{"id":7071,"date":"2018-11-16T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=7071"},"modified":"2018-11-07T13:15:04","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T21:15:04","slug":"mark-watches-babylon-5-s02e18-confessions-and-lamentations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2018\/11\/mark-watches-babylon-5-s02e18-confessions-and-lamentations\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Babylon 5’: S02E18 – Confessions and Lamentations"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the eighteenth episode of the second season of Babylon 5<\/i>, could this show PLEASE stop hurting me, THANKS. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Babylon 5<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For extensive discussion of death and death of a child, illness, ableism, HIV stigma<\/b><\/p>\n

What the fuck WHAT THE FUCK! This show is a lot!!! This did not go as I thought it would and IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S SO GRIM, GOOD GOD. Which is wild to me because the tweet for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Coming of Shadows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d just went live (relative to me), and I thought I had a sense of how grim this show would be, but NOPE.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, an entire fucking species just died on this show. THE WHOLE FUCKING SPECIES. Like, I thought this was sad enough after that child died, but y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

This is a lot. Is there a greater message here? Perhaps, and I actually think the one aspect of this episode that will carry into the future is not<\/i> anything to do with Dr. Franklin or the Markab. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Delenn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relationship with Sheridan, which has just moved a step closer to something\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, actually. Possibly<\/i> romantic? The chemistry is there, and the show has been slowly building an emotional foundation between the two of them. I admit that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d love to see this go forward! I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something unmistakably human, too: finding companionship in some form or another.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But that aspect of the episode, while HEARTBREAKING (the way she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153John!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, will forever destroy me), is just a tiny part of the greater whole. It was hard to watch this episode without<\/i> thinking of the possible analogue to HIV and the stigma that surrounds it. Though I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that the writers (or, I suppose in this case, JMS, since he had writing credit on it) intended for that to be the sole metaphor here. There was a huge moral aspect to the Black Death as well, and I think if JMS had wanted this to be an HIV or AIDS metaphor, he probably wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have made this a disease that acts so rapidly or<\/i> is 100% fatal. Part of how stigma around HIV operates is the mistaken belief that it is an immediate and inevitable death sentence, when that is absolutely not the case with the available medicine in this day in age. I have plenty of HIV+ friends who all got the disease at various stages in their life, at various points in time, and with different drugs available to them. And yes, as sad as it is to say, I have lost friends to HIV, too. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the gay or queer community, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of impossible not<\/i> to know someone who isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affected by HIV.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some value in analyzing this episode as a means of discussing stigma, and I would encourage everyone to do their part in terms of research\u00e2\u20ac\u201dreading available information from trusted sources, including and ESPECIALLY first-person ones\u00e2\u20ac\u201dabout HIV and the stigma that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attached to it. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one aspect this episode totally nails: humans ascribing a moral reason for a disease when there is none present, and then trying to moralize a cure that only makes matters worse. Much of the moralizing around HIV\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat it is a filthy disease, that it warrants slut-shaming, that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gay\u00e2\u20ac\u009d disease\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhas contributed to the silence around it, and that only makes it harder to deal with it on a societal level and<\/i> on a personal one.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But given the way that Drafa spreads, I found the Black Death analogy far more powerful. This is a disease that could possibly wipe communities out in a matter of weeks, but the religious and moral negativity attached to it only makes matters worse. Unsurprisingly, this enrages Dr. Franklin, and we know from past episodes that he detests when religion gets in the way of him trying to do his job. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting, too, since we just learned what Dr. Franklin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s religious leanings are. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to solve this as best as he can, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why Dr. Lazarenn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arc is so damn tragic. I see this as a story of two men trying their best to solve a horrific problem, and when it gets so bad that Dr. Lazarenn is infected, it seems logical to him to volunteer himself to be studied.<\/p>\n

Yet there is so much tragic irony here. Dr. Franklin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s studies of Dr. Lazarenn help him come to an important discovery\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 just sixty seconds after Dr. Lazarenn dies. Delenn and Lennier, fully aware that they risk getting infected themselves, sacrifice their own health so they can comfort the dying Markab. They even help reunite a mother and a daughter separated in the chaos. And right when Dr. Franklin figures out a medicine that can delay death\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand possibly help the Markab develop a resistance to Drafa\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe finds out that all<\/i> the Markab on the station have died. LITERALLY ALL OF THEM.<\/p>\n

This episode is a punch in the gut, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. What the HELL.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Confessions and Lamentations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"