All posts in Television

Bat­tlestar Galac­tica Sea­son 3 is offi­cially done and I have mixed feel­ings about it. It started off with a real bang and I just loved the occu­pa­tion of New Caprica by the Cylons and the ensu­ing struggle/escape from the planet, but once they got off-planet the show started to waver. It started off great with “Col­lab­o­ra­tors”, which was amaz­ing and hard to watch and was prob­a­bly my favorite episode of the year, but then they started throw­ing in the “story of the week” episodes, like “Hero”, “The Pas­sage” and “The Woman King”. And yeah there were some excep­tional episodes thrown in the mix in between the val­leys (like the soon to be clas­sic “Tak­ing a Break From All Your Wor­ries”), but the sea­son just didn’t have the tight feel that the major­ity of sea­son 2 had. From lis­ten­ing to the Ron Moore Pod­casts, you can tell that the season’s sto­ry­line went through a large meta­mor­pho­sis con­cern­ing the presidency/legacy of Gaius Bal­tar and his rela­tion­ship to that sub-genus of humans, the Sag­i­tarans. There was sup­posed to be a big hul­la­baloo in regards to Bal­tar shoot­ing Sag­i­tarans dur­ing the Occu­pa­tion and how it was filmed and how Lee was sup­posed to sud­denly come into pos­ses­sion of this film and how there was more to in that it seemed, but that all got sgarbageped when they real­ized that no one really cared about the Sag­i­tarans (my opin­ion). The film was going to fea­ture heav­ily into the trial of Bal­tar but that was also sgarbageped.

This is more just ram­bling, isn’t it?

The infected bases­tar episodes (“Torn”, “A Mea­sure of Sal­va­tion”)were excel­lent in exe­cu­tion but made me furi­ous when a poten­tially huge new plot line was dis­carded just because Helo had a con­science. Adama should have shot him him­self. Or else Tigh could have eaten him, which I think he would have gladly done.

Tigh con­tin­ues to be my favorite char­ac­ter of the series, and when he isn’t on screen for long peri­ods of time I miss him. He’s a com­plete jerk and a drunk, but it’s price­less lines like “It’s in the frakkin’ ship!” and that lit­tle laugh he gave Helo in “The Woman King” that make me wish some­one would rec­og­nize how great an actor Michael Hogan really is. But he’s Cana­dian and a recluse, from what it sounds like, so he may never get the recog­ni­tion that I think he deserves.

Next favorite is Chief, Galen Tyrol. Every­time they want to have a heavy mythos-centric episode they seem to allow him to shine. Whether he’s com­ing to grips with the idea that he may be a Cylon, or try­ing to deci­pher the Eye of Jupiter, or even in Cross­roads, where he and oth­ers, for some rea­son, keep hear­ing “All Along the Watch­tower”, Aaron Dou­glas as Tyrol is great, and he plays the tor­tured part well.

Is it okay to think that Grace Park (Sharon/Boomer/Athena) isn’t that great an actress? Yes, it is okay. Because she’s not.

And I miss Brother Cav­ill (Dean Stock­well). We need more of him next sea­son. He’s just so slimy.

I’ve been feel­ing it for awhile, and I’ve started see­ing the same thoughts I’m hav­ing start pop­ping up across the inter­net : I’m prob­a­bly done with Lost. It was nice and fine when it began, but I think it’s over with.

I thought it was a great con­cept — 40ish peo­ple crash land on a deserted island and have to sur­vive. Mean­while strange things start hap­pen­ing. What’s caus­ing it? Well, tune in next week and learn some more. In the mean time you’ll learn about the peo­ple that you’re fol­low­ing through flash­backs to their lives off of the island. Not a bad idea for a show.

And I stayed around for months, years now. Two and a half years as it is, and I tune in duti­fully week after week, like all of the other peo­ple who have been there from the begin­ning or got hooked on the show at some point dur­ing its run. Every Wednes­day at 8 pm was Lost, and you watched it for clues and then you talked about it the next day at work, and you pon­dered the mean­ing of lit­tle things and hoped and prayed that your theory(s) would be addressed at some point.

What is the mon­ster? What was Walt’s power? How did he draw ani­mals to him? How did he man­i­fest him­self when he was some­where else? Who was the guy that Jack thought was his father? Who’s the guy that Eko thought was his brother? Was it the smoke mon­ster? How did Locke lose the abil­ity to walk? Was Char­lie ever doing more heroin on the island that he found in the plane that Eko’s brother showed up in? Why did Boone have to die? What hap­pened to Desmond’s boat? What was the deal with that shark that had a Dharma logo on it? Where did Rose’s can­cer go? What’s with the mag­net­ism on the island? And what do the Num­bers mat­ter for?

All are some of the ques­tions I’ve got about this show, and I know from the episode where Jack watches the Boston Red Sox win the World Series that they’re only 70 days into their stay on the island. At this rate Sun will finally have her baby along about sea­son 12 or so. Time moves slower here, things hap­pen more rapidly on the island than in our world, since we wait an entire week to watch one or two days on the island.

And it’s get­ting tedious. There are bet­ter, far bet­ter, shows out there (Bat­tlestar Galat­ica) and shows that are more inter­est­ing (Heroes), so why stick around for Lost any­more? The rat­ings for the sea­son 3 opener of Lost were down 1 mil­lion view­ers from the sea­son 2 finale. One mil­lion view­ers is a lot of ad dol­lars to ABC. Are they going to start prod­ding the show’s cre­ators to start giv­ing more infor­ma­tion to get peo­ple back?

If they would just cough up some big plot points (Why the crashed, who the Oth­ers are, where the island is, what the mon­ster is) they could always cre­ate new plot points, like they did in the sea­son 2 finale with the huge stone foot Sayid saw on the beach. But instead they drip out minu­tia week after freak­ing week with no secrets revealed.

Why should I stick around for a show that I feel takes me for granted? Why should I watch a show where I know almost no more about the Lostie’s sit­u­a­tion now than I did when it began? Will ABC force changes to the show in order to get peo­ple back? And since it’s not even my favorite show on TV any­more, why should I care about Lost now?

I’ve writ­ten a lot about Lost (well, at least some about it.) on this site, and while I gen­er­ally think the show is great, it has it’s bumps and dips in the road on its way to per­fec­tion. When it’s great, it’s really great, but when it’s mediocre, or just plain bad, it’s bad. I like the show mainly for the peo­ple, which is usu­ally what keeps you around for a given length of inter­est, but some­times the writ­ing is just lacking.

I watched “Bat­tlestar Galac­tica” when it was on in 1978. I was high on Star Wars and this was the next best thing to Star Wars that we had on TV, which made sense, since many of the ILM design­ers who worked on Star Wars worked on BsG also. I even watched the crappy “Galac­tica 1980” when I was nine or ten years old. I’d also heard for years that Richard Hatch, he of Apollo fame, was attempt­ing to res­ur­rect the series and have it con­tinue from the stop­ping point of the first series. I thought it sounded lame and like some­thing that a washed up actor would try to do, kind of like how Tom Arnold keeps say­ing that there’s going to be a True Lies 2. Then I started read­ing about Ron Moore’s adap­ta­tion and how it recast many of the orig­i­nal roles and that they’d sex­i­fied the whole thing and it sounded pathetic and lame.

But then I (belat­edly) saw the minis­eries on DVD. And I was hooked.

Gone was the loop­i­ness of the first series. No more casino plan­ets. No more Ovians. No more Dagget or lum­ber­ing Cylons with their hokey swords. The Cylons were bad muthas. The apoc­a­lypse of the 12 colonies of Kobol felt real (nat­u­rally in a post 9/11 world) and imme­di­ate. There were moments where peo­ple had to make deci­sions that would get the entire fleet killed or just half of the fleet. It was gut wrench­ing to watch as the pres­i­dent decides to aban­don half of the fleet to die so that the rest of the fleet can live on to run from the bad guys another day.

And then the SciFi Chan­nel green­lit a first sea­son. And it was great. And then based on the rat­ings of that they green­lit a sec­ond sea­son, some­thing that the first series could never do. And it’s still great.

My favorite char­ac­ters from the new series are Col. Tigh and Gaius Bal­tar, two peo­ple that I never cared about from the first series. Tigh always was the nice gen­teel sec­ond in com­mand (I remem­ber very lit­tle about him) to Adama, and I remem­ber noth­ing of Bal­tar, except that I think he was already a turn­coat to the Cylons when the series began. Michael Hogan and James Cal­lis, who play Tigh and Bal­tar, respec­tively, are great, with Hogan being my favorite of the two. His Tigh is a lowlife drunk scum­bag who Adama sees some sort of value in. He’s crass, gets in fights, and is almost uni­ver­sally hated by the crew, espe­cially Star­buck. Cal­lis, who I remem­bered as the gay guy from Brid­get Jones’s Diary is hillar­i­ous here as the ego­ma­ni­a­cal genius who keeps hav­ing visions of his Cylon girlfriend/handler in his head. That the man who unwit­tingly helped bring the apoc­a­lypse on is able to be ele­vated to the post of vice pres­i­dent of the for­mer 12 colonies makes for great television.

I love the show. I wait weekly now to see what will hap­pen next. I try not to read on the net what will hap­pen the next episode. I don’t do such a good job of that some­times. The sign of great tele­vi­sion is that you will clamor for more and more like this show does. I want to know who else is a Cylon. I want to know what the colonists will find on Kobol. I want to know how Helo and Star­buck are going to get back to the fleet and what will hap­pen to them on the way. I want to know when Bal­tar will finally turn to the Cylon side and either be forced to flee or will stay and be a Fifth Colum­nist for the Cylons. I want to know what is going to hap­pen to Boomer now that she shot Adama. Will Pres­i­dent Roslin die? Will Bal­tar become pres­i­dent at that time or will he have to cam­paign against Tom Zarek? When is Tigh going to attempt to clean up and get rid of his crazy wife Ellen, who con­se­quently lusts for Tigh to have power? What will hap­pen to Chief when he gets back and his sus­pi­cions about Boomer being a Cylon are realized?

Damn! I love this show!