bsg season three

[jlh]

So I finished season three this morning.

ali_wildgoose commented on my season two post that it didn't sound the same as when I talked to her about it. This might be because I was trying hard to focus on the things I did like as opposed to the bits I found frustrating, assuming that my frustration was based in not being a fan of the SF genre as such. However, season three, and other things, disabused me of that notion. So, no punches pulled.

1. Why don't we ever, in this series, really see the civilians? Clearly the show itself doesn't care about them except when it does, but I'm disappointed in that choice. I think it could have made all the ethical dilemmas they try to set up more powerful when they aren't talking about civilians in the abstract.
   
2. Did they mean Zarek's passionate plea against a trial for Baltar, saying it would be little more than a show trial where he could spout off about whatever, to be ironic? Is the show that self-aware? Or am I not supposed to remember that Zarek had exactly the same sort of trial himself?
   
3. Something that's been happening off and on throughout the series is the idea of the biological being the ultimate tie of parents and children, whether that child was raised by or even acknowledged by their birth parents. There's Kara's reluctant bonding to Kacey, though I'd wager she would have saved anyone's child; there's Athena Agathorn's ability to immediately calm Maya on board the Cylon ship even though she never held Maya in her arms; and since I've been spoiled, there's the whole Chief and Cally's baby thing. It makes me deeply uncomfortable; there's every reason to think that the woman Maya actually bonded to was the one she was given to by Roslin, the woman who died on New Caprica. It also sets up a situation where the only child you need to, or even can, bond to is one that carries your DNA. That's dangerous stuff, right there.

• 3.01-3.04: I found the entire occupation to be tiresome, as I find all SF analogues to any kind of real life political situation, because they are ham-handed and oversimplified and therefore facile. And that makes them dangerous—people think they've learned something about suicide bombings in the middle east by seeing one on BSG, when they've learned absolutely nothing, because most of the complexity of the situation has been removed. io9 has remarked that the entire purpose of SF is to simplify the situation, to give the viewer/reader an easy villain, etc, and it's no wonder that they don't think much of the Cylons. But I always have a problem with that simplification; I want to say, "but, but, but!"
  
  Also, I get it, Leoben is creepy. But Tigh running around with an eye patch and a beard and a watch cap and a hand-rolled cigarette like he just got off the Pequod was pretty awesome in a completely hilarious way. Chief is his hot self of course, and Anders grows on me. Mostly though, I love the way he always refers to Kara as "my wife."
  
  I also don't find Baltar's dilemna on New Caprica to be that interesting, because I never find him interesting, and not because he's not sympathetic, but because he just keeps doing the same thing over and over. So Gaeta's whole freak out, and the guns to the head and all that, whatever. Even the conversations on Gallactica—don't we all know exactly what's going to happen? Adama will go, Lee will follow (especially after that speech Dee gives him). People will be rescued, maybe some will die, the end.
  
  I think I'm supposed to say: ooh lookie, the four of the Five are in charge of the Resistance! So this is me saying that.
  
  
• 3.05-3.08 & 3.10: Poor Jammer. Lucky Gaeta. "Collaborators" was horrible, mostly because Roslin's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (because she's Mandela now, get it? except she wasn't in jail, so maybe she's Tutu and Tigh is Mandela? I dunno) is completely dropped. Why, in later episodes, didn't we see people's testimony? Dying Cylons, can we wipe them out, blah blah blah. Kara and Saul making trouble, seems like old times. I fast forwarded through the torture porn. Pilot tries to kill Adama, but hey, he was hot so that was vaguely interesting. Poor Kat ^^; Also tears for anyone actually standing up to Kara, like, ever. The stuff with the cylons is more interesting.
  
  
• 3.09: I'm setting off the "boxing episode" only because everyone's so !!! about it. I am not a fan of the whole stupid Lee/Kara thing, shippy or not, because it is tiresome and because I hate ships where people are bad for each other but can't seem to separate, like Taylor and Burton. I feel badly for Anders, though Dee seems to have gone into it with much more awareness. I got what they were going for with the Chief/Adama fight, though I found it tiresome, and only interesting in that Chief is now being elevated as a character. And also: Roslin being a boxing fan because of her dad is the biggest cliche ever. Is there a female character written by a man that isn't secretly a boxing fan?
  
  
• 3.11-3.12 (The Eye of Jupiter/Rapture): The part of this show I care about is the mythology, so I'm perking up here, though almost immediately "really? really?" about Lee and Kara snogging in her ship. Whatever. Chief is awesome and I love him; Anders is awesome and I love him. The Dee-Lee-Kara-Sam clusterfuck is a tiresome undercurrent to these episodes and leads to piles of unnecessary drama, as does Helo having to shoot Athena-Sharon even though he's not really killing her. But I actually feel a little bad for the Threes
  
  
• 3.13-3.19: And then we get more crap filler. More torture porn and overlapping triangles in a useless episode that got the Cheers theme in my head for days—and if I actually cared, would have been the moment I stopped watching BSG because really. The "Sagittarons don't deserve to die and Baltar gets a trial" episode was so awful, even if it did center around Helo, that I have little to say. I'm no more inclined to give Adama a break about being an absent father than Lee is, and I'm not sure why Chief and Cally were sitting around in an airlock like this was a ST:TNG episode. Dirty Hands I will talk about at length below. Maelstrom was a little triggery for me, I must admit, but I also don't have a lot to say about it. Kara's life was a mess, she "dies," everyone cries. Lee is sad but also wants to be a lawyer. The only good part about Caprica-Six in jail is head-Baltar, who is so much awesomer than actual-Baltar. Tigh and Roslin take the stand in the most uninteresting way possible, but at least Helo gets an interesting line about the weather.
  
  
• 3.20 (Crossroads Part 2): Okay, so the second half of this episode made me perk up once again, and I'm in less of a bad mood than I might have been. But I will have to break this down into parts:
  • I felt like Lee's speech about everyone being forgiven for things was some sort of recognition of all the weirdo shit that went down not just in season 3 but really since the show started. For a group of people who spend that much time on moral postures, their actual morality is pretty squishy and comes down to an upsettingly Calvin-esque "if the good guys do it, it's good." Expediency is not all.
    
  • However, as Jacob pointed out in his TWoP recap, the crowd reaction shot was unnecessary and ridiculous.
    
  • And again, yes, Lee putting on his pilot gear was pretty great, however adorable he was in his little suit. I don't really care about all the daddy issues that got him there, however.
    
  • Why did the "oh, we're cylons" scene have to be in Gallactica's own black box theater? Jacob made that same final five joke about the Oscars and also referred to Caucasian Chalk Circle, but it really was like they were suddenly in some play at an experimental theater. Even the way it was shot and blocked was very in-the-round.
    
  • Okay, the song. I don't get it. As aethelflaed2 remarked, it's a dreadful cover. But beyond that, it's so tied to Viet Nam (seriously, my kingdom for a 'Nam doc or film that doesn't use either "Watchtower" or "Gimme Shelter") that I'm not sure why it was chosen. Are we supposed to bring all the cultural baggage of that song with us, or are they betting on that fabled geek lack of awareness of general culture? If we're not supposed to be thinking about that, why did they choose this song? I found the random quoting of lyrics to be a little silly, though I'm sure it was supposed to clue others into what song they were actually hearing. I also wonder: are we supposed to think that Dylan exists in all universes at all times, or is this really the future?
    
  • Oh Kara. Her reappearance is pretty much perfect, isn't it?

Right, so, "Dirty Hands." I was paying a lot of attention because, Chief is my favorite, especially labor leader Chief. But there were large parts that really struck some basic problems that I have with the show:

• We only see civilians in these side filler episodes, only hear about the actual lives lived on the 12 colonies in them. We vaguely assume that we understand the civilization they're coming from because it's kind of like ours, but we actually don't, and I wish that we did.
  
• And even more so, we don't really see how the reality of their current situation has affected the civilians except when they become a problem for the military, and then we're encouraged to see them as sometimes well-meaning but always misguided and inconvenient in their semi-reasonable demands.
  
• Roslin starts this series conceding to the teacher's union in labor negotiations and now she's being all hardline? That's … odd.
  
• Of course Danny Noon the striving college kid gets hurt later, because that's the only reason he was in the story in the first place.
  
• I really loved Baltar talking about his young life to Tyrol. I think that's my favorite thing that Baltar has ever done.
  
• See, the problem with episodes like this, or the whole "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" thing, is that it's, throw the civilians a bone, then go back to thinking of them as useless and annoying.
  
• And now the point that really gets at something I cannot stand about this show, namely, the showdown with Adama. TOTALLY POINTLESS. All Tyrol actually wants is to talk to Roslin, and he gets that. So why all the grandstanding? Why the hysteria? Why the need to threaten to shoot Cally? It was all just drama for drama's sake, and that happens so often on this show.

Hence, I have decided that this show is Grey's Anatomy in space. I'm going to keep watching for the same reasons I've watched season 3, namely, the mythology stuff. The rest I either don't care about or actively don't like.