grüße

I might next year as I plan to rewatch (maybe actually gif things this time? It would be pretty awesome. There's all these moments I always wanted gifs and gifsets of but nobody ever made them because they didn't feature actual cast characters) but here's some thoughts I wrote in March when I still thought I would have time for it, which believe it or not was actually about Garibaldi.

idk man the muse struck and I followed it. He is not a character I think about or write about a lot. Actually I'll be even more honest: I don't like Garibaldi. I don't like the character, I definitely don't like the actor (and since the actor's vibes and values do slip through - and this was on purpose - it is even less easy to separate the art from the artist than usual), and I don't like the s5 ending of "space capitalism wins the day". I don't mind giving Garibaldi a happily ever after, I just don't like that particular HEA. Quite frankly I think Lise can and should do better.

But I don't want to not-like Garibaldi, necessarily. There are elements of his character and arc that are very powerful, and very well-done. Sometimes his dialogue can be witty. I don't mind procedural storylines, and I don't mind cops in fiction, especially when on occasion the narrative holds them accountable for the stark reality of their rightwing worldviews which Babylon 5 has a better track record of doing than idk NCIS. Actually, I really adore everything about the S4 Garibaldi arc and I wish it doubled down harder than it did in S5. So I've always wanted to look for ways to keep what I like and be able to softly explain away the things I don't like.

Every time I rewatch S1, there's two episodes that stand out for me as just.... very boring, and they are TKO and Survivors. Are these in and of themselves bad episodes? Probably not, but for me they are, because they're Garibaldi episodes. Most of the time in S1 when we see Garibaldi, we're also seeing him with Sinclair, and he's more of a supporting character in Sinclair's story. This is more satisfying to me: their relationship on-screen as characters is extremely meaningful for both characters. But now that I'm rewatching the series with the high quality blu-ray (it was worth it, oh my god it was so worth it) I find myself being more forgiving, and more open to exploring ideas, especially for episodes and characters I'd originally written off. Like Garibaldi.

So here's my Garibaldi backstory theory, and here's how I think TKO and Survivors could both have been made much stronger episodes for its inclusion...

===

1. Let's suppose Garibaldi's had a rough teenage life. (aka, let's suppose his dad dies much younger than is said in canon. Or his dad was super old when he had Garibaldi. Either way, Garibaldi's teen life is very no dad so sad.)

There's a number of plausible reasons people might have shitty teenage lives. Being a teenager is a bit shit even if you have a relatively stable situation! Canonically, Garibaldi's from Earth, was born there, and lived there during his childhood. We know his father was in the Dilgar war as a Marine, and we know his father made him bagna cauda every year on his birthday, and we know his grandmother (tho not sure if maternal or paternal; for the purposes of this meta I'll assume paternal) was a member of the Boston PD.

There's some other information about his dad's cooking abilities spruced up for the B5 cookbook "Dining on Babylon 5". I'm not considering it as particularly canon, but I'm also not discarding it. You can go find it if you like, it's quite nice and says cool things about how much Alfredo Garibaldi really loves cooking. (And if you can't, I have a pdf download link I can send you, if you reach out in the comments.)

Apparently the Garibaldis move to Mars some time after the Dilgar war broke out, which would put it at young Michael being 9ish at the time, and he spends some years growing up there. He doesn't seem to have good memories of Mars in S4, although in Hunter, Prey (S2) he describes this period of his life as being "crazy, innocent, and optimistic as hell". I'm taking that latter quote as having being said with a significant edge of bittersweetness: that Michael is reflecting on how crazy it felt to him, and how innocent and optimistic he was, before Mars dug in deep and Changed Him.

It's not clear how old his dad is in relation to Michael. He's at least 36 years old when Michael is born, since Garibaldi describes his father's death from Torg Syndrome at 75 (in A Spider in the Web), at which point Garibaldi himself is 38, so that math checks out if Alfredo Garibaldi passed away in 2259. But that's also not that likely imo, or Garibaldi probably would have said something over season 2? or 1? if his dad was dying or recently deceased. The way Garibaldi relates the story of his dad's Torg's Syndrome feels a lot more distant than that. Like I don't talk about my father having passed away in such a distant manner, because to me it feels like only a few years ago (even though by now, it's been almost a decade). This is why I feel like it makes more sense that for Michael, it's been awhile. There's some distance; it's not as raw.

So I figure likely his dad died in Michael's 20s, but for reasons of angst, and making this Martian teen period of his life much worse, I think it would be more interesting if his dad develops Torg's Syndrome or some precursor to it during his time in the Dilgar war, during Michael's childhood. Garibaldi Sr's security career is therefore significantly cut short. Whether the onset of Torg's Syndrome is directly caused by the war, or some injury stemming from it, or whether Alfredo Garibaldi was legit in his 60s when he had Michael, is up to you, but I think it'd be interesting either way:

- if Alfredo Garibaldi died young, then his parents could still be alive, and maybe Michael's grandmother (the former Boston PD police officer with the slug thrower) steps in to raise Michael, who is still just a tidge too young to be on his own. But I imagine it's difficult when your father dies when you're young, especially if you had a really good relationship with him, and a lot of the feelings of your own masculinity is tied up in the father figure - it's also difficult from the grandmother's perspective, as she lost a son. Through no fault of their own, Michael & Grandma Garibaldi might have been poorly matched as child and guardian, and maybe that's enough to explain why Michael goes a bit wild as a teen on Mars. Or, perhaps it was worse: perhaps Garibaldi's grandmother is genuinely a really difficult (even abusive) person, and that helps spurn Michael's own difficulty. Either way teenagedom becomes hard for him.
- if Alfredo Garibaldi died old, then his parents would likely not be alive anymore, and young Michael would have been put into some sort of care system. I don't know what that would look like in the 2200s, but if I liked perfect futuristic utopias where everyone is happy and cared-for, I would be watching Star Trek, not Babylon 5.

Notice I've said nothing about Michael's mother. I generally assume that side of the family isn't in the picture at all. Maybe she signed away custody, maybe Michael's adopted/maybe Alfredo was a single parent, maybe Alfredo is trans actually, there's lots of options here.

All this could conspire to give Garibaldi a pretty shit youth on Mars. This would go a long way too in explaining his paranoia, as well as his strong feelings of loyalty between friends: he's used to operating in tribe-like settings, because when shit got rough on Mars, he did what a lot of kids with rough teen years do and turned to gangs. Maybe he felt he had no other choice, maybe it was him looking for the father figure and sense of family whose loss he still feels keenly. Either way, Mars grinds him down.




2. In Survivors: Let's suppose Frank Kemmer is about fifteen years older than Garibaldi.

In some ways you can really tell that Babylon 5 is written by a man born in the 1950s. Even when it's guest writers, they're also still very much 50s mindset creatures. You go to high school, you finish at 17, you start your career the next year. If you have an apprenticeship that could take a year or two, but either way, you're a working man by age 20. You might even be married, you might even have your first kid and are working on your second. You might well own your own house, which is both available and affordable for you on a single income. Few people go to university; a bachelor's degree is a mark of money or intelligence or a particular direction in a particular career or all three but the important thing is, it's not mandatory and required to be a productive member of society.

I really don't think I need to explain to anybody reading this why this is no longer the case and just, hilariously dated.

But people writing in the 90s and born in the 50s could not have possibly anticipated the societal knock-on effects of the personal computer. Setting why I blame the computer(/internet) aside - it's kind of out of scope for this essay - the point I'm driving at is: Garibaldi has between the ages of maybe-12 and 20 an unexplained 8 years gap of teenage trauma on Mars. Somewhere during all that, he cleans up enough to join Earthforce (or maybe it's a condition of some probation?). In today's society this era might well have persisted into his 20s, buuuut it's a 90s TV show, so out of the end of those 8 years, in 2241, as a 20-year-old junior in his career but nevertheless in a fucking career at 20, Michael takes a job through Earthforce working security on Europa.

Enter Frank Kemmer.

Michael has, by this point, some formative notion of right and wrong. In my theory, his dad has passed some years prior, but he remembers his father and his values clearly! Michael sees shit go down on Europa that he really doesn't like, and maybe it echoes worse years of Mars where he saw shit he really didn't like either. There's a sense of justice that he has, that he's had to suppress for awhile, to be able to make it through the day. It's draining his will to live, and he has already turned to drink.

I imagine with a difficult teenage period, Michael's first drink was in his early teens, and the edginess of drinking alcohol as a teenager - a risque kind of thing - has waned. He used to do it to fit in or seem cool; now he's doing it to cope. I imagine he's not the only one on Europa who drinks to cope; it probably helps him fit in with the other, more corrupt security officers, not all of whom are as OK with the corruption they feel obliged to turn a blind eye to, or even contribute to. Drink lets Garibaldi be one of the boys, while keeping some parts of him (his moral system, the last vestiges of his father) out of their clutches.

But Lt Kemmer sees enough in Michael to at least want to make a difference, and that's where the friendship starts. I firmly believe part of Frank also thinks: I can save him. And I think Michael probably wants to be saved, for a number of reasons: Frank gives him family, Frank gives him friendship. If Frank, to Michael, is about 15 years older than Michael, that's just enough of a big-brother feel that Michael really looks up to him, and with Michael's past as being in gangs, vs his father, this is what he needs.

I also definitely think Frank is Michael's first crush on a man, or first love, or first love in a long time. (Frank Kemmer according to the comics has a wife but we could go full Voyager on this and delete the wife, or if we keep her around then there's also elements of crushing on someone unattainable. Either way, angst for Michael.) This is a lot for Michael to be dealing with: balancing the refreshing prospects of life and friendship and/or love (regardless of whether his feelings are reciprocated), vs the depressing reality of his work on Europa.

Also, this makes it extra crushing on Michael when Frank dies, which is 100% the point.

Michael's relationship to Lianna feels very much "little sister" to me, not pseudo-daughter figure. She looks maybe 7ish in 'Survivors' in Garibaldi's flashback, and that would fit with Frank having become a relatively-young father maybe around 26 or so, and thus no more than 15 years older than Michael. Michael probably sees a lot of himself in her, and when Frank dies, it's not just him losing someone close to him all over again, it's another theatrical playing-out of the same things that happened to him as a kid: being too young and losing your dad at an extremely vulnerable age.

I don't think early-20s Michael has the emotional capacity to deal with any of this. I don't think a lot of us would. So I'm not surprised that he runs. He doesn't step up and become a guardian for Lianna, even if he wanted to. He isn't able to, he's still processing his own loss, and this is massively triggering for him. But I think he does want to step up. He sees what Frank does for him and he sees something aspirational in it. To be someone's big brother, Michael thinks, would be good for him, it would be a chance for him to do some good for someone in similar difficult teenage circumstances. It'd let him repair what was done to him in a therapeutic way, and it'd help someone against going down the same path he did. In truth, to be someone's big brother would suit Michael very well.

Just .... not right now.

I think Lianna's behaviour in Survivors makes sense regardless of whether or not she has a mom to take over care for her, but it would be extra crushing on Garibaldi if she doesn't, and so he looks back on his early years believing that he technically could have stepped up but he didn't and because of that Lianna wound up in a care system, just like he did, after she lost her dad, just like he did. It gives him extra layers of misplaced guilt and might fuel what I'm about to introduce in the next section. This is another reason I'm a fan of forgetting about the wife (who is only mentioned in the comics; in the episode itself Garibaldi only refers to Frank's family which could be just Lianna, Lianna and a cat, Lianna a cat and a goldfish, etc).

Ultimately, not a lot has to change in Survivors to make it better quality TV imo, but what I would want to improve it, is to really draw out these elements to show that it isn't just some one-off alcoholism episode, this is triggering for Garibaldi in multiple ways that hit hard, and way too close to home, because Frank's death and his guilt over Lianna was the watershed moment for him in many ways. The guilt comes through in the episode well enough, but I would want it to come out waaaay more. Garibaldi was a shuttle pilot on Mars before coming to B5 - so sometime between Frank Kemmer's death and S1, Garibaldi retraces Kemmer's steps in his own career! That connection should be made a lot more clear, so that Frank - and by extension Lianna - mean so much more to Garibaldi and these ghosts from his past that he feels he could not possibly apologise enough to should haunt him a lot more viscerally. With that, I don't think anybody would be surprised that Garibaldi does start drinking: it is so common to fall back into addiction when you're surrounded by environmental cues from a previous period of addiction, your brain has already prepared for the drug.



3. In TKO: Let's also suppose Walker Smith and Garibaldi go way back and are closer than just casual acquaintances. Walker Smith can then be a little more interesting, because of what he means to Garibaldi.

So, TKO. It's a shit episode and there's a lot of ways you could make it less shit that don't have anything to do with Garibaldi:

- it's a boxing episode with a supposed-underdog character newly introduced that we don't really give a shit about; indeed, a cast member is not the protagonist of the A-plot. Harder to care about it as a result unless there are significant stakes for a cast member, in whom we already have investment.

- it's a cheesy boxing episode. So ... so TKO is really just Mortal Kombat in space. Or maybe Rocky in space. Or maybe Karate Kid in space. Or idk literally any 80s/90s tv show that had a one-off boxing episode because so many of them did. There's nothing that seems to tie it to B5 specifically. You could pull the entire episode out and drop it into any other deep space franchise and it would be the fucking same and about as meaningful. Zima cannot save this derivative piece of schlock.

- the Mu-tai is the only time we actually see Yolu culture and that's SUCH a fucking shame because the info we get in the encyclopedia about them makes them sound really interesting! Alas, the choreography and setup of the Mu-tai is very human influenced, and the Yolu don't matter in the future of B5 for worldbuilding purposes. This could have been brought back for ranger training in S5 as Yolu do join when the ISA opens up ranger membership to all races. (Or, even better in S3, to give Neroon something to really be mad about or show that Neroon doesn't hate all alien races equally, it's literally only humans. (Yes, I will put Neroon in every essay.)) We never see the Mu-tai again. Also why does a boxer manage to hold his own against what is apparently death-match MMA after like a day's worth of training? It's giving 'humans are special and are better at alien things than the aliens'. :/

- the episode feels really racist: Mu-tai, Muay Thai ... really, they could not have named it anything else?? Again, as said before, the whole setup of the Mu-tai is not alien enough and feels too human influenced, which means the trappings around the Mu-tai specifically feel Fantasy Asian. It comes off as overdone to the point of stereotyping. While that is legit Soon-Tek Oh's own accent, it's also in the writing and dialogue choice ("Into the Sands of Blood comes <character name>, bravest of his race!"). Maybe if the Mu-tai had been less Fantasy Asian in its construction and callbacks, the casting for the Muta-do would've worked a bit better and felt less stereotypical.

Now, you could make a neat argument about the episode being about cultural appropriation from a human -> alien perspective, but evidence is thin if that's the argument you're making, at least imo. The Mu-tai is apparently partly spiritual but I don't see any evidence of Walker Smith learning something spiritual. ("Bust a few snakeheads and make a big splash on the nets" says Walker Smith, and that is his entire MO for entering the Mu-tai in the first place.) In fact, he doesn't conclusively seem to learn about Yolu culture at all, he just - gets what he came for and then exeunt stage right as everyone claps and chants his name. I almost wonder if the cultural appropriation themes would have been doubled-down on had Walker Smith had been cast differently (that is, if he'd been played by a white actor) - had they been diluted because someone knew that 1990s audiences would pick up a different vibe? But this is speculation. In the future, I'd buy that every human has the ability to be racist to aliens, buuuut if that's what you're going for, you should be even more diverse in your casting elsewhere. B5 usually got this pretty good in terms of extras or one-line characters, but extras =/= protagonist or significant supporting character of the A-plot.

Anyway, it's a bit weak to say there's a deeper theme of cultural appropriation, that feels more like a post-hoc analysis at best.


Addressing any of these would (imo) have already helped make TKO stronger as a whole. But since this is a Garibaldi essay, I'll focus instead on more Garibaldi-related points.

First off, hearkening back to Garibaldi's desire to do good and help others out of bad spots in a way that Frank helped him. There's a lot of evidence for Garibaldi approaching people who were on their last ropes, had nowhere else to turn, etc, and giving them a job or assistance - in fact, it's one of the reasons he blows up in S3 at the increasingly Nightwatch-flavoured staff he's now got, who oust him for their new loyalties not to him but to Nightwatch (in S3's Point of No Return). It plays into Garibaldi's strong notion of loyalty as well if he's been there for people, and (maybe a little manipulatively) expects them to be loyal to him in return. Perhaps this is something Garibaldi does a lot: big brothers other people, turns around the good that was done to him (by Frank Kemmer, by Sinclair) to do the same to others in a pay-it-forward scheme. Perhaps the manipulative-adjacent elements of quid-pro-quo come from his days in Martian gangs. You could argue he does this out of his own goodwill and belief in paying-it-forward, you could equally argue he does it out of guilt for having been a slip-up in the first place (as atonement; where he can't apologise to the people he's wronged during his bad turns, he can at least repair harm at a societal level). I think both simultaneously kind of make sense for his character.

With that in mind, we should expand Walker Smith's backstory a bit. Maybe he also is one of those characters who are on their last ropes whom Garibaldi helped out. In canon, he was apparently booked by Garibaldi for something (it's not said what) and that's what made them friends. What if we made their relationship a bit deeper?

Let's say sometime in his late 20s, after he's dealt with his grief over Frank and set aside his guilt over Lianna, Michael's at last in the right frame of mind, emotionally and physically, to start paying it forward. He does so, with someone he spots as being like him: Walker Smith. We could give him a backstory of having also had a shit teen life and having turned to crime or gangs or drugs or even all three (again, just like Garibaldi). Walker's running out of options. When the inevitable run-in with the law happens, it happens with Michael, who seizes an opportunity to be the big brother that someone once was for him.

Your choice if Walker sees Michael in the same light that Michael saw Frank; that could be delightfully toxic if pushed into such territory. But I think it would be cool if a) Walker Smith has some difficulty with drugs due to his past and b) he gets out of it through boxing which provides the structure he's lacked from ordinary street-fighting, and c) turning to boxing in the first place is Michael's idea and suggestion to Walker. It pays off big time: Walker winds up fucking loving boxing, and moreover he winds up being good at it. This is now a niche that could lead to opportunity, as well as an outlet for his anger. And it brings Walker and Michael together as closer friends.

It also makes TKO make a bit more sense if Walker Smith has had drug problems. So has Garibaldi, and Garibaldi gets slipping off the wagon so badly that it costs you your job - which is what Walker says happened to him in TKO:

"I worked long and hard for a title shot. And I didn't think there was anything they could do."
"And that's when they framed you?"
"Like a picture. Doctored my blood tests to make it look like I was popping adrenals. Spread the word that I was a stooge for the Syndi. The nets ate it up and me along with it."

Walker extrapolates a bit:

"I haven't been able to get a legitimate fight in over two years. I earned that shot, Mike. I sweated for it, I bled for it, I dreamed of it. And they took it away from me like it was nothing. Like I was nothing."

This also gives Walker something more spiritual that could play into his reasons for the Mu-tai. He's not just doing it as a PR stunt. He doesn't come from privilege and he's had to work hard and prove himself and someone with power effortlessly took it all away. But maybe something deep within him does have him turning too readily to an easy win through doping. Maybe he does that because he has control issues. Maybe he does it because he feels he needs to be the best and competition is fierce and he needs the edge to guarantee his success, which he now knows can all too easily be taken away from him. Maybe it really is nothing more than someone wanted him to fix a fight and he wouldn't out of his principles and now he's paying for it, because now nobody wants to be even near him, and doping is out of desperation to guarantee (and after all there's an element of double jeopardy to it - he's already been vilified for a crime he didn't do! might as well actually do it!?? like shit, they can't damn him twice!). If he has precedent for drugs then a doping scandal might really harm him. All of these are good conditions for falling off a wagon, and it would be good to see him do that in this episode, especially because in Survivors, that's exactly what Garibaldi does also.

So that's at least one thing I'd change: give Walker more personality and backstory and weave it deep into Garibaldi's. Related to that, I'd change that this episode is about Walker Smith's PR Stunt Of Glory - instead, it's more about Walker Smith's Difficult Relationship With Big Brother Figure Michael Garibaldi, whom he idolises and turns to when shit is at its worst. Here we could see whether Garibaldi could forgive Walker to ease his pain - and in so doing forgive himself - or if he puts the pressure on, in an effort to help Walker get out of a hole he's dug himself (after someone also put him in it). In approaching Garibaldi, Walker knows he's fucked up, and he wants something from Garibaldi - forgiveness, support, fuck's sake maybe even just a goddamn hug - he's emotionally more fragile than he lets on.

In fact, another thing I'd change: I don't think Walker Smith should enter the Mutai at all. I think the Mutai should exist in this episode as a sort of horizon goal. Caliban (the Brakiri who helps train Walker and tells him how to slip into the Mutai anyway) could be cast rather as a figure egging Walker on to do it anyway for his own benefit, and Garibaldi could be positioned diametrically opposite. Thus Walker finds himself caught between two forces.

Tbh Caliban's own reasons for being here at all are super murky and could be expanded upon or left secret, or be even nefarious/opportunist. Maybe Caliban's reasons for doing this are specifically a way to get back at his own brother figure, which could be the Muta-do (big brother), or Gyor (to whom Caliban was big brother to, and who surpassed him in a way that Caliban grew envious of), presenting a foil of a big brother relationship gone sour and toxic.

Like it's okay, actually, if aliens have something that humans aren't allowed to be in! It would be very okay! It even makes thematic sense because Minbari don't do it either. Instead, maybe this episode ends instead with Walker Smith catching the eye of Gyor, who proposes a separate, private fight - Gyor who's specifically heard of Walker's trials, and who recognises that there is a spiritual component to it after all (the drugs, the dream). And Gyor shows him a few things and humbles him, and maybe presents a different view to big brother. Maybe this episode can be less about cultural appropriation because it kind of half-assed that. Changing so much about it I wouldn't call it TKO at all but maybe something like, Brothers in Arms.