Episode 2.14: There All Honor Lies
This episode has three plots, and they didn’t Babylon Five any of them. While none of them are especially amazing, the two main ones are pretty good, and the “funny” one is short and weird but innocuous. Plus we get the best Vir scene yet, another example of Lennier being badass, and the triumphant return of Caitlin Brown, this time as a no-nonsense human lawyer. I missed you, real Na’Toth. Please come back.
Let’s start with the “funny” plot. I keep putting that in quotes for a reason. It seems that Earth has decided the best way to keep the station financially self-sustaining is to create a bunch of B5 merchandise, like hats and action figures and stuff, and for some reason Sheridan and Ivanova are horrifically offended. I don’t think we’re supposed to question they’re motives—I think the writers assumed that we would flatly agree that this is a unilaterally bad idea—but I do not, and there is no evidence presented that might actually show us why this merchandise is so abominable. Londo freaks out over a Londo doll, but this is because the Centauri are apparently offended by anatomically inaccurate dolls; if the doll has no genitals, it’s like a statement claiming he has no genitals, and that’s one of the first culturally interesting details we’ve learned about the Centauri. As a detail it makes sense, and given that detail Londo’s reaction makes sense, but compare that to Sheridan’s nuclear freakout when he learns that one of the teddy bears has his initials. The bear’s baseball jersey says “Ba-bear-lon 5,” which is CLEARLY inferior to “Bear-bylon 5,” but that’s not why Sheridan freaks out. Sheridan freaks out because.... Because I don’t know? He’s fine with the gifts shops and the merchandise and the bear baseball team, but having his initials on one is a bridge too far? He’s supported the whole merchandise plan throughout the whole episode, and then loses his mind over that detail and demands that the entire program be torn up and destroyed. It’s like the writers are assuming the existence of some obvious cultural thing that makes the merchandise inherently terrible, and they’re basing all the humor around that imaginary cultural thing, and the rest of us just have to reverse engineer it. Sheridan even spaces the bear, and it shows up as an unidentified object floating near the station, and Warren Keffer goes out to investigate and sees that it’s a bear and —without knowing any of the backstory with Sheridan or the initials or anything—immediately aborts the mission and says he can’t identify the object, “not on a bet,” because OBVIOUSLY the bear is terrible and OBVIOUSLY he knows that Sheridan threw it out here because OBVIOUSLY how else would it have gotten out here? The only way any of this makes sense is if JMS himself, or Peter David who wrote this episode, just deeply hates teddy bears and assumed that the rest of us did as well. But: at the end of the day, a “short and inexplicable” C-plot is miles better than a “long and painfully unfunny” C-plot, so I’ll take this weird gift shop storyline and be grateful for it.
Meanwhile, in the part of the show where stuff matters, Vir recieves a special communique from Centauri Prime letting him know that he’s being replaced: Londo is now important enough that he merits a “real” assistant, not the pointless joke that everybody thought Vir was, so they’re dumping him and sending somebody real. And Vir is sad about this, and Londo does him a solid and says “if he goes I go,” and it’s touching and resolved and hooray, but describing the plot doesn’t tell you anything about how good this all was, because it was all in the performances. Vir has a conversation with Londo that’s really almost a monologue, and it’s deeply personal and heartbreakingly sad and so beautifully acted that I wanted to cheer. Do you know how many actors can give a speech like that—one that doesn’t advance the plot or chew the scenery or reveal any shocking secrets—and make it riveting? Do you know how many comic actors can do it? The answer is “virtually none,” but Stephen Furst kills it. Bravo.
And just to make this a hat trick of stellar supporting performances, the A-plot gives us more of Lennier The Awesome and a guest appearance by Caitlin Brown, who used to play Na’Toth before a burgeoning movie career and an allergic reaction to the Narn makeup forced her to leave the show. This all starts with Sheridan getting mugged in an alley, and as he’s chasing down his mugger he runs into a Minbari dude who picks a fight and gets so aggressive that Sheridan is forced to kill him...with a pistol conveniently lying on the floor. This sparks off a patented B5 political machination story, and it's all pretty cool stuff though I don't understand why the mugging was necessary to make the scheme work: the implication was that they needed Sheridan to chase the mugger in order to make him bump into the Minbari and give him an excuse to start the fight, but if your end goal is "force this man to kill me in the absence of witnesses," why do you need pretense? Just start a fight and go for it. But, either way, there is a witness, and it's another Minbari named Ashan, and as near as I could tell (the scheme was far more convoluted than it needed to be), Ashan is not only a general anti-human racist but also a specific anti-Sheridan crusader, who hates him for the whole Black Star incident and doesn't think he should be in charge of the station. He straight up lies and says that Sheridan killed the dude in cold blood instead of in self defense, which is either part of the whole scheme to begin with or a conveniently awesome stroke of luck, because we're now at the point that will require a trial, and even if Sheridan is exonerated he'll have to step down as commander of the station. Yay evil scheme! And Ashan won't talk to Delenn at all because she's a yucky human-face, and he'll talk to Lennier but he won't tell the truth even though apparently Minbari ALWAYS tell the truth, which I don't believe for one second but all the characters do so whatever. And Lennier does what Season 2 Lennier does best, which is to remain supernaturally calm and inexplicably imposing in the face of both political and physical threats, culminating in a scene where he chases Ashan down, knocks Kenickie unconscious, and gets into a martial arts standoff while demanding answers. Eventually they do a cheap little "get him to confess while people are listening" routine, in which we learn that Ashan was talking to the mugger because he was trying to find out what really happened, which implies that he wasn't part of the scheme after all and was just going along with it accidentally because he was a Very Convenient Racist, and then Delenn barges in and tears him a new one, and Sheridan follows that up with an honor-saving solution that seems designed to protect Lennier more than anything, which I am totally fine with. And also, in the middle of this whole business, Earth sends Sheridan a lawyer who turns out to be Caitlin Brown who turns out to be super gorgeous AND still one of the most engaging and charismatic actors on the show. I'm pretty sure I have a crush on Caitlin Brown. The lawyer is way too niche of a character to stick around long-term, and honestly kind of one-note as well, so I assume we won't be seeing her again, but wow was it nice to see her even just this once.
And I totally forgot! There was actually a D-plot as well, if you can call one scene a D-plot, in which Kosh is apparently "teaching" Sheridan now, which mostly seems to involve taking him to an opium den. Sheridan excitedly says that he learned about the beauty of darkness, or some such nonsense, but we'll have to take his word for it because all they showed on screen was a dude in a robe asking for money and then a bunch more dudes chanting. Good one, Kosh. Darkness is super beautiful, I totally get it.
Also, as a final note: Talia shows up for approximately ten whole seconds, gets a tiny drop of booze spilled on her by Vir, and then leaves. Like, maybe she was visiting the set that day, so they put her into a scene that was originally intended for an extra? I have no idea. But hey, remember Talia? So does the show. She was totally in it again for ten seconds. (And it physically pains me to say this but yes, even in a tiny ten-second appearance they still managed to have a man hurt her. Way to be consistent, Babylon 5.)
This is two "perfectly fine without being amazing" episodes in a row, and I enjoyed them but I didn't love them, and I want to love them. The overall quality of the show is definitely way up from Season 1, but it's not yet at the delirious heights everyone kept telling me that Season 2 was going to hit--we had a couple of standouts, definitely, but so did Season 1. We're getting into the back half of the season, though, so I'm expecting things to start really clicking soon. But I also feel like I've been saying that for several episodes now. We'd better start clicking soon.
Let’s start with the “funny” plot. I keep putting that in quotes for a reason. It seems that Earth has decided the best way to keep the station financially self-sustaining is to create a bunch of B5 merchandise, like hats and action figures and stuff, and for some reason Sheridan and Ivanova are horrifically offended. I don’t think we’re supposed to question they’re motives—I think the writers assumed that we would flatly agree that this is a unilaterally bad idea—but I do not, and there is no evidence presented that might actually show us why this merchandise is so abominable. Londo freaks out over a Londo doll, but this is because the Centauri are apparently offended by anatomically inaccurate dolls; if the doll has no genitals, it’s like a statement claiming he has no genitals, and that’s one of the first culturally interesting details we’ve learned about the Centauri. As a detail it makes sense, and given that detail Londo’s reaction makes sense, but compare that to Sheridan’s nuclear freakout when he learns that one of the teddy bears has his initials. The bear’s baseball jersey says “Ba-bear-lon 5,” which is CLEARLY inferior to “Bear-bylon 5,” but that’s not why Sheridan freaks out. Sheridan freaks out because.... Because I don’t know? He’s fine with the gifts shops and the merchandise and the bear baseball team, but having his initials on one is a bridge too far? He’s supported the whole merchandise plan throughout the whole episode, and then loses his mind over that detail and demands that the entire program be torn up and destroyed. It’s like the writers are assuming the existence of some obvious cultural thing that makes the merchandise inherently terrible, and they’re basing all the humor around that imaginary cultural thing, and the rest of us just have to reverse engineer it. Sheridan even spaces the bear, and it shows up as an unidentified object floating near the station, and Warren Keffer goes out to investigate and sees that it’s a bear and —without knowing any of the backstory with Sheridan or the initials or anything—immediately aborts the mission and says he can’t identify the object, “not on a bet,” because OBVIOUSLY the bear is terrible and OBVIOUSLY he knows that Sheridan threw it out here because OBVIOUSLY how else would it have gotten out here? The only way any of this makes sense is if JMS himself, or Peter David who wrote this episode, just deeply hates teddy bears and assumed that the rest of us did as well. But: at the end of the day, a “short and inexplicable” C-plot is miles better than a “long and painfully unfunny” C-plot, so I’ll take this weird gift shop storyline and be grateful for it.
Meanwhile, in the part of the show where stuff matters, Vir recieves a special communique from Centauri Prime letting him know that he’s being replaced: Londo is now important enough that he merits a “real” assistant, not the pointless joke that everybody thought Vir was, so they’re dumping him and sending somebody real. And Vir is sad about this, and Londo does him a solid and says “if he goes I go,” and it’s touching and resolved and hooray, but describing the plot doesn’t tell you anything about how good this all was, because it was all in the performances. Vir has a conversation with Londo that’s really almost a monologue, and it’s deeply personal and heartbreakingly sad and so beautifully acted that I wanted to cheer. Do you know how many actors can give a speech like that—one that doesn’t advance the plot or chew the scenery or reveal any shocking secrets—and make it riveting? Do you know how many comic actors can do it? The answer is “virtually none,” but Stephen Furst kills it. Bravo.
And just to make this a hat trick of stellar supporting performances, the A-plot gives us more of Lennier The Awesome and a guest appearance by Caitlin Brown, who used to play Na’Toth before a burgeoning movie career and an allergic reaction to the Narn makeup forced her to leave the show. This all starts with Sheridan getting mugged in an alley, and as he’s chasing down his mugger he runs into a Minbari dude who picks a fight and gets so aggressive that Sheridan is forced to kill him...with a pistol conveniently lying on the floor. This sparks off a patented B5 political machination story, and it's all pretty cool stuff though I don't understand why the mugging was necessary to make the scheme work: the implication was that they needed Sheridan to chase the mugger in order to make him bump into the Minbari and give him an excuse to start the fight, but if your end goal is "force this man to kill me in the absence of witnesses," why do you need pretense? Just start a fight and go for it. But, either way, there is a witness, and it's another Minbari named Ashan, and as near as I could tell (the scheme was far more convoluted than it needed to be), Ashan is not only a general anti-human racist but also a specific anti-Sheridan crusader, who hates him for the whole Black Star incident and doesn't think he should be in charge of the station. He straight up lies and says that Sheridan killed the dude in cold blood instead of in self defense, which is either part of the whole scheme to begin with or a conveniently awesome stroke of luck, because we're now at the point that will require a trial, and even if Sheridan is exonerated he'll have to step down as commander of the station. Yay evil scheme! And Ashan won't talk to Delenn at all because she's a yucky human-face, and he'll talk to Lennier but he won't tell the truth even though apparently Minbari ALWAYS tell the truth, which I don't believe for one second but all the characters do so whatever. And Lennier does what Season 2 Lennier does best, which is to remain supernaturally calm and inexplicably imposing in the face of both political and physical threats, culminating in a scene where he chases Ashan down, knocks Kenickie unconscious, and gets into a martial arts standoff while demanding answers. Eventually they do a cheap little "get him to confess while people are listening" routine, in which we learn that Ashan was talking to the mugger because he was trying to find out what really happened, which implies that he wasn't part of the scheme after all and was just going along with it accidentally because he was a Very Convenient Racist, and then Delenn barges in and tears him a new one, and Sheridan follows that up with an honor-saving solution that seems designed to protect Lennier more than anything, which I am totally fine with. And also, in the middle of this whole business, Earth sends Sheridan a lawyer who turns out to be Caitlin Brown who turns out to be super gorgeous AND still one of the most engaging and charismatic actors on the show. I'm pretty sure I have a crush on Caitlin Brown. The lawyer is way too niche of a character to stick around long-term, and honestly kind of one-note as well, so I assume we won't be seeing her again, but wow was it nice to see her even just this once.
And I totally forgot! There was actually a D-plot as well, if you can call one scene a D-plot, in which Kosh is apparently "teaching" Sheridan now, which mostly seems to involve taking him to an opium den. Sheridan excitedly says that he learned about the beauty of darkness, or some such nonsense, but we'll have to take his word for it because all they showed on screen was a dude in a robe asking for money and then a bunch more dudes chanting. Good one, Kosh. Darkness is super beautiful, I totally get it.
Also, as a final note: Talia shows up for approximately ten whole seconds, gets a tiny drop of booze spilled on her by Vir, and then leaves. Like, maybe she was visiting the set that day, so they put her into a scene that was originally intended for an extra? I have no idea. But hey, remember Talia? So does the show. She was totally in it again for ten seconds. (And it physically pains me to say this but yes, even in a tiny ten-second appearance they still managed to have a man hurt her. Way to be consistent, Babylon 5.)
This is two "perfectly fine without being amazing" episodes in a row, and I enjoyed them but I didn't love them, and I want to love them. The overall quality of the show is definitely way up from Season 1, but it's not yet at the delirious heights everyone kept telling me that Season 2 was going to hit--we had a couple of standouts, definitely, but so did Season 1. We're getting into the back half of the season, though, so I'm expecting things to start really clicking soon. But I also feel like I've been saying that for several episodes now. We'd better start clicking soon.
The whole JS bear thing was on an inside joke about how JMS had two rules "no cute kid and no cute animals."
ReplyDeleteThat bear was actually a gift from Peter David. The entire plotline was basically just a big prank.
I KNEW IT
DeleteAnd JMS meant those rules.
DeleteThe bear gets spaced and the kid in believers got euthanized.
I think the whole merchandising plot was also a side swipe at the highly over-commercial and merchandised trek franchise.
ReplyDeleteThe scene with Kosh is my favorite scene in the series, but unfortunately really understanding and appreciating it requires knowing what happens later. When you watch the scene after watching the full series, it becomes something different: a rich symbolic moment that is beautiful and pivotal.
ReplyDeleteKind of like the moment when Frodo decides to take up the ring. JMS is setting up some awesome things which will play out later.
I respect you and I believe in not spoiling. I would only humbly beg that you rewatch that one scene once you've seen the full series. It is much better then.
The rest of the episode is forgettable, but in many symbolic and mythic ways, that one scene is, as they put it "one moment of perfect beauty".
I had no idea that was Caitlyn Brown!
ReplyDeleteSeasons 3 and 4 are the best. Season 5 switched networks, forcing some last-minute changes that hurt the story.