B5, S05E04-06
May. 26th, 2012 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyUnder the cut: Horrendous working class stereotypes, altogether too much space hippie, probably too many Star Trek references, and a poll about how Byron should die.
A View From the Gallery:
Soooo, you know how I hated the trope on which The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari was based, but ended up digging the episode anyway?
This is the opposite of that. I love the trope but the execution sucked so hard that entire star systems were obliterated.
Okay, so B5 is under attack by some aliens we’ve never heard of and will probably never hear about again. The Gaim say they’re badass, so they must be badass. The White Star fleet is too far away to help because of Sheridan’s stupid-ass strategy in the last episode. Fine, I suppose, but what about Epsilon III? Or any number of races that have signed on to the ISA? This enemy is supposedly so formidable that Lochley orders an evacuation—something that didn’t even happen during the Shadow War—but they don’t have an empire and no one but the Gaim has heard of them. Could the Minbari not take them out? It’s a dumb set-up. I’m pretty sure they’d call Draal before evacuating the whole station.
Anyway, what makes this episode different is that it’s from the point of view of Bo and Mack (really?), maintenance workers who are basically an unfunny version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Unfortunately, JMS can’t write comedy, so practically every joke falls flat. They are the most stereotypical wisecracking everymen you’ve ever seen, and I was hoping they would die at the end. So they wander around the ship, breaking for lunch every 30 seconds and complaining about how overworked they are, while lampshading everything from the design of the White Stars to Ivanova’s abrupt departure.
What probably would have made it work was if they flat-out hated the main characters. But they don’t. They wax poetic about how Sheridan and Delenn are so in love, and they admire Franklin’s noble doctor routine, and they talk about what a hard job the pilots have. Did JMS write this with one hand? I mean, I like these characters, but I was kind of hating them after hearing Bo and Mack talk about how great they are.
To make things even worse, our schmoes take refuge with Byron and the Space Hippies, and I hate Byron and want him to die. He can stop quoting Hamlet any time now. He smolders at the bad guys of the week to get them to leave—which works, I guess because they find Byron as annoying as I do—and then Bo and Mack find him so annoying that they leave for someplace more dangerous.
This episode makes no sense. None.
One point for confirming that Lochley was on the wrong side, I guess. And a second point for the G’Kar/Londo scene. Note that this is the scene in which Bo and Mack don’t say anything beyond: “How long have they been married?”
Can we have a moratorium on working class characters being portrayed as dumb as shit and slavishly grateful when main characters remember their names?
Bottom line: I liked this episode better when Star Trek did it. Though for all I know, that one wouldn’t hold up very well either.
Learning Curve:
This one is automatically better because it starts on Minbar (with a flowing waterfall!) and involves the Rangers. Delenn wants a report as to how training is going, so instead of sending an e-mail or something, two trainers and two trainees visit B5. Nice to see that the warrior and religious castes are still having some tension. Also, the trainers are kind of racist about the pakh’mara. There is a pakh’mara Ranger now; that’s pretty cool.
Meanwhile, a dude named Trace with a terrible Cockney accent is trying to take over Down Below and intimidating everyone by killing people who owe him money. Yawn. He almost gets my sympathy when he decides that killing Zack is a good idea, but before he can do that, he pisses off the competent Ranger trainee, Tannier, and gets his dudes to beat the everloving shit out of him. Tannier survives, though, and immediately goes to take on Trace and all of his guys. And wins. Heh.
Garibaldi gets into a supremely unprofessional fight with Lochley and tries to get Zack to investigate her. Wow, Garibaldi, maybe you should have done that right away when it was announced she was taking over the station. That actually does seem like a reasonable thing to do, though everyone just acts like Garibaldi’s paranoid. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on in the argument because, like Lochley, he was on the wrong side of the Earth civil war. I mean, it wasn’t his fault, but still.
All of this raises the question of why Sheridan asked for her, when she was obviously on the wrong side. Finally Delenn asks. We don’t see the answer, but from the distance between them on the (horizontal) bed, it’s obviously that Lochley is Sheridan’s ex.
In other news, apparently Marcus was a shitty Ranger. Damn, that's cold, show! Did Jason Carter want too much money or something? Also, Lennier is a shitty Ranger in basically the same way, which is to say that they both were trying too hard and doing it for the wrong reasons. Aww, I wanted Lennier to be hyper-competent at being a Ranger like he is at everything else. Besides, all we’ve seen the Ranger trainees do so far is meditate and fight, and we know Lennier rocks at both of those things.
Strange Relations:
Bester comes to B5 because he knows how much I need the Space Hippies off my show. Yay Bester! He also puts Lochley in a situation where she has to punch out Garibaldi and throw him in the brig. Yay Lochley! Wow, and with just that, I’ve warmed up to her. Oh yes, and she’s actually Sheridan’s ex-wife, not his ex-girlfriend. Eww. I’m starting to think that Sheridan is one of those weird dudes who won’t have sex until he puts a ring on it, and that’s why he’s been married three times.
Meanwhile, the last thing I need is a Byron/Lyta love story. Maybe they’ll get married and have lots of really irritating children with fabulous hair.
So Bester and his guys search the station fornuclear wessels hippie telepaths. The hippies actually have bead curtains, which makes me want them dead so much. Anyway, Lochley has to let Bester arrest them, because all planets are allowed to conduct their own business on B5 as they see fit. But Franklin’s new gig studying interspecies diseases gives her inspiration. The hippies are dirty and filthy with all of their nature-loving and intergalactic couch-surfing, you see, and she can’t let them go with Bester until they’ve been quarantined for 60 days. Hahaha. Also, damn, I’m stuck with them until the end of the show, aren’t I?
In B-plot news, the Centauri regent is on his death bed, which means that Londo is going to be Emperor soon. Cue assassination attempt. Fortunately, Delenn has a solution, which is to assign G’Kar to be Londo’s bodyguard. Can she even do that? I mean, he’s back to being an ambassador, if not an official member of the Narn government; doesn’t he have actual stuff to do? But I don’t care because it’s cute how Delenn ships them too. Now G’Kar has to go everywhere Londo goes. That’s so sweet.
Just as I was about to declare that I liked this episode even though it was mostly about the hippies, there is a final scene where there are candles and the hippies sing. Badly. Take the worst thing you can picture happening on TV and multiply it by a gazillion and you will have a small fraction of how much I hate this.
Bester, don’t wait 60 days. Kill Byron now before this show gets any worse.
Also, you can’t expect me to avoid referencing one of the most awesome Star Trek episodes in a recap about Evil!Chekov meeting Space Hippies:
[Poll #1842877]
A View From the Gallery:
Soooo, you know how I hated the trope on which The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari was based, but ended up digging the episode anyway?
This is the opposite of that. I love the trope but the execution sucked so hard that entire star systems were obliterated.
Okay, so B5 is under attack by some aliens we’ve never heard of and will probably never hear about again. The Gaim say they’re badass, so they must be badass. The White Star fleet is too far away to help because of Sheridan’s stupid-ass strategy in the last episode. Fine, I suppose, but what about Epsilon III? Or any number of races that have signed on to the ISA? This enemy is supposedly so formidable that Lochley orders an evacuation—something that didn’t even happen during the Shadow War—but they don’t have an empire and no one but the Gaim has heard of them. Could the Minbari not take them out? It’s a dumb set-up. I’m pretty sure they’d call Draal before evacuating the whole station.
Anyway, what makes this episode different is that it’s from the point of view of Bo and Mack (really?), maintenance workers who are basically an unfunny version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Unfortunately, JMS can’t write comedy, so practically every joke falls flat. They are the most stereotypical wisecracking everymen you’ve ever seen, and I was hoping they would die at the end. So they wander around the ship, breaking for lunch every 30 seconds and complaining about how overworked they are, while lampshading everything from the design of the White Stars to Ivanova’s abrupt departure.
What probably would have made it work was if they flat-out hated the main characters. But they don’t. They wax poetic about how Sheridan and Delenn are so in love, and they admire Franklin’s noble doctor routine, and they talk about what a hard job the pilots have. Did JMS write this with one hand? I mean, I like these characters, but I was kind of hating them after hearing Bo and Mack talk about how great they are.
To make things even worse, our schmoes take refuge with Byron and the Space Hippies, and I hate Byron and want him to die. He can stop quoting Hamlet any time now. He smolders at the bad guys of the week to get them to leave—which works, I guess because they find Byron as annoying as I do—and then Bo and Mack find him so annoying that they leave for someplace more dangerous.
This episode makes no sense. None.
One point for confirming that Lochley was on the wrong side, I guess. And a second point for the G’Kar/Londo scene. Note that this is the scene in which Bo and Mack don’t say anything beyond: “How long have they been married?”
Can we have a moratorium on working class characters being portrayed as dumb as shit and slavishly grateful when main characters remember their names?
Bottom line: I liked this episode better when Star Trek did it. Though for all I know, that one wouldn’t hold up very well either.
Learning Curve:
This one is automatically better because it starts on Minbar (with a flowing waterfall!) and involves the Rangers. Delenn wants a report as to how training is going, so instead of sending an e-mail or something, two trainers and two trainees visit B5. Nice to see that the warrior and religious castes are still having some tension. Also, the trainers are kind of racist about the pakh’mara. There is a pakh’mara Ranger now; that’s pretty cool.
Meanwhile, a dude named Trace with a terrible Cockney accent is trying to take over Down Below and intimidating everyone by killing people who owe him money. Yawn. He almost gets my sympathy when he decides that killing Zack is a good idea, but before he can do that, he pisses off the competent Ranger trainee, Tannier, and gets his dudes to beat the everloving shit out of him. Tannier survives, though, and immediately goes to take on Trace and all of his guys. And wins. Heh.
Garibaldi gets into a supremely unprofessional fight with Lochley and tries to get Zack to investigate her. Wow, Garibaldi, maybe you should have done that right away when it was announced she was taking over the station. That actually does seem like a reasonable thing to do, though everyone just acts like Garibaldi’s paranoid. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on in the argument because, like Lochley, he was on the wrong side of the Earth civil war. I mean, it wasn’t his fault, but still.
All of this raises the question of why Sheridan asked for her, when she was obviously on the wrong side. Finally Delenn asks. We don’t see the answer, but from the distance between them on the (horizontal) bed, it’s obviously that Lochley is Sheridan’s ex.
In other news, apparently Marcus was a shitty Ranger. Damn, that's cold, show! Did Jason Carter want too much money or something? Also, Lennier is a shitty Ranger in basically the same way, which is to say that they both were trying too hard and doing it for the wrong reasons. Aww, I wanted Lennier to be hyper-competent at being a Ranger like he is at everything else. Besides, all we’ve seen the Ranger trainees do so far is meditate and fight, and we know Lennier rocks at both of those things.
Strange Relations:
Bester comes to B5 because he knows how much I need the Space Hippies off my show. Yay Bester! He also puts Lochley in a situation where she has to punch out Garibaldi and throw him in the brig. Yay Lochley! Wow, and with just that, I’ve warmed up to her. Oh yes, and she’s actually Sheridan’s ex-wife, not his ex-girlfriend. Eww. I’m starting to think that Sheridan is one of those weird dudes who won’t have sex until he puts a ring on it, and that’s why he’s been married three times.
Meanwhile, the last thing I need is a Byron/Lyta love story. Maybe they’ll get married and have lots of really irritating children with fabulous hair.
So Bester and his guys search the station for
In B-plot news, the Centauri regent is on his death bed, which means that Londo is going to be Emperor soon. Cue assassination attempt. Fortunately, Delenn has a solution, which is to assign G’Kar to be Londo’s bodyguard. Can she even do that? I mean, he’s back to being an ambassador, if not an official member of the Narn government; doesn’t he have actual stuff to do? But I don’t care because it’s cute how Delenn ships them too. Now G’Kar has to go everywhere Londo goes. That’s so sweet.
Just as I was about to declare that I liked this episode even though it was mostly about the hippies, there is a final scene where there are candles and the hippies sing. Badly. Take the worst thing you can picture happening on TV and multiply it by a gazillion and you will have a small fraction of how much I hate this.
Bester, don’t wait 60 days. Kill Byron now before this show gets any worse.
Also, you can’t expect me to avoid referencing one of the most awesome Star Trek episodes in a recap about Evil!Chekov meeting Space Hippies:
[Poll #1842877]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 10:25 pm (UTC)I can't buy the hippies as dangerous to anything other than my sanity. The only thing making them dangerous is Garibaldi using them to spy on people.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 02:15 am (UTC)That did not disappoint. Oh God. Bwahahahahahaha. I have to watch a few more quickly so that I can post about the awfulness I just witnessed.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 09:12 pm (UTC)At least we're spared this. Ivanova had enough tragic love stories. At least the other two were kind of worthy of her.
Do you know what makes that Even Worse? JMS WROTE THE SONG. He wrote the awful songs the awful singer sings (awfully) in that Franklin storyline, too. I do not fucking know why he thinks he can write songs, and yet, he does.
I hate everything.
For double bonus awfulness points, there is a story about Marcus and Ivanova JMS wrote post-show that everyone I knew immediately hated and declared non-canon. My husband wouldn't even read it.
Wait, what? Isn't he dead? Is he a zombie now?
The one good thing about Lochley - some smartass remarked at the time it meant Sheridan had wives from all three castes: worker (Anna), warrior (Lochley), religious (Delenn) (altho I think Delenn also counts as warrior - and I think "worker" for Anna would mean more "civilian," not working-class. Anyway).
That is part awesome and part "God, did he actually have to collect the whole set?"
no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 09:41 pm (UTC)Of course, my head canon is that Talia is not irreversibly dead either. Ivanova deserves to get laid and be happy, dammit.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 10:35 pm (UTC)