last episodes of S2, at last

[salinea]

Not watching Razor after all since opinions vary on its spoileriness, and I prefer to play it safe :)


Episodes 2x17 to 2x21

The Captan's Hand
An okay episode, mainly done to set up a number of things.
Roslin's first big mistake. It's rather stupid to interpret the natality curve of a nine month desperate run through 18 years. If you keep running for the next 18 years, you'll be screwed anyway for other reasons. If you stop running, bet the natality curve would change. Either way, if you want to encourage more baby, there's a way of making a policy of dong that, and banning abortion isn't the best one.
Zarek and Baltar... now that's a winner team to end all winner teams XDDD

Downloaded
Brilliance!
Wonderful WTF about Caprica Six having her own little Spirit!Baltar hanging around. Having the same kind of hallucination, now that's true love ♥ ♥ ♥ Okay, I have no clue what's going around about this, what kind of freaky explanation for it we might expect to get... But it's interesting.
I love that Capirca Six's Baltar keep mentioning all the people massacred by the Cylons when the real one seems to do his best to forget it XD
Back to the our first Sharon, it's nice to see her and how angry she is.
The ending had me be rather excited and hopeful, but since then I watched Lay Down Your Burden, so...
Meanwhile on Galactica, Roslin makes her second big mistake. Way to undermine the source of help and information you could rely on before, not to mention the dishonesty to the adopting mother and the fact this is not the best way to have a good surveillance of the baby.

Lay Down Your Burden 1&2
All in all I'm not sure it was a good episode, but it was fun. Pacing's a bit off, though.
Chief's storyline ends up not connecting with much. I called the Priest being a Cylon pretty quickly (he's very amusing).
Roslin stoops lower than I thought she would (there's something a bit heartbreaking about even Baltar not thinking she would cheat an election).
And Gaius for president!
And BOOM!
That's right Gaius, second time you're complicit to a Cylon bombing but this time your complicity was intentional (and that because you were feeling spiteful about Roslin that day, even! XD). Is it even for the people killed that you're crying, or for her? Or for feeling betrayed? And why at this point am I so emotionally invested in such a scumbag character?
One year later.
I wonder what Gaeta's thinking of Baltar right now, although i do adore him in the role of Presidential aide or whatever it is ♥
Kara hugging Tigh : one season without ever meeting and bickering and now they're to hugging basis? Hahahaha! my first ship is alive and well, I guess.
Chief as Union leader is simply awesome.
And the shit hits the fan. Do the Spirit!Six and Spirit!Baltar see each others, I wonder? XD

Time to watch S3

Comments

[rockstarwookie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, banning abortions doesn't stop abortions from happening, but the ban doesn't preclude that they don't also introduce incentives for raising children.
I think the argument that the situation is so far from a civilised society that may freedoms are not practical for the survival of the species/society is an interesting question and I think it likely that many people find it tough to get past the issue in real world to see it in the context of that situation.

I think the cut and dolly shot of Baltar with his head in his hands is absolute genius.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I think the argument that the situation is so far from a civilised society that may freedoms are not practical for the survival of the species/society is an interesting question
It is. But in this case that answer is so utterly unpractical and probably inefficient that the point is moot. So they're using the argument wrongly.

I think the cut and dolly shot of Baltar with his head in his hands is absolute genius.
Yeah.

[werthead.livejournal.com]

Bah, where's the fun in playing it safe? ;-P

Great run of episodes. The mid-Season 2 dip was a bit worrying but they brought the season home in style. The Baltar-Roslin facedown was great stuff.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I'm paranoid about spoilers :p

I meant to be more conclusive about S2 but I was in such of a rush for watching S3 that I didn't say what I meant to XD

S2 had some brillant episodes... the Pegasus arc, Downloaded and Scar, but it also felt much more... unfocussed compared to S1. They had some obvious troubles with keeping advancing everyone's plot from episodes to episodes which meant some characters were entirely left out of some episodes, and some character's development made little sense (Lee's on and off angst, Starbuck's focussing so much on Anders lacked explanation but why not, and Lee and Dee's hooking up would have deserved more development than it got), in some parts I felt that the drive of the plot really faltered (Epiphanies) which makes me worry for the long term warping of the storyline. On the other hand, from a point of view of craft, beautiful images and scenes, shocking twists, tight editing, wonderful acting they keep rocking.

[werthead.livejournal.com]

RDM - producer Ronald D. Moore - said that he had huge problems with stretching Seasons 2 and 3 to twenty episodes apiece. Apparently the Sci-Fi Channel wanted to do more than the 13 they did for Season 1 (and it would have been hard to cram everything in Season 2 into 13 episodes) but RDM and co. didn't have enough material, so ended up with 3-4 episodes of filler.

This is a much more obvious problem in mid-Season 3, which is where BSG falls afoul of the same problems that Lost did in late Season 2/early Season 3 and it managed to resolve them in the same way: by getting a definitive end date to the show, they can plan for the end much more effectively and throw out the filler.

A shame that the filler stuff didn't work better though. There are many elements of the Fleet, the Cylons and the Colonials that could do with better fleshing out, but rather than doing that they end up with episodes about BAD CRIMINALS doing BAD THINGS in the Fleet :-O

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense. The pacing because of diffent season lenght, and the having an end in goal. BSG isn't a story made for episodic narrative as such, definitly. You need to knwo where to end it.

There are many elements of the Fleet, the Cylons and the Colonials that could do with better fleshing out
I thought they were pretty good with Scar and with Final Cut for this reason exactly, good mostly standalone fleshing out secondary characters.