yet more Laura Roslin thoughts

[pellucid]

I promise, someday I will stop making multiple BSG posts every week! Today is not that day, however.

Comments

[frolicndetour]

Not much to add, except that as much as I wasn't altogether sold on the way they were approaching Adama/Roslin even in season three, it honestly has never occurred to me that what we're seeing - or even what Ron thinks he's showing us, is Laura enters a relationship with Bill --> Laura loses perspective and abandons the Fleet. I think what they're trying to show is us is: Laura is utterly shaken by the discovery of Earth --> Laura decides to give up and let herself die -->Laura finally gives in and enters a relationship with Bill, because her responsibilities aren't holding her back anymore. There's a definite implication that she couldn't have both, which, to the extent that it's focused more on her than on Bill (I keep typing "Bull," heh) is a bit fail-y, but not as much as what you're worried might be happening. And to the extent that it's true of both of them, I can understand it, because they're not just any man and any woman; their relationship definitely creates the appearance of corruption, and has somewhat destroyed the balance of power that was there when they were more able to check each other.

I think "The Hub" made a weird conflation of Laura's ability to have compassion for Baltar with her ability to embrace her love for Bill ... which, talk about different kinds of "love." But I think that's just a weird Espenson moment - even though it worked for me totally on a purely emotional level at the time, since both those scenes were so affecting - and it doesn't have much to do with what we're seeing this season. This season Earth happened first, and Laura was totally shaken and lost all confidence in her leadership abilities, stopped treatment, then took up with Bill, I guess is now in a fast and irreversible decline, so handed power to Lee, (but is still there to help him as much as she can.) So I totally understand how the timing is very disturbing and seems to fit into really bad stereotypes, but I don't think that's what we're meant to take from it.

[pellucid]

I think the biggest problem here is that I'm not particularly sure they know what they're trying to portray about Adama/Roslin, and even if they do know, they're not executing it terribly well. And I fear that if asked, Ron or the other writers would answer the "what are you trying to show" question with a rather shallow "oh, isn't it sweet that they've finally gotten together; even though this journey has broken them down so much, they've got a little comfort here." Which is...not terribly satisfactory to me. And also not really what I'm seeing executed.

As for "The Hub," I can't decide what to think about it. I'd like to write it off (or at least the parts of it I didn't like; there were also aspects of the episode I really did like--particularly most of the Baltar stuff and some of the dream sequence stuff) as just an Espenson episode that doesn't quite jive with reality, but it seemed to be such an important episode in terms of Laura's development that it's hard to write it off. I do keep trying to see where the connections are from that to what happened afterwards because how do you just walk away from that and pretend it didn't happen?

Mostly, though, I think that the inconsistency of the writing leaves so many things open for interpretation that it's easy for us all to see whatever pings for us--perhaps positively, though in my case, at least with Laura, in an anxiety-producing way--and be tempted to run with that. And there's not a coherent picture there to prevent such things. I'm just trying to put whatever faith I have left in the Opera House and endgame; Laura's just got to be awesome in the end, yes??? Laura and Kara and Caprica and Athena--all these women who have been getting something of the shaft lately!