For me, the series has always belonged to Baltar and Six, and we got a couple of truly fine exchanges, first in their Butch & Sundance moment before the assault, and later when you know they'll keep each other warm on the veldt. Their scenes were the best in the series, and probably the necessary condition for me to have followed it as long as I did. You didn't know where the writers were going, but you wanted to watch Callis and Helfer get there.
The other grace note (sorry) was the respective fates of Boomer and Galen. I'm sure Moore regards Athena's sororicide as a leavening dose of loss in his happily-ever-after finale, and it was inarguably the proper move for Athena, but I regard it as symbolic of the writers' timidness, their failure to embrace the complexities they were oh-so-pleased to introduce. The flashback to Boomer's rookie mast said it all: Bill and Saul going through the motions and getting sloshed, having no clue who they were accepting into their company or what would ultimately happen as a result of their ill-considered actions. You weren't worthy of her, boys.
Galen, well, that's us (or at least me). Proud to be on board from the start, tirelessly willing to do his part as far as he understood it, generous with his faith in his leaders, but ultimately nagged by suspicions that he is smarter and has better judgment than them. Epistemologically forced to accept that he was a cylon, Galen never stopped regarding it as absurd. Finally presented with a shit sandwich and told to take a bite, he said “Frak this” and walked away.
The series kicked off asking, “Does humanity deserve to survive?” Yet despite conclusively eluding their enemies and discovering a habitable planet, we are asked to believe that the Colonials decided that while their genes might endure, they would deliberately extinguish their own civilization. As the would-be hunter-gatherers filed off to the Happy Hunting Grounds, I kept hearing a song in my head:
For me, the series has always belonged to Baltar and Six, and we got a couple of truly fine exchanges, first in their Butch & Sundance moment before the assault, and later when you know they'll keep each other warm on the veldt. Their scenes were the best in the series, and probably the necessary condition for me to have followed it as long as I did. You didn't know where the writers were going, but you wanted to watch Callis and Helfer get there.
ReplyDeleteThe other grace note (sorry) was the respective fates of Boomer and Galen. I'm sure Moore regards Athena's sororicide as a leavening dose of loss in his happily-ever-after finale, and it was inarguably the proper move for Athena, but I regard it as symbolic of the writers' timidness, their failure to embrace the complexities they were oh-so-pleased to introduce. The flashback to Boomer's rookie mast said it all: Bill and Saul going through the motions and getting sloshed, having no clue who they were accepting into their company or what would ultimately happen as a result of their ill-considered actions. You weren't worthy of her, boys.
Galen, well, that's us (or at least me). Proud to be on board from the start, tirelessly willing to do his part as far as he understood it, generous with his faith in his leaders, but ultimately nagged by suspicions that he is smarter and has better judgment than them. Epistemologically forced to accept that he was a cylon, Galen never stopped regarding it as absurd. Finally presented with a shit sandwich and told to take a bite, he said “Frak this” and walked away.
The series kicked off asking, “Does humanity deserve to survive?” Yet despite conclusively eluding their enemies and discovering a habitable planet, we are asked to believe that the Colonials decided that while their genes might endure, they would deliberately extinguish their own civilization. As the would-be hunter-gatherers filed off to the Happy Hunting Grounds, I kept hearing a song in my head:
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower