Battlestar Galactica 3x12, "Rapture"
Boom boom boom, baby. My show is back, and it is not fooling around. Oh yeeeah.
Okay, first off, I better quickly cover what I didn't like about this episode, in order to get onto to what I did. Cus, you know, that part's going to take a lot longer.
Look, I will be the first to admit that I may very well have become a brainwashed automoton that's so in love with this show that I'm too blind to see where they screw up when they do ("By your command, RDM..."), but I still like to think that's not quite yet the case. This episode was, to say the least, a little bit all over the place. There were a lot of threads they had to tie up and as a result they covered all of them very briefly and with occasionally a bit too much convienance.
That said, I think part of that was easily ignored by yours truly while watching it because of the inherant hype that comes with getting to watch a new episode after a lengthy hiatus. Which I think helps to make it okay; if an episode in the middle of the season was this spastic, I would not be a happy camper. But, hey, they were coming off a cliff-hanger with a hell of a lot of balls in the air.
Did they catch them all? I think so. Some were fumbled a bit, I will give you that, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they dropped them completely. They wrapped it up, and now we can move on. Overall, I rate it a solid B+ to A-. Not their best, but still one of the best on television.
Onto the good stuff!
Say what you will about the Quadrangle of Doom (I'm personally treading the line between indifference and annoyance myself, but with everything else that was going on, it was a plotline that was pretty easy to ignore), but the one thing I do like about it is that, for the most part, none of the parties involved are exactly blatantly labeled as the "bad guy" here. There's no home-wreckers, no sluts, no frigid spouses...they're four different people who just seriously need to get their shit together.
So yes, this week Kara was fracked-up and needed to be shown the back of a pimp hand, Dee was Soldier of Fortune Awesome, and Sam and Lee got to play with guns and be sweaty. And they all more or less managed to keep their personal crap out of the mission. I see no downside to that.
Between promos and spoilers, I had already figured out how Athena was going to get onto the Basestar about two weeks ago, but...damn, that was hard to watch. I mean, hard.
Have I mentioned that I love Helo? I don't think I have lately. Admittedly, he can be a little driven sometimes in the sense that he'll do something for Sharon or Hera that's not so much for the greater good, but he always always pulls it off with grace and somehow never manages to seem selfish. How does he do that? I have no clue, but I love it.
Speaking of love, I have no words for how much I loved the face-off between him and Roslin. If Adama hadn't stopped him...I honestly don't know where that would have gone. Probably no place good. I still adore Roslin, yet I probably would have cheered if Helo had popped her one. Oh, show.
This episode did for the Cylon downloading process what "Hero" did for Adama's personal backstory: confused the hell out of us all.
So in all that was going on, no one bothered to scan through Athena's memories or whatever? ...fine. Sometimes I feel the need to nitpick the hell out of stuff like that, but I frankly and honestly don't care to understand Cylon technology that much anyway because I know I'll just end up making my head hurt.
God made the nova explode at just the right time, so maybe he was looking out for our girl Athena too.
Speaking of God...yeah, I was rolling my eyes a bit at the "Hera immediately knows her true mother" thing. Not so much that they did it, but in that it's so cliched.
But again: fine. I understand that Hera is The Very Special Baby. She gets to get away with that a couple of times. First she gets to cure cancer, and now this. I think she only gets so many slots under her "Feats" on the character sheet, though, so they better choose wisely from here on out.
Which seques us semi-neatly to...oh, Boomer. Man, did she freak me out this episode. I mean, I get where it's all coming from, really. She's been through a lot of shit, and everytime she tries she just gets shot down (woah, inadvertant pun) all over again. Chief doesn't love her, Adama doesn't want her, Cally won't be her friend, and Hera won't be her daughter. She has nothing, nothing but her bad memories and the guilt for things that she never wanted to do. So now it's her turn to be the bitter one, and who could blame her for that? Poor, poor Boomer.
I'd like to think the neck-snapping was a direct throw-back on the writers' part to the very beginning of the series. It's just too perfect otherwise.
So I take it this means we're off the Basestar now? Considering the only real major player we have left there is Boomer; everyone else is back on Galactica. Which is probably a good thing, considering I love the Cylons probably more than I should but even I was getting a little sick of the trippy stuff over there every single week.
Speaking of which, RIP Three. Another thing I knew was coming because of spoilers, as I heard awhile back Lucy Lawless was only making so many episodes with the show, which clearly meant something had to happen to her, and boxing is pretty much the only permanant solution when you're dealing with a Cylon.
But that's what you get for playing in the freaky mysticisim and defying the group mind, Three. It's cold machine logic, sure, but...they're machines. They still haven't come to terms with the fact that they're evolving past that ideal anymore. So Three was a little too ahead of her time on that. Not to mention pretty damn crazy in general, but that's what you get for taking lessons in religion and love from a drug-taking priestess and the guy who basically lost his mind about two years ago.
(Oh, and as far as the seemingly random Cavil on the surface goes...I think there was originally supposed to be a bigger skinjob party on the planet, but then they had to cut something out. I only bring this up because I remember that promo shot with Leoben on the planet wielding a gun, which obviously didn't make it into the episode. So that makes that seem a little less odd, at least. Actually, I think they probably cut a lot out of this episode, as there was this bit on the David Eick podcast about a scene with Lee and Sam that also was missing from the episode. That probably goes a long way towards explaining how jumpy the final product came across.)
So, Three apparantly recognized one of the Final Five as being a supposed human she saw at one point or another and also possibly one she did something to, hence the apology. Cue dramatic music!
I'm personally glad they didn't show us who this was, though...I'm looking forward to trying to solve the mystery on my own. Not that I'm not freaked out in the meantime, of course. Eeee...
And, Gaius. How in typical form was he in this episode? Three's bleeding from her nose, slowly dying in his arms, dreamily going on about she's just seen the face of God and what have you, and he's just going "Yeah yeah, but what about ME??" He never changes, does he?
(Well, actually, maybe a little...or am the only one who's been noticing recently that he's gotten a bit more hardcore? I'm just saying that, the guy who shoots Cavil and just keeps on going, that guy has come a long way from the guy who was whining about having never held a gun before back on Kobol. Then again, we all know what happened on Kobol, so...)
I also have to admit, I giggled inappropriately when Three died and his reaction was to swear in frustration and kick Three's arm out of the way so he could try his luck at the mystic Eye. Oh, Gaius. You are so so very frakked, and I love you for it. Timing's just a bitch too, isn't it? Hee.
Honestly, I was a little surprised that they just brought him back to Galactica like that. I mean, I'm personally thrilled, and I certainly see how it makes more sense for the story, but I wasn't necessarily expecting the character motivation to make that happen there.
Then again, we had Sam and Chief in that party, leaders of the New Caprica resistance, so no doubt they were of the opinion that shooting him like a dog and leaving him to burn up with the nova was too good a fate for him. And, frankly, I agree with them. There is a lot of explaining that needs to be done. A lot of accountability that needs to go around.
Finally: next week.
Look, can I just come out and say...it's not even that I'm annoyed with the focus on the Quadrangle, to be honest. It's that I have this thing where I personally like previews to actually tell me what the hell is going on in an episode, and...
Okay. This is technically a bunch of spoilers, but since it's for next week I'm sure you all won't mind so much.
First of all, the blurb I found at Battlestar Wiki talks about Baltar attempting suicide. Secondly, I've seen the promo pics for this episode, and we have, oh, one shot of Lee. Almost all of the others have Baltar in them. So while, yes, it's more than plausible that the episode will be divided between two main storylines because they've done it before...all about the Quadrangle? Yeah, I don't think so.
That's what pisses me off, really; when the promo monkeys make it look like the episode is all about *blank* when it isn't all about *blank*. That's my TV pet peeve.
But ignoring the idiots who make the promos...
Gaius Baltar is back on Galactica. Caprica Six is finally, for reals, on Galactica. Hera is back with her mommy and daddy and therefore the Fleet in general. Starbuck may have a destiny, and if so it is HUGE. We've got another marker on the (seemingly endless?) road to Earth. The Quadrangle of Doom will continue to frak your shit up. Someone we know is totally one of the Final Five.
Dude, this season is going to rock.
So, that's my review. What's yours?
Okay, first off, I better quickly cover what I didn't like about this episode, in order to get onto to what I did. Cus, you know, that part's going to take a lot longer.
Look, I will be the first to admit that I may very well have become a brainwashed automoton that's so in love with this show that I'm too blind to see where they screw up when they do ("By your command, RDM..."), but I still like to think that's not quite yet the case. This episode was, to say the least, a little bit all over the place. There were a lot of threads they had to tie up and as a result they covered all of them very briefly and with occasionally a bit too much convienance.
That said, I think part of that was easily ignored by yours truly while watching it because of the inherant hype that comes with getting to watch a new episode after a lengthy hiatus. Which I think helps to make it okay; if an episode in the middle of the season was this spastic, I would not be a happy camper. But, hey, they were coming off a cliff-hanger with a hell of a lot of balls in the air.
Did they catch them all? I think so. Some were fumbled a bit, I will give you that, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they dropped them completely. They wrapped it up, and now we can move on. Overall, I rate it a solid B+ to A-. Not their best, but still one of the best on television.
Onto the good stuff!
Say what you will about the Quadrangle of Doom (I'm personally treading the line between indifference and annoyance myself, but with everything else that was going on, it was a plotline that was pretty easy to ignore), but the one thing I do like about it is that, for the most part, none of the parties involved are exactly blatantly labeled as the "bad guy" here. There's no home-wreckers, no sluts, no frigid spouses...they're four different people who just seriously need to get their shit together.
So yes, this week Kara was fracked-up and needed to be shown the back of a pimp hand, Dee was Soldier of Fortune Awesome, and Sam and Lee got to play with guns and be sweaty. And they all more or less managed to keep their personal crap out of the mission. I see no downside to that.
Between promos and spoilers, I had already figured out how Athena was going to get onto the Basestar about two weeks ago, but...damn, that was hard to watch. I mean, hard.
Have I mentioned that I love Helo? I don't think I have lately. Admittedly, he can be a little driven sometimes in the sense that he'll do something for Sharon or Hera that's not so much for the greater good, but he always always pulls it off with grace and somehow never manages to seem selfish. How does he do that? I have no clue, but I love it.
Speaking of love, I have no words for how much I loved the face-off between him and Roslin. If Adama hadn't stopped him...I honestly don't know where that would have gone. Probably no place good. I still adore Roslin, yet I probably would have cheered if Helo had popped her one. Oh, show.
This episode did for the Cylon downloading process what "Hero" did for Adama's personal backstory: confused the hell out of us all.
So in all that was going on, no one bothered to scan through Athena's memories or whatever? ...fine. Sometimes I feel the need to nitpick the hell out of stuff like that, but I frankly and honestly don't care to understand Cylon technology that much anyway because I know I'll just end up making my head hurt.
God made the nova explode at just the right time, so maybe he was looking out for our girl Athena too.
Speaking of God...yeah, I was rolling my eyes a bit at the "Hera immediately knows her true mother" thing. Not so much that they did it, but in that it's so cliched.
But again: fine. I understand that Hera is The Very Special Baby. She gets to get away with that a couple of times. First she gets to cure cancer, and now this. I think she only gets so many slots under her "Feats" on the character sheet, though, so they better choose wisely from here on out.
Which seques us semi-neatly to...oh, Boomer. Man, did she freak me out this episode. I mean, I get where it's all coming from, really. She's been through a lot of shit, and everytime she tries she just gets shot down (woah, inadvertant pun) all over again. Chief doesn't love her, Adama doesn't want her, Cally won't be her friend, and Hera won't be her daughter. She has nothing, nothing but her bad memories and the guilt for things that she never wanted to do. So now it's her turn to be the bitter one, and who could blame her for that? Poor, poor Boomer.
I'd like to think the neck-snapping was a direct throw-back on the writers' part to the very beginning of the series. It's just too perfect otherwise.
So I take it this means we're off the Basestar now? Considering the only real major player we have left there is Boomer; everyone else is back on Galactica. Which is probably a good thing, considering I love the Cylons probably more than I should but even I was getting a little sick of the trippy stuff over there every single week.
Speaking of which, RIP Three. Another thing I knew was coming because of spoilers, as I heard awhile back Lucy Lawless was only making so many episodes with the show, which clearly meant something had to happen to her, and boxing is pretty much the only permanant solution when you're dealing with a Cylon.
But that's what you get for playing in the freaky mysticisim and defying the group mind, Three. It's cold machine logic, sure, but...they're machines. They still haven't come to terms with the fact that they're evolving past that ideal anymore. So Three was a little too ahead of her time on that. Not to mention pretty damn crazy in general, but that's what you get for taking lessons in religion and love from a drug-taking priestess and the guy who basically lost his mind about two years ago.
(Oh, and as far as the seemingly random Cavil on the surface goes...I think there was originally supposed to be a bigger skinjob party on the planet, but then they had to cut something out. I only bring this up because I remember that promo shot with Leoben on the planet wielding a gun, which obviously didn't make it into the episode. So that makes that seem a little less odd, at least. Actually, I think they probably cut a lot out of this episode, as there was this bit on the David Eick podcast about a scene with Lee and Sam that also was missing from the episode. That probably goes a long way towards explaining how jumpy the final product came across.)
So, Three apparantly recognized one of the Final Five as being a supposed human she saw at one point or another and also possibly one she did something to, hence the apology. Cue dramatic music!
I'm personally glad they didn't show us who this was, though...I'm looking forward to trying to solve the mystery on my own. Not that I'm not freaked out in the meantime, of course. Eeee...
And, Gaius. How in typical form was he in this episode? Three's bleeding from her nose, slowly dying in his arms, dreamily going on about she's just seen the face of God and what have you, and he's just going "Yeah yeah, but what about ME??" He never changes, does he?
(Well, actually, maybe a little...or am the only one who's been noticing recently that he's gotten a bit more hardcore? I'm just saying that, the guy who shoots Cavil and just keeps on going, that guy has come a long way from the guy who was whining about having never held a gun before back on Kobol. Then again, we all know what happened on Kobol, so...)
I also have to admit, I giggled inappropriately when Three died and his reaction was to swear in frustration and kick Three's arm out of the way so he could try his luck at the mystic Eye. Oh, Gaius. You are so so very frakked, and I love you for it. Timing's just a bitch too, isn't it? Hee.
Honestly, I was a little surprised that they just brought him back to Galactica like that. I mean, I'm personally thrilled, and I certainly see how it makes more sense for the story, but I wasn't necessarily expecting the character motivation to make that happen there.
Then again, we had Sam and Chief in that party, leaders of the New Caprica resistance, so no doubt they were of the opinion that shooting him like a dog and leaving him to burn up with the nova was too good a fate for him. And, frankly, I agree with them. There is a lot of explaining that needs to be done. A lot of accountability that needs to go around.
Finally: next week.
Look, can I just come out and say...it's not even that I'm annoyed with the focus on the Quadrangle, to be honest. It's that I have this thing where I personally like previews to actually tell me what the hell is going on in an episode, and...
Okay. This is technically a bunch of spoilers, but since it's for next week I'm sure you all won't mind so much.
First of all, the blurb I found at Battlestar Wiki talks about Baltar attempting suicide. Secondly, I've seen the promo pics for this episode, and we have, oh, one shot of Lee. Almost all of the others have Baltar in them. So while, yes, it's more than plausible that the episode will be divided between two main storylines because they've done it before...all about the Quadrangle? Yeah, I don't think so.
That's what pisses me off, really; when the promo monkeys make it look like the episode is all about *blank* when it isn't all about *blank*. That's my TV pet peeve.
But ignoring the idiots who make the promos...
Gaius Baltar is back on Galactica. Caprica Six is finally, for reals, on Galactica. Hera is back with her mommy and daddy and therefore the Fleet in general. Starbuck may have a destiny, and if so it is HUGE. We've got another marker on the (seemingly endless?) road to Earth. The Quadrangle of Doom will continue to frak your shit up. Someone we know is totally one of the Final Five.
Dude, this season is going to rock.
So, that's my review. What's yours?