Fri, September 22, 2006
You can imagine my (further) disgust—8:57 PM
Only kidding. In fact, I found the incorrectly named "pull-out" feature to be informative and useful, since the finale of season two and the previous EW blurb about season three have me considering a return to Lost fandom.
Not that I ever stopped watching, but for most of season two I was making snarky comments when I should've been taking notes. Thanks to this handy li'l guide (and an in-depth Q&A with Brandon), I'm about as prepared as anyone could reasonably expect to be.
(Also, hats off to EW for not doing this in the form of their infuriating "A to Z" features.)
Brandon — Sat, 9/23/06 2:22am
I've only skimmed it so far, but they seem to have done an excellent job with this. Jeff Jensen's love of the show has definitely been a driving force in the quality of EW's coverage.
Only 12 days left til Season 3!
"Holly" — Mon, 9/25/06 3:42pm
Since EW's cover raises the issue: I acknowledge and accept that some of the same people who like Lost don't like Battlestar Galactica, but I don't understand it. To me, BSG is doing something a lot like what Lost does – only better, with intriguing and relatable character development and moral conundrums that actually make me think, plus the grand mysteries and exciting plots. Are the spaceships really that much of a turn-off? Seriously, I'm really curious about this.
Bee Boy — Mon, 9/25/06 4:24pm
Okay! I was actually going to ask you about this. (I searched old e-mail but couldn't find a previous discussion that I swear we had about this back when BSG first started up. Maybe we conversed in person? In this day and age – could that be?)
I'm no huge Lost fan, but I read all of this issue's Battlestar Galactica coverage and it sounded like a show I might enjoy very much. EW also pimped the show pretty heavily three years ago (with the same blonde hottie pictures), so needless to say I was intrigued. I remember TiVo'ing the first episode, watching four minutes of it, and being turned off by the very kind of sci-fi talk (and, frankly, sci-fi acting) that I was promised I'd be avoiding. I felt betrayed, and I bailed immediately. Because as much as I want to like sci-fi shows, I've learned I can't stomach anything sci-fi-ier than Firefly. I gave Farscape the ol' college try – I really did – but for some reason I just don't cotton to the worlds of these shows as easily as some people do. I think it might have to do with the dense political backstory that you usually have to absorb, or the heavy-handed allegory (those per-episode "morals" you always hear about on Star Trek). But I'm not really sure – I suppose it could be the spaceships.
Now, I'm interested in diving into season three, either with EW's blurb to guide me or a quick Netflixing of the past stuff. (11 discs? Crikey! EW's blurb it is!) It sounds like you've stayed with the series all along, and you give it the same enthusiastic recommendation EW does?
Brandon — Mon, 9/25/06 5:16pm
For me, it's just the setting. I don't know why, but a fantasy setting just seems to induce a sort of lethargic disinterest in me. I saw the first two Lord of the Rings, was able to admire their quality, but every time I think about seeing Return of the King, all I can muster is a "meh." Never got into the Star Wars films with the same fervor of other people my age (and stopped with The Phantom Menace), never got into Star Trek that much. Haven't seen Blade Runner, haven't ingested a word nor frame of Harry Potter.
I don't doubt that Battlestar is excellent - you can't go wrong with Olmos and Mary McDonnell - but I just can't muster any interest. I was an X-Files fan, and I loved Invasion last year, so I'm not opposed to fantasy elements. I guess I just need a real-world setting to make it work.
Bee Boy — Mon, 9/25/06 5:26pm
...like all those real-world hypermagnetic time warp islands they have out there with the spontaneously generated polar bears and the clouds of sentient nanoparticles? Thought so.
(strutting around in circles, thumping his chest, gesturing towards the heavens, humming "We Are the Champions" as loudly as possible)
Brandon — Mon, 9/25/06 5:52pm
Yeah, but those are the fantasy elements added on top of the real-world base. At its most basic level, it's still a real-world desert island with real-world people stranded after a real-world plane crash.
That's some fine strutting there, my unexplained-polar-bear-despising friend.
Bee Boy — Mon, 9/25/06 5:58pm
He he! Ask Holly – these EW cover posts are all about the shameless bait!
"Holly" — Mon, 9/25/06 8:14pm
Woo-hoo! I'm glad to be discussing this. And I'm enjoying the virtual strutting.
I do give BSG the same enthusiastic endorsement that EW does (and actually I didn't like the miniseries or the first episode of the series, either; the story and characters grew on me as Season 1 progressed). I further want to draw attention to the article's emphasis on ways that the show doesn't conform to traditional scifi stereotypes. It is neither overly tech-heavy, overly allegorical, or underly (is that a word?) character-driven. It uses scifi technobabble the way The West Wing used political babble – if you care, you can sort it all out, but it's background, unessential to the real story. BSG assumes that its audience consists of smart people who live in the real world and appreciate complex stories and characters, spaceships or no spaceships.
That said, it's true that I'm speaking as someone who enjoys science fiction and believes that Lord of the Rings is great cinema. Plenty of people I respect share Brandon's point that if it isn't somehow tied to the real world, it's too hard to get into. I don't know why that's not a problem for me, but it never has been. I am totally willing to suspend disbelief for spaceships, artificial gravity, polar bears on tropical islands, invisibility cloaks, flying broomsticks, and Rings of Power. I am totally unwilling to suspend disbelief for characters acting in ways I don't understand, obeying motivations that make no sense. One minor throwaway line from a character that rings false on my ear will throw me out of a totally real-world drama in a way that BSG's reliance on a human-robot hybrid baby totally does not. I can happily accept the story on its terms – but then I want it to stay true to those terms.
I'm always super curious about ways to bring more non-scifi/fantasy fans into the fold. I see these genres as having the potential to tell some of the most complex, human-centric, profound stories possible – just in a way that's rich with metaphor (not clunky allegory, but elegant metaphor). Some of the hybrid forms – scifi or fantasy with a real-world basis (X-Files, Buffy) – are certainly some of my favorites.
If you're interested in giving BSG a chance after all that, I'd recommend the EW article, plus maybe the "Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far" hour-long special that is airing at various times on USA and SCIFI in advance of the season premiere.
Bee Boy — Tue, 9/26/06 10:23am
And I'm huge on this. Huge. It's at the core of most things that have irritated me about Lost over its history. (And my thoughts regarding Superman are all too well known.)
"Holly" — Tue, 9/26/06 2:55pm
Yep – in my opinion, this is the major crime that Lost commits, both in terms of character and plot. Well, this and having characters who constantly invent irrational conflicts with one another when any sane human beings would be struggling to cooperate – while also struggling to satisfy their overwhelming curiosity about all the wacky stuff occurring around them by comparing stories, sharing experiences, and asking basic logical questions. But these Losties, by gosh, they're just darn determined to keep pointless secrets like paranoid weirdos and fight with each other in defiance of all reason. It's exhausting to watch.
Ah, but maybe this is a clue to the Mystery. Something to do with electromagnetism squelching curiosity and teamwork.
And, to be fair, something about the show must be working, because I keep giving it another chance – in defiance of all reason myself.
Bee Boy — Mon, 3/12/07 7:28pm
I'm continuing to enjoy catching up on BSG. There's no danger it will become one of my most anticipated shows each week, but it's still plenty good. I just finished a recent episode, "The Woman King," and it left me with an inkling about why sci-fi shows get less respect than others – a question posed in these comments a while back.
They've got this character "Helo" who is just an all-around frackup – he does nothing right, and he's more irritatingly self-righteous than Lisa Simpson, constantly ruining things for everyone else. In this episode, it appears to be more of the same. Still, the show makes it clear that you should understand where Helo's coming from. Sure, he's going about it the wrong way, but his heart's in the right place! Then, in the end, it turns out he was right all along (basically, by dumb luck) and so we have to admit that there's a reason not to crack him over the skull and shoot him out of an airlock.
Which is a complaint I sometimes have about the show: everybody's always right. They don't often agree, but they each have a defensible position, depending on how you look at it. There's a constant moral grey area – it's up to the audience to sort out who did the right thing and who didn't. The closest thing BSG has to a villain is Gaius Baltar, but he's not so much evil as confused by moral quandaries and questions about his own identity. I can't stand Starbuck because she's intensely self-involved (to an extent that rivals Meredith Grey) and destructive to herself and others, but that's just me – she's clearly the spunky hero of the show. So there's never a satisfying conclusion because there's no clear-cut good guy to win out over a clear-cut bad guy.
I understand why the show does this: it's meant to be thoughtful and give us perspective on the real world, which is often a mishmash of competing motives and consequences, some good and some bad. But, as television, it can be infuriating. I'm not saying I never want thoughtful television, or morally relativistic television. But it can be tiresome, compared to other shows where you get to cheer after each episode. I don't know if all sci-fi shows are like this, but in my experience many are. So, that might answer your question – if the average American is more prone to a tidy, ass-kicking conclusion and less prone to thinking about things than I am, that might be why he or she shies away from this kind of programming.
(Also, the episode I watched last night, "Taking a Break from All Your Worries," rivaled early Jericho for "Wah! My adultery is really becoming a strain!" – which... no.)