'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review HBO's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," which I really liked:

"Can I ask why a fine woman like yourself wants to become a detective?" a man inquires of Precious Ramotswe, the heroine of HBO's delightful new mystery series, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency."

"Because I love my country Botswana, and I love Africa, and I want to do good with the time God has given me," Precious explains, elegantly summing up so much of the show's appeal.

You can read my full review of "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" here. I'll have some kind of separate post after the two-hour pilot airs on Sunday night. Not yet sure how well the show's going to lend itself to weekly blogging -- especially since the following Sunday brings the return of "In Treatment," another show I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this year -- but I look forward to seeing what other people think of it.

And since the pilot and several episodes have already aired in England, let me remind you of the spoiler rules, which come up a lot with "Doctor Who": no spoilers of any kind are allowed about episodes that have yet to air here in America. If someone wants to say, "Oh, I really liked this," that's fine. If someone wants to talk plot details, that's not acceptable. Click here to read the full post

Lost, "He's Our You": The prisoner

Spoilers for tonight's "Lost" coming up just as soon as I try the dipping sauces...

"Because, Sayid, to put it simply: you're capable of things that most other men aren't. Every choice you've made in your life -- whether it was to murder or to torture -- it hasn't really been a choice at all, has it? It's in your nature. It's what you are. You're a killer, Sayid." -Ben

"He's Our You" was, in many ways, our first old-school "Lost" episode of the season. Where most other episodes have either featured lots of time travel, or two distinct storylines involving characters on the island versus those in the real world, this reverts to the original model of a story on the island where one character's struggle (in this case, Sayid's) is illuminated by flashbacks from their life on the mainland.

Of course, the show and its characters have been through enough changes that we could get a relatively traditional episode where the flashbacks all take place after the crash of Oceanic 815, while the "present-day" scenes are in 1977, but this was structured similarly to a first season episode, down to the potentially stunning moment at the end, when Sayid calmly put a bullet in the chest of 12-year-old Ben Linus and staggered off through the jungle.

How stunning that moment was, and how impressed I was by "He's Our You," will depend on a couple of things that we won't know for another week at the earliest. First, and most obvious, is whether Sayid was able to disprove Faraday's closed-loop theory of time travel by killing someone we know to be alive 30 years in the future. The second is whether there's anything more to tell about Ben and Sayid's falling-out on the mainland.

Let's talk about the "death" of young master Linus first. If Faraday is right that the past can't be changed by anyone but Desmond, than Ben's very much alive, and the show doesn't even have to stretch that much to explain it. We have plenty of past evidence (Locke and Christian's resurrections, Michael's failed suicide attempts) that the island has the power to raise the dead and/or prevent the deaths of people it has a use for. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see, early next week, young Ben getting up in amazement, then reveling in the realization that he was "special" and chosen by the island for some great purpose. And if the closed loop then keeps spinning, then the Ben who "meets" Sayid in season two remembers him well as the man who tried to kill him, and when he calls Sayid a killer in Santo Domingo, he's only throwing Sayid's own 30-year-old words back in his face.

But just for argument's sake -- and so far everything that's happened this season supports the closed-loop, "12 Monkeys" model, so I'm just having fun here -- what if Dan is wrong? What if Sayid really did kill Ben as a boy? Does the adult Ben lying in the Hydra infirmary in 2007 suddenly vanish? Does he become a walking paradox? Are we going to deal with the creation of multiple, alternate timelines, where everything the Lostaways do back in the Dharma years creates a new parallel universe, each slightly different from the one before?

The latter scenario seems to fly in the face of what Cuse and Lindelof were saying before the season began -- that if the future or past can be changed, if mistakes can be corrected through time travel, then they feel the audience can't get invested in anything the characters do. (The converse of that, of course, is that if the closed-loop theory is true, then nothing the characters are doing this season, or maybe in the life of the series, matters, because it's what they were always destined to do.)

So I'm going to assume for now that young Ben dusts himself off soon and goes running to tell his eyeliner-wearing pal Richard about his brush with death. And Sayid won't have to live with the guilt of having metaphorically killed Hitler in the cradle, or even with the moral conflict of seeing Ben be abused by his father, an abuse that no doubt helped turn him into the monster Sayid knows all too well.

And that leaves me with the more vexing question: is that really all there is to their schism in the present?

Sayid's scenes with Hurley bridging the end of last season with the start of this one implied that Sayid discovered Ben had significantly betrayed him, or tricked him, or in some other way so thoroughly violated his trust that Sayid would warn Hurley to always do the opposite of what Ben says. From what we know of Ben, that's sound advice under any circumstances, but Sayid acted as if Ben had gone beyond even his usual evil machinations, or that Sayid had uncovered incontrovertible proof that Ben had played him. But all we saw here was Ben discarding Sayid after he killed all of the men allegedly loyal to Widmore -- not that we yet know who they really were and whether they posed any kind of threat to the Oceanic Six -- followed by Sayid trying to ease his killer's guilt by building houses in Santo Domingo. That doesn't seem to track with what the previous episodes implied, and if that's all there is, I feel let down. Yes, Ben has screwed the Lostaways over six ways from Sunday, but for Sayid to feel such hate for him -- to feel the need to kill him as a boy, before he's ever done anything to anyone -- he has to feel a bone-deep hatred for adult Ben, and being turned into a hired gun doesn't seem like remotely enough motivation to me.

Maybe there are other pieces to the puzzle, but if so, we're not going the episode should have more strongly implied that they were missing. And since we still need to find out how Hurley, Kate and possibly Sun wound up on Ajira 316 -- not to mention what happened to Ben at the marina and whether Desmond and Penny are okay (please please please please please) -- I doubt there's going to be an opportunity to loop back to Sayid's backstory anytime soon.

Still, it's always fun to watch Sayid run around with his license to kill, and be suave, and to suffer torture if need be, particularly with the introduction of Oldham, the Dharma bunch's own interrogation expert, and the "he" of the episode's title. William Sanderson is at least the fourth "Deadwood" alum to turn up on "Lost" (after Kim Dickens as Sawyer's baby mama Cassidy, Robin Weigert as Juliet's sister Rachel and Paula Malcomson as murdered Other Colleen Pickett), and he made a quick and memorable impression. I suspected that Sayid would wind up simply telling Horace the truth and being disbelieved, but it was still a great sequence, alternately disturbing and funny (just as Sayid found it).

Meanwhile, after dominating the last few episodes, Sawyer takes a bit of a backseat. He's still prominent, trying to work around the Dharma folk to save Sayid, while also dealing with the complication of his ex-girlfriend turning up just as he had gotten used to his new special lady(*), but "He's Our You" was a reminder that the series hadn't suddenly turned into "Everybody Loves LaFleur."

(*) Quick straw poll: I know there are (or were) Kate/Sawyer fans, but after the last few episodes, how many people actually want Sawyer to leave Juliet for Freckles? And how many people groaned when Sawyer turned left from his front door to try to catch up with Kate?

Some other thoughts on "He's Our You":

• Some of you complained last week that, upon returning to the island, the characters are once again doing a terrible job of sharing information. Last week, Kate, Hurley and Jack somehow hung around on a cliff with Jin for 20 minutes without telling him his wife was on their plane, and here Jack and Kate apparently spent the night in the same bungalow without Kate mentioning that their respective exes shacked up while they were gone.

• Have we ever seen the adult Ben use the move he was so impressed to see Sayid use to take down Jin?

• Am I the only one who briefly wondered if the much-talked-about Oldham would turn out to be Faraday?

• The more I see of Radzinsky, the more I begin to wonder if he actually committed suicide in the Swan, or if Inman blew his partner's brains out just to shut him up.

• Radzinsky makes a reference to calling Ann Arbor for guidance on what to do with Sayid. Lostpedia tells me that Dharma co-founders the DeGroots attended the University of Michigan.

• Who wants to begin analyzing the meaning of Ben trying to give Sayid a copy of Carlos Castaneda's "A Separate Reality"? Should we take that as a sign that Sayid might have actually killed Ben?

As always, let me remind you of two basic rules around here: 1)No spoilers (which includes the previews for next week, interviews, things you've read/heard elsewhere, etc.), and 2)Make an effort to read all the comments before yours so you're not repeating a point that's already been made as if you're the first person in the world who ever had this thought. If you can't exercise the proper level of restraint and/or consideration for others, your comment's getting deleted.

With that in mind, what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost vs. American Idol: I choose Lost

Just a reminder: back when Fox moved the "American Idol" results show opposite "Lost," I said I would always watch and blog about "Lost" before even thinking about "Idol." This week, thanks to last night's presidential presser, it's the second half of the "Idol" two-hour performance show opposite "Lost," and I'm still sticking with my pals on Craphole Island. So don't bank on any "Idol" commentary from me until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Based on the number of comments for each show (if not the Nielsen ratings), I suspect most of you will agree with the choice. Click here to read the full post

Reaper, "The Favorite": Dad always liked you best!

Quick spoilers for last night's "Reaper" coming up just as soon as I find a glass...

"The Favorite," written by "Reaper" creators Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters, hit on two of its three storylines, deepening the complications of Sam being the Devil's son and having a lot of fun with the idea of human/demon loving. And if the Sock subplot didn't work, it's because Fazekas and Butters have a much higher opinion of the appeal of Ted -- whom I had hoped we were rid of -- than most of us do.

From the moment when Satan told Sam in the season premiere that he had sired hundreds of offspring over the millennia, it seemed inevitable that we would get to meet another one. Guest star Armie Hammer nicely captured how easily a Satan spawn might become a total d-bag, especially if he was spoiled instead of forced to work for everything the way Sam is. And the happier the Devil is, the more fun Ray Wise is to watch, so this was a nice showcase for him.

Rick Gonzalez, meanwhile, had maybe his strongest episode yet, as Ben had to face performance anxiety after realizing he wasn't satisfying Nina. The scene where Ben braced himself to have sex with her in her demon form was really funny, and a reminder that Gonzalez's more low-key style can get laughs just as easily as Tyler Labine's more extroverted antics.

One moment I particularly liked was when Morgan, after meeting Ben and Sock for the first time, tried to figure out what each guy's specialty was -- particularly Ben's long, silent contemplation of whether Sock qualified as the "fighting guy." It served as a commentary about how much these guys are still fumbling along without a real plan, succeeding more by accident than anything else, but also worked as an unintentional meta commentary on how sloppy and yet endearing "Reaper" itself is.

What did everybody else think? And with Sam's (non-Satan) dad looking all blue, is he supposed to be a demon, or a zombie? Click here to read the full post

ER: What's your favorite episode, and why?

So, I'm trying to do some early brainstorming on all the things I'm going to write next week about the finale of "ER." And one of the naturals is to do, as I usually do at the end of iconic series, a Best Episodes list. I have a bunch of obvious ones in mind -- the pilot, "Blizzard," "Love's Labor Lost," "Hell and High Water," "Exodus" (pictured above) -- but, as always, I'm open to suggestions, especially if you can articulate why you feel yours was one of the show's strongest hours.

In particular, I'm curious to see if anyone can make a strong case for an episode from after, say, Anthony Edwards left. Click here to read the full post

Heroes, "Cold Snap": Bryan Fuller to the rescue?

I know, I know... I swore off "Heroes" after the first episode of "Fugitives" -- because even though it was appreciably better than what had come before in season three, I felt too much irreparable harm had been done to the characters and the series for me to care anymore. But last night was a relatively slow one at Casa Sepinwall, and with Bryan Fuller -- who wrote the best episode of the series to date before going off to create a delightful little treat called "Pushing Daisies" -- back in the fold and writing "Cold Snap," I decided to give the show another shot, just to see if Fuller's return was really the cure-all that so many fans have been hoping for. Thoughts on whether he succeeded coming up just as soon as I fly to Paris...

Now, I came into "Cold Snap" having not watched the previous five episodes, so I had to play a lot of catch-up with the storyline, which characters have flip-flopped allegiances yet again, etc. But in spite of that, this was the strongest episode of the series I've watched in some time -- maybe not enough to get me back watching regularly, but at least to make sure I try to watch the episodes with Fuller's name on them.

What Fuller did so well in "Company Man," and what he did well here, is to take the characters seriously as people. They're never going to be as deep as anyone on "The Wire," or maybe even on "Lost," but the show is a lot more engaging when the characters seem like approximations of real people, with real feelings and with interests outside of accumulating more power, taking down the bad guys, or whatever the needs of the plot are.

So here Fuller spent a lot of time revisiting emotional beats that the series had largely ignored in the past in favor of keeping the story moving: Hiro reflects on what it was like to watch his mother die a second time, Ma Petrelli deals with the semi-normal life she abandoned as she got deeper and deeper into Company business, Daphne confronted Parkman on just how strange and superficial his love for her seems (before she was given a fairly poignant death), etc. Even Tracy was given an opportunity to revisit who she used to be before she became both a figurative and literal ice queen, right before the show apparently bumped off another of Ali Larter's characters(*).

(*) It's here that I should remind you again about the No Spoilers rule. For all I know, Tracy's going to melt down and then reassemble, or we're going to meet yet another of Nikki's dopplegangers, but I don't want to know anything about any interviews people have done, or spoilers that have been teased on other sites, or things in the previews, or whatever. Got me?

Because Fuller was dealing with so many characters and plotlines, he wasn't able to delve as deeply into anyone as he was with the single-focused "Company Man." But if "Heroes" could make this kind of effort every week to respect the characters, to think about who they are as people and not just pieces on a chessboard, to ask, "Well, how would someone really react if this incredible thing happened to them?," then it might be a show I'd want to watch more often.

Of course, it helped that Fuller chose to exclude or minimize most of the characters I can't stand. No Sylar, no Claire, virtually no Peter, Mohinder unconscious for a good chunk of the episode, and no Nathan (whom I used to like, but who has changed allegiances and motivation so many times that he's become just as useless as his brother, as far as I'm concerned). There's still a whole lotta dead weight in this ensemble, and I'm not sure that's a problem that can be easily solved no matter who the writers are.

So, what did everybody else think? Was it the miracle you were hoping for? And for those of you who've stuck it out over the last couple of months, how has "Fugitives" been working for you compared the last few story arcs? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Old King Clancy": Northwest Passage

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I renounce my Canadian half-citizenship...

"Canada, you did it again. You even found a way to ruin this. Why? Why do we let you be a country?" -Barney

Today was not a good day at The Star-Ledger. We're certainly not alone in taking a beating in this economy, but the events of today had me really, really, really hoping for some big laughs from tonight's "HIMYM," particularly after the last two episodes had been so strong. Instead, unfortunately, we got a fairly iffy outing saved by some always-reliable Canadian comedy.

Now, admittedly, today's news at the paper may well have made it impossible for me to enjoy a storyline about fake jobs, Ted being on the verge of getting fired, a room designed for firing people, etc., but I don't think so. The biggest laugh I had at the episode was the security cam montage of Barney firing people -- specifically, the shot of him having sex under the table and then firing the woman he had sex with, which is completely despicable and yet completely Barney. (This is how good the writers and Neil Patrick Harris have been at creating this character: I love it when he's doing horrible things even when he's appearing in grainy footage with the sound off so I can't even see or hear anything from NPH.)

No, I just think it was a lame story, as sitcom plots about elaborate lies tend to be. Other than "HIMYM"-y touches like the aforementioned video montage, or the '70s-style caper movie title cards for each member of the conspiracy (including the chipmunk!), it was forgettable and not all that funny.

Lily playing a guessing game with Robin about Canadian sex acts -- with help from yet another classic fake website from the "HIMYM" folks (this time with appearances from an actual Canadian celebrity) -- was an amusing B-plot, and a reminder that clever euphemisms (invented or not) are often funnier than more sexually explicit punchlines, and it had a nice payoff at the end when we found out what really happened with The Frozen Snowshoe. I just wish it was in service to a better A-story.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Predator": The Buy More way

Spoilers for tonight's "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I set up my own "office"...

"Playtime is over... It's time for you to become a spy." -General Beckman

What she said -- only double it.

I never want Chuck the character, or "Chuck" the series, to lose the innocence and goofiness that makes him/it so appealing. But two seasons in, it's time -- really, it's well past time -- for Chuck to be treated not as some clown who's a temporary inconvenience for the NSA and CIA, but as someone who's been working as a de facto field agent for a while, who has saved both his partners and the world itself enough times that calling him anything other than a spy is just a matter of semantics and training. He already is a spy, so much so that Vincent from Fulcrum (played by Arnold Vosloo from "The Mummy") recognizes the name Charles Carmichael; now he just has to learn the right way to be one.

These last few episodes have been slowly inching both man and series into more serious territory, and with "Chuck vs. the Predator," co-creator Chris Fedak shows that it can be done without losing the comedy. The stakes for Chuck are getting higher and more deadly, but here they got raised in an episode that also featured Jeff aping Fonzie by turning a men's room stall into an office, Millbarge going berserk in two different Buy More locations, and hilarious homages to both "The Right Stuff" (Big Mike leading the Buy More crew in the triumphant side-by-side slo-mo walk) and "The Untouchables" (Big Mike quoting Sean Connery's speech about The Chicago Way and then recreating the "You're not from Chicago" scene).

I'm guessing/hoping that this will lead to some other questions we have being answered, like whether Chuck will be paid by the government, how well (or not) he'll take to getting self-defense training from Casey and Sarah, and even whether the Buy More cover is necessary anymore. If they're treating him as a spy who's going to be instrumental in bringing down Fulcrum(*) and not as an asset to be hidden from the bad guys at all costs, does he really need to spend so much time slipping in and out of that cover job? At the very least, could they have him quit the Nerd Herd to man the counter at the (government-controlled) Orange-Orange?

(*) It's a measure of how good the character work and emotional beats are that I buy into this "war" between the CIA and Fulcrum even though I have no real idea about or interestin in what Fulcrum is really up to. Fulcrum is basically a MacGuffin, the thing that's necessary to make the story go, but not worth actually explaining. If Fulcrum turns out to have a master plan down the road, fine, but I don't really need it.

Beckman's first physical meeting with Chuck made it clear that the stakes are going up, but also that she's starting to realize it was a mistake to leave two agents out on their own without major oversight. You could see her reacting strongly to Sarah's defense of Chuck throughout the episode; she may have a desk job now, but she didn't get that job without having a good eye for detail, and it's clear that, whether Sarah is supposed to be Chuck's handler or his partner, she's not as cold and objective as Beckman would like. (Neither, interestingly, is Casey, who knows just how schmoopie and annoying Chuck and Sarah can be, yet he refused to rat them out to Beckman.)

One episode after introducing us to the concept of Orion, the show appears -- again, appears -- to have killed him off. I'm guessing this is a classic comic book case of there not being a death without a body -- that, or my theory that Orion is Chuck's dad has to be tossed out the window. I suppose Chuck's dad could have been involved in building the Intersect without being Orion, but there's something in the way that Orion said that he always wanted to do the "this disc will self-destruct" spiel that sounded very much like something Chuck himself would say.

After keeping nerd world and spy world mostly separate for the last few episodes, "Predator" also managed to use the Buy More to complicate the Orion situation, first with Jeffster playing war games with Orion's laptop in Jeff's office, then with mess involving Jeffster, Millbarge, Vincent and the safe in Big Mike's office. The scenario of two break-ins happening simultaneously, with lots of mistaken identity, is so old that I think they did it three or four times on "I Love Lucy," but it was well-executed here, in part because of how Jeff and Lester are revealed to be some Bizarro World version of Casey and Sarah. (After all, Casey tricked out the A/V room as an office in the same way Jeff did to that stall, while Lester's been mistaken for a woman at least once before.) And it helped that Tony Hale was finally allowed to cut loose and be completely insane as Millbarge -- and, based on his "Just like Fresno" mantra, I don't think this is the first time Emmitt has had a freak-out in the middle of a store.

If the Beverly Hills Buy More didn't look like anything but the regular set dressed up with some new cardboard cut-outs, it did set up a nice parallel between nerd world and spy world, with Buy More 90210 as the nerd equivalent of Fulcrum, Big Mike as General Beckman and Morgan as Chuck.

And speaking of Fulcrum, "Predator" also gives us our first glimpse of their headquarters, albeit done in a minimalist fashion that evoked the tribunal where General Zod and his gang get sentence at the start of "Superman: The Motion Picture" (or similar tribunals in a half-dozen paranoid '70s/'80s thrillers). At Comic-Con, I had asked Fedak why Fulcrum wouldn't be constantly sending raiding parties into the Buy More after Mauser disappeared at the end of his mission in "Chuck vs. the Santa Claus," and he said this episode would explain that what Fulcrum thinks is happening at the Buy More is very different from what's actually happening. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the in-episode explanation that they think it's a CIA substation -- wouldn't they still want to know what was so valuable at this substation? -- so I asked Fedak via e-mail if he could expand on it. Here's what he wrote:

Mauser's plan was to identify what or who Casey and Sarah were protecting inside the Buy More. His orders from Fulcrum would have been: "We've identified a domestic substation in Burbank, California. Create an incident and see what's really happening there." Mauser succeeds (he learns that Chuck is the Intersect), yet he never gets to deliver his report. Back at Fulcrum HQ, they're stuck with their original information -- there's this base in Burbank but all the agents they send inside it get taken or wind up dead. And remember, their real focus is Bryce Larkin, who we always imagine is having super spy missions all around the world, battling Fulcrum in a James Bond vs. SPECTRE fashion.

The Bryce part of the explanation is the more important part -- it's been established repeatedly that they think Bryce has the Intersect, not Chuck -- but I still have to think the Mauser's disappearance would only make them more curious about that Buy More, even if it kept costing them manpower.

Some other thoughts:

• Loved the CG effects on the Predator drone itself. One of the cooler-looking pieces of FX on the show to date.

• I always enjoy those glimpses of Operation: Bartowski returning from a mission we'll never get to see -- in this case, them all covered in filth after posing as plumbers -- as it's both an easy opportunity for humor and a sign that Chuck's life as a spy is even more thorough than there's room for on the show itself.

• This episode did slightly undercut the coolness of the "Tron" poster scene at the end of "Chuck vs. the Lethal Weapon," in that it reminded me of the surveillance cameras Casey has in Chuck's bedroom -- and Chuck's awareness of them. Yes, he deliberately looks at the Tron poster while he's facing the camera, so Casey couldn't see what's on it, but at the same time, wouldn't Casey (or whoever else has access to that footage) wonder why Chuck kept looking at the back of some poster? I thought the idea of him slipping the new Intersect blueprints inside a copy of Brian K. Vaughan's very cool "Ex Machina" makes more sense.

• Our weekly plot hole that's necessary to make half the plot work: how does Chuck not understand what Orion means when he says he'll be sending a computer to "your current location"?

• I did a quick Google Maps search of the two addresses mentioned. The corner of Wilshire and Doheny, where the Buy More 90210 is allegedly located, is pretty dull (there's a bank on one corner), while 54 Temple Ave. doesn't exist at the zip code given.

• If Beckman's speech at the end of the episode didn't have such important ramifications for the series as a whole, I would have been sorely tempted to lead the review with an incredulous Chuck asking Casey, "You had a gun?" and a smug Casey saying, "I always have a gun."

• Does no one else live in the apartment complex but Casey, Chuck, Ellie and Awesome? Beckman makes quite the entrance that would be noticed if the building were as populated as, say, Melrose Place.

• On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a basket of puppies and 10 being Jeff eating the urinal cake, how disturbed should I be by Lexter expressing his fear of having to turn tricks "again"?

• Got a kick out of Beckman mocking Casey's Reagan photo by telling him, "The '80s are over." Just try telling that to Fedak and Schwartz.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Programming advisory: HIMYM at 8 tonight, not 8:30

Just in case you don't have a DVR that automatically grabs new episodes of certain shows, note that tonight's episode of "How I Met Your Mother" is airing at 8 p.m., rather than 8:30 (when CBS is airing a rerun of last season's "The Bracket"). My guess is, with "Big Bang Theory" and "Two and a Half Men" already renewed for next year, and with a "HIMYM" renewal basically a sure thing, CBS is testing out how "HIMYM" does leading off the night, which it hasn't done in a while, to give them more options for figuring out next year's schedule. Click here to read the full post

In lieu of an open thread this week...

...could anybody who has a question for me try e-mailing me over the next couple of days? The bosses want me to resurrect the mailbag column I used to do on a weekly basis, but it's been so long since I've done one regularly that most of the feedback I get is via blog comments.

I hope that if I start running them on at least a semi-regular basis, the readers will get back into the habit of sometimes e-mailing their questions (or, in rare cases usually involving senior citizens, snail-mailing them), and then the machine will perpetuate itself the way it used to.

I obviously can't promise to answer everyone's question -- limited space in the paper versus unlimited space on a blog -- but I'll try to cherrypick the best ones, and if yours doesn't come up, feel free to post it as a comment the next time I do a real open thread. All I ask is that you include your full name and the city/town where you currently live, as we need that to run any letters. Being from Jersey is not mandatory, and ask anything TV-related at all.

Just do me one favor and try to include the word "mailbag" somewhere in your subject line or the body of the e-mail. I get several hundred useless PR e-mails a day, and when I don't have time to go in and delete them all, it helps to have a keyword I can search for. Click here to read the full post

Amazing Race, "Alright, guys, we're at war!": Dreaming of painted elephants

Don't have much to say about last night's obligatory "The Amazing Race" stop in India (and am glad I mostly watch the show on CBS.com, as my recording at home was mostly Obama, thanks to the NCAA tournament pushing "60 Minutes" into the 8 o'clock hour), but I do want to make one quick point after the jump...

I again want to point out how awesome Mel White is in the way he debunks traditional modes of reality show behavior as unnecessary. I was already on board the Team Schneebly train after Mel refused to pray for the winds to change, because God has more important things to worry about than a game show, but now they're one of my favorite "Race" teams ever after Mel explained that being on a game show isn't an excuse to yell at cab drivers or other service people for working slowly. The man rules, and not just because he smoked all the young'uns on the Roadblock.

Was hoping the knuckleheaded brothers would finally go home, but it seemed fair that the flight attendants just missed surviving because they had to do the Speed Bump.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

United States of Tara, "Betrayal": The burning shed

Quick spoilers for last night's "United States of Tara" coming up just as soon as I navigate my company's human resources voicemail...

I wish I could spend more time on "Betrayal," which was so tragic for poor Marshall and so rife with material about the alters and the way they interact with each other. But as I've already said a few times today, I'm slammed with other assignments, so I'm just going to hit a few bullet points and open it up for discussion:

• Poor, poor, poor Marshall. I loved that the show went the unexpected route of having Jason be totally cool with kissing Marshall, even in the sober light of day. (His desire to keep it on the down-low made it seem realistic enough.) So, of course, the writers had to punish Marshall in a more unpredictable way, by having T -- who, in her last appearance, had attempted to make amends with Tara's son -- decide to screw with him by seducing Jason. So painful to watch, and so beautifully played by Keir Gilchrist.

• Last week, we had some debate about whether Tara could switch from alter to alter without first reverting to her own persona. Here, we get confirmation, as she goes straight from Gimme (whose appearance is provoked by a deep tissue massage) to T (the alter least likely to feel ashamed of how people would respond to Gimme's public outburst). So that means there's still a possibility that we could see, say, Alice turn into Buck under the right circumstances.

• Toni Collette has the flashiest part, but I'm really developing a new appreciation of John Corbett while watching this show. He more or less always plays characters who live in the same strike zone, but he makes Max seem different from, and richer than, previous Corbett types like Aiden or even Chris from "Northern Exposure." What makes Max special -- and the ideal kind of man to be in this marriage -- is the gift he has for empathizing with his loved ones problems. Last week, we saw him really get on Marshall's wavelength when he realized the depth of his son's crush on Jason, and here we had the very sweet way he responded to Tara telling him about Dr. Ocean "breaking up with" her. He doesn't get mad, or shrug it off, but instead finds a way to put himself on her level and react the way she was. Very nicely-done, by actor and character.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Big Love, "Sacrament": New religion

Quick spoilers for the "Big Love" season three finale coming up just as soon as I take my kid to work...

Todd VanDerWerff, in his weekly reviews of the show at The House Next Door, has been talking all season about the possibility that Bill would one day evolve into Roman. That subtext becomes overt as Bill takes Roman's advice about seizing power from God, here by deciding to form his own church. I know Bill's intentions are better than Roman's, and he'll likely never mass the number of followers -- or the body count -- of his father-in-law, but it was still troubling to see him leading the family in the sacrament to launch his church.

And speaking of Roman, while I really hope he's dead for real this time, this show has faked me out one time too many on killing off various Juniper Creek characters (Roman, Alby, Bill's dad) without ever going through with it. Now, Joey seemed to be a lot more thorough than the Greens were when they shot Roman, but still. After the wonderful compound-free detour that was "Come, Ye Saints," the show went very, very heavy on Juniper Creek drama for the rest of the season, and I'm so, so tired of it all. Outside of wanting a bit more backstory on Selma Green (like why Hollis allows her to dress as a man), I'd be happy to never see any of those characters again, and to just deal with the problems Bill and his wives face from the modern world.

I'm also not sure how I feel about Barb inviting Nicki back into the marriage. Yes, she felt bad for Nicki after learning about her daughter, but even that original sin shouldn't absolve Nicki of all the terrible things she's done since joining Barb and Bill's family. I think Chloe Sevigny does a wonderful job of playing Nicki as more than just a caricatured witch, but from Barb's point of view, I don't know that I'd ever allow her back, let alone be the one to bring her back.

What did everybody else think -- about the finale, and about the season as a whole? Click here to read the full post

Terminator, "Today is the Day, Part 2": Never trust a captain named Queeg

Before tonight's "Chuck" review, the rest of today's blog entries are going to be very, very short, as I'm slammed at work but want to give people a chance to discuss notable programming from the weekend. First up, brief spoilers for Friday night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" coming up just as soon as I go for a swim...

The story continues to inch incrementally forward, both in the present (John Henry confronts Shirley Manson about her plans) and in the future (we see John trying to forge an alliance with the T-1000's), but the show remains much stronger on the character stuff than on plot.

Best scene in the episode, by far, was John confronting Jesse about what they each did to Riley. The show has talked and talked about John needing to come into his own, but this is the first time where I've really believed he was growing up and becoming a leader. Very well-played by Thomas Dekker.

I'm hoping, but not assuming, that Derek went through with killing Jesse, just because I found her a drip of a character, and the two-part flashbacks to her time on the sub didn't change that opinion. (Though it did give Chad L. Coleman a chance to show he could convincingly play a character who's 180 degrees from Cutty on "The Wire.")

Still waiting for all the stories to start coming to a head, but the show's been much improved the last few weeks.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Flight of the Conchords, "Evicted": Is that all there is?

Spoilers for the season -- and maybe series -- finale of "Flight of the Conchords" coming up just as soon as I use my calculator watch...

"Is it a hit?" -Jemaine
"It depends how you define 'hit.'" -Murray
"Do people like it?" -Bret
"No, I don't think it was that sort of it. But you enjoyed yourselves, right? That's what it's really about." -Murray

I spent a whole lot of "Evicted" trying to parse it for clues about which way the Conchords were leaning about continuing with the show. And when we got to that extremely meta exchange, followed by the guys deported back to a New Zealand sheep ranch (and Murray either deported as well, or simply joining them because he has to keep managing the band), I assumed that this was their farewell.

Then I thought back to season one, which ended with the band more or less disintegrating in the wake of the Crazy Dogggz becoming an international phenomenon. That also could have worked as a series finale, but the show came back.

Now, HBO keeps saying no decision has been made, and the guys and James Bobin have been pretty mum on the subject. And the way HBO works with other shows like "Curb Your Enthusiasm," we may not know there's going to be another season until it's announced, maybe months or even years from now.

And I'm ambivalent about whether I want the show to continue.

In some ways, season two has been even better than season one. I think they've had a better handle on what they want the show to be, comedy-wise, they've made more and better use of the supporting players. And even when the songs weren't that memorable, the quality of the videos was significantly higher.

On the other hand, the songs were, for the most part, less memorable. And now that they've dipped even deeper into what's left of the back catalog -- they finally found a way to work in "Petrov, Yelyena and Me" by making it a nautical nightmare of Bret's -- I wonder what the songs would be like for a hypothetical third season.

I love this show. I'm very happy I got to watch it for two seasons. I'd probably be very happy to watch it for two or three more. But there's certainly something to be said for the idea of walking away before the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

Some specific thoughts on "Evicted":

• I loved every little detail of Murray's musical about the band, from his brief attempt to turn Bret's life into Luke Skywalker's (complete with Greg building a model Landspeeder) to the incredibly literal lyrics that lacked any of the charm or wit of actual Conchords songs.

• A great episode for Mel -- and and for Doug, for that matter -- as the problems in their marriage finally came to a head, then got solved when Mel got to glimpse Doug performing on stage with her beloved band. My favorite part of the break-up montage: Doug reverting to his hard-partying ways once he and Jemaine had moved into the RV. (Mel, of course, gets to keep the house, even though I'm sure it was Doug's.)

• If this is, indeed, farewell, Dave also got a few nice moments, once again trying to make his living situation seem vastly cooler than it is, then turning up as the Statue of Liberty and more or less getting the lyrics right.

So, three questions for discussion:

1. Do you want the show to continue?

2. If it doesn't, do you feel this was a fitting ending?

3. Favorite moments/songs/jokes/whatever from the two seasons so far?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Breaking Bad, "Bit By A Dead Bee": It don't come easy

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I go to Whole Foods...

"Jesse, what's changed?" -Walt

Exciting and tense and freaky as last week's episode was, "Bit By A Dead Bee" feels even more uniquely "Breaking Bad," if a show on only its 10th episode could be said to have its own unique style.

I've seen the scenario in "Grilled" before, albeit rarely done as well as it was there. But any other show that did it would spend five minutes in the next episode on the story "Breaking Bad" spends this entire hour telling. Anywhere else, and Walt (or his HBO/FX/Showtime equivalent) turns up naked in the supermarket feigning a blackout, and that's that. But nothing is ever that simple on this show, as Vince Gilligan tries to focus on what he calls "those in-between moments."

The blackout explanation only creates another problem Walt has to solve, which he finally does by spinning yet another lie (or, rather, a huge omission of the truth) to the shrink (played by the wonderful Harry Groener). And there's that delicious pause right after he asks about doctor-patient confidentiality when you begin to wonder if he's going to spill his guts about the whole criminal enterprise, just so he can discuss it with someone who's actually a grown-up and not an impatient, over-his-head clown like Jesse.

Even only 10 episodes into the series, the brilliance of Bryan Cranston basically goes without saying, but just watch his mental gears turn in that moment. I've watched it three or four times already, and each time I come away thinking that he almost did tell the doc the truth, or that he was simply calculating how much of the truth (in this case, his unhappiness at home) he needed to tell to be done with this. And if that's not enough Cranston genius, take a second look at Walt, having snuck back into the house to hide the gun and cash, watching Walter Jr. comfort Skyler, realizing his family has already moved on without him. They're like the family depicted in the painting in Walt's hospital room, waving goodbye to the rowboat but perfectly fine on their own without the male adult around.

Jesse's side of the alibi plan was more expected, if only because Tuco died next to his car. Still, there was a lot of tension over whether he could pull it off, with only his cranked-up hooker friend to support the lie, and especially once Tio popped up again. That's two weeks in a row where this old man with his wheelchair and his bell has given me a major freak-out midway through an episode. I feel like they could probably get away with at least three or four more "surprise" Tio appearances in a row before he stopped being so disturbing.

Meanwhile, I've got a bad feeling about the barrel that Jesse entrusted to his friend's cousin. That's got impending disaster written all over it, doesn't it? (And not just because Jesse still doesn't know he can roll the barrel instead of carrying it.) Is Walt going to have to cook up some more castor beans to clean up another mess?

(That situation, by the way, springs up from an unexpected real-life problem, as the owner of the house the production uses as Jesse's decided to sell the place, so the writers quickly had to come up with a reason for him to abandon it.)

Meanwhile, we got an even more extended look at Hank than last week, as we see him trying to put on the expected macho celebratory mood even as you can see that killing Tuco doesn't sit so well with him. Dean Norris is doing some really good work here, and I look forward to the inevitable moment when it finally occurs to Hank that the easiest way to connect all the dots is by placing his genius chemist brother-in-law in the middle of them.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Kings, "Prosperity": A seat at the table

Spoilers for episode two of "Kings" coming up just as soon as I blow up some pigeons...

"This one, you protect from what wants to happen. He has a destiny in him. People with destinies, things don't go well for them. They die old and unhappy, or young and unfinished." -Mrs. Shepherd

"Prosperity" was probably the weakest of the three "Kings" episodes I've seen, since it hangs more on David than the other two, and since David is, by nature of this early place in the familiar story, an underdeveloped character. I can't decide yet whether Chris Egan simply isn't up to the task of making him more interesting than he seems so far, or if he's playing the character as written. And based on the dismal ratings for last week's premiere, I doubt the show will be on long enough for his abilities to become clear.

But for however long it's on, I'm going to stick with it, because even if David isn't yet the man worthy of the destiny his mom sees in him, the world he moves in is still so interesting.

The peace negotiations with Gath give us our first look at the other side, and we see that the enemy isn't quite so refined -- a poorer country with no great city and some kind of military-led dictatorship as opposed to Silas' more glamorous monarchy. It's still not clear if this is a completely alternate reality or if it's supposed to be our Earth with some key historic differences (David does play a very familiar-sounding classical piece on his piano at one point), so it's hard to know what the rest of the world's governments are like, but in these two, Gath is definitely the jealous younger sibling.

We also learn more about the history of Silas' rise to power when, after his brother-in-law William makes good on his threat to bankrupt the treasury, Silas has to go to Abaddon(*), the once-mighty, now-mad ruler he defeated to help create this kingdom. Given how many of the commenters seem to be watching primarily because they loved Ian McShane in "Deadwood," I imagine you were pleased to see Brian Cox, however briefly, as Abaddon, in an episode packed with great character actors like Dylan Baker, Miguel Ferrer and Mark Margolis.

(*) Other than the setting, this is the first really significant break from the Bible story, where Saul was appointed by Samuel, who had previously been leading the Israelites, after the people demanded that they have a king to lead them. The name Abaddon pops up elsewhere in the Bible -- and was also the name of Lance Reddick's character on "Lost" -- but not in the Book of Samuel.

And after not having much to do in the two-hour pilot, Susanna Thompson's Queen Rose starts moving to the forefront here, trying to manipulate her daughter away from David and demonstrating that she has an army of her own for formal events like the treaty-signing.

I continue to love the way the show manages to feel simultaneously cinematic -- that area of the Upper West Side where David cuts off the convoy has never looked prettier -- and theatrical, with characters like the security guards functioning as the Greek chorus, or Shakespeare's fools, or deus ex machina, or whatever role is needed for the story.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part 2": There must be some kind of way out of here

Spoilers for the series finale of "Battlestar Galactica" coming up just as soon as I make my weapons hot...

"Just so there'll be no misunderstandings later, Galactica's seen a lot of history, gone through a lot of battles. This will be her last. She will not fail us if we do not fail her. If we succeed in our mission, Galactica will bring us home. If we don't, it doesn’t matter anyway." -Bill Adama

"I see angels, angels in this very room. Now I may be mad, but that doesn't mean that I'm not right, because there's another force at work here. There always has been." -Gaius Baltar

"Earth is a dream. One we've been chasing for a long time. We've earned it. This is Earth." -Bill Adama

"What do you hear, Starbuck?" -Bill Adama
"Nothing but the rain." -Kara Thrace
"Grab your gun and bring in the cat." -Bill Adama

"Cultivation?" -Caprica Six
"Yes. You know, I know about farming." -Gaius Baltar
"I know you do." -Caprica Six

"I just know that I am done here. I've completed my journey, and it feels good." -Kara Thrace

And so the amazing four-year journey of "Battlestar Galactica" comes to an end, and I feel very, very good about it -- even as I suspect others may not.

"Daybreak," the two-hour conclusion (technically three hours, if you count last week's part one; Ron Moore has said he wanted to air all three together), was essentially two finales in one, and I hope you'll forgive me for doing more plot recap than usual, both because so much happened and because it's one of the final times I'll get to write about this show and want the experience to last as long as possible.

The first hour was rock-'em-sock-'em action on a level of technical brilliance that surpassed anything else the series had ever come close to. As Adama and the Galactica crew launched their final, desperate assault on the Cylon stronghold, The Colony, Gary Hutzel's F/X team outdid themselves yet again in depicting ships trying (and sometimes failing) to navigate through a swirling asteroid field, massive guns from both sides firing upon each other, and in a moment to make every fanboy and fangirl's heart swoon, robotic Cylon centurions getting into an epic fist-fighting brawl in The Colony's halls. (Anyone who couldn't resist the urge to yell, "Toaster fight! Toaster fight!" is more than forgiven.)

We got to witness the rescue of little Hera; the vengeance-fueled executions of wayward Cylons Boomer and Tory by, respectively, Athena and Tyrol; Saul Tigh, straddling the worlds of Cylon and human, briefly brokering a peace treaty between the two; Brother Cavil, hardcore as always, eating his own gun once it became clear peace was not in the offing; the accidental (or divinely inspired?) destruction of The Colony and all the evil Cylons within it; and Starbuck using the notes from her father's version of "All Along the Watchtower" to program the dying ship's computer for one last, blind jump to a planet called...

Earth. Yes, Earth. But not that Earth, the charred nuclear wasteland that the fleet discovered halfway through this final season. Our Earth, new and green and lush.

And as the survivors of the assault on The Colony, along with the remaining members of the rag-tag fleet, explored the very familiar, but very ancient grassy plains of Africa, circa 147,991 B.C. (or thereabouts), we entered the second phase of the finale, the long, slow, sweet goodbye to all the characters we had grown to care about over the previous 80-odd hours of television.

Lee convinced the rest of the fleet that it was better to abandon most of their modern technology and try to blend in with the primitive Earth natives. President Roslin finally succumbed to her cancer, but not before her lover and partner Bill Adama took her on one last aerial sightseeing tour of the home she had helped lead their people to. (Last seen, Adama the elder was living alone high on a mountain, planning to build the cabin he had hoped to share with Roslin.) After 2,000 years of bickering and dysfunction, Tigh and wife Ellen finally got a chance to simply be in each other's company, no distractions, no hostility. Athena and Helo bantered about teaching Hera to be a hunter-gatherer. Gaius Baltar, having finally committed a selfless act in helping save Hera, won the heart of Caprica Six and, after spending a lifetime trying on new identities in the name of self-preservation, made peace with the one he was born with, pointing Six towards a field ripe for cultivation and crying as he reminded her of his childhood on the farm.

And Kara Thrace, who seemingly returned from the dead at the start of this season? It appears, though Moore's script and Michael Rymer's direction deliberately left it ambiguous, that the Kara who came back was an "angel," sent by the same divine power that had been manipulating events by the start, along the same lines as head Six and head Baltar . Having fulfilled the prophecy to "bring humanity to its end" — albeit in a much nicer way than that phrasing suggested at the time — Kara said her goodbye to old friend and sometime-lover Lee and, while his back was turned... vanished into thin air, in the middle of a wide open field with nowhere to hide.

And after that long, lyrical farewell sequence — along the lines of the last 40 minutes of "The Return of the King," only less repetitive (and better-earned, given the length of the series as a whole) — we briefly jumped ahead to the present day, to find the angelic versions of Baltar and Six strolling through Times Square (at one point reading over the shoulder of Ron Moore himself) and pondering whether this version of humanity, on the verge of creating its own artificial intelligences, would repeat the endless cycle of human-machine violence that doomed Kobol, the 12 Colonies, and the other Earth. As the angelic Six expressed an optimistic take, the familiar Jimi Hendrix version of "All Along the Watchtower" came on the soundtrack over a montage of news footage of recent, real innovations in robotics that make the Cylons seem more science than science-fiction.

For a series that had always used familiar trappings of sci-fi like robots and spaceships to comment on our present-day circumstances — 9/11, the Iraq insurgency, constitutional law being bent in the name of security and/or religion — it was the perfect final sequence. No, that cute Japanese robot that does backflips isn't likely to instigate the genocide of humanity anytime soon, but in many ways the world of "Galactica" is closer than we want to admit.

From this seat, the finale expertly blended all the things that made the series so wonderful: action, great performances in service of well-rounded characters, contemporary politics placed in futuristic settings, and a healthy dose of spirituality.

It's that last, though, that I suspect may lead to some grumbling.

God, or the gods, or whatever you want to call the divine forces of the "Galactica" universe, has always played a role in the series, but that role was particularly dominant in the finale. Unanswered questions about the nature of characters like Kara or the spectral Baltar and Six? God's responsible. What was all that stuff about visions of an opera house that Six, Athena and President Roslin shared? God showed it to them. How did Kara know how to get the fleet to the new Earth? God told her. How is it possible for human beings to naturally evolve on a planet a million light years away from where all the colonial humans originated? Baltar suggests a divine hand. Etc.

Moore has always been less interested in technical details and logistical explanations than character beats and emotional moments. It's often a strength of the series; where one of the "Star Trek" spin-offs might have needed five minutes to explain how Tigh and company were going to give Cavil's people the secret of rebuilding resurrection, Moore's script glossed over it in a couple of sentences and raced ahead to the more satisfying moment where Tyrol found out that Tory had murdered Cally, and strangled her in revenge.

But here, at the end, after four years of waiting for answers on some of these questions (particularly the nature of Head Six, who's been causing trouble since the "Galactica" miniseries in 2003), I imagine some fans aren't going to simply accept "God did it" about Head Six, or about the existence of another planet that could be called Earth.

Me, I went with it. The answers are interesting on some level, but what I'll take out of "Galactica" is the emotional experience more than any plot mechanics. I'll remember Roslin and Tigh having a pointed debate about the use of suicide bombers when they were living under a Cylon occupation on the planet of New Caprica. I'll remember the horror on Cally's face as she realized she was married to a Cylon. I'll remember old men Adama and Tigh standing shoulder to shoulder as they prepared to hold off a coup on Galactica, Kara letting go of her status as top-dog pilot when she realized she didn't need it anymore, Lee giving a speech explaining how humanity had devolved from a government into a gang, or Roslin holding Baltar's life in her hands and choosing forgiveness over revenge.

And from this finale, I'll care more about Baltar coming to grips with his past (sins and all), or the glimpses of the lives our characters left behind when the Cylons nuked the colonies, or Adama tearfully placing his wedding ring on Roslin's finger moments after her death than I would have about getting a more concrete explanation of what happened to Starbuck after her ship exploded.

When Moore, Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell and producer David Eick appeared on a panel discussion at the United Nations earlier this week, Moore said he hoped he entertained people and made them think. From first episode to last, Moore accomplished those missions with me — even if I have to do some extra thinking on the blanks he declined to fill in.

Still, before we go, I want to examine the extent to which he did fill in some of those blanks, and also take a deeper look at some of the aforementioned moments and other great ones from the finale.

Earth-2: In talking with Mo Ryan (who should have her own finale review and Ron Moore interview posted sometime later this evening) after we screened "Daybreak" on Monday night, she seemed most apprehensive about the idea of a second Earth, and that the one we saw in "Revelations" wasn't the one that we live on.

I thought it worked, though, and not just as a fake-out to mess with our heads at the end of the mid-season finale. We never saw any definitive geographic and architectural proof that "Revelations" Earth was our Earth, no matter how much some of us (and I put myself at the head of that line) wanted to believe that we were staring at the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge. The idea that the 13th Tribe destroyed themselves as part of the cycle of Cylon/human violence (or, in this case, Cylon/Cylon violence) very much fits the show's mantra of "All this has happened before, and it will all happen again. The idea that our Earth would get its name -- as well as certain concepts of language and other bits of race memory that would take 150,000 years to resurface -- from these familiar-looking visitors from another star system feels right. It makes the similarity in dress and idiom between Colonial society and 21st century Earth society feel less like a cheat (so the show could more easily comment on current events) than a passing of the torch down through the generations.

Given how far in the past the colonials are, and that they abandoned most of their gear and technology when Anders piloted the rag-tag fleet into the sun, I can very easily see them falling to the technological and social level of the natives within a few generations. Basic survival is going to be such a priority for these people that I think they're going to quickly lose hold of the social niceties, until the idea of three-piece suits or fighter jets or a criminal justice system disappears into the collective unconsciousness, waiting to resurface when the technology catches back up.

As for why Kara, if she really was an angel, was sent back to first lead humanity to the wrong Earth, well, that ties into...

They have a plan: No, not the Cylon "they" (which I imagine we're going to hear more about in "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan," the Cavil-centric TV movie coming out later this year), but the divine "they."

I don't know that we're ever going to be able to connect all the heavenly dots, given how much of the series was admittedly made up as Moore and company went along. Moore argued to me in the interview we did after the screening that Head Six pushes Baltar into leading the cult so he can finally come to grips with the idea of a higher power, which in turn makes him able to convince Cavil to agree to a truce, but it still feels on some level like the writers needing something to do with James Callis between the trial and the finale. (Baltar had, after all, had previous periods where he briefly bought into Head Six's talk of the one true God, and even times early in the cult arc where he seemed to be believing his own hype, only for those scenes to be undercut by jokes later on.)

But parts of it very much make sense to me in retrospect, if you believe that God (or whatever the divine force prefers to be called, per Head Baltar), has been trying to get humanity and the Cylons to break the cycle of destruction.

Why have Kara lead the fleet to the charred Earth first? I think it's because humanity had to be brought so low -- to have all of its hope taken away so abruptly that a Dualla would blow her brains out or a Gaeta would lead a mutiny -- so that when the opportunity to attack The Colony came about, enough people would be resigned enough to go on that suicide mission, to confront Cavil and rid the universe of the more stubborn and vindictive Cylon faction once and for all.

If they don't find the charred Earth first, then Dualla doesn't kill herself, which means Gaeta probably doesn't launch the coup, which means Anders doesn't get shot in the head and turned into a Hybrid, which means Galactica can't find or reasonably fight Cavil's forces, which means Kara's not placed in a position where she has to jump the ship based on nothing but the notes to "All Along the Watchtower," which means they don't get to the good Earth.

(The shot of the Raptors flying down over those beautiful African fields beautifully paralleled the descent to the surface of the nuked Earth near the end of "Revelations," and was one of many moments in the finale where the screening room got quite dusty.)

Now, obviously Kara could have just taken them to the good Earth first, but Cavil would still be out there, and Lee might not have been able to persuade the other 38,000 surviving humans to give away their toys, and the rebel skinjobs might not have set the remaining toasters free, etc. Most of this has happened before, and here things happened so the old things might not happen again.

Back to Caprica: The "Lost"-style flashbacks to the pre-genocide lives of Baltar, Kara, Lee, Laura and Bill were fairly polarizing last week, though I feel like they're probably the element of the finale that suffered most from cleaving it into two pieces. "Daybreak Pt. 1" isn't a standalone episode in the way that even "Exodus, Pt. 1" is; it's a collection of incidents and character moments that just comes to a stop when the hour's up. Under those circumstances, I can see how the amount of time spent on these seemingly unrelated glimpses of the central characters on Caprica may have seemed frustrating. ("Why are we watching Lee chase a pigeon? When are we going to find out the deal with Kara's pristine Viper?")

But in the context of "Daybreak" as a whole dramatic entity, I thought they worked smashingly. Not only did they serve as a reminder of all that the characters (and the thousands of others they represented) had lost, but they tied in so well to the final fate of each one.

Laura overcomes the loss of her entire family and (after briefly trying to blunt the pain by dating an eager former student) finds the strength to help the world at large by joining Adar's presidential campaign, which in turn allows her to find the strength to help out after most of her larger human family was wiped out by the Cylons. And, having stuck around long enough to see her people to a safe outcome, and to get a few precious weeks being openly in love with Bill Adama, she can let go, content.

Kara confesses to Lee, right before the first of their many attempts to hurt the ones around them by sleeping with each other, that she fears death much less than being forgotten, and instead will be remembered (for a few generations, anyway) as the hero who singlehandedly delivered the last survivors of her civilization to their new home. In that strip club (and a big giant "Hah!" to that entire sequence), Ellen just wants to spend time with Saul; now they have all the years that their new circumstances will grant them.

Six witnesses Baltar fight with the father whose existence he'd like to deny, and when he tries to express his love for Six -- the first time in a long time Gaius Baltar has tried to place another person on equal footing with himself -- she gives a little laugh and he retreats back to his selfish, survivalist persona. It's only after he's gone through the events of the last four years -- much of it with a spectral version of the woman he loves operating as his life coach -- that Baltar is able to be selfless, to be someone the real Six would be proud to love, and to be able to look back on his farming roots as anything other than an embarrassing biographical detail. When he weeps in Africa, he's thinking about all the pain he's caused by looking out for Gaius Baltar first and foremost, and about the good things that finally happened when he saw the value of others for real, and not just as another long con. And I don't think that moment is half as powerful if we haven't been spending time the last two weeks being reminded of what he used to be.

Boomer and Tory, RIP (maybe): The deaths of Boomer and Tory were satisfying to different degrees. Both had done terrible things to others, and while you could excuse that to some extent due to their identity crises -- both found out as adults that they weren't remotely the people (or species) they believed themselves to be -- Boomer still sided with Cavil over the more peaceful Cylons, kidnapped Hera and screwed Helo right in front of Athena, and Tory still murdered Cally. There had to be some accounting for that, and if Tory's death was the more cathartic of the two, it's because she was cowardly to the end, trying to use "Hey, we're all Cylons" as some kind of blanket amnesty rather than face up to the ramifications of what she had done. Boomer, as she told Athena, made a choice to defy Cavil, even though she knew it would lead to her death, from either of the two sides she had repeatedly betrayed.

And the show obviously felt more for her than it did for Tory, as Boomer's death was accompanied by another flashback to her days as a nugget struggling to win the respect of old men Adama and Tigh. Tory just died, and her death was quickly upstaged by the CIC shootout, Cavil's suicide, and then the hand of the divine reaching out to make the dead hand of Racetrack launch her nukes.

Some other thoughts on the "Galactica" finale:

• I don't want to devote too much space to rehashing things Moore said in the press conference after the finale screening, or the interview we did after that, so click here to find out about that. But just a few highlights: Daniel was never intended to be Kara's father, and Moore and the other writers were shocked to see how many people were getting into that theory; he wishes he had been clearer in the editing that The Colony and all the evil Cylons were sucked into the singularity and destroyed; Edward James Olmos wanted a much bleaker ending than Moore did; and that the "cold island up in the highlands" Tyrol's talking about is Scotland. Go read it; I'll wait.

• Bear McCreary was on top of his game (just like everyone else on the finale), and the screening room again got dusty when Anders piloted the fleet into Earth's sun (looking very much like an eye) and the soundtrack briefly shifted into a version of the theme song to the original '70s "Galactica."

• For that matter, the idea of the characters winding up on our Earth centuries ago pays homage to the original series, which posited that its characters' ancestors had started out on Earth in the distant past and had done things like build the great pyramids of Egypt.

• I'm assuming all those Caprica City skyline shots were created for the "Caprica" spin-off, and if nothing else, they suggest the new series will look gorgeous.

• It may not get as much attention as flashier character farewells like Kara disappearing or Baltar crying -- especially since the character in question popped up again once we got to Earth -- but one of my favorites was Doc Cottle getting choked up while saying goodbye to Laura, and Laura telling him to "go light a cigarette and grumble" rather than ruin her image of him.

• It didn't last long, since most of the Galactica crew survived the assault on The Colony, but the idea of Hoshi and Romo Lampkin succeeding, respectively, Bill and Lee Adama as heads of the military and civilian arms of the fleet, was both hysterically funny and poignant. At this stage of the series, with so many top people dead (especially after the coup), who else was left?

• Can I talk again about the awesomeness of the toaster-on-toaster violence? I just loved the image of the rebel centurions with the red paint streaked across their chests to identify them as separate from Cavil's forces, as it's such a low-tech, punk contrast to their usual sleek appearances.

Here at the end of a very long series and a very long post, you don't need me to again repeat all the reasons "Battlestar Galactica" was such a landmark television achievement. You don't need me to tell you how it returned to the hallmarks of traditional science fiction by using the futuristic trappings to tell compelling stories about the way we live now. You don't need me to tell you about this rich cast of characters, played by a cast of actors who will criminally never get their proper due from the rest of the showbiz community because their peers are too snobbish to realize that an Edward James Olmos or a Mary McDonnell or a Michael Hogan might be capable of giving devastating performances in the middle of a show with this title. You don't need me to tell you about the epic action, the tear-jerking moments, the occasional snippets of comedy or all things that made this show so special. But I wanted to at least mention them before the end, before I cede the floor to you and ask...

So say we all?

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com Click here to read the full post

Battlestar Galactica: Ronald D. Moore finale Q&A

After Sci Fi Channel screened the "Battlestar Galactica" series finale for the press on Monday evening, there was a brief press conference featuring producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, and stars Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos. Later in the evening, I asked Moore some additional questions about the finale. After the jump, some highlights from the press conference (really only from Moore and Eick), and then a transcript of the solo interview with Moore. To read my review of the finale, click here.

Post-finale press conference

(All questions will be paraphrased, since I only asked the first one)

(On what the second Kara actually was, and whether we all went down a rabbit hole when we assumed that Kara was the daughter of Daniel the missing eighth Cylon)

Moore: Daniel was definitely a rabbit hole, and it was an unintentional rabbit hole, to be honest... (Daniel) was always intended to be an interesting bit of backstory about Cavil, as a Cain and Abel allegory. And people started seizing on it as some major part of the mythology... and it was never intended to take that kind of load-bearing weight.

Eick: It's kind of like Boxey in that way.

Moore: It's exactly like Boxy. Kara, I think, is whatever you want her to be. It's easy to put that label on her: Angel, or Messenger of God, or whatever. Kara Thrace died and was resurrected and came back and took the people to their final end. That was her role, her destiny on the show... We debated back and forth in the writers' room for a while on giving it more definition, and saying, definitively, "This is what she is," and we decided that the more you try to outline it and give voice to it and put a name on it, the less interesting it became. We just decided this was the most interesting way to go out, with her disappearing without trying to name what she was.

(On whether any of the Cavils, Simons or Dorals survived the attack on the Colony)

Moore: The final (edit) came out a little less clear on that level than I sort of intended... The idea was that when Racetrack hits the nukes, they smack into the Colony and it takes it out of the stream swirling around the singularity, and it fell in (to the singularity) and was torn apart. But as we were cutting the show for time, and taking out frames, one of the things that became less apparent was that the Colony was doomed. The intention was that everyone aboard the Colony perished.

(On when and why he decided to have the fleet wind up discovering our Earth in the distant past)

Moore: We decided that a couple of years ago... I don't think we ever had a version of the show where they wound up in the future, or the present. Those didn't seem as interesting. In the early going, we started talking about the fact that we would see a lot of contemporary things in the show, from language to wardrobe to all kinds of production design. That only made sense to us if a lot of the things we see in the show you feel are taken from our contemporary world were actually from their world and spread through the eons and came to us through the collective unconscious, or from (what Lee said about) "We will give them the best part of ourselves."

Eick: There was a time we were talking about, "They land and there are pterodactyls and tyrannosaurus rex." But it was the idea that they were part of the genis of humankind, and this seemed the more affordable way to do it than going "Jurassic Park."

Moore: The image of Six walking through Times Square, we came up with a long time ago.

(On what happened to destroy the original Earth)

Moore: The backstory of the original Earth was supposed to be that the 13th tribe of Cylons came to that world, started over, and essentially destroyed themselves. There was some internecine warfare among the Cylons themselves that was supposed to be another repetition in the cycle of "All this has happened before and all will happen again." Even they, who were the rebels and split off, left to their own devices, there was enough of humanity left in them that they destroyed themselves.

(On why Cavil killed himself)

Moore: Cavil killing himself came from Dean Stockwell, to be honest. As scripted, in that climactic battle in CIC, Tigh was going to grab Cavil and fling him over the edge of the upper level, and he was going to fall to his death. Dean called me himself and said, "I just really think that in that moment, Cavil would realize the jig is up and it's all hopeless and just put a gun in his mouth and shoot himself." And I just said, "Okay."

(On the history of "All Along the Watchtower" in the "Galactica" universe)

Moore: The notion is that the music, the lyrics, the composition is something divine, it's eternal. It's something that lives in the collective unconscious of the show, it's a musical theme that repeats itself. It crops up in unexpected places, and people hear it, or pluck it out of the ether. It's sort of a connection of the divine and the mortal -- music is something that people literally catch out of the air... Here is a song that transcends many different aeons and cultures across the star, and was reinvented by one Mr. Bob Dylan.

Eick: It was a simple way to communicate the idea clearly that this is not the future. This is the story of a culture that gave birth to ours. There was an episode in season one in which Helo and Sharon are running for their lives and they hole up in a diner, and there's a Cylon centurion cornering them, and for the longest time we planned to have an old jukebox in the diner that would play, "Yesterday," or whatever we could afford.

Moore: Probably not "Yesterday."

Eick: Okay, something from The Guess Who. I think we felt it was too soon, and would confuse things. It would be so non-specific that people would just be thrown by it. But we were thinking about it that far back, that music would be a great way to tell the audience about the cyclical theme... All the colloquialisms and slang that you hear, and how people interrelate... we get that from them, not the other way around.

(On whether Head Six and Head Baltar are angels or demons)

Moore: I think they're both. We never tried to name exactly what the head characters were, we never looked at them as angels or demons. They seemed to periodically say good things or evil things, to save people or to damn people. There was a sense that they worked in the service of something else... that was guiding and helping, sometimes obstructing, sometimes tempting. The idea at the end was that whatever they're in service of is eternal and continues, and whatever they are, they too are still around, with all of us who are the children of Hera. They continue to walk among us and watch.

Ron Moore interview

When I talked to you at summer TCA, I ran through that checklist of unanswered questions.

Oh, yeah! What do you think?

You nailed pretty much every one. I think people are going to debate about Kara.

I accept that. I knew, when I decided this was as much as we were going to say about Kara, I said, "People are going to be pissed."

I don't want to spend too much time on Daniel, but did you realize that you were giving Kara's father this name that was so similar to Daniel?

That I had no idea. I only found that out online. I went, "Is that true? I guess it is." It's one of those things where you're inside the show and doing it, you don't realize that people are going to seize on this detail and it gets a life of its own. When I saw that stuff spreading online, I was really astonished. "Really? Daniel? They're obsessed with Daniel." So I started telling every interviewer, "Please tell people not to focus on Daniel, because they're really going to be disappointed."

This was a very dark, very bleak show, that had, for the most part, a happy ending. Were you ever tempted to go the dark way? Why did you decide to end it the way you did tonally?

I guess I always assumed it was going to end on some sort of note of salvation -- that they would find a home and be okay, at least some of them. I didn't want to end the series like "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," with the destruction of everybody. Although that's what Eddie wanted to do. Eddie kept pitching me that they come to Earth in contemporary times, and everyone's cheering and happy, and cut to the White House and the President goes, "Nuke 'em!" And they destroy Galactica -- cut to credits. And people say I'm dark!

I was literally never tempted to go that way. I always felt that however brutal the show was, and how bleak it felt in moments, it was never nihilistic. It was never about saying that people are irredeemable. It was about trying to be honest about people, saying, "Look at us. We are capable of all these things. Really good people do horrible things and horrible people do good things."

Given how often you used the show to comment on current events or, at least, draw current events in the show, do you feel that the finale in any way speaks to what's happening now?

Only in the sense of where it finally ends up in the very end: the robotics and where we are about to be technologically. I just saw something the other day with a scientist saying we're going to have a true (artificial intelligence) within five years or something crazy. Or these Japanese robots that look like the woman in the finale, they're getting more currency. It's been an old saw in science fiction for a long time, since Frankenstein, that we're going to create life that's going to turn on us. Well, we're right there, and we should probably really think about these things and understand the door we're about to go through.

I'm curious about a few characters' final fates. You very easily could have gotten away with Helo sacrificing his life so Athena could go after Hera, but they got the happy ending in the end.

There were two things. One, originally when we were breaking the story, Athena and Helo were both going to die to save Hera. And then I felt sort of unsatisfied about that. I really wanted that family unit to survive to the end. So in the script, when Helo gets shot in the corridor and he's left, I didn't intend it to be a cliffhanger of "is he going to die?" I just kept writing it, and there wasn't a moment to establish he was okay. And when Tahmoh read the script, he got that point and said, "Oh, (bleep), I'm dead." And when he got to the end, he was surprised.

And then it becomes this tearjerking moment when you see the three of them off in the distance (on Africa) and you realize he survived and they're intact.

And when Tahmoh had that reaction, I decided, "Well, now I definitely don't want to establish that he's okay," because I wanted people to have that same reaction.

Well, did anyone else almost die and then you gave them a reprieve in the end?

We did talk, for a long time, that Adama and Laura were going to get in a Raptor together and fly off into the stars, and Adama was going to show her the universe, and that would be the last we see of them. And before I ever even wrote it, Mary got wind of that and called me and said, "You know what? In our very first conversation about the show, we agreed Laura would die. I feel it's important to actually show it," and I said she was absolutely right, so she died on camera and Adama lived on camera.

Because when he said goodbye to Lee like that, I assumed he was going to wait for Laura to die and then crash the Raptor or something.

I knew people would have that reaction.

So he's going to be like Tyrol, just live off by himself?

He's going to build that little cabin, and who knows what.

Aaron Douglas keeps saying, "Well, you know what? They're going to get a message. Someone's going to trudge up the hill to Adama and hand him a note, saying, 'Tyrol needs you in Scotland!' And Adama will put on his pack and go off to Scotland!"

Given how much of the show was made up on the fly by you and the other writers, looking back, how well do you think everything hangs together with the finale factored into it?

I think it hangs together better than it has any right to. I do feel good that the process I always believed in and really defended -- about feeling the story instinctively as you go through it, and not being tied to, "Oh, we know exactly how it's going to end up" -- that that was true. We were able to get there and could say, "We've been making this mosaic, and now we just need to put the final touches on it and we'll have a complete picture." There's loose threads and things that don't quite work, but I think that's in the nature of almost any show. By and large, I think we did a pretty good job of it.

The thing I wonder about is the head characters and how (important they were). There's that moment at the end where Caprica Six says something like, "That's it? You just needed us to carry Hera into that room and protect her?"

Well, if you look over the life of the show, they certainly did more than that. But ultimately, that was the key moment that makes everything else possible.

Some of what Head Six is doing is keeping Baltar alive and free, but when she's encouraging him to start the cult, and get the cult armed and all that, is that just her screwing around for her own amusement?

No, I think that she's moving him towards an acceptance of the divine. Baltar could not make that speech in CIC unless he had gone through a religious conversion. If he didn't have a belief in something greater than himself, he couldn't have made that argument to Cavil in that moment.

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com Click here to read the full post