BSG triple bill
Feb. 7th, 2021 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallowness3.08 Hero, 3.09 Unfinished Business, 3.10 The Passage
Because I watched these three the same night and ‘Hero’ is so much about Bill Adama, that was the throughline for me in watching them all, even though he gets a less and less important role in each episode (you’d probably describe ‘Unfinished Business’ as a Lee/Kara episode, or about the ramifications of New Caprica.) I don’t think it was me being tired, but I didn’t entirely understand what was going on in ‘The Passage’, including human business.
So, ‘Hero’. To get the snark out of the way, the moment they introduced the medal for Adama’s service as something to celebrate, you knew someone’s reputation was going to get more tarnished, and my response to Bulldog was, frankly, ‘WHUT!? A better pilot than Starbuck? Ha!’
More seriously, the revelation that the Cylon attack wasn’t entirely a surprise/the Admiralty was stirring made total sense. I got good and mad at Saul for dobbing in Adama himself, although it made sense from where he was at, but it was still mean. And him sort of lecturing Bulldog for acting on it felt ridiculous, but I suppose we were always going to have the return of Tigh (though it feels as if the show is trying to make New Caprica more of a detour off its grand plan for characters’ roles than perhaps it ought? Give or take a few losses and causes for angst? Surely it should be even bigger.) But then I’d thought Kara ought to have gone to Lee with what she’d found out (next ep suggested a good reason why she didn’t) because hadn’t she chosen the uniform, making him her superior, while Saul was on the outside, and she had to know that associating with him was probably not a great thing to do given they’d both been chewed out? Obviously, I thought this in light of Adama’s conversations with Saul and Lee about what had gone down, which Kara wasn’t privy to. And what ramifications there were led to Bil and Saul making up as friends, at least.
I enjoyed Roslin being at her most schoolmarmy with an iron spine and she got through to Adama in a way Lee, who was dealing with the news that his father had done this, couldn’t, and Saul, having taken the moral high ground at the time and now being still the grieving drunk, couldn’t. As she said, tough for Adama to be the one in charge after being involved in this mission that might have started it all (especially from his perspective), but he just had to live with it. And she provided the broader view as a civilian again.
The whole thing about having shot down (well, trying to) one of his own people, and not rescuing them, when he tries to rescue everyone else rang entirely true. And I liked their whole complicating of the origin story (which would also happen in ‘The Passage’, and a similar ‘the past is messier than you thought’ approach in ‘Unfinished Business’.)
So, the upshot of Diana torturing Gaius is that she’s sleeping with him and Caprica now? ??? Maybe we missed a scene or two there? (Interesting that they gave the role of Bulldog’s captor to Special Guest Star Lucy Lawless and not credited stars Tricia Helfer or Grace Park.) And now she’s decided to go for suicide to reach for the mysteries between death and resurrection, because she’s got the mystical stuff hard. I really wasn’t impressed with her for the way she ordered that poor Sentinel to kill her and erase all its memories/evidence. Other than it being efficient.
‘Unfinished Business’ took us back to New Caprica (ugh, and the moustache) before the Occupation and filled in quite a few gaps, but later than I’d expected. I called foul at them sticking Adama releasing Tigh from service in the previouslies, because they could have fitted that in the body of the episode. (If it had aired before and I’ve forgotten, I apologise, but I don’t think it did.)
Two narratives intertwined: what happened on the first day they were breaking ground on New Caprica (speaking of facial hair, I didn’t pay enough attention to Baltar’s here, given that he was growing a beard in ‘The Passage’) and ‘the dance’. While we’ve seen most of the military characters doing boxing training and it seemed to be a tradition, I thought it was a stupid tradition because I don’t see how giving each other concussion helps anyone, and I side-eyed the Doc a lot – Lee shouldn’t have gone back in the ring, for instance. (But I’m not a fan of boxing.)
I was also aggrieved that we didn’t see any more Bill/Laura action. I mean, what they showed was way beyond platonic and didn’t preclude more happening offscreen, but… It was indeed a great dress. There was a suggestion (more than that, in the ‘Madam President’ and ‘Admiral’ as she helped him walk away from the ring, contrasting with the first names planetside,) that he blamed himself for yielding to her influence about letting people go, but it’s not like the occupied hadn’t paid a high price for that or that it was unreasonable, even if both Adama and Roslin never thought the colonisation would last and that the Cylons were done with them.
Oh well, Adama’s beef with Tyrol turned out to be more about Tyrol’s sloppy attitude now than then. Tyrol and Kallie were so excited about their baby and their new future! We also saw happy Saul/Ellen, all delivered with a dash of irony for what they’d go through, but, as I said, the heart of this was Lee and Kara. We learned there were more things for Kara – well, both of them - to rue than we’d known, and that neither she nor Lee had moved on as much as had been suggested previously (which made more sense.) Typical BSG teasing of flashbacks until we got to see the full story. Sam getting used was nothing new, although Dee had always known more about Lee and Kara’s past. Her presence in the Galactica scenes was powerful, even if she didn’t have much to say. (Also, kind of hilariously, it seems that the Old Man has a total blindspot over what was going on between Lee and Kara. Oh well, if he was going to have a blindspot, it would be that.)
I enjoyed Starbuck wiping the floor with Hotdog, though the fact they were pitting people of different sizes, ages and genders against each other also made me wince, but really, given both have put in the training, Lee ought to have won this.
Whatever the aggro between everyone else, here it was unresolved emotional tension, (not UST which we thought before this ep). Of course, however screwed up he is, she’s always been several times more, which explains why she ran AGAIN from him and from them.
Masterful use of clips of their relationship over the years, BTW.
Of course, in the next ep, Apollo still had to shout Starbuck down for crossing the line with Kat. She could never let the stims thing go, and though she tried to apologise in the end, it’s not Kara at her best. In fact, I’d got used to siding with Kat when she was in Kara’s face, so I was a bit sad that she was written out, but what a way to write her out.
Well, what a confusing way. I know we had the exposition about Sharon’s initial mission, but with the funky light, it had been really hard to follow. I know they were deliberately making us wonder if Kat and the guy from her past were two of the Five (except it didn’t track), and Diana’s quest was inherently trippy, doubly so with the oracular stuff the hybrid was spouting (which I thought meant that she was sending them to where the fleet was getting its algae). But my brain was more frazzled than it needed to be by what went on.
Everyone starving didn’t quite land for me (generally, their muscular definition looked fine.) Maybe if we’d seen them finding out their food was rotten, or maybe if it was something more gradual, less ‘and suddenly all our food stores are gone.’ But the idea of a relentless grind of a mission with extra responsibilities taking its toll on subpar pilots, especially Kat, as her past caught up with her worked. (Echoes of the Scar episode.) Adama’s gesture (to what, his third adopted daughter now?) landed.
Because I watched these three the same night and ‘Hero’ is so much about Bill Adama, that was the throughline for me in watching them all, even though he gets a less and less important role in each episode (you’d probably describe ‘Unfinished Business’ as a Lee/Kara episode, or about the ramifications of New Caprica.) I don’t think it was me being tired, but I didn’t entirely understand what was going on in ‘The Passage’, including human business.
So, ‘Hero’. To get the snark out of the way, the moment they introduced the medal for Adama’s service as something to celebrate, you knew someone’s reputation was going to get more tarnished, and my response to Bulldog was, frankly, ‘WHUT!? A better pilot than Starbuck? Ha!’
More seriously, the revelation that the Cylon attack wasn’t entirely a surprise/the Admiralty was stirring made total sense. I got good and mad at Saul for dobbing in Adama himself, although it made sense from where he was at, but it was still mean. And him sort of lecturing Bulldog for acting on it felt ridiculous, but I suppose we were always going to have the return of Tigh (though it feels as if the show is trying to make New Caprica more of a detour off its grand plan for characters’ roles than perhaps it ought? Give or take a few losses and causes for angst? Surely it should be even bigger.) But then I’d thought Kara ought to have gone to Lee with what she’d found out (next ep suggested a good reason why she didn’t) because hadn’t she chosen the uniform, making him her superior, while Saul was on the outside, and she had to know that associating with him was probably not a great thing to do given they’d both been chewed out? Obviously, I thought this in light of Adama’s conversations with Saul and Lee about what had gone down, which Kara wasn’t privy to. And what ramifications there were led to Bil and Saul making up as friends, at least.
I enjoyed Roslin being at her most schoolmarmy with an iron spine and she got through to Adama in a way Lee, who was dealing with the news that his father had done this, couldn’t, and Saul, having taken the moral high ground at the time and now being still the grieving drunk, couldn’t. As she said, tough for Adama to be the one in charge after being involved in this mission that might have started it all (especially from his perspective), but he just had to live with it. And she provided the broader view as a civilian again.
The whole thing about having shot down (well, trying to) one of his own people, and not rescuing them, when he tries to rescue everyone else rang entirely true. And I liked their whole complicating of the origin story (which would also happen in ‘The Passage’, and a similar ‘the past is messier than you thought’ approach in ‘Unfinished Business’.)
So, the upshot of Diana torturing Gaius is that she’s sleeping with him and Caprica now? ??? Maybe we missed a scene or two there? (Interesting that they gave the role of Bulldog’s captor to Special Guest Star Lucy Lawless and not credited stars Tricia Helfer or Grace Park.) And now she’s decided to go for suicide to reach for the mysteries between death and resurrection, because she’s got the mystical stuff hard. I really wasn’t impressed with her for the way she ordered that poor Sentinel to kill her and erase all its memories/evidence. Other than it being efficient.
‘Unfinished Business’ took us back to New Caprica (ugh, and the moustache) before the Occupation and filled in quite a few gaps, but later than I’d expected. I called foul at them sticking Adama releasing Tigh from service in the previouslies, because they could have fitted that in the body of the episode. (If it had aired before and I’ve forgotten, I apologise, but I don’t think it did.)
Two narratives intertwined: what happened on the first day they were breaking ground on New Caprica (speaking of facial hair, I didn’t pay enough attention to Baltar’s here, given that he was growing a beard in ‘The Passage’) and ‘the dance’. While we’ve seen most of the military characters doing boxing training and it seemed to be a tradition, I thought it was a stupid tradition because I don’t see how giving each other concussion helps anyone, and I side-eyed the Doc a lot – Lee shouldn’t have gone back in the ring, for instance. (But I’m not a fan of boxing.)
I was also aggrieved that we didn’t see any more Bill/Laura action. I mean, what they showed was way beyond platonic and didn’t preclude more happening offscreen, but… It was indeed a great dress. There was a suggestion (more than that, in the ‘Madam President’ and ‘Admiral’ as she helped him walk away from the ring, contrasting with the first names planetside,) that he blamed himself for yielding to her influence about letting people go, but it’s not like the occupied hadn’t paid a high price for that or that it was unreasonable, even if both Adama and Roslin never thought the colonisation would last and that the Cylons were done with them.
Oh well, Adama’s beef with Tyrol turned out to be more about Tyrol’s sloppy attitude now than then. Tyrol and Kallie were so excited about their baby and their new future! We also saw happy Saul/Ellen, all delivered with a dash of irony for what they’d go through, but, as I said, the heart of this was Lee and Kara. We learned there were more things for Kara – well, both of them - to rue than we’d known, and that neither she nor Lee had moved on as much as had been suggested previously (which made more sense.) Typical BSG teasing of flashbacks until we got to see the full story. Sam getting used was nothing new, although Dee had always known more about Lee and Kara’s past. Her presence in the Galactica scenes was powerful, even if she didn’t have much to say. (Also, kind of hilariously, it seems that the Old Man has a total blindspot over what was going on between Lee and Kara. Oh well, if he was going to have a blindspot, it would be that.)
I enjoyed Starbuck wiping the floor with Hotdog, though the fact they were pitting people of different sizes, ages and genders against each other also made me wince, but really, given both have put in the training, Lee ought to have won this.
Whatever the aggro between everyone else, here it was unresolved emotional tension, (not UST which we thought before this ep). Of course, however screwed up he is, she’s always been several times more, which explains why she ran AGAIN from him and from them.
Masterful use of clips of their relationship over the years, BTW.
Of course, in the next ep, Apollo still had to shout Starbuck down for crossing the line with Kat. She could never let the stims thing go, and though she tried to apologise in the end, it’s not Kara at her best. In fact, I’d got used to siding with Kat when she was in Kara’s face, so I was a bit sad that she was written out, but what a way to write her out.
Well, what a confusing way. I know we had the exposition about Sharon’s initial mission, but with the funky light, it had been really hard to follow. I know they were deliberately making us wonder if Kat and the guy from her past were two of the Five (except it didn’t track), and Diana’s quest was inherently trippy, doubly so with the oracular stuff the hybrid was spouting (which I thought meant that she was sending them to where the fleet was getting its algae). But my brain was more frazzled than it needed to be by what went on.
Everyone starving didn’t quite land for me (generally, their muscular definition looked fine.) Maybe if we’d seen them finding out their food was rotten, or maybe if it was something more gradual, less ‘and suddenly all our food stores are gone.’ But the idea of a relentless grind of a mission with extra responsibilities taking its toll on subpar pilots, especially Kat, as her past caught up with her worked. (Echoes of the Scar episode.) Adama’s gesture (to what, his third adopted daughter now?) landed.
