Zach - February 28th, 2009 - Come on already
Let me preface this with HUGE SPOILER tags. I know Ricky at least loves Battlestar Galactica and reads this site, so I feel I need to make sure he sees this. There is story being told in this post, there are major secrets about the show that I am going to reveal, if you haven't watched any of it yet, and want to find out the story when you do get around to watching it, don't read anymore.
Okay, I've been a huge Battlestar Galactica fan since Brian introduced me to the series after season 2.5, I believe. It is a great show. BSG is done in 3 weeks. That's it, they have three weeks to attempt to end the series and tie up all the plethora of loose ends that they've created in the last 4 years. What do they do with the past five episodes?They spend the first two staging, executing, and ending a mutiny that in the end had very few real important points. Sure, they were awesome to watch and really let you understand the political and emotional problems within the fleet, but those episodes really didn't give any information about what the hell is going on in this world.
The next episode is a story dump that, while I loved it, seemed like the writers really felt rushed to get all this information to us because there are so few episodes left. At this point I thought the show was really just going to go into wrap up mode and every episode after it would be focused on the things that've always mattered; the opera house, what/who Starbuck is, what Cavil actually planned on doing, what the final five cylons were going to do now that they were all together(sort of). But no, the next episode might'as well've been a soap opera.
We gleened NOTHING new from this episode, just that Ellen and Saul still have issues. This episode also served to remind me why I was glad Ellen died the first time, she really is a character you hate. The previous episode she seemed poised and noble, I thought she was going to be different this time. But no, she is back to being a jealous, selfish, back-stabbing wench again. You'd think suddenly remembering you were one of the creators of the cylons, that you'd been a member of the 13th tribe, that you tried to stop the cylon war on the 12 colonies, and that you were a co-rediscoverer of ancient technology that allowed you to be immortal that you would stop being such a miserable, petty person.
Now we have this week's episode. Sure, we get SOME tidbits of information about who Kara is and that maybe Anders is doing something useful in his coma, but really this episode was just as uneventful as the last one. I get it, Galactica is not going to make it. I get it, Boomer is still a pretty terrible person. Why did it take an entire hour, or 1/5th of the remaining air time of the series as a whole, to reinforce those two, little facts? Oh, and the 8th cylon model might be Kara's dad. You could've spent more time on that, that would've made me happy.
So now we have 3 episodes left, with the final episode being at least 2 hours, to explain all this stuff. If they do it in the form of another information dump, they could probably do it in one episode. The point is though, out of 5 episodes, only one was of any real value in terms of finishing up the story. It seems like they could've spread that out a little more. I kind of liked the old style of giving us little pieces of story every episode, instead of this every few episodes really matter stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I still love the series and even enjoyed all of these episodes in the past 5 weeks. I just wish they wouldn't waste what little time they have left. I will be extremely dissapointed if the series just ends with everyone dying, or with some BS "All this has happened before, and it will happen again" Nietzsche garbage. If they even end it with something that seems like the beginning of the next cycle, I'll puke. Nietzsche is fine and all, but its a tired story line.
Also, Heroes, yes I still watch Heroes, has no freaking storyline anymore. Its just, "Oh noes we're being hunted and I can paint the future! Let's make what I paint not happen!" Every season is this, and it got old 2 seasons ago.
Zach
And guess what? I love pancakes!
March 1st, 2009 at 7:04 pm
I’d like you to name 3 things that have used recurrence to convince me it’s a “tired storyline.”
And Mario Galaxy doesn’t f-ing count.
I’ll give you one - Xenosaga. Though calling something ‘tired’ based off one relatively obscure series is a bit of a stretch.
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:29 am
Mario totally counts, as it did in fact, use it.
Okay, maybe tired was the completely wrong word to use here. I guess I meant boring. I would be rather disappointed in the series if it ended with hints to the fact that it was all just going to be in an infinite cycle.
I would probably be disappointed if it ended with them “breaking” the cycle.
I really just want a real, bonafide ending. I want the major plot points to be explained, I want the characters that need explaining to be explained, and I want the story to end. I don’t want a lot of stuff left up to me to figure out, I am not that clever.