Day of the Dead

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast.

My name is Jeff Akin and I am the one who was, We're watching Babylon 5 for the first time for you, the one who is,

it's a great shtick, Brent, but if the people are listening on the audio version, they're not gonna get it.

Brent: Well, but it, the pin and teller, were in this episode and you're doing the pin thing. I'm doing the teller thing. I mean, you know.

Jeff: It's a lot of fun on YouTube.

Brent: Oh man. Oh, hey guys. Welcome to the show. Uh, Jeff and I, Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters who are searching for the important messages that Babylon five is delivering in its own unique way.

Jeff: Now we're looking for those Babylon five messages, not Star Trek messages, because we're not looking for the Star Trek ones. And this is not a Star Trek podcast. We play the rule of three. This is a game that limits us to no more than three references to Star Trek per episode. In total. That's it. Three.

One of those plays. No substitutions. Exchanges are refund.

Brent: You know Jeff, I'm pretty sure last week I blew through all of my references, all of our references. We didn't get a buzz once last week though,

Jeff: No. Cause you really, I mean, they, they weren't, they were. Well, I think a couple times you're even like, well this is a Star Trek. And also, and also, and also, so it really wasn't a Star Trek thing.

Brent: but if we do make Star Trek references, what sound should they hear out

Jeff: Oh, it's a beautiful, beautiful sound. And it's this,

Brent: It's not annoying at all.

Jeff: not even a little bit.

Brent: Right? Because while this is definitely not a Star Trek podcast, Jeff, those references do tend to get shoved in more so from time to time, and. That just happens. Although we are better because we used to do three each and now we just do three total, which is awesome. So that's a game we play.

You know, another game we like to play.

Jeff: What's that

Brent: It's a game called.

Jeff: time to pay the piper

Brent: That's right. This is part of the show where we look back at what last week's prediction about this week's episode was gonna be, and we see just how right we were or how absolutely wrong we were. Jeff, I don't think that there is a single thing that we have gotten feedback on more than we have on people's responses to our predictions.

Jeff: for real?

Brent: This is the spot. So let's take a look back at what we said last week, uh, that this week episode was gonna be, how close were you? What did you say?

Jeff: I thought that, uh, Regent on Sentara Prime was gonna die, and Lando was gonna be set up to become emperor.

Brent: Not at all.

Jeff: That's two goose eggs in a

Brent: here. Here's the thing. I'm gonna give you like 0.001 just because we got a mention of you are the soon to be Emperor.

Jeff: Hey, I'll take it. I'll take it. What did you think

Brent: Well, I said that if this one doesn't involve masks with skulls and all that sort of stuff painted on that, I'm gonna riot. And I'm happy to say I do not have to riot because that was definitely, definitely in this episode I said that this was gonna be something where people are celebrating this. It's gonna be another culture on Babylon five, which I nailed that.

And that we were gonna be seeing the ghost of the past. We were gonna be honoring those from the past and we're not really honoring, but seeing ghosts from the past nailed that. However I said this is, this is where the Brint getting specific kills it. Like if I stay general, I'm okay, but I got specific on it.

I said Telepaths are gonna get involved and screw with people's minds and make them think that they're seeing stuff that maybe they really aren't. We didn't even see Telepaths in this one really at all. also said there's gonna be no Lanier. And he a thousand percent showed up at the very beginning of the episode.

So, you know, looking real suave in his black, black outfit with the little badge on.

Jeff: It is a good looking analyst shock. Like he wears it. Well.

Brent: he does, but he still looks like he's wearing his dad's robe. Like I just, I don't know.

Jeff: Yeah. We'll dive into all of that.

Brent: I'll say. He does look good. He's just, yeah.

Jeff: I was gonna say, king is back. The king is back. I'll let you wear the crown on this one, but you got specific, gonna give you 0.8 on this

Brent: take it. I'll take it.

Jeff: We had a programming note that we, little housekeeping, we wanted to

Brent: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Forgot we just talked about this all of three minutes ago and I forgot about it.

Jeff: It's gonna be fine. This is gonna be a great, great, smooth episode, but we've had a lot of comments on YouTube, like on the, the, just the, the various videos coming up on Patreon, on our Discord emails, things like that on the two words that plagued us for the first season especially, and into the second, and then kind of taper it off.

But those two words, Brent, are viewing order.

Brent: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, uh, we are well aware that the, today's episode chronologically falls into like, right between like episodes four and five or something like that. It's like right after, what was it? Learning curve.

Jeff: think learning or review from a gallery I think is

Brent: you're from the gallery and learning curve. Like it kind of fits in in there. We understand that.

Um, we got out of order and we actually, we have a friend John, who has a list who, who kind of helps us mitigate that kind of stuff. stopped looking at that list a while ago. Be for two reasons. One, because we made an executive decision to save the movies until the end, and so we, we weren't following that.

But then honestly, the, the order that they come up on, on the, on iTunes or on on Amazon is the same order that John kept giving us. I think we just got outta the habit and we didn't really look as we were going forward. And yeah, we saw some things out there, but we just sort of kept moving at a good pace and we we're just saying we know that it belongs back there. I think it's fine.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, depending on who you talk to, it belongs back there. Or there's people who think it was gonna be later. Here's the

bottom line. 

Brent: Yeah, yeah,

Jeff: made the choice. Right? Like, we made that choice to, on the movies that got us off track, we're gonna stick to this. Right? That's, it's the next one in the app. That's with the iTunes thing.

That's, we're, we're gonna keep following that. We're gonna go through, um, there we are. And thank you for your care and your input.

Brent: Yes. And, and frankly with this particular episode, having now watched it, I'm still kinda like, uh, it didn't really matter.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: You could have watched this. Like, in fact, I said to you just, just before we came on mic, like this could have been like episode two of the season. It feels like, like it just, it's so non-time committal.

Jeff: yeah. There's like one little line and little thread in Lao's piece that it can't happen after a certain point. We don't know when that point is, but it can happen before most any of

Brent: it couldn't happen after Londo actually became emperor.

Jeff: you go. Yeah.

Brent: Outside of that, yeah. Have.

Jeff: soon as Lock Lee's on board and he's not emperor anywhere in there. But Brett, we're starting to dive into some specifics on this episode.

So before we get too far on that, for those who haven't seen it before, here we are spoiling all the good stuff. Right. Before we get, uh, too far ahead, Brent, can you tell us what Day of the Dead was all about?

Brent: Well, hey, do you remember when the Drazi had their thing about purple and green and we learned a bit about their culture? Well, it's time to learn a bit about the culture of another alien species. This time it's the Briary, or is it the Briary? Whatever. Uh, they seem to say it both ways anyway. They apparently have like a single comet in their system and it passes by like once every 200 years.

And when it does, it signals a day of the dead festival, which actually happens at night. But we can't call it Night of the Dead for reasons. Anyway, apparently there's this thing where people laugh, they tell stories, they have feast, and rumor has it sometimes weird stuff happens. But that's all just stories though, right?

So when the Bakar Ambassador, quote unquote, buys a bit of babble on five just for a single night, it's not renting though. It's actually buying, but he's gonna give it back the next morning. Lockley doesn't really think too much of it. She honors his request and that's when all hell breaks loose, because now that part of the station is considered Kar, like their home world, it's part of their home world, sovereign land.

And on that night, an unexplained phenomena happens with absolutely no scientific or fictional or scientific fictional explanation. They even say so in the episode. Sometimes it's just good to have a bit of a mystery. And so we move on and several of our characters are visited by their ghosts. First up is soon to be Emperor Lado malaria, who is visited by somebody that actually.

Really warmed my heart for him to get to see again, Adara Tyre. It's the true love of Lao's life. They have sex, apparently, a lot of it, and she comments on him being the ruler of 40 billion. Sari Alondo says he'd give it all up just to be with her. Garibaldi is visited by Elizabeth Derman. Don't remember her.

It's cuz we knew her as Dodger. Remember her? Yeah. No real mention that Garibaldi is married because no one remembers lease either. Dodger tries to sleep with Garibaldi again and Garibaldi puts her off again and by morning she's gone. Garibaldi has missed his shot again, but he is married. So good on him.

Right? Captain Lockley is visited by, captain Lockley is visited by Zoe. Her little sister? Oh no, no. Wait, I'm sorry. That's an old girlfriend. Oh, was she just a roommate? Uh, it's probably a girlfriend man. Not really super clear. But she was definitely from back in the day when Lockley was a little bit of a wild child.

Drug riddled. Poor cold party, party, party. Lockley apparently found Zoe's body many years ago and always wondered if her death was on purpose or was it an accident. Lockley winds up giving us a bit of her backstory, how she got clean, worked her way up through the military, and before Zoe leaves in the morning, she gives Lockley a message.

We'll come back to that in a minute. And finally there's Lanier because hey, he's back on the station just for the day of the dead so he can learn about it. And who does he get visited by? Morden. Yes, that Morden. With a cool new haircut, which makes his face way less punchable. He tells Lanier that he is gonna betray the Rangers Lanier Scoffs, and that's pretty much the end of that whole storyline.

Well, as for that message that Zoe brought to to Lockley, well turns out that message was for Captain Sheridan, or I'm sorry, president Sheridan. That message was from Kosh. A message that says When the long night comes, go back to the end of the beginning, whatever that means. And while that's pretty much the end of the episode, by morning everything's back to normal.

Jaar regrets moving out of his quarters for the night because he kind of is curious what he would've seen. And he notes that everyone seems to be more at peace, which is weird cuz I didn't get that vibe at all. Oh yeah. And, uh, Penn and Teller who've been on the station, uh, as Rebo and Zooty, they leave because that's the grand total of the impact that they've had on the story during their time here.

Jeff, what did you make of this episode? Day of the Dead?

Jeff: Right outta the gate. I'm just gonna read one of my notes here because you sir, are wrong. You're very wrong about a very key thing. Here it is. It is a sin to have morden's hair looking like that. That man has been given a gift and this is in a front to God that they made him look like this.

Brent: I don't think they made him look like that. I think the actor just came over from whatever he was doing postmortem time and was like, yeah, I'm not growing out my hair here.

Jeff: I was so disappointed. I miss, oh, his hair is so great,

Brent: But it does make his face entirely less punchable.

Jeff: That's true. That's very true. Much more, uh, much more. Just like I could hang out with this guy. Kind of a look.

Brent: yeah, exactly.

Jeff: dude, I spent at least about 11 minutes of this episode with my head and my hands almost in tears, Penn and Teller like

Brent: From, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Head in, head in your hands. From tears. From laughing or from

Jeff: complete utter defeat.

Brent: Okay.

Jeff: Babylon five broke me in the first couple minutes, and not in the way that like a confessions and Lamentations did, but in a way of just like, Oh my God. This where I'm, I'm going to, we, we had that one. I, I forget the episode, but where the computer had that ridiculous AI that you thought was hilarious.

Brent: Yeah, the New York accent.

Jeff: And I'm just like, this is in affront. This is horrible. Oh my God. They're gonna keep, like, Garibaldi shot it, right? In the, in the, I'm like, yes. And that's, I mean, I, I enjoy Penn and Teller. I enjoy their work. I think, you know, whatever. They're funny. They're talented. They're all those great things.

They're in Babylon. Oh my, hello Uh, Greg Brady surfing, uh, in Hawaii, right? Like this. Where's the shark? Cuz you're about

Brent: The shark. Literally. Yeah.

Jeff: Oh my God. But then we got, I got a glimmer of hope. Glimmer of hope, because we got a deep dive into the hayak. Right? Like, like you said, back in the second season, we got a deep dive into the dsi.

Ooh. We're gonna learn about the pre curie. Like, I, I like this. Using this time to learn about the other races. I was so ready to hate this episode, and then it turned, this Day of the Dead is a Star Trek episode that happened to be done on Babylon five Total Next Generation, maybe even, uh, second season of Picard here a little bit, right?

Some mysterious thing causes the crew to be mysteriously transported across the galaxy to come face to face with their pasts. But this wasn't just their pasts. Here's the Babylon five piece, right? It's a bunch of dead people, and some of those dead people had beef with them, right? We gotta look at Lockley, Lanier and Morton for some reason, Dodger and Adera.

Oh my God, I, I, I enjoyed that this little foray. Into, into the, the characters and some story. I, I thought that was cool. I am really eager to hear what white star thoughts you have on this one. I wanna know what your rebo and Zui thoughts are, and Yeah, just tell me what, what, what, what about you? Where were you on this one?

Brent: Uh, I feel like you've built this up in your head and I'm about to disappoint you in so many ways. Uh, Jeff, I think the season, uh, this episode is the season's Geometry of shadows.

Jeff: I, I know right where you're

Brent: You know, where I am. Uh, on the surface, this looks like a waste of an episode. Was it a comedy? Was it a whore? It had the potential to be either one, and it did neither. Some cool stuff happened, but does it ultimately matter? No, not really. However, there was that one thing that that one guy said that probably is gonna come back later and be pretty big. So actually it is more important than you might think. Hello? Can you say foreshadowing? Just thoughts. I remember hearing people talk about our reaction to geometry of shadow.

You remember foreshadowing? I'm like, yeah, we don't know that it's foreshadowing yet, guys. Anyway, uh, I thought Penn and Teller were a complete waste. They were absolutely wasted on this episode. My problems with this episode overall functionally is there were so many different places, Jeff, that they, they started getting down in line with something and then they just stopped.

For example, as soon as Rebo and Zdi started talking about wanting to quit comedy and do something more exciting, I was like, yeah, okay. Let's, let's have that conversation about, about why being in entertainment is actually an important job and, and realizing that what you're doing actually matters. Because there's no way they need to do that and go be in politics. They just don't, but they did nothing with it. Like they had that conversation, Delen and Sheridan like kinda looked at each other. They said like a sentence that didn't really make much of a difference, and then they got off it. The next thing we saw, they were walking off the station and, and tell her, stop to talk to Sheridan for a second and give him some cryptic message.

That makes no sense whatsoever. I thought with the ghost there might be some sort of definitive ghost story. Jaar says at the end, you all seem more at peace. So are these people dealing with, with unresolved stuff in their life? Well, what, what the hell is Lanier looking at Morden for? Right. Okay. Maybe, maybe what these guys, or these are people who have, who are coming back, who have messages from beyond.

We saw that with Zoe. We saw that with Morden. And you really, it really has nothing to do with the person. Like, like the, the whoever's in the great Beyond is sending these people during the, the, the day of death. But then what the hell is Dodgers doing there? Like, he, she didn't further gar Baldy at all.

She didn't provide closure for him at all. Loved seeing Londo get with Laira. I loved that. What impact did that have on anything whatsoever? Did it make Lando ready to be Emperor? Did it resolve some conflict that he's had longstanding? No, he got to bon's girl one more time and she's like, Hey, it's pretty cool.

You're gonna be over 40 billion people. And they did nothing like that. One was like a 50th, like they just didn't do much with it. You know, it, it, this, this was a lot of really cool concept that they could have gone somewhere. That to me, failed in execution. It just, it was a lot of false starts and that was, that was my overall impression of this episode.

Jeff: I don't think that, uh, you said it, that Londo and Adro went one time. I think they went six times. It's gonna, that's where I'm gonna, I'm gonna sit on

Brent: I gotta, I gotta admit, there is a piece of me, like, I'm looking at a deer. She's got, she's got, like, her shoulders are bare and she, you know, she, she's definitely got some sort of clothing on and she's got the head thing going on and I'm sitting here just trying to go, where are the six places

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: her body that connections get made? Like, where are those six places? I'm just curious.

Jeff: that video also? Please don't share it.

Brent: Please don't, don't produce it and don't share it if it exists out there. I do not need to see that.

Jeff: I think, I think the Aira played a really important role in this one. I think it's, so, I, I still have, um, I'm not sure the, the, the Dodger one. I, I, I, I haven't really figured out what she was there for other than like a, a cool callback, you know, like, oh, that was

Brent: Jeff, I'm sorry. Can I stop you real quick cuz I wanna talk to everybody out there just for a second. Please do not fire off a bunch of things. Doing a deep dive explaining all of this to us just yet, especially if this is making connections back to previous episodes or stuff that's coming forward. Let Jeff and I get that on the second watch and once we get to the second watch we get back here, have at it.

But for right now, let us try to figure this out. Like we're, we're trying to figure out what the hell these guys were all doing here. Let us be in this space right now. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah. Cause to your point, geometry of shadows taught us the level of foreshadowing that happens in this show. So like, now we're gonna have that lens to look at this, you know? And so, but I think when with adara, like there's a surface level thing where it just felt good. You know? It's like, yeah, Alondo gets something nice to happen to him.

And, and this is, this is good, but I actually thought, thought about it in terms of the Catholic mass. So in the cath, in the Catholic mass, on Sundays and other high feast days, there are four readings from the Bible, actual scripture that we read. And then the, the priest can use that for his homily to, to build off of.

There's a, generally a reading from the Old Testament, uh, during the period after Easter in the octave of Easter. That's from the acts of the apostles, but generally it's the Old Testament. Then there's, um, a psalm that, uh, that is generally sung. Then there's a second reading usually from the epistles, right?

So St. Paul's letters, maybe St. John's letters. Then there's the gospel reading itself. Now, The Psalm and the Psalm will generally tie to the gospel in a real, you know, kinda loose way. Um, the second reading from the letters that's, that's just there, sometimes it lines up, sometimes it doesn't. But the first reading is specifically built to do what we say as Catholics to give us Jewish ears so that when we hear the gospel recited, we can hear it as the Jews from the time of Jesus would have heard this.

You know, so they're gonna talk about this thing in the gospel, and you're like, oh, that's because of this thing they talked about in job or the, when Moses said, you know, so you kind of prep us. There's a tie in the first reading to prepare you. For the gospel reading. And I think that this moment with Adera was our first reading.

This was to prepare us for what's about to go down with Londo. We needed to remember not londo, the genocidal genocide in person, not Londo, the guy who had RFA taken out by a bunch of nas. We had to remember the Londo who forgot how to dance. We had to remember Londo who saw himself as a burnt out old Republican, you know?

And so I think, I think that this is not just foreshadowing, it's like Adair is not gonna play a role, but it had to put our minds back in a place with Londo.

Brent: Hm.

Jeff: I thought I did really well.

Brent: So you think that that was adara coming to visit Londo was less about the benefit of Londo and more for the benefit of us as a viewer.

Jeff: Yes, yes.

Brent: Interesting. I think you're a thousand percent right about that. Uh, or even that Londo needed to be reminded. He doesn't care about the,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: you know, like he said for a while.

Like, he doesn't really want to be emperor. Like he doesn't, he just wants to serve his people. What, what was the thing he said to her? Like the one boast he made to her,

Jeff: Yeah. I'm the savior of our people.

Brent: our people. He says, um, which is a bit rich, but he's probably also not wrong. Like, Yeah, he is the, the destroyer of Narn, the savior of the sari and the savior of Narn,

Jeff: yeah,

Brent: like 

Jeff: yeah. Maybe our people, right? Goes beyond that. But you take that, I'm the savior of our people. To use your word juxtaposed with, I would give those 40 billion people up for you.

Brent: I, I love that as a message. I still don't see, like, if she would've come back with a message for londo of like, remember how to dance. Like, let that be his message. Like, remember how to dance. Like, be like, yeah, Londo do that. Let's make that happen. Like, that'd be cool, you know? Uh, she didn't, and I, I could definitely see, definitely see your whole piece, uh, about that.

I, I gotta tell you though, um, I just thought it was so good to see her again. And I, I mean, I, I think we'd written her off so long ago and, and to, this isn't a clip from when she was on the sh the episode before. This was her like on set filming new material, like so good. So good. 40 billion is a lot of people.

Jeff,

Jeff: it's a lot of people. Yeah.

Brent: I mean, we got eight, nine on Earth today.

Jeff: And we're losing our, like we're freaking out. Like what do we do? Oh my God. Yeah. It's a lot of

Brent: 40 billion folks. Uh, Gar Baldy. Let's talk about him for a sec.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Okay. I'm done.

Jeff: Well I have to tell you, I was offend. There was one line in this whole thing that personally offended me and I'm just like, I don't, I don't know what in the world, how could you put this ink on paper, let it dry, and then let someone speak this on television. on pizza. What? Are you kidding me? Hey, you know sushi, that stuff you eat with bubble gum? Is she? What's wrong with her? Capers? Go on sandwiches.

Brent: Capers go in the trash.

Jeff: No, here's, here's a great way to you, there's a great caper

Brent: no, I'm sorry. No. You know where capers go in the cabinet cuz you never use them for anything. That's where Capers go. Everyone has them just in the

Jeff: Bought it one time cuz a recipe said capers.

Brent: They've been there since 1989.

Jeff: It's a great thing you can do with capers. It's kind of a, it's, it's similar to what you can do with kale now. It works really well. But what you do is you get a surface, a plate, a platter, something like that, and you coat it with, uh, coconut oil and then you lay the capers on top of it and that coconut oil becomes important.

Or the kale, because that coconut oil makes it easier for it to slide off the platter into the garbage. There you go.

Brent: I was gonna say, it's, it's interesting you said kale, because that's where they both belong.

Jeff: Yeah. Uhhuh. But then, but then the second thing she said that I actually was just like, ah, She said techno mancy, and if there's techno mancy, that means that the techno ages might do a thing. And I just got excited that there was a tie. And I love now that I'm saying this, that you tied this to geometry of shadows and there's a real subtle callback to techno ages.

All right. That's Garibaldi.

Brent: Yeah. I mean, okay. Garibaldis married. We've established that, right?

Jeff: So

Brent: to have forgotten about

Jeff: I think so. I thought so.

Brent: I thought he was, um, Garibaldis married. This girl shows up. That is okay. I mean, let's ask, would it, if he would've slept with her, would, was that cheating? This is not a real person. This is a ghost that does not really exist.

All right. I'm not even gonna get into that. Well, she's gonna be gone by morning. So who would ever know? Like I Garibaldi would know, and that's gonna be on his conscience. But like, did she like her and Adara? Like, were they physically? I I mean, it had to be physically there if stuff could have happened, right?

Like, you know, but if yes or no, I'm gonna pin you down, yes or no. If Garibaldi would've slept with Dodger, was he cheating on his wife?

Jeff: Yes.

Brent: Okay. They're sitting there, I feel like they kissed once or twice. Her head is on his lap, really close to his junk, maybe on his junk.

Jeff: Yeah. He kind of even went, whoa.

Brent: a lot of caressing, there's a lot of laughing and flirting.

Yes or no? Was Garibaldi cheating on his wife?

Jeff: Yes. I heard someone say once cheating doesn't start when I'm gonna, uh, when it happens, it capital, capital, it cheating.

Brent: our pg, our PG show here.

Jeff: Yeah. Cheating happens the minute you respond to the direct message or the text message,

Brent: Mm, yeah.

Jeff: Be begin. And I've come to believe this, I've come to accept this. That cheating begins in the mind.

Brent: 100% am with you on that. 100% with you on that. Um, so here's then the question. Let me ask this, these ghosts, were they real or were they projections?

Jeff: Yeah. I,

Brent: Were they in the mind of these people?

Jeff: I think that that's a, God, it's a tough question. I can't because on one hand, yeah, on the other hand, like they brought new material to them, you know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to think of the show. It's something that my daughter watched. It's some animated show and, uh, This person's having a real CRI crisis and oh it was, it was The Simpsons a Simpsons episode where Bleeding gums, Murphy dies and is talking to Lisa and Lisa's like meets his son, right?

Who uh, has a hearing impairment and there's all this stuff. She takes up his cause and then like she has a dream and the vision of bleeding gums. Murphy is talking to her and she's like, oh, you really think that? And he says, Hey, this is your dream. I'm gonna think what? And say whatever you want me to think and say.

I don't think these people said what they would have wanted them to think and say, I think they were real.

Brent: Well, of course I'm in your mind, but why should that make it any less 

Jeff: Ooh. 

Brent: Another way to say that. I mean, I think the truth is we don't know. Like what was this weird bubble that everybody was in that Sheridan threw something at and it went way too slow to come back at him with that much force. Like,

Jeff: That was, that was, I, I hated that scene, but I loved that scene. Like I watched it over and over, like on my rewatch for notes. I'm like, I just wanna watch that

Brent: Do you know why Sheridan was in this episode?

Jeff: Uh, cuz he is in the opening credits.

Brent: Well, cuz he was contractually already paid for it. They'd already paid him for it. That's it. Um,

Jeff: Get dressed, go throw this fire extinguisher that's smaller than a can of soda.

Brent: right, him, him and Delen had zero actual purpose in this episode. Um, I guess while we're here, let's talk about people with zero purpose in this episode, pen and teller.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Now, what was your reaction when you saw Pen and Teller come out?

Jeff: The second they walked out, I was just like, oh. So t n t is forcing guest stars on them

Brent: Yes. That's a thousand per, I mean, this is what CW was doing when they tried to get Enterprise to put a boy band in the, in the Mess Hall of Enterprise popular band. They did it with Charmed. They did it on what, what was it? Dawson's Creek. I feel like they've done, they did on so many of those shows. T and t definitely.

This has every bit of that feel that they,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: they tried to force that on, uh, Rebo and Zuki were not funny.

Jeff: no, I say, here's my exact

Brent: They were awful.

Jeff: I can't believe I'm watching this. I am Lockley rolling my eyes and I'm looking for a reason to leave too.

Brent: I really kinda wish, like, I hope that Penn and Teller were forced on them by the studio j m s wrote them to be stupid. And Lockley served as J M S I E, our proxy on screen.

Jeff: It's the closest he could get to capturing them without ing them.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, although I gotta say when I first saw them, I was very excited cuz I love Penn and

Jeff: Yeah, they are

Brent: You have something you don't know about me. I told, I told the folks in Brent watches this when I was growing up. My best friend lived two doors down from me. His name was David. We, he was a year or so younger than I was, uh, best friend growing up, you know, over at each other's houses all the time.

Uh, David, genius of a kid. Like I wi this kid when he was nine years old. So this is 89, 90 when the internet is still like military bound. Created a website selling brass knuckles.

Jeff: What?

Brent: Yes. A nine year old created a website selling brass knuckles to this day. To this day, it is the number one retailer of brass knuckles in the world.

He, this man does almost nothing with it, as far as I understand. He just sits back and paper money in the mail.

Jeff: Huh?

Brent: Number one retailer, like it's all automated. Like this man did Amazon before Jeff Bezos did Amazon. He just nailed it down to brass knuckles. Like my friend David also got into magic. He, he was the magician, the magic.

Now I've always had a bit of a flare for the showman. Love David. He didn't, we teamed up as kids cuz we were best friends and we had a pen and teller act that we would do at birthday parties and, and different things like that. We had it all set out and it was the same basic idea. I did the speaking.

David did not, and it was so, there was a lot of studying of Penn and Teller and how they worked and they were very big influences on a very young me.

Jeff: Wow.

Brent: Loved watching them, loved watching them. I was so ready for this to be a comedy. It was not a comedy.

Jeff: No.

Brent: Oh. When they're sitting there having their conversation, and I mentioned it earlier about they want to give up comedy to go do something important, I'm gonna save the rest of that conversation.

But I, I, I was so disappointed that that just fell so flat.

Jeff: Well, I, I

thought of 

Brent: a finish to that episode. There is a finish to that conversation

Jeff: Yeah, I thought of you in that, in that line. Cause I'm just like, this is a Brent is is a working for like, traveling, touring comedian. He knows this. And good comedy has a real message. It's, it's the most, uh, it can be one of the most subversive ways to get really difficult conversations and concepts across to people in ways that are relatable and that you can hear and understand.

And I was just like, this is, this is Brent's jam and they're not even

Brent: when, when, when Rebo said, we can say something really cool, but then it gets lost in the comedy. I disagreed so vehemently. I was like, it doesn't get lost in the comedy. It lands because of the comedy. It gets through it, it, it does for the message what placing stuff in sci-fi does. This is why we do this show.

This is why, this is why sci-fi is uniquely positioned as a genre to hold up a mirror to society and show us who we are. It's because you can, you can do it in the form of aliens so it's not offensive and it could show us right here, right? Like sci-fi is uniquely positioned to give us these messages and these tales and these to give us hope for a future in a way that crime procedurals and, um, uh, sitcoms and dramas and legal things and hospitals shows, those aren't, those are not positioned to be able to do in a way that sci-fi is.

Comedy is that same way for being able to comment and, and, and criticize and bolster and shape the attitudes of society. Comedy has a way of doing that because it comes in, in the form of comedy and people are more ready to accept it.

Jeff: Yep. Yeah.

Brent: Uh, he was so wrong in that. And that's all gonna play into my, my white star thoughts, so I'm gonna stop here

Jeff: Yeah, I'm excited to hear about it. But yeah, I, I mean, I have nothing on else on Rebo and Zu other than, Hey, that's cool. They studied other cultures humor and that little cryptic line at the end was literally just like, Hey, let's feed something to them to say it to close off a storyline that meant nothing.

Brent: to show Teller actually said he, he said one word to his partner, but he's gonna say four to Sheridan

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: because it told me so, or whatever he said. Yeah.

Jeff: I, uh, uh, well, just to kind of pivot away from that and other stuff, did you, they had a newspaper, right? Because Corwin was like trying to do some stuff and there's this newspaper that was there. Did you catch any of the headlines on the newspaper?

Brent: I, I didn't, I just saw the one, the pin and teller, their actual photo, not pin, with this weird wig going on. Um, I, I saw their picture and I just thought it was, uh, pushing back to them all the time. No. What, what did they say?

Jeff: Yeah, so I actually paused, uh, the thing when they showed the front and the back and everything to get the pieces. So there's a Meet Rebo and Zedi up close and personal. Babylon five will air a Rebo and Zdi movie marathon that Lockley got caught into. Uh, then there's a Rebo and Zedi arrive. Then there was a couple here that were kind of interesting.

Interstellar Alliance talks to resume. Hmm. I wonder what that's about. Londo Malari to become

Brent: sorry. Wait, what is resume? Do we know?

Jeff: Exactly. I don't, I never knew they stopped. So

Brent: Okay.

Jeff: that's, uh, maybe

Brent: Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Read that again. Intertel,

Jeff: Interstellar Alliance talks to resume.

Brent: I thought you meant, Rezum was like a news magazine or something, and that they were talking to them like as it You're talking about the talks to Rezum. Okay, interesting.

Jeff: And maybe now that I, I just said that we're talking about maybe that's one of those plot points and where things land that this did matter, but, but also it doesn't matter.

Brent: Because wasn't it, wasn't it in, um, oh, what were those episodes Learning curve and view from the gallery that people were like, stonewalling the Alliance

Jeff: Not

Brent: or something like that. Yeah. Wasn't it, wasn't it like it was, because remember the Drowsy were like, oh, we're, we don't have to, we don't have to sign a pledge of anything because we're amazing and yet we're actually jacking these people up over

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. It might, might have been around to that in the hiccups there, but there was a little one, Alando Malari to become Centa Emperor. And I think this one was important

because it was a, It was teeny tiny and it was below the fold. And Londo saw that, right? And he was just like, yeah, you're not even above the fold news, dude.

Like, does,

Brent: dude, that is not anything I would've picked up until like my second, third, fourth viewing.

Jeff: yeah. This was my second that I, I mean, I saw this stuff and, and, but I went back on my second one. Reclamation of San Diego Wasteland gets underway.

Brent: Okay.

Jeff: Maybe this is where Bureau 13 pops up again.

Brent: I think that's a wasted storyline that's never coming back.

Jeff: agree. I can hope. Stocks how do, how, how are your credit rates? Um, then there were the two that I think that might turn into things. One was the Earth Senate votes for more money on Titan reforming or tar on Titan Terraforming.

Brent: Titan being a moon of Neptune.

Jeff: I think so. I think it's Neptune.

Brent: Neptune.

Jeff: And then the other one, a Narn consulate opens on Mars amid controversy.

Brent: there's a controversy. Okay. All right.

Jeff: So

Brent: Those are, you know, Jeff, here's the thing. I would totally write those off, except in our very first episode, you get to the end and you're like, Hey, did you hear what that newscaster said is the episode was fading to black about President Clark and all this. And I'm like, yeah.

And you're like, that's gonna be like a central thing to the whole deal. And they put it right here. And I'm like, eh. And yeah, that's literally what ignited the whole

Jeff: Right. Two whole seasons of that, that, yeah. As it was fading out.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: Where you wanna go next? You wanna talk, uh, Morden and Lanier

Brent: I was gonna say, what do we have left? We have Morton, Lanier, and then Lockley and, and Sister.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Uh, Yeah, let's talk, let's talk more than Lanier, cuz that one should go quick. Um, all right. First of all, Lanier dude, literally, here's my note, right As I gave up on seeing him again, he waltz is right back into my life.

Here he comes, here comes Lanier.

Jeff: just right outta

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. And then, man, he, he's, oh, delin, so good to see you. And he goes, how is your partner?

Jeff: partner.

Brent: And Delin goes, my husband, he's fine. And I'm sitting here going, dude, you know Sheridan personally, she does not have to say my husband. She could say, John, you know him. You do know.

Come on now.

Jeff: petty,

Brent: Oh. Oh. Honestly, if you're that petty, you shouldn't be on the shock. Um, Anyway, those, those were my two initial notes on Lanier. What did you think, Jeff? I'm curious. When Lanier popped on the station, he popped up on screen. What? What was your reaction?

Jeff: eh?

Brent: Yeah, so underwhelming, right? Like it should have been a big moment and it wasn't.

Jeff: Nope. I, I, I, I feel like he had to be here because there was some, there was some foreshadowing that that occurred. But other than that, I think it's a huge waste of

how he 

could have showed 

Brent: shadows part. Hey, that one line happened with that one guy over there? Yeah.

Jeff: Here it is.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: And that one line, you're gonna betray the analyst shock.

Brent: Oh, I would die before I did that. And he's like, okay. And then like they, they had that line and he goes, I would do this. And then literally all that happened was Morden sat in a chair and read a newspaper until it was time for him to disappear.

Jeff: Yep.

Brent: Cause that was it. Like what?

Jeff: And then, and then he got a little jab in. Right. He's like, you know, well, uh, Delen doesn't love you the way that you love her. Yeah. But I thought it was neat cuz he is like, already know that. And he's like, actually you don't, in your heart you don't know that.

Brent: That might be a catalyst for how he's gonna wind up betraying the endless shock.

Jeff: That's what I think too. Go after until, uh,

Brent: I, I think he, when he betrays the endless shock, cuz I think that's coming like I, a hundred percent. I'm like, yep, that's gonna happen. I don't think he's gonna intend to do it though.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Brent: He's gonna do it, but I don't think he's gonna intend to do it.

You know? I don't think he, I don't think in his mind it's not gonna be betraying them, but it will be.

Jeff: He's gonna think he's doing the right thing.

Brent: Yep. Yep. That's what I think. That's what I think. And maybe he really will be doing the right thing, but you know, like, you know, I'm not gonna go there anyway.

Jeff: All right. Then we got Zoe.

Brent: Yeah. Um, oh, by the way, I'm sorry. Um, when, when Rebo and Zedi met Delen and Sheridan, and Zedi plays the little machine and it ha tells this joke in Mumbar that none of us actually understood in Deen's. I 1000% really appreciated how slow Delin took to laugh. Like she heard it, it was, you could see like the acting on that was amazing cause it, it, it, it had to go through her brain.

You could see it running through her brain a couple of times and she's like, uh oh, that is a joke. Oh, that's really funny. Yeah. Like it was, it was so well acted and well played as opposed to as juxtaposed Jeff. Everybody else laughing to Reone Zdi, which was fake and awful and horrible. We've already covered

Jeff: Yes. Terrible,

Brent: Um, what before, I'm sorry. Jaar walking into C N C with his robe in, in his PJs, but it wasn't the, the bathrobe with the chest

Jeff: right? Mm.

Brent: Judges just goes to show where Jaar has come. Like, think about it. He used to be that dude, you know, with three girls walking out of the room, most of them Sari, if I remember right.

And then this one, you know, here he is in a full like monks robe coming out.

Jeff: but also like Babylon five is huge and you're gonna go ask to sleep in c and

Brent: Cnc, right? There's not a hotel on Babylon five. You can't go for a night.

Jeff: Can Can I go sleep in lock Lee's office?

Brent: Can, can I go to LAN's room? Any of the fellow NAS on the station?

Jeff: One one square mile out of this massive thing is gone and you go to, okay,

Brent: Yeah. And maybe that's like one fifth of the station, right? Like that's a huge part,

Jeff: it's a big chunk, but like there's a lot of the station left

Brent: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff: and talking about, uh, acting like, you know, mirror lin's acting. I agree. That was awesome. I thought Traci Goggins did a great job in. Yeah, like cuz she had this balance of like, I have this, what I'll call core trauma in her life that she's face to face with.

But at the same time she's like, I'm captain of this station. There's weird stuff going on. I have to try to work to help solve this problem. And she just did a great job in being present in that moment, in those moments with Zoe, but also Po really impressed with her.

Brent: Yeah. She, she did, she did the thing she needed to do. I also appreciated the look. I'm pretty sure if we just let this go till morning, it'll be fine. Although her just popping in on Garibaldi unannounced should not, I mean, like, that needs to be a ring. And you have to say here, like, I, I, you lose the comedic awkward zooming in, you know,

Jeff: It's totally space balls when, uh, Lord helmet's using the bathroom, right? Oh, p and screw, oh.

Brent: or, or, uh, uh, when he's actually, president's group was in bed with the, the two girls and he comes up and he is got the book upside down or whatever. Yeah. Um, and then she does it again to, uh, uh, the other person.

Jeff: Tolando. Yeah,

Brent: Londo. That's right, that's right. Um, but yeah, Zoe and, and, uh, Lockley, I gotta tell you, when Zoe first appeared, everything about that whole interaction said to me, little sister

Jeff: totally.

Brent: did not say I, I or is a former girlfriend, is, was I think the ultimate thing they were going for

Jeff: never clicked for me. I went from kid's sister to like best friend, like we were best friends who ran off doing drugs.

Brent: maybe I'm doing that thing where I see two people and I want to, I wanna put them together in a relationship that they don't actually have. Cuz they really never were clear about it. Although it did. There were some romantic overtones that seemed to me at times, but never, never anything explicit.

They did do a lot of partying,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: uh, and by that bad stuff,

Jeff: I think that a lot of

Brent: like, do you got any stuff you wanna, she's like, I've been dead for 20 years. Can I do something while I'm here?

Jeff: Do you got any new cool stuff? Like what have they done to this? But I think, like, I definitely got, um, trauma bond, right? And so like, we're, we're gonna go party, we're gonna run off, we're gonna live, we're wherever we can live, sleep, wherever we can sleep, as long as we're getting, you know, our next fix is around the corner.

And so I, I, I, I never got romance, but like we've talked about that romance isn't my mother tongue. And uh, you know, so maybe that's why I didn't pick up on it. But to me it just really, it really hit like trauma bond. And like I said, it's a core memory, a core trauma. I mean, her passcode is Zoe's dead,

Brent: that was a little over the top for me, honestly.

Jeff: very on the nose.

Brent: Now I gotta be honest. My wi, I think I've said this on the show before, my wifi password is the name of my dead dog two dogs ago. Like, you know, like I, I get it, but I'm not my pass. It's not, it's not. Sam is dead. It's just Sam.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Like the passcode would just be Zoe, not Zoe's dead, like, no.

Uh, To me, I, I'm not speaking to anyone else's trauma or what that looks like, cuz this clearly is something that has influenced her all the way up. But think, think about where she's gone. So she was a drug riddled teenager, maybe young twenties

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: gets rescued by her marine uncle or whatever 

Jeff: Dad, her dad,

Brent: didn't she say it was a she he sent like the uncle or something like that?

No, it was that, right?

Jeff: Yeah. With, with, with his, with buddies from his platoon.

Brent: Yeah. She grew up as a military brat, but out of that situation, she goes off to join the forces and works. She, she's clean and gets her life together and works her way up to being the captain of a station. Like that's a pretty good bump. That's a pretty good jump. But she still has all this old stuff.

She found her friend dead

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: and never knew why.

Jeff: And the core thing. And the core thing, and I want to, I want to acknowledge right now we're gonna talk about self-harm. We're gonna talk about suicide for a minute, so skip ahead if this is activating for you in any way. Pausing. Okay. She didn't know, did you do this on purpose? Right. And it was a, it was a big thing and, and it was powerful when she kind of, when Zoe explained a little bit, like at first it wasn't, but then it was on

Brent: yeah. So I couldn't, I couldn't go on anymore, which I thought was real interesting because you have Zoe, who we first met her and she's like, Hey, you got any more stuff? Like, let's pardon, let's, let's do some, let's do something fun. Let's go. Actually, I couldn't go on anymore.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: That's what happened. Like that is, that is such a, a, a change in where you are.

I think it's very, Pictorial of an addict

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: when you, when you get into a sober spot as an addict and you go, I can't do this anymore. But then when you're in your old triggers, you're like, yeah, let's, let's just go do this, because what does it do? It numbs the pain. It numb takes you out of all this stuff. You just want it, you enjoy it, and all of that stuff.

And yeah, she, she was here for something. That's, that's her first response. I, I thought that was real interesting. But you're right. The way that, that Traci Coggins portrayed this whole deal again, this led us down a road that it never delivered on though. Because here you have a character who has unresolved stuff in their life.

Oh, wait, Londo has unresolved stuff in his life. Oh, Garibaldi has unresolved stuff with Dodger, but he's married now. Lanier has unresolved stuff with more. No. Okay. That it, it all falls apart at that

Jeff: Yeah. And even like, it starts to at Garibaldi, but I think if we think about it, it might be, I, I never questioned him and least, but maybe this was a thing of just like, Hey, by the way, look good dude. He's gonna, you know, in his mind, stay faith. I, I don't know. Does he have, uh, yeah. It, it's gar. It's gar up Aldi in Lanier that the whole thing kind of falls apart around.

Brent: It really does. It really does. Um, and that's, and that's just where I go back to now. I have one major. Okay. So she comes in, she has this message for Sheridan. Let's talk about this message real

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: When the long night comes, go back to the end of the beginning. Let's start at the end. What is the end of the beginning?

Jeff: I thought about that a lot. And the best I can come up with is the end, the beginning. I gotta start there. What's the beginning? And I would think the beginning is Lorianne and the ancient ones and the first ones.

Brent: Hmm.

Jeff: So what's the end of that? The end of that was when they mission accomplished and went out beyond the rim. So my thought is, well let's pause there. What, what? Where's your beginning and end?

Brent: I think the beginning to me was Sheridan's life, and the end is when he lost his life, which we got confirmed in this episode that he died at Zaha Doom to go back to the end of the beginning. Because stuff didn't really start happening for Sheridan until the Lorian stuff. So the everything before that would be beginning.

So the end of the beginning, go back to that space. He's gotta go back to Zaha Doom. Zaha Doom's blown up right now, but he's gotta go back to Zaha Doom. That was, that's my thought. Now people have to Oh, you're so wrong. Yeah, I probably am.

Jeff: Yeah. We probably, we have no idea there's, cuz my, my guess is it's telling him to go beyond the rim. So the ancient and first ones went beyond the rim. And so he says When the long night comes and the episode, the long night taught us that, that's the end of a peak conflict. And so we'll have some peak conflict come up.

Uh, and when that's done, Sheridan needs to go. It's time for Sheridan and his people to go beyond the rim.

Brent: Wow. Sheridan and his people specifically, or Sheridan and his people as in humans.

Jeff: I, I think humans,

Brent: Wow. So what he's saying is, is, Hey, when it comes time for humans to leave this galaxy,

Jeff: with us.

Brent: wow, that's, but Sheridan's only got like less than 20 years left, man. Like,

Jeff: Sort of, you know, I mean, I mean, yes, but also we know that that's not necessarily, I mean, he died

Brent: that's not necessarily the end. Right?

Jeff: and we know that in a thousand years, was it a thousand years that, or, or however, I forget, I forget the breakdown that we got in the deconstruction of Falling Stars, but they're gonna start telling the story of Babylon five and Sheridan as a holy book.

Maybe it's up to him to leave that message that, you know, here's, here's where

Brent: it got up to a thousand years.

Jeff: it was a thousand, yeah, a thousand. And

then it 

Brent: it was a year, it was like a year, and then it was like a hundred years. And then it was like, 500 years and then it was a thousand with a or and then maybe it was like a a hundred thousand or a million

Jeff: million. It was a

Brent: with a two to 10.

Jeff: yeah, when, when the star, when the sun blew up and all that stuff went

Brent: Oh, cause they all went,

Jeff: beyond the rim. Well, maybe, maybe they went beyond the rim. I don't know. But. maybe that's it. The beginning was midnight on the firing line and the end was deconstruction of falling stars.

And we're just in the prologue now. So when the long night of the prologue happens, go back to the end of the beginning, which is, uh, wherever dude went in his analyst shock ship when the sun blew up. I confused myself saying all that.

Brent: Basically. I think that just means it's time to watch Babylon five again. Um,

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: uh, okay. So here's the bigger question. Morden comes with a message, you're gonna betray the endless shock. I don't really know that that's a message as much as I'm gonna rub your face in it, but it feels like a message. Zoe comes with a message dodger.

We could, we could maybe pull a message out of our butts about that one, but I don't think there really existed one, which is why this breaks down londo. Again, you could kind of pull a message out of that, but I think it kind of breaks down. Here's the question. Why does each person get the person that they get? Because it's clearly doesn't have to do with unresolved conflict that you're having to, to resolve. As Jaar suggested at the end, he is like, you all see more beast food? Like no, they don't. The bigger question, who is sending these people, if it's not a creation of their own soul and they're coming with a message, who is sending them?

Jeff: I think. might be a controversial opinion, but I think no one has any idea. I think the whole thing was contrived and made up with no explanation whatsoever for the sole purpose of getting a handful of messages out, and then they didn't have enough content to fill a full 43 minute episode, so they tossed in a couple more,

Brent: I think that's it, Jeff. I think the God's honest truth is Lanier is gonna betray the endless shock, and Sheridan gets this cryptic message from Kosh, from beyond the grave,

Jeff: and then we get some Lockley development. We learn a little bit about

Brent: a little bit of that. And that is the, that is the full extent of the purpose of this episode, which may be fine, but still like,

Jeff: God, do you know what I would've loved in this?

Brent: all over again.

Jeff: Do you know what I would've loved

Brent: what's that?

Jeff: if Ivanovo was still on the station and Talia came back?

Brent: No, I disagree

Jeff: Really?

Brent: because if Talia would've come back, well, uh, if Talia would've come back and she was evil, Talia. That's the only way I would accept it if Thalia came back and she was bland, vanilla ta before. No, no. You know, who should have come back and said it'd be her mom or her dad,

Jeff: Ooh, that's good too.

Brent: you know, probably her mom, frankly, cuz the whole tele cause talk, you know, you know, a theme that they really just sort of dropped and never did much with iVOS A in Telepath.

Jeff: Well, no. If you remember in that pivotal moment at the end of the shadow war when the Telepaths swooped in and Ivanovo was at the front with ster because they were strong telepaths and they're the whole, oh wait, no, never, nevermind.

Brent: I mean, it is what it is. What allowed her to plug into the great machine, and then she realized that the shadows knew her name in that one episode. But like,

Jeff: got that piece of the, the, the President Clark stuff that,

Brent: yeah, it just, it just like, what, like, it's a neat thing, but what does it, what did it matter like anyway.

Jeff: I just think in terms of, oh my God, what was the episode after

Brent: People are so pissed at me right now. Jeff, I'm sorry. They're so pissed at me right now. And like, you don't even underst guys listen on fire for the second time's coming up soon.

Jeff: I just think back too, I think it was Ceremonies of Light and Dark. When um, is that the one that was after Severed Dreams?

Brent: Yeah. Oh yeah. That's, that's the one where de wound up in the hospital and like she gave him all the new uniforms,

Jeff: Yeah. But they all went in and shared something secret. The Rebirth Ceremony and Ivan's was, I think I might have been in love with Talia and nothing ever came from that, ever. This would've been an awesome place to go back and visit that.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: I'm trying to think of other cool ones that we could have

Brent: Actually having Avan, having Avan be the one to come back and tell somebody something buts

Jeff: come back to Gar. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Brent: would need to come back.

Jeff: Yeah. Cause I was like, have Ivan ever come back to Gar Baldy? That would be, but she's not dead, so she could actually come back as a, so I'm trying to think is, are there anybody or any other big losses we had that would've been cool have, have Naroon come to Dalen

Brent: Mm. Or du caught.

Jeff: Duca?

Oh yes. Yeah. They could have done some cool stuff with

Brent: Could have done some cool stuff. Have, I mean, get Michael O'Hare back and let him do a thing cuz he's dead by now.

Jeff: dead for a thousand years, you know? Yeah.

Brent: You know what I want, you know what I really want, and I'm sure they're never gonna come back to this. I want to go find wherever he went after he was doing his thing as veiling.

Jeff: like afterwards?

Brent: the whole story, was like he had a bajillion kids and then he wound up living in like exile on some island somewhere.

Like, I wanna go find that island that he was on, like.

Jeff: I would love the story of Valen period, right? Let's, let's see that story and then have that like Valen the after years.

Brent: Right,

Jeff: It'd be cool.

Brent: right.

Jeff: I think that we have reached the point of this conversation where we boil this all down, check and see if this episode has any deep morals messages to it, or if it's holding up a mirror to society or maybe possibly even giving us hope that we might be better in the future.

But at the same time, we're looking at how much it delivers that message in its own unique Babylon five way. Brent, you get to do that by rating this episode on a scale of zero to five white stars, what do you got?

Brent: I might be mean on this one, Jeff.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: I'm gonna, I'm gonna start by telling you my white star rating, and then I want to explain it

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: and I may, I'm, I'm saying this now because I may, uh, I'm sorry. YouTube. Hold on just a sec. My cable for my headphones is really freaking long, and sometimes my chair like, rolls over the cable and then gets caught and I'm like, sorry. Okay. Say this. Start that over again. I'm actually gonna tell you my rating first, and then I'm gonna explain it, but I'm gonna reserve a caveat that I may change my rating as I talk myself into something.

Jeff: okay.

Brent: And Jeff, I'm going to allow you some input on this if you want, if you, if you wanna stump for something. Here's my initial rating. No white stars.

Jeff: Wow. Okay.

Brent: And here's why. Because what do we say? Does this me, does this show have a message? And how does it deliver it in Babylon five way? This episode doesn't really have much of a message. It started having some messages. It never finished them. It never, it didn't deliver the message. Let me give you the message that this episode really should have tackled that it wanted to tackle.

Again, I go back to Rebo and Zedi sitting there saying, Hey, we think we want to give up comedy because we wanna do something that's important. Hey, this is, this is something that actually I could kind of relate to Londo and Lady Adara and what they got going on. Hmm. I could also relate this to, uh, I don't know, um, Lanier who has given up something to do something that he felt was important.

Uh, I could also relate this to, um, I don't know Lockley who gave up something to do something important,

but for Rebo and Zdi specifically,

they say they want to do something important and Sheridan. So cl gets so close to saying, yeah, but we need you. Your comedy is important. Comedy is like, that is an important job, Jeff. Folks out there know, I've, I've been a stay-at-home dad for a number of years, and as often as I talk about like, you know, it's, it's hard because you just feel like, man, I'm just wasting my life.

Oh, but do you know how important it is to be raising good kids? Like that's a really important job to, to, to raise the next generation. Like, like you get that sort of platitude that they're not wrong, it doesn't feel good, but they're not wrong. This might be a little bit like that. Here's the deal.

Entertainment is important, comedy is important. Being an entertainer is important. You mentioned earlier I used to do standup comedy. That is absolutely true. I stopped, that's actually when I started getting into podcasting because I had, I needed, I, I had a creative thing that I needed an outlet for and I wasn't able to go out every night and be on tour.

And even that, even having a residency working night like that, I just didn't have that ability anymore. I still don't at this point.

During Covid though, this became crystal clear to me though, Jeff, during Covid, I dunno about you. You started during Covid, right? During C O V I D as a podcaster. As a YouTuber, I was with a different podcast. It was like two podcasts ago for me, and it was wildly popular. It was, it was, there was some important pieces that happened.

It was the NFL podcast, the Peter cast loved that show. Um, but as a poer, as a YouTuber slash as an entertainer, I felt a personal responsibility for helping folks get through lockdown and for helping folks get through covid. It was never more imp, more apparent and clear to me the need for entertainers than when we had to all stay home.

Whether it was right or wrong, whether you agreed with it or not, what, that's not the point. We were all staying home. The need to be able to have something to kind of take your mind off the stuff. The need to have something that people can just laugh at or just be together around people, they can rally around as a fandom.

Uh, by the way, I would also feel the same way about, about professional athletes. Like I'm really glad that the professional sports leagues really strove to keep their stuff going. Um, because people need that. You, you need that, that, that piece. Like that's a big part of society. There are a few things that we need as human beings to survive.

Clothing, food, shelter, right? At some point you need medical care. Some point you need companionship, love, community, entertainment's down that list. But when we start talking about quality of life, enjoyment of life, entertainment's a big thing. When you're building a city, you play, you play those sim games.

Civilization or any of these where you build a thing, you've got, you've gotta put in a movie theater, you've gotta put in a, a, a a, an art theater. You've gotta put in because your people, you gotta put in a park. Cuz people have to be able to have recreation to not riot. You know what I mean? Like, like there is an important responsibility for people in comedy that that really, really matters.

And the people who can do it well should be doing it. I don't feel that urgency now, cuz we're on the other side of it. If you and I, if you and I were to stop doing a podcasting tomorrow, Jeff, it, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like that monumental. But being in a, in a spot where it was needed, it felt monumental.

Now I say all of that to say, when you and I get these emails, when we get these messages from people, Who were in surgery and we helped them get through their surgery or people who were in, in, uh, in the hospital for 6, 8, 9 months. And we were, we were a part of their healing process. You know, like us here, Babylon five for the first time, not some other podcast like this one right here.

Or when we get emails about people who are in familial relationships that are in trouble, husband and wife, father and son, uh, you know, whatever. And we gave them a point of commonality that they could base a relationship on again. And it saves a relation. We get those emails. We, we've had a handful of these emails.

You sit back and you realize not just comedy, entertainment, what we're doing here. It matters. It matters huge. Like for some people out there, this is the thing I think of, I think of Dan Davidson over at the Tre Geeks podcast who talks about how an episode of Deep Space Nine stopped him from committing suicide.

I feel like we've had, have, correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, we've had a few emails where people have like been on the verge of, of su well we, we had one not too long ago. People have been on the verge of suicide and, and Babylon five is what helped get them through. There was one we got, I dunno, a year ago, Jeff, where, and I'm not gonna share the full story, but basically this person was in such a bad spot.

It was like for a year and a half, they just watched Babylon five on repeat and apparently if you just watch it on repeat, you can get it done in about like four or five days. Like just on re, like that's literally all this person did. And he did it for like a year and a half and Babylon five helped him get through like, and that's not us, but that's Babylon five.

But still, like comedy's important and, and doing that thing if you are gifted in it, Is important and don't lose sight of that which is actually truly important to go do something that is also important just because you see it as bigger and better. That's, that's all I got. Babylon five didn't say that. That was not the message they put out there.

Jeff: Nope.

Brent: They had a chance, uh, they could have said something like, Hey, tell people you love them before you don't have a chance to anymore. That didn't happen. Um, hey, you gotta face your fears, face your internal demons face the thing that haunts you from the past to be able to move forward.

Yeah, but that's not where they went with this episode either. So I gave this one zero white stars cuz it didn't really have a message and it, the ones that it did have, it still didn't even deliver them Babylon five way or another.

Jeff: I have two thoughts that come to mind. One is affirming what you just said. Well, one, I, I hope, I hope that it hurt them to say that, right. What you want us to say that our comedy doesn't make a difference? Because I'll tell you two performers that believe they're making a difference in the world are pen and teller.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: So I, I, I, I hope that they were like, oh God, it's a good thing they're paying us a lot cuz this, this is a lie. But it also reminds me of a very specific date. And that's September 13th, 2001. Now most people, when you say September in 2001, you think of nine 11, right? Cuz that's a day. Uh, and so, you know, terrorists, terrorists succeeded on us soil.

They, they, they killed a bunch of people and caused, caused what became global havoc for a long time still. But the world stopped. The United States specifically stopped. I have stories share another time and place, but I was working in the movie theater industry at the time and it, and I worked that day.

And it was, it was weird. It was weird. And a day I'll never forget, a lot of people will never forget that day. But on September 13th, the very first. Large gathering occurred in the United States. It was in San Antonio, and it was a taping that went live of w w e SmackDown. And historians have looked back.

You know, we, we have the gift of hindsight at this point now. And that moment when Vince McMahon decided and his team agreed to continue with their taping in San Antonio, Texas, two days after the tragedy, after the attack, that was the moment that we were able to start getting back

Brent: Right.

Jeff: Told people that things were gonna be okay.

Not good, right? Not awesome, but okay, you can show up again. So just echoing what you were saying on the white star conversation, the one thing I'll offer and I hesitate to even offer a white star on this one, cuz I don't think I would give it one myself on there, but there was a moment. An object lesson where, uh, Lockley is about to agree to sell the station for a day to the Bri Curie, which I don't know about you, but if you have a sale with a set end date to it, isn't that a lease,

Brent: It's a rental. 

Jeff: a rental.

Yeah.

Brent: Call it what you want. It's a rental.

Jeff: So it's whatever. But Jaar

comes in 

Brent: it could be a cell, like if it's just like a handshake gentleman's agreement, like, Hey, we're gonna do this and it's gonna be official and while I don't have to, I'm gonna give it back to you. Right. Then next day. That's the only way that I think it actually becomes official.

Like if they could have reneged on the agreement on Monday morning, like that's it. Yeah. Otherwise,

Jeff: Car came running in. What? Don't do it. Don't do it. You don't know what you're getting into. You can't do this. So then he sleeps on the floor of c and c and afterwards he's like, Aw, I kind of wish I did that. Look how you are. So kinda the lesson I pulled out of that one was, uh, especially when it comes to things from other cultures, don't be so quick to judge.

Maybe take a moment and experience that. I've shared on this podcast before. My wife is Lebanese, much of her family is Muslim, and when we were first dating, um, I was invited to her family's Ramadan celebration. And so with Ramadan, you fast from sun up to sundown. After sundown, there's a big feast.

There's praying, there's talking, there's celebrating. It's, it's, it's a beautiful celebration. I like to say that I look forward to half of Ramadan each year, that half being the sundown part of it. But I got to go and do that, you know, and I came in. Uh, you know, preconceived notions about Muslims and the Islam Islamic faith.

And, uh, you know, some were right, a lot were wrong. But in that moment, like I realized, God, this is a beautiful celebration. Uh, and these are great people and I'm excited to be a part of this family. And I, I may not join your faith, but I'm sure glad you got, you shared part of it with me if I'd come in as jaar.

Whoa. No, no, no. Don't do that. You can't do that, man. I sure would've missed out on a lot. What else are we missing out on? Because we come in with our preconceived notions. So that's a little lesson I got out of this one.

Brent: I'll give it one white star. Then

Jeff: Whoa.

Brent: I'll, I'll, I'll go up for you. One, I, on a scale of zero to five, I'll give you one.

Jeff: It's still, that's a lot more than I

Brent: Yeah. I, I'll give you, I mean, it's a good lesson. I won't elaborate anymore, but it's, it's a good lesson. So you should, you should do that. Well, Jeff, uh, uh, so I rated it on white stars, but, uh, hopefully you're gonna have a much easier time here. Maybe not, I don't know of placing this one in our 100% completely accurate, totally immutable. Scientifically designed ranking of season five of Babylon five. Our current top five is the very long night of Lada Maori, no compromises learning curve of view from the gallery and Paragon of Animals.

Jeff, where do you put Day of the Dead?

Jeff: This is a really hard one.

Brent: Here's a question. Can I ask a question for you? Do that.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: We've kind of pooped all over this episode a bit.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Did you enjoy the episode at all though?

Jeff: I actually really did.

Brent: What? Yeah, like I, last week I did not like the episode, but like the rest of Season five though, like it's not that I didn't like it, I just didn't like it.

Like I didn't not like it. I just didn't like it. Like it was just, it was an episode. You know what my very first note here was? I feel like we're just watching any nineties television show, sci-fi or not. I feel like that's where we've gotten back to. It's just any nineties sci-fi show that could ever be out there.

Jeff: Yeah. I think last week we got, uh, an episode we didn't like to watch, but enjoyed talking about for a podcast situation. This week we got a one, it's whatever move. We've had a long conversation about this from a podcast, but it's stuff we've pulled out. But I enjoyed watching it, and I think for me, when I, when I look at this and I, and I and I, and I'm

Brent: You know why? You know why Byron wasn't in this episode?

Jeff: Dudes for real, that alone's gonna bump it up a spot. In fact, that statement alone, I was between two

Brent: Okay.

Jeff: and, and I was thinking to myself, I'm like, you know, I could, I could rank this based on the assumption that it's a geometry of shadow situation, but also I could be wrong. But that statement, it doesn't have Byron in it answers the question, Brent, this is our new top.

Brett, this is our new number five episode right below a View from the Gallery and Above the Paragon of Animals.

Brent: Fair enough. I thought you were gonna say it was top three and I was like, wow. That just goes to show how mediocre season five has been so far.

Jeff: That's so true. Ugh. Well, that's it for the Day of the Dead. Next week, we are watching the Kingdom of the Blind for the first time. We've never seen these episodes. We avoid thumbnails at all costs. We don't read descriptions or anything. We guess what the next episode is gonna be based on title alone, Brent.

Next week you'll have to pay the piper for what you're about to say. What do you think the Kingdom of the Blind it's going to be about?

Brent: So I think this is where we get back to Byron and the Telepaths, though. Right. And we, we can't get too far away from where we left it last week. Um, but I think this one, the Kingdom of the Blind, this is about Byron Solidifying, solidifying and consolidating his power. Um, the Kingdom of the Blind, I think is a metaphor for the telepaths.

They are the blind, and this is about that kingdom. Uh, I think this is really about Byron just gathering power, bringing more and more telepaths to the station. I think Lockley especially, um, maybe even Sheridan, although Sheridan's probably gonna be a little more on the fence, they kind of start regretting allowing them to stay and giving them the leeway that they gave them here.

Um, remember Sheridan did this because he feels a war coming on with the Telepaths from Earth. What if this is the thing that actually starts the war with the Telepaths from Earth? Because people from Earth are leaving Earth to come out here to do this. And Cycore is not gonna like that. So, um, Yeah. I, I, I, Sheridan's gonna come face to face.

I, he's not gonna be able to have these people on his side. They are going to be the, the cause of this thing. But it's Byron, this is all, Byron. Get ready for a lot of Byron next week, I think.

Jeff: Sheridan's gonna be on the side of Sitecore ultimately.

Brent: Oh gosh. It wouldn't shock me if Ster was in next week's episode.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: So I about you. What

Jeff: Yeah. I'm, I'm not, I'm not far off. I think this will be the first shots fired in the Telepath war, um, not the start of the telepath war. Um, But in fact, to use that last thing, I wouldn't be surprised if Ster showed up either. Cause what I almost see is Byron as king, right. You know, looking all big and whatever.

And I literally see him reciting like a manifesto. This is the manifesto of the telepaths of, of, of my people. It's gonna draw those battle lines. Um, and, and then I think we're gonna dive into the telepath war, but my, that's my prediction. Here's my hope. My hope is that the Telepath War lasts about as long as the Minbar Civil War did.

Brent: Oh, two episodes. Yeah.

Jeff: And we move on.

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: I hope so. Cuz I'm, I'm remember when like the telepath thing, like was like this is gonna be the story. I'm so done with this part right here. Like either, either, either. You know, there's a term we have where I come from, it's time to poop or get off the pot and it's time for Babylon five to poop or get off the pot when it comes to this telepath war thing.

Jeff: Yeah, get it done. We're gonna find out what happens right here next week. Thank you everyone so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. Leave us a rating, a review, and please share this podcast with someone who loves Babylon five, or is just about to fall in love with this incredible series.

So, Brett, until next time.

Yeah, man, what's up?

Brent: Um, why did you say that thing you said before we went on mic?

Jeff: Oh, because it tells me to

Brent: Well, let's get the hell outta here.