In episode one the Narn and Centauri were at each other's throats, and in this one Commander Sinclair is tasked with getting them to agree about something - namely to come to a treaty over the Euphrates sector. Not only is he hampered by Ambassadors Mollari and G'Kar's mutual dislike of each other, but also the fact that Mollari is distracted by a love affair with beautiful dancer Adira Tyree.
The episode reveals a lot about Mollari, and about Centauri culture being one obsessed with status. Adira takes joy in Mollari's title, using it even in bed, but when he suggests taking her somewhere public for breakfast she worries at the damage this would do to his reputation. Mollari, for his part, doesn't care about their difference in status. There's something of the mid-life crisis in the way he moons over a younger woman to the detriment of his duties, but it's also our first hint of Londo as a hopeless romantic.
While Londo's shirking his duties, his aide Vir gets to play ambassador. There are some amusing scenes of Vir playing with a handheld videogame console while the negotiators wait for Ambassador Mollari, and of G'Kar and his newly-arrived aide Ko'Dath playing with it together, while Sinclair despairs over the whole thing. Vir himself is so bumbling and good-natured that he seems ill-suited for a career in politics, but his appointment makes sense in a society where influence is everything - Mollari himself has pulled strings to get relatives favourable positions, an important plot point in Midnight on the Firing Line.
What Londo doesn't realise is that Adira's a slave - contracted out by her own government into the service of an alien called Trakis. He wants to use her to gain access to House Mollari's "purple files", the sensitive information held on the other houses that allows them to maintain position and status. Adira reluctantly copies the files, but when the time comes to give them to Trakis she runs instead. Trakis uses devious tricks to find her, bugging Mollari while he and Sincair look for her, then Sinclair uses devious tricks of his own to find out where she is by persuading telepath Talia Winters to take the information from Trakis's surface thoughts. This isn't the first time he's used dirty tricks to solve a problem and it won't be the last, and it makes him much more interesting than his later replacement commander Sheridan who's much more straightforward.
As well as characterisation for Ambassador Mollari, the episode relays character information in the B plot of Garibaldi chasing around the station trying to find out who's using the restricted gold communications channel without authorisation. It turns out it's Ivanova using it to speak to her dying father, a relationship that will feature in a later episode, and it says a lot about her that she hasn't asked Sinclair for permission. Garibaldi figures it out in time to see their final conversation, and later tells her the problem was a computer glitch in such a way as to make sure she knows he found her out and is letting her off - this time. Londo himself gets a bittersweet ending: Adira is freed, but chooses to return home to Centauri space for a time rather than stay with him. While at first glance it doesn't appear this episode does much to tie in to the wider plot, this relationship lays the groundwork for something monumental in season three.