Some further thoughts on BSG
Oh, LJ, of course your current header is loaded with vaguely religious symbolism. So excellent.
You know what else is excellent? BSG, which I finally finished this past week. Way to kill me, last episode. Way to just utterly emotionally destroy me. (Actually, that's an accurate description of the entire fourth season. I cried at some point in more episodes than not.)
It would take a really long time to type up a post that encapsulates everything I think about the show, and I'm sleepy, so I'm going to limit it to thoughts on the fourth season, with a special focus on the final episode, which I have come down on the side of thoroughly loving (I might be the only person in the world who thinks so, I know).
Roslin and Adama. Oh, god. I have literally been waiting for them to just acknowledge the fact that they are made for each other and start trying to have post-menopausal babies since their first scene together in the miniseries. You can't have two actors with that much chemistry and not let that happen eventually. And, lo, BSG, you delivered. You broke my frackin' heart. Seriously. I sobbed through pretty much every scene that they had together in the final season. Any time they appeared together, I would just start crying preemptively.
You know which scene destroyed me more than any of the others, though? The one where Roslin is jogging through the ship, after going off her medication, and she looks so tiny and happy and like she's really dying in her oversized sweatshirt, and then she runs into Adama... I am honest to god tearing up just thinking about it. I love both of them so much. And then Roslin's death scene? Beautiful and heartbreaking and perfect.
The degree to which I was invested in that storyline really surprised the friend that introduced me to BSG, who has never before had to deal with my complete and utter sappiness. So, yes, I am a hopeless sap who can't say no to a doomed romance, in spite of myself.
They made Lee Adama interesting. I didn't dislike him before, but he wasn't particularly interesting either. However, starting with his courtroom rant at the end of the third season, he actually got to develop a bit beyond pilot-with-daddy-issues, whose main defining character trait was that he loved Starbuck. By the end of the fourth season, I cared what happened to him. (Didn't hurt that I found him much more attractive with the longer hair.)
I probably over-identify with Starbuck, for a long list of reasons. Still, thank you BSG, for not restricting her to the hyper-masculine inverted stereotype of the miniseries/first season, but not ever effacing that part of her personality. Also, who doesn't want to be the Harbinger of Death when they grow up/die?
Gaeta's subplot was lame, and regardless of what the webisodes tell me, I still think his real motivation was frustrated love for Baltar. Oh, and his subplot was mostly only lame because that was the weakest writing that the show had, I think-I really didn't buy his shift to totally mental mutineer, much as I wanted to be sold on it.
I loved the flashbacks in the final episode, especially Roslin's blind date with her former student and the way she shot him down after sleeping with him. And Kara and Lee almost sleeping together (and Lee's crazy, destructive attempts to chase the pigeon out of his apartment). By far my favourite, though, was the scene with Baltar and Caprica-Six-the look on her face when he says, "the things men do for love," encapsulated her entire motivation as a character.
I was really relieved when Baltar cut his hair and shaved and generally stopped looking like Jesus. Being sexually attracted to Jesus was an unsettling aspect of the show, for me.
On that note, I really enjoyed the religious elements (which is unusual). It was consistent. It worked in the universe.
And I'm glad that the show ended on that absurd, kitschy, tongue-in-cheek scene, with some hyper-moralising thrown in for good measure. It was an excellent reminder that for all that it was incredibly moving and dark and serious, the main point of the series (from where I stand, anyway) was to examine the question of whether or not humanity deserves to survive-and if it is a question of deserving it, or simply doing it. And the hint of irony that, in doing something meant to break the cycle (leaving behind their technology), the humans (and presumably Cylons?) screwed themselves over-and the cycle wasn't broken, anyway.
Anyway, that doesn't even begin to say everything that there is to say, but those are the things that struck me, particularly. And, now, bed.
You know what else is excellent? BSG, which I finally finished this past week. Way to kill me, last episode. Way to just utterly emotionally destroy me. (Actually, that's an accurate description of the entire fourth season. I cried at some point in more episodes than not.)
It would take a really long time to type up a post that encapsulates everything I think about the show, and I'm sleepy, so I'm going to limit it to thoughts on the fourth season, with a special focus on the final episode, which I have come down on the side of thoroughly loving (I might be the only person in the world who thinks so, I know).
Roslin and Adama. Oh, god. I have literally been waiting for them to just acknowledge the fact that they are made for each other and start trying to have post-menopausal babies since their first scene together in the miniseries. You can't have two actors with that much chemistry and not let that happen eventually. And, lo, BSG, you delivered. You broke my frackin' heart. Seriously. I sobbed through pretty much every scene that they had together in the final season. Any time they appeared together, I would just start crying preemptively.
You know which scene destroyed me more than any of the others, though? The one where Roslin is jogging through the ship, after going off her medication, and she looks so tiny and happy and like she's really dying in her oversized sweatshirt, and then she runs into Adama... I am honest to god tearing up just thinking about it. I love both of them so much. And then Roslin's death scene? Beautiful and heartbreaking and perfect.
The degree to which I was invested in that storyline really surprised the friend that introduced me to BSG, who has never before had to deal with my complete and utter sappiness. So, yes, I am a hopeless sap who can't say no to a doomed romance, in spite of myself.
They made Lee Adama interesting. I didn't dislike him before, but he wasn't particularly interesting either. However, starting with his courtroom rant at the end of the third season, he actually got to develop a bit beyond pilot-with-daddy-issues, whose main defining character trait was that he loved Starbuck. By the end of the fourth season, I cared what happened to him. (Didn't hurt that I found him much more attractive with the longer hair.)
I probably over-identify with Starbuck, for a long list of reasons. Still, thank you BSG, for not restricting her to the hyper-masculine inverted stereotype of the miniseries/first season, but not ever effacing that part of her personality. Also, who doesn't want to be the Harbinger of Death when they grow up/die?
Gaeta's subplot was lame, and regardless of what the webisodes tell me, I still think his real motivation was frustrated love for Baltar. Oh, and his subplot was mostly only lame because that was the weakest writing that the show had, I think-I really didn't buy his shift to totally mental mutineer, much as I wanted to be sold on it.
I loved the flashbacks in the final episode, especially Roslin's blind date with her former student and the way she shot him down after sleeping with him. And Kara and Lee almost sleeping together (and Lee's crazy, destructive attempts to chase the pigeon out of his apartment). By far my favourite, though, was the scene with Baltar and Caprica-Six-the look on her face when he says, "the things men do for love," encapsulated her entire motivation as a character.
I was really relieved when Baltar cut his hair and shaved and generally stopped looking like Jesus. Being sexually attracted to Jesus was an unsettling aspect of the show, for me.
On that note, I really enjoyed the religious elements (which is unusual). It was consistent. It worked in the universe.
And I'm glad that the show ended on that absurd, kitschy, tongue-in-cheek scene, with some hyper-moralising thrown in for good measure. It was an excellent reminder that for all that it was incredibly moving and dark and serious, the main point of the series (from where I stand, anyway) was to examine the question of whether or not humanity deserves to survive-and if it is a question of deserving it, or simply doing it. And the hint of irony that, in doing something meant to break the cycle (leaving behind their technology), the humans (and presumably Cylons?) screwed themselves over-and the cycle wasn't broken, anyway.
Anyway, that doesn't even begin to say everything that there is to say, but those are the things that struck me, particularly. And, now, bed.