Geek Rant: The End of BSG

I know, I know.  I’m coming out of my hiatus just to gripe about a TV show?

Yes.  Yes, I am.

About 3 or so years ago, a good friend of mine started talking up the reimagined newer iteration of the TV show Battlestar Galactica.  I thought, “Battlestar Galactica?  Yeah, right.  You must think I’m a real dork.  Forget that, I’m gonna go read some comic books.  Sheesh.”

Turns out I had to eat my words.  I began the almost-3-hour mini-series, a precursor to the main show, one night at about 11pm thinking I’d just check it out and then go to bed.  Well, I went to bed pretty late that night as I got so wrapped up in the show that I consumed all 3 hours and was hooked.

Fast forward a few years later and the Good Ship Battlestar is coming in for a landing with its 2 hour series finale airing this coming Friday.  Now, I’ve flip-flopped throughout the entire series on just how much I love the show.  Because when BSG is good, it’s amazing…but when it’s bad, it just sits there, boring and lifeless.  I sort of felt that way about the opening 10 episodes of season 4 – lot of hype, not a lot of delivery – but with the last second discovery of Earth, the long-hoped for home for the wayward human race, the show attempted to inject some new mysteries and intrigue into the show.

Thus began it’s final 10 episodes this winter.  My lackluster feelings about the show were quickly quelled by an opening arc of a mutiny amongst the fleet and long-time series characters getting bullets in the ol’ brainpan for their treachery.  I was ready, I was excited, the show had regained its solid ground and was barrelling towards its explosive final episodes…then it came to a screeching halt.  The discovery of the final fifth didn’t seem to move the story much and Starbuck’s skeletal discovery on Earth has been explained away as, what?  I don’t know.  The show’s mangled continuity has been explained as, what?  I still can’t quite wrap my brain around it all.  It has felt as though, nearing the end, the series creators’ realize the need for answers and are just blasting them out there with little regard for the sense they may, or often don’t, make.

It’s difficult because I do think the series is a high water mark of television, be it sci-fi or otherwise.  Many times I’ve been a little unsettled by how much the series human/cylon rivalry/relationship has mirrored real-world politics and cultural climates.  But dadgummit, that doesn’t negate the need to tell a good story.

The past few episodes, or rather, the last few – as in no more ever – have been plodding, talky and downright boring with little action to move the story at all except the last five minutes of the episode when some great revelation happens that incrementally pushes things up the field 5 yards.

This past week’s episode was possibly the worst offender.  The first of a 3-hour finale that should be a riveting sci-fi headspin full of action and high production value kicked off with … oh, yeah, a bunch of flashbacks of the main characters to events before the series began that have very little, if any, bearing on the main action.  I don’t need these flashbacks now, I probably didn’t need them 3 years ago.  I understand the characters enough at this point to get who they are and wasting screen time with a lead character drunkenly swatting a bird out of his apartment 4 years ago does what exactly?  Bores me and leaves me scratching my head wondering what they were thinking.

Again, the whole episode mopes around a bit, sad to see itself end, navel-gazing and pissing me off!   Oh, but wait, we’re approaching the last ten minutes of the episode, gotta make something happen.

Come on guys.  I’m definitely watching this week but man I had hoped for more oomph, more epic sci-fi space combat and some dang cohesive continuity to tie it all together.  Here’s hoping I get any of that.

So say we all.

End rant.

~ by nathanrouse on March 16, 2009.