Episode 2.15: And Now for a Word

I wish I liked the episode more. I was excited about it after reading the description, because it’s a clever concept, and then in practice the dialogue and the acting was all great. The story they’re telling is cool, and they tell it well, and by all accounts I should like it, but.... It didn’t work for me.  And I think I know why.

The gimmick is this: A Narn ship and a Centauri ship get into a fight, prompting an increasingly hostile series of escalations between the Narn, the Centauri, and Earth, but instead of seeing this unfold like normal we see it through the lens of a TV news program who happened to be on the station filming when the attack occurred. This is a cool idea, and it was fun to watch, but it had two problems: first of all, the news show created an extra layer between the audience and the story, which separates us from the drama and leaves the whole thing feeling kind of clinical and lifeless. There’s a scene in the diplomatic council chamber where Sheridan and all the ambassadors are yelling at each other, and it absolutely crackles with energy, and I thought “wow this got really good all of a sudden” and then I realized that it was because the extra layer had disappeared. Something dramatic was happening, and we actually got to watch it; most of the rest of the episode felt like the newscaster was  describing a bunch of drama to us instead of just letting us experience it for ourselves.

The second problem is related: a frame story like this can totally work, distanced drama and all, but only if it replaces the drama with something else—some extra level of commentary or irony. This episode flirted with that idea a couple of times, but it never really went all in. In practice, this meant that the newscaster frame story never really mattered—it never rose beyond “a clever idea” to become “the best and only way this story could have been told.” If you’re going to take something away (the immediacy and direct connection to the story) you have to add something else back. Otherwise all you have is a hollow gimmick.

There were two times that the episode really uses its form to do something it couldn’t have done otherwise, and they (along with the scene in the council chamber) were absolutely the highlights. One of them came in the newscaster’s interview with Delenn: the reporter talked to all of the ambassadors in turn, getting their opinions on the station and on the attack, and it was fun to see their different attitudes contrasted against each other. This was a common trope in season one, and I loved it and I’m bad they did it again. But then they elevated it to a whole new level with Delenn, because as her interview wore on you started to realize that the reporter was a blatant anti-Minbari racist, and that bit by bit she was dropping her facade of professionalism to just start attacking Delenn directly. It was brutal, and it was uncomfortable, and it told a good story while also feeding into the long-term mytharc of the series, and—this is the key—it couldn’t possibly have been done in any other format. The frame story with the reporter is what made the scene effective, especially in contrast to the other ambassadors who were treated with respect, while Delenn was just badgered until she cried (and then the camera lingered on her crying FAR longer than necessary, which was perfect).

The other moment came in the form of a fake commercial for Psi-Corps recruitment: a little boy is sad because the other kids pick him on for “knowing things” he shouldn’t know, and then a Psi-Corps guy shows up and tells little Johnny and his Mom all about how the Psi-Corps loves him for being different and special, and offers to pay for his education, and then slips in a subtle plea for everyone to inform on their neighbors if they think someone might be telepathic. It walked that perfect 1950s line between adorably homey and creepily dystopian, and—again—it couldn’t possible have worked without the frame story to make it fit.

If the episode had featured more fake commercials, maybe even one per break, it could have helped ground us in the world and shown us all kinds of things we’ve never seen before, from other perspectives we don’t usually get on the show. And/or, if the episode had focused on the Minbari instead of the Narn/Centauri war, we could have gotten a lot more of that racist editorializing we had with Delenn, which would have given us a stronger emotional connection to the newscaster, who was functioning as the main character. Instead, she was mostly a blank, and the other characters were filtered through a separating lens, and I feel like someone told me about a good story instead of just telling me the good story. Ultimately, the episode was a fantastic idea on paper that never came together as an episode; it was good, and it contained some absolutely brilliant stuff, but as a whole I think the experiment failed. I would love to see that whole story again from the other side, living it along with the characters like normal. Probably with G'Kar or Londo as the focus character, because there is some awesome character work going on there if the show will get out of its own way and let us see it.

(I especially loved the way they were portrayed: Londo as cool and reasonable but also removed and kind of disingenuous; G'Kar as hot-headed and angry, but also a man of the people. And after last episode's stumble, Kosh is actually cool again: his one appearance shows the news crew trying and failing to get an interview with him, barely managing to catch a glimpse before a door slammed shut. Cool stuff.)