SPOILERS
* Well. Well, well, well.
* A while ago I wondered aloud whether the final act of the show would end up having been about what happens to a society when it gives up. Turns out I was right, but not in the way I expected. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, I think.
* In general I think the show went with the ballsiest possible “out” for each of its central conundrums. The Colonials’ “Earth” wasn’t our “Earth”! They really were angels! Kara just disappears! The inevitable rapprochement between humans, rebel Cylons, and hardline Cylons is scuttled because of freaking Cally! Hera is only kinda sorta the key to survival, all the visions about the opera house were really just set-up to make sure that a bunch of people saved this kid’s life…but then as it turns out, she’s Eve! Tack on a good old-fashioned thought-provoking science-fiction ending and I’m sound as a pound.
* It was a very, very good decision to spend so much of the end focusing on Gaius, my favorite character and my favorite performance in the series. I found myself wishing a bit that he was given as much close-up time as he was during that episode a few seasons back where Adama tortured him, which was where I really fell in love with him, but what he did with what he had was just lovely. When he said “I know about farming” and cried, that’s when I finally teared up. I love that poor man.
* Other things I liked: Tory getting her comeuppance and the Chief’s lonely denouement in Scotland. Tigh saying if someone had done that to Ellen, he’d have done the same thing Chief did, when of course someone DID do that to Ellen–Tigh himself. (Ellen seemed to notice.) All the climactic battle stuff, particularly the fate of Racetrack and Skulls and the Centurion-on-Centurion violence. The whole cockamamie plan for the attack. Cavil’s last word. Anders’s fate. Apollo finally getting something of weight to do once again: a) guide the human and Cylon civilizations into a new dawn; b) see Kara off. Laura getting laid (HOT). Kara and Lee nearly doing it (also HOT, and also a callback to the fact that those two were never meant to wind up together, godsdammit). Seeing Bulldog (I think???) among the Marines boarding the Cylon Colony. Admiral Hoshi and President Lampkin, no matter how ridiculous that might have been. The fact that the Baltar Army subplot went nowhere except as a headfake. The randomness and camaraderie of the Apollo/Doc Cottle/Baltar/Hoshi/Tigh/Adama scouting party. Giving the last words to Head Six and Head Baltar.
* Unsolved mysteries: What happens to the hardline skinjob Cylons? What happens to the freed Centurions?
* And of course, “You know it doesn’t like that name.”
* Oh, Battlestar Galactica, I will miss you very much.
And what about that great Saul Tigh laugh when they were on the grass talking about mating with the natives?
The dangling Kara plot threads are kind of driving me crazy though.
I have to say I’m not nearly as enamored by it. Most of the stuff you dug actually pissed me off. I kind of felt they bailed on numerous subplots and cheap-out solutions just to tie up loose ends. It gets a D form me.
I figured as much. It’s definitely a case where what some people love about it is exactly what other people will hate about it.
i really loved your review sean. i never thought of hera as eve, but i guess she is known as “eve” after 150,000 years.
jesus christ, why did this end.
Man, Baltar just had one of the best journeys of any character ever, eh?
I don’t know why it seems odd to me that “God did it” should end up being the answer when so gods damn much of the series has been about religion. Maybe it’s just kind of shocking to see the Divine acknowledged as fact in such a cynical, semi-real world kind of setting. Interesting to note: if God exists and it is the Cylon god (I’m assuming), what are we to make then that the Centurions were the ones that “discovered” him?
The one thing I can safely say I was unsatisfied with is the resolution for Kara. Speculation over at Sepinwall’s blog is that she was an angel like the Head characters, but the Head characters were never given 20 episodes where we watch their trials and tribulations and get inside THEIR heads and have weird hallucinations of their dead dads. She certainly seemed very human this last season, and to find out that she was only the memory of a human doesn’t scan for me. Although it does tie into what we learned about her: she’s not afraid of dying, but of being forgotten. So I guess I’m saying it works thematically, but not from a logic standpoint.
Love that Cavill.
Glo: You’re here!!!! ZOMG
Justin: Baltar is one of my favorite characters from anything ever.
Regarding “God” (you know it doesn’t like that name, Justin): It’s interesting to see how different people’s expectation for the show’s ending was from what the show had been basically promising to deliver all along, which was a heaping helping of real-live mysticism. I think you’ll see two different cultural forces converge in terms of who doesn’t like “God”‘s direct involvement in the finale in the persons of Head Six, Head Baltar, and Kara: Your basic internet-fandom contingent, which insists that everything must be SERIOUS BUSINESS and have logical explanations that can be “solved” like a puzzle; and a goodly chunk of serious SF fans, to whom (if the Tor.com roundtable is any indication) the word “angel” is automatically STUPID in all caps. It’s a bit of a bummer given how daring this actually was, and how much it required of an audience trained to expect the worst to accept, if only briefly, the best. I’ll probably be posting a lot more about this tomorrow.
I thought about it for a while, and talked with some smart people who were bothered by the religion angle of the story, but I think that has everything to do with their feelings about religion and little to do with their feelings about storytelling.
Ultimately my thoughts came down to this: the finale was a statement about the limitations of the human mind to fully understand the complexities of the universe, and the role of the Creator in both the “real” and fictional universes.
Having “God” play such a large role is literally a deus ex machina, but Moore and Eick were basically saying there are many, many things in this universe that will always be inexplicable, and you’re not entitled to a “logical” explanation (at least as that’s understood by the limited human mind) for everything in any universe, even in the fictional BSG one. And in the BSG universe, Moore and Eick are quite literally the Creators; they’re “God” in a meaningful sense. So they’re not going to give you an answer to everything either. It’s their Creation, not yours, and you’ll get what you’re given. Which would have been an arrogant posture to take if so much of the characters’ arcs hadn’t ultimately been so hopeful. Of course, the coda with Head 6 and Baltar was a nice kick in the nuts, a spoonful of medicine to help the sugar go down.
Carnival of Battlestar
* First, this seems like as good a place as any to collect the links to all my Battlestar Galactica posts for this final half-season. * Episode 4.5.1: Sometimes a Great Notion * Episode 4.5.2: A Disquiet Follows My Soul…
A man, a Plan, a canal, Adama
So the Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica debuts this Friday night. Sort of: They did that weird SciFi/Syfy double-dip where they released the “uncut” pilot on DVD first and show it on TV months later. That’s what they did for…