sounds like a bad cover band
So I've been reading reviews and recaps of He That Believeth in Me, and one of the things I've seen some people mentioning (in some cases with heaps of righteous indignation rather than the amused exasperation I think it calls for) is that Ron Moore is pulling all this stuff out of his ... hat and how the cylons never actually had a plan and the identity of the final four was recently planned, which is why it's so very WTF? (though I think we all thought Billy might turn out to be a Cylon - he was too perfect to be real - *sniff* I miss Billy - so it makes sense that they'd make Tory a cylon because of her position, though I suppose Billy could actually come back now that the show he left for went nowhere) - especially considering Chief's freakout at the end of season 1 and Cavil's assurance that he wasn't a cylon (though I suppose cylons, like demons, lie, except when telling the truth will fuck you up more, if that's their goal), and Tigh's service in the first cylon war, supposedly before there were skinjobs (though I suppose the genetic material to create the skin jobs had to come from somewhere, and wasn't that the point of the Diana[?] being lost in Razor? Possibly those folks were the templates for the seven, at least, and possibly all twelve, though if the Temple of Five is four thousand years old...
And see, this is where I just start laughing, because it doesn't matter what show it is, the mytharc is always fucked up*. It doesn't matter what the show is, or what the showrunner tells you. They are making shit up as they go along.** They are lying liefaces who lie, and they will all tell you one thing and maybe even mean it, right up until a better idea comes along or they get bored, or the actors they need aren't available, and then, because it is a television show, and produced on the fly under many constraints, things change. On a good show, the changes will work, and everyone will go, "hey, that's exactly where I thought it was going all along - look at the clues" or "hey, I never expected that, that was awesome!" or something along those lines. And even on a good show - a good show slowly going bad, perhaps - you end up with the Syndicate being destroyed so the showrunner can clear away the tangled wreckage of his not-particularly-planned-out mythos and pretend it made sense at some point.
Shows that have this kind of structure, or that develop it, tend to, as they progress, get deeper and deeper into the mytharc stuff and tend to stop producing as many standalone type episodes - anyone schooled on X-Files, BtVS/Angel, or Alias can tell you that. And the mytharc becomes more complicated and unwieldy, and often, unresolvable, as the seasons pass. You just learn, as a viewer, to either go with it and spackle the holes as they appear (fanwank ahoy) in amused and affectionate exasperation, or you eventually walk away, shaking your head in disgust at the mess your once-awesome show has become.
And even on shows without that kind of overarching mythology to muddy the waters, things start to get a bit recursive three or four or five seasons in (see The Sopranos) or take unexpected (and often unwelcome) turns (see The West Wing or Grey's Anatomy), because the actors want more money/facetime, or got knocked up/are unavailable, the writers want more hookers and blow time, the showrunner suddenly has two additional shows to run, the network has lots of notes and is demanding they be implemented, and/or has given the show a shiny new timeslot of death, etc.
And the thing is, along the way, a good writer (or in the case of tv shows, group of writers + the showrunner) will be seeding his or her story - both consciously and unconsciously - with character (and arc) stuff that can be picked up at any time. One of the best unplanned and yet absolutely PERFECT reveals EVER was Bayliss's history as an abuse survivor, and then later, his bisexuality, on Homicide. It wasn't something Fontana had mapped out in season one, but by the time they arrived at it, it felt true to Bayliss, as we'd seen him over the years (in ways the late revelations of a tortured background often don't, in the hands of many writers, where they feel pasted on as an excuse for bad behavior).
I guess my thing with television is that while I do have expectations, and obviously, I sometimes get frustrated with the writing on shows I love, one of my expectations is that the mytharc is always going to wind up taking over the show (whatever the show might be), and it's almost always going to end up sucking. It's just the nature of the beast.
Personally, with BSG in particular, it's been so up-and-down since the second half of season two that I don't expect the awesomeness of the first season and a half, much like when I was watching the later seasons of the West Wing, I had to remind myself that it wasn't the same show it had been the first two spectacular seasons, and that even though I think Homicide's fifth season is pretty damn good, it still subjected us to quite a lot of annoying bits (the arson investigation and Mikey's endless refrain of "Do you think I'm dirty?"). As long as I am mostly entertained, and I love the characters, I will keep watching. If I start wanting to put my foot through my television (hi, Grey's Anatomy), I stop watching.
One of the defining aspects of being a fan of something, to me, is loving it enough to pick it apart and obsess over the stupid details and the "wait, wait, that doesn't fit with continuity, does it?" kinds of conversations we're constantly having, but another part of being a fan, for me, is knowing that inevitably, the thing I love is going to break my heart somehow, and it's just best to know that and be prepared going in.
All of which is to say, I mostly enjoy BSG a lot - I love a number of the characters quite fiercely - but I still think Ron Moore has been partaking heavily of the crack, and I don't know yet if it will turn out to be the good crack or the bad crack, I just hope it's the entertaining crack. And that goes for all the other shows I watch, as well. I might get bent out of shape after an episode, I might rant that they're doing my favorite character a disservice or ruining the storyline, but then I remember all the stuff I've said here, and I try to chill out.
And man, can you tell I'm having a hard time working on my remix? *snerk*
--
*Possibly the exception to this is Babylon 5, which I never watched but which is the only show I've ever actually believed was planned out in advance the way its creator said it was, if only because it apparently mostly followed the plan, from what I've been told; I could be wrong about that.
**Which, well, isn't that kind of what writers do? Though it's also why I personally can't post works in progress. What if I realize 5K words in that I'm missing something important at the beginning? Once it's out there, I can't fix it!
~*~
And see, this is where I just start laughing, because it doesn't matter what show it is, the mytharc is always fucked up*. It doesn't matter what the show is, or what the showrunner tells you. They are making shit up as they go along.** They are lying liefaces who lie, and they will all tell you one thing and maybe even mean it, right up until a better idea comes along or they get bored, or the actors they need aren't available, and then, because it is a television show, and produced on the fly under many constraints, things change. On a good show, the changes will work, and everyone will go, "hey, that's exactly where I thought it was going all along - look at the clues" or "hey, I never expected that, that was awesome!" or something along those lines. And even on a good show - a good show slowly going bad, perhaps - you end up with the Syndicate being destroyed so the showrunner can clear away the tangled wreckage of his not-particularly-planned-out mythos and pretend it made sense at some point.
Shows that have this kind of structure, or that develop it, tend to, as they progress, get deeper and deeper into the mytharc stuff and tend to stop producing as many standalone type episodes - anyone schooled on X-Files, BtVS/Angel, or Alias can tell you that. And the mytharc becomes more complicated and unwieldy, and often, unresolvable, as the seasons pass. You just learn, as a viewer, to either go with it and spackle the holes as they appear (fanwank ahoy) in amused and affectionate exasperation, or you eventually walk away, shaking your head in disgust at the mess your once-awesome show has become.
And even on shows without that kind of overarching mythology to muddy the waters, things start to get a bit recursive three or four or five seasons in (see The Sopranos) or take unexpected (and often unwelcome) turns (see The West Wing or Grey's Anatomy), because the actors want more money/facetime, or got knocked up/are unavailable, the writers want more hookers and blow time, the showrunner suddenly has two additional shows to run, the network has lots of notes and is demanding they be implemented, and/or has given the show a shiny new timeslot of death, etc.
And the thing is, along the way, a good writer (or in the case of tv shows, group of writers + the showrunner) will be seeding his or her story - both consciously and unconsciously - with character (and arc) stuff that can be picked up at any time. One of the best unplanned and yet absolutely PERFECT reveals EVER was Bayliss's history as an abuse survivor, and then later, his bisexuality, on Homicide. It wasn't something Fontana had mapped out in season one, but by the time they arrived at it, it felt true to Bayliss, as we'd seen him over the years (in ways the late revelations of a tortured background often don't, in the hands of many writers, where they feel pasted on as an excuse for bad behavior).
I guess my thing with television is that while I do have expectations, and obviously, I sometimes get frustrated with the writing on shows I love, one of my expectations is that the mytharc is always going to wind up taking over the show (whatever the show might be), and it's almost always going to end up sucking. It's just the nature of the beast.
Personally, with BSG in particular, it's been so up-and-down since the second half of season two that I don't expect the awesomeness of the first season and a half, much like when I was watching the later seasons of the West Wing, I had to remind myself that it wasn't the same show it had been the first two spectacular seasons, and that even though I think Homicide's fifth season is pretty damn good, it still subjected us to quite a lot of annoying bits (the arson investigation and Mikey's endless refrain of "Do you think I'm dirty?"). As long as I am mostly entertained, and I love the characters, I will keep watching. If I start wanting to put my foot through my television (hi, Grey's Anatomy), I stop watching.
One of the defining aspects of being a fan of something, to me, is loving it enough to pick it apart and obsess over the stupid details and the "wait, wait, that doesn't fit with continuity, does it?" kinds of conversations we're constantly having, but another part of being a fan, for me, is knowing that inevitably, the thing I love is going to break my heart somehow, and it's just best to know that and be prepared going in.
All of which is to say, I mostly enjoy BSG a lot - I love a number of the characters quite fiercely - but I still think Ron Moore has been partaking heavily of the crack, and I don't know yet if it will turn out to be the good crack or the bad crack, I just hope it's the entertaining crack. And that goes for all the other shows I watch, as well. I might get bent out of shape after an episode, I might rant that they're doing my favorite character a disservice or ruining the storyline, but then I remember all the stuff I've said here, and I try to chill out.
And man, can you tell I'm having a hard time working on my remix? *snerk*
--
*Possibly the exception to this is Babylon 5, which I never watched but which is the only show I've ever actually believed was planned out in advance the way its creator said it was, if only because it apparently mostly followed the plan, from what I've been told; I could be wrong about that.
**Which, well, isn't that kind of what writers do? Though it's also why I personally can't post works in progress. What if I realize 5K words in that I'm missing something important at the beginning? Once it's out there, I can't fix it!
~*~