“Sometimes the best laid plans have been known to go astray”
– John Mellencamp, “Sometimes a Great Notion”
So last week’s Battlestar Galactica, which I’ve finally watched, was pretty much exactly what I expected. (Spoiler warnings in effect.)
Not the specific twists and plot developments — which still seem mostly like unearned shocks and melodrama — but the overall feel and my reaction to it. Like just about all BSG episodes in recent memory, this was an intense (and sometimes very bleak) hour of television that afforded the actors some interesting scenes and suggested some not uninteresting things to come. (Or to have come again, if the cyclical nature of History is really what the show’s all about.) But narratively, it’s kind of a mess, betraying a lot of the same problems that have weighed down the show since at least season 3 — and which have likely been present from the very beginning.
I think my opinion of the show falls somewhere between Gerry Canavan and Abigail Nussbaum’s (links above). By no means have I lost all faith in Battlestar, and at this point I’ll continue to watch to the very end, but I didn’t see anything in “Sometimes a Great Notion” to suggest the last of the series will be less problematic or frustrating than what’s come before.
“And my heart, it lies at the bottom of the ocean”
– John Mellencamp, “Sometimes a Great Notion”
I finally watched it, and I felt the same…ambivalent. I just don’t know what to make of the episode.
My reaction to BSG continues to be the same as it has been. Generally, when I’m watching it, I’m interested in it, even frequently rather moved by it. And then, as soon as I stop watching it, it more or less ceases to exist for me.
This seems to be a common complaint, and it’s exactly how I feel about the show. I’m invested when I’m watching, but it’s hard to rise above indifference when that hour is up. If I’m more interested now — enough to blog about it briefly — it’s only because these are the final handful of episodes, and the problems inherent in Ron Moore’s vision for the show are becoming more pronounced as they come to a head.