BSG: Daybreak, part 1, and TSCC: Today is the Day, part 1
These shows continue with the episode title parallels. Among other parallels. Speaking of which, how about another plug for charmax's brilliant crossover vid Unnatural Selection?
**
There were parts of this episode I adored and other parts that confused and/or frustrated me, and I think I must quote R. for the most concise reaction. As soon as the credits rolled, she said, "That was it? And there are only two hours left?" It does seem like there are an awful lot of bases to cover in the last two hours.
This was a beautiful episode, though. I loved the flashback scenes, and whether they serve a wider plot purpose or not, I appreciated that we got them. At this point I feel like the show needs to be as much an homage to characters we love as it is about telling the end of the story, and there was a certain element of that in these flashbacks. Our main characters, for the most part, with all they had and all they lost before the world ever ended.
I particularly loved the continuity between characters then and now. Laura before was still so very Laura: she deals with grief through action, through sharp decisiveness. This was not something she only figured out the day the bombs fell. And she picked herself up again and moved on in her grief. Laura is also such an oldest child, and while that's a small thing in the grand scheme, I was glad they got that detail right.
There's a thread here about all the people who live only in the memory of the people still alive. When Laura dies, who will remember her family? Who, aside from Baltar and Caprica, remembers Julius Baltar? Who, aside from Kara and the Adamas, remembers Zak? How many billions of people have already been forgotten? I'm not sure whether they're trying to do something with this concept, aside from fairly generic things about love and memory and death--but in the face of all the destiny and the plottiness, I really appreciated these little character moments.
I have no idea what the point of the pigeon was, though. Unless we're supposed to think about the genetic similarities between pigeons and doves (in Spanish, for instance, it's even the same word--la paloma--for both) and then think of doves and peace and such. But that seems rather a stretch, yes?
While I enjoyed the character moments of the flashbacks, I didn't particularly like the way all the rest of the episode felt like the contrived movement of chess pieces into position for the big final move. There were so many things that just Did Not make sense to me. Who put Athena and Hera's picture on the wall??? No way was it Helo--he hasn't given up--and while I suspect Athena has given up on some level, she doesn't seem like she's at a point in her grieving process where she would make that move. It reads very conspicuously like RDM thought, "I need Adama to decide to go after Hera. Why would he do that now? Oh, I know! He sees her picture on the wall," without thinking about how it got there.
Similarly, I couldn't see what purpose Baltar's whole...thing about representation (which, wtf??? aren't all his followers residents of ships and consequently enfranchised under the current system?) was, except to set up the conversation with Lee in which Baltar is forced to admit that he doesn't even live up to his own standards. Did we have to have a whole crazy plot point to set up that one line?
And I understand that we need all of Our Heroes going along for the last hurrah, but on a practical level, why is Lee going??? Isn't he supposed to, y'know, be running the government? Saving the people? Holding the fleet together instead of running off on what's arguably a very risky mission? Could we at least have had a conversation in which he justified this decision? Compared with, for instance, his decision (at least initially) to remain behind with the rest of the fleet instead of rescuing the people on New Caprica, this seems out of character and a bit irresponsible. Suddenly he's wearing his uniform again and everything? And if he's going along, and Laura's going along, and Baltar is not going along, how does Lee think Baltar won't assume political power in his absence?
Also, isn't the point to rescue Hera and not just to die along with her? Why all the drama about the one-way mission?
I'll suspend my disbelief in hopes that the payoff will be worthwhile, but even if it is, I wonder if I'll feel it was a bit dishonestly gotten if we have to do all this handwaving of logic to set it up.
Nevertheless, I think my overall assessment of this one is positive, with character moments trumping wtf plot moments. Plus, Laura and Kara very nearly hugged there at the end, and for some reason that made me extraordinarily happy. There's a missing conversation in there somewhere, and I might have to write it. After I write the one that I'm currently working on between Laura and Lee.
And the end draws near, and I have tickets to see the finale on the big screen at a local theatre that is airing it!!! Should be pretty awesome!
**
And another quite strong episode of TSCC. I will be so heartbroken if this show gets cancelled, y'all!!! Nevertheless, I still feel a bit like things aren't moving along quickly enough in this show--I thought, for instance, that we'd have gotten closer to a Jessie v. Connors confrontation in this episode, yet that's still deferred.
I'm hoping that John was able to determine from Riley's body that it was probably a human that killed her--she couldn't possibly have struggled so much against a machine, could she? If Cameron had killed her, would Riley have had the bruises on her face and throat, the skin underneath her fingernails? (This is also my argument against Jessie actually being a machine that has replaced the real version that Derek knew from the future--a theory I've seen tossed around here and there but to which I don't really subscribe.) So John's desire to believe Cameron plus the evidence from Riley's body lead him to the conclusion that she was killed by a human. And so he starts investigating and they find Jessie? Derek also seems like he's getting suspicious of Jessie's motivations. I want this to come to a head soon!
I am loving what they're doing with Jessie's backstory, though. Something happened on that sub to send her on her current course, and these flashbacks are painting her as far more sympathetic than I've seen her before. I find it a little difficult to believe that all those humans would be quite so trusting of their reprogrammed robot captain--yet they interact with him much as Sarah interacts with Cameron, I think. Sarah doesn't like Cameron or truly trust her, but she is forced to adopt some basic habits of trust; I imagine that Jessie and her crewmates' relationship with their cyborg is similar.
And future John, by both Jessie and Cameron's assessments, does not particularly sound like the kind of guy I'd want saving humanity. At what point does our John realize that the only way to truly change the future is to opt out of his own self-fulfilling prophecy?
On the Ellison, Catherine, and John Henry front, I sincerely hope that the whole episode with Savannah makes Ellison start to suspect Catherine more--at least to suspect her of being a bad mother, to start thinking more critically about the whole situation, etc. That's another part of this story that feels a bit like it's in stasis, and I want it to move more quickly.
The fact that this is a two-parter seems promising, though. The ending wasn't any more cliffhanger-y than most episodes, but I feel like in the world of television, when you need lots of stuff to happen, you put it in a multi-part episode. So here's to stuff happening in part 2!
**
I haven't watched ER since, oh, 1998 or so. But before that I watched quite regularly (with my mother, who has been a faithful viewer over the long haul), and when I heard that George Clooney and Juliana Margulies and Noah Wyle and Eriq LaSalle were all coming back for the episode this past week, I--probably like many other people who hadn't watched in the past ten years--tuned in. And I'm really glad I did.
I have no idea who any of the current characters are, so none of that stuff meant anything to me. But it was lovely to see the old faces and to see how these characters reunited and also didn't. Doug and Carol never knew that Carter was getting the kidney; Carter and Benton never knew from whom the kidney came. I loved the conversation between Doug and the doctors from the current County General, where there had been so many generations of people in between that they hardly knew any of the same people. There was something so bittersweet and also realistic about that. Years pass. People move on.
I have no idea how the ER fandom (if there even is much of one) likes to write its characters, but I feel like there's a general fanon trend of making our characters all bff-y: years down the road, SG-1 is still connected, the staff of Bartlet's White House still get together once or twice a year, etc. And canons reinforce this idea, as well: the finale of B5 finds Our Heroes reminiscing about old times from years down the road, and in the most recent X-Files movie, Skinner comes to help out Mulder and Scully, just like old times.
And I kind of love that ER didn't do that. Doug and Carol are still together; Benton happens to show up to be there with Carter after all these years. But there is no grand reunion, very little reminiscing about old times, no legends floating around the halls of County General about the people who used to work there. It's been a lot of years (Benton mentioning that his son was now 13 made me feel old!), and people move on with their lives. Kudos to ER for capturing that dynamic along with the nostalgia.
**
And speaking of years passing, kernezelda points out that today is Farscape's tenth anniversary!!! *raises a glass to my show*
**
There were parts of this episode I adored and other parts that confused and/or frustrated me, and I think I must quote R. for the most concise reaction. As soon as the credits rolled, she said, "That was it? And there are only two hours left?" It does seem like there are an awful lot of bases to cover in the last two hours.
This was a beautiful episode, though. I loved the flashback scenes, and whether they serve a wider plot purpose or not, I appreciated that we got them. At this point I feel like the show needs to be as much an homage to characters we love as it is about telling the end of the story, and there was a certain element of that in these flashbacks. Our main characters, for the most part, with all they had and all they lost before the world ever ended.
I particularly loved the continuity between characters then and now. Laura before was still so very Laura: she deals with grief through action, through sharp decisiveness. This was not something she only figured out the day the bombs fell. And she picked herself up again and moved on in her grief. Laura is also such an oldest child, and while that's a small thing in the grand scheme, I was glad they got that detail right.
There's a thread here about all the people who live only in the memory of the people still alive. When Laura dies, who will remember her family? Who, aside from Baltar and Caprica, remembers Julius Baltar? Who, aside from Kara and the Adamas, remembers Zak? How many billions of people have already been forgotten? I'm not sure whether they're trying to do something with this concept, aside from fairly generic things about love and memory and death--but in the face of all the destiny and the plottiness, I really appreciated these little character moments.
I have no idea what the point of the pigeon was, though. Unless we're supposed to think about the genetic similarities between pigeons and doves (in Spanish, for instance, it's even the same word--la paloma--for both) and then think of doves and peace and such. But that seems rather a stretch, yes?
While I enjoyed the character moments of the flashbacks, I didn't particularly like the way all the rest of the episode felt like the contrived movement of chess pieces into position for the big final move. There were so many things that just Did Not make sense to me. Who put Athena and Hera's picture on the wall??? No way was it Helo--he hasn't given up--and while I suspect Athena has given up on some level, she doesn't seem like she's at a point in her grieving process where she would make that move. It reads very conspicuously like RDM thought, "I need Adama to decide to go after Hera. Why would he do that now? Oh, I know! He sees her picture on the wall," without thinking about how it got there.
Similarly, I couldn't see what purpose Baltar's whole...thing about representation (which, wtf??? aren't all his followers residents of ships and consequently enfranchised under the current system?) was, except to set up the conversation with Lee in which Baltar is forced to admit that he doesn't even live up to his own standards. Did we have to have a whole crazy plot point to set up that one line?
And I understand that we need all of Our Heroes going along for the last hurrah, but on a practical level, why is Lee going??? Isn't he supposed to, y'know, be running the government? Saving the people? Holding the fleet together instead of running off on what's arguably a very risky mission? Could we at least have had a conversation in which he justified this decision? Compared with, for instance, his decision (at least initially) to remain behind with the rest of the fleet instead of rescuing the people on New Caprica, this seems out of character and a bit irresponsible. Suddenly he's wearing his uniform again and everything? And if he's going along, and Laura's going along, and Baltar is not going along, how does Lee think Baltar won't assume political power in his absence?
Also, isn't the point to rescue Hera and not just to die along with her? Why all the drama about the one-way mission?
I'll suspend my disbelief in hopes that the payoff will be worthwhile, but even if it is, I wonder if I'll feel it was a bit dishonestly gotten if we have to do all this handwaving of logic to set it up.
Nevertheless, I think my overall assessment of this one is positive, with character moments trumping wtf plot moments. Plus, Laura and Kara very nearly hugged there at the end, and for some reason that made me extraordinarily happy. There's a missing conversation in there somewhere, and I might have to write it. After I write the one that I'm currently working on between Laura and Lee.
And the end draws near, and I have tickets to see the finale on the big screen at a local theatre that is airing it!!! Should be pretty awesome!
**
And another quite strong episode of TSCC. I will be so heartbroken if this show gets cancelled, y'all!!! Nevertheless, I still feel a bit like things aren't moving along quickly enough in this show--I thought, for instance, that we'd have gotten closer to a Jessie v. Connors confrontation in this episode, yet that's still deferred.
I'm hoping that John was able to determine from Riley's body that it was probably a human that killed her--she couldn't possibly have struggled so much against a machine, could she? If Cameron had killed her, would Riley have had the bruises on her face and throat, the skin underneath her fingernails? (This is also my argument against Jessie actually being a machine that has replaced the real version that Derek knew from the future--a theory I've seen tossed around here and there but to which I don't really subscribe.) So John's desire to believe Cameron plus the evidence from Riley's body lead him to the conclusion that she was killed by a human. And so he starts investigating and they find Jessie? Derek also seems like he's getting suspicious of Jessie's motivations. I want this to come to a head soon!
I am loving what they're doing with Jessie's backstory, though. Something happened on that sub to send her on her current course, and these flashbacks are painting her as far more sympathetic than I've seen her before. I find it a little difficult to believe that all those humans would be quite so trusting of their reprogrammed robot captain--yet they interact with him much as Sarah interacts with Cameron, I think. Sarah doesn't like Cameron or truly trust her, but she is forced to adopt some basic habits of trust; I imagine that Jessie and her crewmates' relationship with their cyborg is similar.
And future John, by both Jessie and Cameron's assessments, does not particularly sound like the kind of guy I'd want saving humanity. At what point does our John realize that the only way to truly change the future is to opt out of his own self-fulfilling prophecy?
On the Ellison, Catherine, and John Henry front, I sincerely hope that the whole episode with Savannah makes Ellison start to suspect Catherine more--at least to suspect her of being a bad mother, to start thinking more critically about the whole situation, etc. That's another part of this story that feels a bit like it's in stasis, and I want it to move more quickly.
The fact that this is a two-parter seems promising, though. The ending wasn't any more cliffhanger-y than most episodes, but I feel like in the world of television, when you need lots of stuff to happen, you put it in a multi-part episode. So here's to stuff happening in part 2!
**
I haven't watched ER since, oh, 1998 or so. But before that I watched quite regularly (with my mother, who has been a faithful viewer over the long haul), and when I heard that George Clooney and Juliana Margulies and Noah Wyle and Eriq LaSalle were all coming back for the episode this past week, I--probably like many other people who hadn't watched in the past ten years--tuned in. And I'm really glad I did.
I have no idea who any of the current characters are, so none of that stuff meant anything to me. But it was lovely to see the old faces and to see how these characters reunited and also didn't. Doug and Carol never knew that Carter was getting the kidney; Carter and Benton never knew from whom the kidney came. I loved the conversation between Doug and the doctors from the current County General, where there had been so many generations of people in between that they hardly knew any of the same people. There was something so bittersweet and also realistic about that. Years pass. People move on.
I have no idea how the ER fandom (if there even is much of one) likes to write its characters, but I feel like there's a general fanon trend of making our characters all bff-y: years down the road, SG-1 is still connected, the staff of Bartlet's White House still get together once or twice a year, etc. And canons reinforce this idea, as well: the finale of B5 finds Our Heroes reminiscing about old times from years down the road, and in the most recent X-Files movie, Skinner comes to help out Mulder and Scully, just like old times.
And I kind of love that ER didn't do that. Doug and Carol are still together; Benton happens to show up to be there with Carter after all these years. But there is no grand reunion, very little reminiscing about old times, no legends floating around the halls of County General about the people who used to work there. It's been a lot of years (Benton mentioning that his son was now 13 made me feel old!), and people move on with their lives. Kudos to ER for capturing that dynamic along with the nostalgia.
**
And speaking of years passing, kernezelda points out that today is Farscape's tenth anniversary!!! *raises a glass to my show*