Fuddlemiff
Is this real life?
How far into it are you? Popular opinion is that it went down hill in season 3, but there are quite mixed opinions about the last season.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
There was a long stretch of annoyingness in season three (it's the love rectangle, you'll know it when you see it) but I think season four recovered from that...but then season four had issues too. And when they say "they have a plan" in the opening titles you should mentally substitute the words "THEY HAVE NO FUCKING PLAN" in to avoid disappointment.
Fuddlemiff
Is this real life?
"The Cylons were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. They look and feel human. Some are programmed to think they are human. There are many copies. And they give the impression of having a plan, through their decisive, yet beguiling actions. However, they're full of shit."
Donovan
beer, I want beer
I'm nearly through what they call season 2.5, whatever the hell that is. I've just watched my first episode that made me say, "What? Oh Come ON." It was the abortion episode and I can't remember specifically what bugged me but the writing was pisspoor for that episode, very jarring. I remember wanting to watch the credits to see who wrote that crap.
Two and a half seasons is a pretty good track record to get hit with series lag, all things considered. The annoying factors are only beginning to wear on me, like Starbuck's one-note character "She's amazing but reckless, super hot and loves sex and only guy hobbies like sports and poker and cigars." In other words, nerd fantasy girl. I mentioned to someone I was a little creeped out that she was at once more masculine AND more feminine than Dirk Benedict. Apollo is kinda bland and flat. The best parts of the series are Hardass Adama, batshit Baltar and his crazy blond ghost girl, Richard Hatch as the shady terrorist Jerek, and I even really like Tigh who may be the most tortured one of the lot, because he's got that wife. That wife, brrrrrrr. I think she turned off my sex drive. And the Cylons are definitely more scary than the first time, although I'm getting tired of the same four or five, I want new ones dammit.
Oh well. Two and a half seasons ain't bad, and the best thing about netflix is even the shitty ones will go quickly with the FF button. Funny aside: back a year ago or so I tried to start catching up on the series via Blockbuster, and rented one that turned out to be a tv movie about the Pegasus with that admiral bitch. I was completely lost for the most part, having no ground for the story to stand on, but by contrast it made the actual Pegasus arc in this recent series MUCH more powerful for me by knowing the backstory in reverse. When they found that tortured cylon, for example, I knew what had happened to her and was more sympathetic as a result. Interesting effect...
O
Two and a half seasons is a pretty good track record to get hit with series lag, all things considered. The annoying factors are only beginning to wear on me, like Starbuck's one-note character "She's amazing but reckless, super hot and loves sex and only guy hobbies like sports and poker and cigars." In other words, nerd fantasy girl. I mentioned to someone I was a little creeped out that she was at once more masculine AND more feminine than Dirk Benedict. Apollo is kinda bland and flat. The best parts of the series are Hardass Adama, batshit Baltar and his crazy blond ghost girl, Richard Hatch as the shady terrorist Jerek, and I even really like Tigh who may be the most tortured one of the lot, because he's got that wife. That wife, brrrrrrr. I think she turned off my sex drive. And the Cylons are definitely more scary than the first time, although I'm getting tired of the same four or five, I want new ones dammit.
Oh well. Two and a half seasons ain't bad, and the best thing about netflix is even the shitty ones will go quickly with the FF button. Funny aside: back a year ago or so I tried to start catching up on the series via Blockbuster, and rented one that turned out to be a tv movie about the Pegasus with that admiral bitch. I was completely lost for the most part, having no ground for the story to stand on, but by contrast it made the actual Pegasus arc in this recent series MUCH more powerful for me by knowing the backstory in reverse. When they found that tortured cylon, for example, I knew what had happened to her and was more sympathetic as a result. Interesting effect...
O
Donovan
beer, I want beer
Just remembered the two things that triggered my WTF reflex. One was small, almost nitpicky, the other was a major fucking plothole IMO.
During the episode on abortion, the embattled president at one point yells, "Hey you got your pound of flesh. Now GTFO" or something like that. Now granted, the series so far plays pretty heavily with greek mythology and earth related ancient history, etc, and provides a plausible explanation for the similarities. But "Pound of flesh" isn't ancient, it's Shakespeare. Earth 16th century literature has no place in the dialogue. Furthermore, "Pound of flesh" in the context of the conversation made no sense at all. It refers to exacting an unreasonable or completely ridiculous payment for services rendered, and draws its origins from the character Shylock who demanded such a ransom in the literal sense. (BTW, also the inspiration for many of the labels used on jews to this day)
Yeah it's slightly nitpicky, but another reason it was so jarring is that in the show it was connected to a conversation about a successful abortion some young girl had just had against the wishes of her parents, so the already incorrect and inappropriate term "pound of flesh" took on a wholly repugnant meaning. Sloppy, careless, stupid writing mistake.
The other, and much more major, writing fuckup was the deus ex machina way Boomer saved the Galactica from a Cylon Virus, by plugging her arm into their computer's hot lead, essentially jamming a cord into her bloody forearm. Let's suspend the outlandish notion of compatibility for just a second, and the assumption that not only would the software code of two disparate and warring alien species be identical and able to co-mingle without effort, or that the hardwire port in that chick's arm would even be able to FIT the jack of the ancient Galactica computer system: the REAL problem I had with that whole scenario is that the show spent an entire year reinforcing the notion that the Cylon/humans were so identical as to be undetectable even at the molecular level. It was a MAJOR FUCKING PLOT POINT, PEOPLE. You're telling me that in all that poking around they did, all that examination with microscopes and cell samples and whatnot, nobody noticed the COMPUTER HARDWIRE JACK IN THEIR GODDAMN FOREARMS?
Okay end of rant. That was my WTF moment watching the season 2.5, which I gather now had something to do with the internet. Looks like they made a major shift for season three and made everyone get a new haircut to show time passage. I'm hoping the season will be good coming up, but I'm not sure and there are some serious reservations already.
During the episode on abortion, the embattled president at one point yells, "Hey you got your pound of flesh. Now GTFO" or something like that. Now granted, the series so far plays pretty heavily with greek mythology and earth related ancient history, etc, and provides a plausible explanation for the similarities. But "Pound of flesh" isn't ancient, it's Shakespeare. Earth 16th century literature has no place in the dialogue. Furthermore, "Pound of flesh" in the context of the conversation made no sense at all. It refers to exacting an unreasonable or completely ridiculous payment for services rendered, and draws its origins from the character Shylock who demanded such a ransom in the literal sense. (BTW, also the inspiration for many of the labels used on jews to this day)
Yeah it's slightly nitpicky, but another reason it was so jarring is that in the show it was connected to a conversation about a successful abortion some young girl had just had against the wishes of her parents, so the already incorrect and inappropriate term "pound of flesh" took on a wholly repugnant meaning. Sloppy, careless, stupid writing mistake.
The other, and much more major, writing fuckup was the deus ex machina way Boomer saved the Galactica from a Cylon Virus, by plugging her arm into their computer's hot lead, essentially jamming a cord into her bloody forearm. Let's suspend the outlandish notion of compatibility for just a second, and the assumption that not only would the software code of two disparate and warring alien species be identical and able to co-mingle without effort, or that the hardwire port in that chick's arm would even be able to FIT the jack of the ancient Galactica computer system: the REAL problem I had with that whole scenario is that the show spent an entire year reinforcing the notion that the Cylon/humans were so identical as to be undetectable even at the molecular level. It was a MAJOR FUCKING PLOT POINT, PEOPLE. You're telling me that in all that poking around they did, all that examination with microscopes and cell samples and whatnot, nobody noticed the COMPUTER HARDWIRE JACK IN THEIR GODDAMN FOREARMS?
Okay end of rant. That was my WTF moment watching the season 2.5, which I gather now had something to do with the internet. Looks like they made a major shift for season three and made everyone get a new haircut to show time passage. I'm hoping the season will be good coming up, but I'm not sure and there are some serious reservations already.
Loktar
Pinata Whacker
I watched it from the beginning on youtube and other streaming sites. Caught up by the middle of season 3 and watched the rest on TV. All thanks to Cassie for persuading me to watch it.
Fuddlemiff
Is this real life?
I don't think Boomer was supposed to have a port in her arm, I think the lead from Galactica was supposed to communicate in some way with her blood or other biology, in the same way that the Cylons interact with their computers merely by dipping their hands into water. She didn't have some sort of metallic endoskeleton in there. It's still a bit ridiculous, but like a lot of tech stuff in BSG, they kept the specifics quite vague in order to avoid nitpicking.
Donovan
beer, I want beer
Fair enough, I must have missed the part about the water or haven't seen it yet. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't already irritated about the "pound of flesh" gaffe. Like I said, I'm up to 3 seasons and change now, and I have only had one real sucktacular episode to bitch about, so I can forgive that clinker...
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Wasn't Black Market season two? That's regarded as the first really bad epiosde...
Donovan
beer, I want beer
Yeah, I watched that one, it didn't strike me as particularly bad, just totally unnecessary. It was a filler episode that could have been written for any standard cop show, and certainly it was substantially out of character for Lee Adama and most of the others in the episode, but it wasn't particularly awful just very, very forgettable. Thankfully, watching them one after the other with no week-long break between episodes lessens the impact of an episode like that, where I could see having to swallow that shit for a whole week might give original viewers a much bigger tummy ache...
Donovan
beer, I want beer
Just finished the New Caprica arc, and it wasn't awful, but kinda disjointed, like they didn't exactly know what they were doing besides shaking up the status quo. I won't spoilerize any of it, but I really enjoyed the Tigh sections, I liked the bit with Jerek, I like Baltar's new direction, Starbuck's stuff was painful to watch and not in a good way, and holy shit somebody left out the cookies in Lee's cabin. Is that makeup? Or did he really pork up and they just wrote it into the story. The Pegasus resolution was surprising and a bit convoluted, felt like it was forced just to simplify future storylines.
Okay, gotta switch laundry and continue overdose.
Okay, gotta switch laundry and continue overdose.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
I though the New Caprica stuff was pretty great. Fat Lee was certainly a surprise (it was make-up.) I thought the scene with Starbuck killing Leoben every morning then calmly eating her breakfast was awesome. The stuff with the little girl might have been pointless (can't remember if it was important later.)
Tigh doing what he did was pretty heartbreaking. AND IT'S ZARAK.
Tigh doing what he did was pretty heartbreaking. AND IT'S ZARAK.
Donovan
beer, I want beer
Huh, my ear was translating it as a soft "J", but til now he hasn't been around enough for me to notice. Whatever, looks like he's graduating to first-name basis with the president so "Tom" is good enough.
New Caprica wasn't necessarily bad IMO, it just felt a little like a deliberate shakeup, like the writers needed to mix up the status quo and fast, so they threw a bunch of plotlines into a mixer and set the thing for puree. The end result is that some of the new stories will maybe be very very good, better than the "benevolent overlord" stuff they were trying to do, but perhaps some stuff will get left behind in the shuffle.
New Caprica wasn't necessarily bad IMO, it just felt a little like a deliberate shakeup, like the writers needed to mix up the status quo and fast, so they threw a bunch of plotlines into a mixer and set the thing for puree. The end result is that some of the new stories will maybe be very very good, better than the "benevolent overlord" stuff they were trying to do, but perhaps some stuff will get left behind in the shuffle.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Jake the dog.
Homo Erectus
Registered User
I never watche dit and I don't have a movie place nearby. Can this be downloaded?