Thanks for the ride BSG

// March 21st, 2009 // fun

I don’t know what compels me to write about a show that most of my readers don’t watch, save The Cap’n, but I wanted to make sure I posted something to mark the ending of a series that had an amazing four-year run. And was one close to my heart.

For those that don’t watch Battlestar Galactica, I’ve always tried to explain why it’s soooo much better than the name sounds. I know when you hear the title of the show, you likely think cheesy 1970s or Star Trek like things.

It was nothing like that. There are no monsters, no creatures, nothing like that. What you do get is amazing characters, awesome actors, a compelling mythology that keeps you glued to the show for all four years and writers never afraid to broach any subject matter.

Jina says she still sees it as Sci-Fi, and she’s right to an extent. There are Cylons, who are robots that look like humans. There are spaceships and space battles.

But it pretty much ends there. The rest is politics, love, despair, darkness, religion and so much more. You think the characters on Lost are amazing…well, BSG was an equal in that regard.

So that’s it. Rent the DVDs and get sucked into the story of these last surviving humans as they try to find a home.

The show is over, and I’m done pimping it.

Now, let’s get to the SPOILERS for those that DID watch it.

If you haven’t watched it, maybe stop reading so you don’t know how it ends in case you ever do pick it up.

Before I wrote this, I spent a lot of time reading some recaps and comments by people out there. Maybe people loved it, but there are also a ton who hated it. Most of them say it sucked because of the very ending and the religious aspects of the finale.

Which is utterly amazing to me.

The very core of the show, from the very beginning… was always religion being a part of the thing guiding these people. From the book of Pithea (Spelling?) leading Roslin to Earth, or the things about the one true God, or the visions in the heads of Baltar and Caprica, or even the return of a dead Kara Thrace…it’s always been about a higher authority leading their footsteps to the survival of humanity.

So when the series ends with these visions turning out to be Angels, and Kara being “something” returned from the dead to ensure they find Earth…I thought it was beyond fitting.

I would have been mega-disappointed if the visions turned out to be chips in their heads planted by Cylons, or Kara was being controlled by some other alien race, etc.

How you could be disappointed that God was leading them…baffles me. That’s been a massive part of the show, so how could you ignore it at the end?

And finally, the other complaints are the very end with the 150,000 years later and the robot commercials.

Again, the whole show has focused around “it’s all happened before and it will all happen again.” So in saying that, how can you NOT have an ending like that? With mankind once again growing in their technology to build robots who will one day wage war against them?

For me, the finale HAD to give me that. It HAD to show me how this will start all over again.

Now, the good stuff.

Loved Tori getting her neck broken by Tyrol. Frakking LOVED it. I have to say, when Tori got all worried about suddenly revealing herself to all the Final Five, I had completely forgotten about Callie. So it was wonderful to be surprised with that. Fantastic!

Finding our Earth was awesome. People may feel cheated out of thinking the previous “Earth” was ours, but they never showed the continents or anything. Awesome.

Galen going up north, to Scotland presumably, was perfect :)

Loved Baltar and Caprica ending up together. His tears in remembering his father and the fact that he knew how to farm was immensely touching. I’m glad I ended up with something good to think about him at the end.

And Helo lived, and together with Athena helped build the future of the human race.

(although, the only tiny beef I may have with the show…is that Hera really didn’t matter much because the surviving humans from the fleet could easily populate the Earth. I think her importance was more in the fact that it almost brought peace to both sides)

The ending was perfect for me. I got watery eyes a few times, like when Adama spoke to Roslin next to her grave, or Kara disappearing, etc.

This show was one of those few that really meant something to me. Firefly, Sports Night…and BSG…there was just something about it that surpassed everything else on TV in the last few years for me. At least, for shows not called Lost *grin*.

I will say this: I hope the Lost writers can find it in their power to come up with an ending as good as this one.

Thanks for the awesome ride BSG…the shocking events at the end of season two, for the episode Exodus Part 2 (still my favorite), for the amazing music (hat tip to Bear) and for everything else.

It’s a bittersweet moment for me. I’m sad to see it gone, but I’m also glad it ended when it did.

I’ll miss it. Can’t believe it wont be on next week.

That frakking sucks. So say we all.

6 Responses to “Thanks for the ride BSG”

  1. Cap'n Schwartz says:
    March 21, 2009 at 9:16 am

    Superbly said, I dont even want to read other posts after yours Mike, noone better be bashin it if they followed it all that time, like you said the religous tones were throughout the series, give me a break…. what a tremendous show…gonna miss it madly…

  2. Cap'n Schwartz says:
    March 21, 2009 at 9:20 am

    ok one more comment… though BSG is over, there is one more 2 hour made for TV movie… this fall its ‘The Plan’…. its the start of the war and initial attack on the humans, but from the Cylons point of view…sneak peak is here:
    http://scifiwire.com/2009/03/cylons-have-the-plan-and.php

  3. Jina says:
    March 21, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    Cap’n, you and I will have to discuss the finale in person sometime soon. I was slightly disappointed, but am glad that you “uber-fans” loved it. That’s what really matters.

  4. Cap'n Schwartz says:
    March 21, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    I’ll pretend you didn’t even say that…. =P

  5. Jason A. Clark says:
    March 21, 2009 at 8:37 pm

    Well, I’m glad you loved it Mike. I didn’t love it quite as much…

    Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it or anything. For the most part I thought it was a pretty amazing finale (did it seem to anyone else that they packed A LOT into those last two hours!). But I consider myself a HUGE fan of the show and I had a couple of disappointments.

    Kara Thrace was the biggest. Just didn’t get it. I can understand the angels, though I’m on the fence about how I feel about it, but the Kara thing just didn’t make any sense. She was such an important and central part of the show that I felt it was intellectually dishonest for them to just have her disappear and never even attempt to answer the question of who or what she is/was. We must assume that she really did die and that she was maybe resurrected or was herself an angel of some kind… But I don’t see how that fit into the other religious aspects of the show. I can see why people would be upset and confused by it.

    Them finding our Earth and settling it was, honestly, what I expected to happen for the last couple of seasons so it wasn’t a huge surprise. It was fulfilling, though. Not exactly sure why they felt Adama needed to become a recluse at the end…didn’t serve any purpose as far as I could see. A few lines of dialogue could have changed it and the scenes could have stayed exactly the same.

    Like I said, not sure how I feel about the angel aspect but everything was leading up to that being the case so I respect their decision to go that route. In some ways, though, I thought the dialogue after the 150,000 year jump was a bit heavy handed. Some well chosen shots or video footage probably could have said even more in a much more subtle way.

    Thought they dropped the ball a little on the Hera thing too since she was the hope of mankind then all of a sudden she didn’t really matter that much anymore. I can see the argument the writers would make in favor of the choices they made and I understand why they did it that way…but I felt a bit letdown in that regard.

    Still, believe it or not, I thought it was a pretty great ending for one of the best shows of all time. It ended far too soon in my opinion.

  6. Mike says:
    March 21, 2009 at 9:15 pm

    Good stuff Jason…Jina and I talked about it at length this morning and she made a lot of the same arguments you did, although the Kara angle never bugged us.

    She thought it was strange how everyone acted once they got to Earth. Like you said, why wouldn’t Adama want to be with Lee? Or with Tigh as well? Wasn’t it strange that they didn’t even say their goodbyes?

    Maybe the writers wanted us to believe that everyone was just tired of what had just happened for the last 3-4 years and wanted fresh starts, all alone. I dunno, but it didn’t exactly ring true.

    I second the notion about Hera. I’m not sure exactly what was important. Sure, the newspaper at the end called her the Mother of Humanity, but really, anyone could have been.

    What I do think is that she became something mystical that was important to everyone for some reason. If Galactica hadn’t gone after her, then they’d never find a need to go to Earth, the other Cylons would be out there, etc.

    Her existence DID bring the two sides together for final confrontation, which ultimately led to the death of all the other Cylons and the discovery of Earth.

    Maybe that’s what she was there for?

    I also thought the “150,000″ years later technically seemed like a very long time to me. I mean, 38,000 of them landed there, and if you think how old things were 2000 years ago, it just doesn’t seem like it would take 150,000 years for New York to appear.

    As far as Kara, I didn’t have a problem with it. She had a destiny…she always did, and then she died for some reason. Maybe it was God bringing her back, or something else. I don’t think it really matters much, and Ron Moore said they intentionally left it ambiguous for the viewers.

    I thought, as far as all the questions of the show, they really did an amazing job answering 99% of them.

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