apropos of anything

(Seriously, I know… months of radio silence on this blog and now I’ve got 1500+ words on a TELEVISION SHOW? I had to write this out, though, to remember it, to finish thinking about it, and perhaps this is the kick in the pants I need to get back to blogging regularly.)

Two Decembers ago, Alicia put season one of Battlestar Galactica on my coffee table and promised me I’d love it. I didn’t disagree; from everything I’d heard about the series, it seemed right up my alley. What I didn’t expect was how MUCH I’d love it when I finally got around to watching it the following February — the last time I fell so hard for a story was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

(warning: spoilers for BSG the entire series and specifically the series finally after the cut)

It took me maybe two weeks to get through the first season, and before I’d even hit the finale, Alicia’d lent me seasons 2 and 2.5. The Peabody-winning Pegasus arc totally lived up to its billing — beautiful and painful and real, and I didn’t think it was possible to love a show more. But something happened after the Pegasus arc ended, something where suddenly some of the characters didn’t fit right anymore, what with Lee off picking up hookers and shooting shady businessmen, and Kara becoming even more of a lush than before, and this guy named Anders showing up with no real point of his own other than to be a fabricated Plot Device. I thought, okay, Show, I love you, I’m going to have faith in you. So I did, and it got better, and by the end of “Scar” was back to the show I’d loved, and by the end of season 2.5 had blown me away so much I demanded of Alicia, What do you MEAN season 3 isn’t out on DVD yet? What am I going to DO FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS?

Season 3 ended up in my hands the day after it was released on DVD.

Given where the plot had ended in season 2.5, I expected season 3 to start off darkly, which it did, but the story was still tight, gripping, and well-told, and it wasn’t unusual for me to marathon four episodes a night, whereas with the first two seasons I’d watch one, maybe two episodes each day. And then I got to the “Eye of Jupiter” episode, with its ridiculous Anders/Kara/Lee/Dee quadrangle, and the following episode (whose name I can’t remember and am too tired to look up right now) that served up even more quadrangle and did precious little else, and I thought, hmm, am I bored? Or just disgruntled that my beloved program about religion and politics and technology has in one episode suddenly devolved into a soap opera? But still I thought, Show, I love you, I’m going to have faith in you… so I did, and it got better, until “Maelstrom”, when Starbuck went and did… what Starbuck did, and it didn’t make much sense to me unless I thought about it for a really long time and attributed it to guilt over the ridiculous quadrangle. And then Apollo had his meltdown over Starbuck’s death (which I found in character) and stopped being Apollo (which was also kind of in character), and the entire dynamics of the show changed. It was like Battlestar Galactica had turned into its weird cousin, or a bizarro version of itself, like Coraline’s other mother with the buttons for eyes.

This… whatever started after the Pegasus arc. It got worse when the main pilots were either dead or no longer pilots, when the show got so talky there were barely any scenes of vipers in space, or Admirals being glarey and making tough decisions, and no scenes at all of Madame President threatening to airlock somebody. I’d become accustomed to a regular threat of airlocking.

And then season 4 started. I actually watched this one in real time, which meant waiting a week between episodes, which in turn meant letting loose my internal critical lit major and picking apart the story to discuss themes and symbolism and to predict Where It Was All Going. Season 4, which began with some lovely viper scenes and the Admiral having to make approximately 18 tough decisions in the span of two minutes, was even talkier than season 3, but it gave me so much more to analyze that I didn’t mind so much except when I started to notice how nobody was happy at all, except maybe Lee when Starbuck magically reappeared.

But BSG is not about happy. BSG is, as Jacob from TWoP puts it, getting everything you want in the worst possible way. I got that. I was okay with that. And once I accepted that my beloved pilots weren’t really pilots anymore, I really liked season 4 for all its layers and richness and all the things I could thing about between episodes.

Which brings us to season 4.5. Ten episodes to answer the two dozen open questions the show had raised over the years… and while those answers, they came slowly, there were episodes that felt like classic BSG with their combination of drama and politics and good old-fashioned action scenes. When the last episode before the three-hour finale finished, I was so sad at the prospect of my show ending. I didn’t want to deal… and I couldn’t wait to see how it all worked out.

It’s all worked out now… and my gut reaction is anger. It didn’t make any SENSE. Why would the fleet abandon their medical knowledge? The spacecraft, the machines, the computers, all those things I understand. I don’t necessarily buy it (because this show has always asked whether humanity deserves to survive, which to me has always implied the pickles the characters find themselves in have less to do with their technology and more to do with their nature — their hearts and souls, if you will), but I understand, but the medicine? The antibiotics? And why would the fleet split themselves up across continents? Why would that increase their chances of survival? Given that they’d all just made it through five years of hellish existence in floating boxes, running away from killer machines (or trying to escape killer machines during their time on New Caprica), why would they want to separate from the people whose company must have become so important to their sanity? (And for that matter, what happened to Baltar’s cult? What was the POINT of Baltar’s cult?) I have dozens of questions along those lines, along the practical lines, but the one searing through my head as the credits rolled on the finale — HOW COULD THEY LEAVE LEE ALONE?

My two favorite characters on this show are Kara Thrace and Lee Adama. I love them both, and Show, let me remind you that Kara Thrace is tough and hard and can handle things, but Lee Adama? Lee is not as good at having nothing as she is. And in the span of five minutes, the finale took away from him all the people he loved the most. That’s the image I can’t get out of my head, the storyline I can’t forgive the show for. Why does Lee have to be alone? One of the TWoP posters feels it’s a perfect and lovely ending for him because Lee, the good boy, the one who’s spent his whole life living up to other people’s expectations, can now do exactly what he wants without worrying about displeasing his father or losing Starbuck or taking care of the fleet. Which… okay, maybe, except for the part where it undercuts the genuinely perfect and lovely point the show made two episodes earlier about how home is being with the people you love, and so long as you are with them, you have a place to Be, even if you are currently in a floating metal box on the run from killer robots.

I just don’t understand it, why the show would spend four seasons building up how much the Admiral loves his son only to have him voluntarily leave that son to go live in a cabin by himself. I don’t understand why, in their haste to do the cutesy “the characters from BSG are actually our ancestors!” bit, they sacrificed their own themes of humanity and relationships. People do not survive nuclear holocaust and near annihilation on their own. They do not survive five years of being on the run on their own. The demands of leadership are draining, yes, but I do not understand why the Admiral would live out his remaining days alone on a mountain top or why Lee was left with nobody, not even his ex-wife.

I was not thrilled by Kara being an angel and suddenly disappearing, but I can accept it. I loved Baltar’s redemption (although I’m a bit curious when and how the Colonel stopped caring about Caprica, the woman who was almost the mother of his child and who was until so recently living with him), and I was glad to see the Agathons end up as a happy family… but I can’t forgive the show for what happened to Lee, especially as in the end, it’s all a bit hypocritical: Kara Thrace, whose biggest fear was to be forgotten, will be remembered by Lee Adama because he loves her.

In the end, it was about people and their relationships after all.