Convictions

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon five for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I'm watching Babylon 5 for the first time.

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I'm also watching Babylon five For the first time, Jeff and I are two veterans. Star Trek podcasters watching Babylon. Five. You guessed it. For the very first time while doing this, we are taking that analytical lens contrary Jeff, to what some people want us to do, uh, that we learned as Star Trek podcasters.

And we're applying it right here to Babylon five, all the while enjoying a really cool show that we've never seen before.

Jeff: And while this is not a podcast about Star Trek, we are sure to pull in some of those references. I mean, How could we not? It's kind of what we do. But to help us with that, we play the rule of three.

That means that each one of us gets up to three Star Trek references per episode, and that's

Brent: it. Three one of those plays, no substitutions. Exchanges are refund.

Jeff: Hey, did you know, Brent, that in addition to the many ways listeners and viewers can interact with us, which include our website, Babylon five first.com, the number five, the word first, our email address, Babylon five first gmail.com, Twitter, the number, the number five, the word, first number, five word, that's, remember that number five, the word first.

Brent: That's a T-shirt. Jeff. It's Babylon. Five. The number five, the word first. .

Jeff: We'll make it. We'll make it so.

Brent: No, no, no. You haven't started it yet.

Jeff: Haven't started it yet. It did start, I hit the, I hit the thing. It started We're in. Okay, well, we're in. You just

Brent: used it. Bob . Wow. You are down by one

Jeff: boy. That did not take long. Well, in addition to all these great ways,

Brent: uh,

Jeff: it's just gonna turn into a three egos in the office podcast real fast. . That's fine.

Brent: Jeff, you just

Jeff: Right. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna not swing at these dude. Like, what do you did That is

Brent: such low hanging fruit. If I didn't pick it, it would hit me in the head.

Jeff: That's fair. That's fair. All right, I'm gonna try it one more time.

In addition to all those great ways to get ahold of us, we also have a discord, and this is a pretty cool discord, right? There's part of the discord that you and I are in, and we interact with people, and then there's a part of the discord that we're not allowed in, and that's where people can talk about all the spoiler things.

Like if, for example, you want to break into a debate around how hyperspace works, hypothetically, you can go to that sector and get into all the nitty grit details. Are

Brent: we still talking about that, Jeff? That was like a season ago.

Jeff: Well, so people are still catching up. You know, like we have new listeners, listeners all the time, and viewers and I, I'd say about once a week I get an email of somebody deciding to explain hyperspace to us again.

Go to the red sector, go to the red sector on our discord, and you can talk to somebody else about that. But you can have all the other spoilery stuff, right? You can say, Hey, their guess was wrong. They're what? to access

Brent: that you believe how awesome Brent is and how accurate he was in his guests this week again.

Exactly. Yeah. He had to have watched

Jeff: ahead. You can literally, you can literally track his batting average, you know, and because you know what he's been right about and what he's not been

Brent: right. Can we, can we get Nia to, uh, to, to like set that up like as a bot or a mod or something like to just like whatever Brent, like, like to, for you and me both.

Not just Brent, but like for you and me both. Like for you, like how often does the prediction, like, and there needs to be a rating skill cuz sometimes you don't always get it like a hundred percent Right. You know, and then other times you're like spot on. Well,

Jeff: the times you are spot on. Well, hey, you've had a few Jeff, don't sell yourself.

Sure. Powell two to get to that, to get to that Discord though, you subscribe to our Patreon. Now you're gonna recognize this a little bit's patreon.com/baboon five first, the number five, the word first head there. You get access to the discord at certain tier. And I'm gonna share. A little story that ay put onto our Patreon discord.

I thought it was a super cool story. What's up? Ay? Ay says, I started watching B five in the late nineties. It was on really late at night on random nights in Australia. I used to watch a bit of trek at the time. I would often drag my computer of a friend's house hold. I messed that up. I would quite often drag my computer to a friend's house and a few of us would play games.

Anytime B five was on, we would all stop to watch it. At the time, it was about halfway through season three. After a few episodes, I ended up finding the only video store in the city that had those tapes, and I hired out every episode and caught out. After that, they came out on vhs, two tapes, four episodes, a.

The owner used to call me when they came in and I'd do the one hour plus round trip to watch them. I also had the old two VCR trip going and I would tape them all. I ended up buying them all when the video shop closed down. Don't own them anymore. Unfortunately. That was a cool story. So

Brent: for our friends here in America, uh, to hire something out just means to rent.

Uh, just in case you didn't know, um, I feel like I just did like that mansplaining thing you did. Didn't know what he's supposed to do. I was trying to make a joke out of it, and anyway, it was meant to be funny. Uh, Jeff got a question for you. Yeah. When did you first, do you remember, become aware that you could rent or watch on DVD or VHS or whatever entire seasons of television shows?

Not just movies, but television shows.

Jeff: I think. Pretty early on, to be honest. So when I was in high school, one of my best friends worked at a video store, so like they were getting those things in. It was a thing I was kind of aware of as early as like, I don't know, probably like my junior year of high school.

Brent: Wow. That early. Yeah. Huh. I was, I was out of high school, out of college. I was living in South Korea at the time and there was a video store across the street and they had all of the seasons of the show, 24 that I could get into. Like, and I'm, that's how I watched American TV was, you know, with with renting it for, I didn't know that it existed before then, except for, I did know that I could download it off of like Napster or Lime Wire or

I was

Jeff: a lime wire guy myself back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think just having a buddy who worked there changed a lot of things. For me is when it comes to understanding, also was able to get things like when, when Pulp Fiction came out on video September 12th, 1995, which is just two months before this episode we're about to talk about released.

I, it was, it was a hundred dollars to buy that thing. Oh. But I wrote a, I wrote a haiku for one of the girls that worked at the video store and I walked out of there not with, uh, not with her or her number, but with a copy of Pulp Fiction, which in the long run did me a lot more. Good. Do you still have that copy of Pulp Fiction?

I do. I will never not have that

Brent: copy that girl's. Not in your life, but Pulp Fiction still is. Right? That's a good trade. Um, that's actually that same story about was 24 in South Korean. So that's how I got into Star Trek. Really? In my, yeah. Cuz I didn't, I didn't grow up as a kid or as a teenager watching Trek.

Like I, I came to it much later. Um, Voyager was still on the air in its final like season or two. Um, Enterprise was the first show that I got to watch, like live as it was coming out. And then it was after that I got into Stargate and Battlestar Gala was coming on and I just missed baby on five until now.

Here we are. Here we are.

Jeff: You told Star Trek story like it's a great origin story, but it's about Star Trek

Brent: Fair. By the way, the girl that got me into Star Trek also no longer in my life, but Star Trek still is. There you go, .

Jeff: Good deal. Hey, cam Soley, who hosts a pretty cool podcast called The Jacked Up Review Show, emailed us Cam.

Yeah, cam emailed us at Babylon five first gmail.com. What am I gonna say? The number five, the word first with a pretty awesome meme. It says, it's a picture of John Sheridan and it says, I'm a second generation lifelong trackie. But when someone asks me, who's your favorite captain, I answer.

Brent: Sheridan. I like it.

Wow. Mean, so Jeff, this is, uh, you're probably gonna cut this outta the podcast feed, however,

Jeff: probably gonna cut a lot of this out, to be honest, , while

Brent: we Yeah, you probably should. Uh, I would not be offended if you did at all, unlike other co-hosted four in the past. Uh, anyway, uh, just because we care about our lovely folks here at YouTube who are watching, you know, you can actually load that in the thing and you can pop it up here on the screen for everybody to see.

Oh, really? You still have to describe it for Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, we could, we could do something like this, which nobody out there is really gonna know unless they know. Oh, if you don't know what it is, then you don't know what it is. Sorry. But if you do, you do. And

Jeff: that's how that works. Maybe what I'll do, maybe I'll tweet the meme out.

Maybe I'll do that. There you go. At Babylon, we, we got ways to put it out there for people to look at. Totally. Okay. Coming back in. And I've got one more. We have a review, but there's no stars. It's not a star review. This is on cast box. I didn't know that you could leave reviews on Cast Box, but you can't.

I

Brent: didn't know that cast box was a thing.

Jeff: Okay, so fun story Cast box is actually a pretty great, um, player that you can listen to podcasts in. And if you go to our website, babylon five first.com, the little player that we have it on is actually linked to castbox. Interesting. So that's probably what connected this person.

I had no idea you could leave reviews there, but Jeffrey m says, great podcast about a couple of treks watching B five for the first time, giving, running commentary and trying usually in vain to predict what will happen next.

Brent: Usually in vain, I take offense at that.

Jeff: He's clearly not tracking your batting average

Doesn't have stars, but you know what, yes. It's still a great review, so take it and it counts.

Brent: I will take it.

So Jeff, we love those comments. We love our games here. The rule of three is just one of the mini games that we like to play here on Battle on Five for the very first time. The number five, the word first one of those games is where we get to the end of the show. And we're gonna do it when we get to the end of this episode.

And we're gonna take a look at what next week's episode, the title is, never have been seen it before. Uh, never reading any descriptions, probably not even seeing a thumbnail. We're gonna make a guess as to what next week's episode is gonna be about. Well, this is the part of the episode where we look back at what we said last week was going to be this.

And we see how close we actually were. So, Jeff, do you remember what you said last week? That this week was gonna be about? I

Jeff: sure do. I thought that this was gonna be the sidekicks show, right. And we were gonna get veer actively participating in the Narn resistance. And he and Lanier having their drink dates going on and Veer was gonna have to really put himself, you know, put it all on the line, really risk himself to do something for the Nan because of his, you know, convictions.

I was, could not be farther off on this one. What, what, uh, what did you guess?

Brent: I said this one was gonna be about Franklin and the Great Egg people that are back to either like, test his convictions or like they were gonna extradite him to their government to stay in trial for what he did with that poor little kid back in the episode.

Believers not at all. What this episode was about. Did not, you know, even the best batteries don't don't, don't knock everyone out of the

Jeff: park. Exactly. We gotta have it from time to time. Well, for those of you that have no idea what we're talking about, or might have been a while since you've watched this episode, or those who aren't watching at all and are just listening to us talk about it, which would be super cool and maybe a little bit weird.

But either way, Brent, why don't you tell us about this episode? Previously

Brent: on Babylon five, ambassador Kosh has revealed himself to the entire station of Babylon. Five, well, at least to anyone who was in the vicinity of just that one part of the station that they were in that one time. But still, lots of people saw him out of his encounter suit, and when each person looked at him, they all saw basically the same thing, an angel or a God or whatever it is to them.

That's what they saw, the draws, he saw their dsy God. The Mbar saw the Mbar God, the Earthers saw whichever one of those 85 different gods that people on earth believe in except lawn. He, he didn't see anything. All right, everybody caught up. Cool. Missionaries, ministers and monks. Oh my. All the religious people are arriving on Babylon five to seek out this now holy place where their God or Gods have appeared.

One group, a group of Catholic monks led by Brother Theo, have come not only to worship, but they've come to stay, and they've got a pretty cool set of people with them, with loads of talent. And Ava obviously thinks that this is being wasted on religious pursuits. Well, more on that later. The big news is that the station has been recently rocked by a series of bombs going off.

Not from the military or not from the Sari or some other government, just random acts of terror. They don't know who's doing it. It's that creepy guy with the glasses that we saw the camera shot over his over his shoulder and they don't know why he's doing it. It's cuz he was picked on in high school.

Like that's it. But this problem is going to be enough to keep our main trio busy for the entire length of this episode to find the guy Ava enlist the help of brother Theo and the monks to scrub through all the surveillance video to see if they can try to figure out who this guy is that is setting off these bombs.

Guess what they do? Cause they're actually pretty good at their job and we need to justify their existence here on this station. And it's not long before Sheridan has to face off against this guy. Mono E Dead man. Switch. One of those bomb triggers that if the bomber gets shot and drops the trigger, the bomb's gonna go off somewhere.

So keep him alive. Well, Sheridan uses the old, just get him talking until you can distract him enough to rush him for the switch and take him out at the same time. Ploy. Frankly, this part wasn't really that important other than just forwarding the plot along and making the episode a thing. What was really important were two scenarios, both of which featured lawn pretty heavily.

One we see in the med lab, you see right as one of those terrorist bombs went off linear, grabbed lawn and shoved him out of a door, much to his own line's. Harold Lawn's heart grows three sizes that day and he's suddenly pointing fingers in people's chest saying, don't you let him die. He saved my life.

You must save him lawn even does that whole thing where he stays. In med lab with an unconscious Lanier singing to him, telling him stories, telling him super inappropriate jokes. Basically what Neli does anytime somebody goes in for a surgery,

the other scene features lawn getting into an elevator with one other person on board. Just one other jaar. Well, this just got awkward. Jaar is throwing eye daggers towards lawn's. Try that again. Jaar is just throwing eye daggers through lawn's. Soul, while lawn do is doing his best to not look at him.

Jaar won't touch lawn. See, lawn's not worth 500. Narn dying, but another bomb goes off and it cripples the elevator, leaving them trapp. So here we have lawn in an living it up, bunch cars down.

Wow.

thank you for grabbing that joke. The bomb has left a fire blazing and while the fire isn't likely to get them the smoke filling, the very non ventilated elevator is going to have its way. Jaar decides he's just going to do nothing. He doesn't have to top touch lawn, he just doesn't have to save him. And just before lawn and jaar draw their final breath, having been suffocated in this elevator, the door opens much to longo's joy and much to Ja car's heart.

Turns out they're gonna be okay too. Jeff, what did you think of this episode? Convictions?

Jeff: Hello little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. We were in that Babylon five pit a hell together. Hopefully you'll never experiencing anything like this yourself, but when two men go through what we did, you take on certain responsibilities.

If it had been me that hadn't made it, captain Sheridan would be talking to my my son right now. Jim, I got something for you. This link was given to your dad, John, on that fateful day. He knew that if that bomber ever saw that link, he'd be confiscated and he'd be damned if that dude was gonna get his greasy hands.

So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something, his ass. And now little man, I give this link to you, when Bruce Willis wakes up

Brent: they

Jeff: put it, they put it up his butt. Like that . That was Wow. That was, that was amazing. That was such, that was great. That was the

this episode, Brent. Yeah. This episode was better than it deserved to be. Yes. Yes. I think, and, and we talked about this a little bit before we, we came on to camera, but this episode aired just about what, nine months after the Oklahoma City bomb. Yes. So we can dive into if we want a little bit. In a little bit.

But I feel like in that timeframe, a lot of the stuff, a lot of the stakes in this were a lot higher than they are now in our post nine 11 World. World changed since this came out and, and I'm gonna own right now that almost all of my thoughts about the entire bomber plot are completely biased by this new worldview that we seem to have.

And frankly, I you, everything you said about it, it's what needs to be said about it. Like, there you go. Whatever. Yeah,

Brent: but the, oh no, go ahead. Finish your thought. Yeah,

Jeff: but the lawn do stuff, the Lanier stuff. Whoa. That was fantastic. That was so good. Him Lawn and jaar in the elevator. , I'm never gonna be able to say that.

Brent: In. I need an extra syllable. There's like, I need to figure out a way to lose one syllable out of that. It just doesn't flow. Oh man.

Jeff: Hardware, lingerie. Third floor going down. Oh man. We're gonna, I'm gonna have an editing nightmare in this one. , .

Brent: You think we get like Steven Tyler to do this for us? Oh

Jeff: man. I bet we could.

He's probably, he's probably watching right now. I bet he's a huge babbel on five fans. What's up? What's up,

Brent: Steve?

Jeff: What's up man? Sorry for murdering you.

Brent: Something like that. How we went out? No

Jeff: Lawn and Jaar and

Oh, . Jeff lost it, y'all. It's not even that funny. Like, it's like it's great, but okay.

Brent: Bring it back. See YouTube, the audio people will never catch me. You'll never know. You guys, this is for your entertainment and Jeff and mines

Jeff: Lawn and Jaar in that elevator is such an incredible, like if, if you and I had to go do an acting thing together and like show stuff off, I would want to do that scene.

Yeah. Because not only was the back and forth between them amazing, but the facial animations, the eyes, the tone of voice and all of it through the makeup that they both have to, I mean, everything about that was just so good. So the

Brent: words that were spoken non-verbally in that scene was entire monologues.

Jeff: Yeah, because, well, they frankly weren't listening to each other, , you know, so, I mean, it was great. I, um, my, my last thought I had before we, you share your thoughts when we dive into stuff, but I have a lot of, um, questions around, uh, Theo and the, the missionaries or monks or whatever that, that came with him.

I, um, I'm watching and thinking of him through, uh, I'll call it the parliament of dreams, kind of a lens of all of Earth's religions and what, like, that was the introduction parliament of dreams. And I feel like Theo and his crew are the next step in that exploration of earth's religions now in a post, like first contact kind of a world.

But what about you? What were your

Brent: initial thoughts on this? I, I definitely have a lot of thoughts about Brother Theo and that whole situation, so please don't let me get outta here. spoiler. It could get me in trouble with some people and I'm okay cuz I'm gonna say it anyway. All right. Overall thoughts?

I think, honestly, you put it best, Jeff. This episode was much better than it deserved to be. This is an episode that I feel like is a one-off. I feel like it's a, it's a filler episode for the most part. Um, I feel like we have met some new people who are gonna be around for a while. Like, I think Brother Theo and the Monks are gonna be around for a while.

Um, I, you know, six episodes, something like that. You know. Um, I, I, I feel like

I, the, the Lawn Ja, the Lando stuff, um, and this is one of the, this is one of those, this is season three is TKO for me. Okay. And we're only two episodes. And what I mean by this is, is if we go back tot tko, ostensibly, it was not a great episode. It really wasn't. Huh?

Jeff: You keep saying that.

Brent: Yeah, but it was, it was not a great episode.

Okay. What they did in that episode was great. All right. And, and if people can't separate those two, then I, I'm sorry I can't help you go back and listen to Jeff and i's major discussion on that, and then listen to Jeff's discussion on that at the Gray 17 podcast. And then listen to our season one wrap where we discuss it even more

Jeff: or apparently, according to some people listen to anything we ever, especially I ever say, cuz we're gonna tell you how great TK it was, but Yes.

Uh,

Brent: but what it, what I mean by that is the, the message of this, how they put this to together, particularly the lawn stuff, the juxtapositioning of lawn and veneer. Veneer, sorry, lawn and Lanier and lawn and Ja car. And you have the same character and, and how these two guys respond to lawn. Right? And I wanna talk about this a lot more when I get down into the messages later on, because that to me is the crux of this episode, the whole bomber thing.

I I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ride your coattails on this, Jeff, of saying I'm completely colored by being 30 years after this and being in a post nine 11, not just a post nine 11 word world, a post nine 11 world, 11 years later world, you know? Mm-hmm. . Um, although I do think there's, there's some things we can still draw from that plot line that are very applicable to where we live today.

And I dare say when people are listening to this podcast in 10, 15 years, because we know people are still gonna be listening to this podcast in 10 or 15 years, Jeff, um, that I dare say unfortunately, Will probably still be applicable to their day. Maybe even an entirely new way. But mostly this episode Jeff

just honked me off.

Jeff: What does that mean,

Brent: I dunno. But that's what the dude the episode said. It just really honks me off. Is that what he said? That's what he said That what? Mariachi or something like that. Moti. Um, Mauri the new guy. Huh? Mauri. Yeah. Which by the way, I really like this character. Like I hope this guy sticks around. I hope he is not just a one off security guy cuz I'm like, I feel like this guy could be a dude who says some stuff like he's another kin Nicki or another.

Where's Lou in been? Yeah,

Jeff: Lou, since I think we haven't seen him since first season.

Brent: Are we done with L? Is he not? Is he gone? Oh man, I hope not.

Jeff: Or, I mean, he's just working a different shift, you know? I mean, Gar Baldi and Zach have one. He's on the other one. He's

Brent: on Delta shift. He's .

Jeff: Damn. Delta Shifters.

Oh yeah. So we, we'll only see him when it matters. So I have a really, but the dude who plays Mahi, he is in EV everything. I bet. Yeah. And I didn't go to it, but his imdb, I bet has 8,000 entries in it. You know? I mean, he is just,

Brent: well, he was, he was the guy, I'm sorry, he was the guy in the nineties that if you needed a hardcore Asian, you

Jeff: hired this guy.

Totally. That's what I'd say. It was cool to see him, not a villain. Mm-hmm. , you know, like, and because he's just natural as it. But yeah. What I, a cool connection though. Did you ever, so I never watched the classic Lost in Space where Bill Mumey and his crew, I never watched it. I'm sorry. It was past my time.

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: before my time. Did you ever watch the new, the new one they did on

Brent: Netflix? I think I got like half of an episode in, and I kind of went, I've got so much other stuff I'm trying to watch and do right now. I can't invest myself in a new show, and I never went back to it. Mm.

Jeff: I, I watched the first season, I wanna watch more, but same thing, it was just a stack.

He plays, uh, a scientist in the first season and so he's in the new Lost in Space and Bill Mum, he's in the old Lost in Space, and so there's a little connection. And Bill Boom, even had a, uh, had a cameo in the, in the new Lost in Space. I, I have seen that. But yeah, it was a cool, cool little connection. Be Rishi.

Huge fan. Huge fan. Yeah.

Brent: So, like I said, I hope, I hope we get to see more of him. I hope he's, um, uh, I hope he's different than what Ka Nicki is, you know, cause like, like Ka Nicki's kind of this, this, he's a grunt. You know, he's, he's a goofball. He doesn't really get it. He's just sort of doing whatever. He's gonna be the guy who makes mistakes and girl bald.

He is gonna have to come in and clean him up. You know, this is a guy who's like, oh, he legit is a security officer. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, we can do some stuff with him. Like, I, I hope we keep him around. I, I, I actually very much liked him, um, uh, for that. So you wanna talk about the bomb plot and get that one outta the way?

Yeah.

Jeff: Let's talk about some other stuff. Let's do the bomb plot. I, I, I have three notes on it. That's it. Go for it. So, so the first one was about Mauri. Yeah. Uh, the other one is that, um, , we were robbed of a shirtless Sheridan in this episode. Dude did not tell him to open it and show him. He said, take off the jacket.

Take off the shirt. And I'm not gonna lie, I was a little excited at the prospect of seeing a shirtless Bruce box. Lightner didn't get to see it.

Brent: Do you, do you, do you think he's like all ripped and cut or is he, is he a little flabby? What do you

Jeff: think? He's, he's tron like, he's fantastic

Brent: and he's eating all that hydroponics based stuff, you know, that apparently Franklin says putting weight on em, you know, cuz mm-hmm.

that's what happens with eat fruits and vegetables, is you put on

Jeff: a lot of weight, apparently like 10 pounds or something like that. for, for whatever reason. Right. But yeah, I, I, I don't know. I, I mean, to me, I, I, I was interested, is that, is that the right word? I was interested in stuff, I thought, um, plot wise, ongoing important to babble on five stuff or whatever.

Mm-hmm. , um, the explosives from Earth have a molecular thing in them that you can trace to where it came. Okay. We know that about those

Brent: explosives that might come back. Yeah. That might come back

Jeff: Fair. Other than that, like I was in it until he started explaining everything and, and his act, the actor was great.

I thought he did an awesome job, and, but it, I got fired and evicted from my apartment, and I'm like, and Oh, okay. That's, oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, here we are. I, I don't care about this anymore.

Brent: So I wanna read you my last three notes Okay. From this episode. I'm gonna read them in order. Um, and I have, I have a handful, uh, a good chunk of notes here, but these are the last three, and these are the ones that really apply to this.

Uh, the guy that played the bad guy in this, I don't even remember the character's name, should have been played by John Malkovich. Oh, yeah. What? John Malkovich in that role. And this episode just goes off the charts, you know what I mean? Yeah. Um, I, I just, oh, it, it just could have been John Malkovich. It should have been, uh, my next, last note was, so is this episode about anything really, or is it just a one off?

Yeah. And I didn't know, like, is it about anything or is it because like, it, it starts and you're like, okay, who's planting the bomb? All right. Let's, let's just say for what it is, it's not Home Guard. It's not Cyco, it's not the Narn, it's not the Sari. It's not some other alien organization. It's a guy who got picked on and he's taking it out on people, which frankly, Jeff.

Is super relevant today to the world that we live in. Yeah. You know, it's just, instead of blowing people up with bombs, people are taking guns and shooting tons of people and it's horrible. And I don't mean to make light of it, in no way, shape or form am I making light. I wanna make that very, very clear.

And I'm not writing that off. And I'm not just going back. But this guy, you know, you, you pointed it out earlier, this was nine months after the Oklahoma City bombings. This one feels very much like a timely rip it from the headlines. Kind of a kind of a storyline that they put through. And, you know, let's, let's show you why people do stuff like this.

Mm-hmm. . And you know who my mind, who this really comes back to is those, those kids from Columbine High School. Yeah, that's what I was, was that 98? I think it was. Which was a few years after this. Um,

Jeff: well, I think, I think, but that does too. I think that's a great way to paint my reaction. And I think years too, where in November of 95, this was probably, Mind blowing and shocking and oh my gosh, when Columbine happened, I remember it because I'm in Oregon, so this was, this was my backyard where, where all of that happened.

Mm-hmm. . But there was the whole, I think that was the one that had the Trench coat Mafia. And that was a big, I remember like you can't wear trench coats anymore. And on tv, uh, pro wrestling, W CW Sting, part of his gimmick was he wore this big black trench coat and the Monday after the shooting, when on Nitro, he came out without his trench coat.

Like that to me was like, we're taking this seriously, you know, finally in 1998, we are doing something about this and taking it seriously. Now in 2023, I think there have been, what, four days in the last year and a half that there hasn't been a shooting in the United States. That's crazy. And I think, I think the thing about that is, Is we become so numb to this horrific tragedy where, and I'll let you talk about it yourself.

Cause we were talking about it before we came on Mike, but like, we're killing our own people. We're killing our own kids. Yeah. And that's affected, I know me to a point where I watch this episode now and I'm like, that's it, that's all you got is a couple dirty bombs that you're gonna throw around in places nobody cares about.

Come on. Nope. This doesn't even register

Brent: for me. Yeah. I'll tell you where it became real, really real for me. Uh, Jeff, I don't know if you remember this, I live in, uh, Jacksonville, Florida. Mm-hmm. . Okay. Um, I don't know if you remember, uh, this past football season, uh, there was a, a game that was here in Jacksonville, uh, with the Jaguars and it was after.

Somebody did. I don't exactly remember what the details of it were, but somebody did something where, uh, somebody like blew up a synagogue, a bunch of Jews or something like that. And, and somebody did something to the, to the Jewish community. Yeah. And that was, this was in like Colorado or something? I don't remember where it was.

It wasn't here. But here in Jacksonville after the game, somebody was like projecting, uh, antisemitic messages on walls around the, around town. Okay. What? And yeah. Oh, it was crazy. It was, you're like, who would do that? Like, what are you doing? Okay. Now that being said, in my family, we belong to a local organization here called the Jewish Community Alliance.

It's basically the Y M C A just ran by, by Jewish people. Right. And I, since that day, and, and you know, as we get these continuing stories of just stupid stuff happening, have gone am. I hate to say this, but am I putting my family at risk by being here in this particular building? Even though we and my family aren't Jewish, we're just happening ture, but somebody's gonna walk through this door who is very antisemitic and they just start shooting people up.

Or they playing a bomb and a bomb goes off and we just happen to be here because this would be a place that somebody would do that you would think, you know? Mm-hmm. , that's how real something like this is. But in 19 94,

Jeff: 95, 95, this was November of 95.

Brent: This was not an everyday occurrence. Mm-hmm. This was, this was, uh, this wasn't a terrorist came from overseas and tried to blow up the Empire State Building once again.

Um, this was our own guy in our own space who didn't like what the government was doing or something like that. And I don't remember, I don't remember all the details of that. Cause it was so long ago and I was so young when it happened, but, Our, it was a self-inflicted wound and that's what's happening here on, on babble on five.

And you just go, holy cow. Um, holy cow. So was this episode really about anything or is it just a one off 30 years down the line? My last note was, looks like it's just a one off, not a bad episode, just a pointless one. And I say that in the context of really the overall story, and I can hear people out there say, oh, but they set up this and they introduced this and they did this, that, and the other.

Just wait, just you wait. Well go talk about that in the Discord server that Jeff and I can't be a part of. Yeah.

Jeff: And also we're gonna talk about probably some of those things when we start talking about lawn here in a minute. But for the bomb thing, sure. Yeah, we're, we probably talk about that when we get to the Delta conversation.

We just had a rough conversation about some of it and where, what horrible place we are in as a world, as a country right now. You know, for our non US viewers, I can only imagine. The impression you have of what you hear, of what's going on here and Wow.

Brent: Yeah. Let's go to a happier thing ju. Yeah. Jeff, let's go to a happier thing.

Let's do that. Let's talk about the monks. Let's talk about the people visiting the station, the missionaries and ministers and monks. Oh my, um, the, is that or opening scene? The opening scene of this episode is a top five opening scene for me in B on five. It was so funny. Um, it was offensive. Yep. And so funny all at the same time.

Jeff: I was gonna say like for, for someone who works in, you know, who does the communications and works and management and is in a, in a public facing, you know, sort of an organization. All I wa all I saw in that whole scene was like, oh my gosh, they need to do some, uh, sensitivity training and some language training.

Some like, this is just. So they're offensive.

Brent: I'll call it out. Gar Baldy. Not even attempting to get the name of their God correct, Blake? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Let's go. Come on. Moving

Jeff: on. After being corrected, like doubles down and he is like, and then Zach, because like I said, Zach's doing his thing following along, and so he is like, yeah, me too.

Brent: I'm doing, Zach wasn't even paying attention to that conversation. I gotta be honest with you. He was watching some girl walking by. Yeah. And he turned out, oh yeah, yeah. What's up? Why are you poking me right now? Why are you right? We want to share your blessing. Uh, go poke that plant. Please

Jeff: stop touching me.

I think this is gonna be an ongoing thing. There's no way. Because I think about it, right? Think about things like our Lady of Guadalupe or Fatma in the, where like hundreds of years later, they're huge pilgrimage sites. That's mm-hmm. Babylon five is a pilgrimage site now,

Brent: like a hundred. Does that mean that the Great Egg people are coming back?

God, I hope so. Are the great egg people

Jeff: coming? I hope there was someone who I wish, I want that, I want that director's cut or that special thing of the Great Egg person in the, in the Zen Garden looking up and just seeing like,

Brent: Hey

Jeff: guns, you flying through

Brent: the sky? Uh, Jeff, oh, could, could you please explain to me the official Babylon five missionary position

Jeff: That is, uh, I'm actually deleting it right now here. I think that's gotta be the greatest line was in the series to date. I

Brent: mean, was that like the 1990s version of a That's what she said. Joke, . You know what I mean? Um,

Jeff: it's the whole thing. I, I won't, I won't do it, but there's a, uh, There's a word that you can use for Rooster and that word is usable like on television or broadcast in certain contexts.

And a lot of some shows have like taken the big length to like just take the walk so they can say that word that rhymes with walk and do like, this was totally that. They're just like, dude, like JMS is writing. Or someone's in there like, we will never have this

Brent: opportunity again. Nope. Do it. Do it. Say it, do it in there right now.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. This shows on at four o'clock in the morning. Nobody will care. Just nobody will catch it. Just go, go. Um, okay. Really the big ones we gotta talk about though are the monks brother, Theo and, and his group of monks who have come to live on Babylon five. They tell us, please tell me that this is not the last we see of, of Brother Theo and his band of monks.

Like, I want these guys to be around. I don't need them in every episode, but I do want to see these guys around by the way, Do you know who played the actor? Who the actor was that played Brother Theo? No, it was 10 points, if you can make the connection here. Okay. Louis Taren. Lewis Taren was the original draw from season one.

What? You know the battery guy? Yeah. Yeah. So he, uh, I actually looked this up. Like I, I, I probably didn't do what I should do, but I did go look it up. Um, he could not return to the role of draw for health reasons.

Jeff: Oh, like the prosthetic had glue or something? I

Brent: don't know. It did not, it did not specify. I don't know if he was sick at the time.

Okay. Or something's something else going on. Maybe it was the prosthetics. I, I have no idea. But, uh, they obviously, they recast and said, oh yeah, it's making me 20 years younger and now this guy's a opera singer,

but they really loved. And they wrote this role specifically for him. Oh, wow. To bring him back to the Babylon five family. How cool is that? Yeah. Right.

Jeff: Isn't that cool? And he's, and he is great. Like, I really like I'm with you. The fact they said they're moving on to Babylon five, like they, they've got to be and they're amazing.

Right? Like, here's your guy, here you go. I got the distinct feeling. Mm-hmm. that they were Jesuits.

Brent: Jeff, you, you are Catholic. I am, I am not. Um, why do you think that you, you have a better, I didn't even think about like what order of monks these guys would be. What, what leads you to say that? I'm, I'm just curious.

Jeff: The Jesuit um, order is a very controversial one in Catholics. In fact, they used to call the, I think they still, well, up until Pope Francis was elected, the head of the Jesuit order, they used to call the anti. And they'd often really counter counter a lot of the things. But they, the Jesuits value education above most everything.

So a lot of the Catholic high schools, prep schools and colleges that are big are run and managed by Jesuits. Francis is great. He has a, he is like a doctorate in chemistry, another doctorate a master. He has multiple graduate degrees. And that's one of the requirements to be a Jesuit is like, I think you have to have at least two, two, um, two postgrad degrees.

Priests as a whole have, they have a PhD in, um, spirituality or theology or whatever the, there I am showing, I don't know, whatever it is, you'd get a degree in to be a priest, but, so they're all doctors. Mm-hmm. , but they have to get another one to be a Jesuit. Two PhDs makes up the Jesuits. And so the fact this was made up of like, yeah, we've got chemists and we've got bio this and astro this and blah, blah, blah.

really in that, that attention to detail, that scientific sort of, you know, detail that comes through really said Je, I don't dress like Jesuits. Right. So it's, you know, it's evolved or whatever. But I also, they in their little monk outfits, they had the beads that were hanging down that were very, it didn't get a good shot of 'em, but totally looked like a rosary to me.

So I think this is the Jesu, if anyone, when aliens do show up on Earth mm-hmm. in public and we see them, it will be the Jesuits who are front of line to say, we wanna understand your religion and we wanna find out how it intersects with ours and how it all still works together. And that's what they're doing here on Babylon five.

Brent: I really hope that you are absolutely correct about that. Like, I hope this wasn't just jms, like, Hey, let's throw these guys in here, but he's. Pulling real world people in and like, no, this is actually what they would do and this is how they would behave.

Jeff: Um, I had a note on the, on my, them being Jesuit, and I was like, I wonder if they are Jesuit, if there was a plan to somehow connect them with Sinclair who was raised and trained by Jesuits.

But if they kind of created this role for Draw, then, then May, then it's unlikely that there was a plan there or

Brent: they made the connection. Um, okay. I I, there were two thoughts that I had. One made me take a little offense at it. Uh, actually they both sort of did, but Ava having this implication that people who join faith organizations are people who aren't otherwise in demand, you know, she's like, well, if they joined you, how, how good could they really be?

You know, because the only people who come to join you clearly are people who just couldn't cut it in the real world. Clearly people who just needed a crutch or people who just, you know, weren't actually that educated. Like, how good could they really be? Like that was her, her certainly her impression.

Mm-hmm. , which may be, may be accurate to the way a lot of people look at, at that sort of stuff. True, true. But I, I also was like, wow, that's a, that's a pretty bold statement. I love that that brother Theo went in and proved, not, not proved her wrong, but well Yes. Proved her wrong, uh, but proved himself right when he is like, oh, we

Jeff: got some really good people here.

Yeah. Well, I think I, I felt that it didn't jive with her character, you know, I mean, she has her own crisis of faith that she's been experiencing since, you know, pretty much the beginning of the series, but Right. The respect that she showed for, uh, for the rabbi right when he came in in tko. Really, to me like it, I don't know.

It's a leap for me to, for her to all of a sudden be like, wow, I seriously, but it also makes me wonder. You've had the theory for a while that Ava is jms, like that's his avatar in the show. So if I'm j Michael Stravinski, and I'm gonna say a thing, it's gonna come out of Ava's mouth. And so I think this might have been one of those where he is just like, this is what I thought, this is what I learned.

And so I'm gonna take you on my little journey through Ava's experience.

Brent: Yeah. I And that I love that. I love, yeah. But, but just that. Okay. Now that being said, Jeff, uh, you know, we talked earlier about, about you being Catholic. Me being not, I am still a person of faith. Um, and it, and it is truly a, a, a very big, very real thing to me as a person.

I understand a lot of our viewers and listeners out there. It's not totally cool. That's you, but to me it is. Um, I may have misunderstood what Brother Theo was saying, so I'm, I'm asking this in the form of a question to say, help me understand. I'm gonna tell you what I heard and you tell me if I'm right.

Or if I'm wrong, what I heard him saying was a theological piece where what he said was, Hey, everybody's looking for a God regardless of what they call him. It's really the same God. There's all these different paths to get to the same God, and we're just here to figure out what everybody, what everybody calls this one God out here and, and, and you know, regardless of who it is, it's all pointing back to the same person, which I can see.

Knowing that JMS is an Ava atheist, you pull in a character like the vlan who is this thing, and everybody just sort of sees it as their own deal. Um, is that what he was saying? Because that, that is to people who are really of faith. For the most part, not every faith is compatible with other faiths. Like it, there really is a no no.

This is right. And that is not like that, that is how those work. Uh, this watering down of like, oh, it just, you know, everything sort of works is really contrary to what faith actually is. So it, it, it,

Jeff: yes and no. I mean, yes, and I, I'm gonna temper this cause I don't, I don't want to. I mean, we, God, you have opened a thing and we could spend hours on this.

Brent: Yeah. And I, and I'm sorry, I just, I wanna clarify. This is a podcast. This is what we do. Yeah. I would normally not bring this up and just let this go the show, put it in there. This is, this is our job. Like to, to do this. That's why, you know,

Jeff: analytical lens that you introduce at the beginning of every show, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'm gonna, when I, when I talk about this, I'm gonna talk about it from a Catholic standpoint. So what owning my bias, but also just as someone who's traveled a lot of the world and knows a lot of people, and I can never say the word word, right, but like, and who believes in ecumenism or an a Yeah.

An ecumenical approach to things where like, there's this theory, so as a, as a Christian and maybe possibly as a Jew, for example, that's entirely incom or, or a Muslim entirely incompatible with Hinduism, right? So in Hinduism is a pantheon of Gods many and they have different, different jobs. Uh, I don't, I don't know the faith, so I'm not gonna speak to it anymore, but there are many gods in Hinduism.

But from Hinduism, it is possible to believe in the Christian or the Jewish or the Islamic God, because it could be one of them, right? And so there are people who believe that the gods that we worship or we name or whatever are all the same great. Celestial, you know, super theological being mm-hmm. , there are, there are interpretations of them.

So even within Christianity, right, there's the Christian view of there is God, there is God the Father, and there's Jesus and there's the Holy Spirit believe. But, but in Catholicism, father, son, and Holy Spirit are one. Right? There's a Trinitarian view, and so not every Christian shares the Trinitarian view, but it's still all kind of the same God.

There are interpretations that have broken up, and I think, I think that Franklin and Iana hinted at this a couple episodes ago, near the end of season two, when they were talking about religion, and this is kind of more of the operationalization of it, but look how splinter we are now in the almost, you know, quarter way through the 21st century on earth.

And just countless religions and countless gods and deities that, that are worshiped. Mm. Now blow that up across a galaxy in a universe. And that's what the vlan have done. Right. You know, and, and so I think Theo and his crew are coming in from that higher view that, Hey, Hinduism? Yeah, sure. Maybe Daoism.

Yeah, sure. Totally Shintoism. Sure, totally. Islam. Yeah. All, it's all the same. These are our interpretations from a Tarran or an Earth point of view. Mm-hmm. , we wanna understand it, how the drowsy understand it. We wanna understand it how, you know, the menari, how the Marab would have, you know, there's gotta be a couple still left alive, and so let's talk to them.

And so it's really just making that whole pary bigger maybe with the intent of further proving. Yeah, it's actually all one. Because see all these differences, they're actually the same and this way and something. That was me trying to boil it down into a very, in a shorter,

Brent: like, like what I, what I thought he was going for at first was, Hey, this is where we are.

This is what we believe. This is who we have. You guys believe this. I wanna have a conversation with you so I can understand what you believe. Not we're gonna meld all this together and just, you know, let's find out what everybody calls the same thing, you know?

Jeff: Well, you know, and I think too, and you know this too, your studies talk, you know what, it pointed you this way, but the name of God mm-hmm.

is a thing. Sure. You know, it's, we don't have, it's the God of Abraham. It's, I am, you know, yawe and you know, these names that don't actually give a name. And so I know through the Christian faith, like two of the things that we talk about aspiring to is knowing the name of God and seeing the face of God.

Like that's what we aspire to. Sure. So I. If I were looking at this through a scientific lens, religion through a scientific lens, which Catholics do, by the way, that's a core thing of what, what Catholicism is about it. You would have to start saying, the more data I can gather, the closer I can get to an answer.

But like the foundationalists, like Franklin will believe, the closer you get mm-hmm. , the further away you become. So I think that's, I think this is that journey, right? Of trying to get closer, but ultimately getting farther. But this might even be the way that we learn everything we thought was God have been the warlaw.

And,

Brent: and that's, and if you, I love, that's one of the things I love about sci-fi is when they rewrite Earth, I've said this so many times, you rewrite earth history and tell me how it was really an alien the whole time. Yeah. , you know, like, like I love when sci-fi does that. Uh, I don't find it very theologically accurate, but that's okay because it's fiction and mm-hmm.

that's the science fiction a part of it. And I, I can dig that. Um, Yeah, I mean, and I certainly even have to recognize like within, within the, the, the Christian and Hebrew scriptures, there are plenty of examples of people who were servants of God, who were not in the direct path of revelation of the story that follows through the, through the spine.

Mm-hmm. Uh, of the narrative of the Bible. People that come in like, oh, this guy over here just also happened to be a servant of the same God. Mm-hmm. , well, what did he call him? You can call him a different name, but it was the same. Like, what does that look like? So, uh, yeah. Anyway, thank you for engaging with me on that and letting me have my little name because I like, I found that to be a, uh, if, if Jms is projecting, cuz he certainly, we, I I understand and respect when people do that.

Is he projecting that on here? I find it real interesting though, just to cap this whole piece, the way you describe the Jesuits, though, understanding that now actually makes this conversation make more sense.

Jeff: Yeah. To, to me, this all fit. You know what I mean? It's just like, yeah, he, Jesuits doing, doing Jesuit things.

There you

Brent: go. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about lawn. Let's, let's get to the big piece here, right? The, the, the big piece. I'm, I'm noticing the time here. Um, so Lawn, I, he really tracks that, and I said it in the recap, P tracks through two different storylines that I think if you hold them side by side and you really look at 'em, it's an examination of the same thing from two different lenses.

Right. It,

Jeff: it's a true love and hate. Right. And, and then showing the, showing the thin line between the two.

Brent: Sure. Sure. And when you see the two responses and, and what things do this, I mean. Okay. Jeff, all of this is gonna fit into the Star Trek message piece, which we're gonna be down there. Okay. I have one note that is not related to Star Trek message.

I do want about. Um, linear on the table. Ed, laugh. Mm-hmm. , did you know I've got some cool battle on five trivia for you. Okay. Hit me. Did you know that was not Bill Mummy? What that was? That was Bill dummy . And here's what I mean. Uh, so fun fact. Okay. Actually not so fun. Fact, bill Mummy had just lost his father relatively close to the filming of this episode.

And to lay there on a med lab beat up dying was too much for him. He couldn't do it. So they actually made up a prosthetic linear dummy, and that's what was on the table. And they did such a good job with it, that Andreas Kas. Right? The guy who plays Jaar. Yeah. Didn't know that was a dummy on the table, and he congratulated Bill for being able to stay so still in the scene.

Wow. Isn't that cool? That's

Jeff: that camera spent time on him, like, yeah. I never even would've guessed . Wow.

Brent: Yeah. Now I don't know if they made him up, let him lay there for a minute and did like a, like a close up shot, and then they just replaced him. I, I don't know exactly how all they did that, but I watched, I watched that scene again after I read this and I went, wow, it looks so good.

That's incredible. Like you couldn't tell. Yeah. Wow. Especially such a low budget show and, you know, all these things, which clearly they're getting bigger budgets as the, the seasons go on.

Jeff: I have, um, let me see. I have one fun note on this before we, we dive in then. So, okay. The whole thing really for lawn kicked off with Lanier deciding or going to, you know, to help, to help him and let him, let him through.

So, but he was waiting, you know, like in the terminal area, like the waiting room before, and that drunk dude was all like, ah, you know, come on, you, your bone and whatever. Hey, do you know who he was by the way? I do. That's my fun story. Story. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'm watching it and I, and all I'm thinking is I see him there is I'm just like, this dude has got to be a pro wrestler and it's just not clicking for me.

He's got to look, he's got the size, he's got that ruly voice, you know, the gravel from cutting the promos and the ring all the time, brother. And so I, I went on, I looked it up. And that's John Flynn. Many of our viewers may recognize the name John Flynn because he was the cinematographer for Gilmore Girls.

Also Jane the Virgin. Also, he was the director for the long twilight struggle and tko was he actually Long Twilight Struggle, soulmates and tko. Wow. So three of our favorite episodes of Babylon five, it's John Flynn who directed those things and he, oh, go ahead.

Brent: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. He is chief cinematographer for Babylon five.

Jeff: Yes. Yeah, he's done all of the cinematography. Yeah. And so, and then in the whole back and forth there where when there's like, oh, I'm going home cause I have Netter's syndrome, you know who Netter is? That's the name we see at the end of every episode of Doug. That whole scene was just this really super fun, like, Hey, let's just have fun with the crew that work here.

I loved that. Uhhuh,

Brent: Uhhuh, . Yeah. I thought it was, I thought it was a, uh, particularly good, good. Uh uh. Yeah, I, I love the drops in this episode. All those, all those little things. Uh, I got, I got two more real quick. Oh, well, on that specific thing, you know, two types of people in the world. There's Lanier and the guy talking to Lanier.

be a linear belan. Like, just stop , please. Um, hey Di, is it just mirror as Dilin looking more and more human these days? Like, did they change her makeup again? I think

Jeff: her makeup is better. Like the bone crest. The bone crest just looks more

Brent: natural. It's blending more into her head where, like last season it literally, you could see like the gap between it and her skin, you know, but now it actually looks, it's coming out of her head and it

Jeff: blends in the back of her hair.

Just looks more, um, comfortable, natural. Yeah. I think they, I think they've done a little update to it.

Brent: Oh, here's a question. Um, did, did Lando threaten Sheridan? He's sitting in his office and he goes, there's nothing political about the truth, as you'll soon

Jeff: find out. That sounded pretty obvious. Right, right. Um,

real quick, as we were in a break, um, yeah. Are you recording on your side by chance, on your roader? No. You just started getting kind of choppy over on this side. Did I? Yeah. Your

Brent: video and your audio. Did the, the, uh, it should be recording ly though, here. Yeah. Yeah. Like the new recording style. I'm hoping that that, um, saves it.

Yeah, I, my, my little warning thing keeps going in and out. Okay. Like, I've, I've done everything I can to, like, it's, it's, yeah. Internet service people. All my number's good. I don't know what's going on. I really, you know, maybe it's,

Jeff: yeah. Well, with the recording locally, we should be in good shape. I

Brent: just wanted to, I would hope so.

Yeah. Just case scenario, we just piece the show back together with the pieces Yep. That we get from the, from the recording. Um, that's the worst case. And that's not all that bad. Yeah, it's not that bad. So, yeah, I have zero reason to be fuzzy right now, so.

Jeff: Okay. Yeah, you're looking fine now. It's just been, it just started a couple minutes ago, so hopefully fine.

Yeah. And if this looks fine to you too. Yeah, I did not, this is, this is our world. This is, this is what we do see. So we told you it'd be the behind

Brent: the scenes stuff. This is Uhhuh. Yeah. Um, alright. Uh, alright, let's talk about Jaar. We've gotta get into, into all that cuz show's getting long and this is where the meat of the show is.

Yeah. Unless

Jeff: you have something else, Jeff. That's it. Are, do you wanna get to the messages or do we wanna talk about Ja car? Yes, let's do messages.

Brent: Go ahead and transition. Dive in. All right. Yeah.

Jeff: I gotta get my thing here, sir. Is it me or are you

Brent: transitioning on this

Jeff: piece? ? I'm still getting to it. Oh, it's me.

It is, it is.

Brent: You look at that. You ready? Okay, here we go. You ready? And back in

Jeff: just real quick, I just need to say to YouTube, honestly serious, if this is your first time joining us and you're still here an hour and eight minutes in, even though it's your first time, we are a well-oiled professional machine.

98% of the time.

Brent: Welcome to the 2% even. Right? Like, like, because, because this is the unedited version of show. Like, that's, that's the whole premise of what the YouTube side is. Yeah. The, the podcast side is, I mean, that's gonna sound beautiful and you're not gonna know anything that we at all. It's 47 minutes,

Jeff: right?

So, and that doesn't count. So we're good. Now we're back. That

Brent: was an unintentional deal.

Jeff: I got dinged for one, but we're not on, we're we're off. We're off

Brent: now. So hundred percent unintentional. All right, you ready? Back to one. All right, Jeff. Well, we have reached that part of the show, and I, there's still a lot to say, but it's all in this section.

It's that part where we're gonna boil it down and we're gonna see if the show has any of that star treky quality to it. We're gonna apply that analytical lens and in a, a real deep dive of a way, are we looking for deep moral messages? Are we holding up a mirror to society? Are we giving us hope that things can be better in the future?

Those are the things that Star Trek talks about. Things we say sci-fi has an opportunity to talk about in a way that Nobo no other genre can. Uh, so to do this, I'm gonna rate this episode on a scale of zero to five Deltas as to how Star Trek this episode is. And Jeff, you are gonna be the one to this show on a scale of zero to five star theories as to how Babylon five this show is, how much we enjoyed it.

Um, I'm gonna go first cuz this, this really was a, a, a. A neat thing once I really started thinking about it, to me this episode comes back to talking about bitterness. Okay. Um, and, and how do you handle bitterness? Lawn at this point is an entirely unredeemable, not likable guy, right? Mm-hmm. , and correct me if I'm wrong, while I, I think they've certainly probably had a conversation here and there.

Lawn and Lanier not the same level. Those two guys don't have a whole lot of conversations. They don't have a whole lot of interactions. Yeah. Not at all. Maybe occasionally. Chambers. That's really it. It's always gonna be lawn and delin if they have anything, right? Mm-hmm. like, these are two very different pieces.

And let's, let's face it, linearly doesn't really care much for lawn at this point, right? Bomb goes. Lanier saves lawn's life. He values life, even the life of his enemies, even the life of people who are irredeemable. He values their life and he puts his own life at risk to do this thing right. First, a Ja car who we see in an elevator.

Who, by the way, when that elevator opened and Jaar was staying there and he just didn't jump lawn good on him for not killing 500 of his brethren and his whole family, because I don't know that I would've had that kind of control. Right. Also, is this the first time we've seen Lando and Jaar alone since season one?

Jeff: No, cuz in season two we, we had 'em when, uh, Uhhuh, like just before, was that in, was that coming of shadows? Jaar thought everything was cool. He couldn't have like a

Brent: drink. Yeah. Hurts to even remember that. This is really the first time that we've seen those two together in a spot in a long time. You put lawn and jaar in a room, let 'em talk.

That's it. Um, Jaar is so full of bitterness that, uh, while he's not going to kill lawn do, he's certainly not gonna save his life. And I wanna preface everything I'm about to say. Kar does nothing wrong here. He is 100% within his rights to do or not do everything that he did or did not do. Absolutely. But he still made a choice to allow the bitterness.

Rightly so. Very justifiably so. But he made this choice to allow this bitterness to dictate what he did and to not lift a finger to save another life. Right. Look at the, and, and here's where it comes down to look at the response that happened out of both sides. Linear chose to save lawn, and the way that resulted was lawn now became endeared, or I'm sorry, Lanier became endeared to lawn lawn's now gonna look out for him.

Lawn's putting his finger in people's chest saying, you keep this guy alive. Whatever you did, he saved my life. I'm gonna, this is, this is the guy he's gonna stick around. He's just gonna tell you stories. He's gonna help you get better. He is, he is. I mean, this turns Lando in a little bit of a way, at least as far as linear is concerned.

You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. , like, like the, the, the true lawn. Is, is able to come out because of this act of compassion, of, of valuing his life when he didn't deserve it. You know, Lanier showed lawn, what would it be? This would be I guess grace. Mm-hmm. , he showed him something he did not deserve. Right. Um, gave him something he didn't deserve and he, he turned lawn and, and because of that, he got to live.

Lanier eventually came back around and he could have died, but he got to live, um,

versus Jaar. So Jaar goes in, in Jaar. J Jaar has got bitterness, resentment eating him up. Right. Again, I say rightly so we all understand it. Yeah. When the whole thing happens, the bomb goes off and he's just sitting. Watching, I'm gonna watch you die. Mm-hmm. and I'm gonna die with you. Right. I've, I once heard, I've heard quite often, and I, I tend to agree with it.

Bitterness is like drinking a poison and expecting somebody else to die. Yeah. You know what I mean? Um, and that's what Ja Car is doing here. He's like, I'm gonna watch you die. And I don't, and I'm gonna enjoy every moment of this, and I don't care if it kills me, I'm going to die with you. That's fine. But I'm, I'm just gonna laugh at you.

You can't, I'm not touching you. This isn't my fault. You can't do anything to my family, whatever. But I'm just gonna, I'm gonna enjoy every single moment of this. And he sat and he watched. And where would that, and had they not been rescued in the, in the 11th hour, where would that have led to for Jaar That would've led to death.

Mm-hmm. . Right. Lanier having compassion for life led to life. Jaar having no compassion for life, even the life of an enemy drinking this bitterness led to his own demise and his own death. Now, he was okay with it, but still that is, that is an interesting deal to set next to each other. Um, I think that there's a lesson here if I pull it out with this over analytical line.

Don't let bitterness cause you to not do what's right. We respect and we value all life. I can't think of a better Star Trek message than that. We respect and we value all life, even the life of your enemies. . If this is Picard, honestly, if this is Cisco, we're watching Cisco save gold D KO's life Time and time again, time again, right?

This is Jane Way, saving a Kaison or Chite, saving the Kaon. The young man, the young Kaison boys deal who was played by no, right? Mm-hmm. like this Is Kirk doing what Kirk does? This is Picard. I mean, this is all of them, right? Yeah. Uh, saving the life of your enemies and you live, let's, let's face it. Lanier put Lanier and Jaar up next to each other on an ordinary every day.

Lanier is lighter. He is happier, he is joking. Jaar is not. Now you could look at the difference and say, well, look at Minbar versus what's going on with na. And you know, somebody's got the weight of one versus the other. I, I can say that, but even. One is happy with their life, one's not. Mm-hmm. and Ja car's always been bitter.

Yeah. Since the day we met him, he's been bitter and he's held that bit, held, held onto bitterness. This was an episode that really dove in to me about the effects of bitterness, um, and how letting that go can actually turn somebody or it can kill you. Right. Jeff, I, I don't know about you. This is a Star Trek thing.

Through and through. We've already talked about, uh, the, the holding up a mirror to society aspect of this. How this is nine months after the city bombing. Right. Um, you know, we could talk about being nice to being nice to people. Don't let 'em go crazy. Don't bully people. Right. Six months ago, somebody wa a supervisor for a Walmart, walks into the break room and starts shooting up his employees.

because they were mean to him. Mm-hmm. as far as I understand the way that story went. Right. Um, Tim McVay guy who blows up a government building and I you say tongue in cheek, we'd all love to blow up a government building, but you don't really because people are

Jeff: there. Exactly. Do it when they're off shift.

If you're gonna do it, please . I mean, do it now when everyone's remote working still, but yeah. You don't hurt people. Be cool. Yeah. I mean, seriously just be cool to people.

Brent: Right, right. Even, even if it's an enemy and you're well with, and that's the thing, you're well within your rights to not, but you can still choose to

Jeff: do it.

I think though, the difference there, and this isn't to counters, is actually to, to bolster what you're saying is we had bomber dude who decided to not be cool and then hurt other people in not being cool. Then we had Jaar who chose to not be cool. But didn't go and hurt a whole bunch of other people. He just chose inaction against a person he deeply, deeply hates mm-hmm.

and is bitter towards, so the impact was to him, not to others. Right. So I think if you're gonna not be cool, do it like Jaar, right. Where you are gonna carry that on. I mean, please be cool, but don't be bomber dude. Beat Jaar, but actually be linear.

Brent: Yeah. And I would, I would say, um, that be linear. That's another, that's a t-shirt right there, you know, just be linear,

There it is. There it is. Uh, but I mean, Jeff, this one is a Star Trek message laced episode three and three. It's a deep dive. It may not be like clear cut right on the thing, but I, right, right in front of you. But I think it is, and I would even say that this one wasn't intentional, which kind of knocks down a, a delta for me, except I think that, especially with the, the Oklahoma City bombing being so soon.

I think this one had to be super intentional with what it was trying to do. This is a five Delta episode to me,

Jeff: so I have one counterpoint that may, or it shouldn't, I don't think it should have impacted the scoring, but just a, a deeper dive Sure. Onto the outcomes for Jaar and Lanier. So, for Jaar, he lived, but he died, right?

Like a piece of him definitely died and he would have physically completely died if this were the case. And now, even though he bitterly hates every cent lawn specifically, every day, he's gonna see him in council chambers or somewhere and he's gonna be like, I could've killed that guy. I could have killed him.

I didn't do it, but I could have. And that bitterness is gonna grow. And so he chose, but so he chose to lean into the bitterness. It's gonna get worse, but he's still alive. Okay. So bad and good, Lanier. Right, right. Chose death and, you know, to, to save, save Someone he did not hold in higher regard, was able to live, is probably gonna be recognized by the Sari government as a result of it.

But he said a thing at the end where he said, um, I fear I have served the present by sacrificing the future. Yeah, he lives by this rigid code that values life, all life in all circumstances. But the argument could be made right? Like this is the, if you could go back in time and he'll kill Hitler, would you, sort of a thing.

It's wrong to kill somebody, so should I go back and kill him? No, I shouldn't kill anybody. But that would arguably save tens of millions of people's lives. So which life do you value more? The one or the many? And that's what LAN's kind of wrestling with. So in the end, they both got a positive. Right, and that Lanre got to live and car kind of got to live, but they both also got a negative in that Ja Car's gonna live with the fact he could have killed Lawn and Lanier's gonna live with, well, everything Lawn does from this point forward, he might feel kind of complicit in because he could've solved that problem.

So I, I agree. This is Star Trek as it gets, but I think it went Babylon five with it and also saying, yeah, it's great and you should totally choose life and you should be compassionate and cool. Also, nothing in this life is free and you will pay for whichever choice one way or the other,

which I think rocks us into star theories, right.

Brent: Yeah. What you got on Star Furies there, Jeff?

Jeff: Well, you know, this is a tough one cuz like we, we, we kicked this whole conversation off by talking about how this episode was better than it deserved to be and uhhuh this. So it was super well done. There was great stuff.

But like I said, and I'm gonna own this, I'm going to watch this episode through today's lens and say that once we knew that dude got picked on in high school and was evicted and that's why he did this. Mm-hmm. , it deflated so much of, of, of the episode for me, it's just like, oh, there's, there is nothing, you know, behind this.

Brent: Well, and, and if I could add to that, Jeff. Yeah. I think because we have been so conditioned, uh, by y'all out there that this is a serialized story. No story is thrown away. It all leads back at all points to the end. So when you come up upon something and you see this, oh, people are blowing up, you immediately go, okay, who's doing it?

Is it Home guard? Is it Cycore? Is it this guy? Is it that? And when you get to the end, you go, no, it wasn't any of them. It was just this dude. It was just a random guy who, who got picked on. And it, as far as we can tell to this point, I, I don't see any way that this is coming back. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like, like the other stuff is what's more important in this episode than this part, than this bond. You're, it, it makes this episode, like I said earlier, good episode, but pointless. Yeah.

Jeff: Ultimately, cuz they spent so much time on this. And that's, that's where I struggle on, on giving this one star the, it's just, I don't know.

It's just, okay, okay. It happened. But I do think where I'm. , I'm gonna bump it up and give it its final rating here. Is the, the fact that it did deliver that Star Trek message, that was incredible. Mm-hmm. and was the point I, I think with the point of this episode, but it did it with that Babylon five twist where you know, hey, this isn't, this is not binary, this is not good and evil.

Like there's a cost to this. And so I I, I'm gonna give this one, four starfuries.

Brent: I like it. I like it. Well, Jeff, did you know we play some games here? Couple, one or two. You like our games? Yeah. I don't know if this counts as a game, but something that we do here, just like we did last season, we are creating the absolute 100% completely accurate definitive ranking of season three of Babylon five.

So Jeff, I'm gonna ask you, we're only two episodes. But you do have ability to, and you, I can't, I can't negate you on this. Like what you say is, is law. Like you are absolutely correct when you say this. Where are you gonna put this one? Last week we had matters of honor that's currently sitting at number one cuz it's the only one out there.

You've got convictions. Where do you rank this? Is this above or below matters of honor?

Jeff: You know the, it's interesting how you would think that this part of the ranking in the season is so easy, you know, you're like, oh, it's one or two, right? It's, it's super simple. But our ranking game really boils down to this one choice kind of where does it land?

And then above or below that, so whether this was the 22nd episode or the second, it's still kind of the same. choice. It's just a little easier that I, I already know where I'm gonna, you know, where I'm gonna put it over or under Uhhuh . And it's one, you know, we talked about this a lot in the second season, and it's not just, which episode do we, would we rather watch, you know, I mean, that's why mm-hmm.

Confessions and Lamentations ranked as high as it did. Cause I will never watch that episode again. Incredible episode. Incredibly ranked episode as well. Mm-hmm. . So this is one that I have to ask myself that question though, cuz they're both, I mean, oh my gosh. Matters of honor was so good. I really enjoyed that one a lot.

Mm-hmm. . And so I am ultimately gonna put this one at number two. I'm gonna put this just below matters of honor, just, and really on, on, on the, the whole bomb plot. Ultimately, likely not leading to anything.

And that's it for convictions. We did it next week. We are going to be watching a day in the strife. For the first time. Now we don't watch ahead. Oh, well, I'm sorry. What A day in the strife. The strife. Strife. Okay. That's pretty, pretty fun. Little play on words actually. I kinda like that. Yeah. So Day in the strife, we don't look ahead, read ahead, watch ahead or anything.

We just know the name of the title. We get the names of the titles in order from a, from a lister. John, our, our good friend, uh, John over at Trek profiles, uh, prepared for us. So Brent, well, we like to guess, we like to guess what the episodes are gonna be about based on the title alone. So Brent, what do you think a day in the Strife is gonna be about?

Brent: Uh, I'm going with the Ranger guy. What's his name? Marcus. Uh, Marcus. Marcus. And I think, I think it's literally a day in his life, but he's out there fighting, like that's the strife. Like he's a ranger. He's out there. Like, I don't even know if we're gonna be on Babel on five. Next week. Like it just may be, Hey, here's a Marcus episode, uh, out there doing so he might be on ba on five.

It'd be weird to not see our guys, uh, here, but I think it, it might just be following him around getting to know this guy. Cause I get the feeling this guy is not keffer, this is not a guy that was just forced on him by the, by the studio. And JMS is gonna thumb their nose at him every chance he gets.

Like, I feel like this guy's gonna be integral to the plot and he's gonna be around for a while. So yeah, I think it's, let's get to know our new guy

Jeff: episode. I like that. Yeah. Cuz Keer literally was only ever a bro. Or like, Hey, throw you in the locker room and be a bro for a little while. Do this, be a bro.

Whatever. Good. Now I'm gonna kill you. You're gone. Uh, Marcus, like they gave, he has a brother and he's got a story and yeah. Stuff we care. When I hear the word strife, right, I think about struggle. And when I think about struggle nowadays, I think about jaar. So I think this is gonna be another step in him getting closer to rock bottom.

And I think this is, I, I think I brought this up for a couple of episodes now, all the way into, you know, last season. But I think this is really gonna be about him trying to stand up the resistance and still facing, um, you know, people not taking him seriously or, you know, maybe he doesn't have the cred that he needs, but it's just gonna be like, and it's jaar as well.

So there's gonna be, um, there's gonna be kind of a comedic, it's gonna be a tragic comedy of him, like trying to get things going and not blatantly in your face, funny stuff. But I think this will be a very heavy but presented in a lighter way, kind of, you know, almost like. Oh, I did this horrible thing.

But then I'm gonna go back to my office and I'm gonna talk to, maybe we'll see Netta again. I'm gonna talk to Netta and be like, Hey, are we gonna get good Netta or bad Netta? If it's the only Netta anymore, is lawyer Netta good? Good Netta. If it's the other one, she is dead to

Brent: me. She does not exist. She holds Netta.

Jeff: Yeah, so true, isn't it? But she's the only, she's the only. Netta is that one. But we're gonna find out here next week. Thank you everyone for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or if you're watching us on YouTube, and please stop by Apple Podcasts or good pods or apparently Cast Box as well.

Leave us a rating and a review and I'll be Audible. Audible. You're Ons, Jeff Audible. You can listen to us on Audible, audible, like we're a book. Cool. As that, well leave us a rating review. I'll be happy to read it here on the podcast, Brent. Until next time.

Why? Why are you poking the camera?

Brent: I'm not poking the camera. I'm trying to poke you.

Jeff: Why?

Brent: Just trying to share in your

Jeff: blessing.

I'm pretty sure that I don't want you touching my blessing. I gotta keep that to myself. Why don't you go poke that plant over there. Peace, victory, and long life.