Episode 3.20: The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place

This show has really fallen in love with flashbacks, hasn’t it? They are just everywhere. This episode we get to watch a flashback of THE SAME EPISODE, in case you forgot what happened three scenes earlier. I think they should just go all in on it, like LEVERAGE, and make it a Thing.

But before we start reminding ourselves of important things that happened very recently, we need to remind ourselves of unimportant things that happened a very long time ago. Ivanova has been doing a lot of voiceovers lately, and I don’t make fun of it because it works really well, but this time around as she’s running through the cast to tell us what they’re doing, she tells us what Brother Theo is doing. You might remember Brother Theo as the monk who missed the point of PASSING THROUGH GETHSEMANE, and I hope you do because he is back and he is ON ONE TONIGHT. JMS had a bunch of unecessarily wordy jokes he wanted to make, but Marcus isn’t in this episode so Brother Theo gets to make them. I don’t remember him being bitter and joyless before, but that’s his only mode in this episode; a bunch of other religious dudes show up, and Brother Theo deeply hates the nicest and wisest of them, so while the guy is doing his best to provide meaningful data and counsel to Sheridan Theo sits to the side and makes catty comments. And that’s literally his only role in the episode: he doesn’t come back later with something useful, or add anything vital to the plot, he just says things JMS thought were funny, and then the story moves on without him. So it probably SHOULD have been Marcus, but I assume they used Theo because they’re about to use him for something important in the big finale, and wanted to remind us who he was first. This was very much not the best way to do it, unless him being a humorless scold is a key part of the finale, but anyway: Brother Theo, ladies and gentlemen. Tip your waitresses.

Speaking of “clearly a Marcus line but he’s not here,” Delenn spends the episode trying to convince Sheridan to take a break, which is awesome, but she kicks it off with a painfully belabored bit about synonyms for “grumpy.” The focus on language is very Delenn—she’s been fascinated by the vagaries of human language since season 1—but the “I’ll help you but I’ll make fun of you first” is pure Marcus, and comes off as more snide than it should at this point in their relationship. To make it even worse, she starts making fun of the words but never actually comments on how humans have so many synonyms for grumpy, and what that says about us as a species. She gets right up to it, but she doesn’t do it. Anyway: once she gets the jokes out of the way it’s a genuinely tender moment between her and Sheridan, followed by a similar moment later in the episode when she forces him to go to the visiting pastor’s church service. Their relationship is really progressing nicely, and I am loving it.

The visiting pastor is also concerned about Sheridan’s mental well-being, and the best scene in the episode has the two men sitting down in Sheridan’s room to talk about the importance of having an emotional support system. And it’s an awesome scene, but seriously: remember a few episodes ago when I made fun of the lax security on the ship, and how anyone off the street could just wander into an officer’s quarters? This conversation starts with the pastor sauntering into what is either Sheridan’s office or Sheridan’s bedroom—it was too dark for me to tell for sure—seeing Sheridan in the corner, and saying “Oh! I’m sorry. The lights were off, so I figured nobody was here.” IS HE TRYING TO ROB THE PLACE? What on Earth is he doing just wandering through Sheridan’s office and/or bedroom? Do they literally not have locks on anything? Or guards outside the doors? HOW IS ANYONE IMPORTANT ON THIS STATION STILL ALIVE?

But, lucky for Sheridan, it was a pastor this time, and he sits down and he shares wisdom and the alchemical combination of JMS’s dialogue and guest star Mel Winkler’s delivery is phenomenal. JMS can’t write a joke, but he writes sage wisdom like nobody I’ve ever seen, and this is one of the only scenes of the show that I wanted to immediately rewind and watched again. He tells Sheridan that it’s important to have a confidant, and then starts talking about women, and says “She loves you, you know. I saw the way she watched you at dinner,” and Sheridan says “Delenn’s great, but she’s got a lot on her plate already,” and I the single best response the reverend could have given was “Delenn? I was talking about Ivanova,” but he doesn’t, and I was sad—not because I think there’s anything between Sheridan and Ivanova, or should be, but because it would have been a perfect reversal in a perfect situation. But JMS has more restraint than I do, so he told a good story instead of making a pointless but awesome twist. Whatever, man. It’s a great scene, though, and I’d love to see Winkler stick around to fill whatever role Theo is being groomed for, but alas. 

Meanwhile, in the other half of the episode, there are Centauri shenanigans aplenty. Refa shows up, along with some mucky-muck from the Emperor’s court, and it’s a scheme-off to see who is most conniving and who is dead. It comes as no surprise that Londo wins, because he’s in the opening credits, but the journey was kind of fun and depressing in equal parts. The fun parts comes from watching G’Kar—the man at the center of the Centauri scheming—walk into a trap and trying to guess how it’s going to reverse and actually be a trap for Refa. I admit that I guessed wrong. You see, Londo used Vir to deliver a message to Londo about Na’Toth (and I got SO EXCITED but she’s not actually in this one), intending to draw G’Kar back to Homeworld so he can be caught and executed. Refa kidnaps Vir and uses a professional starer to read his mind (seriously—the guy has one second of screen time but he stares the HELL out of it), and that’s when we get to rewatch the whole Londo/Vir scene again, five minutes later, in black and white flashback. I was absolutely convinced that Vir had not gone through with it, and had warned G’Kar instead, but the mind read proved that he’d told G’Kar everything he was supposed to. THIS IS SAD. They spent such a long time building Vir’s backbone, and now it’s completely gone again for no good reason. His character progress has been erased, and there’s not a single thing in this episode that first-season Vir couldn’t have done, right down to the toadying and letting-himself-get-stepped-on-ing. 

Anyway: Vir enables the murder of a man he knows is good, and Refa jumps at the chance to go and murder him before Londo can, and I figured Londo’s actual plan—since this whole thing was obviously a setup—was to kill both Refa and G’Kar in one blow. Spoiler warning: that is not his plan. Instead it turns out that he (we assume) contacted G’Kar long before Vir did, got him on his side, and set the whole thing up. Down in the catacombs G’Kar plays a recorded message from Londo, outing Refa as the guy who ordered the attack on Homeworld that killed millions of people, and then lets the Narn kill the living crap out of him. Refa ends up dead, and G’Kar gets bloody revenge, and it was cool but it doesn’t sit right with me. Why did Londo not also kill G’Kar when he had the chance? We know he wants G’Kar dead. Why use the Narn to kill Refa instead of the poison he already had in place for that exact purpose? Why do the Centauri assume Refa was in league with the Narn when he is found brutally mauled by Narn? Yes, there was a data crystal, but come on. This is the most complicated possible plan to kill one enemy, and it involved not killing another enemy, and it didn’t make sense. Worst of all, it didn’t include anything about Adira: Londo is obviously doing this BECAUSE he thinks Refa poisoned Adira, as he swore to do, but he never mentions her by name, and Refa never says “What? Who’s Adira?” right before being punched in the head by a Narn, which would have been awesome. I can only assume that Adira was very deliberately not mentioned because JMS needs Londo to not know it was Morden who really poisoned her, and it very much felt like the plot was driving the characters instead of the other way around. 

The whole scene with the brutal beating of Refa was intercut with a gospel number performed by Mel Winkler’s church choir, and it’s a rousing rendition of “No Hiding Place,” and it was kind of cool but, again, it felt wrong. There’s no thematic juxtaposition between the two scenes, the way there is in, say, the baptism/murder scene in THE GODFATHER. That one cuts back and forth between a church thing and a  murder thing and it works because the new Don is being metaphorically baptized into the life of violence he’d spent the whole movie fighting against; there is a clear narrative link between the two sequences. This bit also doesn’t have the power of the very recent and very similar death of Kosh, in which a brutal murder was being intercut with a conversation; in that case, each scene informed the other, because they were each about the other, but here we get none of that, and honestly it feels like one too many trips to the well to reuse the exact same technique just a few episodes later. The only connection we have here is the song being sung, about how there’s nowhere for sinners to hide, and yes that applies to Refa but it applies to Londo way more, and Refa is a minor villain at best, and watching a bunch of people who don’t even know that Refa exists sing joyfully about how he’s finally getting a comeuppance no one was really looking for just doesn’t feel right. yes, technically Refa is responsible for the bombing of Homeworld. But in the world of this series, and in the narrative flow of the story it is telling, Refa has not been set up as a supervillain, and nothing has been leading to this moment. Londo didn’t pull the trigger, but he made all the guns and he handed them to a bunch of lunatics and everyone who talks about revenge has been talking about revenge on HIM, not Refa. What this scene really felt like, for me, was Londo getting away with murder by pawning off his culpability on a minor character, and that made the “ding dong the witch is dead” stuff ring really hollow. 

Of note: “The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place” is also the name of a Ray Bradbury short story about a couple of Americans being forced into a labor camp by Mexicans, in a world where white guys are now the minority. It’s kind of a ham-fisted bit of “reverse racism” fearmongering, but it fits perfectly with this episode’s use of the same gospel song: you used to be the oppressor, but now the oppressed are going to have their revenge. I don’t know if JMS did that on purpose, or if he just really liked the song and thought it fit, but it’s kind of a cool thing either way.


In the end, I’m still very sad that Vir caved in a situation where I don’t believe he would have, and that he didn’t appear to have his soul crushed by the realization that he was willing to do such a thing. I’m also very sad that we didn’t get to see Na’Toth again, because it was all a fakeout. But it was a good episode and I love Mel Winkler 

Comments

  1. Interesting to read your thoughts. I felt like the wrongness of the song / Refa scene was kind of the point. The pastor's speech about how the enemy is hate indicts all sides equally: Refa, Londo, the Narns. And then when the song starts, it all turns around: we see the brutality of what it means to have no hiding place, yet here are these people singing about it like it's no big deal. There's a brief shot of Lennier in the congregation where he looks around and seems to wonder "are we singing about what I think we're singing about?"

    Didn't know about the Bradbury story. That's a cool extra layer.

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  2. It's been a long time since I watched it, but IIRC the "professional starer" was a Centauri telepath. Didn't Refa have a line like "Take it from his mind."? And din't Londo later confess to Vir, "I knew Refa had a telepath..." and apologize for using him?

    If I'm remembering correctly, I think you owe Vir an apology: there's no way he could have resisted a telepath.

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    1. Ah, but I think the complaint is that Vir delivered the message Londo wanted delivered to G'Kar, believing it would lead to G'Kar's death. Which is another giant step back for Vir's sense of justice and independence, though, if I remember correctly, it was done under threat. Despite this being one of my favourite episodes the charge is fairly laid.

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    2. Yep, good call. I once again fail reading comprehension.

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  3. I respect your insights and opinions, as always.

    For me, the song was deliciously evil, in that he literally has a gospel choir singing while a lynch mob beats someone to death. Refuge in audacity. The look on the Mimbari faces, especially Lenier, as he tries to get into the awkward song, was perfectly evil.

    Also, there's a nice symbolic shout-out when the singer sings "You know they forgot about Jesus", right on G'kar's closeup.

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