{"id":288,"date":"2008-04-13T03:40:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T03:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.wordpress.com\/2008\/04\/13\/gino-4-2-review-spoilers"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:34:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:34:48","slug":"gino-4-2-review-spoilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/gino-4-2-review-spoilers\/","title":{"rendered":"GINO 4.2 Review – Spoilers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woody Allen\u2019s output has been wildly uneven over the years, but one of his best films is 1994\u2019s Bullets Over Broadway,<\/span> in which a 1930s mobster bankrolls a Broadway play in order to give his horrifically untalented actress girlfriend a starring role \u2013 and something to do. At one point, an understudy goes on for her, and everyone notices that not only does this improve every scene in which she appears, but also the scenes in which she does not appear. Suddenly, all of the other characters have more heft, because you can believe that they take the girlfriend\u2019s character seriously, even when she is offstage.<\/p>\n

Witness a real-life example of this principle in the third Godfather<\/span> movie, where Sofia Coppola single-handedly mutilates the franchise with her limpid, vacant performance. It\u2019s impossible to believe she\u2019s Michael Corleone\u2019s daughter, or that Andy Garcia is truly in love with her, and consequently the movie unravels completely by the third act. The final scene, when she dies in her father\u2019s arms, is supposed to be the ultimate tragedy for the Corleone character, and, instead, it\u2019s unintentionally funny. One bad acting apple truly spoils the whole bunch.<\/p>\n

You can see where I\u2019m going with this, can\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

Moore and Co. have made the fatal mistake of hanging this entire series on the shoulders of one Katee Sackhoff, whose performance as Kara Thrace ranges all the way from really loud to really, really loud. She screams a lot. She seems to like screaming a lot. She\u2019s like a Spinal Tap amplifier constantly turned up to 11, and that leaves her with nowhere else to go. She\u2019s incapable of subtlety; she\u2019s incapable of dynamics; she\u2019s ultimately incapable of acting.<\/p>\n

She ruins not only her own scenes, but also the scenes where she is not present.<\/p>\n

Consider the moment in Adama\u2019s quarters, when Olmos and Roslin are sparring over whether it\u2019s appropriate to believe Starbuck. It\u2019s actually a fairly well-written scene, and both Olmos and Roslin have the chops to carry it off. But it doesn\u2019t work, and it\u2019s only when you consider Sackhoff as the poison pill that you realize why. They\u2019re taking Starbuck seriously, and it\u2019s impossible for the audience to follow suit. All their gravitas can\u2019t add enough heft to ground Sackhoff\u2019s angry wisp of a character.<\/p>\n

In the end, though, fixing Sackhoff would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This is a show that lost its way a long time ago, and it\u2019s only now that everyone will notice that the wheels are truly coming off.<\/p>\n

If you doubt it, compare the Season 4 Cylons with the omnipresent nightmares that fueled this show\u2019s premiere \u2013 and still finest \u2013 episode, \u201c33.\u201d Back then, the Cylons were fierce, unrelenting, and attacked every 33 minutes with mechanical, unfeeling precision. They held all the cards. They were hunting the human race to extinction. And, yes, they had a plan.<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re left with the ludicrous spectacle of squabbling Cylons who settle their differences in makeshift caucus meetings based on the rantings of naked women lying in bubble baths. Remember when the Cylons infiltrated the human networks and shut down the fleet because they were wired into everything? Now they agree on nothing and can\u2019t even get everyone together for a roll call vote.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s this that one #8 Cylon has never disagreed with another #8 Cylon? Um, did anyone notice that there\u2019s a #8 Cylon on the Galactica, openly supporting the humans? It\u2019d be nice if the writers watched their own show once in awhile. \u2018Cause won\u2019t all those models that get blown away by Centurions just get resurrected before the next caucus? Don\u2019t get me wrong; it was fun to see them get blown away in a \u201cwow, man, cool\u201d kind of way. But wasn\u2019t it supposed to mean something?<\/p>\n

Nothing means anything.<\/p>\n

The really sad thing, however, is to watch this ridiculous \u201cfinal four\u201d twist mangle, ex post facto, some of the greatest moments of the series. Remember “Exodus Part II,” when Tigh makes the wrenching decision to poison his own wife, who collaborated with the Cylons to save his skin? That was a singular example of the moral complexity Moore promises and never delivers. Now it\u2019s worthless. Tigh is a Cylon. And if he were truly the same man who had to make the decision to murder his own wife, he would have blown himself away by now. He\u2019s not that man anymore; that character is gone. Rebooted. Now he\u2019s plotting in secret with his fellow reboots. Anything interesting about the character has been erased, much like any semblance of promise this show once held.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really care about the ratings much anymore, and they truly don\u2019t matter. This show should have been cancelled when Enterprise<\/span> reruns started pulling in a bigger share. This thing will undoubtedly lumber on to its unsatisfying conclusion, but I am willing to make a prediction.<\/p>\n

The only people who are still watching, at this point, are the die hard fans. And, sooner or later, these fans are going to get uncomfortable when they\u2019re forced to realize that the show has become meandering and aimless. The people who are truly invested in it will grow more uneasy as it becomes clearer and clearer that the emperor has no clothes. This show, even more than the 1978 original, is a product of its time \u2013 glib, fashionable, and wafer thin. Sooner or later, those die hards, if they haven\u2019t already, are going to resent being taken on a ride to nowhere.<\/p>\n

Mark it. And don\u2019t shoot the messenger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WoodyAllen\u2019s output has been wildly uneven over the years, but one of his best films is 1994\u2019s Bullets Over Broadway,<\/span> in which a 1930s mobster bankrolls a Broadway play in order to give his horrifically untalented actress girlfriend a starring role \u2013 and something to do. At one point, an understudy goes on for her, ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4892,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/4892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}