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TV Review: “The Rings of Power” (2022) (two episodes in)

It’s a show that wasn’t needed, but it’s a show I’m enjoying so far.

All right, here’s the Number One Question that is burning in the heart of every fanboi out there: Was this series absolutely necessary?

No. Of course not. No TV series is “absolutely necessary.” And, honestly having lived in Prof. Tolkien’s head for nearly half a century, I can say that I would have survived if we had never gotten a visual study of the Second Age (as adapted and time-compressed for television).

That said …

Rings of Power Posters — There are a lot of characters. A lot.

I’m enjoying it

I enjoyed the first two episodes of “The Rings of Power.” The adaptations for “Let’s put all the exciting stuff of the Second Age into a single cast of characters that isn’t all-elvish, kind of like Tolkien did for the Third Age” are, so far, fine. I like the characters introduced, both known and unknown. And the FX were quite suited for a billion dollar investment/adaptation.

I can easily be a pedantic purist. But I also tend to accept what is presented to me and evaluate it for what it is, not against some Platonic ideal of the True Tolkien Story. Given the number of renditions of the tales that Tolkien himself did, that seems like a wise starting place.

The status quo we begin with is fascinating, and highlights something that LotR fans usually forget: the Elves are just as culturally flawed and personally prone to error as any random Human, Dwarf, or Halfling. In LotR, we focus on the top-tier Elvish Elders (Elrond, Galadriel, and, yeah, ~~Mr. Galadriel~~ Celeborn), or on the Elvish Super-Hero, Legolas.

But the First (especially) and Second Ages are full of Elves making horrible, monstrous, myth-making and realm-dooming mistakes of vanity and hubris and obsession. RoP gives us those Elves (including, ironically, Elrond and Galadriel), driven by their passions, their griefs over the First Age conflicts, their prejudices, their obsessions, their flaws.

That some of them (Galadriel) are correct in their concerns is not important. That they are not all spouting off profundities and hand-washing, mournful platitudes is.

I am quite satisfied by what we have seen so far, even if we have literally burned through 25% of S.1’s episodes in still setting up the situation. The show has a five year plan (they know precisely what the final scene will be), though only two seasons have been purchased.

Threads

There are a lot of threads in the air. Here are a few:

Rings of Power Players — I’m not altogether certain, after two episodes, that we have actually met all these people.

Galadriel

Those who know their G-elf lore know that Galadriel was kind of a crazy rebel in the First Age and (OMG THE FIRST AGE IMAGES OMG) she is still now obsessive over the threat of Sauron. (And, yeah, she’s right, but is right in a wrong way.) Who has rescued her and boytoy Harbrand from the ocean (my bet is it’s Numenorean folk, kicking off that whole part of the storyline)? What will Gil-Galad’s reaction be when he discovers that Galadriel has given a hard pass on his “gift” of return to Valinor? How does she end up getting one of the Three Rings for Elven-Kings under the Sky?

Valinor

In the canonical Tolkien, the Elves rebelled in heading off to Middle-Earth from Valinor, in sort of a Garden of Eden sort of thing, in angry pursuit of Melkor/Morgoth and the Silmarils. And, as I recall, those Noldor Elves were originally banned from returning for their presumption of leaving it in the first place. I don’t know the specific moment that Elves were allowed to go back (let alone the non-Noldors), but having it show up here as a “gift” that the Elven High King can grant is … interesting.

Elrond

Elrond is part of one of the two cases that are mentioned elsewhere in Ep. 1 of Elf/Human — the son of Eärendil and Elwing. Born in the First Age alongside a twin brother Elros. At the end of the First Age, both brothers were given a choice as to what heritage they would become. Elros chose Human and was the first king of Numenor. Elrond chose Elf, and stuck around for a lot longer.

I almost thought they were going to refer to that early on when there was the “Yeah, you’re not an elf-lord” thing going on. I hope they eventually make it clearer, because it’s a key part of what makes Elrond who he is, and also really informs his attitude toward his daughter Arwen hooking up with the Human (and distant descendent through the lines of Numenor) Aragorn.

I don’t mind Elrond being an aspirational flunky for Gil-Galad, because he was. I don’t mind the difference between LotR Elrond and RoP Elrond because it’s three thousand years ago. Galadriel had mellowed. Elrond has gotten cranky. So be it.

Durin

I trust that, unlike in Pulp Fiction, we’ll see what’s in the box that Durin and his dad look into. My assumption is that it is some of the first mithril mined by the Dwarves, which will in turn prompt them to delve too deeply and unwisely. Will we see the unveiling of Durin’s Bane (the Balrog of Khazad-Dum) during the course of this series? I am absolutely certain we will.

I loved the “living” Khazad-Dum, by the bye.

Nori (and the Stranger)

So the Harfoots fit okay into the origins of Hobbits that Tolkien gave us, and their elusiveness reminds me of his discussion of how, in the Fourth Age (of Man) they gradually faded into the background, invisible from our sight. Nori as the rebel who wants to see the world amidst the village that wants to stay secret and safe is not a new trope, but it’s done well here, with her friend/foil Poppy giving us the conflict externally that a book might do internally.

Of course, the key with Nori is her finding and caring for the Stranger. Who is he?

Sauron (as a falling Lucifer from the skies, I guess) is an obvious and ironic guess — esp. after the whole firefly stunt and its aftermath — in which case, wanna bet that those constellations are visible in, say, Mordor?

But almost as likely is that we’re seeing one of the first Istari — the Wizards — sent down from the heavens. Yeah, the timing doesn’t fit with Tolkien’s canon, and the Istari showed up from Valinor at the Grey Havens, but we already know that dramatic license is being taken, so why not?

Of course, if it’s an Istar, then as the (presumed) first, it would be Saruman. And, as my son said, it would all be worth it in order to see Saruman eat a snail.

But if it were Gandalf, that would explain his fondness for Hobbits all these centuries later.

I am eager to learn (or to see how long they drag out the uncertainty).

Arondir and Bronwyn

So there are a lot of folk who see racism in some of Tolkien’s work. And, yeah, when he deals repeatedly with purity of white bloodlines, literally describes Orcs as a “Mongol race,” and has various Arabic and African humans ally themselves with the Super Bad Guy, that argument (about a Brit who was born and lived as a kid in South Africa) is not too difficult to make.

But Tolkien also talked about conflict between the different races/species in Middle-Earth. The most famous was the conflict between Elves and Dwarves, but the disdain of the Elves for Humans was also there: short-lived, vain mortals who were easily corruptible in exchange for promises of power.

It is absolutely believable that the Elves would maintain an active watch and suppression of Humans who had allied with Morgoth in the First Age. And absolutely believable that those Humans multiple generations on would resent that.

The delicate balancing act of racism in fantasy is that (a) it presupposes actual separate races/species in the fantasy world, which is a legit thought exercise but also mirrors historic racist tropes that different human “races” are similarly distinct — that Whites vs Blacks vs Yellows vs Reds are a real a thing as Humans vs Elves vs Dwarves vs Hobbits.

(The same thing comes up in science fiction, as multiple species interact.)

I don’t know that Arondir and Bronwyn’s relationship is believable, to the extent that we really haven’t seen much of what led to it or what it actually is in the present. But it’s a completely legit thing to play with in this world.

Oh, yeah, diversity

When nobody cares about the ethnic background of actors in an adaptation of a fantasy like this, that will be the proper time to say, “Oh, all Elves are white, and all Dwarves are white, and all important Humans are white, and probably all Halflings are white” and stage that as an experimental art film.

Until then, I really don’t care.

In sum …

I’m enjoying RoP, even as it sets up multiple storylines that have taken at least two (and likely even three) of eight episodes to start progressing. I am curious to see where they are going. They have not presented me with anything that I cannot deal with, and I really want to see what they do next.

Movie Trailers before “Thor: Love and Thunder”

Because trailers can be half the fun of movie-going.

Were there any movies advertised before Thor 4 that caught my eye? Hmmmm. (Links are to the appropriate IMDb entry.)

Nope – This Jordan Peele film has looked largely like a horror film in the TV spots I’ve seen, but in a longer trailer, some interesting, off-beat humor shows up. I don’t know if I’m going to see it in the theaters, but it looks … intriguing.

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. – As presented in the trailer, this looks like a “televangelist couple trying to recover from a scandal that decimated their congregation agree to have their efforts filmed, hilarity ensues” movie. Some amusing moments, but not nearly enough of them.

White Bird: A Wonder Story – Presented as a sequel, of sort, to the movie Wonder from a few years back. As given in the trailer, it looks like a movie grafted into a framing sequence to provide a dubious tie to the original (though both are from books by the same author), but, in any case, it, like its pseudo-predecessor, appears guaranteed to require a test for diabetes after you’re done viewing.

Beast – Just the terrifying movie the African Tourist Board does not want you to see, with a terrifying lion terrifying a family just visiting the the continent. The trailer is kind of a mess, though, mingling numerous CG jump-scares with random threatening plot elements, all of them out of sequence. Not on my list.

Black Adam – It’s not a comic book character I’ve been a heavy follower of, except to know that he’s been retconned any number of times recently, and this movie, too, seems to be part of that trend. I’m leery of DCEU flicks, and a lot of this is painted in that dark anti-hero tones that have been a reason for that, but there’s a bit of humor there, too, and Dwayne Johnson certainly looks the role. I may see what the buzz is when it releases, and plan on an out-of-theater viewing after its run.

Strange World – I had no idea this Disney film was coming out, and it looks — zany, sort of “Jurassic Park meets Dr. Seuss meets Lost in Space,” but, aside from remarkable visuals, I could glean almost zero about the characters or plot. Keeping an eye on this.

So, nothing advertised that I would classify as a must-see, and it was a very odd, mixed batch, for the movie the audience was there to see. But, then, it was a Tuesday evening, and that might affect the distribution.

One thing of note — a lot of African-American casts out there (Nope, Honk for Jesus, Beast), plus a film starring someone of Samoan descent (Black Adam). That’s kind of refreshing.

Movie Review: Thor: Blood & Thunder (2022)

Taika Waititi continues his droll, irreverent take on gods and super-heroes. Which is kind of a problem.

There’s much to enjoy in Taika Waititi’s new MCU movie, Thor: Blood & Thunder (a/k/a Thor 4). It’s visually brilliant, at the very least, and Waititi carries on with some success his droll fun-poking of the literary realm of gods and superheroes from the previous installment, Thor: Ragnarok (a/k/a Thor 3).

That is part of my problem with this film. While Waititi has mostly avoided the most common sin of sequels (taking what worked the first time and focusing solely on that, dialed up to 12), he isn’t completely immune to it. Thor 4 is too in love with its titular character being an unaware parody of a hero, bold and brash and unaware of any of the people around him or the consequences of his actions, juggling ex-girlfriends and ex-weapons with equal ineptness.

My wife — who was not enthused about going to “another Jane Foster movie” — pointed out something important afterward. Thor, as a character, is always about growth and maturity. In Thor 1, Thor learns to be worthy as a leader, not a selfish little boy. In Thor 2, he figures out how to be in a relationship. In Thor 3 (by Waititi!), he learns to be a king. In the Avengers films, he learns about teamwork and, ultimately, about accepting his own limitations.

The problem is that few of those lessons are allowed to take and carry on to the next film. The Thor of Thor 3 spends much of his time being a self-centered oaf, but the death of his father, and of his comrades, and the need to save the people of Asgard, drive him to new heights. Even the traumas of the Infinity War saga on the Avengers side of things, and the goofiness of his time with the Guardians, don’t explain the irresponsible dolt that he starts out as in Thor 4 and, for the most part, remains.

Thor 4 is centered on two sagas from the comics. The first — created by Jason Aaron and artist Esad Ribic — is the saga of Gorr, the God Butcher, a man who is let down by his people’s gods and who gets the power to punish them — and, as a new cause, all the layabout deities who take and take but never actually come through when asked for help in return. This is a remarkably dark saga in the comics, touching on personal relationships with the divine and theodicy, the profound question of why bad things happen to good people in a cosmos supposedly ruled by all-good, all-power divine power.

For the most part, though, Waititi plays it for wry laughs, and for what kind of cool special effects battles can be devised around Gorr’s use of the necrosword and shadows. Gorr ends up with sort of a Tim Burton style of scariness, a bogey-man rather than an existential terror, but the tragedy of his life, and of the actions he takes, and even of Thor facing the idea of times when he didn’t live up to the needs of his own followers — it’s all largely lost for the vast majority of the movie, book-ended by the introduction sequence and the sweet but too-late what-you-really-want message at the end.

The other original storyline here (also created by Jason Aaron) is the saga of Jane Foster as Thor–how she takes up that mantle, and what it means to be splitting her life between uber-powerful god-hero and chemo-weakened mortal cancer patient — especially when it becomes clear that all the Asgardian hi-jinx are neutralizing the chemo (but not the cancer), meaning that, at length, Jane Foster the human will be no more, leaving only Jane Foster the Thor — and what does that actually mean for her?

Jane’s story gets a bit more play here than Gorr’s — modified for the much different situation in the MCU — but it’s again blunted by the need to keep everything quirky and amusing, for Jane to be trying to figure out her catch phrase, for Jane to deal with her ex-boyfriend, the other Thor. The cancer, for most of the center of the movie, is merely a convenient way for her to be weakened at inopportune times. And Natalie Portman’s make-up never makes her look more than a little bit ill.

We end up spending far too much time in this film in humorous set pieces, all of them fun, but all of them consuming ruinous amounts of run time. The stage players of New Asgard (now become a cruise line stop), giving us minutes of recap of just a portion of Thor 3. Endless exposition or commentary by Korg (voiced by Waititi). The Gorr-justifying insouciance of Omnipotence City. Thor doing something or another in an oafish, thoughtless, laughable fashion.

It’s almost all of it funny and played successfully for laughs, but in the end it feels more like a series of really successful SNL skits poking fun at Thor than at a movie actually about him (and Jane, and Valkyrie, and Korg, and a bunch of kids, and Gorr, too). The film spends too much time not taking its subject seriously, aside from those bookend scenes, and so it’s hard to take it seriously when it actually does try to engage our sympathies at the end, with Jane making decisions about her fate, and Gorr doing the same, and Thor learning what’s really important in life (until, one presumes, next movie, when he’ll quite possibly be back to being a goofball).

Thor 4 character posters — With goats, of course.

Chris Hemsworth plays Thor well as far as he’s given to do so. He has the heroic and the goofy down pat (and should, after nine film outings), and I just wish he got to do more of the dramatic moments we’ve seen him in from the beginning of the saga. Natalie Portman’s more a mixed bag. Her rom-com moments feel weird and awkward, but she makes a fine hero. Christian Bale’s Gorr does well with what he’s given, shining in both his initial and final scenes, but hampered too much in-between, relegated to a kinda-scary action villain living in the shadows.

To be fair, it’s not all — or even mostly — actually bad. The make-up is amazing. There are some stunning set pieces (Omnipotence City and the small moon they battle on stand out), visually rich and gorgeous, and (while we didn’t) possibly worth the cost of a 3D showing. And, honestly, the very ending of the film was one of the most satisfying MCU endings in quite a while. (The two mid/end credit scenes weren’t bad, either.) Beyond that, like I said, Waititi’s irreverent humor, and how it translates to the screen, aided by some decent acting talent, works on its own terms.

And, just to say it, we loved the goats.

And, net-net, I enjoyed Thor 4, especially scene by scene. It’s in its overall tone and structure that things didn’t quite gel for me. I will absolutely watch it again in the future, but for the moment I’m left feeling a bit unsatisfied, as if a promised banquet turned out to be all beautifully-baked sweets, and I had been hoping for some juicy steak.

The original version of this review was posted on Letterboxd.

I watched all the Obi-Wan Kenobi backstory so you don’t have to

By which I mean the “First Trilogy,” which remains a mostly awful thing.

I’m enjoying the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series on Disney+, so I thought (since I had some spare time) I’d watch the “First Trilogy” films, to get the background story that leads into this new story.

(And, yes, there’s a ton of stuff in “Clone Wars” that adds to all that, which I have also watched in the past, and heartily recommend, but did not rewatch the several seasons of which for this purpose. Sorry).

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

My current Review on Letterboxd – 3/5 stars

Obi-Wan notes: Ewan McGregor’s first turn as a Padawan learner under Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn. The relationship and banter between the two of them are a big part of the positives to this film. Obi-Wan is is young and brash and confident, but with some justification — he’s a fierce fighter (he does eventually defeat Darth Maul), a powerful assistant to Qui-Gon, and an insightful observer.

In the end, Obi-Wan is on his own — and has sworn to his dying master that he will take on Anakin Skywalker as his apprentice. It’s a role he has no training to take on, being barely promoted to full Jedi himself.

Episode 2: Attack of the Clones

My current review on Letterboxd – 2/5 stars

Obi-Wan notes: It’s ten years later, and Anakin, ripped from his mother, has grown into a sulky teenager. Obi-Wan, sporting a sage beard, has grown into an old fuddy-duddy. The bubbly, defiant, independent Padawan under the rebellious master Qui-Gon is now conservative, chiding, fretful, and domineering teacher.

When on his own — investigating Kamino, fighting Jango, checking out Geonosis — he’s a strong character. Fighting with Anakin against Dooku, he’s heroic. But every time he interacts with Anakin, any attempts to the bantering camaraderie that he had with Qui-Gon is awkward and forced.

Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith

My current review on Letterboxd – 2.5 / 5 stars

Obi-Wan notes: Obi-Wan gets to watch it all fall apart — the Republic falling into tyranny, the Jedi Order is destroyed through its own arrogance, and his Padawan apprentice turns into the monster assassin of the Sith emperor.

And, in the end, he realizes his own failure — and that of the Jedi. He/they failed to see Palpatine’s plot, they failed to protect the Republic, they failed to protect the Younglings — and they failed to see how Anakin was falling from grace. It’s (rightfully) gut-wrenching for him, and the final battle he has with Anakin is no victory on his part, but a cap on the tragedy he’s overseen.

“You were my brother! I loved you!”

And that’s the final indictment, as he failed as both master and as brother, not fully embracing either role, because he got bulldozed into trying to be both when he was too young to figure it out.

And while he takes on a final assignment at the end of the film, watching over Luke, the OWK series shows he’s been more than a bit traumatized by the whole thing. Which adds an interesting twist to the series.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is arguably the most interesting and heroic character of the First Trilogy, and he was definitely my favorite character in The Clone Wars. I love that they’ve given him a dedicated series, and I am definitely eager to see what comes next.

Movie Review: “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (2022)

A distinctively comic-booky film, in mostly good ways.

(No significant spoilers.)

When I got out of this movie, I tweeted, “This is the comic-bookiest movie I have ever seen. Both in (mostly) good and bad ways.” And, the next day, that’s still true.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a very (shall we say) strange movie. It is filled with arguably too many characters, but the important ones all get a fair amount of screen time and agency. It is filled with horror (none of it too horrific), and mind-altering multidimensional madness (which is all delightful), but remains at heart a super-hero film. It is filled with cameos and fan service, but those are present as lovely icing on a rich cake, less a distraction and more of the overall flavor.

Benedict Cumberbatch is back as Doctor Strange, who’s casually mastered magic enough since his 2016 movie to use it for casual costume changes, and to tie his tie. Cumberbatch actually gets to play multidimensional variants of himself — all very nicely done, and all leading to the character learning something about himself and having a nice, if not profound, character arc to go with it tale.

Elizabeth Olson is back as Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch (the actress pretty much flew from the set of “WandaVision” to begin shooting the movie). The character fits a bit awkwardly into role of super-villain, being driven by tragic circumstances, dreams of alternate universes where she actually has her kids, and, of course, temptations from the fell magic of the Darkhold. It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for her when she acts so violently and callously as time goes by. The final confrontation with her is fitting, but doesn’t quite make the whole thing work as a needed redemption arc.

So you could have had a fine film with just those two having at it, but there are three other major characters vying for useful screen time and making good use of it. Benedict Wong gets a solid work-out as Sorcerer Supreme Wong. He’s not the star of the movie (I would totally watch a Wong movie), but he gets a lot of screen time and great action sequences, and his banter is top notch. Rachel McAdams returns as Christine Palmer, a stronger far more successful second act for an MCU hero’s love interest than most others we’ve gotten.

And, of course, Xochitl Gomez plays neophyte power-house America Chavez, and deftly manages to dodge most of the snarky teen tropes, avoiding being too much of a damsel in distress, but also not instantly rising up as a super-hero. The movie is all around her, but not necessarily about her, and I want that latter movie as a follow-up. Nicely done, even if Saudi Arabia had the vapors over some very innocuous references to the comics canon background that she has two mothers (and wears an LGBTQ flag pin on her jacket).

And even after that we could point to significant appearances by folk like Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo (playing a Mordo in very different circumstances but very true to the character’s previous portrayal), and a host of cameos that will get any fanboi squeeing (my personal favorite being Rintrah, but that’s just me).

The plot is non-linear to the point of, well, madness, with the party being split (and the various splits given plenty of air time) multiple times. And while there are cast-of-zillions CG battles in places, a lot of that gets done in odd places in the movie, leaving the finale to be a much more nicely integrated combo of super-slugfest and very personal conflict.

The movie also wraps up on some very satisfying but unexpected notes. The Stephen-Christine thing is resolved, but not in an overly obvious way. The fate of America Chavez is left in a neat holding pattern for future MCU use. And, for that matter, so is Wanda’s fate; the multiverse being, of course, vast.

As well, we also tee up another (huzzah) DS movie, with some quick final-scene + mid-credits fun. (Yes, there are two credits shots, as usual for MCU movies. I’m not sure the final one is worth busting your bladder for, but if you can wait for it, it’s amusing, and quite appropriate for a Sam Raimi-directed effort.)

Danny Elfman’s music is fine, and perhaps even appropriate for such a tripped-out film. He does reference a few times (too few, for my taste) Michael Giacchino’s DS theme (I do love leitmotifs and musical continuity), but his original contributions fit the tone.

As to the overall film, written by Michael Waldron and directed by Sam Raimi … well, the “Multiverse of Madness” epithet is correct. Things get zany, and there are plenty of references back to old horror movie tropes to keep things tonally shaken up. There’s a real effort to keep the magic battle bits from too much like standard super-hero energy blast work. That includes one battle relatively late in the film that is delightful, different, and really very weird.

The end result is something phantasmagorical, as much mood piece as story, and that makes it both distinctive amongst its fellow super-hero films and, perhaps, a bit weaker. A movie like this could be approached with “What cool Doctor Strange story could we tell?” or with “How do we show off the multiverse?” The film tends to tip a bit toward the latter, though it does a decent job all-around, better than I might have expected.

Even though it was executed with technical excellence (as one expects from the MCU), it’s not just about that excellence. The difference in what it does, the seriousness with which it take its multiversal venues, and the quirky aspects of everything it gives us and how it directorially goes about it, will make it a much more memorable outing than some other technically excellent but more conventional super-flicks. I think it will end up a cult classic in the genre.

Because it is, in fact, the comic-bookiest film I’ve ever seen. It sacrifices some depth and story for visual and conceptual effects and craziness. But it does so in a way that stands out. Steve Ditko, who originated the visuals of Doctor Strange, would, I think, be very pleased. Overall, I like, and will absolutely be watching it again.

doctor strange 2 poster — Doctor Strange 2 poster

(Based on my Letterboxd review here.)

TV Review: “Loki” (2021)

On rewatch, I liked this 6-ep series even better than the first time around.

Perhaps because I could stop oohing and aahing at all the fun stuff and pay attention to the story.

Loki has always been one of the best villains in the MCU, precisely because he’s been one of the most approachable and relatable. Cynical and sly, but also desperate for approval. Vain, but fragile. Casual betrayer but also, in his eyes, always the betrayed. Apparently self-possessed and confident, but constantly failing through his own hubris — and, perhaps, his own desire to fail, knowing himself unworthy. Petty, cruel, but largely because only by being mean does he earn what he thinks is respect.

Over the course of his mainstream MCU career — Thor, Avengers, Thor 2 (where he was pretty much the only part worth watching), Thor 3, and a few brief moments of Infinity Wars, we saw him at his most maniacal, and also his most vulnerable. It wasn’t quite a redemption arc, but it came close.

Loki grief — Loki’s nearly the only thing in “Thor: The Dark World” worth watching.

All of which made him a perfect candidate for a new Disney+ limited series last year, especially putting him into a situation where his power was was restrained, the threat to his life was real, and his ego would be taking multiple shots (and temptations).

Even with an ending that gets a bit more complicated than it needed to be (but setting up one aspect of the Multiverse, not to mention next big baddy Kang), Loki is a lovely romp through muddied morality. Is Loki a hero or a villain? (Yes.) Is the Time Variance Authority a good thing or a bad thing? (Good. No, bad. No, good. Maybe bad?) Is Loki capable of growth and change, of even, perhaps, love? Or is he just looking out for Number One and engaging in multiversal narcissism? (Maybe, to all of the above.)

Loki and Sylvie — A lot of folk were very “Ew” over this. I loved their relationship because it was clearly never, ever going to work.

The production resisted until the final couple of episodes the temptation to set up too many Easter Egg hunts. As a result, the Loki series still had appeal for both the trivia nerds and the casual MCU viewer. I thought it did its job solidly on both counts, not to mention setting up an eventual second series. Pretty much all the actors hit their marks well, with Tom Hiddleston easily taking on being the star of the show. Plus the music was great, and the production design delightful.

Bravos all around. I look forward to the next season.

An earlier version originally published on Letterboxd.

Loki all character posters — All characters great and small

What $100 Million Ad Campaign Would Jesus Do?

An effort to attract back unchurched young adults has a good message, but the wrong target

A $100 million ad campaign is being launched to attract young adults back to Christianity.

This week, an alliance of Christian media ministries announced the launch of an extensive $100-million-dollar national ad campaign to share inspirational messages about Jesus Christ with “skeptics and seekers.”

The “He Gets Us” campaign features stark ads with messages such as “Jesus was homeless,” “Jesus suffered anxiety,” and “Jesus was in broken relationships.” They direct people to a website where they’re then connected to national ministries and local congregations.

As an example …

So let’s put to the side whether spending $100 million to actually help homeless people, anxious people, or people in broken relationships would be more in keeping with Jesus’ actual message.

The problem, I think, is that the target of the campaign is totally misaligned. The research that went into it actually makes the case.

Starting in April 2021, a representative sample of 5,000 U.S. adults answered an online survey designed by Haven, followed by additional quantitative polling and interview-style qualitative research. […]

Skeptics of Christianity represent one-fourth of the U.S. population, according to the research. Half of them, “especially those with children,” are open to learning about Jesus, if obstacles can be overcome, Haven states. The biggest obstacle: Jesus’ message has been distorted as “hate-filled.”

Based on these insights, Haven’s goals became to “communicate that Jesus is for everyone and is a worthy example to live by”—and that his teachings are “positive for society as a whole.”

I mean, that’s cool — but maybe a more productive goal would be figuring out how “Jesus’ message has been distorted as ‘hate-filled.'”

I suspect the problem for “young adults” is not with Jesus’ message or perceived relevancy. It’s that they see Jesus’ ostensible reps here on earth spending their money on jets (and ad campaigns) and preaching to mega-churches (and the press) about how those young adults’ gay friends are going to hell, and how wealthy companies should get tax breaks because capitalism is God’s way, and if you just donate enough money then God will reward you with a bunch of money, too. Oh, and that Jesus’s representatives should take over the country on behalf of all the white people.

One Nation Under God — This is the message the Religious Right sends about Jesus.

I believe the evangelical Religions Right — the brand of Christianity that has spent the last fifty years elbowing itself in front of the microphone as the One, True Representatives of Christianity in the US — has done more with its venality and cruelty to drive people away from Christianity in this nation than any “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”

More impactfully, by the Religious Right locking themselves in with the Republican Party in the pursuit of the power to force their agenda on the rest of the nation, they have become associated inextricably with folk like Trump, Cruz, McConnell, DeSantis, Gaetz, MTG, Boebert, Hawley, etc.

Trump and Bible — This is the face of US Christianity to too many people.

These “young adults” now see those deplorables as the representatives of Christ (because they claim to be and/or there are plenty of religious types willing to assert they are), and it’s profoundly unappealing to them.

After all, who’s going to be believed as to what Jesus’ message is? A slick ad campaign, or the religiously-anointed political representatives of the church trying to kick people off welfare, force LGBTQ folk back into the closet, require rape victims to give birth, suppress the vote of people of color, lock down the borders to desperate refugees, kick homeless out of town, and legalize discrimination under the banner of “religious freedom” … all with the blessing of various groups and ministers saying that this is all being done in Jesus’ name.

There are a lot of Christians and churches that aren’t into all that, to be sure, that focus on charity and compassion and humility — but they’re not the ones parading around, wrapping themselves in flags and waving around crosses. They’re not the ones crowing about how Christianity is all about nationalism, capitalism, partisanship, guns, and power.

Trump being prayed over — This may garner some votes, but it probably doesn’t encourage “young adults” to go to church.

Maybe Jesus’ ad campaign shouldn’t be focused on trying to draw unchurched young adults to faith. Maybe it should be focused on changing the hearts of those who are driving those young adults away from Christianity. Because right now they’re drowning out Jesus’ words, whether or not He Gets Us.

B5 Rewatch: 5×07 “Secrets of the Soul”

Hot telepath sex, not-so-hot telepath origins, and aliens who are (gasp) keeping secrets

This ep manages to have very clear A- and B-plots, with some occasional medlab scenes to help them cross-over. And the theme for today, in very different ways, is reparations.

A-Plot: As more telepaths show up at B5, tensions continue to grow. Outcasts in Downbelow resent that the teeps get free food and meds from the station. Zack has suddenly become a jerk, and has decided he really doesn’t trust teeps — except Lyta, of course, because she’s different, which attitude doesn’t endear him to her, and pushes her into being … kind of sketchily fanatical.

LYTA: If Byron asked me to follow him into hell, I’d do it gladly with a smile on my face, because I believe in him. What could you possibly say in five minutes that would change that?

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - byron bloody lip — Byron’s “Turn the Other Cheek” routine is likely to end just as badly as the previous fellow’s.

There’s one briefly violent encounter where Byron lets himself get punched in the face multiple times, both defuse a bully’s anger and to teach his people about being non-violent.

BYRON: Your anger has nothing to do with me. What will satisfy your anger will never come from me or anyone else here. I’m afraid you must look for it elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the same gang ends up curb-stomping another teep found on his own — and when Byron’s teeps telepathically torture one of the gang members to find out who was responsible, Byron gets arrested for the crime (very clearly unjustly). Which mean, since Zack is being a jerk and leaves Byron to cool his heels in a cell overnight, it means that Byron’s not there to restrain his people from assaulting one gang member telepathically to torture the whereabouts of the perp, and then beating the perp to death, all in utter silence.

There’s probably a sane middle ground between Byron’s “oh, I am so disappointed with them, I am a failure as a leader” moaning, and Lyta’s “I can’t excuse what they did, but, yeah, I can totally excuse what they did,” but the script turns up the melodrama dial. Lyta’s been reluctant to dive headlong into the teep colony, but seeing her beautiful cover model brood and angst over what’s happened (a scene that is either overwrought in its acting, or Byron intentionally manipulating her), she strips down and has hot telepathic sex with him.

Yeah, it seemed a bit odd to me, too.

Not, of course, as odd as what happens next.

One, the telepaths are clearly aware that their main man is going at it with his new girlfriend. I mean, it’s not like the bead screen between the floors they were sleeping on and Byron’s quarters offered that much privacy anyway, let alone the whole telepathy thing, but …

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - vorlon fetal experiment — Fetal alien being made … telepathic?

Two, finally having some hot sex (or any sex) for the first time since she was taken by the Vorlons and Made Their Agent, triggers a whole bunch of memories for Lyta, both how things were like when she was working for the Vorlons (first Kosh, then, far less pleasantly, Kosh 2), and then, before that, how things were when she was in a tank, being biologically altered, and could see, in thousands of tanks around her, other individuals, some of them babies or fetuses, for a dozen races, similarly being modified.

And, of course, those memories are all being projected into Byron, and into all the teeps who have been awakened and are watching.

Which is when things get a bit dark, because while Byron has been begging folks for a planetary colony to being his people, now he knows a deeper truth: telepathic abilities were bred into races around the galaxy by the Vorlons, to serve them as weapons against the Shadows. And while he can’t sue the Vorlons, all the younger races are on the hook for their debts.

BYRON: They owe us a place where we can be among our own kind. We’ll ask to speak to the Alliance, put our case before them, see if they can be persuaded to do the right thing.

LYTA: And if they can’t?

BYRON: Then we’ll make sure they have no other choice.

Ssssssooo much for being Gandhi?

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - hyach — “I’ve got a secret.”

B-Plot: Franklin hasn’t gotten much love this season, but now gets at least half an episode to play with. He’s been tasked by Sheridan to study inter-species disease, to help address potential illnesses and plagues that could jump populations. It’s right in line with his past studies of non-human physiology, and with his refusal to develop bioweapons against non-humans.

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - hyach-doh — Hyach-doh. Apparently the cap-wearing was considered genocidally déclassé.

In this ep, he’s researching the Hyach, a race that wants to be in the Alliance, but is very secretive about their past. Franklin researches the shit out of them, and ultimately uncovers the secret they have hidden from the galaxy: two sentient races, capable of interbreeding, were present on their world until about a thousand years ago, when the Hyach decided it was time to exterminate the Hyach-doh, and, in fact did so.

While it looks like Franklin might be killed for uncovering the secret, it turns out the racial elders had a reason to let him uncover it: the Hyach are going extinct. Something about past hybridizing with the Hyach-doh was apparently necessary for their medical/genetic survival, but now they’ve unwittingly killed the people who might have saved them. Unless Franklin might possibly research and discover a cure …

Franklin will do no such thing, more than happy to indict the present Hyach, who have been maintaining this secret, as accessories after the fact to genocide. Only if the secret is let out will he help organize the massive, interplanetary research project needed.

It comes across as kind of a strident response to the situation — Yes, you are responsible for the sins of your fathers — but it also abruptly reminded me a bit of the debate over contemoprary reparations to Black Americans over slavery (and post-slavery racial injustice), esp. with Franklin, a Black man, serving as proxy for the Hyach-doh.

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - vorlon experiments — Remember when folk still thought the Vorlons were good guys?

Other Bits and Bobs: So, yeah, reparations. Byron is convinced that his people deserve a planet, not just because it would be a charitable thing, but because they are owed it because of Vorlon interference with their fates. And Franklin is sort of demanding it of the Hyach– a public acknowledgment of (and shaming about) the identity and existence of the Hyach-doh, and what happened to them.

Not sure if that synchronicity was intended, but it passed right over my head the first time.

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - teeps arriving — “What, we’ve got more of THEM arriving?”

As mentioned, Zack is playing his blue-collar Everyman role a bit strong, acting as a racist jerk toward the telepaths moving into his neighborhood and making trouble. (That he is maybe a bit jealous that Lyta is spiraling into their orbit probably doesn’t help.) That Zack has, in the past, been a voice of reason when Garibaldi was going off the deep end doesn’t help it feel a bit jarring.

The teeps, meanwhile, keep getting more and more cult-like. Early on in the ep, Lyta refuses to sleep over with the gang because she feels she doesn’t belong yet. At which point, Byron violates a whole bunch of confidential boundaries, walks out into the main room, and announces that Lyta doesn’t feel like she belongs with them. Which leads, in turn, to all the teeps getting up and gathering around her and giving her hugs.

Knowing (as I didn’t when the episode aired) that Joe spent time in a cult after he left home … yeah. The signs are all there.

Meanwhile: An odd episode with only three of the twelve regular cast members present (Franklin, Zack, and Lyta).

While Patricia Tallman was not actually nude (though with only quite sheer and unreliable pasties) they still made it a closed set during the filming. JMS — who apparently was quite uncomfortable even writing an intimate scene like that (he literally has in the script, “I wonder which is more embarrassing, reading this or writing it?”) — did not visit the set during filming. Though apparently Doug Netter, leading a group of studio executives on a tour, and having missed the CLOSED SET note on the call sheet, did.

It’s maybe worth remembering that while the genocide of the Hyach-doh a thousand years back is treated here as a terrible shame, tragedy, and capital-crime-by-association, back in S.1, the Centauri extermination of the Xon (only two thousand years ago) is treated as, well, literally a joke (at least by the Centauri).

So the B5 Rewatch has been stretching on for some time, but it had been multiple months since the last time we watched. My son had put together (for a different show we’re watching only when he’s home) a Google Slides presentation to brief us on characters and dramatic situations we might have forgotten. Inspired by that, I came up with this presentation to refresh him and my wife before we started watching this ep.

Most Dramatic Moment: The Lyta-Byron-sex-flashback-Vorlons-voyeurism scene probably hits the high mark here, especially when her eyes go all black and spooky.

Lyta started this series as something of a victim, and continued along that path for the past four years, trying to find an institution — Psi Corps, B5, the Vorlons — who would support her and treat her the way she wanted. They all failed. Unfortunately, the moment she’s going to choose to finally take an independent stand … will not be a good one for her.

Most Amusing Moment: This is not a laff-riot episode, and the usual suspects for humor and humorous interaction (Sheridan, Lochley, Londo, Garibaldi, Vir, even Lennier) were not around.

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - pakmara vomit — Just another day in Medlab.

So the best probably comes from the pre-credits sequence, where Franklin introduces what he’s doing about interspecies diseases in a conversation with a Pak’ma’ra, which is amusing in and of itself, but gets better when Franklin tries to feed him a barium milkshake.

(The Pak’ma’ra prosthetics/movement are actually very, very good. Today it would be done with CG, but the practical FX are nicely executed.)

Babylon 5 5x07 Secrets of the Soul - Lyta in the tank — Lyta, Vorlons, and the tank

Most Arc-ish Moment: Lyta’s flash-back, hands-down — literally hitting big moments from her character arc, plus peeling a further lid off the history of telepaths and the not-very-nice nature of the Vorlons.

Overall Rating: 3.1 of 5.0 — The A-plot whipsaws back and forth, with a lot of obvious set-up, a lot of melodrama, and a lot of cultish weirdness. I’m probably giving it a higher score than it deserves because of the big Vorlon/flashback scene. The B-plot is a fascinating setup, but ends in a very talky way that turns out both smarmy and preachy and far too neatly wrapped with a moral bow.

(Rating History)

Other Resources for this episode:

Lurker’s Guide
Babylon Project Wiki
IMDb
AV Club (covers eps 6-10 of the season)
TV Tropes
Sci-Fi Musings (home of the little videos in so many of these reviews I’ve done)
Sundry Thoughts

Previous episode: 5×06 “Strange Relations”

Next episode: 5×08 “Day of the Dead” – Neil Gaiman guest writes, as folk on the station are visited by the deceased of their past. What could go wrong?

There is some controversy as to where “Day of the Dead” should be placed. It was written early in the season, after only four scripts had been completed by JMS, and before all the detailed chronology was figured out; it was originally shot 11th, but shuffled to 8th during the original run because of conflicts with the NBA playoffs, and so as to let a more solid sequence of episodes occur. This creates some minor continuity conflicts, and some oddness with G’kar and Londo being (still? again?) on B5, but other recommended options have their own inconsistencies as well. Since it’s all relatively trivial, I’m going with DotD next, as in the original broadcast and HBO Max.

Movie Review: “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021)

Tom Holland SM films have been about growing up. This one’s even more so.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is a complicated film, on one level. There are multiple fight sequences, as well as a lot of talking sequences, some big passages of time, some thorny conundrums that get handwaved aside, and some others that last until the bitter end.

The last SM movie ended with Peter Parker being outed by Alex Jones fill-in J Jonah Jameson both as Spider-Man and (thanks to villainous shenanigans) as the murderer of Mysterio and the wreaker of havoc across London.

The movie manages to quickly get past that, but it also has impacts through the entire film. Even though the cliche of “wanted by the police” isn’t lingered over, the repercussions of the event continue to last, leaving Peter’s life a never-ending media circus. But, as we’ve had hammered home over the years since the last SM film, public belief doesn’t necessarily align with truth, meaning that even when Peter is exonerated, he remains under attack by JJJ and by a substantial portion of the general population.

Worse, the biggest villain fought against by our her for the first quarter of the movie is the college admission process, and MIT decides that all the excitement means they will take a pass not just on Peter’s application, but on his girlfriend MJ’s and his bestie Ned’s. Which in turn leads Peter to go to Doctor Strange to see if the Sorcerer Supreme can set things aright.

He does not, but in the process the universe is broken, and beings from other worlds start to shift into ours, in particular some arch-enemies of previous Sony Spiderverse films.

It’s all a glorious muddle, yet the narrative through-line is maintained amidst various super-battles, with Peter trying to take care of his friends and family … and learning that great Spider-Man lesson not yet uttered in this go-around.

Ultimately, SMNWH is a story about growing up, of coming of age — not solely because Tom Holland is becoming a more mature actor in appearance, but also (to not be meta) not just in personal courage and heroism (Peter has already demonstrated that). This is a movie about that moment of maturity when one learns to extend the application of one’s virtue beyond just a circle of friends and family. That includes the willingness to lose everything in order to save others, even those who might not deserve it.

Throw in a great soundtrack by Michael Giacchino, some really nicely done SFX (including battles of CG figures that look more and more realistic), a variety of cameos from elsewhere in the Multiverse, and a ton of witty banter and general geekery, and it’s a delightful capstone to the Tom Holland trilogy of Spider-Man films.

(So, of course, they’ve announced a fourth film. We’ll see what they do with it.)

P.S. There are two post-credit scenes, one to placate Sony, one to placate Marvel. Neither are great, but worth waiting for unless you really, really need to pee.

Originally posted on Letterboxd.

Death

It sucks.

I got word today that my online friend, Les Jenkins, passed away. He was suffering from too-late-diagnosed pancreatic, et al. cancer, knew he was dying soon, and, after a few weeks of hospice care, did.

Dammit.

Les started his “Stupid Evil Bastard” blog a little bit after I started this one. We crossed path fairly early on, ended up being fairly regular commenters back and forth in different social media, and eventually developed one of those weird Internet friendships that the 21st Century has wrought. We never met in person, I regret to say, but we discussed things online, we chatted online back and forth, we actually talked on the telephone multiple times (as we older folk do), and we even did, over the last decade, several podcasts/vlogs where we just nattered on about politics and pop culture and philosophy and life.

And now, as they say, he’s gone.

Les was smart and clever. He was a deft hand at PC technology, that being his career path. He had a dry sense of humor, and a deep devotion to the people and causes he held dear. He no pretenses to personal virtue (thus the name of his blog), but never became utterly cynical about human nature (thus the subtitle to his blog, “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

Les was a firm atheist. He’d reached that conclusion through consideration and logic and reasoning. He could be merciless in dealing with theists (usually fundies) who would come to his site to debate him or, worse, preach at him. Yet even though I’m not of that persuasion, he never subjected me to his razor tongue, probably because I wasn’t interested in debating him on the subject. We’ll all eventually learn the truth (or not be in a position to care about it), and both of us were willing to play that long game.

Which turned out to be far shorter for Les than it should have been.

So on the one hand, it would be presumptuous of me to consider him in any sort of afterlife, looking down with that crooked smirk at the world. But my own belief, or weakness, as someone who believes in such an afterlife (though clueless as to how it’s constituted), is to hope that someday I’ll get a chance to sit down with him, in “person” this time, and chat over what he’s learned. He’s definitely the sort of company I’d want in such a state.

And, of course, if he was right, neither of us will know otherwise. So either way, it’s all fine.

I’ve lost family members over the years. I was there when my dad passed. But Les — a peer, a friend, someone who went from “Oh, hey, another tweet” to “he’s gone” in a seeming heartbeat — that’s a wake-up call to the transitory nature of life, a reminder of the mortality of anyone (self included).

Discussions of death should be about the subject who’s gone, but inevitably are about the person writing about them.

Anyway …

… thanks, Les. You helped me through some PC tech issues, sure. You engaged me in interesting conversation and consideration of my own beliefs. You were a friendly presence in my life, and my life was better for you being in it. Even without an afterlife, your impact on others around you lives on. Rest in peace, sir.

Yes, Putin is acting because he sees weakness. But …

… it’s not the weakness that the GOP is nattering about

After decades of on-again, off-again muttering, Vladimir Putin has sent his Russia (and his Belarus) to invade his neighbor, Ukraine. There are a lot of internal reasons for him to be doing this — NATO expansion is not one of them, but his own sense of mortality and history more likely are — but the result is arguably the largest military operation on European soil since the end of WW2. And it’s a conflict that will not only mean blood and suffering in the Ukraine, but further weaken the bonds of the international order and trigger further wars, if not in Europe then elsewhere.

One of the most amazing elements of the whole tragic affair so far, though, has been this sort of thing:

House GOP weakness tweet — Stay classy and patriotic, House GOP

I mean, clearly, the era of “partisanship stops at the water’s edge” is long over (if it ever really existed), but the Republican Party’s eagerness to score whatever political points they can, in any way, under any circumstances, has reached new depths.

(Not to mention nonsensical ones: how is the President, leaving the podium and exiting the room, after briefing the press, a sign of weakness? But, following the rules of the Big Lie, the GOP simply repeats its Trump-led mantra of “Sleepy Joe” and pretends it’s being witty.)

As the situation around Ukraine worsened, the GOP had a single message: that Vladimir Putin was moving in his perceived national self-interests (which Fox folk like Tucker Carlson say seem perfectly legit to them!) because Joe Biden’s “weakness” was taunting him on. Or, put another way: This never happened under Donald Trump’s presidency! Putin respected Trump’s strength and resolve, and would never have dared do such a thing! Biden’s weak! Trump is strong! [insert sounds of beating on chest here]

trump putin strong — Trump strong! Trump smash!

Leave aside for a moment the lack of merits as to Putin’s casus belli here (which many in the GOP and GOP-adjacent seem to be flirting with simply accepting, out of some slavish devotion to Putin as a Strong Man who is anti-“woke” and pro-Christian and anti-LGBTQ and pro-“family” and therefore rings all those chimes for the far Right). Leave aside that, even if Joe Biden had literally invited Russia to invade Ukraine, invading another sovereign nation is Not Cool, and is still an action that Putin — who has previously invaded other parts of Ukraine, not to mention Georgia — still decided to do, on his own initiative. Leave aside a degree of American hypocrisy about sovereignty and flimsy justifications for invasion.

Did Joe Biden’s “weakness” contribute to Putin’s terrible (or, if you listen to Donald Trump, “clever”) decision to invade Ukraine?

Yes. But not the way yahoos like Trump and Cruz and Tucker will have you believe.

But Putin didn’t invade while Trump was Prez. That shows Putin doesn’t respect Biden!

Is it actually a bad thing that a murderous, anti-democracy autocrat, someone who beats, jails, assassinates, or disappears his opponents and critics while retaining supreme power for decades, on behalf of himself and his kleptocratic buddies, doesn’t respect the sort of person Joe Biden is?

That actually strikes me as a good thing.

Well, what I mean is that Putin respected Trump’s strength and resolve!

Hardly. Putin got nearly anything he wanted from Trump. Trump went along with the fait accompli of Crimea annexation. Trump did his darnedest to roll back those “worthless” sanctions that had been placed on Putin’s regime because of them. Trump weakened Ukraine’s defenses, removing a GOP plank to send arms to Ukraine, and then delaying and leveraging arms shipments to get the Ukraine government to politically damage Joe Biden (you might recall there was an impeachment about it and everything). Trump weakened NATO, trying to recast it as a transactional, mercenary arrangement, downplaying the value of that alliance and, in fact, of any alliances, and casting doubt that, if another NATO country were attacked, he’d actually fulfill US Article 5 obligations to step in. Trump showed over and over again, from Iraq to Syria to Afghanistan that he’d pull troops out of anywhere because he wasn’t interested in world order or commitments or principle, only in his own ego and what made him look good. Trump raised Putin’s image on the world stage, calling him strong and smart and ruthless and powerful. Meanwhile, at home, Trump divided America, taking partisan gaps and wrenching them further open with a crowbar.

Why on Earth would Vladimir Putin ever endanger that? After investing in monkeywrenching the 2016 presidential election and, to his great surprise, being rewarded with a Donald Trump winning the damned, thing, why would he ever do anything that might antagonize or weaken his greatest global ally, witting or unwitting?

No, no, Putin knew Trump was strong and resolute and would strike out at anyone who crossed the US. He’d never admit it, but he feared Donald Trump.

If Putin feared Trump, it was to this degree: Trump is, even if you have him accurately pegged as an unprincipled narcissist, unpredictable and savage. Crossing him too publicly, in a way that offended his ego, affected his support, endangered his chance of being carved into Mount Rushmore, was to risk not only an ALL CAPS EARLY MORNING TWITTER SCREED!!!!!! but possibly something even more damaging.

Does anyone doubt that Trump would be willing to threaten — if not carry out — lobbing nukes if he took it into his head (and his sycophants suggested it was a good way to look strong)? A man who was so bound up in his pride that he was willing to sit by while a violent mob stormed the US Capitol on his behalf, and seriously considered deploying the military to overthrow the 2020 election?

Yeah, even a bad guy fears a crazy desperado with a gun. That’s still not a good thing.

TrumpPutinlotofkillers.JPGimgmax660 — Not a real photo but part of a real quote.

But Biden is clearly weak. He didn’t prevent the invasion of Ukraine. Putin knew Sleepy Joe’s weakness would let him do whatever he wanted.

It’s worth noting that those who make this argument are extraordinarily vague about what should have been done to prevent Putin’s act of war. They simply wave their hand and say that it would never have happened under Trump, without even bothering to suggest what Trump would have done to stop it.

(They don’t have to because, of course, it’s not a rational argument.)

But there is one nugget of truth, at the last, in their accusation.

Joe Biden is weak.

Because America is weak.

McCarthy & McConnell — Party over Nation

Joe Biden is hobbled by the profound partisan divisions in the US, divisions led by a GOP that is still dominated by Trump and Trumpism, and who are more interested in pulling down Joe Biden than in stopping Vladimir Putin. Putin knows this. Indeed, he’s actually done what he can to engineer the whole situation.

What are the chances that the US will stand firm and united in doing what it can to stop, mitigate, or punish Putin’s actions? Zero. Nobody is actually going to suggest sending in US troops. That leaves economic and political retribution, and the effect of that will take years, even assuming it is maintained for that long. And the GOP will be right there, unwilling to offer realistic solutions, just claiming that Biden “lost” Ukraine (or even that Russia was justified in their actions and that Biden was a loser anyway for not realizing that).

Putin, whatever his reasons for invading Ukraine, has to have seen this as the perfect moment, not because Joe Biden is a weak man, but because he oversees a government that is weakened by internal division, by an opposition party that sees Biden as their real target and Putin, if not an ally, then a tool to use against him. Which makes them tools in Putin’s hand for long-term success.

And if the GOP hamstring Biden from systemic, sustained action against Putin, and manage to put Trump (or whoever is the Trumpiest candidate they can agree upon) in the White House in three-plus years, will that person simply do what Trump did, shrug and work to lift any remaining sanctions? Write off NATO as a bad and expensive idea and let it shift for its own?

What will that weakness encourage Putin to do next? What will it encourage the rest of Europe to do to appease him?

What will it encourage China to do?

What will it encourage any nation around the world who see a richer, weaker neighbor, and knows we’re lurching backwards a century or more, to an era of “spheres of influence” and “might makes right.”

The GOP is correct in saying that Putin is emboldened by weakness.

But they’re the source of it. And the consequences will extend long beyond the Russian conquest of the Ukraine.

TV Review: “The Book of Boba Fett” (2021-22)

The lovely parts are far greater than the muddled, poorly-structured whole.

So … The Book of Boba Fett.

Sigh.

YES THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE FOR THE SERIES, AND BITS AND BOBS OF THE FINALE. YOU SHOULD WATCH IT FIRST (YES, YOU SHOULD, EVEN IF IT HAS SOME SIGNIFICANT FLAWS).

This was a marvelous, stirring, my-younger-fanboy-would-disbelieve-we’d-ever-see-it collection of incredibly cool, thoughtful, interesting, thrilling, exciting, lore-filled, great bits and ideas …

… that were greater than the eventual sum of their parts.

To start bluntly, dramatic pacing on this show was for shit. Backflashes and presentflashes and huge sidequests and where-the-hell-is-the-titular-character chunks of story dominated the whole series. Loading down the saga with backstory and exposition can be done … but it has to pay off. And inserting massive peripheral tales that have nothing to do with the core narrative would rightfully have any writing group pulling out the torches and flensing knives.

Hey, know that graph of how a novel is structured? Essentially a cascading series of rising actions, ending in a big climax and then a denouement?

This series was just a constant stream of static.

Slow moments. Fast moments. Small moments. Big moments. All thrown into a blender with no actual pacing, aside from the Disney+ “The final episode will be full of pew-pew-pew action.”

And even in that final episode, which was, to be sure, mostly the huge blow-out action sequence that people were looking for …

… we get interrupted mid-stream by an extended sequence of gratuitous Groguness.

Yeah, things are getting unbearably tense in Mos Espa … so let’s break for several minutes of cute Grogu action!

… the titular character, master of a dozen deadly weapons, spends much of his time during the big action sequences not doing much more than hanging with a (beautifully rendered) CGI figure, yanking on chains.

… the denouement is an utterly flat collection of much of the cast, and then some meaningless Mando stuff, and then a mid-credit scene of a supporting character with supporting character and ROLL REST OG CREDITS.

cobb vanth boba fett finale — Honestly, I didn’t recognize him on first watch.

Whu–?

(Okay, I’ll give a shout-out to the secondary characters. The Mod gang. The Gamorreans. The Freetowners. Krrsantan. The Mayor. The Mayor’s Chief of Staff. They were all finely done. But they weren’t the real focus of series, even if I’d have loved to see more of them.)

We ended up in this series spending so much time with fun stuff and cool stuff and interesting stuff and backstory stuff and lore stuff and fan service stuff that … it feels like they forgot it was supposed to maybe … be a story … nay, a book … a book of … well, let’s grab a name at random, say … Boba Fett.

I honestly don’t know if they decided halfway through the plotting that they had run out of ideas and therefore threw in a bunch of other stuff (Sarlacc! Mando! Grogu! Cad Bane!), or if there was never a story to begin with, or if this was a way of sneaking in a Season 2.5 of The Mandalorian past the Disney overseers … but …

Really, truly, the idea of …

a bounty hunter, the coolest bounty hunter (and bodyguard and button man) ever, deciding they didn’t want to work for stupid, short-sighted, inept, venal bosses any more, but wanted to become their own boss, a boss unto themselves, building something that was theirs, and in the process learned the challenges, perils, pitfalls, challenges, seduction, and ultimately oblige of power …

… that is an awesome story. And that’s what the trailer promised us.

boba fett concept art — Boba Fett, and the uneasy head that wears the crown

And that’s what … we got a watered-down half-a-story of, mixed up with a cloudy brew of guest figures, parallel stories, and fan-cruft.

Heck, imagine the difference if we took all that irrelevant Mandalorian time and added in some internal conflict to the Boba Fett story.

For example, Fennec Shand repeatedly bumps heads (if lightly) with Boba Fett about taking a more forceful, bloody, and criminal course of being a mob boss. Hey, Spice is profitable! That could have given us some real conflict. Is she going to argue when he says, “No”? Is she going to consider her options? Is she going to set up a side gig? Is she going to (even seem to) consider betraying him? Will the Pykes approach her, thinking she’s a weak link? Will she show she’s her own person … and ultimately make the right choice for her own reasons?

Nope. A kick-ass character and great actress, she just spends most of her time in the series giving us recaps of the situation (overlapping the “Previously” intros), nodding politely to Boba’s orders, and then being a deus ex assassin at key moments. A huge waste.

Or consider, if you wanted to drag the Mandalorian into the mix (which his own series laid the groundwork for), we could create some dramatic tension from that. Does Din Djarin really support Boba Fett’s ends (or his understanding of Boba’s ends) or is he supporting Boba, reluctantly, out of a sense honor? How far does that go? Does he protest Boba’s course? Does he actually show that possible internal conflict? Conversely, does Boba Fett really trust him? Does his see how his own sense of honor/obligation lines up to Mando’s? What do these two characters have in common, and where do they have differences, and how can we let that actually drive some drama between them?

Nope. Instead, we get “I am Lawful Neutral, so I will follow your orders to the death.” “Dude, you really believe that?” “It is the Way.” Ho-hum.

“Because they’re cousins … identical cousins …”

Hell, as far as that goes, even Boba Fett, the titular character, after getting a burst of character growth in the extended Tuskan flashbacks (very nicely done) … spends most of the series in an enlightened mob boss state. From the time in the present when he sits on Jabba’s throne to the end of the show … he doesn’t actually seem to grow or change. He’s the “I am the boss. I will rule with respect. I will protect my people” guy. He doesn’t get any internal conflicts, he doesn’t clash with anyone but obvious enemies, he doesn’t question his course. He just cruises along. His only challenge is a bit of naivete as to what it takes to run a city as a mob boss. That’s the only internal “conflict” he faces. Which is … a bit boring.

character conflict and growth — Boba really doesn’t tick any of these boxes.

While the Mando 2.5 miniseries bits were a huge gimping disruption, I did enjoy them for themselves. Playing with the Darksaber (when it could do things); running into Luke, and Ahsoka, and Grogu; learning that Luke is, yeah, just like we learn in the third trilogy, going to be a Jedi dick of a teacher … all of that was informative and fun. It was all great.

And it was totally inappropriate to this series. It had nothing to do with Boba Fett. It had nothing to do with the overall gang war of Mos Espa. It was simply a bridge to (we assume) the desired starting point of Season 3 of The Mandalorian.

(It also led to some of the worst telegraphing. “Oh, hey, I, the Mandalorian, am now flying around in a Naboo starfighter, but the little dome area where an astromech droid used to go is now just an empty dome, so very, very empty, I wonder what will ever fill it …?”)

boba fett grogu naboo starfighter — I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to find Grogu here!

Sigh.

This series really could have been so much more. So many of the elements are beautiful. The Tuskan sequences were lovely and meaningful both for Boba and for Star Wars lore. (What? The Tuskans aren’t just blood-thirsty, superstitious wogs? Mind-blown!) So many of the figures used — the Pykes, Krssantin, Cad Bane, even call-outs to Mando bits like Cobb Vanth and Mos Pelgo and Peli Motto — were neat in and of themselves, and could have all fit into a rich Boba-focused narrative saga.

For that matter, Boba’s part of the story could have been about the conflicts he felt, his personal urges toward violence, what he learned from his time with the Tuskans, how that intersected with his vengeful motivations dating back to his father’s death, and how those drives still did (and, to his realization, didn’t) apply to the present … maybe his growing uncertainty about his reasons for taking on the role of daimyo of Mos Espa, and how that ultimately translated into his taking on responsibility for the lives of the people there.

But the show decided, for whatever reason, to try to do too much, and too little, to show some lovely lore, and to short-circuit the character growth … and ultimately turned out to be a fun-to-watch, frustrating-to-contemplate, disappointment.

I don’t regret watching any individual element, really. But I definitely consider the series, the Book, as a whole … a fail.

book of boba fett — Cool, but disappointing.

B5 Rewatch: 5×06 “Strange Relations”

Bester is here for the Teeps, and Lochley’s secret is finally revealed.

A-Plot: The past finally catches up with Byron and his Telepath ~~gang~~ ~~cult~~ commune, as EarthGov sends Psi Corps bloodhounds, led by Bester to apprehend them as criminals and send them back. With Sheridan trying to play nice with Alliance members (like Earth), and Lochley not having any legitimate reason to stop them (and, further, having previously had not-horrible interactions with Bester), there seems to be little way to stop it from happening.

Well, except for Lyta Alexander, who’s been helping ~~steal~~ liberate drugs for the Teeps, and whom Byron continues to woo to join his ~~cult~~ commune. She’s not your average telepath, having had her powers goosed by Kosh waaaay in the past. And, indeed, she manages to stop Bester and his goon squad at least once — but cannot reliably do so, especially when he gets his requested support from station security.

Fortunately, after Bester has captured all the teeps and is going to head back to Earth with them, Lochley pulls a deus ex bureaucratica, using a new medical regulation (from Franklin, with the toner still damp) that requires thorough examination and quarantine of any folk who have been in Unknown Space, like the vagrant teeps have been, before being allowed back on Earth. That frustrates the hell out of Bester, but assuming he still has an ally in Lochley, he’s willing to come back in sixty days to pick them up.

Lochley, in turn, while not carrying the animus against Bester that Sheridan and Garibaldi do, isn’t by any means a fan, and it’s clear that while she can’t “let” the Teeps escape B5 before Bester’s return, she will not be at all disappointed if they find a way to do so.

Babylon 5 5x06 Strange Relations - lyta close up — Sad, lonely, isolated Lyta is sad, lonely, and isolated.

But while the Telepath plot here gets solved by Lochley, it’s really Lyta’s story, and there’s a lot of heartbreaking moments as Lyta watch the teeps run down and captured, one by one, and Byron tells her he’s turning himself in to be with them, even if it means his likely death. You can see the increasing isolation she’s under — cut off from Kosh, not a member of the Corps (despite still wearing a badge), not a member of the command team any more (and relegated to sneaking station supplies to the Teeps), but also not a member of the Teep ~~cult~~ colony. In every scene, it grows more and more painful …

Until, at the very end, as Byron is reunited with his ~~cult~~ family, and they all sit around and sing a slightly creepy song about love and harmony and finding “a better place” …

And we will all come together in a better place
A better place than this
My love will guide you
My love will hold you
My love will show you the way
There will come a tomorrow
Where we’re free from our sorrows
And our love will show us the way
We are sister and brother
And we will all come together in a better place
A better place than this …

… she takes off her Psi Corps badge and, a bit uncomfortably, goes to Byron’s side.

This will not end well.

And it shouldn’t. Zack is already on the record thinking that Byron is going to be trouble, not because of telepath prejudice (he and Lyta had a thing going on at one point, remember?) but because Byron is so clearly aiming to be a martyr. Byron himself is clearly about one batch of Kool Aid from a self-inflicted tragedy. The guy is just so plainly manipulative that it’s terrifying seeing Lyta sucked into his orbit.

Some reviews try to complain that Byron and his ~~cult~~ band of merry teeps are being forced on us as heroes. I disagree, at least so far to date: I don’t trust the guy, even if he’s as sincere as a saint.

B-Plot: The Mystery of Lochley is Revealed! Delenn chats with Lochley, having been given the skinny by Sheridan the previous night, though nothing specific gets said. Lochley’s a bit peeved that Sheridan didn’t warn her, but also feels vaguely apologetic to Delenn. Meanwhile, Garibaldi is hanging out around the corner, taking notes.

But not for long, since in short order he’s in the brig, having stormed into Lochley’s office to punch Bester in the snoot — understandable (even to Lochley), but not to be allowed (even if she has to threaten the security team she summoned before they lay hands on their former boss).

In short order, she and Zack discover Garibaldi has been riffling through Lochley’s personnel files on the computer, so she goes down to his cell (quite a nice and sizeable room, to be sure) to hash it out — which annoyingly turns into Lochley answering all of Garibaldi’s questions.

She explains her chumminess with Bester from a past experience where he took out a rogue telepath who had killed two of her people (who had found out he was using his telepathy to win at gambling). And she explains that Sheridan chose her because it would be politically valuable to have an EarthForce officer who was on the “other side” in the war, but one he could trust both not to stab him in the back, disagree with him when needed, and back him up likewise.

As to how Sheridan would know that …

LOCHLEY: We met fresh out of Officer Training School. We hit it off, fell crazy in love, got married, realized we’d made a terrible mistake, fell crazy out of love, and split up. You see, in a relationship. you gotta take turns being in charge, but, we both wanted to be in charge all the time. We had arguments that could peel paint off the wall.

They remained friends and respectful of one another and knew they could trust one another.

It almost feels a little anticlimactic, esp. since the scene feels rushed and info-dumpy, and Lochley’s spilling all the beans that Garibaldi asked for comes across more as weak than reasonable.

(It also feels … unrealistic. None of her records — or his — indicate her marriage to Sheridan? The press — directly or via politicians and partisans in EarthGov — haven’t learned about this? It’s a kind of clever idea, but it makes no sense.)

Other Bits and Bobs: Londo is shifting into the next phase of his life, preparing to return to Centauri Prime to support the ailing Regent, and anticipating becoming Emperor — the prospect of which he’s increasingly melancholy and pessimistic about.

Things get a bit more exciting when the Centauri cruiser he’s supposed to be on is destroyed in an obvious assassination attempt. Delenn and G’kar are concerned over Londo’s safety, so Delenn decides he needs a non-Centauri bodyguard — and that G’kar is the perfect choice. The Narn is initially taken aback, but the idea of his being a necessary part of the Centauri court tickles his funny-bone, and by the end Londo and G’kar are heading off the Centauri homeworld, bickering about who gets the aisle seat.

Meanwhile, the criminally-underused Franklin is given by ~~the writer~~ the Alliance a new side gig: research head for medical care of Alliance species, with an emphasis on diseases and the like that can jump to other species. It’s actually a good tie-in to some of his original research (which he dumped when he learned that EarthForce was going to use it for bio-weapons). And it means he’ll get more opportunities to do something in the show than hang out in MedLab and look distressed.

Meanwhile: So JMS briefly belonged to a religious cult/commune when he was in his early 20s, after escaping an extremely abusive and isolating household. A lot of that experience feeds into the Byron / Lyta / Telepath saga — Byron as charismatic leader, the group behavior, even the song they sing.

babylon 5 5x06 Strange Relations - byron homecoming — No, nothing at all creepy or cult-like here.

And knowing that makes it clear that there will be no happy ending here, for anyone — we know that Psi Corps is awful, and Bester a nasty piece of work, but in his own way Byron is as manipulative as the Psi Cop, and his band of teeps is as much a trap as the Corps.

Babylon 5 5x06 Strange Relations - byron — The only question with someone like Byron is how many of his followers he’ll take down with him.

I can’t let a Bester episode go by without commenting on Bester. He is his usual maddening self — gentile and oh-so-pleasant sharing jokes and tea with Lochley, snarky and smirking whenever he knows he has the upper hand (and wants to rub it in), and, at a few moments, almost desperately eager in wanting to take Byron in and being told he can’t (yet).

Babylon 5 5x06 Strange Relations - bester — Don’t you (like Garibaldi) just want to punch this guy?

Bester is not Walter Koenig’s most famous role, but it should be, and any time he’s in an episode, like this one, it’s a treat.

Most Dramatic Moment: Despite the reeeeeally annoying (and creepy song), there’s a lovely moment from the director, John C Flinn, where Lyta approaches the Teep colony, and sees them with their candles and their singing and their camaraderie and family … through a plastic grid, separate and shut away from them and emphasizing for the final moment how cut-off and alone she is …

Babylon 5 5x06 Strange Relations - lyta on the outside looking in — Lyta, on the outside, looking in.

Most Amusing Moment: Lochley realizing that, with all the other things that have been going on, she’s forgotten to order Garibaldi released from holding.

LOCHLEY: I also have this nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something.

CORWIN: I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Good night, Captain.

LOCHLEY: Good night, Lieutenant. [beat] Oh no! [into link] Lochley to security.

SECURITY: [over link] Security here.

GARIBALDI: [over link] I said, let me the hell out of here! [Sound of something getting thrown]

LOCHLEY: You can release Mr. Garibaldi now.

GARIBALDI: [over link] About time.

Honorable mention to most of the dialog between Sheridan and Lochley. She still feels stiff with the other characters — trying to be the hard-ass Ivanova type in a way that Tracey Scoggins just cannot pull off with her perfect makeup and hair — but her banter with Sheridan is almost always loaded with gems that are delivered neatly.

SHERIDAN: I’m caught in a web of my own good intentions.

LOCHLEY: Well, the road to hell is paved with them, sir.

SHERIDAN: I know, but why does it have to go through this office?

Or, as Lochley’s explaining why, legally, she has to cooperate with Bester:

LOCHLEY: How am I doing do far?

SHERIDAN: Annoyingly logical.

LOCHLEY: Thank you.

SHERIDAN: It wasn’t a compliment.

Most Arc-ish Moment: Londo has a chat with Zack. The security chief doesn’t understand why Londo is moping about — being emperor sounds like a sweet gig. But Londo has forebodings, both from Centauri premonitions about the future, and from family history — he will be the second Mollari to be emperor, and that one ended badly, too.

babylon 5 5x06 Strange Relations - londo and zack — “This is where it begins to go bad for all of us.”

Knowing what’s coming, he’s not wrong. But even on first watch, it was easy to remember the threads — Londo’s premonition of his death at G’kar’s hands, the flash-forward Sheridan had about him and Delenn being held captive by the Centauri, and, of course, the creepy Shadow stuff going on in the palace.

Yeah, this is where it all starts to go bad for Londo … and everyone in his orbit.

Overall Rating: 4.3 of 5.0 — After two episodes that were largely filler (entertaining in their own way, but still not really progressing anything), we finally get some plot movement around the Telepaths, the Alliance, and an array of personal stories. It’s the best episode of the season so far.

(Rating History)

Other Resources for this episode:

Lurker’s Guide
Babylon Project Wiki
IMDb
AV Club (covers eps 6-10 of the season)
TV Tropes
Sci-Fi Musings (home of the little videos in so many of these reviews I’ve done)
Sundry Thoughts

Previous episode: 5×05 “Learning Curve”

Next episode: 5×07 “Secrets of the Soul” – Hot telepath sex, not-so-hot telepath origins, and aliens who are (gasp) keeping secrets

Reposted on Pluspora.

B5 Rewatch: 5×05 “Learning Curve”

Wherein we learn more about being a Ranger, none of which is pleasant

A-Plot: A delegation from the Rangers goes from Minbar to B5 to chat with Delenn, the Entil-zha. Two of them are older gents, instructors — Turval, from the religious caste, and Durhan, of the warrior caste — and they bring with them two trainees, Tannier from the religious and Rathenn from the warriors.

Along the way, they get entangled with a new gang boss in DownBelow, Trace. The New Boss has Big Plans, and he’s doing some demonstration killings to show people who’s in charge.

Babylon 5 5x05 Learning Curve - Trace — Bullying Gang Boss Leader is a Bully

Unfortunately (for all concerned), recruit Tannier gets involved in one of Trace’s incidents — and ends up being seriously curb-stomped as another demonstration. That leads to Delenn taking the whole matter away from Zack and station security, and handling it via the Rangers. “Those who harmed him,” she tells Lochley, “now have power over him. He must take back that power, or he will never be whole again.”

Tannier, barely back on his feet, is given a chance to duke it out solo with an increasingly panicked New Boss. The recruit ends up taking the guy apart, resolving both the New Boss problem and giving Tannier back the self-respect and self-control he’ll need as a Ranger.

DURHAN: Where is your fear now, Tannier?

TANNIER: Gone, Master.

TURVAL: And what do you feel? Anger? Do you feel triumphant? Happiness? Joy?

TANNIER: Pity.

DURHAN: Why?

TANNIER: Because this is all he will ever have and all he will ever know. Because his name will be swallowed by silence. Forgotten. His name belongs to no one.

TURVAL: And who does your name belong to? History? The world?

TANNIER: No. It belongs to me.

And then we get some neat little bows, and Security moves in to clean up the mess.

Babylon 5 5x05 Learning Curve - post fight bow — “Don’t mind me, I just beat up this dude who beat me up.”

There’s a lot of this that seems to play well, if a bit preachy. On reflection, it does make the Rangers seem a bit more, um, cult-like, and with a fondness for violence as a way of resolving problems. That is, in part, their remit, but it’s also an extension of, as Garibaldi later comments, Minbari inability to back down from a righteous fight.

That these are the guys who are running interstellar security and espionage for the Alliance is both comforting and uncomfortable.

B-Plot: The Mystery of Lochley Continues! Garibaldi is obsessing over the station’s new captain, her past, and which side she fought on in the Civil War.

This leads to a blow-up between the two (with a very uncomfortable Zack sitting by), where Lochley ends up not-confessing that, yeah, she was loyal to Earthforce, because she believed in the chain of command, she wanted to keep her crew safe, and she wasn’t ordered to do something she couldn’t in good conscience do.

LOCHLEY: I am a soldier, Mr. Garibaldi, and as such my vocabulary is rather limited. I only really understand three words: loyalty, duty, honor. If I did it your way, one of those would have to go … and then the other two would become meaningless. Just like this conversation. Good day.

That hardly satisfies Garibaldi, esp. since it reinforces the question of why Sheridan would have picked her for the job.

(Parenthetical note: some poor direction or editing here: In some parts of the scene, the crowd in the cafeteria is definitely hanging on every word Lochley says as she and Garibaldi get into it, complete with applause when she leaves; but in the main shot when she’s saying it, everyone in the background is just chit-chatting amongst themselves.)

While the scene is a little clumsy and rushed, it’s a solid, legitimate argument against what Sheridan & Co. did. JMS plays fair with both sides — which is fine, now, but back actually during the Civil War, a lot of comments were made that “just obeying orders” or “the military can’t set political policy” were treated as weaselly, if not evil. Turning around and treating Lochley’s “as long as I don’t get ask to commit war crimes, it’s not my place to interfere” as something we want to hear our protagonist saying needs a little bit more explanation at this point.

In a later scene, Lochley mentions something in passing that Delenn picks up on as indicating that she’s known Sheridan in the past. And the final scene of the episode has Delenn and Sheridan in bed that night, discussing the matter (or having discussed the matter) — with Delenn on the far side of the mattress, her back turned to him …

DELENN: I’m going to pretend that you were going to tell me this sooner or later.

SHERIDAN: I was just looking for the right time.

DELENN: Ten seconds after you thought of it would have been good.

SHERIDAN: Yeah. Yeah, maybe so.

What “this” is will remain a mystery until next episode.

Other Bits and Bobs: Garibaldi is beginning to work with Byron’s telepaths, though they seem unenthused (or perhaps just disdainful of Garibaldi and the other nats).

He’s also beginning to butt heads with Zack. There’s still a mentor/mentee and even old friends aspect to their relationship, but Garibaldi doesn’t want to listen to Zack, and there are hints here that he’s accessing station security info that Zack doesn’t approve of.

Meanwhile: This episode has one of the rare cases of an actor who played two significant (and not heavily made-up) characters: Turhan Bey, who not only plays the Religious Caste Ranger Instructor Turval here, but back in S.2 played the Centauri Emperor Turhan. This was his last credited role before his death a few years later.

In the script book, JMS recounts how a lot of this episode was driven by the curb-stomping he received when he was young, and at a time when he just got booted out of the cult he’d fallen into. A lot of the “face your fear” stuff here seems to come from this incident, even if Joe never got a chance to beat the shit out of his attacker while his colleagues stood around and applauded.

(His letting the remaining anger about that incident drive this episode is one of the reasons he feels it’s so weak.)

Most Dramatic Moment: Yeah, probably Lochley’s “Loyalty, Duty, Honor” speech to Garibaldi.

Honorable Mention to the cool dismantling of the retreating gang as they seek to escape their level of DownBelow, with thugs being picked off from the front and rear and dragged into the shadows by the Rangers. Not only is it creepy, but when the (mostly Minbari) Rangers in the shadows finally become visible in the dim down-lighting, they look positively satanic.

(The whole incident is scary — while the Mora’Dum, the “Application of Terror,” is meant to be about a Ranger overcoming their own terror, Trace, the New Boss, is clearly terrified by the whole matter, too.)

Most Amusing Moment: Gotta be the final scene there between Sheridan and Delenn.

Babylon 5 5x05 Learning Curve - Sheridan and Delenn — Sheridan faces the No Win Scenario

Honorary Mention to: One of the new cross-species Ranger recruits is a Pak’ma’ra — who refuses to learn new languages, and whose dietary habits make it difficult to house him with the other Rangers.

Delenn figures out that the ubiquity of the Pakmara (and the fact that nobody wants to pay any attention to them) makes them perfect couriers for the Rangers, turning lemons into lemonade.

Most Arc-ish Moment: This episode is 98% arc-free, but there is one intriguing moment where Delenn and Turval are chatting, and he mentions how Lennier, now at Ranger Camp (though unseen in the episode) is not tackling training in a healthy fashion, driving himself to the breaking point.

Delenn, of course, knows why, but it’s not like she can talk much about it. She just asks Turval to watch over him.

It might have made this episode a lot better — and a lot more on-point — if we’d gotten Lennier rather than Tennier as one of the visiting apprentice Rangers.

Overall Rating: 3.5 of 5.0 — This episode is … kind of a waste of time, in an otherwise crowded season. There’s some minor progress on side fronts, but with Londo, G’kar, and the Telepaths all MIA, there’s just not that much there there, though what’s there is entertaining. It’s hardly a bad episode in and of itself — it just feels like an unnecessary one. Its problem is strategic (where it shows up in the series and what it does there) more than tactical (the show itself).

That’s not just my opinion. JMS has commented, “There are some stories you tell that you look back at later and wonder, what the hell was I thinking?” Between not having a core-character-focused story (after the previous not-a-core-character-focused story), and using yet another interchangeable violent crime guy trying to take over the gangs, Joe opines he would just as soon this episode vanish softly and silently away.

(Rating History)

Other Resources for this episode:

Lurker’s Guide
Babylon Project Wiki
IMDb
AV Club (covers eps 1-5 of the season)
TV Tropes
Sci-Fi Musings (home of the little videos in so many of these reviews I’ve done)
Sundry Thoughts

Previous episode: 5×04 “A View from the Gallery”

Next episode: 5×06 “Strange Relations” – Telepaths! Psi-Corps! Assassinations! Divorces! Finally, some chewy arc bits!

Reposted on Pluspora.

B5 Rewatch: 5×04 “A View from the Gallery”

An unusual slice-of-life episode, as epic events and characters are observed by … B5 janitors

A-Plot: The focus in this episode are the two floating maintenance workers, Mack and Bo. The former is salt-of-the-earth building super, always with a wry quip about the little guy. The latter is also grounded, but has a little bit bigger perspective.

Over the course of the episode they have chances to observe — and comment to each other about — each of the major characters, and their relationships. It’s actually feels still part of the TNT reintroduction of the series, since there’s both a lot of show and a lot of tell.

Beyond observation, there are two parts of this plot. First, there’s the sense that the little guys (like Mack and Bo) never get paid attention to by the big guys. They’re the set changers in a kabuki play, invisible except when someone has a complaint. On the flip side, there’s also the idea that the little guys look for something more consequential than their work life. Bo, in particular, envies the snazzy Star Fury pilots out there, dogfighting their ways to glory.

So Byron (whilst they’re hunkering down with the teeps in Brown Sector) links Bo up to one of the pilots — initially terrifying, then exciting, then …

Babylon 5 5x04 View Gallery - Bo as pilot — Bo suddenly seeing himself as a Starfury pilot

The vision is interrupted — but it’s a taste of a life he never had, never really grasped, making him both more respectful of the pilots and more glad of the role he gets to play on a daily basis.

A third aspect to this part of the plot is that, even as we see the little guys both feeling rare bits of appreciation and even a little adventure, we also get to observe how they see through the facade of heroism, up-close. Delenn and Sheridan’s love. Lochley’s fierceness. Franklin’s pain. G’Kar and Londo’s ties that bind. The telepaths’ humanity. It feel a bit stagey at times, but it still manages to work.

B-Plot: There’s a fleet of evil aliens looking to invade B5’s sector — let’s call them the McGuffins, because in the end who they are and what motivates them isn’t important, and they’ll never be seen again. Anyway, the station knows they’re on the way because of the Gaim. B5 has to give them, at the least, a bloody nose to teach them not to move along to another sector.

Lochley is facing her first big military challenge. B5 is a formidable force, but with the White Star fleet away (see last episode), they’re vulnerable.

Sheridan is facing the reality of not being in charge of the station any longer, but still wanting to see Delenn protected. Delenn, on the other hand, isn’t going to be the damsel locked in the tower for protection.

Garibaldi is fighting for his job, having both gotten the initial Gaim intel, but also missing out on some key strengths of the bad guys. He’s also paranoid about Lochley, trying to pin down on what side she fought during the Civil War.

Franklin is prepping for the big battle, to receive casualties both from B5 and the attacking aliens. When Bo asks why he’s willing to save aliens there to kill them, he exposits some backstory about how his own father (who visited the station in 2×10 “GROPOS”) had his life saved by an enemy doctor, inspiring Franklin to go into medicine himself.

Londo and G’Kar are in shelter, bickering, but also giving us a few glimpses at themselves through their origins. G’Kar grew up in bomb shelters, barely protected from the Centauri bombings, always eventually coming back out into the sun. Londo, on the other hand, was always saddled with layers of noble duty — he never grew up, as G’Kar put it, only grew old.

(That insight will inform the rest of the season, as G’Kar blossoms in the sunlight of freedom, and Londo becomes ever more burdened by his destiny and his duty. More on this below.)

Byron is protecting and honing his people, quoting Shakespeare (again), but still being moved enough by humanity to help Bo make the connection he’s looking for.

Ultimately, the McGuffins are defeated, thanks to a deus ex White Star return of the fleet to trounce them. The command crew are wearied but satisfied with their jobs. Sheridan and Delenn can bill and coo. And Franklin gets stuck signing the death certificates.

The B-plot, in the end, isn’t meaningful, except to advance its entwined A-plot. It would have been nice to have thrown in some plot development in what’s been a slow start to a busy season, but …

Other Bits and Bobs:

Meanwhile: JMS has noted that Mack was modeled somewhat after Harlan Ellison, who had been pestering him the entire series about doing an episode from the perspective of “the little people.” Ellison gets a story credit on this episode.

Most Dramatic Moment: Franklin, having already talked about his desire to go out and find any lives he save after the battle … ends up the episode tagging corpses overflowing out into the hallways.

Babylon 5 5x04 View Gallery - Franklin morgue — You think Mack and Bo have it tough?

As Mack starts saying in complaint to Bo, “They get all the glory, we get all the mess. Well, maybe not all the mess.”

Most Amusing Moment: Mack and Bo exchange any number of amusing quips, not even counting their interactions with the series protagonists, but the best has to come as Londo and G’Kar, after lengthy bickering, kvetching, and kvelling, wander off …

Londo: [uncomfortably] I think I will see how things are going out there.

G’Kar: I’ll go too. Good idea.

Londo: What, are you afraid I won’t come back, G’Kar?

G’Kar: No, afraid you will. [They walk off.]

Mack: [to Bo] So, how long you figure they’ve been married?

Amusing, but insightful. The two are bound, if not by oaths of love, by deeper strands of destiny and personality. There are times when it seems that B5 is actually a show about those two aliens, and, even if it’s not true, it’s still close to being so.

Honorable mention to Delenn arguing Mack and Bo out of escorting her to an escape pod at Sheridan’s orders. It may be Sinclair who studied from the Jesuits, but he instilled some of that into the Minbari generations ago, and Delenn has learned her lesson well.

Most Arc-ish Moment: Much of this episode is throw-away regarding arc, but the interaction between Londo and G’Kar and their mutual childhoods is both foundational and predictive of where things are going for the two of them.

G’Kar: Ah, that explains a great deal.

Londo: Really? And what exactly does it explain, G’Kar?

G’Kar: I spent my years in one shelter after another, but sooner or later, I was able to leave the shelter and walk out into the daylight. You do not have that luxury. You carry your shelter with you. Every day. You did not grow up, you grew old.

Babylon 5 5x04 View Gallery - Mack Bo reading — Mack and Bo in the raid shelter, enjoying some time off.

Overall Rating: 4.1 of 5.0 –My son, who’s always had a love-hate relationship with (his dad forcing him to watch) B5, opined, as the credits rolled, that he’d be happy to watch B5 in the future if every ep was like this.

I think this comes mainly from that human, non-epic, un-pompous note to it. Even though some of the dialog from JMS feels a bit — elaborate and heavy, even from Mac and Bo — it’s still much more of a grounded episode, reflecting not just the legendary heroes (and villains), but the little guys who get whipped up into their wakes.

We’ve seen B5 from other perspectives in the past — but that was the news media, friendly and un-. Mack and Bo, even if a bit too precious and wise at times, still give us an everyman’s perspective on life on B5 that’s too often missing in the sturm und drang of galaxy-shaking drama.

(Rating History)

Other Resources for this episode:

Lurker’s Guide
Babylon Project Wiki
IMDb
AV Club (covers eps 1-5 of the season)
TV Tropes
Sci-Fi Musings (home of the little videos in so many of these reviews I’ve done)
Sundry Thoughts

Previous episode: 5×03 “The Paragon of Animals”

Next episode: 5×05 “Learning Curve” – No janitors, just Ranger trainees, going toe-to-toe with a new gangster chief on B5. Oooookay.

Reposted on Pluspora.

The Bestest Toaster Ever

In which I wax lyrical over a kitchen appliance, which turns out to be pretty special.

When I was growing up, I was jealous of the toasters other people had. Because when the toast was done, they went SPROING and flew the toast up practically into the air. Or actually into the air, if you were on TV.

Toaster popping — I thought this was sooooo cool.

(It’s such a popular gag that you can find at least three other scenes from I Love Lucy using it.)

Our toaster, however, didn’t do that fun thing. It went “Click,” and the toast slowly, slowly rose. How boring.

Over the years, I came to value our family toaster for its clean, classy look (and, at the same time, stopped actually wanting to use my toaster as a projectile weapon). And at some point in my life, after I was on my own, I bought one.

Which wasn’t easy, because it was, y’know, vintage in some fashion. They didn’t make them any more. So I ended up buying one on (if I recall correctly) eBay. And, when it arrived, mirabile dictu, it actually worked.

And Margie got used to my peculiar toaster, and it looked pretty on the counter, and that was the end of the story.

Except … it wasn’t. Because it’s not just any toaster, it turns out. It’s a Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster, first invented in 1949, and according to this article, it’s the Bestest Toaster Ever.

Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster advert 1952 — Advertisement from 1952

Or, heck, watch this video, that talks about not just how it’s the Bestest Toaster Ever, but how all the really cool stuff works:

Or read this honest-to-God fan site for the toaster, lovingly crafted in Microsoft FrontPage.

Or, heck, learn how one of these beauties was the first commercial kitchen appliance connected to the Internet.

Okay, I’m convinced. It’s the Bestest Toaster Ever.

As for my particular model, it’s a T-20C, manufactured between 1957-58. It has the art deco etching on the front, which only the original T-20 models did.

I believe my parents had a T-35, which had the yellow Sunbeam logo on the front, and the darkness dial on the side, but no etching. It was made 1958-1967, which would line up neatly with being a wedding present.

Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster T-35 — A T-35 like I grew up with (photo via automaticbeyondbelief.org)

Sunbeam stopped making these beauties in the late 1980s, as they were simply more complex and expensive to manufacture than those ones that were so popular on TV.

All of this was a lot of time to write about a toaster, even if it’s the Bestest Toaster Ever (or even “Automatic Beyond Belief!”). But it is pretty spiffy, and evocative of my childhood (and adulthood), so … perfect for today.

Do you want to know more?

My Movie-Watching Year in Review (2021 Edition)

Not a lot of theater-going, but an MCU rewatch helped the numbers

While I managed to get back into the theaters for part of 2020, overall film watching still took a hit from normal. This was the year that we got much more into streaming, though we still maintain a healthy DVD/Blu-Ray collection. For 2021, I recorded in Letterboxd:

44 movies watched.
14 movies watched for the first time.
3 movies watched in a movie theater.
30 movies rewatched.
40 movies liked. ❤
24 movies (re)watched from the Marvel Cinematic Universe

So MCU flicks made up over half the movies watched, both rewatches and new releases.

Highest Ranking movies watched:
5.0 – Fellowship of the Ring
4.5 – Howl’s Moving Castle
4.5 – The Avengers
4.5 – Captain America: Winter Soldier
4.5 – The Death of Stalin
4.5 – Sneakers
4.5 – Black Panther
4.5 – Ant-Man and the Wasp
4.5 – Ice Station Zebra

Lowest Ranking:
3.0 – Iron Man 3
3.0 – Thunder Force
3.0 – Aquaman
3.0 – Conan the Barbarian

Month with the Most Movies Seen: April (8)
Months without Movies: February, August

movie theater interior — Hoping I’ll see more movies like this in 2021.

My Book-Reading Year in Review (2021 Edition)

I read a fair amount this year, though less than usual.

The good news is, I keep track of the books I read at Goodreads.com.

The bad news is, I don’t always do a good job of it, though, especially when it comes to graphic novels, because those read so relatively quickly. So I know when Goodreads says I read 56 books this year, that’s arguably inaccurate.

Still, here’s my Annual Report from Goodreads.

The overall numbers are down from the past — I get into the non-fiction books below, but from a fiction standpoint, not being in the office, I didn’t as regularly take my lunchtime walk as I have previously. My bad.

Much of the year was spent re-reading / catching up on favorite book series. Two new (disappointing) installments were added to Cole & Bunch’s Sten series. I caught completely up with Gail Carriger’s various steampunk romances, as well as Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet space opera multi-series. I also caught up with the latest Charles Stross Laundry titles, and read some more Terry Pratchett (though not as much as he deserves).

From a new series standpoint, not much beyond discovering Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, an urban fantasy (even when in the countryside) about a family of Buffy the Vampire Slayers who are also conservationists and cryptozoologists. It’s pretty cheap fun, nice world building, and I’ll be plowing through many more of them in the New Year.

Goodreads (and my Kindle) rank things from 1-5 stars. Only three books earned that rating from me this year (with links to my reviews):

Maria Dahvana Headley – Beowulf, A New Translation
Gail Carriger – How to Marry a Werewolf
J Michael Straczynski – Together We Will Go

(I didn’t review HtMaW beyond the rating — I think it just hit all the notes right for what it was.)

Most of what I read-read was fiction. Non-fiction works completed were few on the ground, largely because the COVID Pandemic continued to impact both my commuting to work and longer-range driving during which I usually listen to such things.

Anyway, for the record, there it all is.

Movie Review: “Fellowship of the Ring” again (2001)

Twenty years later, I still love these movies, especially the first one.

Twenty years ago started three of the greatest Christmases ever. Yeah, there was family, and food, and presents. But there was also, year after year, a new Lord of the Rings movie.

Holiday planning in that era always sounded like (from my perspective), “Okay, we arrive in California on Thursday … Christmas is Saturday … so can we sneak off to a matinee of the next LotR movie on Friday, or do we have to wait all the way to Sunday?”

This year marks the 20th Anniversary of Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring, the best, for my money, of the LotR trilogy. I mean, all three of them are good, but FotR hews closest to the original, and tells the best story.

I’ve reviewed the movie six times, but I want to highlight my latest thoughts, twenty years on. I love so much about this film — the visualization of Middle-Earth, Howard Shore’s stunning soundtrack, the faithfulness of the adaptation (with trade-offs to keep the movie flowing forward yet stay within the three hour range — a sad wave to both Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs). This particular review, I wanted to focus on one particular aspect: the second bananas.

The LotR trilogy has a remarkably solid core cast. Elijah Wood gives us a Christ-like Frodo, evolving from care-free hobbit teenager (equivalent) to increasingly tormented Ring-bearer, to post-war vet who can’t find his place back in the Real World (but fortunately has another world he can move to). Ian McKellen’s Gandalf is equal parts avuncular uncle, force of nature, and leader who’s read too many prophecies and knows too much of what’s really going on to be honest or comfortable. Viggo Mortenson’s Aragorn is the surprisingly reluctant hero with an inferiority complex (likely after having had his foster father rag on him for decade about how weak humans are). Orlando Bloom’s otherworldly Legolas, John Rhys-Davies unfortunately humorous Gimli, Sean Astin’s stalwart Samwise, Dominic Monaghan’s semi-responsible Merry, Billy Boyd’s utterly irresponsible Pippin — all are an excellent core that carry the trilogy forward movie by movie.

But one of the real powers of the trilogy, as seen in this first film, is the quality of the supporting cast, the next tier who aren’t the focus of the story, but who bring a powerful richness to it.

Ian Holm (Bilbo) has such great moments as doddering fool, twisted Ring-bearer, and ingratiating friend. He adds backstory texture to the tale, demonstrates early on the corrupting power of the Ring, and foreshadows the tragedy that Frodo will face. Thank God Jackson didn’t do a Lucas and try to CG-retrofit Martin Freeman (also a great Bilbo in the The Hobbit films) into the original films.

LotR Ian Holm - Bilbo — Ian Holm as Bilbo Baggins, careening between charming and very scary.

Hugo Weaving (Elrond) has the tragic pathos and elvish ego to be utterly believable as a leader who bears the bittersweet realization the strength of the elves to stand down their ancient foe Sauron is passed, and in being the SOB/sympathy parent toward Arwen in her doomed relationship with that feckless human, Aragorn.

LotR Hugo Weaving Elrond — Hugo Weaving as Elrond, who always looks like he has a terrible headache.

Cate Blanchett (Galadriel) is equal parts tragedy, wisdom, and spookiness as the greatest of elves remaining in the mortal lands of Middle Earth. As the narrator of the film (not the original concept, surprisingly enough), she provides a perspective and insight and sorrow to the whole proceeding. A lot of it is camera angle, slow-mo, and background music, but Blanchett’s distinctive, earthy beauty and smile play such a role.

LotR Cate Blanchett Galadriel — Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, mysterious, charming, tragic

Christopher Lee (Saruman) is certainly a villain. But he’s a whole-hearted one, and you can see where he’s been corrupted/seduced by Saruman, with the threat that if the most powerful wizard in Middle Earth can be so turned, what chance does anyone else have. Given that the other opponents in the film are scary, voiceless creations (Sauron, the Nazgul, the Balrog), Saruman becomes the able spokesperson for the bad guys. I regret losing his “I want to be a Third Power” subplot from the books, but Lee’s scenery-chewing largely makes up for it.

(Lee apparently really wanted to play Gandalf, and I’d love to visit that alternate reality — but I’m glad I live in this one.)

LotR Christopher Lee Saruman palantir — Christopher Lee as Saruman, who “delved too deeply” into the Palantir of Orthanc

But best of all, as I always conclude, is Sean Bean (Boromir), given a role much more sympathetic, less egotistical, than Tolkien provided his character. Boromir’s vice is his virtue: his caring for others, his willingness to sacrifice all in a monomania to protect those in his charge. He’s mentor and protector of Merry & Pippin, drilling them in combat, advocating for them on the ascent of Caradhras. He’s the man of action and protection, running to the door at Balin’s tomb, to see the approaching orcs (and cave troll), and grabbing Frodo when he’d run back to Gandalf at the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, and restraining Gimli from re-entering the Mines. He’s the voice of compassion as everyone mourns Gandalf’s death. Time and again, he’s the hero always at the fore, less cerebral and strategic than Aragorn, dealing with the immediate needs of his people and his cause … and, ultimately, he cares too much to not fall into the Ring’s seductive trap of power, or — once he needs to redeem himself — to survive the experience.

Tolkien’s Boromir is kind of a dick, if ultimately valorous. Jackson/Bean’s Boromir is the guy who really should be the hero of the story, and falls just short of the goal.

LotR Sean Bean Boromir hobbits — Sean Bean as Boromir, wrassling with Merry and Pippin, because he’s a cool guy and wants to protect the weak.

A 20th Anniversary view of FotR is a splendid way to spend an evening. To my son’s dismay, I’m willing to wait a year (as I did in 2001-2002) to rewatch The Two Towers.

Trailers before “Eternals”

A couple of things I’m interested in, plus an annoying non-movie advert.

I always fine fascinating the question of what’s advertising before which film.

House of Gucci — Gee, a shame they couldn’t find any decent names for this film. But seriously, this is definitely a movie I will not be seeing, but I very much look forward to reading all the articles about it and the story behind it.
Clifford the Big Red Dog — I will likely not go because it is waaaaay too cute, but it looks like a great film for the kids. Even if it doesn’t have The Song.
Morbius — Never one of my go-tos in Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, but this looks nicely dark and creepy. Unlikely to go, as it’s not my wife’s cuppa, but it’s definitely a fresh, horror-tinged leaning into that tormented anti-hero vibe. Better than, alas …
The Batman — I confess I am sooooooo tired of Batman as tormented, anti-hero, insane, vengeance machine, out-grim-grittying-teeth-grinding each previous version in some weird attempt to turn him into an actual villain. Frankly, I think the trend has been out of control since Batman: The Animated Series wrapped up. So, no, I don’t think I’ll be going.
Sing 2 — I did not see the first one, but, damn, if this ad doesn’t make me want to see this one.
[Regal Theaters … why the hell is there a freaking crypto.com commercial in the middle of my movie previews? Also, “Fortune Favors the Brave” is not an investment strategy, no matter how buff Matt Damon looks.]
The King’s Man — Same ad as we saw last going. Looks fun, more so than the original Millar outing.
Encanto — I feel a bit like I am seeing the entire movie, bit by bit, as Disney keeps revising the commercials. But … I will still probably go, because it looks soooooo good.