#about how Minkowski dealt with Eiffel being stranded in space
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Pan-Pan, Boléro, and Minkowski's different responses to loss
I want to compare two key lines of Minkowski's which indicate very different responses to grief:
In Ep29 Pan-Pan, Minkowski breaks down and says "Doug Eiffel is gone! There was nothing we could do to save him. It wasn't anyone's fault. It's horrible, and pointless, and it just happened."
In contrast, after arriving at the funeral in Ep46 Boléro, she says "[Lovelace, Hilbert and Maxwell are dead] to make the fact that we're not gone yet important. They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here."
TL;DR: In Pan-Pan, Minkowski expresses her unprocessed grief through despair and hopelessness. Whereas in Boléro, she is able to find hope in the loss and lead her crew in trying to move forward. I suggest a significant reason of the difference is the presence of Eiffel to force Minkowski to confront and process the sense of loss.
Pan-Pan: "It's horrible, and pointless, and it just happened"
In Pan-Pan, the whole episode is full of anger and despair, but Minkowski speaking about the horrible pointlessness of losing Eiffel is one of the most painful and hopeless moments. It doesn't feel like she's really speaking to the others. She's focused on her internal despair (as suggested by the fact that she goes on to talk about the cracks, which Lovelace and Hilbert aren't supposed to know about).
The only potentially positive thing Minkowski says here is her recognition that "it wasn't anyone's fault". When Hera and Hilbert have been blaming Lovelace, and Minkowski has been blaming herself, it's significant that she acknowledges that sometimes a horrible thing just happens without there being anyone to blame.
But in this context, and in the tone of voice Minkowski uses, even the lack of blame doesn't really feel like a positive thing. If Eiffel becoming stranded was just pointless and random, if there was nothing any of them could have done to save him, then the next tragedy might be just as unpredictable and unpreventable. Minkowski strikes me as the kind of person who can sometimes fall into the trap of subconsciously wishing that the awful thing is her fault because then at least she'd have control over something. In her train of thought here, the lack of blame is followed by focusing on how horrible and pointless what happened to Eiffel was. The only conclusion she can draw is "it just happened". There's no sense of hope in those lines. Eiffel being stranded just happened, and so do the cracks, and the crew are at the whims of brutal fortune with no meaning to any of it.
Boléro: "They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here"
In Boléro, Minkowski can't even say that the tragedy wasn't anyone's fault. For each of the deaths, someone pulled a trigger. There is blame, and some of it lies at her feet. She didn't want to come to the funeral because at first she didn't know what she could say about the deaths she feels responsible for.
Yet even so, this time she finds something reassuring she can say to her crew, a grain of hope she can provide without attempting to diminish the loss: "[they're gone] to make the fact that we're not gone yet important. They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here."
In another show, or another context, this kind of line might have had an 'everything happens for a reason' tone, which is something I deeply dislike as a response to other people's loss. But it doesn't feel like that's what Minkowski is saying here at all. She isn't trying to make any grand philosophical statement about the ultimate beneficence of the universe, or about how mortality gives meaning to human life. What she says here is working on a much more personal level. It's more about finding something other than despair that the crew can take from what has happened. This tragedy may still be horrible, but it provides a reminder that they are still alive in a context where that's far from guaranteed. Minkowski emphasises that the fact the survivors are alive matters - her crew matters. I'd argue that this contrasts with the 'it just happened' outlook discussed above.
I don't know how much Minkowski fully feels the importance of them still being there in the moment, but it's something that she can offer her crew, something that she can say in a situation that words can't grasp. I think the moment when she joins the funeral is such a key moment of her leadership. In the end, despite her doubts and struggles, she's there for her crew. Eiffel brought them together for a funeral, but he doesn't know what to say when Hera asks why they have to be gone. Minkowski enters just at the right moment to support her crew and she provides an answer to Hera's question. It's not a perfect answer, but it allows the funeral to move forward. It allows the crew to move forward (even if that emotional movement is somewhat thrown off by a dramatic change in the circumstances). Minkowski starts off the eulogies; she leads her crew in the acknowledgement of what's been lost.
Why such a difference in responses?
There's lots of ways you could interpret the difference between the outlook of these two moments, and there's probably more to say about it though the lens of Minkowski's character development than I'm going to say here. But for me, the main difference between these moments is that, in Pan-Pan, it feels like no processing or recognition of grief has really occurred. When Minkowski says "Doug Eiffel is gone!", it almost feels like the first time that Minkowski has fully confronted and acknowledged the loss. Eiffel has been lost in space for 116 days, but it's only at the end of this episode that Minkowski brings herself to say in her distress calls that he is "presumed dead". Whereas in Boléro, she's already eulogising the dead and thinking about what can be learned from the loss, not even a full day after the mutiny.
Obviously there is much less ambiguity to a body bag (or least there would be, if not for alien interference). But I can't help thinking that the difference between the attitudes towards loss which Minkowski displays in these two quotes is less about the difference in the kind of loss, and more about a situation that prompted and enabled the processing of emotions in Boléro: namely, the funeral. After Eiffel was stranded in space, I think Minkowski probably went months without looking her grief in the eye. But after the deaths of Lovelace, Hilbert, and Maxwell, Eiffel's suggestion of a funeral forces Minkowski to confront her complicated emotions and provides a space in which she can offer direction to her grieving crew.
This is a good illustration of how I think Minkowski and Eiffel complement and support each other in a really valuable way. On his own, Eiffel couldn't provide the leadership that the crew needed for the funeral to work. But without Eiffel, and his determination to recognise the emotional weight of the three deaths, the funeral would never have happened and Minkowski would never have been in a position to provide hope and direction to her crew. When Eiffel was the one the Hephaestus crew were grieving, Minkowski couldn't offer much emotional direction to her crew beyond despair. But when Eiffel is beside her in the grief, saying that the grief deserves to be felt, then Minkowski can find a way for them to move forward emotionally. It's not the deaths that remind them how important it is that they are still here. It's the grief. It's the ability to confront that grief together.
#Wolf 359#w359#Renée Minkowski#Renee Minkowski#Doug Eiffel#I know that this is a lot to say about two short-ish quotes but I think they are symbolic / indicative of broader patterns#Also some of this probably contradicts things that I've said at other points#about how Minkowski dealt with Eiffel being stranded in space#But it's complicated. okay?#Sometimes I want to think about her grieving him and what that would look like#And sometimes I want to think about how in his absence she's much less able to process her emotions at all#Either way I'm emotional about them#This wasn't even initially meant to be a Minkowski & Eiffel post tbh#I just had this thought as I was writing this#It also wasn't meant to be 1000 words but these things just happen#Btw when I say I dislike the idea 'everything happens for a reason'#I fully respect if people find that a useful approach for their own personal misfortunes#but as soon as you start saying it to anyone else who is suffering#it feels distasteful to me#Maybe everything happens for a reason but sometimes the reason is shit etc#Eiffel & Minkowski#w359 spoilers#Wolf 359 spoilers#the empty man posteth#tw death#tw grief
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