BSG - Catchup!

First off, my sincere apologies to anyone who's been looking at the Angry Kid for three weeks! Brrrrr! (Heh, brrr - like, you know, it's COLD.)

I haven't said it in a while, so in case you forgot:

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER! No, seriously! No kidding around.

Dirty Hands

Ok, I'll surprise you all: I liked this episode. A lot. I think this ep tried (accidentally as it turns out) to get back to what I consider one of the basics of BSG. What happens when you blow up twelve PLANETS and stuff sixty thousand people into a bunch of space ships. (I think it should also be asking "What happens when that sixty thousand gets cut down to THIRTY thousand!")

Listening to the podcast, I find that this happened by accident. Ron Moore says that previous episodes ask questions, but this episode gives an answer. ("Unions are good," in case you missed it.) I think he's wrong. Not about the unions, that's another matter. (If he really wanted a good union episode, when Starbuck wanted her viper she should have tried to get it herself. Then the knuckle-draggers could have told her she didn't have seniority on the union list to do that while they took their coffee break. THAT would have been union.) I think he's wrong that this episode gave an answer. I don't think it did. I think it asked some really cool questions about this society. I think it showed more guts than the show has had recently in saying "It's the end of the world, how do we act?" Where it got interesting for me was when Tyrol asked "I'm a deckhand. Does that mean my kid is a deckhand?" It kind of goes back to the questions that Tom Zerrick asked in Colonial Day: Why do people still do the jobs they do? The Galactica folks? Sure - they're in the military. Although even that's a little fuzzy. Lee was a reservist. He didn't want to be a viper pilot all his life. (Coming up - Lee Adama Lawyer. That's right: L.A. Law.)

I like that certain shutdowns are totally unacceptable. I'm not real sure why Seelix got promoted at the end. Where they just being jerks before? She wasn't really needed after all? I did like Tyrol's statement that there are some people that SHOULD be doing unskilled labor now. Journalists come immediately to mind. Ad men. Maybe lawyers. I think they should re-address the fact that they are in an extraordinary survival situation. There are a lot of skills that will need to be passed on. Knuckle-draggers, pilots, computer specialists, chemists, printers, doctors, priests, baggage handlers, ALL of this stuff. These ships need to be maintained, NEW ships are going to need to be built. They need to start looking YEARS down the line. It would be interesting if the show started making more statements about "This stuff don't fly anymore. We're almost dead."

So, regardless of Mr. Ron's statement that he's giving out what to him is an obvious answer, I think they are some fascinating questions. Not that I think the show will pursue them. Ah well.

Boom boom boom.

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Ding Dong...

How does the rest of that song from the Wizard of Oz go?

Maelstrom.

Wow. They killed her. They really killed her. The circumstances surrounding her untimely demise are mysterious enough, so I'm thinking she'll be back. If not, they'll need a really good reason for it.

Needless to say, She Who Is My Wife is pissed. Lots. She's plotting a show right now that will have Starbuck, Fred Burckle, and Wash, and all the other characters who were killed by evil writers (many of whom are Joss Whedon). She's also plotting the death of poor Dualla. She'll calm down eventually. But RDM should be locking his doors. (I know, Mrs. Ron apparently received real threats for Thrace-unrelated things, so that's not funny at all. We're not really threatening you or your scotch, Mr. Ron.)

Wow. RDM killed Starbuck AND Captain Kirk. That's quite a record. Got your sights on Batman next? James Bond? The Lone Ranger? Santa Clause?

Great ep. Gorgeous. Kudos to the FX gang. Really wow. Great writing. Terrific casting. Kara's mom was perfect. Much better than Lee's mom. They looked like each other, for one thing.

I knew Kara was going to die as soon as she said "Nothing but the rain." Callback to the pilot? Uh oh. Then they got all "closure-y" with her and Anders and her and Lee. It started to feel like "a very special Battlestar Galactica". Her and Lee patched it all up. She was dead. WHY I have no idea. But I saw it coming.

EyeTigh's reaction of horror and bewilderment was perfect. Theirs is one of my favorite relationships on the show.

I have hopes of seeing how this effects Lee. But I've had those hopes many many times. The upside to a Kara-less BSG is that we MIGHT get a good Lee ep. Could happen. No, really.

And the Old Man of the CiC tearing up his toy ship in helpless useless rage was the perfect moment in a show of perfect moments. EDIT: Ok, just heard the podcast. This was IMPROV. This was Crazy Eddie. And this was a RENTED prop, running in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!

Nice to see Leoben (or whoever) being used for something GOOD for a change. Flesh and Bone is still one of my faves, and the New Caprica bits were SUCH a letdown.

My money is that there is meaning to when Starbuck got out of bed wearing her BRIGHT RED pjs. They cut away from it so fast I almost felt like they realized they were tipping their hands.

Whether this is any good depends entirely on what happens next. Killing characters is easy. Making them worth killing is another matter. There were terrific and realized reasons for Wash and Book to die. (Hop over to Firefly for a moment folks. If you haven't seen it, well, I just spoiled some big stuff, but you should go watch anyway. We'll wait.) I haven't seen WHY Kara is dead yet. Right now it feels like it's because a) Ron wanted to be SHOCKING or 2) Katee Sackoff wanted to see if she could do better than White Noise 2. You have to give us back as good as you took away. Otherwise, well, we hear Heroes is really great.

My other (wishful) thinking is this. This might be The Show Fights Back. We have The Internets. We have all the spoilerific material in the world. Way before a thing happens it's telegraphed all to heck and back. I'm a spoilerphobe, so I didn't hear any of this. After the fact I've found some buzz. Apparently her name WILL be leaving the credits. There's talk of KS auditioning for shows, pilots in the works. What if it's a big setup? Seriously, what if they're using the buzz to give us the best head fake ever? Crazy dreaming, I know. But gosh, I'd love to see them pull it off.

As it stands right now, Kara went crazy and killed herself. But Moore is still babbling on about DESTINY (no escaping, that's for me!) so it still feels unfinished. Oh, and we didn't see her eject, right? But we saw a couple of cutaways to the ejection handle. It just occurs to me. I recall back in the commentary for Kobol's Last Gleaming II, Moore talked about how they wanted Baltar to walk into the bright light and meet Dirk Bennedict, who would announce he was God. Another random thought is that bits of this for some reason reminded me (cause, yes, that's how my head works) of the Light Ships from the original BSG. Not that they remind RDM about that, so it might just be me.

Will she stay dead? She'd better not. So say we all.

Next week? Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger....