Episode 4.6: Into the Fire

Oh, man. Like, how do I even start this? Obviously I didn't like it--you can't have read this entire blog, and understood my feelings about this show and its story and (more specifically) its style of storytelling, and thought that I would like this episode. Half of me wants to thank you all for not spoiling the big reveal, and the other half of me is honestly kind of angry that no one warned me how ultimately hollow and unsatisfying the end of the war would be.

I've noticed, over the last few months, that my blog has been only superficially about Babylon 5--what it's really been about, under the hood, is storytelling in general, and what happens when storytelling preferences conflict, and what happens when someone does a deep analysis of a work of art long past the point where he's realized he doesn't like it. If I had not locked myself into a blog, and the social contract of completing that blog, I would have stopped watching this show a long time ago--not because I hate it, I actually enjoy most of it--but because it is clearly Not For Me. And this episode has put that into perspective more than any other, because it is objectively good, and well-made, and in many ways the Platonic Ideal of a Babylon 5 episode. This is what we've been building toward; this is what it all means. The conclusion of the war, the final bloom of countless little plot seeds, the thesis statement for the series as a whole. Clearly the story isn't over just because the war is--we watched them build toward a war, and we watched them fight it, and now we get to watch them recover and reconstruct and move on. But the thesis has been stated, and the flavor has been tasted, and if you don't like that flavor now you're not going to like ten or twenty or a hundred episodes from now, either. I've had 72 episodes to develop a taste for it, and I haven't, and so the only question left is: why am I still here? I honestly believe that I'm doing a disservice to the show itself, and to its fans. Last week a friend of mine said "I've never seen the show, but based on your posts about it now I never have to," and I told him "no, turning people away has never been my goal. There's a lot I don't like but I still recommend it." Now, though, I don't think I do. If this is what we spent those 72 episodes building toward--if this massive sense of disappointment is my reward for sticking with it--then no, I don't recommend that people watch this series. For me, and for people who share my storytelling sensibilities, it simply isn't worth it.

Which--and let's be VERY clear about this--doesn't mean it's bad. Lots of people love this show, and they are not wrong, and I've made this exact excuse often enough that it should have been a sign. In the Shadows' ideal evolutionary environment, where natural selection reigns, the early episodes would have weeded me out of the viewer pool long before I got this disillusioned. The people who love this episode are the people who were self-selected to still be watching when it aired. They're the people this episode was written for, and they loved it because it was exactly what they wanted. There were other people, I'm sure, who got to this point and said "Wait, what? It's over? What now?" but they are also going to be okay because they love the world, or the characters, or the style of the show. They're invested in the people, and they want to see what happens to them now that the war is over. I'm...not? I don't watch this show because I love it, I watch this show because its reputation as a storytelling landmark made me curious, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. That's not the kind of love that will get me through the rocky times in a relationship.

My point is that this show is doing exactly what it set out to do, and it's doing it well, and it's not a thing I'm interested in so there's no good reason for me to still be watching it. But at the same time I have a morbid curiosity about what happens next. There are still plenty of plot seeds and call-forwards and foreshadows that have yet to pay off, and I kind of want to see them but I know they're going to bug me. But you know what's going to bug me even more than that? Not finishing this damn thing.

Sigh.

In brief, because at some point I should actually talk about the episode:
1) The war is over, and the Shadows and the Vorlons and all of the First One Pokemon that Ivanova has collected all jump in their ships and go "beyond the rim." And it's dumb but it happened, and we all have to deal with it.
2) The First Ones went with Lorien, and not only did he treat them like children but they treated themselves like children, which was also dumb.
3) The designs of the First One ships were all very alien and cool, so at least there's that. They never once felt like unknowably ancient beings, but they did look like it, so I didn't hate EVERYTHING about this episode.
4) Just kidding, I also loved Londo blowing up the Shadows' island and cutting off Morden's head. Though I wish he'd stayed in his burn-victim makeup--the only reason to take him out of it was for emotional bookending when his head was on a pike, and I don't care.
5) The Vorlons arrive on Centauri Prime, ready to cleanse it of all Shadow influence, and then...don't. I don't know why, and neither do you, so don't bother proposing any theories in the comments.
6) I am very bitter about this stupid episode.
7) As the resolution of a one-shot episode, "Captain Kirk talks the aliens down from their war by telling them people should choose their own fates" would not be terrible. As the culmination of a series-long arc: just shut up, Babylon 5. I am very done with you.

I will return to this blog at some point, but it might be a while.