Catching up with Battlestar Galactica

It makes me kind of sad to say this, but I've been a bit disappointed with Battlestar Galactica this season. I guess it's inevitable for any show that's been brilliant in its early seasons to come down a bit, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. I liked the first couple of episodes involving the resistance and the rescue from New Caprica, but once everyone was returned to the ships, things got...well, a little tiresome. I hated all those dreamy scenes on the Cylon ship with Baltar and the Moonlight Sonata background music, and the ridiculous Lee/Kara/Dee/Anders love quandrangle took up entirely too much time. Yes, there have been episodes that I loved, like the boxing/flashback one (even though that's the one that spawned the evil love quadrangle), and I've enjoyed the standalone character-centric ones, with Kat and Helo and Tyrol, but overall, I don't know, I'm not as excited about the show as I used to be. Probably because I didn't pay much attention to the dreamy Cylon scenes, but I don't know what they're up to, and I feel like there isn't as much of that sense of urgency that the first two seasons had.

And then we come to this week's episode. I'd heard spoilers and rumors of Kara's demise, but I didn't know what to make of them, and honestly even after watching the episode I still don't know what to make of it. Yes, the acting and writing and all was superb, but I just really don't get it. Ok, she had a tortured childhood and a tortured adulthood, for that matter, and everyone's always been telling her that she has some "special destiny." And at the end she tells Lee that she's not afraid anymore. Of what, death? Her special destiny is death? Plus all of this happened so quickly. We've always known that Starbuck's kind of a messed up person, but to bring up these issues and then kill her in the same episode? I felt like it could have been a bit more convincing had there been some slower buildup over the season.

This episode left me feeling like she died for nothing, but that can't be right. Is her death going to trigger some chain of events that makes it important? Or did she not die at all? Did she eject? Is she a Cylon? Truthfully none of these options sound all that great. Plus, the fact remains that even though Kara wasn't always the easiest character to like, but I'm having trouble thinking of the show without her in it.