I have to think about this. Currently, aside from the finale, Taking a Break from All Your Worries is my least favorite episode, but that's all based on both emotion for Kara/Lee (and Dee/Sam because I don't think pretending/settling helped anyone) and the fact that it didn't make a whole ton of sense based on where the characters were directly before. (And it has the worst Leemo scene EVAH) I only vaguely recall the other plotline about Baltar and his manpain/guilt/impending trial. But I do recall that Dirty Hands sorta started the slow slide for me or at least really stuck in my head that Adama and Roslin especially had really turned into pretty hard and myopic characters
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Taking a Break sort of fits my theory in that, while I definitely don't think it's a badly-written episode as a whole, the Quad of Doom scenes were mostly not-that-great at all and in retrospect it can be viewed as The Point where Kara and Lee failed to get together (though at the time I definitely didn't think that's what it was). If Kara/Lee were one of my top fannish priorities, that might "elevate" TaB to Worst Episode Ever status for me, too
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Oh I had thought that Eddie was the one that really pushed to make it all dark and twisted. I didn't know that.
Yes, I felt the Laura at the end of DH was a markedly different "hardcore" Laura than she would've been in S2 or S1 and that bothered me a lot. And yes my Adama!Fail started in Torn and never really let up after that.
See, I'm a contrary bitch, because while I loved that Leoben ran away in Rev., by the time the finale rolled around, that was just one more thing I was slightly annoyed about. That storyline definitely deserved to be resolved esp. since it was related to Kara's big purpose and even if they couldn't get CKR they could have pulled some shenanigan to make it work by saying some other actor was "Not-Leoben" or whatever.
Torn is another strong candidate for me! I definitely had that strong negative reaction to the Adama/Tigh/Kara scene, and it was the first time I really felt that the writers and I were on fundamentally different pages re: Adama. Or re: anything, actually. I caught up with the first two seasons on DVD, and I thought Occupation - Collaborators were pretty much much excellent, so Torn was my first instance of fannish discontent. *g* And much as I complain about him now, there was a time when I loved Adama, so that marked the beginning of the end of that for me. :/
Very interesting post! I am slightly ashamed to admit that I do not remember which episode was Escape Velocity and which one was Ties That Bind. Cally dies in one of them. Is the let's-make-Tory-sleep-with-Baltar bit in either of those? And they had Boomer/Cavil and Tigh/Caprica, right? Two of my least favorite things BSG did ever.
I think I will stand by my choice of Taking a Break as WEE. I hate the torture arc. I hate that it was Laura Roslin doing the torturing. I hate that it's paired with utterly nonsensical soap opera stuff. And yes, it still fits 1, 2, and 3 for me.
After all, in my opinion, Daybreak didn't introduce any fail, it simply failed (so to speak) to redeem some of the fail that had already been there for a while. This sums up my feelings about the finale perfectly.
Let's-make-Tory-sleep-with-Baltar was in the first two episodes, and it was pretty failtastic that they had Tigh suggest that ("you don't have to get on your back for him, but..." arrgh!), but at least it looked like they were about to do really interesting things with Tory. And then... yeah. Ties That Bind is the one where Cally dies and Escape Velocity is the one with Tyrol crying about how he "settled for that vacant-eyed shriek" and the Caprica/Tigh beat-down (which was admittedly kind of cool at the time, but not so much subsequently) and some of the squickier Cult of Baltar scenes. And was that Boomer/Cavil too? Ugggh. *feels vindicated in hatred*
I can definitely understand the choice of Taking a Break, though it's not my Worst Episode Ever. One thing that kind of saved the Baltar stuff for me was that Laura is obviously conflicted about the torture, and she ultimately won't let Bill just execute him. I don't think she would have gone that far with anyone but Baltar. But I agreed with a lot of what you said about it.
I think for me, a Worst Episode Ever qualifies when I don't see a point for the episode being there, and finding it really off-kilter to the rest of the show. That being said, I tend to watch TV with a really open mind and look at things in a rather positive matter, so finding an episode that would count as a WEE is kind of difficult. (I've also been exposed to a gratuitous amount of filler throughout my years of watching anime, and there are whole arcs that can be placed under the category of WEE)
I do have them, however. Deadlocked is certainly high on the list since I feel that all that was accomplished on that episode was getting Boomer and Ellen onto Galactica, which was done in the first five minutes. The rest of the episode was rather ridiculous, and I felt that the time could have been used much more effectively than it was. I agree with your points about Black Market and The Woman King, since they are self-contained fail, but Deadlocked can't be self-contained fail and that makes it my Worst Episode Ever.
but Deadlocked can't be self-contained fail and that makes it my Worst Episode Ever.
Exactly! Deadlocked technically accomplished a lot; it killed of Liam and thus made it easier to get Saul/Ellen and Baltar/Caprica back together, and cemented Hera's importance both to the characters and to the mythology of the show. I just think it did both those things in a really awful way. And an unnecessarily awful way, given that at least several fanfic authors have done a much better job of both those things. :P
I'm probably going to get a big WTF for this, but my WEE is Maelstrom. According to your criteria, here is my rationale.
1. It has to have impacted the show negatively in terms of something I care about. They killed Kara. They made her crazy, made her hallucinate. They made her child abuse (overkill) and her crazy Leoben vision the reasons she dove into the maelstrom. Since when did Kara have visions? Was she taking kamala and no one told me? It seemed so sudden - so random and contrived. The heavy-handedness of this ep makes me angry. Yes, I am touched by the sadness of Kara's abuse and by the heart warming reunion with her mother, but they killed a main character for mystical reasons and it felt like another "shock value" manipulation.
2. While it doesn't have to be entirely badly written, the badness can't be counterbalanced by positive stuff that I am strongly invested in. If I could have bought into the whole Kara has a destiny and must die to fulfill it aspect of the show, I would have probably enjoyed it. Now, it frustrates
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OMG!! I COMPLETELY FORGOT HOW MUCH I HATE SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME!!!
I must renege on my vote for TABFAYW and switch it over to Someone to Watch Over Me. A whole episode to focus on Kara and they did nothing to move her character forward or give her any answers (since Dreilide =/= Daniel as any logical person might guess at that point), instead they just gave her a conversation with a ghost that supposedly made everything better and a weak-ass memory of a song that she could have remembered at any fucking time along the way and did not need to die for!!! OMG YES. This one. I subjectively hate it then and now, it impacted the show negatively because we were clearly supposed to see crappy mysticism and head people were the answers to everything, and the writing was terrible. So on the nose! Kara spilling out her troubles to mystery guy at bar! Not recognizing her own father?! BOO. BOO!!!!
Hey, there'll be no WTFing from me in this post, since I know just how individual and subjecting these things are. That said, OMG I love Someone to Watch Over Me! *g* I talk more about why here if you're interested. I think though that it may have something to do with my disillusionment with the show that at that point, I was no longer expecting to get any answers about Kara. I had hopes, but no expectations - and I also had a lot of fears that we might get answers that were both definitive and HORRIBLE. *g* Eddie was hinting at that in interviews, actually. In retrospect I think he was just referring to the scene where she finds her body, which never horrified me all that much. And in even more retro-spect, I think Kara's ~destiny was always mainly about coming to terms with her past, and the sci-fi trappings were just that. And surprisingly I'm pretty okay with that
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Between Black Market, TWK, and Deadlock, it's pretty even. I hated all three when I watched them, and there's very little to balance their craptasticness. But in a weird way, Black Market is worst to me because they did exactly what they meant to do and it sucked on pretty much all levels, where I guess I cut some slack for the other two because they have technical problems that Black Market didn't have.
But in a weird way, Black Market is worst to me because they did exactly what they meant to do and it sucked on pretty much all levels,
That makes sense to me; Black Market had a couple more decently-written scenes than TWK (though I had completely forgotten head!Gauis was in TWK), but it was also squickier because, like you say, they did what exactly what they intended to in BM. I don't think Angeli *intended* to Mary-Sue Helo or write the most comically bad denouement ever. *g*
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Yes, I felt the Laura at the end of DH was a markedly different "hardcore" Laura than she would've been in S2 or S1 and that bothered me a lot. And yes my Adama!Fail started in Torn and never really let up after that.
See, I'm a contrary bitch, because while I loved that Leoben ran away in Rev., by the time the finale rolled around, that was just one more thing I was slightly annoyed about. That storyline definitely deserved to be resolved esp. since it was related to Kara's big purpose and even if they couldn't get CKR they could have pulled some shenanigan to make it work by saying some other actor was "Not-Leoben" or whatever.
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I think I will stand by my choice of Taking a Break as WEE. I hate the torture arc. I hate that it was Laura Roslin doing the torturing. I hate that it's paired with utterly nonsensical soap opera stuff. And yes, it still fits 1, 2, and 3 for me.
After all, in my opinion, Daybreak didn't introduce any fail, it simply failed (so to speak) to redeem some of the fail that had already been there for a while.
This sums up my feelings about the finale perfectly.
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I can definitely understand the choice of Taking a Break, though it's not my Worst Episode Ever. One thing that kind of saved the Baltar stuff for me was that Laura is obviously conflicted about the torture, and she ultimately won't let Bill just execute him. I don't think she would have gone that far with anyone but Baltar. But I agreed with a lot of what you said about it.
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I do have them, however. Deadlocked is certainly high on the list since I feel that all that was accomplished on that episode was getting Boomer and Ellen onto Galactica, which was done in the first five minutes. The rest of the episode was rather ridiculous, and I felt that the time could have been used much more effectively than it was. I agree with your points about Black Market and The Woman King, since they are self-contained fail, but Deadlocked can't be self-contained fail and that makes it my Worst Episode Ever.
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Exactly! Deadlocked technically accomplished a lot; it killed of Liam and thus made it easier to get Saul/Ellen and Baltar/Caprica back together, and cemented Hera's importance both to the characters and to the mythology of the show. I just think it did both those things in a really awful way. And an unnecessarily awful way, given that at least several fanfic authors have done a much better job of both those things. :P
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1. It has to have impacted the show negatively in terms of something I care about. They killed Kara. They made her crazy, made her hallucinate. They made her child abuse (overkill) and her crazy Leoben vision the reasons she dove into the maelstrom. Since when did Kara have visions? Was she taking kamala and no one told me? It seemed so sudden - so random and contrived. The heavy-handedness of this ep makes me angry. Yes, I am touched by the sadness of Kara's abuse and by the heart warming reunion with her mother, but they killed a main character for mystical reasons and it felt like another "shock value" manipulation.
2. While it doesn't have to be entirely badly written, the badness can't be counterbalanced by positive stuff that I am strongly invested in. If I could have bought into the whole Kara has a destiny and must die to fulfill it aspect of the show, I would have probably enjoyed it. Now, it frustrates ( ... )
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I must renege on my vote for TABFAYW and switch it over to Someone to Watch Over Me. A whole episode to focus on Kara and they did nothing to move her character forward or give her any answers (since Dreilide =/= Daniel as any logical person might guess at that point), instead they just gave her a conversation with a ghost that supposedly made everything better and a weak-ass memory of a song that she could have remembered at any fucking time along the way and did not need to die for!!! OMG YES. This one. I subjectively hate it then and now, it impacted the show negatively because we were clearly supposed to see crappy mysticism and head people were the answers to everything, and the writing was terrible. So on the nose! Kara spilling out her troubles to mystery guy at bar! Not recognizing her own father?! BOO. BOO!!!!
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Character Annihilation FTW.
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And also TWK has Helo shirtless, which helps. *G*
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Amen. I must absolutely agree on this very important and redeeming point.
And if he'd been cuddling Hera while shirtless, it would be even better :)
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/shallow
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That makes sense to me; Black Market had a couple more decently-written scenes than TWK (though I had completely forgotten head!Gauis was in TWK), but it was also squickier because, like you say, they did what exactly what they intended to in BM. I don't think Angeli *intended* to Mary-Sue Helo or write the most comically bad denouement ever. *g*
And yes, shirtless-Helo never hurts!
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