Eyes is better than the two preceding episodes but still falls ever so short of Signs and Portents which is why I always recommend skipping it to newbies who haven't seen the show before. They can go back there once they're hooked.*g*
Impressions upon rewatching: the Garibaldi + Lennier + motorcycle subplot is still cute, and the scenes between Harriman and Ivanova are great. Harriman pretty much comes across as a proto John Matheson, and serves to flesh out Psi Corps as not consisting of uniformely evil thugs. It's the main plot, or rather, the ending of the main plot which is the problem. Turning Ben Zayn into a raving lunatic for the last ten minutes is an easy way out, and the critique of Sinclair gets devalued much as the one of Sheridan in the s4 finale, or the one of Delenn and her certainty of being the chosen one by the fact it comes from a torturer (and Jack the Ripper, no less) in Comes the Inquisitor. The only example where JMS didn't take this easy way out I can think of is In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, where the episode clearly means the audience to recognize Sheridan's behaviour as problematic as well, and doesn't see "but Morden is a villain!" as an acceptable reason.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-05-11 08:18 am (UTC)Impressions upon rewatching: the Garibaldi + Lennier + motorcycle subplot is still cute, and the scenes between Harriman and Ivanova are great. Harriman pretty much comes across as a proto John Matheson, and serves to flesh out Psi Corps as not consisting of uniformely evil thugs. It's the main plot, or rather, the ending of the main plot which is the problem. Turning Ben Zayn into a raving lunatic for the last ten minutes is an easy way out, and the critique of Sinclair gets devalued much as the one of Sheridan in the s4 finale, or the one of Delenn and her certainty of being the chosen one by the fact it comes from a torturer (and Jack the Ripper, no less) in Comes the Inquisitor. The only example where JMS didn't take this easy way out I can think of is In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, where the episode clearly means the audience to recognize Sheridan's behaviour as problematic as well, and doesn't see "but Morden is a villain!" as an acceptable reason.