Back to BSG
1 Mar 2009 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaSo, yesterday the SCC and Dollhouse subtitles (english ones, I'm a good reader/writer but I have a shitty ear, okay?) weren't up yet (though they had Italian ones, for both, I don't get it either); so I figured I might as well finally catch up on BSG. I have only one thing to say:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Okay not really:
First there were three really really painful and dull episodes, much like Sometimes a Great Notion which was also very painful and dull to watch, hence my lack of enthusiasm over watching more, and even that one episode had the cool and chilling moments of Kara meeting with her corpse (and Leoben getting Dude! WTF? Even I am creeped about it, LOL).
Maybe if I had had a pal to watch it with, and snark about it, it would have been better. Or popcorns to throw at the screens at the lamest and idiotic moments. Such as, every time Adama is on screen.
It doesn't help that I was already hating Adama's guts before these episodes. After that, If I don't get to watch him to die painfully before the end of the show, I'll be disappointed. This comes from the girl who almost never hate fictional characters.
Okay, they had a few redeeming moments, such as Gaeta generally speaking being awesome and snarkilicious, and that really awesome scenes between Baltar and him. Awwwww. Actually I'm really surprised that in a show with as much up-and-downs as BSG almost every scenes between Gaeta and Baltar through the seasons were all pitch perfect and awesome. Thank you for that at least show.
Although you really, really suck about politics. Seriously, I can't think of one moment when the show was trying to deal with srs bsns dark and deep political shits from Bastille Day on when they didn't fail painfully and full of Strawman-ship. Not to mention the the painful americanocentrism. Poor Zarek, they really never did anything interesting with such a potentially cool character.
So I was really sad over Gaeta dying, what with the fact he was my woobie in this show, but at least he got a good send-off, so now that I think about it, I think I'm madder about Dee. Because Dee basically only got killed off to get across the point that People they are depressed now! And she was killed because she had had no storyline of her own since the middle of season 2, when her storyline had turned out to be All About Lee. Yeah. Great waste of a character here. In any case, between both of those deaths, there is no more significant Characters of Colour that are not Cylon. Way to go, show!
Also we had Kara and Lee being awesome, so there was that.
Then we had three hilarious and awesome episodes, or at least kinda good looking. You know I thought that Ellen as First Cylon was really an anticlimax as a revelation at first, but I take it all back. She's AWESOME. She brought back all her soap opera and comedy gold ways to the show, and I'd been missing that. Also she was great with Cavil.
Roslin also did some great try to get back in my good grace with that hilarious AWKWARD conversation with Caprica, and her "OH NOES, NOT ELLEN" expression. But it's not working, she's been too WTFed for too long, but I'll settle for not actually disliking her actively.
Tyrol was particularly cuddly and and nice in those episodes (and the ones before, actually, even if I was rooting for Kelly to shoot him because I get annoyed at how the main cast never get killed yet supposedly the show is daring and dark for always killing lots of characters, yeaaaaah, not so much.) But I still think he's an asshole for giving up on his kid just because he's not his genetically speaking. If you spent two years changing his diaper, it's yours, Chief.
I missed Boomer too, and was glad to see her back, playing everyone, and I was disturbingly rooting for her when she beat the crap out of Athena, kidnapping Hear, and having disturbingly hot sex with Helo.
Anders was really cute when he was blabbering.
Oh, and we also got Baltar in high form (bigger gun!) :D
What's left? Really liked the atmosphere in Someone to Watch Over Me, with the piano - which I called pretty early as Kara's hallucination/head person/flashback. I think Kara's dad looks rather disturbingly like Leoben in a way. Anyway, I'm glad we finally got an answer about her (OR DO WE?) and really surprised the speculations about her being half cylon turned out true - I thought that one was really a long shot.
Okay, so in conclusion? The storytelling and bigger narrative is SHOT TO HELL. I have absolutely no faith left in this show to turn out right in terms of the story, not even on a metaphorical level where all the plotholes and lack of consistency don't count so much. If I want a deep show dealing with themes like genocide and terrorism and complex moralities, I'll just watch Avatar again - oh wait, I'm doing that already. However, the show still manages at times to reach stellar levels in terms of mood, acting, music, visuals, cinematography and emotional moments. The thing is, it's all in fragments, no broader narrative worth mentioning even at the scale of episodes. Oh, and there's the comedy gold. They should market it more as a comedy show, because that's on of the thing they do good (unlike, you know, dark themes and complex morality and politics LOL). They used to be good about the military SF action stuff too, maybe they'll get back to it before the end.
Also it's got a great fanvid fandom!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Okay not really:
First there were three really really painful and dull episodes, much like Sometimes a Great Notion which was also very painful and dull to watch, hence my lack of enthusiasm over watching more, and even that one episode had the cool and chilling moments of Kara meeting with her corpse (and Leoben getting Dude! WTF? Even I am creeped about it, LOL).
Maybe if I had had a pal to watch it with, and snark about it, it would have been better. Or popcorns to throw at the screens at the lamest and idiotic moments. Such as, every time Adama is on screen.
It doesn't help that I was already hating Adama's guts before these episodes. After that, If I don't get to watch him to die painfully before the end of the show, I'll be disappointed. This comes from the girl who almost never hate fictional characters.
Okay, they had a few redeeming moments, such as Gaeta generally speaking being awesome and snarkilicious, and that really awesome scenes between Baltar and him. Awwwww. Actually I'm really surprised that in a show with as much up-and-downs as BSG almost every scenes between Gaeta and Baltar through the seasons were all pitch perfect and awesome. Thank you for that at least show.
Although you really, really suck about politics. Seriously, I can't think of one moment when the show was trying to deal with srs bsns dark and deep political shits from Bastille Day on when they didn't fail painfully and full of Strawman-ship. Not to mention the the painful americanocentrism. Poor Zarek, they really never did anything interesting with such a potentially cool character.
So I was really sad over Gaeta dying, what with the fact he was my woobie in this show, but at least he got a good send-off, so now that I think about it, I think I'm madder about Dee. Because Dee basically only got killed off to get across the point that People they are depressed now! And she was killed because she had had no storyline of her own since the middle of season 2, when her storyline had turned out to be All About Lee. Yeah. Great waste of a character here. In any case, between both of those deaths, there is no more significant Characters of Colour that are not Cylon. Way to go, show!
Also we had Kara and Lee being awesome, so there was that.
Then we had three hilarious and awesome episodes, or at least kinda good looking. You know I thought that Ellen as First Cylon was really an anticlimax as a revelation at first, but I take it all back. She's AWESOME. She brought back all her soap opera and comedy gold ways to the show, and I'd been missing that. Also she was great with Cavil.
Roslin also did some great try to get back in my good grace with that hilarious AWKWARD conversation with Caprica, and her "OH NOES, NOT ELLEN" expression. But it's not working, she's been too WTFed for too long, but I'll settle for not actually disliking her actively.
Tyrol was particularly cuddly and and nice in those episodes (and the ones before, actually, even if I was rooting for Kelly to shoot him because I get annoyed at how the main cast never get killed yet supposedly the show is daring and dark for always killing lots of characters, yeaaaaah, not so much.) But I still think he's an asshole for giving up on his kid just because he's not his genetically speaking. If you spent two years changing his diaper, it's yours, Chief.
I missed Boomer too, and was glad to see her back, playing everyone, and I was disturbingly rooting for her when she beat the crap out of Athena, kidnapping Hear, and having disturbingly hot sex with Helo.
Anders was really cute when he was blabbering.
Oh, and we also got Baltar in high form (bigger gun!) :D
What's left? Really liked the atmosphere in Someone to Watch Over Me, with the piano - which I called pretty early as Kara's hallucination/head person/flashback. I think Kara's dad looks rather disturbingly like Leoben in a way. Anyway, I'm glad we finally got an answer about her (OR DO WE?) and really surprised the speculations about her being half cylon turned out true - I thought that one was really a long shot.
Okay, so in conclusion? The storytelling and bigger narrative is SHOT TO HELL. I have absolutely no faith left in this show to turn out right in terms of the story, not even on a metaphorical level where all the plotholes and lack of consistency don't count so much. If I want a deep show dealing with themes like genocide and terrorism and complex moralities, I'll just watch Avatar again - oh wait, I'm doing that already. However, the show still manages at times to reach stellar levels in terms of mood, acting, music, visuals, cinematography and emotional moments. The thing is, it's all in fragments, no broader narrative worth mentioning even at the scale of episodes. Oh, and there's the comedy gold. They should market it more as a comedy show, because that's on of the thing they do good (unlike, you know, dark themes and complex morality and politics LOL). They used to be good about the military SF action stuff too, maybe they'll get back to it before the end.
Also it's got a great fanvid fandom!
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no subject
Date: 1 March 2009 10:50 pm (UTC)So that's why the guys at ITASA keep saying they get their subs up first... it's actually true, lol. I always thought they were bragging. Btw it just makes sense that non English speaking countries rush for making their subs, y/n?
no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 12:39 am (UTC)And I think it's the first week I see the italian subs up before the english or spanish ones, but perhaps I just hadn't paid attentio before :)
no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 March 2009 11:06 pm (UTC)I cheered.
Out loud.
no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 March 2009 03:54 am (UTC)Oh, how wrong they are.
no subject
Date: 1 March 2009 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 12:19 am (UTC)Final Five: "Oh noes! Anders is comafied and we really wanted to know about the song and about our old lives back on Earth! Argh WTF!"
One week later:
Final Five: "Well we could just ask Ellen those EXACT SAME questions we were so upset about not getting answered last week or...not. For some reason. Who knows? Let's go to the bar instead and continue not asking those questions we really wanted answered. Hey, Starbuck is playing that song, you know, the one we DIDN'T ask Ellen about despite previously declaring our interest in it?"
The writers chickening out of the Gaeta/Zarek thing was also annoying. I do buy Zarek going off the deep end and blowing the Quorum away - this is the guy who tried to do things legally 20 years ago, was thwarted and started killing people back then, so it's not a huge difference - but it seemed like he did it far too soon before he'd played all his political cards. He could have kept them locked up or something until he and Gaeta had total control, but they obviously wanted to do the SHOCKING thing instead.
"There is no more significant Characters of Colour that are not Cylon." I hadn't noticed this but you are right (Tory = baby-killing nonentity, Simon = token mentalist doctor with about four lines in three seasons). Athena I suppose is a good guy, but she is cancelled out by Boomer, her 'evil twin' (they could have tried layering Boomer a bit more, but obviously couldn't be arsed).
One thing I do note hasn't been mentioned a lot is that Tyrol killed someone to cover Boomer's escape. I'm wondering if that's going to be mentioned again or forgotten.
no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 12:36 am (UTC)I do buy Zarek slaughtering the Quorum, I just thought he went a bit fast about it. Although I didn't buy the Quorum, ya know, resisting him? Perhaps that's my problem.
Although I thought Roslin pretending to be sad about their death was HILARIOUS. You know she's secretly overjoyed and ready to dance about it :p
Show's always had skanky race issues but they didn't improve as the show as been going and they've run out of of CoC to kill or turn evil in a flat way.
Although to be fair to Tory she did rescue the baby, sort of, only killed the mommy XD
I don't count Athena as good people since she murdered Nathalie.
But! I actually like Boomer and think she's layered :D but evil, mostly. LOL.
One thing I do note hasn't been mentioned a lot is that Tyrol killed someone to cover Boomer's escape.
Did he? I thought he only knocked her out and put her in jail in Boomer's stead. Did we have confirmation she was dead?
no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 01:54 am (UTC)Personally I thought Tyrol killing her would be more hardcore and make things more morally dubious, but it isn't really in keeping with his character.
Agreed, Avatar is better-plotted overall than BSG, which is inherently hilarious.
no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 02:17 am (UTC)The other Eight was lying there with blood coming out of her head
OK, I hadn't see the blood. Not cool Tyrol :(
It's not just that Avatar is better plotted, it's that it's better plotted, more consistent and coherent, has better world building AND has a better handling of very dark themes like genocide, terrorism, cycle of violence and how you break it.
no subject
Date: 2 March 2009 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 March 2009 03:09 pm (UTC)wow you really did XD
no subject
Date: 3 March 2009 09:38 pm (UTC)Well, now that I think about it, I always forget that Elmo is Latin American (which is unfair to him given he's rather militant about Hispanic actors getting roles) so there's Adama, and Helo's actor is also mixed race - Canadian First Nation, I believe. So that's two characters left, although they can pass for white if the audience doesn't know any better.