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shallownessSo, I’ve tried to tidy this up and temper it since I first typed up my reaction, but this is basically a rant, and I have to admit I didn’t realise these were the final two episodes of the third season until I doubled checked the episode title.
I had the face of someone who’d drunk sour milk after watching these two episodes, I have to admit. Other than Roslin, Athena and Caprica all having a shared vision about protecting Hera (and even that was from Gaius AGAIN in the opera hall AGAIN) we had a bad legal drama, father-and-son wrangling, Lee finding the high ground to argue against killing off Gaius (which the show blatantly wasn’t going to do), mysterious noises that only three characters, and then four, could hear. And then A Big Reveal. As ‘All Along the Watchtower’ played and we saw Earth, instead of being surprised Kara was still alive (is she resurrected because she’s the fifth of the five? BUT THE VIPER CAN’T RESURRECT so you’d better explain that, show) even if the next episodes include Boomer punching Tyrol, Caprica and Athena punching Tigh, that’s not going to make up for what I fear is a hot mess. As in, right now, those four being, all unknowing, Cylons doesn’t work for me and neither did much of the rest of it.
Well done, Lambkin for walking away with your reputation as an intriguing enigma still intact, I’d say.
Except for having referenced the vanished cat and reminding us that it had vanished. But I did chuckle dryly at Baltar being surprised that his legal team were done with him.
So, okay, there were moments that worked for me.
While the revelation that Laura was back on the Kamala root, thus partly explaining the ‘vision’ (I initially went ’ooh, you have Hera’s blood in you, but it’s clearly run out of MAGIC), that, and Dee walking out on Lee (understandable, did he discuss any of what he was up to with her?), Agathon filling in briefly AGAIN, Baltar getting away from someone killing him AGAIN, a lot of this is me writing the word again AGAIN.
Yes, they could dangle her Baltar in Caprica’s head at me, but that’s a bit late. (I enjoyed her hitting Tighe back something fierce. Oh dear. If nothing else, the show featuring a lot of the female characters hitting a lot of the male characters might get me back on side?)
And okay the reveal about the return of Laura’s cancer helped explain some more of Adama’s grumpiness in the first part of the twofer, and they were cute over the phone call. It was predictable that he voted to acquit, because Lee’s speech was targeted at him (but I couldn’t help observe that it was always Roslin who had wanted the trial,) so their row after that all went down was spiky. But was a small strand, and Laura’s health is one more recurring feature.
As to why the legal drama irritated me, it was obvious that the prosecution’s argument would falter from the first (and blah blah Tori playing hardball over trying him for genocide was more about her being off her game and Roslin being really emotionally invested in this, but as a viewer knowing that Baltar was culpable for the nuclear explosion too, even if it’s never been investigated, might have been the key link in making a righteous case that would get him done to rights was mildly frustrating. Except the legal drama was mainly about its impact on fleet unity.
I know it moved on to the question of whether the trial could ever be fair given the judging panel being biased, but I can’t say that upped the jeopardy. I just mainly felt sorry for the chair of the panel, who seemed to have the most legal knowhow.
It was also clear that the prosecution lawyer (being the kind of guest star who doesn’t get a name, let alone a backstory wasn’t going to get to ask proper questions, it was all going to be the witnesses mouthing off.
This reached its apogee with Baltar complaining about his lawyers and Felix’s perjury. That did raise a grin. And I’m not going to excuse Felix perjuring himself to get the verdict (even though it’s inexcusable) because by this point it only led me to wonder why they hadn’t showed someone taking an oath, given the importance of faith on the show.
But instead we got Lee continuing to get played, Adama got riled into giving him his honest opinion of Baltar (and pretending Tigh hadn’t embarrassed him, but if Adama wasn’t focusing his anger at Lee, Tigh shouldn’t have been let to be drunk on duty, let alone on the stand. Speaking of witnesses mouthing off, the more Tigh whined on about Ellen, the more I rolled my eyes.)
And yes, crazy mother was crazy for seeing Gaius, ‘class warrior’, weasly president (Roslin would never have established a colony on New Caprica, so she probably wouldn’t have let humanity be there for the Cylons to invade was my response to the ‘what would you have done?’ line of argument.)
I might have had more to say about Helo intuitvely knowing a storm was comng if we hadn’t had the music thing. I mean, I had stopped playing the ‘sleeper Cylon’ game, even though the Five were in play, and bravo for it only being four confirmeds.
Look, if it hadn’t been for her hearing the music too, I would have snarked that Sam (not such a grieving widower) liked Tori’s bed hair just fine, when Roslin amusingly complained about it. It’s conveeenient that Tori and Anders have become such important characters. (I care less about Anders than I’m meant to. As he’s still limping, WHY IS HE TRAINING TO BE A PILOT after all that fuss about Starbuck’s leg?)
But I suppose I can vicariously enjoy new shades of self-loathing from Tigh.
Tyrol is the most interesting reveal. Unless if he was lying, Dean Stockwell’s fake priest genuinely didn’t know the Chief was one of the five, and Sharon didn’t either. CALLIE IS GOING TO FREAK. But also, baby Michael! Is he as special as Hera? On the one hand, what does that say about Tyrol truly loving Callie? (Aww.) Although I suspect that once things calm down, there’ll be self-loathing from him and Callie angst.
There are many questions about how and why the Five came to be triggered/realised they were Cylons, given the other seven have been very mysterious. (Which suggests to me that the writers haven’t thought it through yet. I am very sceptical about how it’s part of The Plan. Are there other copies? And how early a model is Tigh who has been living as a human for years and years and years (grr, why have two late middle-aged white men?) What does this mean for Sam/Kara even if the text wants me to be all ‘Kara came back to rescue u, LEE.’ Indeed, is Kara the fifth Cylon? Or did they die because they have no copies? Is Tori the short one Diana ’saw’?
Write yourselves out of ths hot mess, writers!
For me, I think New Caprica and the occupation was their mistake. It wasn’t part of the original brief, and it should have changed everything, but it very much didn’t. Indeed, the general stasis is the problem. I’m jaded about Kara clearly not dying, and Six always walking around in ridiculous clothes. And so we have the big reveal and I’m meant to be going, ‘This changes everything!’, but I’m so not.
I had the face of someone who’d drunk sour milk after watching these two episodes, I have to admit. Other than Roslin, Athena and Caprica all having a shared vision about protecting Hera (and even that was from Gaius AGAIN in the opera hall AGAIN) we had a bad legal drama, father-and-son wrangling, Lee finding the high ground to argue against killing off Gaius (which the show blatantly wasn’t going to do), mysterious noises that only three characters, and then four, could hear. And then A Big Reveal. As ‘All Along the Watchtower’ played and we saw Earth, instead of being surprised Kara was still alive (is she resurrected because she’s the fifth of the five? BUT THE VIPER CAN’T RESURRECT so you’d better explain that, show) even if the next episodes include Boomer punching Tyrol, Caprica and Athena punching Tigh, that’s not going to make up for what I fear is a hot mess. As in, right now, those four being, all unknowing, Cylons doesn’t work for me and neither did much of the rest of it.
Well done, Lambkin for walking away with your reputation as an intriguing enigma still intact, I’d say.
Except for having referenced the vanished cat and reminding us that it had vanished. But I did chuckle dryly at Baltar being surprised that his legal team were done with him.
So, okay, there were moments that worked for me.
While the revelation that Laura was back on the Kamala root, thus partly explaining the ‘vision’ (I initially went ’ooh, you have Hera’s blood in you, but it’s clearly run out of MAGIC), that, and Dee walking out on Lee (understandable, did he discuss any of what he was up to with her?), Agathon filling in briefly AGAIN, Baltar getting away from someone killing him AGAIN, a lot of this is me writing the word again AGAIN.
Yes, they could dangle her Baltar in Caprica’s head at me, but that’s a bit late. (I enjoyed her hitting Tighe back something fierce. Oh dear. If nothing else, the show featuring a lot of the female characters hitting a lot of the male characters might get me back on side?)
And okay the reveal about the return of Laura’s cancer helped explain some more of Adama’s grumpiness in the first part of the twofer, and they were cute over the phone call. It was predictable that he voted to acquit, because Lee’s speech was targeted at him (but I couldn’t help observe that it was always Roslin who had wanted the trial,) so their row after that all went down was spiky. But was a small strand, and Laura’s health is one more recurring feature.
As to why the legal drama irritated me, it was obvious that the prosecution’s argument would falter from the first (and blah blah Tori playing hardball over trying him for genocide was more about her being off her game and Roslin being really emotionally invested in this, but as a viewer knowing that Baltar was culpable for the nuclear explosion too, even if it’s never been investigated, might have been the key link in making a righteous case that would get him done to rights was mildly frustrating. Except the legal drama was mainly about its impact on fleet unity.
I know it moved on to the question of whether the trial could ever be fair given the judging panel being biased, but I can’t say that upped the jeopardy. I just mainly felt sorry for the chair of the panel, who seemed to have the most legal knowhow.
It was also clear that the prosecution lawyer (being the kind of guest star who doesn’t get a name, let alone a backstory wasn’t going to get to ask proper questions, it was all going to be the witnesses mouthing off.
This reached its apogee with Baltar complaining about his lawyers and Felix’s perjury. That did raise a grin. And I’m not going to excuse Felix perjuring himself to get the verdict (even though it’s inexcusable) because by this point it only led me to wonder why they hadn’t showed someone taking an oath, given the importance of faith on the show.
But instead we got Lee continuing to get played, Adama got riled into giving him his honest opinion of Baltar (and pretending Tigh hadn’t embarrassed him, but if Adama wasn’t focusing his anger at Lee, Tigh shouldn’t have been let to be drunk on duty, let alone on the stand. Speaking of witnesses mouthing off, the more Tigh whined on about Ellen, the more I rolled my eyes.)
And yes, crazy mother was crazy for seeing Gaius, ‘class warrior’, weasly president (Roslin would never have established a colony on New Caprica, so she probably wouldn’t have let humanity be there for the Cylons to invade was my response to the ‘what would you have done?’ line of argument.)
I might have had more to say about Helo intuitvely knowing a storm was comng if we hadn’t had the music thing. I mean, I had stopped playing the ‘sleeper Cylon’ game, even though the Five were in play, and bravo for it only being four confirmeds.
Look, if it hadn’t been for her hearing the music too, I would have snarked that Sam (not such a grieving widower) liked Tori’s bed hair just fine, when Roslin amusingly complained about it. It’s conveeenient that Tori and Anders have become such important characters. (I care less about Anders than I’m meant to. As he’s still limping, WHY IS HE TRAINING TO BE A PILOT after all that fuss about Starbuck’s leg?)
But I suppose I can vicariously enjoy new shades of self-loathing from Tigh.
Tyrol is the most interesting reveal. Unless if he was lying, Dean Stockwell’s fake priest genuinely didn’t know the Chief was one of the five, and Sharon didn’t either. CALLIE IS GOING TO FREAK. But also, baby Michael! Is he as special as Hera? On the one hand, what does that say about Tyrol truly loving Callie? (Aww.) Although I suspect that once things calm down, there’ll be self-loathing from him and Callie angst.
There are many questions about how and why the Five came to be triggered/realised they were Cylons, given the other seven have been very mysterious. (Which suggests to me that the writers haven’t thought it through yet. I am very sceptical about how it’s part of The Plan. Are there other copies? And how early a model is Tigh who has been living as a human for years and years and years (grr, why have two late middle-aged white men?) What does this mean for Sam/Kara even if the text wants me to be all ‘Kara came back to rescue u, LEE.’ Indeed, is Kara the fifth Cylon? Or did they die because they have no copies? Is Tori the short one Diana ’saw’?
Write yourselves out of ths hot mess, writers!
For me, I think New Caprica and the occupation was their mistake. It wasn’t part of the original brief, and it should have changed everything, but it very much didn’t. Indeed, the general stasis is the problem. I’m jaded about Kara clearly not dying, and Six always walking around in ridiculous clothes. And so we have the big reveal and I’m meant to be going, ‘This changes everything!’, but I’m so not.
