Check out this review of recent episodes of Battlestar Galactica. G'head. I'll wait.
This review is a product of the all-too-common Arrogant 'Net Nerd's Disease (or ANND), which is very closely related to Arrogant Cultural Critic's Disease (ACCD). In both case, victims often think that by virtue of their own vast, personal insights alone, they can critique popular entertainment, in this case a television show, and pay little to no attention to the actual content. The assumption that underlies the symptoms of these two diseases is that the reviewer is, by definition, smarter than that which he or she reviews.
The reviewer lists ten reasons why the show might be doomed. Here we go...
10. Show co-creators Ron Moore and David Eick are both developing multiple other projects. Moore is working on BSG prequel show Caprica, and Eick is working on both Bionic Woman and Them.
Red herring. Spin-offs don't spell doom for the main show. Buff and Angel both rocked.
9. Crucial subplots, such as the fate of Sharon and Helo's hybrid baby, are left dangling for more than three episodes.
I suppose this could be a problem if you have no attention span, but this show has always demanded more of its viewers than the average drama. Deal with it or flip channels. I hear Andromeda is still in re-runs.
8. Rather than developing characters via personal transformation, character development is charted via hair length, presence/absence of beards, and weight gain/loss.
Those are visual signifers of character development. Kara's hair and Adama's moustache were both symbols of them leaving the soft/civilian life behind. It's a motif, ya twit.
7. The only way the writers imagine they can showcase Edward James Olmos' considerable acting talents is via long-winded speeches.
He's been doing that since the first episode. I fail to see how it's suddenly bad now
6. Cylon threesomes.
In character, for both Baltar and what little we know of Cylon culture, and really, really funny!
5. Too much intimacy with the mysterious Cylon enemy in their SM dungeon ship makes them seem campy rather than scary.
I'll give her a half-point for this one. The Base Ships could have been handled better, but they are making the best of a bad situation, which is not having enough budget to really wow us with the Cylon environment.
However, there was no S&M dungeon that I noticed. There's been some screwin' (see #6, above), and there's been some torturin', but they've been separate. The whole point of Baltar's orgasmic experience during the torture was that it was Head Six's way of taking him away from the torture. That's sort of the opposite of an S&M/rough sex situation, as far as I know...?
4. Entire episodes are clumsily devoted to single-word social issues like "torture" and "genocide."
Topical references, like Adama's speechification, have been with the show since day one. You got a problem with that, then that's on you.
3. Eick promises next season will bring more flashback-heavy episodes that focus on romantic entanglements and/or childhood trauma.
As opposed to what? Big-ass battle sequences? Adama beating Cylons to death with Ol' Flashy? Does this reviewer realise that it's not actually an action show?
2. A retcon turns Adama into the cause of the Cylons' attack on the twelve colonies, thus making him both improbably important and too much of a bastard.
There are two scenes that make very clear that Adama's sense of guilt is misplaced. That it's actually the product of a desire for a simple explanation for the horrendous thing that happened, and that that answer doesn't exist. I can't think how you could miss that, unless you're just not paying attention.
1. Boxing is used as a thin excuse for an episode that could have been written (better) by shippers.
The boxing episode was a wonderful example of parallel editing and a great use of revealed history. It was the payoff of years of Kara and Lee dancing around each other, and the Adama/Tyrol match was the perfect parallel. While Adama carries on about how none of us are friends, and that acting like friends is leaving them all at risk, Kara and Lee demonstrate that without their emotional bonds, these people can't live, are barely even 'people' at all. That's been a major theme of the show since the miniseries, a conundrum with no solution, and presenting problems without clear-cut solutions has always been what this show does best.
Plus, Adama and Laura smokin' fatties and snuggling in the sand. You cannot overstate the sheer volume of awesome in those scenes.
Posted by orion at December 5, 2006 10:18 PMReading your comment about the review reminds me yet again that this is a show that I really ought to watch sometime.
When I read the original review (as per your link) I was actually quite shocked that some of the things listed could be problems with the show rather than good sides.
I found this list online as well, and had a similar reaction--though I can see where the author is coming from.
The boxing episode left a bad taste in my mouth, too, although we've known ever since "Lay Down Your Burdens" that Season Three would be fraught with flashbacks, filling in the gaps left by the (stunning, ballsy, awesome) one-year leap forward. I think it bugged me most because, fatties aside, we really didn't learn much about the characters that wasn't already obvious. Lee/Kara romantic tension? Say it ain't so!
And I've already voiced my dislike of the basestar sub-plot, for the increasingly blatant non-existence of the Cylon masterplan--which is why the absence of hybrid-baby talk seems so conspicuous (as recently as "Exodus," she was the MacGuffin upon which the entire conflict hung).
I did like the threesome, though. Now that a number of Cyclons have started to explore human emotions, I'm curious to see how that will "infect" the rest of the race. Maybe emotional instability will play havok with their "projecting" capabilities. Might be fun.
But I'll save my (plentiful) predictions for another time.
Posted by: Scott Sharplin at December 9, 2006 11:29 AM