Spoilers for "Battlestar Galactica" just as soon as I calculate exactly how lucky Gaius Baltar is...Okay, I'm starting to get just a little bit concerned about the post-exodus portion of the season. The virus two-parter had some interesting moments and ideas but never quite clicked, and "Hero" felt like a mess from start to finish. This is two weeks in a row now that the show has done an episode that feels like a Next Generation leftover, both with the appearance of An Important Character We've Never Bet Before and with the repeated hit of the reset button in the final minutes. Tigh's in an alcoholic doom spiral from killing his wife? Nevermind. Novacek's presence is going to cause some problems? Ship him off to an obscure corner of the rag-tag fleet, never to be seen or heard from again. Adama's starting to blame himself for the near-annihilation of the human race? Roslin tells him to have a Coke and a smile and shut the bleep up.
Adama's guilt trip was the phoniest portion of the episode, because the Bill Adama we know is both too smart to not realize the Cylon's plan would have taken much more than a year to implement, and because the Adama we know doesn't have the time or energy to wallow when there's work to be done. Olmos tried to sell it, but it wasn't worth buying.
That leaves the brief snippets on the Cylon base ship to keep things interesting, and D'Anna taking a suicidal walk of shame (and can you blame her? Gaius Baltar?) does not a full hour of TV make.
Is it just me, or is the show really struggling to find itself since the escape from New Caprica?
Ditto. [comics nerd reference]Did John Byrne write this episode?[/comics nerd reference[
ReplyDeleteAnd next week: Boxing? WTF???
When Tigh is the bright spot of the episode you have problems. As for Adama saying "I provoked them" - if you provoked nuclear war by inching over a border, once, that's something in our house we like to call an excuse.
ReplyDeleteSucky episode, very sucky right up there with the black market episode.
This didn't fall anywhere near Black Market. But I fear that next week will not only fall to that level, but will crash through that floor.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a boxing episode does bring back unpleasant memories of "TKO" pretty much the worst Babylon 5 ep.
ReplyDeleteI've been wondering if there was a physical 6 in bed with Gaius and 3, or if we were getting a bizarre representation. I don't think we can trust the boundaries between thought and reality on a Cylon ship.
As soon as we saw Tigh with real eyepatch, I knew he was on the way back. Which is too bad. It feels false for him to have actually pulled himself together. His redemption should have come from a noble, self-sacrificing death.
But in a lot of ways we got a reset button all the way back to Season 1. Lee doesn't trust his father. Starbuck and most of the fleet worships Adama. Tigh is back as XO. They've got a captured Raider (but this time they've got Athena to help them figure it out.)
On the other hand, I don't think we've seen the last of Bulldog. And 3 gets crazier and crazier. Does she keep getting killed, resurrecting, trying to hold on to the in-between state of consciousness for longer and longer? ("I think I was in heav-en.") At what point do the other models vote to box her?
Treacher- if he did, he would probably say if we didn't like it, we weren't liking Moore and Eick.
ReplyDeleteEric- at this point, it makes more sense for Tigh to drink himself to death more than anything else. I think Michael Hogan's a terrific actor, but I agree Tigh being on his way back seems false.
Too much of a retcon, and the idea that sending Volcheck over the line starting the war is laughable, because Boomer and Doral were probably among the colonists for years beforehand. I'm a liberal guy, but I don't take my guilt THAT far. And, well, they WERE building a war machine. The whole thing left me scratching my head.
And genius plan, Cylons: let Bulldog go back to the Galactica in the hopes he might kill or otherwise incapacitate Adama. Because that would work perfectly... how?
I wonder if they shipped Novacek to the same ship where Roslin's old friend who was nearly her VP has been hiding for the last couple of seasons...
ReplyDeleteAfter the boxing episode, maybe they could do an episode where Apollo gets stuck in an elevator with a pregnant lady and has to deliver the baby all by himself.
ReplyDelete"As soon as we saw Tigh with real eyepatch, I knew he was on the way back."
And it's flesh-colored! Come on, Doc Cottle doesn't have any black eyepatches?
"Treacher- if he did, he would probably say if we didn't like it, we weren't liking Moore and Eick."
And then, of course, he'd ban us.
While I agree that this is an especially long breather that they're taking, I'm not worried yet. First off, any J'onn J'onzz is good television. Second, I think it was important for Roslin to cement the fact that she's been changed by the occupation. Now, she's the hardened, tough, and calculating one, even having to slap Adama around to get him out of his little funk.
ReplyDeleteAnd while it's a bit of a stretch for Tigh to pull out of his death spiral so quickly, I'm sure he'll finally give in as soon as Ellen returns. I'm now convinced that she's one of the five models we've not seen. I'm also convinced that while our seven flip-flop all the time...
- "destroy the humans!"
- "live with the humans!"
- "destroy the humans!"
...the other five are steady in their convictions. So steady, that there was a schism between the two groups.
That would, to me, better explain why Brother Cavil used Ellen the way he did then just wanting to use and abuse a human.
Last season took a downward turn in quality about 2/3 of the way through, but it recovered. I'm hoping it's the same thing here.
ReplyDeleteJim Said: And it's flesh-colored! Come on, Doc Cottle doesn't have any black eyepatches?
ReplyDeleteForget patches altogether! Tigh ought to leave the patch off and freak out the CnC with his creepy empty socket staring out at Gaeda.
Maybe the writers think the characters are more important than the story? They could have really 'lost the plot' ! I skimmed episode 9, first time that I did that !
ReplyDelete