So there we were, Kim and I, hav­ing a nice evening together, going to our favorite Tex-Mex haunt, Mattito’s, and it’s pretty crowded, but the weather out­side is nice, not too warm, not too cool, and so Kim asks if there is any imme­di­ate seat­ing out­side, and there was, so we were led out to our table, and who is sit­ting at a table for 6 across from us but WFAA weather man Pete Delkus.

I have a strange his­tory with mem­bers of the WFAA news team. Way back, when I was about 17 or so there was a guy on WFAA that did the news named Quin Math­ews. One day I saw him at a CD shop, so, being the curi­ous sort, I fol­lowed him around and would casu­ally try to see what he was going to buy. I think it was jazz. Then I would see him at Block­buster with a female. They both picked a video, his pick lost that night.

Then Gary Cogill and I exchanged some emails about film crit­i­cism and we even saw each other at a press screen­ing for a Kevin Kline film that was pretty ter­ri­ble. And I saw Troy Dun­gan in col­lege at a Parent’s Week­end func­tion at Bay­lor. But it had been a loooooooooong time since I’d seen any cur­rent WFAA team players…until Fri­day evening.

White shirt, pink tie. Hair look­ing per­fect, as usual. Looked like an iced tea in a beer mug. In fact, the whole fam­ily had drinks in mugs. Three kids, two other women. The strange thing? There wasn’t a lot of talk­ing at the table for so many peo­ple being there. Seemed kind of strange for a party of six.

The other thing that I noticed almost imme­di­ately is that the waiter that every­one else on the patio had was not attend­ing to Delkus, party of six. They had Mar­tin, who is one of the old timers there. He’s good. He paid atten­tion to the Delkus party while we were wait­ing for refills, Delkus, party of six had refills imme­di­ately, thanks to Martin.

I guess it pays to be weather roy­alty in this town. Now if only us lit­tle peo­ple could get our refills in a timely man­ner, too.

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? 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. 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 drink 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.

I am a sand­wich guy. Love sand­wiches. I could live off of them for days and weeks given the oppor­tu­nity. I even like cre­at­ing new ways to make sand­wiches. Grilled chicken and spicy mus­tard on a grilled cheese com­prised of pro­volone and moz­zarella? Why not?

Jason’s Deli, Which Wich, chopped beef, sliced turkey with honey bar­be­cue, I love them. And if they were sen­tient and could feel love, they would love me too.

And so I was at Pot­belly Sand­wich Works the other day with Kim. I ordered the Pizza Sand­wich and she got the Turkey Skinny. I had to go back to the house so I took mine with me and she met a client. About twenty min­utes passes.

I eat the sand­wich when I get home.

Seri­ously? They call this a Pizza Sand­wich? Pep­per­oni, mari­nara sauce (who­ever put that on pizza?), provolone(again, who put that on pizza?), mush­rooms and Ital­ian sea­son­ing. Those are the ingre­di­ents that make up the vaunted “Pizza Sandwich”.

It was ter­ri­ble. Pos­si­bly the worst sand­wich I’ve ever bought at an estab­lish­ment that pur­ported to be a sand­wich shop. It didn’t taste like pizza, and it didn’t even taste good. It was like the bread was a wet sponge and the “pep­per­oni” (all two slices) was so low rent that it needed a bailout.

I talked to Kim later and told her the Pizza Sand­wich was ter­ri­ble. She imme­di­ately retorted, “My sand­wich was ter­ri­ble too!”

So good­bye and good rid­dance, Pot­belly Sand­wich Work. You’ve been in busi­ness for 32 years but hope­fully you’ll go out of busi­ness very soon and stop pol­lut­ing the world with your crummy “sandwiches”.

Peo­ple always com­plain about the Acad­emy Awards show; it’s too long, it’s bor­ing, it has all of those lame musi­cal numbers

But whether it’s Rob Lowe and Snow White danc­ing to “Proud Mary” or Savion Glover tap-dancing to the music from Schindler’s List, the musi­cal num­bers do serve their pur­pose. Imag­ine you’re the one sit­ting in that giant the­ater wait­ing for your name to be called as one of the hon­ored few in your cat­e­gory. You’re crowded next to your co-stars and the pro­duc­ers, you kinda need to use the restroom but the lines are incred­i­bly long and just at that moment the pro­duc­ers of the show have shined their tim­ing wis­dom on you and start show­ing a dance ret­ro­spec­tive from the past eighty years of Oscars.

And all of those peo­ple that make the movies, most of them are the lit­tle guy, the guy you’ve never heard of that did some­thing really cool with the spe­cial effects from Iron Man or The Dark Knight, shouldn’t he be hon­ored too? Yes, he’s crammed into the bor­ing part of the show, the part of the show that every­one watches just to see what the goofy cos­tume designer is wear­ing and what bizarre polit­i­cal rant they’re going to go on dur­ing the Best Doc­u­men­tary award.

The Acad­emy is made up of TONS of peo­ple, and they all want their moment in the sun.

What if you were that lit­tle guy? The guy that won Best Live Action Short? Wouldn’t you want your moment?

So stop com­plain­ing dur­ing the bloated, overly-long Oscars. Let’s win one for the lit­tle guy.

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.