Tuesday, November 21, 2006

BSG Mon- Tuesday: "Hero"

I sense a great disturbance in the Force. BSG is moving to Sunday nights come January. You know, back in 1978, BSG was on Sunday nights...

"Hero". This is where BSG gets into murky waters. I'm sure there were Season 1 eps like this. I KNOW there were S2s like this. This is a treading water episode. I'm sure they have great epic pivitol moments planned. This just ain't one of them. Sometimes the eps are terrific, like "Final Cut". Sometimes they're (say it with me now) "Black Market".

This also falls into the "lets go back an muck with continuity" hole. I don't think this ep contradicts anything per se, but you never got the impression in the miniseries that BSG-75 was not Adama's ship, or that it was any sort of punishment. I'm all for the "let's find out that we didn't really know what we thought we knew" kind of twists. Alan Moore is the Grand Master of it. But it has to fit, otherwise you don't get that wonderful sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when the TV world unravels around you. This didn't fit. This feels like adding the sister that no one ever mentioned before, without the mostly gratifying supernatural explanation. The technical term is "WTF"?

As (mostly) usual, the show managed to get me ready to stand on my chair and scream at the TV (What do you MEAN, WE started the war?!?) and then calm me down by not doing or saying what it clearly looks like they're going to. But they were tricky this time out, so it didn't quite work. I know, I do a terrible job of divorcing the show from the writers that write it and the world that they live in. Adama is supposed to feel bad because his momentary crossing of the Neutral Zone (to see if there even ARE any cylons, after they have ignored meetings at Armistice Station for FORTY YEARS, btw) set of GENOCIDE? Let's talk DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE, guys! "I gave the cylons a reason!" Feh.

And there's NonFatLee backing him up. "NO, Dad, it wasn't you! It was the top brass that, oh, yeah, we swore oaths and stuff to follow, even though we just KNOW that they're a bunch of blood-thirsty war-mongers just WAITING to get back into it with the toasters." Way to make a man feel better about his life's decisions, NFL. Oh, how are those dreams about the Olympic Carrier treating you? You were just following orders then, not your fault at all. I'm all for dramatic tension and tortured self-inspection (I'm an Angel fan after all) but make it make sense! (Unless it's Kara. She doesn't have to make sense. It's part of her charm.)

Laura almost always gets to be the hard cold voice of "That only works on television". And she ALMOST did it. Wild Bill didn't start the war. That's nonsense. (Ahhhh. Heavy sigh of relief.) There were HUNDREDS of ways that WE started the war. Huh? What? Say again? So, the cylons had no responsibility in this? And we did? Are you saying that there's something that should have been done differently Madame President, and THAT would have prevented the attack? I mean, aside from hiring a different defense contractor for your mainframe, and continuing computer security protocols on all of your battlestars and fighters, of course.

I mostly liked the episode. I just didn't like where it started or where it ended. I will be curious what the consequences of this ep will be. (Of course, I'm still thinking that this show always has consequences. We lost that about half-way through S2.) If the cylons know where the fleet is, why are they still playing this cat and mouse junk? Five or six basestars and that's all she wrote, innit? I've always figured that the toasters don't really want to wipe out the fleet. But every time we actually see cylons, when no people are around, they're talking "WE MUST DESTROY THEM ALL OR THEY WILL DESTROY US!" AND THEY HAVE A PLAN. Suuuuuure they do. It's a whole civilization of Starbucks. (The viper pilot, not the coffee shops, of course.)

Oh, and as the Hog of Wart posed the question: Ok, this guy is a tough as nails fighter pilot, and he's just going to go cool his heels at wherever the civvies go these days (since Cloud Nine is cinders)? Because he's emotionally scarred? Good grief, he and Starbuck can be a team! The management of resources in this rag tag fleet, human and otherwise, continues to amaze me.

Any ep that has good EyeTigh work is a bonus as far as I'm concerned, and this one had it. ET seems to be getting back to his old functional disaster self. He's got to be more reliable than "All We Are Saying" Agathon.

Kara got to do stuff, speaking of no consequences. Kara threw that emotional baggage off like an Adama kid throwing off a spare 100 pounds.

We're how many eps in? Eight? We take a week off this week. I figure we'll come back for two, have a heart rending cliff-hanger, and take the Christmas break. The show is still good, but they're not on all cylinders. I attribute this to two reasons: They're not being ruthless with "how would this REALLY go" and they're setting up character threads that they never get back to making work.

On the first point, I imagine they have a problem with a real war time scenario. The first season was a great post-9/11 metaphor. And that was terrific. But unlike the real world where things got back to normal fairly quickly, and if you feel like saying we're at war you can, if you feel like it's all hyped up, you can say that too, these people lost TWELVE PLANETS. They are down to 40,000 human being left anywhere. Attacks are frequent, disasters common place. These folks would harden up pretty quickly. Especially after New Caprica. This would be the remains of a civilization on a 100% war footing. WWII on something-other-than-steroids-cause-I'm-sick-of-the-cliche. But the I don't think the show runners can even imagine a group of people willing and eager to make such sacrifices anymore. Which is too bad, because that would make BSG1 look like a warm-up.

On the second, remember when they juggled The Story of the Week, Laura's cancer AND visions, Boomer and Tyrol, Sharon and Helo, Baltar and Six, and whatever hijinx Lee and Kara were getting up to? With an occasional cut to EyesTigh getting hammered in his bunk? Good times.

Not next ep, but the ep after, is written by Jane "Shindig" Espenson. Wacky fun. No BSG this Friday (and Moore still hasn't posted the podcast!) so see you in two weeks! Boom boom boom.

EDIT: I made sure I wrote this before I read Goldberg's comments. They are here. He nails it better than I do. But he gets paid for it.

1 comment:

Tallguy said...

Jim, I can't believe I didn't mention iTigh's new iPatch. Sorry.

If the terms of the amistice are that strict (notice the Feds never ONCE declared war against the Roms for breaking treaty stipulations) then maybe a part of that treaty would be that BOTH sides SHOW UP? I'm saying that the Cols are still not on the instigating side of this. ALSO, I think CapSix's infiltration of the DefNet (and Gaius Baltar) predates Bill and Tigh's Excellent Adventure.

I also missed the GB show. All I can say is: Yeah, right.