells him that he’s been a doctor for so long, and so intensely, that he doesn’t actually know who he is now that he’s not a doctor anymore. He needs to find himself, and when he finds himself he needs to sit down and talk and talk until there are no more words left. “And that’s the important part, because the most important things can’t be said with words.” There’s a simple power in this concept, and in Franklin’s description of it, and this plot-focused show sometimes loses that while trying to keep the rest of its plates spinning. Getting a chance to slow down and just spend some time with interesting characters, even when the story doesn’t really go anywhere, was great.
Franklin’s wandering takes him to a nightclub where he meets Coco Hernandez from FAME, here performing a torch song in one of the only good “musical numbers in an SF TV show” I’ve ever seen. She does two numbers in the episode, and apparently both were written by JMS, so kudos to him; they’re not gonna be radio singles anytime soon, but Erica Gimpel hits them out of the park. Franklin is enthralled, and she comes over after the show to flirt, and their relationship is banal but somehow more fascinating because of it. They don’t do or say anything vital, and they don’t even really reveal anything profound about themselves, but they’re real people, having a real conversation, and I loved it. They end up spending the night together, and then the plot part of this A-plot kicks in, but it’s—again—small and simple. She asks him for drugs, he says no, and we start to wonder if that’s the only reason she flirted so hard with a doctor; when he’s asleep she takes his ID card and uses it to buy a recreational painkiller, and he wakes up to find her unconscious and assumes she ODed. But Attractive Doctor (uncredited) tells him the opposite is true: she’s dying of a painful, chronic illness, and uses the painkiller just to get by. So she wasn’t really playing him, and they’re connection was real, and they have a little talk at the end but it doesn’t tie off Franklin’s arc in any way, and imdb says she isn’t coming back again, and that’s really as far as it goes. It’s not setting up a new love interest or recurring character, and it shows Franklin being Franklin without shining any new lights on him or his journey, and I'm kind of okay with that because it was enjoyable and interesting. It was kind of like the old Incredible Hulk TV show, where Bruce Banner just wanders around meeting people and then moving on, and honestly I would watch a show about the life crisis of Franklin the space doctor just roaming the galaxy trying to find himself.
And this blog, like this episode, doesn't really have an ending. I said what I wanted to say, and now I'm done.
She is mentioned in one other episode in late Season 4, but it's one of those references that is fairly easy to miss if you're not paying attention to it.
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