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icepixieOh, these episodes. Not gonna lie, for me it's a bit of a slog from these to, oh, "And the Rock Cried Out," though I remember liking "Walkabout" and at least some of "Interludes and Examinations." (Unpopular fandom opinion time: Why yes, this slog I refer to does include "War Without End." Yes, yes it does. I hate those episodes, though I reserve the right to change my mind when I hit them in the rewatch. Commence boggling now.)
I mean, as a group, these seven aren't in a league with, say, S1 or the worst of S5, but they're a definite letdown from the awesome that comes before and after. (And not just in the sense that they aren't as adrenaline-filled, because I love "Ceremonies" and "Sic Transit Vir." Still good TV, but not as mindbendingly excellent, somehow.)
A Late Delivery from Avalon
Eh. Rewatching it doesn't change much from my original opinion, namely that the first incarnation of Cupid did this concept better, but some of the details were fun. Namely, Marcus and G'Kar are fun. You know Marcus has wanted to kneel in front of Arthur forever, and this is like the biggest dream come true he's ever had. I'm guessing he's meant to be a big Dickens fan as well, since this is his second reference, and I love that he quotes Pushkin at Franklin and Franklin is like yeah, I know it too, punk, and you aren't going to convince me with it.
Who wants to bet that Marcus [re]read Pushkin after he became infatuated with Susan? Heh. Also, I have this five things idea bugging me--Five Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart--so possibly I need to read him. One of poems I want to use is a section of the Rubiyat; I haven't decided on the others. Marcus seems very into the nineteenth century, sadly, which I'm totally not. Well, I like Coleridge and Wordsworth and Keats, none of which seem as thematically apt (I guess one could commune with nature in the hedge maze, but it doesn't seem quite the same), though perhaps I could use one of Keats's odes. "Nightingale" would work nicely for a pre-"Ceremonies" exploration of his guilt over his brother's death, while "Grecian Urn" might be good for a more lighthearted inquiry into Marcus and art/literature. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" strikes me as Marcus-ish, particularly the ending, and there's a little-known Pound poem, "A Girl," that's both actually comprehensible and very Marcus--though possibly I'm drawn to these only because I am an inveterate Modernist. (There's a reason I am not allowing myself to use a Yeats poem, because then this fic would quickly become Five Yeats Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart. Same thing with Millay.) I'm pretty sure John Donne ought to be in that list somewhere as well, probably either "Song" or "The Sun Rising." Or, since Marcus can be very creepy where Susan is concerned, "To His Mistress Going to Bed." I feel like he'd be into Browning's monologues as well, though again, I'm pretty much not (uuuuugh, I'm totally with the Modernists in throwing off those boring Victorians). Perhaps something by Bishop too, but that may be more my like for her than anything else creeping in.
ANYWAY, so I was talking about the episode, not the reading habits of one Marcus Cole though if anyone wants to speculate with me, I welcome comments. Right. So, G'Kar getting drunk and palling around with Arthur was hilarious. Hee, thumping.
I feel like this episode might have worked better in S1, as a way of reinforcing the hell that was the Earth/Minbar war by giving us a direct/flashbacky POV on it from someone besides Sinclair. Him giving the sword to Delenn might have worked better as a way to begin working through the recriminations at that point, too. (I don't know my Arthuriana well enough to know if Delenn needed to be part-human for the analogy of her to the Lady of the Lake to work. To be honest, I'm still not sure where that comes from. But damn, it's sure ironic given "Atonement." Although pretty much everything Delenn does from S1 through that episode is ironic given "Atonement"...)
I still enjoy the sleeveless robes Sheridan and Ivanova get to wear over their uniforms. The intersection of the vertical stripe and the gold stat bars still makes it look like they're wearing crosses, like modern-day Crusaders.
Lastly, I have to look askance at the bit plot with Michael basically forcing the postmaster to bribe him. It doesn't seem very Garibaldi-ish.
Ship of Tears
Okay, I like this one pretty well too. Bester is never a bad addition to an episode. One thing that amused me was that in the notes I took as I was watching, I kept writing "Cylon" instead of "Shadow." 'Cause Carolyn was a little hybridy, with the building a nest from computer parts and then screaming and speaking less-than-intelligibly. No prophecy, though. Probably a good thing. (But oh, the thesis I could write on similarities between those shows...)
One good thing about Bester: You always know where you stand with him, i.e., you're screwed. One bad thing about Bester: You're never entirely sure how you've been screwed. At least Susan gets it right--no matter how helpful he's going to be right now, he's going to screw them over before too long. (Oh, Michael. How am I going to get through season four?) He's also refreshingly open about his views on telepaths, mundanes, and his general plans for the future.
In the B plot, we have Katsulas and Furlan rocking every line they have as Delenn tells G'Kar that they kinda sorta sacrificed his planet to the Shadows, sorry about that. Oh, G'Kar.
We also have the pretty new war room. Oooh. (Although I have to admit that I still go "SERIOUSLY?" when I see that round table, in light of the previous episode. Oh, JMS. Some day you should write that fantasy novel you're obviously itching to do.)
I mean, as a group, these seven aren't in a league with, say, S1 or the worst of S5, but they're a definite letdown from the awesome that comes before and after. (And not just in the sense that they aren't as adrenaline-filled, because I love "Ceremonies" and "Sic Transit Vir." Still good TV, but not as mindbendingly excellent, somehow.)
A Late Delivery from Avalon
Eh. Rewatching it doesn't change much from my original opinion, namely that the first incarnation of Cupid did this concept better, but some of the details were fun. Namely, Marcus and G'Kar are fun. You know Marcus has wanted to kneel in front of Arthur forever, and this is like the biggest dream come true he's ever had. I'm guessing he's meant to be a big Dickens fan as well, since this is his second reference, and I love that he quotes Pushkin at Franklin and Franklin is like yeah, I know it too, punk, and you aren't going to convince me with it.
Who wants to bet that Marcus [re]read Pushkin after he became infatuated with Susan? Heh. Also, I have this five things idea bugging me--Five Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart--so possibly I need to read him. One of poems I want to use is a section of the Rubiyat; I haven't decided on the others. Marcus seems very into the nineteenth century, sadly, which I'm totally not. Well, I like Coleridge and Wordsworth and Keats, none of which seem as thematically apt (I guess one could commune with nature in the hedge maze, but it doesn't seem quite the same), though perhaps I could use one of Keats's odes. "Nightingale" would work nicely for a pre-"Ceremonies" exploration of his guilt over his brother's death, while "Grecian Urn" might be good for a more lighthearted inquiry into Marcus and art/literature. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" strikes me as Marcus-ish, particularly the ending, and there's a little-known Pound poem, "A Girl," that's both actually comprehensible and very Marcus--though possibly I'm drawn to these only because I am an inveterate Modernist. (There's a reason I am not allowing myself to use a Yeats poem, because then this fic would quickly become Five Yeats Poems Marcus Cole Knows by Heart. Same thing with Millay.) I'm pretty sure John Donne ought to be in that list somewhere as well, probably either "Song" or "The Sun Rising." Or, since Marcus can be very creepy where Susan is concerned, "To His Mistress Going to Bed." I feel like he'd be into Browning's monologues as well, though again, I'm pretty much not (uuuuugh, I'm totally with the Modernists in throwing off those boring Victorians). Perhaps something by Bishop too, but that may be more my like for her than anything else creeping in.
ANYWAY, so I was talking about the episode, not the reading habits of one Marcus Cole though if anyone wants to speculate with me, I welcome comments. Right. So, G'Kar getting drunk and palling around with Arthur was hilarious. Hee, thumping.
I feel like this episode might have worked better in S1, as a way of reinforcing the hell that was the Earth/Minbar war by giving us a direct/flashbacky POV on it from someone besides Sinclair. Him giving the sword to Delenn might have worked better as a way to begin working through the recriminations at that point, too. (I don't know my Arthuriana well enough to know if Delenn needed to be part-human for the analogy of her to the Lady of the Lake to work. To be honest, I'm still not sure where that comes from. But damn, it's sure ironic given "Atonement." Although pretty much everything Delenn does from S1 through that episode is ironic given "Atonement"...)
I still enjoy the sleeveless robes Sheridan and Ivanova get to wear over their uniforms. The intersection of the vertical stripe and the gold stat bars still makes it look like they're wearing crosses, like modern-day Crusaders.
Lastly, I have to look askance at the bit plot with Michael basically forcing the postmaster to bribe him. It doesn't seem very Garibaldi-ish.
Ship of Tears
Okay, I like this one pretty well too. Bester is never a bad addition to an episode. One thing that amused me was that in the notes I took as I was watching, I kept writing "Cylon" instead of "Shadow." 'Cause Carolyn was a little hybridy, with the building a nest from computer parts and then screaming and speaking less-than-intelligibly. No prophecy, though. Probably a good thing. (But oh, the thesis I could write on similarities between those shows...)
One good thing about Bester: You always know where you stand with him, i.e., you're screwed. One bad thing about Bester: You're never entirely sure how you've been screwed. At least Susan gets it right--no matter how helpful he's going to be right now, he's going to screw them over before too long. (Oh, Michael. How am I going to get through season four?) He's also refreshingly open about his views on telepaths, mundanes, and his general plans for the future.
In the B plot, we have Katsulas and Furlan rocking every line they have as Delenn tells G'Kar that they kinda sorta sacrificed his planet to the Shadows, sorry about that. Oh, G'Kar.
We also have the pretty new war room. Oooh. (Although I have to admit that I still go "SERIOUSLY?" when I see that round table, in light of the previous episode. Oh, JMS. Some day you should write that fantasy novel you're obviously itching to do.)
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Date: 2010-08-13 06:06 am (UTC)As far as snow and ice go, I am very grateful that I don't drive. I live at the top of a very steep hill in downtown, and if I were to try to drive that in snowy conditions... bad things would happen. I'm a bad enough driver without snow and ice (hence living in the city with our beautiful wonderful public transit system, which I love). Last year, when we had INSANE amounts of snow for Seattle, and weather that kept it laying around for weeks on end, the worst of it for me wasn't actually the snow and ice at first... at least that meant that my bus just never showed up and work got canceled. (Although, god, the number of times I fell on my butt onto the ice that winter... do not even bear telling. Hiking boots and Doc Martens, while great on trails and mud and rocks, are not good for snow. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.) No, the worst was the week after the big snow, when the stupid snow plow had finally got out to my stupid office and shoved all the snow UP ONTO THE SIDEWALKS. Very handy for the drivers, I'm sure, but I basically came up with my new conception of hell that week - trying to walk down an already-skinny sidewalk in poor visibility with traffic rushing by me, on piles of heaped-up uneven snow with patches of ice made of snow that'd been tamped down by other pedestrians.
Looking back, it was exciting and fun. At the time, I was sure I was going to die. ;)
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Date: 2010-08-13 07:04 pm (UTC)Weather conditions you're not used to suck, period, no matter where you are. I make fun of the Brits on my flist for moaning about 80F, but I try to be good-natured about it, and they do the same to me when I'm whining about 60F being cold.
Hiking boots and Doc Martens, while great on trails and mud and rocks, are not good for snow.
AHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, I sadly have personal experience with that. I had some fabulous hiking boots for undergrad in Ohio, and they did keep the snow out, but my first winter there was the worst they'd had in sixty years. (Literally, snow fell right before Thanksgiving, and I thought, "Oh, that's nice. It'll melt in a couple days, right?" It was there until FRIGGING MARCH. We hit 2.5 feet at one point in February. I thought I was going to kill myself.) Anyway, I went out to my ballroom lesson one night while wearing them, and the steps to my dorm were, unbeknownst to me, completely slicked over. I think I blacked out for a few seconds from hitting my head, and I'm pretty sure I broke my tailbone in the fall--I never got it checked out by a doctor, but it hurt to sit for about six months, and for the past seven years, it's ached for a week or so when the weather changes in autumn.
Aside from not salting the steps, the maintenance crew at school were pretty good about clearing sidewalks, etc. (they had a couple tractors fitted with snowplows; it was pretty nifty), and the school basically was the town, so I never needed to go somewhere where they'd pushed the snow from the roads onto the sidewalks. (Which looks like it would totally suck, yes, and I'm sorry you had to deal with that.) So for me it was only that fall and one my senior year, on a slick patch of road, which I took in order to avoid some treacherous steps, ironically enough. There were other slips and trips at other times of the year, but those were my own clumsiness. ;)
Looking back, it was exciting and fun. At the time, I was sure I was going to die. ;)
So much of life can be summed up in those two sentences... ;)