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I love ‘Lost’. This cur­rent sea­son is so great I would marry it if I wasn’t already married.

But I’ve noticed that ‘Lost’, which is prob­a­bly one of the best shows cur­rently on tele­vi­sion, keeps doing this stu­pid stu­pid dia­logue con­ven­tion over and over and over until you could make a drink­ing game out of it. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but that’s my job, to notice the mun­dane and pointless.

It goes like this — two peo­ple are going some­where on the island, doesn’t mat­ter where, but they are alone, walk­ing, or eat­ing some­thing, or lis­ten­ing to a record, and one of them will sud­denly say a seem­ing non sequitor, the other will be con­fused, reply, “What?” or some­thing like that, and the other per­son will explain. In an episode a cou­ple of weeks ago they did it not once but three times in one episode. Like I said, you could have a drink­ing game.

So this is the way I would write it if I were writ­ing the show -

Locke and Sawyer are trudg­ing through the jun­gle, not a care in the world about Oth­ers or Smokey or Chris­t­ian pop­ping out or any­thing, just trudg­ing through the jun­gle. They haven’t spo­ken in some time.

LOCKE — “Five.“
SAWYER — Looks around con­fused, focus­ing on LOCKE. “What’d you say?“
LOCKE — “Five. I said five, James.“
SAWYER — Still con­fused. “…Five what?“
LOCKE — Now con­fused too. “…Uh…you know, about what you said ear­lier. There are five. Five.“
SAWYER — Now look­ing peeved. “I have no idea what you’re talk­ing about.“
LOCKE — Spread­ing his hands, ever the teacher. “About…2 hours ago we were talk­ing about…you know, that thing we were talking…about.“
SAWYER — “John, I have no idea what you’re talk­ing about. I don’t know what “five” means.“
LOCKE — Now very con­fused. “You don’t?“
SAWYER — “…No.“
There is a long silence as Locke looks at Sawyer. He is very con­fused now, to say the least, and try­ing to fig­ure out what “five” refers to.
LOCKE — “Hmm…I don’t know what “five” means either.“
Sawyer smirks. “Nice one.” He begins trudg­ing again.
Locke stands in the jun­gle, then fol­lows Sawyer. “I’ll think of what it means in a minute!“
SAWYER — “Sure you will, Sherlock.”

He heads off into the jun­gle. Locke quizzi­cally follows.

It would be funny. And then maybe the ‘Lost’ writ­ers wouldn’t do it anymore.

It’s been a cou­ple of weeks now since Bat­tlestar Galac­tica left the air­waves and since it’s been off I’ve thought a lot about that last episode. After all of the buildup and antic­i­pa­tion for some sort of mind-blowing end­ing you’ve got to won­der — Was it good or was it just okay? Did they answer enough ques­tions to the lin­ger­ing plot points that were mys­ter­ies? Was it a good mix of action (which it was) and expo­si­tion (the jury is still out on that one)?

Our rag­tag band of sur­vivors killed off (or had their ene­mies kill them­selves) their ene­mies, specif­i­cally Dean Stockwell’s wily Brother Cavil, who opted, instead of res­ur­rec­tion, to end it all with a bul­let in the head. With his death I’m assum­ing that the Cylon threat is gone, but aren’t there more Cylons out there? And come on, that was a cheap way out. Cavil had a sweep­ing mas­ter plan to bring the Cylons back on top and take res­ur­rec­tion back to his peo­ple and he ended his life with a bul­let? In the mouth? Sure, I know that Tyrol had just killed Torie and that the secret of res­ur­rec­tion would never be his after that, but sui­cide? He had the human race where he wanted it and it’s not like the guy can nat­u­rally die. Sui­cide seems like a lame way out for him.

But there were other things. The Opera House vision was all about the Galac­tica CIC? Really? What writer thought that up and how rushed to dead­line were they before they thought that lame idea up? If Bal­tar and Six were sup­posed to take Hera why would Roslin and Sharon be so scared?

A huge prob­lem with the episode? A lot of the loose ends seemed to get tied up rather loosely.

We never find out why Kara came back or or why or what she was. And you kind of knew she was going to be it but Roslin was the dying leader?¹ Did she really lead them to Earth or did she just lead them in space? What hap­pened to the rela­tion­ship between Tigh and Six? He’d got­ten her preg­nant.² And Head Six and Head Bal­tar? What was that? Are they angels? Cylons? No expla­na­tion given. Or not worth giving.

Another prob­lem is that Ron Moore gives expla­na­tion of many of these hints on his show com­men­tary pod­casts, which is also how you would have found out that every­one who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship. You never would have heard a sin­gle char­ac­ter just men­tion in pass­ing, “Every­one who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship.” I guess those 3 sec­onds of air­time would have eaten up too much story time.

Prob­a­bly my biggest prob­lem with the show was that way too much time was given to the bat­tle at the Cylon colony and not enough given to the time on Earth. Sev­eral parts of the final bat­tle seemed to drag as Colo­nials would walk through the Cylon hall­ways, guns drawn, star­ing straight ahead like they were…waiting for some­thing to appear…like Bad Sharon. Or Simon. Or that PR guy. Or a bat­tle between CG Cylons.

And too much time spent on the char­ac­ters’ pasts on Caprica. Time was wasted so we could see that Roslin slept with a for­mer stu­dent, Bill had a job inter­view, Anders talk about “per­fec­tion”, Tigh and Ellen drink³ and Lee almost sleeps with his brother’s fiance Kara. Prob­a­bly col­lec­tively 45 min­utes was wasted on flash­backs. Sure, it showed why some of these peo­ple sur­vived the war, but still need­less and pointless.

And because of the time crunch Earth seemed to be hur­ried through. We had a lot of ter­ri­tory to cover there and a lot of sto­ries to wrap up, we couldn’t take a few min­utes out of the point­less Lee/Kara flash­back and show more of what hap­pened to Lee on Earth?

There he was, talk­ing to Kara, then she just upped and “dis­ap­peared” and he was alone. And that was that.

Noth­ing else about Lee? He’s just left alone in Africa? Alone? With­out Kara? What a waste of time that was.

I think of all of the Earth­bound sto­ry­lines that was served the best was the Baltar/Six one. You learned that Bal­tar grew up on a farm and knew how to cul­ti­vate crops, so now that he has no more sci­ence equip­ment he’s at least going to sur­vive. And after all they’ve been through, tall Six is going to be with short Bal­tar. But I don’t get Head Bal­tar and Head Six. I’m guess­ing they’re angels? I don’t know. If they’re Cylons those clothes they’ve been wear­ing for 150,000 years still look good.

And a log­i­cal fal­lacy — If the notes of “All Along the Watch­tower” are given numer­i­cal val­ues, and those numer­i­cal val­ues, when punched into an FTL com­puter, take that ship to Earth, wouldn’t Jimi Hendrix’s ver­sion of the song at the end of the show tech­ni­cally lead who­ever fig­ured out the numer­i­cal code right back to a bombed out nuclear Earth in the future? As I’m assum­ing by the end of the show that the writ­ers are hint­ing that our cur­rent Earth is head­ing down the same path as our “fore­fa­thers” did on Kobol. Maybe the next coor­di­nates could have been put to “Danc­ing Queen” or “How Much is that Doggy in the Win­dow” or “The Bat­tle Hymn of the Republic”.

My last prob­lem with the show was that the series was so great and well writ­ten that it felt like most of the mys­ter­ies from early on were just given short shrift because some sort of answer had to be given as an expla­na­tion for them. The final five plot­line was alright but ulti­mately silly in the end. Kara return­ing from the dead was never ade­quately explained, the con­ceiv­ing of Hera, and lots more. It was great TV but I think that the show cre­ators owed it to their fan base to elab­o­rate bet­ter and fig­ure out bet­ter answers to the mys­ter­ies, even if they were con­ve­nient plot­lines from sea­sons ago that helped pro­pel the story along. A good exam­ple that they could have looked to was “Lost” which just seems to get bet­ter the longer it goes. The cre­ators of it may not know where it’s going to go from sea­son to sea­son, but they think up new and inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tions for the Losties to get involved in, and it’s not like the two shows have lit­tle in com­mon. The Losties are stuck on the island (sort of) and the Colo­nials are stuck on the Galac­tica. Both sets are try­ing to get home and only one so far has suc­ceeded. Let’s hope that “Lost”, with all of the expec­ta­tions it has built up for itself, can pull of an end­ing bet­ter than “Galac­tica” did.

1. She seemed to give up about half way through the sea­son. If any­one led them to Earth it was Bill, or Star­buck, or…somebody else. [↩]
2. Or maybe I’m just a stick­ler for details. [↩]
3. Wait…they drink? Do they ever really stop drink­ing? [↩]

And I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed about it.

Not that she’s not a great char­ac­ter, we just haven’t had a chance to get to know and like her like we have her hus­band, Saul. While Saul’s per­sonal stand­ing had con­tin­ued to rise as the years went on and the fleet con­tin­ued their quest through uncharted space, Ellen died in the early parts of Sea­son 3 after pass­ing infor­ma­tion over to Brother Cav­ill in order to get Saul out of prison. She was manip­u­la­tive, cruel, evil and las­civ­i­ous. She drank heav­ily and plot­ted against every­one so that her hus­band (and her) could ben­e­fit from oth­ers fail­ings. She is not an easy per­son to like.

But Saul loved her (until he had to kill her) and still loves her, and now that he’s had his vision as he pre­pared to kill him­self in some icy radioac­tive ocean on Earth he’s con­vinced that she’s the final Cylon.

But I wasn’t con­vinced about that. How to explain Star­buck and her res­ur­rec­tion from the dead? What about that Viper she and Leobon saw with her charred body in the cock­pit? If any­one had a legit­i­mate claim to the Final throne I thought it would be her. Maybe as the final Cylon she is the most pow­er­ful and can res­ur­rect with­out the Res­ur­rec­tion Ship? Maybe.

But Ron Moore, cre­ator of the re-imagined series, said -

“[Ellen and Saul Tigh have)) always been Cylons, and there’s some­thing pro­found about that. They’re a mar­ried cou­ple who just have to go at it peri­od­i­cally and just have major issues and major prob­lems. But the bond between the two of them was some­thing that lit­er­ally could not be bro­ken. And I thought that was a really inter­est­ing and ulti­mately very pos­i­tive thing to say.”

So I’m apt to believe it. And I thought it would be inter­est­ing if some­one that had been killed off of the show was the final on, but not her. Maybe Billy or Dee or that lit­tle girl that died on the cruise ship dur­ing the pilot. Ellen just seems like such a…blah choice.

If and when Ellen returns (and they’ve set it up where she just has to return) how will she? Can she cre­ate her­self? Will a Higher Cylon Power cre­ate her? Will she be all know­ing? I doubt it. The other four don’t know any­thing even though they’ve been asked. Do they know the way to Earth? Nope. Do any of the Final Five have the answers to the big ques­tions? Prob­a­bly not. If they do it’s been drib­bled out of their pro­gram­ming, like that song they all sang together, which was cute, but they don’t seem to share a hive mind of higher pow­ers or advanced knowledge.

Will Ellen be the Know It All? Prob­a­bly not.

I’d hoped (hoped hoped) it would be Tom Zarek because that way when it was (hoped it would be) revealed in the last episode that he was the final evil Cylon then Adama could nuke him and his evil com­pa­tri­ots. Of course, the way the sto­ry­line is pro­gress­ing right now along the lines of trea­son and rev­o­lu­tion Adama may have his chance to do just that. But now we know it isn’t going to be Zarek.

Oh well. Had to be somebody.

It’s been a long time since I wrote here, but some­thing is going to hap­pen tonight that sadly will be the begin­ning of the end for the best show on tele­vi­sion today (sorry, “Lost”). The reimag­ined “Bat­tlestar Galac­tica” fires up for the sec­ond half of sea­son four and I couldn’t be more psy­ched about it.

We last saw our band of pil­grims as they arrived at Earth, but not the Earth that we cur­rently know. It’s a bombed-out radioactive-looking waste­land that doesn’t look very wel­com­ing to the voy­agers from the twelve colonies. I would guess we’ll get our ques­tions answered this sea­son, at least I hope we do. Bat­tlin’ Bill Adama has brought these peo­ple this far, I doubt that he’ll leave them hang­ing, but what about hope at this point? Most of what was keep­ing every­one going onboard those fly­ing tin cans was the hope that Earth would be out there, some­where, and that it would be hab­it­able. It’s like get­ting half of a prayer answered. Sure, you made it to Earth, but are you going to like it once you get there? Good luck. Brother Cavil is still out there with his com­pa­tri­ots, and when they find Earth…eek.

We’ll also finally get to see the last secret Cylon. I guess after Baltar’s aborted Cylon Detec­tor didn’t fig­ure out that four of the Final Five weren’t human that some­one we know and love will be the last one. I’m hop­ing that it’s not one of the top two (Adama or Pres­i­dent Roslin), and I don’t think that the cre­ators of the show would take so obvi­ous a tack. My gut tells me that it could be Tom Zarek, but who knows. It would also be a com­plete mind f*ck if it was Billy Keikeya, who died in a bar­room shootout, or Ellen Tigh, who was killed by her hus­band back on New Caprica.

And is Lee Adama still the pres­i­dent now that Roslin is back? Does she even want to be pres­i­dent any­more? If Lee is still pres­i­dent, will Zarek keep try­ing to influ­ence him(another rea­son that I think he is a top con­tender for The Last One)?

My only com­plaint? That the Sci-Fi net­work sur­vives off of peo­ple watch­ing this one show, and because of that they aired the first ten episodes of sea­son four and then had the audac­ity to hold onto the final 10 until 7 MONTHS LATER. Shame on you, Sci-Fi Chan­nel. At least you’re finally going to air them.

And I’ve waited so long for this show to come back on. Please lord let it be good. No, be bet­ter than good, please be great and remind me why I love this show so much. Please.

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