Babylonia!

Patrick

Patrick is a mid-40 year old geek with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Information Systems. Nothing he says here has anything to do with the official position of his employer or any other institution.

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11 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    This wasn’t an awesome episode. It felt like a “before I’ma tell you that story, I’ma have to tell you this one” episode.

    Girabaldi fell into the bottle once, and he can fall into the bottle again. The alien races like Girabaldi. I loved G’Kar’s interaction even more than I enjoyed Londo’s. (Londo came across as a standup guy. A huckster with a heart of gold. G’Kar came across, however, as a fairly decent chess player.)

    I didn’t know that about Michael O’Hare! What a sad story… I knew what happened to him in the story (I walked through the room when he spoiler spoiler spoilered) but I thought that that was because that was always his arc. I didn’t know that he pretty much *HAD* to go. That poor man. I liked him.Report

    • Patrick in reply to Jaybird says:

      My general critique of the writing in the first season is that they are doing too much setup that leads to abbreviated story development intra-episode.

      Things that make me go, “Hm, that’s a believable storyline” are interrupted by far too many things happening in too pat of a manner to move a storyline that should take two or three episodes to clear up to conclusion in the running time allotted.

      Now, the advantage of this is that we’re almost to Signs and Portents and we’ve got a huge chunk of plot arc already constructed and decent frames for how the characters act laid out and all that, but at a cost of some verisimilitude for buying into the individual episodes.

      This is a trade-off that cost the show some viewers, but gained them some viewers, too.Report

      • Dman in reply to Patrick says:

        Yes, most of the set-up is complete and we can get to the real story. I am looking forward to it.Report

      • Reformed Republican in reply to Patrick says:

        That is a good point. There is a lot of info dump that happens, and things done to put the pieces into place, and sometimes that does hurt the individual episode stories. I think JMS might have preferred to do something more serial and less episodic, but he did not think it would have retained the viewers. Fortunately, the payoff is worth it, and things really do kick off soon.Report

    • Reformed Republican in reply to Jaybird says:

      G’Kar is very opportunistic. This is not the first time he has tried to hire a human to come work for the Narn. G’Kar does some shifty things, but he mostly does it to further the Narn. Londo wants to be a good guy, but his society and culture just do not allow it much of the time. His hatred of the Narn does not help him any. One of the great things about this show is that all of the main characters develop through the series. They change and they grow.

      I had always wondered about Michael O’Hare’s departure as well. In the past, JMS said “it was mutual” and “it was necessary for the show” and things like that. It turns out that was true, but he omitted a lot, since he was keeping his promise. I never thought it seemed like just his arc, because there are plot threads that start with him, but get transferred to his successor. It aways looked like there was more to the story, but I had no idea what it really was.

      It seems popular to rag on his acting, but it never bothered me much. He makes Sinclair seem very serious and stoic, but I never thought he was unconvincing.Report

      • Dman in reply to Reformed Republican says:

        The first time I watched the series, I had no problem with O’Hare’s acting, but I was happier to have Sheridan after a couple of episodes. The second time I watch B5, I thought Sinclair was often over acting the part. It was not until the third time and beyond that I realized it was the combination of slight over acting with his voice and the lack of acting with his face that made a mess of the whole thing.Report

  2. Dman says:

    Funny, this is one of my more favorite episodes of B5. I like learning more about Girabaldi and how he screwed up. I have also been a big detractor of O’Hare on the show, but in this episode he actual showed some range. He frowned more than usual and smiled in a couple of sceens. It was nice. I sucks what happenned to him and I would not want that to get him off the show.

    I also loved the interaction with both Londo and G’Kar. Very nice and it highlights again how similar those two are, just on opposite side. Very well done.Report

  3. Damon says:

    I”m not a fan of this episode either. Frankly, I always liked the “spacy scenes”. More alien ships flying out pew pewing the better. That being said, it’s clearly obvious that Leanna holds a grudge and wants to hang Garbaldi not for his alledged crimes but for his history.

    RE Molary and G’Kar. These are great characters and they develop a huge amount going forward. They are a joy to watch. Any more would be spoilers. 🙂Report

  4. Pinky says:

    In retrospect, I think that Garabaldi’s alcoholism was just lazy writing. You want to write a hard-life cop, you put a bottle, the dead body of a good man, and an angry ex in his past.Report

  5. Jack says:

    Is there a planned schedule for this recap? Will you be including the movies and spin off? I think I will appreciate the series far more if I am following along with this esteemed group. At LOOG’s recommendation I watched most of the first season a couple of years back and was kinda disappointed. Conceptually I loved it, but some writing, acting, and stagecraft deficiencies interefered with my suspension of disbelief. At one point I became convinced that every child “actor” on the show was probably just a relative of one of the producers. I am told that the performances improve in season 2 and a lot of things start to pay off. I will give it another go, particularly as I am quite impressed with JMS comics work. I just reread his Supreme Power from 2003, a really fantastic superhero deconstruction/”what if” take on the main DC titleholders. Highly recommended if you like SH deconstruction.Report

    • Patrick in reply to Jack says:

      We are covering the first season not-quite weekly. Attempts are made to get the posts up on Monday… there will likely be irregularities between now and 09/20, however. We have a volunteer for the next episode so the next recap should go up on Monday, and I already have written most of my recap for Signs and Portents (because it’s sorta the linchpin episode of the first season), so at the very least the next two weeks we should have a post on Monday.

      We will probably cover the pilot at the end of the first season. If we do the movies at all, it will be after season four at the earliest.Report