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Sunday, March 25, 2007

BSG Finale (Where's the Reset Button?)

Just watched the season three finale of BSG -- and found it almost flabbergastingly bad.

Minor uninteresting characters played by actors of lesser talent have dominated the whole third season, the fabulous Roslin has been backgrounded, the brash bratty Starbuck has been soap-operad into irrelevance, that dullard Agathon has struck endless stolid poses (I think of Agathon as the BSG analogue to Peter Jackson's version of Sam Gamgee in his LOTR, a gag-inducingly "sympathetic" crypto Middle American figure forever threatening to render an otherwise relatively enjoyable sf entertainment periodically unwatchable), Lee has wishy-washed unattractively the whole season through (sometimes in a completely gratuitous fat suit, thereby eliminating the one consistently edifying thing about Apollo: his appeal in a skimpy towel) -- only Saul Tigh of all people has offered up a spectacle worth watching this season and now....

*spoilers* (I guess, kinda sorta)

....he is apparently, idiotically, a Cylon, together with a handful of other characters who've fluttered boringly lately in the background (among them, the eye-rollingly bad Blanders).

God, the narrative "twists" and "turns" scream of desperation, of exhausted inspiration, of indifference to the weight and recalcitrance of established history and character.... The courtroom speeches! The discarded prop! The "shocking" return of Starbuck! Creak, creak, creak go the cliches, sleepwalking their way between car commercials (by the way, you foolish people who buy and drive cars for whatever reason: trust me, they all look exactly the same).

For heaven's sake, I wish Ron Moore et at would let Starbuck be a badass again, I wish they would let the Cylons be arbitrary and scary again, I wish they would let Lee have sex with the President or just kill him already (maybe that one is just me), I wish they would let Baltar actually act like an opportunistic genius slash perpetual id instead of a glycerin-eyed bowling pin, I wish they would let Six show her venom, let Sharon be schizo, let Adama be our grim and grizzled flawed patriarch, and I wish that please please please they aren't really making Saul Tigh a Cylon.

Nobody in the BSG audience was surprised by any of the "surprises" of this unbelievably dumbed down finale. I'm embarrassed for the show. I'm embarrassed by all the desperate reiterations about "The Best Show on Television" every commercial break. BSG this season has been the furthest thing from the best show on television. I'm so annoyed, I can't believe a show so good has gone so bad.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i'm no bsg apologist, nor could i be after the jus de cylonfœtus debacle of the second season. i did watch last night, however, and am willing to give the episode a pass--wretched, tanbur-infused cover of `watchtower' & all--, on the grounds that it allows for a set of story arcs that might be good for the series.

for example, it's conceivable that the cylon fleet is manned/toastered by final-five model cylons (who are, of course, unafilliated w/the greater cylon confederacy). it wouldn't be entirely illogical, then, that (at least) thee-fourths of four-fifths of the final five should have been leaders of the resistance movement on new caprica.

oh and apollee used `temerity' !