Anyway, I've suddenly become more inspired to blog, and I realize there were quite a few "big" TV events that I hadn't written about and wanted to record here, for posterity or whatever. So I'm planning doing a couple of these "Rewind" posts to catch up with my thoughts.
First up: the final season of Battlestar Galactica. It's pretty hard for me to sum up my feelings about the show as a whole...I do know that it's definitely one of the best shows I've ever watched. I really wish the stigma of sci-fi (the genre and the network) and the silly title hadn't prevented it from getting a lot of the recognition and the large audiences that it deserved, but so it goes.
Of course, the show had its ups and downs, and there were some things I kind of hated, like all the dreamy, Moonlight-Sonata stuff on the Cylon baseship, the terrible Dualla-Lee-Kara-Anders love quadrangle, Tigh and Caprica Six being all happy couple, Baltar's religious cult or whatever it was...and really, the very end of the series, with Hera being our mitochondrial ancestor or something (meaning we're all, like, half-Cylons)? I could have done without that. And Kara as a ghost/angel/supernatural entity? That wasn't so satisfying either.
But overall, I did really love the last season. Maybe I was just drinking the Kool-Aid, but I was pretty impressed with how they managed to answer so many questions and tie up so many storylines, all with the same quality of storytelling and character development that's defined the show. A lot happened. So instead of trying to sum up everything, I think I'll just list some of the moments and scenes that have stayed with me from the last season, even as it's been a couple of months. In a way, it's sad that the show is over, but I'm glad that the writers were able to end it on their own terms. I know, I sound like a broken record when it comes to this, but so many shows out there would benefit from a similar approach....
- The flashback where Lee and Kara first meet. I was never a huge Lee/Kara shipper, but this scene just really got me. It was just so obvious that he basically fell head over heels for her the minute he saw her, and it was easy to see why. Their attraction, the tension, was so unreal. And how they almost sleep together with Zak (her fiance, his brother) passed out on the couch...wow. No wonder their relationship was doomed to be messed up.
- Zarek massacring the Quorum. I knew that something bad was going to happen, but that was just chilling. I thought that whole storyline was really pretty surprising. I mean, Felix Gaeta, of all people, the mastermind? At first I didn't understand why this was happening, with so few episodes left in the final season to wrap up everything, but it really did make sense. For the whole series, we've really been only seeing things through the eyes of the government and the military, and very little from the perspective of the civilians. Step outside of that all that we knew personally about Adama and Roslin and the Final Five and things really were crazy and out of control. At times, I actually even found myself sympathizing with Gaeta and Zarek.
- Dualla killing herself. Again, I knew something was up--Dee hadn't been featured much at all and she was the focus of the episode. But the actual suicide scene was so sudden, and the fact that she had been reconnecting with Lee, and was seemingly happy...it was haunting.
- When the crew splits in two, and Romo Lampkin is left as President and Hoshi as Commander? Both hilarious and horrifying at the same time...
- Ellen as the Fifth. Honestly I always thought she was kind of annoying and didn't mind when Tigh "killed" her, but on her return, I thought she was great. It was a bit of an off-the-wall choice, I thought, but with Tigh, it fell into place pretty nicely. Kate Jackson did a really great job keeping her Ellen, but as the Fifth, calmer, wiser, empathetic AND sympathetic.
- Tyrol strangling Tory at the last second, breaking the connection among the Cylons, and effectively voiding the deal they had made with Cavil. Poor Tyrol. He was one of my favorite characters, and I felt like the writers were constantly dumping on him. I was actually probably the only person who liked Cally, and was pretty bothered by Tyrol's angry tirade against her where he basically says she was second best after he lost his true love, Boomer, so I was secretly really excited that he got so angry when he found out that Tory killed her. Besides which, Tory was a bitch and she deserved it, especially the way she was trying to bargain before they shared their memories.
- There's always been plenty of action on BSG, but the battle scenes at the Colony and on Galactica during the finale were so super intense. Good stuff.
- Basically all the scenes with Adama and Roslin together, and especially their last one. You gotta love that on a show with plenty of hot younger actors, the most compelling romance is between two of the older ones.
- Athena, Helo, and Hera, our happy little family unit at the end. I was so sure that they were going to kill off Helo...
As a final note, I watched the pilot for Caprica which is a BSG prequel of sorts, with Bill Adama's father on Caprica and the beginnings of the Cylons. I thought it was pretty intriguing...very intense and dark and with all the rich characters that we're used to in the BSG world. The series won't be airing for real until next year, but I'll definitely be checking it out. There's also the TV movie, The Plan, which will be airing this fall, and is from the Cylon perspective. I think it'll actually be a little weird to delve back into all of it after the finale, but I'm looking forward to that as well.
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