-G'Kar, in a way that text on a screen can't do justice.
First off, an explanation of how these reviews are going: as I work my way through Season 2, episodes that I think are "Arc" episodes will get their own reviews. On days that I watch a standalone,* I'll go back and re-cap a stretch of earlier episodes until I'm caught up. I could say that the reason I'm doing this is because
*Yes, there is no such thing as a standalone episode, because see my above comment about all the Chekhov's Guns.
So the first thing that needs to be said about "Acts of Sacrifice" is that it's the episode that convinced me that Andreas Katsulas was the best actor on the show. He's got a lot of competition, because almost everyone is pitch-perfect. Yes, I ragged on Mira Furlan's accent and how I thought it took Richard Biggs a while to figure out how to play Dr. Franklin, but Biggs had gotten it down pat by the time Season 2 rolled around (seriously, compare his performance in the scene where he turns out to be the leader of the underground psychic railroad in "A Race Through Dark Places" to his first scene in "Infection" and you'll see what I mean), and Furlan's accent is only distracting when she's yelling at someone (and skipping words like "the") - and most of the time she's being the Spock to one character's McCoy and another character's Worf.
(Hey, I know I'm not supposed to mention DS9 in these reviews, but I can mention TOS and TNG characters, right? Oh frak me, Worf was on DS9 after TNG wrapped.)
Where was I? Oh right, Proud Warrior Race Guy with a massive grudge against one of the other major species because, among other things, they killed his father.
Now, I never saw The Gathering, so there was really only one episode ("Midnight on the Firing Line") where G'Kar was blatantly the bad guy. Since then, he's slowly become more sympathetic, while Londo... Remember back in my review of "Midnight on the Firing Line" when I said Londo was a Sicilian? Well, he has his own Godfather II moment here where he realizes that his newfound power has cost him his friends, and now he's all alone. (There is another possibility here, but I somehow doubt that Londo has fond memories of going sledding as a kid.)
But just because Londo's becoming an evil bureaucrat who's trapped in a Faustian bargain doesn't mean that G'Kar automatically becomes a good guy. Delenn points out that eventually, the Narns will regain their war footing and it'll be the Centauri who need help; the two sides just really want the other one dead no matter what, and that can make life difficult for someone dedicated to peace.
Speaking of making life difficult, Ivanova's Big Delegated Task this week is to seal an alliance with... I forgot the name of their species, so I'm just going to call them the Darynan. Why? Because they're a bunch of social darwinists and Darynan is the best anagram of "Ayn Rand" that I could come up with in 30 seconds. Okay, excuse me, they're the Lumati. As I said, they're a bunch of social darwinists who basically think it's a-okay to completely ignore the suffering of inferior people. (Gee, way back in "Midnight on the Firing Line," Ambassador Kosh told Sinclair to ignore the Centauri-Narn conflict because "they are a dying people." Hmm...) But they agree to an alliance once they see that B5's social safety net is basically a big neon sign that says "this way to the slums" - which they accomplish by visiting one of the slums, where all parties are involved are apparently a-okay with the slum being treated as a zoo. I swear, this is the most bizarre thing I've seen on this show, and that includes Londo's Season 1 haircut. I'm trying to imagine walking down the streets of Chicago and talking very loudly about how wonderful a place it is because the worthless people are reduced to begging for money. Are the bums of the future all medicated so that they never cause any major diplomatic incidents?
Speaking of major diplomatic incidents, there's a whole Capulets-and-Montagues thing going on with the Centauri and Narn commoners, which ends up getting a jerk Centauri (whom I'll call Tybalt) killed. G'Kar knows that a) those Centauri jerks have it coming, and b) actually getting revenge on them will have disastrous consequences for his attempts to elicit support from the humans and Mimbari. This is where Andreas Katsulas shines. He's trapped under more prosthetics than any of the other major players, and I've seen Doctor Who documentaries where the actors under prosthetics say they have to over-act in order for their facial expressions to transmit through all that... whatever-it-is. But in the shouting match between G'Kar and Sheridan, Katsulas manages to convey everything he needs to without out-melodrama-ing Bruce Boxleitner. Later on, he tries to calm the Narn commoners' Occupy B5 and manages to be both nakedly emotional and utterly reptilian in the same scene.
If you've read a lot of my reviews, you know I don't ever go on this much about acting. That's how impressed I am with Katsulas's performance in this episode. Granted, this is a bit undermined by the ridiculous fight scene at the end... but only a bit.
(I'd also like to note that this is the second episode in a row where a B5 ambassador is told that they're not truly representative of their species anymore because they've been tainted by the humans. Let's see if that goes somewhere...)
Speaking of being tainted by humans, there's the rest of Ivanova's B-plot. It turns out the Lumati seal their negotiations by having sex. Now, this aired on PTEN, not HBO, so you can already guess that it ain't gonna happen... but after Ivanova realizes that the Lumati rep has no idea what human sex is like, she gets him to agree to do it "human-style," which (in her version) involves her doing a dance where she acts like a stereotypical womanizer, blowing off a lot of steam about past one-night stands (okay I'm making that up - we haven't seen any evidence that she sleeps around) and then faking it during a really good handshake.This is either hilarious or completely over-the-top. Take your pick.
(Yeah, I disagree with the decision to make Ivanova funny. I thought she was plenty funny when she was the station's resident no-nonsense ice queen with a great pessimistic streak.)
Sheridan and Delenn work under the table to get a tiny bit of support for the Narns. This isn't want G'Kar wanted, (he wanted public military support, not covert supplies and a bit of refugee-evacuating) but he realizes that it's all he can get. (I'd also like to note that only Sheridan, not Delenn, is capable of looking G'Kar in the eye during this scene. May or may not be significant.)
Finally, Londo completely ignores the chance to cause more trouble by not making a big issue of Tybalt's death. In return, Garibaldi has a drink with Londo. D'aaaaw, he has his friend back.
The relationship dynamic on B5 has shifted somewhat since Sinclair left, and that might be part of the reason why JMS wanted to write the character out. (Everyone involved in that decision - including actor Michael O'Hare - wanted Sinclair to leave the show, and I'm not going to get into that right now.) While Garibaldi is still on much better terms with Londo than with G'Kar, Sheridan came onto the scene right when Londo started down the slippery slope, and his experience with the two ambassadors is untainted by G'Kar's Season 1 antagonism. We see this dynamic in effect after Tybalt's corpse has been discovered; Garibaldi jumps to the (logical) conclusion that he was killed by a Narn because of his friendship with Londo, whereas Sheridan wants to wait until they actually have all the facts.
"The Coming of Shadows" painted both G'Kar and Londo in unflattering lights. G'Kar was plotting to publicly assassinate the Centauri Emperor; Londo targeted a Narn colony for obliteration in order to further his own political power. Now, even though Londo and G'Kar are both seen being voices of reason - Londo basically ignoring a dead Centauri provocateur and G'Kar trying to stop a bunch of Narn provocateurs - and even though we do sympathize at least a bit with Londo when Garibaldi barely gives him the time of day, our sympathies in general are more with G'Kar this time. (Maybe Londo's new black coat has something to do with it.)
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