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jenniferstolzer · 4 years ago

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Babylon 5 Rewatch ep 2.20 The Long, Twilight Struggle

Sheridan and Delenn receive an invitation to Epsilon III where Draal pledges the Great Machine to the campaign against the Shadows. Meanwhile Londo commits his Shadow allies to one more attack against the Narn, allowing the Centauri to commit war crimes and end the Narn conflict.

Things I like about The Long Twilight Struggle

1, An energy fluctuation happens on the planet and Corwin turns to his coworkers like “There’s something happening. Contact Commander Ivanova” then the camera drifts to a private quarters. A shower is running. We see the steam as we coast slowly toward the bathroom for a tasteful near nude shot of Claudia Chris—NOPE Bruce Boxleitner. I CACKLED.

2, Draal is great and I love him. It worked out that Sheridan is new here to get a refresher on who Draal is and what’s going on with the Great Machine. Also the Great Machine making him younger is a good way to explain why he’s Herman Munster now. I’m guessing he’ll stay young and vibrant until he disintegrates like the last guy.

3, I appreciate seeing Londo’s true colors in his conversation with Refa. He’s tired, both from the trip to Centauri Prime and of all the war and darkness he’s involved himself in. He’s also still mourning Ursa Jaddo from Knives which was a nice callback considering he had a significant moment of doubt and regret in that episode, and it’s good to be reminded that he’s not totally sold on what’s going on right now. It’s also nice that he’s against the mass drivers at the outset but is convinced to go with Refa’s plan because he considers the glorification of his people more important than himself or anything else. He talks himself into doing something truly horrendous, but it’s wrong and his face knows its wrong. And then Refa makes him watch, when he fully intended to hide from what he’s done. Gguhh the pain is wonderful.

4, Watching this in a rewatch hurts so bad. Like Franklin gives G’Kar a warning about the Centauri’s interest in homeworld. There’s the possibility he can stop it.

5, Delenn and Sheridan go down to Epsilon III she is acting super cocky and in control because she wants to impress her crush, even using clever colorful English phrases. Everyone remembers Abasfrigginlutely Damnit. Oh Delenn….

6, Sheridan looks at the inside of the Great Machine and is like “Lord, I may not go home” and I laughed b/c it looks like Tron in there.

7. The jump-kicking Centauri.

8, The mass drivers really are the most disgusting move. To devastate a civilian population from space is the ultimate ranged weapon. What could they possibly do? Watching Londo watch it happen is peak drama because as disgusted as he is watching, you know he’s as disgusted with himself in facilitating it. The drama is there but also horror on a level few shows can communicate, that of self-horror. The moment earlier where it was established and Londo still had a concept of right and wrong even as he was dealing with the Shadows is pulling full weight here. At the beginning of this season he was a buffoon struggling to stay afloat, in the middle of the season he finds the power and respect he wanted but loses the trust and friendship of the station in the process, and here at the culmination of his choices he sees what he was really willing to sell his soul for. He could have remained powerless and kept his sense of self, but instead he chose advancement and learned to hate what he’s become. It’s just staggering.

9, G’Kar is also pulling full weight in this episode. He’s prepared to go back to Narn, be with his family, and die among his people but he is the only member of the Kha’Ri not on homeworld and being so, he is an in credibly valuable asset for the race now that surrender is unavoidable. The tears in his eyes when asking for sanctuary are soul crushing, and the horror and shame he’s feeling is an inversion of Londo’s�� powerlessness and being suppressed despite knowing he could do more verses being powerful and regretting it.

10, The Centauri terms of surrender are so cruel. It’s the turn of a knife that’s already been plunged to the hilt and Sheridan coming in to yank the dagger back an inch like a badass is extremely galvanizing and give Delenn grounds to commit the Rangers to him later in the episode. Also something I want to note about this scene that I think is even more important than Sheridan being a hero, it’s G’Kar sitting in his normal spot in complete despair, enduring Londo’s terms. Londo is dressed in every decoration and medal he’s ever owned, screaming at the top of his lungs like being the loudest makes him the rightest, yet G’Kar is silent. Londo demands G’Kar be removed from the council chambers like an invader. Sheridan replies by recounting the request for sanctuary, resulting on the two fighting over G’Kar’s head, but no one calls the bailiff to come get him. No one except Londo tells him he needs to go. They give G’Kar the chance to move. Even Kosh waits to see what he’s going to do. Will he attack? Will he scream and cry? No. He stands and with every ounce of self control he contains, delivers one of the greatest axefalls in television history.

“No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once, we will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.”

11, AND THATS NOT EVEN THE END OF THE EPISODE! I can’t believe this wasn’t a two-parter with everything that’s happened in this one half an hour of screentime. Sheridan essentially tells G’Kar he’s on his side in this war. He offers G’Kar his hand as an ally, and G’Kar considers it saying; “The last time I offered someone my hand, we were at war 24 hrs later” He pauses to make you wonder if he’s lost the ability to trust, then shakes with Sheridan and the look on his face tells something completely different. He still believes he’ll be at war very shortly, but he’s hoping for it. He’s counting on it.

12, Finally we get the introduction of the Rangers and the only thing that can kind of fit on my “Liked less” list. I like this just fine, but there’s something about Delenn who is in charge of a secret sect of warrior monks pledged to side with the Vorlons against the Shadows, turning the control of those monks over to Sheridan without fully introducing him to their existence. To be fair, she gives him partial control and doesn’t hand it over to him, removing herself from the field and I know having watched the rest of the show that she still is the sole figure in charge of the Rangers and is more accurately pledging herself and those in her service to Sheridan’s cause… but the way they read in this episode it looks like she’s giving Sheridan the reins. The next episode is KIND OF dealing with this with the inquisitor, but in general I think we could have avoided a lot of nonsense if she just phrased her pledge more accurately.

13, And this leads me to a theory… that Babylon5 was labeled their best hope for piece, but really it was built specifically as a neutral ground for the staging of the Shadow war. It really is Babylon 5, as in a replacement for Babylon 4 which was used as a warbase. This is why the Minbari co-founded the station, this is why it ends in fire at the end of everything. It’s existence is specifically tied to the the return of the shadows and the drama and diplomacy of the Narns, Centauri, Telepaths, Earthdome, etc etc are events of the universe that happen to occur there. Wihtout the Shadow War, there’d be no Babylon 5, and without Babylon 5 the universe would not continue.

14.

Finally.

The ARMY OF LIGHT

I got teary-eyed

Things I liked Less about The Long Twilight Struggle

The Delenn thing. But we’ll get back to that next episode. And that’s it.

This episode is truly one of the greatest and most emotionally wrenching pieces of television ever created. It’s a silly scifi show with rubber masks that dares to delve deeper beneath the skin than anything else I’ve seen. We see the horror and depravity of war, but we also see the people turned inside out by it and what colors they are within. Ten out of ten. Thanks for breaking my heart. This is why I had to take pause on my rewatch to prepare.

oh by the way @gin-007 and I are resuming our rewatch from 2019.

and I’m putting all these eps up on @b5picanep as well if you want to go back to see previous episodes.

#babylon 5 #babylon 5 spoilers #babylon 5 rewatch #season 2 #episode 20 #the long twilight struggle #art #jenstoart #g'kar

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pixiealtaira · 7 years ago

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Dragged Kicking and Screaming ( 5/ 22)

Title: Dragged Kicking and Screaming

Or How Burt Hummel Mashed the Hummels and Hudsons Into One Functioning Family.

Characters(s): Kurt, Burt, Carole, Finn, with short appearances by the New Directions guys and various ops who mostly take up space. Rating: PG13 Summary: Somehow the Hummel household and the Hudson household had to come together…

Chapter One Chapter Two

Chapter three Chapter Four

Kurt told Burt as he left Monday morning that he would be home that weekend on Friday evening and to remember he only had the next two weeks of school before his winter break started…and he would be in his room all of his vacation. Finn could share it with him, Kurt was willing to have the room shared, but he would be in his room until they had a new place. Kurt reminded Burt that Kurt wasn’t boarding after school started up again, either. They couldn’t afford it and the only reason he was able to at the moment was because the boy whose space he was taking up had been in Africa with his family until January and Kurt had needed to be on campus to fit in the early morning classes he had to complete the semester. Next semester his earliest class would be 8:30 am, not 6am…like it was currently. Burt was aware he heard Kurt…he remembered thinking that he’d have to speak to Finn about it, but it had been 4 in the morning, so by the time Finn got up and they managed to get him out the door…Burt had pushed the conversation with Kurt aside, for the most part…or at least the talking to Finn part.

Burt made the appointment to seriously start looking for a house Monday morning as soon as he got to work. He didn’t regret his haste in doing so either. He came home to find that Kurt had padlocked his closet shut after removing all Finn’s stuff from it into a pile on Finn’s bed, removed Kurt’s computer (which Finn couldn’t get on anyway because Kurt had it password protected and that had been a constant fight since Kurt started at Dalton in the first place) and stereo system, and removed all the nice towels and all his bedding. Burt assumed at least the towels and bedding were in the closet, although he wasn’t certain the missing electronics were. Burt heard about the missing items all week long. He wasn’t sure why, Finn didn’t use most of them. Burt figured it was probably just the fact that Kurt removed the items that irritated Finn so much. Burt went out during his lunch breaks to see houses with the realtor. He wasn’t making any progress.

When Kurt came home that weekend…with stacks of books and papers that were nearly taller than he was…Burt asked about the electronics and all Kurt did was laugh. Then he locked himself in the bedroom, tossing Finn’s stuff back out. When Burt called him on it Kurt had laid it out for him very blatantly. Kurt had to take the semester finals at Dalton, even though he had been at the school for nearly 4 weeks. Kurt was taking the classes he ought to have been taking as a first semester junior, and had an hour long extra class for catch-up in those where he had to complete every assignment the classes had done before he transferred in. He had four extra classes that Dalton kids HAD to take as freshman or sophomores that he was also taking which had to be completed…every bit that he’d missed. And Dalton students didn’t just have six or seven classes to start off with, they had between eight and twelve…in a system more like a university or foreign school than like McKinley. Kurt was carrying ten non-make-up classes plus the Warblers...which had a grade that dealt with theory. Kurt had to get at the very least a B- in everything to keep on the Warblers as a new transfer student, even though students who were not new to the group only had to maintain a C in all their classes. Dalton taught at a MUCH higher level than anywhere in Lima ever even dreamed of…including the campus. Finn’s behavior the week before lost him several days of studying that Kurt hadn’t been able to afford and put him behind. Kurt promised to show up for meals and do his chores at some point, even a weekend chore or two, and that the electronics were all safe and sound and could come back when Kurt was home.

Finn tossed a tantrum, Carole and Burt fought about certain children’s attitudes…Carole complaining about Kurt and Burt complaining about Finn. Kurt came out for meals, in fact Kurt cooked all three nights, and Kurt’s chores were finished by the time Burt checked at 10pm each night. Kurt even managed to clean out the refrigerator again and do a deep cleaning of the basement area (vacuuming and spot cleaning carpets that was missed the weekend before because of inability to move furniture or get access to rooms, making sure everything that was still out was put away, pulling out chairs and the couch and vacuuming behind those, cleaning the seating, dusting and wiping down shelves and other things). Burt was given a list of damages to shelves, walls, end tables, the sofa and chairs, carpets and other things that happened that Kurt didn’t know about and that weren’t there when he cleaned before Thanksgiving Sunday night. Kurt noted that they could have been there when he quick steamed the carpet downstairs, as he’d done that in a hurry and hadn’t made notes of anything. Finn laughed about the list and basically said ‘so what’ when Burt questioned him and Carole got upset with Burt again when he said that Finn had better figure out some way to fix the damages.

Kurt changed out the china in the cabinet in the dining room so that the Christmas China was on top and in front and set up the small nativity and few porcelain houses and people they had on the bottom shelf. The stuffed snowmen graced the fireplace mantle before the weekend was over. Burt never saw him do so...it just happened. Sunday, Kurt handed his dad a stack of cards and the Christmas Newsletter printouts and reminded him to sign them and mail them out by the Next Wednesday. Kurt also popped his Advent Chocolate in his mouth in front of Finn every morning at breakfast and refused to share the Christmas Cookies he baked at three in the morning Friday night. Finn yelled and whined and Carole responded by telling Burt that Finn needed to be able to use the upstairs TV to make him feel better…gaming with some of his friends. She removed the snowman from the mantle and threw them in the closet when he said that Finn would watch TV on his TV down stairs and he wasn’t having guys over until Finn did his homework, which he knew he hadn’t because he bragged to Kurt that he wasn’t stupid enough to do his homework all weekend like Kurt was. Finn took off on Saturday and Carole didn’t even know where he went and didn’t come in until almost 2am. Burt called Carole and Finn on that, since Finn made so much noise coming home he woke Burt and Kurt. Finn whined and Carole took him out to the movies Sunday afternoon. Burt rolled his eyes and settled into his chair to watch the shows he liked. Hr made a huge production of handing Kurt his money for the big chores he’d completed at dinner. Finn whined to his mom for the rest of the evening when Burt told him he only handed out money for jobs completed...not just because kids wanted it. He said nothing when Finn whined about the room being locked that night either. Kurt had set out clean clothing for Finn, Burt had no reason to fuss at him.

Needless to say, Carole joined Burt in house hunting on Monday, agreeing to two hours an afternoon until they found something they could agree on. It took until Thursday to find one. Moving house wasn’t happening soon enough, in Burt’s opinion. But at least it was happening and neither Finn nor Kurt got to help pick, which would save some fighting. Each boy would have their own bedroom and bathroom, there would be two guest rooms and there was not only a living room, but a den and family room…so Kurt’s stuff didn’t have to mix with Finn’s much. The master bedroom was NOT on the same floor as the other bedrooms and had an office attached to it. There was a large dining room and room off the kitchen that could fit a kitchen table so they could eat less formally. The kitchen was large and had a huge island that people could sit and eat at as well and had a pantry upstairs. The basement wasn’t finished, but was blocked out for three more rooms. The parts finished were the laundry room and the cold storage area, the utility room and a rec room. It had a detached three car garage that Burt could turn into a shop. It would be great for them. However, they ended up not being able to get into a new house until the third or fourth week in January. The family selling it wasn’t moving out until after Christmas and then there were things that needed done before they could move in. Which meant Burt had no reason to not allow Finn’s and Carole’s Third Annual Hudson Lights party on Saturday.

And maybe if finals week hadn’t been so stressful for Kurt, 15 classes worth tests or presentations in 4 days (Warblers had been finished the week before, grade wise.) Burt found out later, and if Kurt hadn’t come home on Friday morning to then do a full day of charity work at the garage so that Tad Williams’ minivan would be fixed in less than 24 hours, (Tad had shown Kurt how to change the belts in Ford trucks when Kurt was a younger teen and didn’t even mind when all Kurt talked about was musicals, even though Tad himself had never heard of any of them. Kurt had admired than man since then, even when Tad stopped working at the shop and went to work mechanics at the John Deere place on the other side of town.), since Tad’s wife was due with kid four three days prior and that minivan was their only vehicle, Kurt would have managed not to blow up for the whole of Saturday and kept his temper in check like he’d managed at Thanksgiving. However, the circumstances leading to Kurt’s explosion were indeed in place.

When Kurt had gotten into town at 10am Friday and stopped at the shop, he’d looked wiped out and Burt was seriously worried about his health at the point. However when Kurt found out about Tad’s situation, Kurt had taken on the job and refused the pay (which he knew would make Christmas near impossible for the family). It had unfortunately taken him until 2am to finish since had to drive around hunting down the parts needed and then fix the vehicle. Kurt nearly logged more time calling around to find parts and then driving from place to place picking up parts than he’d logged driving to and fro from Dalton. Burt knew he and the others would never have managed to get the van done that day…it would have taken them a full week. But Kurt had had it finished and delivered to Tad’s house so it was there when Tad woke and they had it ready to go when Tad’s wife went into labor Saturday night near midnight.

#glee fanfic #burt hummel #Kurt Hummel #hummel household

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hellofastestnewsfan · 6 years ago

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On Sunday morning, Rudy Giuliani, as he so reliably will, made news on cable news: Appearing on the CNN show State of the Union, the president’s lawyer turned surrogate told Jake Tapper that—despite the Mueller report having found insufficient evidence to conclude that the Trump campaign had colluded with a hostile power in the run-up to 2016—there’s “nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.” The revealing goal-post displacement got as much attention as you’d expect, and that meant that something else got attention as well, as video of Giuliani’s comment pinged around the internet: the April 22 event that CNN has been advertising, in recent days, with gladiatorial gusto. “CNN PRESIDENTIAL TOWN HALLS: TOMORROW,” went the chyron underneath the viral “Giuliani: ‘Nothing Wrong’ With Getting Info From Russians” clip. The graphic helpfully informed viewers about the timing of that event: back-to-back town halls featuring Amy Klobuchar (at 7 p.m. ET), Elizabeth Warren (8 p.m.), Bernie Sanders (9 p.m.), Kamala Harris (10 p.m.), and Pete Buttigieg (11 p.m.). The coverage, CNN’s chyron promised at one point, via a countdown clock aired later on Sunday, is “25 HRS 45 MIN 20 SEC” away.

It wasn’t that long ago that cultural critics worried about TV’s way of turning politics into a form of amusement, coining terms such as infotainment and media events to convey anxieties about what happens when the high stakes of politics collide with the low ones of daily distraction. Those days seem quaint now, and they seem quainter still when CNN spends weeks plugging the quintuple-header that it is hosting on Monday in conjunction with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. Town halls, merging the intimacies of direct democracy with the implied distance of the TV screen, are throwback events that also neatly capture some of the tensions of politics as they’re practiced in the present: They marry versions of policy wonkery—discussions of health care, immigration, education, gun safety—with the primary-colored flashiness of cable news. And they tangle the promises of American politics with the demands of American celebrity.

In the months-long lead-up to Monday’s combined event, Kamala Harris did a town hall; Cory Booker did a town hall; Bernie Sanders did a town hall; Elizabeth Warren did a town hall; John Hickenlooper did a town hall; Tulsi Gabbard did a town hall; Howard Schultz did a town hall; Pete Buttigieg did a town hall; Amy Klobuchar did a town hall. There have been many more. Each appearance has tested not only a given candidate’s stances on some of the issues that will be at play in 2020, but also broader questions: What does political charisma look like now that the definition of that quality may finally be expanding? What does an American leader act like in the year 2019?

The town halls work, basically, like this: They put presidential candidates and potential voters together in a single room, to exchange ideas—a mass-mediated version of the flesh-pressing politics that used to be, and in some formats remains, the American norm. In CNN’s version, members of the audience, preselected for the opportunity, ask questions of the candidates, typically reading—and sometimes shaking with understandable nervousness—from slips of paper; the candidates answer the questions; the audience, often, applauds. (The crowds are frequently but not always self-declared supporters of the candidates.) The moderators of the events—CNN anchors such as Tapper, Don Lemon, Erin Burnett, and Wolf Blitzer—occasionally intervene, asking their own questions or following up when a candidate has neglected to answer an audience member’s query.

“Oh, this is fun!” Elizabeth Warren exclaimed during the town hall she held in March. The remarkable thing was that she appeared to have meant it.

For the audience, part of the appeal of the town halls comes from the fact that they can be much more than fun: They are also thoroughly high-stakes for the politicians participating in them. Buttigieg has risen in the polls and in the national conversation in part because of his performance last month at his (first) CNN town hall, before an audience at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. “Buttigieg Feels Momentum After CNN Town Hall, With $600K Raised in 24 Hours,” a headline—from CNN—went, a few days after the March 10 event concluded, citing numbers from a Buttigieg campaign aide. CNN wasn’t alone in that analysis: In a piece explaining the recent “Buttigieg boom,” Vox traced the bump in attention and funding to the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s “breakout performance at a CNN town hall in early March.” Google Trends agrees with the assessment: It records the search interest in “Pete Buttigieg” as spiking in mid-March—just after he joined Tapper on CNN’s makeshift stage.

The town halls, in that way, can have the feel of a religious ritual: They profess a faith in the power of the political conversion experience. They assume that there are minds, among both studio audiences and those watching at home, that are capable of being changed. Last week, Sanders appeared at a town hall on the Fox News channel, an event co-moderated by the anchors Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, and the collision of left and right resulted in … a small political victory for the democratic socialist. “By the end of the town hall,” Vox noted, “audience members were booing the occasional Baier or MacCallum follow-up, even doing call-and-response with Sanders.”

For CNN, the town halls offer a different kind of proposition: They offer ratings without an overt admission of political partisanship. In March, CNN’s average audience from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET numbered 884,000, while Fox’s was 2.66 million and MSNBC’s was 2.12 million. The latter networks use that time for opinion shows that in turn bring in audiences. And the town halls, Reason’s Matt Welch notes, have offered CNN some fairly reliable ratings bumps: Harris’s first town hall, on January 28, brought in 1.96 million viewers; Klobuchar’s brought in 1.17 million; Warren’s brought in 1.09 million.

And, so: As the Democratic field grows, so do the events that promise to showcase that field’s hopefuls to potential voters. On April 9, Kirsten Gillibrand participated in one with Burnett. On April 10, it was Washington Governor Jay Inslee (with Blitzer). On April 11, it was former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, with Lemon. On April 14, the network hosted a doubleheader with the businessman Andrew Yang and the author Marianne Williamson—the latter of whom is perhaps best known as Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual adviser. These are opportunities for candidates and for CNN itself, which also uses the events to practice a version of vertical integration. CNN hosts the town halls, using its anchors as moderators; it airs the events; and then it reports on the town halls’ happenings, dividing their action into video clips and sound bites and fact-checks and article-length assessments of the candidates’ performances. After Buttigieg’s town hall, a commentator praised his “star turn”; the commentator was writing for CNN.

It’s turtles, all the way down to Super Tuesday. And while Fox and MSNBC have run their own town halls, it is CNN that has most eagerly invested in them. (It has done so, sometimes, at its reputational peril: See the criticism the network received after devoting a town hall to the former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, the as-yet-undeclared independent candidate who has seemed to assume his chief qualification for a presidential run to be his status as a billionaire.) That might give the network king- (or, given this field, queen-) making power in a crowded primary; it might simply mean that CNN is adding to the noise of a hectic nominee-selection process. Or it may be that the town halls find a new way to call the culture’s bluff. While the town halls are ostensibly realizations of voters’ hunger for more substantive conversations with candidates, they can also double as showcases for the opposite: sound bites. Gaffes. Memes. Viral moments. The fireworks of the presidential debates, without presidents or debates.

“This is just a theory,” the MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace put it, leading a panel discussing Buttigieg’s CNN town-hall performance, “but I think as many people are watching and waiting for these moments … as are watching the polls.” It’s a good theory. And it helps to explain why, on Monday morning, CNN repeatedly cut away from its news coverage to show an empty stage in Manchester, New Hampshire: a set lit dramatically in red and blue, devoid as yet of actors or audience—an embedded advertisement for CNN that doubled, if you squinted in just the right way, as an ad for democracy.

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2IyT4IP

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