It\u2019s over. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve tried to anticipate what I would write for a final review that would be a worthy capstone to four seasons of reviews. I even tried my hand at a few ideas over the past few weeks that might let me go out in a blaze of snarky glory. None of them worked, and nothing I can say at this point will be entirely adequate, much like the final episode itself. <\/p>\n
In this respect, I can empathize with our friend Mr. Moore\u2019s plight. <\/p>\n
Yet the episode itself, as a standalone, worked quite well in places. The second hour of the three kicked all sorts of tushy, what with the explosions and the blood-smeared centurions and the old school Cylons and space dogfights and all the popcorn SciFi coolness you could muster. I had a great time. And seeing Earth, our Earth, was pretty fun. I have no idea, though, why Hera mattered at all. Suddenly she\u2019s \u201cmitochondrial Eve\u201d from which we are all descended? Given that Earth was already populated when Galactica arrived, and that the Colonials scattered all over the globe, how is this even remotely possible?<\/p>\n
Like that\u2019s the only question left unanswered. <\/p>\n
Still, you have to cut Moore and Co. a little slack. Nothing they could have said or done would have sufficed, even under the best of circumstances. It didn\u2019t help that Moore painted himself into several different corners and then just stomped his way across the floor, hoping that you wouldn\u2019t notice the mess he was making. Why did the Cylons attack every 33 minutes? Because. Why did they operate on Kara in \u201cThe Farm\u201d and steal her ovaries? Because. Why was the Final Five\u2019s history and mission so wildly convoluted and inconsistent? Because. Why was their earth nuked? Because. Why did the Cylons bother to nuke humanity in the miniseries in the first place? Because. <\/p>\n
Because why? Well, because God did it. <\/p>\n
Who would have thought that this would be the heart and soul of the reinvention of the Science Fiction television series: a literary device as old as time \u2013 the \u201cDeus Ex Machina,\u201d i.e. the Machine of the Gods. At the end of a Greek myth, Zeus or Poseidon or the God of Quality Footwear would wave his bolt or his trident or his shoe horn and make everything better. Or worse. Or like it never happened. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s cheap, it\u2019s sloppy, and it\u2019s the core of the \u201cgreatest show on television.\u201d<\/p>\n
No wonder so many devotees of this show are in an uproar. The discussion boards have been filled with theories to reconcile the improbability of all of Moore\u2019s arbitrary twists and turns, only to discover that there are no explanations. God did it. God sent his sneering daughter Starbuck to save His Battlestar. God directed His servant Baltar\u2019s hand to point out the ammo dump back in Season 1\u2019s \u201cHand of God\u201d episode. God sent lots of visions that didn\u2019t make any sense and which were largely irrelevant. God sent a slutty angel in a red cocktail dress to help Baltar masturbate. God wrote \u201cAll Along the Watchtower\u201d and taught it Anders, Starbuck\u2019s father, Hera, and Bob Dylan, respectively. Did Jimi Hendrix use the jump coordinates from the song to help him kiss the sky? Maybe Jimi is the name God likes better than God. And, really. who wouldn\u2019t?<\/p>\n
Such sophistry. <\/p>\n
No one likes to hear \u201cI told you so,\u201d which is too bad, since it\u2019s usually so much fun to say it. Yet I take no joy in seeing this show\u2019s devotees being so colossally duped. Indeed, a reasonable person could have looked at this show and its solid initial premise and its stellar cast \u2013 Sackhoff ever the exception \u2013 and conclude that something was happening here that was worth their time. Context, however, leads to a different conclusion. <\/p>\n
This is a show that, from day one, was built on a foundation of contempt. <\/p>\n
You can still see the reflexive disdain for the show\u2019s source material in the comments of those who have followed the show\u2019s hype but not its story. It\u2019s impossible to read an overview of the thing without a ritualistic genuflection to the idea that the original series was hokey and trite and silly and filled with all manner of limburgerian fromage. So even when the new show sucks openly, apologists can take cover behind Dirk Benedict\u2019s dated hairstyle. At least the new show didn\u2019t have Muffit the Daggit! Or casino planets! Or Lords of Kobol!<\/p>\n
Oh, wait\u2026<\/p>\n
See, the dirty secret is that much of the original show\u2019s basic mythology actually did survive into this new incarnation. And when this show shined \u2013 and it did, on occasion, have its moments \u2013 it was following in the footsteps of its predecessor. Unfortunately, it always refused to acknowledge that that was what it was doing. Indeed, the producers were embarrassed by where they had come from. They were ever lamenting the fact that they were forced to labor under the leaden weight of the cheesy title \u201cBattlestar Galactica,\u201d which was holding them back. <\/p>\n
Can we now collectively admit that this is a provably false assertion?<\/p>\n
Consider: the only information people who tuned in to watch the miniseries had was that the show was named \u201cBattlestar Galactica.\u201d That was a name with a history and not-insignificant brand equity. So the miniseries was a ratings smash. Yet when the show went to series, the show lost a third of that original audience. <\/p>\n
So who were the people who abandoned this show after the miniseries? <\/p>\n
Wouldn\u2019t it make sense to assume that a good chunk of them were people who liked \u201cBattlestar Galactica\u201d but recognized that this series bore scant resemblance to its namesake? As the show wore on, the ratings steadily eroded to the point where first run episodes were lower-rated than \u201cStar Trek: Enterprise\u201d reruns. This show should have been cancelled after the second season, yet it endured. Why? Because the network and the producers and the intelligentsia were proud of it. They were proud of the audience they were alienating. The rubes and hicks that couldn\u2019t see how nihilistic gloom was infinitely more sophisticated than the heroic optimism of the original series weren\u2019t wanted here. This show mocked their religion, their politics, their morality, and wallowed in the despair that marks the absence of the things they hold dear. <\/p>\n
And then, in the end, God did it. <\/p>\n
Suddenly, the tables are turned. The core diehards, the ones who followed Ron off the cliff, who bought into the miasma and the blackness, who somehow believed that all of this was going somewhere that would justify their investment of time, energy and passion \u2013 they get told that God did it. They now know what it is to be held in contempt by the show they loved. It\u2019s not surprising that they\u2019re not particularly happy about it. <\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting is that Moore, in his finale, felt it necessary to provide a bunch of irrelevant backstory for characters that have been on display for four television seasons and the better part of six years. Adama\u2019s lie detector test? The strip club? Roslin\u2019s boytoy? Lee and Kara\u2019s sexual near miss? What was the point?<\/p>\n
The point, it seems to me, was one last, flailing attempt to give these characters enough weight so you would miss them when they rode off into the sunset. Which, by and large, you won\u2019t. Too many of these folks were mean, nasty, vile people, and it\u2019s kind of nice to be rid of them. The largest exceptions, in my mind, were Roslin and Adama, whose final scenes were, indeed, rather touching. Part of that is the stellar nature of the two actors involved, but these two characters were the only ones that maintained most of their integrity throughout. (Maybe Lee, too, although his denouement was pretty pedestrian.) Are we really going to miss the Tighs or Tori? Anyone else wish Starbuck had been thrown out of the airlock long before she Let There Be Light Rock? <\/p>\n
It was laughable to see the Baltar flashbacks, which provided a limp retcon to make Baltar\u2019s genocidal betrayal just a little less venal. I mean, come on. Baltar\u2019s an interesting character, sure, but he\u2019s not a good guy. He\u2019s an amoral, self-serving weasel. And suddenly, he\u2019s the one non-imaginary angel character with the direct conduit to Jimi God? How are we supposed to take that seriously?<\/p>\n
The broader answer, of course, is that nobody should take any television seriously. In the immortal words of the Shat \u2013 who, I\u2019m thinking, may have actually met Bob Dylan \u2013 \u201cfor crying out loud, it\u2019s just a TV show!\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, it is. But the disappointment comes from knowing that it didn\u2019t have to be \u201cjust a TV show.\u201d Like it or not, that\u2019s all we\u2019re left with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019sover. I\u2019ve tried to anticipate what I would write for a final review that would be a worthy capstone to four seasons of reviews. I even tried my hand at a few ideas over the past few weeks that might let me go out in a blaze of snarky glory. None of them worked, and ... 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-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","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=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4793,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/4793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}