BSG: Down To Earth
I’m going to get pretty detailed here, so if you didn’t see Friday’s episode, cover your ears.
OK, so all in all, it was a decent episode. Not the best of the season but no Black Market either.
A few other people have had some gripes and they may be legitimate to some degree.
For the most part, you can ignore the bad episodes of Battlestar Galactica (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 dead cat was a bit much and Lee giving him Jake the dog made no real sense but then Jake the dog doesn’t make sense and sense is a luxury when you’re running for your life.
Also, it was pretty much a given that Lee was going to end up as President. The writers telegraphed it which was a good thing. No one trust’s Zerak, Roselin’s dead or dying and, well, that pretty much rounds out the candidates. There’s just over 39,000 people left in the fleet by this point. Expecting Barak Obama to suddenly appear on the hanger deck would have been a stretch. I’m just glad that the writers had enough sense to move Lee out of the military and into the Quorum a few episodes back so he wasn’t jumping from Captain of his own ship, to fighter pilot, to lawyer to fighter pilot again to President like a seven year old trying on every hat in the toy box.[1] Really, there’s no one else left at this point. It’s either Lee or the fleet becomes an anarco-sydicalist commune where everyone takes it in turn to be a sort of executive officer for the week.
Adama hasn’t had much to do lately other than grumble and read bedtime stories to his girlfriend, so it makes sense that, with Roselin missing, he’d jump ship and go look for her. He’s got nothing left to live for or even do. He’s lost all his ideals, his son has abandoned him, his surrogate daughter, Kara is nuts[2] and now the Cylons are being all weird and friendly. So of course he hands the fleet over to a Cylon-fraking, deranged drunk.[3] His fistfight with Saul was surprisingly believable.[4] After everything they’ve been through, there’s no way they were just going to hug it out. This is BSG not Starfleet.
I’ll give you that this was a lot to handle all at once. And if they had time, the writers may have been able to stretch these developments out for another episode or two. But they didn’t, per the nature of serialized TV drama. I can see how people might get frustrated but seriously, folks, we have 12 episodes to wrap shit up and the nature of the show dictates that it’s going to be a bit…complicated. We’re heading for Earth and it may be paradise or just another stop before oblivion but you don’t exactly coast into either. You crash into it and see who survives.
And even if this was a weaker episode, I’ll take BSG’s B-reel over the A-reel of just about any show on television. And that includes Lost.
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1 Tune in next week, when Lee gets to be an Astronaut! Oh, wait…
2 So of course she’s CAG because, hay, half the air wing is gone and it was either her or Hotdog.
3 Who is also a Cylon. So now Cylons can make babies with one another, or at least the 5 can with the 7. That’s a development.
4 The fight was ostensibly over women but really more about them as friends. Boys don’t express their feelings well and it’s easier to beat thecrap out of your best friend than tell him you love him and you’re sorry about how everything’s gone to shit but there’s nothing you can do about it but keep moving forward. Adama can’t move forward anymore though. He’s reached as far as he can go and needs to stop before he drags the remainder of humanity into the void with him.
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Who said he was the only one fraking the Number 6? Either that, or he’s really not a cylon.
Oh, and did you catch that bit about Adama going on a solo mission in Cylon space? Who’s the 5th? Huh? HUH??????
It was more a suicide mission, just one he happened to survive.
And we know that the Five are fundamentally different than the seven, as they are at least 3000 years old (as determined by the date of when the temple of the five was built).