Actually I haven’t seen much of the two episodes that just aired so I don’t have much to say about them. If anybody has a review or a link to a good review or just wants to talk about how lame it is that I don’t have TiVo, have at it in the comments. [Update – there’s more, but netiquette suggests that I should toss it behind a spoiler wall. More commentary on the other side.]
The episode before the two-part finale, Downloaded, was a complete mindf*ck in so many ways. First there’s the obvious dangling of false hope – you expect the writers to present a hopelessly bleak imminent-doom scenario and then have the fifth columnists within both the Cylon and human factions meet up and settle everything over a 29th-century hookah. Obviously that would end the series, which means that the writers have some disappointment lined up. Maybe that shoe has already dropped and I don’t know it.
Seeing the imaginary Baltar for the first time was a jarring experience even though it finally put to bed that debate about whether Baltar’s #6 was an undetectable chip or some sort of free-floating Jungian onscience-given-form. Not a chip. The most jarring thing is that I actually like this Baltar. For what it’s worth I also like the real #6 a lot more than Baltar’s phantom, which probably comes from Baltar’s #6 being a memory processed through the mind of an emotionally-detached egomaniac. Here’s hoping for more episodes from the Cylon perspective, especially if they make beating up on Xena into a regular thing.
A final obvervation, the abortion subplot also twists our current political climate in amusingly convoluted ways. The show makes it pretty obvious who you’re supposed to root for, who when you think about it corresponds to a future Pat Roberts, religious pandering and authoritarian streak included. Overall a cool show and ten times more thought-provoking than most stuff on TV.
jaime
Is Sci-Fi ever gonna run a marathon to catch us losers up on this phenomenon?
Krista
jaime – if you get the Space Network out of Canada, we’re quite a bit behind. We’re just starting the 2nd half of Season two in a couple of weeks. My suggestion is to splash out on the DVDs – they’re worth it.
jaime
I hate watching TV shows on DVD. I’ve been trying to watch the first season of 24 on DVD for 3 months now and I’m only on hour 5.
Krista
I normally don’t like it either, but for Galactica, it’s worth it. That, and Family Guy are my only two tv-show DVD purchases.
Andrew
You have no god damned idea how trivial that will all seem compared to the season finale, which is quite simply the greatest mindf*ck in sci-fi TV history. I shall say no more.
Krista
Andrew – excellent. Don’t spoil it for me. I have heard, however, that it’s such a mindf**k that people will either completely turn on the show and hate it, or will fall more madly in love with it than ever.
Ancient Purple
All I can say is that the season finale was a complete “HUH?!?!?!” moment. I hope to God this wasn’t the “jump the shark” moment for BSG.
Jon
I’ve watched the season finale three times now, and all I can say is that Ron Moore pushes his balls in a wheelbarrow in front of him. Nothing else can explain where he got the nerve to pull what he did in the last 15 minutes.
I have no idea how he proposes to write his way out of this corner. I can only assume there’s something pathological – “how can I paint myself in and then stunningly get out of it?”
Regardless, I am distraught that I won’t find out until October. New Dr Who, while welcome, is no panacea.
Carpetbagger
You have no god damned idea how trivial that will all seem compared to the season finale, which is quite simply the greatest mindf*ck in sci-fi TV history. I shall say no more.
Well, Andrew said what I was going to say. The season finale was simply stunning. It’s been a few days — and I’m still not over it.
Andrew
Maybe we can use the TARDIS to travel to October.
MikeP
Agree with Andrew…the last 30 minutes of the season finale was like, “Oh shit…is this really happening?”
Jonah Goldberg has a pretty extensive post up at The Corner about the finale, but it’s got major spoliers.
ppGaz
When you guys do these weird tv-cult things, I always feel like I am at a party of people I don’t know, and wearing the wrong shoes.
I may have to hang myself, like the guy on the Sopranos last night.
Only, worse.
JWeidner
Oh boy, Galactica party!
Tim, as some have pointed out, the Season Finale is the REAL mindf**k. I too, have read plenty of opinions of viewers who freaked out over it, but personally, I think it was just stunning. I’ll anxiously await your thoughts…
kdaug
Hate to jump in with the “OMG!!1! BEST SHOW EVAR” schtick, but I’ve been watching the show since it started, and though I’m not a huge TV watcher, I will say that in 30 years this show will be included in lit and humanities classes worldwide. Philosophically, it hits every major theme – from the meaning of life/humanity to our responsibility to/for our creations, politics, comparative religions, social dynamics, et al.
It is superbly crafted, pulls no puches, picks no favorites. It asks the hard questions and eschews the easy, comfortable answers. It makes the viewer think, and question. And it does so without fluff, easy heros, catchy one-liners. The most salient theme running throughout, since the first mini-series premier – “Does humanity deserve to survive?”
Though I’m trying hard not to proselytize, if you were to buy or rent a DVD of a television series at any time in your life, I can’t think of a better one. But do yourself a favor and start at the beginning.
Gump, Esq
I have to agree with Jon about Ronald Moore and his cantaloupe sized testicles. This is by far the best show on television right now and one of the best ever. Hats off to the season finale.
oopla
The Finale rocked so hard. I have to Jump on the Best show on TV Bandwagon. I am consistantly loaning out my boxsets to all my friends. It’s like I hardly own them.
All I will saw about the Season 2 finale is that it actually shocked me more than season 1’s.
BumperStickerist
BSG will become, in effect, two shows – one will be a sort of ‘Red Dawn’ for those left on New Caprica. Starbuck will taking the Patrick Swayze role. The second being ‘Rat Patrol’ with Apollo putting on the aussie bush hat and running raids against the Cylons.
Andrew
Wolverines!
But Bumper, I think you’re spoiling things.
capelza
I love this show…and that 15 minute ending made me gasp outloud.
Who is the bad guy? Or the good guy? I think that like real life, it isn’t nearly that black and white. Awesome show.
fwiffo
The episode you mention was pretty good (I thought parts of the abortion stuff were poorly written,) and the two-part finale was friggin’ amazing, but the show overall is really uneven. Yeah, the miniseries, and the blockbuster episodes are great, but the middle-of-the-season episodes are often pretty disappointing. The four or five episodes prior to the last three of the season were the worst ever. Not just the worst episodes of Battlestar – some of the worst television I’ve ever seen. Getting through them required the patience of Job.
I was convinced they’d jumped the shark when Roslin was miraculously saved (not that I think saving her was bad, but that seemed to be the start of a painful series of astonishingly terrible episodes).
The whole evil black-market guy with mentally defective bodyguards thing, and hooker who knows all about Apollo’s stupid intimacy issues which were dumb and had no proper setup? I wanted somebody to kill me. Apollo almost dying every other episode and being glad about it, but then he gets shot and is all angsty about it because he didn’t want to die this time? I wanted to kill myself. “Scar” which would have been completely fucking stupid even if it wasn’t the most overused cliche EVER? I DID kill myself, then came back from the dead just to bitch about it.
But the finale was fucking goddamn fucking cool. (I’ll anonymize my comments to save Tim from spoilers). The whole thing where XXXXX went kaboom, and XXXXX getting his XXXX on with the XXXXX was hilarious, and the whole dynamic between XXXXX and XXXXX was completely satisfying, and XXXXX looks great in glasses shouting about the prolitariat. Friggin’ masterpiece, I tell ya.
Justin Slotman
I agree with fwiffo–after Roslyn got saved by magic Cylon fetal blood (though I thought the crappiness began when Baltar gave the Pegasus Six the nuke) and before “Downloaded” I had basically decided to wait for the DVD for this season. But these last three episodes have been really choice.
LITBMueller
Adding my voice to the chorus: Ron Moore’s testies – fucking huge!; finale – BRILLIANT!!! 20 years ago this kind of show would never have been allowed on TV. Ron Moore would have gotten his ass fired for just presenting the script for th finale.
Oh, and SciFi giving us the new Who to tide us over until new Battlestar! FANTASTIC!!!
Anyone care for a jellybaby?
JWeidner
I do have to add, after having read more recent posts, that the cylon baby, magic blood episode WAS pretty ridiculous. I must have wiped it from my mind – either that, or the final 3 episodes this season did that for me.
oopla
I hope that NBC goes ahead and broadcasts Battlestar Galactica on broadcast TV.
BIRDZILLA
I,ve been watching VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA on DVD and these are all in BLACK AND WHITE
tBone
Ron Moore feels your pain. He absolutely savaged this episode in his weekly podcast – yet another reason I like this show so much. When it sucks, they aren’t afraid to admit it.
Matt
Man, I gotta find out how to use bit torrent so I can start downloading these. I hadn’t seen it until last night, when I caught like a half hour of one episode at the gym.
ppGaz
{ prolonged grunting, choking sounds }
Oh, and Bird? Everything is black and white to you: You don’t have a frigging COLOR TV.
Maybe the metal cabinet and the click-tuner with twelve channels is a giveaway?