I mean, not so much that the show's been going downhill since the New Caprica exodus because while I'm sketchy about the middle of season three, I love the crazy religious stuff and Maelstrom through Revelations are, in my opinion, awesome.
I just. I don't know.
Like everything else I hate about 4.5, what I hate most is the parts I don't hate. I can't just end it at Revelations because there's The Oath and Kara burning her own body and No Exit and the moment All Along the Watchtower starts getting played on the piano. And even in this bloated, self-indulgent piece of idiocy, we have Gaius Frakking Baltar moving me (except his proselytizing, yes; but at least Cavil was unmoved and demanded something tangible). We have perhaps one of the most poignant and true things ever uttered by Caprica, "I always wanted to be proud of you."
We have a beautiful tonal coda which also makes NO SENSE either from a fear-of-technology-perspective, a planning-perspective and ESPECIALLY a colonialist perspective (I console myself with the fact that history suggests they fail and language and shit don't develop for another 100,000 years and so actually they're the ones who get colonised and slowly forget everything as generations pass).
We have the pretences at answers that aren't answers at all.
We have the wonderful suggestion that this is significant because we are all Hera's children (which yes, I confess it, I liked the fourth-wall breaking coda) that somehow still seems to be...limiting rather than an explosion of integration. Because we threw our technology into the sun and maybe Hera was also the last of her generation. That's all the Cylon can hope for; choosing to live out the remainder of their lives "helping" humans instead of being forced into it and watching as their influence on their own genetic future decreases with every generation.
I console myself with the fact that at least it made me think. At least I don't hate the absolute ending even if I hate how they got there. I don't know.
As to Laura, I agree. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. I nothinged it and that was painful. Especially since Mary McDonnell was...really knocking it out of the park with her acting. I really thought she did a great job there. I just...blah.
I just...there are not words for how unfair the fact that "it turned into a musical about incest," indicates a lowering in quality rather than an explosion of awesome. *sigh*
I do agree with you in large part about 4.5--I think there were more parts of it that you liked, but I didn't hate it all. I'm just not sure the good bits outweighed the bad enough that I particularly want to rewatch it. As for whether it's been going downhill since season 3, I feel like for me, the trajectory of the show is as follows: mini-New Caprica were, with some notable hiccups, consistently excellent, and more often than not, rather mindblowing. The rest of season 3 was overall of lower quality, but still with some pretty cool bits. 4.0 was better than 3 in general and contained several wonderful episodes and lots of crunchy mytharc stuff, but overall I felt it wasn't as strong as anything before the Pegasus arc, and perhaps not as strong as anything before the New Caprica arc. So I don't see it as having been getting steadily worse since early s3: rather, despite regaining some ground after that, it still never returned to its former glory. And then 4.5 has been more bad than good.
I did love the Caprica/Baltar bits of this; I realize I didn't really say so in my review.
I also like your point that the whole thing doesn't work historically. Except that while that sort of fixes the icky imperialism, it also makes the sense of this as an ending for our characters tremendously unsatisfying. Their "clean slate" means no legacy at all?
I nothinged it and that was painful.
YES. That was really the worst part. I'd almost rather have been ragey. One of my all-time favorite fictional characters, a character I have loved very deeply and in whom I have invested ridiculous amounts of time and words, has died, and I feel...nothing at all. Even with Mary doing some really wonderful acting.
Yeah, I mean...I actually think that the Home arc is overrated *ducks flying objects* and that the second half of S2 suffered from pacing issues although not to quite the degree that the middle section of S3 did. But I do agree with you mostly. While I love S4.0 almost unreservedly, a lot of that's because the specific crazy religious stuff it's doing hit a whole bunch of my kinks rather than actually managing the amounts of political commentary it used to. It's just that if S4 was, in its entirety, an awesome season of bizarre mind-bending technological commentary and mythic symbolism, I was prepared to forgive it the lack of, well, sane political and religious and social commentary? ALAS.
I take an odd sort of comfort in enjoying the Caprica/Baltar parts. Because at least they managed to exceed my expectations on one front.
I don't mind the "clean slate" thing so much if I consider that Hera as their legacy also extends to the fact that all their other offspring, both Colonial and Cylon also contributed to our present genetic make-up.
Culturally they might not have had much to do with us (although who knows what they did with a few isolated pockets of early humans), and I'm not the kind of person to argue for genetic determinism. But honestly, I think the only "legacy" any of us have on a long enough time-scale is the survival of the species. And I don't mean like, literal, personal baby-making. Because eeew. Everyone contributes to the continuation of society/the species simply by being part of it.
Personally I think the notion that they completely changed our genetic make-up (going with my preference for believing there's a lot more Cylon in us than just Hera) is a plenty big enough legacy. Who knows what evolutionary tracks that did change. Perhaps that is, ultimately, why we did evolve language 100,000 years later. Or perhaps not. But...I at least like it more as a blended and accidental form of evolutionary colonialism rather than the more blatant colonalism of the actual episode.
(I would also like to note that this isn't me trying to excuse the episode in any way. Just trying to make my eyes bleed less. *sigh*)
Also I have nothing else to add about Laura because yeah. You said it already.
Has the Fleet even had an opinion on her since 4x11? *cries*
I mean, not so much that the show's been going downhill since the New Caprica exodus because while I'm sketchy about the middle of season three, I love the crazy religious stuff and Maelstrom through Revelations are, in my opinion, awesome.
I just. I don't know.
Like everything else I hate about 4.5, what I hate most is the parts I don't hate. I can't just end it at Revelations because there's The Oath and Kara burning her own body and No Exit and the moment All Along the Watchtower starts getting played on the piano. And even in this bloated, self-indulgent piece of idiocy, we have Gaius Frakking Baltar moving me (except his proselytizing, yes; but at least Cavil was unmoved and demanded something tangible). We have perhaps one of the most poignant and true things ever uttered by Caprica, "I always wanted to be proud of you."
We have a beautiful tonal coda which also makes NO SENSE either from a fear-of-technology-perspective, a planning-perspective and ESPECIALLY a colonialist perspective (I console myself with the fact that history suggests they fail and language and shit don't develop for another 100,000 years and so actually they're the ones who get colonised and slowly forget everything as generations pass).
We have the pretences at answers that aren't answers at all.
We have the wonderful suggestion that this is significant because we are all Hera's children (which yes, I confess it, I liked the fourth-wall breaking coda) that somehow still seems to be...limiting rather than an explosion of integration. Because we threw our technology into the sun and maybe Hera was also the last of her generation. That's all the Cylon can hope for; choosing to live out the remainder of their lives "helping" humans instead of being forced into it and watching as their influence on their own genetic future decreases with every generation.
I console myself with the fact that at least it made me think. At least I don't hate the absolute ending even if I hate how they got there. I don't know.
As to Laura, I agree. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. I nothinged it and that was painful. Especially since Mary McDonnell was...really knocking it out of the park with her acting. I really thought she did a great job there. I just...blah.
I just...there are not words for how unfair the fact that "it turned into a musical about incest," indicates a lowering in quality rather than an explosion of awesome. *sigh*
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I did love the Caprica/Baltar bits of this; I realize I didn't really say so in my review.
I also like your point that the whole thing doesn't work historically. Except that while that sort of fixes the icky imperialism, it also makes the sense of this as an ending for our characters tremendously unsatisfying. Their "clean slate" means no legacy at all?
I nothinged it and that was painful.
YES. That was really the worst part. I'd almost rather have been ragey. One of my all-time favorite fictional characters, a character I have loved very deeply and in whom I have invested ridiculous amounts of time and words, has died, and I feel...nothing at all. Even with Mary doing some really wonderful acting.
I'm just so disappointed!
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I take an odd sort of comfort in enjoying the Caprica/Baltar parts. Because at least they managed to exceed my expectations on one front.
I don't mind the "clean slate" thing so much if I consider that Hera as their legacy also extends to the fact that all their other offspring, both Colonial and Cylon also contributed to our present genetic make-up.
Culturally they might not have had much to do with us (although who knows what they did with a few isolated pockets of early humans), and I'm not the kind of person to argue for genetic determinism. But honestly, I think the only "legacy" any of us have on a long enough time-scale is the survival of the species. And I don't mean like, literal, personal baby-making. Because eeew. Everyone contributes to the continuation of society/the species simply by being part of it.
Personally I think the notion that they completely changed our genetic make-up (going with my preference for believing there's a lot more Cylon in us than just Hera) is a plenty big enough legacy. Who knows what evolutionary tracks that did change. Perhaps that is, ultimately, why we did evolve language 100,000 years later. Or perhaps not. But...I at least like it more as a blended and accidental form of evolutionary colonialism rather than the more blatant colonalism of the actual episode.
(I would also like to note that this isn't me trying to excuse the episode in any way. Just trying to make my eyes bleed less. *sigh*)
Also I have nothing else to add about Laura because yeah. You said it already.
Has the Fleet even had an opinion on her since 4x11? *cries*
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