BSGblogging 4.10
Well, that was awful. Perhaps the worst episode of the series. I don’t want to dwell on all its faults, but the lack of a genuine continuity cop on what is, at bottom, a serial hurts. Suddenly we appear to have successful Cylon-Cylon reproduction when the inability of Cylons to intrabreed has been a major driver of their behavior. And, Tory gets Cylon superstrength but Bill Adama is an even match for Saul Tigh? (Granted, this could be A Clue.)
The good thing about the episode is the way it shows how the attitudes of the Colonial elite toward the Cylons are in transition. The dying Six on the operating table, then Adama referring to her as an "unarmed woman," then back to calling the imprisoned Six a "skin job" in the argument with TIgh. The other good thing about the episode was Michael Hogan’s left eye. That single socket is a more dynamic actor than all of Keanu Reeves. Hogan’s face was marvelous during all the "dramatic irony" moments tonight, and they were legion, but there were a couple moments early in the episode (when one still had hope!) that were hilariously apt.
NB: I’m not declaring the series terminal. We’ve long since realized it will never be what we hoped it would be. But any series that goes on this long is going to have its stinkers. Something I have wondered from time to time, though, is, if you fed the bad parts of the series to the dog, how many boxes would your DVD set need? That is, could you make a reasonably coherent whole out of selected eps? I’ve been reading the volumes of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus. We comics fans justly revere Kirby, and the Fourth World is one of his signal achievements. I consider "Hunger Dogs," in the fourth volume, to be almost criminally underrated. But you know, some of those issues weren’t very good. But you hit two and three-issue stretches that astonish. That’s what comes of producing serial art. Kirby’s original vision, according to the end notes, was for the series to be edited and collected. But Kirby’s dead, and DC can get $50 a volume (retail) by reprinting verbatim.
Comment by Jess Nevins —
May 31, 2008 @ 12:06 am
About the reproduction–maybe rules are different for the Final Five?
But so much of the episode was a clumsy and obvious effort to make Lee Adama into his father’s rival, as if the Greek mythology underpinnings of this series weren’t clumsily obvious enough (hello, Zeus/Cronos). Really just a waste of 60 minutes, esp. when so much that would have been interesting was left out. Even Romo Lampkin was mostly wasted, and I wouldn’t have thought that possible.
Comment by Eric Scharf —
May 31, 2008 @ 10:08 am
C’mon, you have to admit Bamber looked HAWT in that burgundy number.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 31, 2008 @ 10:13 am
I did say I wasn’t going to dwell on ALL the episode’s faults.
Comment by Derek Copold —
May 31, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
When Lampkin made that comment about the clean slate being the idiot’s solution, I couldn’t help but think Moore & Co. were making a confession to the audience.
As to your question about the good and the bad of the series, the first season and a half plus the two Caine episodes are about all you need. There was also the Exodus II episode, which was excellent, but only because of its battle choreography. Everything else is a disappointment.
Again, I marvel at how good the older series now looks. Back in Season One, if anyone were to say the old seventies show was better, I would looked askance at them. Now, I can only agree.
Comment by Derek Copold —
May 31, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
BTW, can we call this episode “The one where the show truly jumped the shark”? None of the previous episodes really spelled the final end of the series as a serious work as much as this one does, IMO.
Comment by Eric Scharf —
May 31, 2008 @ 2:18 pm
Curiously, I didn’t hate this episode dramatically more than others this season, but I suspect that’s because I saw it of a piece with the carelessness that typified the second half of Season 3 (excluding the Baltar trial arc) and the fruitiness of the whole Final Five plot, and quite frankly I’m just in a hurry to get to the end, and this ep did more than its share of moving us forward.
I imagine it hurts more this time because it’s Bill’s character they’ve dissolved. Admittedly, the loss of Laura is a plausibly powerful trigger, but the number of unaddressed character breaks in a single episode was depressing. It was inevitable that Lee would bring Lampkin back, but not inevitable that Lampkin would be so diminished thereby. And my boy Zarek is jilted again (That unnamed Quorum delegate made my point for me: if Bill would legitimize Baltar, why not Zarek, who has done nothing but accommodate Bill/Laura since New Caprica?).
I’ve been composing a reply to a friend who, having never seen Twin Peaks and recently borrowed my box set, asked why they made a second season. It’s tempting to conclude that serial art requires a qualitatively different aesthetic than one-offs, but one always has to be careful with notions of “creative control.”
Comics and television are two serial art forms that, due to advances in both technology and criticism, have recently become widely available in collected form. As an unabashed late adopter, I have been more than willing to wait for a particular series to achieve critical acclaim and then obtain the trade paperback or DVD box set. I just borrowed Alan Moore’s entire Swamp Thing run from the library and read it in less than two weeks, which makes for a different experience than running to the comic shop every month for three years. The same goes for the first-time Twin Peaks viewer in 2008. Of course, by following BSG in realtime, I get to enjoy the comments of you fine people, which would be less germane after viewing the box set in 2011.
Comment by Derek Copold —
May 31, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
Of course, by following BSG in realtime, I get to enjoy the comments of you fine people, which would be less germane after viewing the box set in 2011.
It’s something of a tribute to the show’s initial quality that it got so many people of so many POV’s really involved in the story and the characters.
Comment by Jennifer —
May 31, 2008 @ 4:11 pm
Yeah, I caught the Cylon/Cylon reproduction thing, too. It’s obvious the show’s writers didn’t even have the vaguest idea of a story arc when they started writing this a few seasons ago.
I have a problem with the whole Final Five thing, however: apparently, for all that there are countless copies of the other seven models, they only made one copy apiece of the final five? And coincidentally, those five (save Anders) all just happened to be on the few ships that escaped the initial Cylon onslaught?
If you watched the “scenes from next week’s episode” at the end, you also know who the Fifth Cylon apparently is. That, too, contradicts a few things I recall from earlier in the series, but I won’t say anything here for fear of making a spoiler for you folks (like my boyfriend) who don’t like watching the previews.
Comment by borehole —
May 31, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
For my money, this show’s sucked ever since they got off New Caprica, but I keep watching anyway, and it was all worth it for the look on Tigh’s face re: “you’re not the same man” or whatever Adama’s line was.
The pregnancy and the lack of superstrength have got me hoping that Tigh’s not a Cylon after all, and I’m gonna cling to that hope until I can’t. Never bought it. I’ll buy a lot when the production design’s this sweet, but that was just too much to ask.
Michael Hogan agrees with me, according to Katee Sackhoff, so maybe he talked the writers into remedying the situation. By staring at them intensely, I’d wager. I know I’d buckle if that dude cast a withering glance my way.
Comment by ChrisWWW —
May 31, 2008 @ 10:46 pm
Have you seriously watched that old show recently? It was fun, but it was far from being good TV.
It’s amazing and sad that seemingly 99% of internet commentary about TV shows consists of asking that question.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 31, 2008 @ 10:48 pm
To me the question is when did the phrase “jumped the shark” jump the shark?
Comment by ChrisWWW —
May 31, 2008 @ 11:19 pm
Answer: May 31, 2008 @ 10:48 pm
Comment by Sean T. Collins —
May 31, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
To me, the fact that Tigh impregnated Six seemed to be a completely obvious nod in the direction of the Five obeying different physical rules than the rest of the Cylons. The idea that it was just Those Krazy BSG Writers fucking up never even crossed my mind.
I guess I’m tuning in late here and have missed previous complaints about the show, because all these post-mortems have me really taken aback. I’ve been a bit frustrated with the emphasis on mythology at the expense of the human drama that drove the show until this Final Five business made it into the intro sequence, but not to the point where I’m ready to blast the whole show out the airlock (or compare it unfavorably to the ridiculous ’70s version–or say this was the worst episode of the series when the series included “Black Market”).
“We’ve long since realized it will never be what we hoped it would be.” What did we hope it would be?
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 31, 2008 @ 11:51 pm
Hey, Sean. Derek in particular has been down on the show for a long time now. I don’t associate myself with his comments on the topic, really, but he’s get a right to his perspective. I would give “Black Market” the edge over last night.
Perfect? A somewhat coherent fulfillment of a handful of felt thoughts about themes introduced early in the series? In particular, there was a span from “Flesh and Bone” to “Fragged” where it appeared that human sinfulness and its relationship to the Cylon menace would be a major, integrated component of the story. That this would tie in, in an interesting way, with the Cylon’s fanatical monotheism. There was a time before the first Deanna episode (and then the Pegasus story) where it seemed like the writers might not become so fond of the characters that they would let them skate free of the worst consequences of their worst actions.
We all know that the Big Idea was to hold one of Roger Zelazny’s funhouse mirrors up to America’s post-9/11 psyche. (See his story intro in DANGEROUS VISIONS. Or maybe it was an afterward.) Early on it was brilliant at that. Only the creators’ grip on the mirror was shaky.
Now, I make allowances for the serial format and the sheer talent of the cast. And there have been many many fine moments and even powerful episodes. Even this season, much of the Cult of Baltar arc and the parts about Roslin dying have been first-rate TV. I can’t help but compare it unfavorably to the first two seasons of DEADWOOD and into the third, where the writers really did have a grip on their material. (I’d have gone a different direction with Hearst.) On the other side of that, Deadwood only had to maintain consistency and coherence for 36 episodes and, by the end, it didn’t quite. Moore and Eick have had to do it over a much longer span.
Comment by Barry —
June 1, 2008 @ 8:25 am
Comment by borehole
“For my money, this show’s sucked ever since they got off New Caprica, but I keep watching anyway, and it was all worth it for the look on Tigh’s face re: “you’re not the same man†or whatever Adama’s line was.”
I only noticed it this episode, but it’s been happening for a bit: Tigh is clearly a haunted man. He’s still functioning, but he’s taken a terminal hit to his fundamental beliefs.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
June 1, 2008 @ 1:37 pm
I don’t think they’ve ever been that consistent on the Cylon superstrength idea. Athena’s husband got in a fistfight with what’s his name (the Chief) a season or two ago and it was an even match. And I seem to recall other scenes where humans and skinjobs engage in hand-to-hand combat and it’s not that uneven.
As for the reproduction, I imagine the writers can’t be so stupid that they didn’t notice the problem here–there’s presumably some explanation they’ll trot out later. Though maybe I’m wrong.
I was very annoyed with the Lampkin character pulling a gun.
It just seemed like a pointless little mini-drama.
The biggest problem in the whole series, for me, has been Baltar’s internal Six. You almost have to believe she’s supernatural–she seems to be able to pick up Baltar’s physical body and make it do odd things and to have foreknowledge and control of events and I’m fine with that, but if so the series is going to have to end on a religious note, with some sort of supernaturalism shown to be valid. (It could be one or the other or neither of the two competing religions.)
I’m still a fan, but I don’t expect the writers to pull everything together in a sensible coherent way in this final season.
Comment by Sean T. Collins —
June 1, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
Thanks for the response, Jim. And Derek, of course you have a right to your perspective.
It’s odd, but I’m discovering that I don’t know the show as well as I know other shows I’ve followed this intently. With the exception of something obvious like “Fragged,” I don’t really remember episode titles or what happened in them. I don’t even remember what came when! Maybe because the seasons of a show like this are so much longer than on other shows I’ve caught up with via DVD (The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, and back in the VHS days, Twin Peaks), they tend to blend together?
But also now that I’m thinking of it, I would say that what I think this show is “about” is harder to pin down than in those other cases. For me, The Sopranos is about the excuses people will find to be bad; Deadwood (which I haven’t finished yet! one episode to go in Season Two is where i’m at) is about the consequences of choosing to do GOOD; Twin Peaks is about the existence, and corrosive influence, of evil; and after watching the pooch-screwing final season of The Wire, I feel like that show is about being an op-ed piece.
What is BSG about? It used to be easy–it’s about the effect of war and atrocity on society. I still think that’s the case, but the Final Five guessing-game and the mysticism dilute it a bit. But last night’s episode, wonky decision-making by the Adamas and the quorum included, made me think that maybe it’s cohering back into something even grander, and that now we might be seeing the end stages of this particular human civilization–that they’re all too far gone to make it work anymore. That’s been cropping up explicitly in dialogue for the past few episodes, I think, and things like Kara’s mutiny-provoking vision quest, Bill Adama’s dereliction of duty, Tigh frakking the Six, Cally’s meltdown, Tory’s journey to the dark side, Baltar starting a religious movement whose message (”God loves us because we are all perfect”) is essentially a total abdication of personal responsibility, Athena getting paranoid and murdering the Cylon leader, Roslin instituting a Bush II-style pseudo-autocratic way of governing, the Quorum adopting a feel-good interim president despite all the obvious conflicts, even Lee giving a dog to a guy who talks to his dead cat–heck, a cynic like Lampkin losing his shit completely–it all points to the show depicting a society in its terminal stage. It’s easy to see how it could all be read as sloppiness, but I’m thinking (hoping?) otherwise.
I’m totally copying and pasting and posting this on my own blog.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
June 2, 2008 @ 12:51 am
What did I hope BSG would be? After the miniseries and the first few episodes, even thru the first season, I hoped it was the second coming of Babylon 5, in other words a well thought out, consistent narrative with a single vision. It became clear to me somewhere in Season 2 that Moore & Co did not have that vision, and were going to make it up as they went along. I kept watching, and still watch, because i find the characters fascinating and the acting top notch, even if the plotting is haphazard. And they’ve really stretched my patience with the “final 5″ nonsense.
But hey, Babylon 5 wasn’t perfect either. Anyone remember the episode “Grey 17 is Missing”. Or all of the 5th season?
Comment by Derek Copold —
June 2, 2008 @ 9:53 am
ChrisWWW,
Have you seriously watched that old show recently? It was fun, but it was far from being good TV.
Actually, I just watched the whole series a few months ago. Admittedly, I went in with low expectations, which may have falsely raised my opinion of the show.
I grant that there were a number of flaws. The science was embarrassingly bad. You had some annoyingly obvious Cold War allegories that stepped on the story. Then there was the fact that it was on network TV and had to appeal to a broad audience that included kids. Finally, special effects technology was nowhere near what it is today so you get hokey shots repeated time and again. All this makes for some teeth-grindingly bad moments.
But despite all that, the main thread of the series was solid and engaging, the characters were likeable and believable, and the show was, surprisingly, more naturalistic than this recent so-called “dark, gritty and realistic” version. The most woo-woo aspect of the old show was the ship of lights, whose inhabitants were later explained to be evolved energy beings. I don’t remember a single episode turning on ludicrous “visions”.
So, amazingly, I have to say the 70s version is better, IMO, than the new one.
Comment by Derek Copold —
June 2, 2008 @ 9:56 am
You almost have to believe she’s [Head Six] supernatural–
Don’t forget the “Shelley Godfrey” story, where she physically manifested herself on the Galactica.
Comment by Derek Copold —
June 2, 2008 @ 10:21 am
I would give “Black Market†the edge over last night.
In terms of stand-alone quality, I agree. “Black Market” was worse. In fact, the first hint of problems was in the episode before when Roslin was saved by the magic healing powers of hybrid blood.
This last episode, however, was far more fatal to the series. We can forget about “Black Market.” If it was taken out of the DVD collection, no one would miss it. “Sine Qua Non”, however, has permanently reshuffled the deck, and fatally so. The rest of the series must hinge on the decisions made in this episode.
And look at what it’s done. It’s reduced Bill Adama to a silly teenager, made a mockery of Lee Adama’s respect for the law, and tossed aside all the kookiness it associated with Starbuck. Notice how all of a sudden she was “Joe Professional.”
Yes, “Jumped the Shark” is a cliche, overused term, but if propelling Lee Adama into the presidency in one episode doesn’t fit the description, I don’t know what does.
Comment by Keith —
June 3, 2008 @ 2:16 pm
For the most part, you can ignore the bad episodes (because their are only about a half dozen) and still follow the various plot threads and keep up with the story. That’s some fierce craftsmanship, right there. I personally had no problems with this episode (except perhaps Lampkin but his very existence is bothersome. We all know that it would take a revolution to rid us of all the lawyers but in a pinch genocide’ll do. And still one survives!) The cat was a bit much and the dog made no real sense.
But I’ll take BSGs B-reel over the A-reel of just about any show on television. And that includes Black Market.