Tonight's BSG:

[tzikeh]

Okay, so. First of all, I'm going to have to watch the whole thing over again just to get clear on all the OMG SAM THE HYBRID BRINGS YOU EXPOSITION THEATER, and this time I'll be better prepared for John "Daily Show / I'm A PC" Hodgman flinging me right the fuck out of the storyline. Dude, I get that you're a superfan, but couldn't you, yourself, have gauged that putting your very distinctive face and voice in the show would, like, fuck up the scenes you're in? And inspire ten million "I'm a Cylon, and I'm a PC" jokes in a matter of nanoseconds?

Hi, Sam! That was quite the Exposition Core Dump, right there, is what that was. If only we'd known that all we had to do was shoot one of them in the head.

I'm not sure how much I liked how the backstory came to us... actually, I'm kind of sure I really really don't like that we were treated, through Magical Bullet-Time Memory Recall, to the Final Five becoming Bob Saget on How I Created Your Mother, but the medium is not the message, and the message seems to be AWFULLY interesting, if slightly confusing. I really do need to go back right now and watch all of Exposition Sam's scenes... oh, dear, uh... if Sam is going all Word Salad Hybrid Cylon Precog Aphasic on their asses... um... is Chief gonna hook him up to the Galactica?

This is getting freaky.

OH - title - "No Exit." Very much about the baseship storyline in terms of symbolism and parallels and so forth (hell is other skinjobs!), and more prosaic w/r/t Galactica's woes.

Other OH - the opening titles before the teaser before the real titles - DUDE OLD SKOOL CYLONS WERE THE FIRST CENTURIONS OMG OMG AWESOME

And now, to re-play the episode in order to untangle the Exposition Salad.

ETA: Previous post plainly particularly prescient! (LOLITERATION)

EATA: Why do I still venture into the Television Without Pity's episode discussion threads from time to time? All they do is remind me of how fucking ignorant, obtuse, and illiterate so many human beings are.



1) Okay, We know there had to have been at least one Daniel who made it to maturity, because Ellen says he was "artistic" and that John was jealous. So, my guess is that Daniel is Starbuck's piano-playin' artisticky dad. And that's why she painted. And why she has a Special Destiny. And so she's this cycle's Hera, or something.

2) Since we had the Obvious Apple is Obvious moment, we can tie in John Cavil's "murder" of Daniel as a Cain & Abel thing.

3) Ah, the cut from Boomer saying "Who would I want to love?" to a shot of Chief walking down a hallway on the Galactica. Nice. Though how weird would it be if we have Helo and Athena, and then Chief and Boomer? Or would that just be the set-up for a porno?

4) Not only is Sam spewing exposition, but he's doing it like he's auditioning for the fucking Modern Major-General. So, besides the fact that he's monologuing twenty minutes of "shit we want you to know that we couldn't even be bothered to take one step up and show you in flashbacks," it's too much information crammed into not enough screentime.

(Okay. Don't like the massive exposition. Got it. Done with bitching about it now.)

5) Yeah, they're gonna hybridize the Galactica. Fill 'er up with Cylon blood. Hah - just like Roslin.

6) I adore that the Cylon Final-Five Ellen is so different from her human version (and I love that all the "human" Cylons had had their memories of being Cylon knocked offline by Cavil!). Very Earth Mother. Or is that Kobol Mother? I'm going to have to go listen to Sam again, now, aren't I.

(No, seriously, I won't complain again.)

7) Cavil... whatever else you might say about him, the dude *knows what he wants*.

8) Ohhhh, criminy. When Ellen finds that Saul is having a baby with Six? Yeah. That's not going to go well.

9) There should be a shitload more damage and blood in the Quorum room on Colonial One. And no way the cleaning crew's been in yet, since there's still blood on the nameplates and, you know, the chairs are still there. Also it should smell *bad*. And Roslin would *not* sit down, not to mention Lee. Ick.

Comments

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

Yes, watching this I almost sent you an email telling you OMG U R SO SMRT!!!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

LOL SMRT

[casirafics.livejournal.com]

Obvious Apple is Obvious

Well, hey. PC was on the show. We had to get an Apple in there SOMEWHERE.

;)

[grace-om.livejournal.com]

Yes, John Hodgman -- I love him, but NOT on Battlestar doin' srs biznes.

And I love Ellen. All sober and serious with a brain and no makeup...what a gorgeous woman. I never realized this before. It's going to be a little awkward when she shows up to join her beloved husband and his new family...

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Yeah - the Saul and Six have a baby thing can't end well.

[furies.livejournal.com]

re: #8, hahahah, i thought the EXACT SAME THING.

though man, ellen is super fabulous in this incarnation. i LOVE her clothes, too. and the gorgeous skirt-suit she wears to go to her death? awesome.

i thought the same thing about cain & abel, and also daniel being kara's father . . . also, daniel was the 7th, and 7 is a huge number in revelation, and the bible in general, so i feel like something is definitely up with that. though now i'm completely thrown about the numbers of the lines - if cavil/john was 12, and d'anna was a three, and doral 5, etc. then how did the numbering WORK? why would the first created by ellen be one of the last numbers? and who is the lucky number 13, then? (i am convinced there has to be something in the numbering. convinced.)

i still don't understand how the skinjobs came into existence in the first place. i get that ellen and the others figured out how to create new ones and how to resurrect them, but i don't get where the five started from. i mean, who changed them around? who made so many variations on earth all those years ago?

oh, my brain hurts.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Cavil, Sharon, Simon, Leoben, Six, Doral, D'Anna, Daniel. That's eight.

The final five (or first five) makes 13. And the final five don't have numbers.

Daniel as seven

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

"Daniel" is the seventh watcher of the twenty leaders of the 200 fallen angels in Enoch.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

The Cylons had resurrection technology when they lived on Kobol. When the Thirteenth Tribe fled Kobol 3,000 years ago, they went to Earth, where they apparently figured out how to procreate the old-fashioned way and discarded the tech. Presumably they also lost faster than light travel during their time on Earth, or they'd probably still be on their way to Earth. The Final Five were a group of scientists who reinvented / rediscovered resurrection just in time for the genocide of Cylon Earth (no exposition so far on who dropped the bombs on Earth. Maybe one of the Twelve human tribes still had FTL, stumbled across Earth, and decided to eliminate the Cylons? Who knows). Not having rediscovered/re-invented FTL, the Final Five, as the only Survivors, went back to the Twelve Colonies at sublight, only to discover that 2,000 years had passed, the Twelve Colonies had re-invented the Cylons, and were in the middle of the First Cylon War. The Final Five secretly contacted the Centurions, and convinced their little brothers to declare an armistice in exchange for their big brothers/sisters helping them out with creating skinjobs. The skinjobs they created then screwed over both sets of parents, by enslaving the Centurions and scrubbing the memories of the Final Five. Cavil = the Ultimate Ungrateful Son.

I'm kinda impressed that I actually managed to follow all that. Particularly since the damn show decided to exposit all of it, instead of, say, filming a scene where the Final Five arrive at the Colonies and realise they're too late, the humans have already created and alienated Cylons, and are now neck deep in war with them. Apparently whoever wrote this ep never learned that writer's cliche about "Show, don't tell."

[12-12-12.livejournal.com]

Re: the TWoP discussion threads--right there with you. Sometimes it also retroactively impairs my enjoyment of an episode, which makes me *headdesk* more than ever. I've been good about cutting myself off these days, though.

TWoP and other plagues

[auroramama]

I *know*. And I should cut myself off too. But sometimes someone says something smart and thought-provoking. It's just that that happens every few pages, and someone says something bitterly depressing on every page. And it lingers in the mind, somewhere below the conscious level, at least for me. At some point hours later I'll be thinking, "Why am I in such a bad mood?"

I haven't minded the BSG forums so much -- and the inevitable "worst episode in the history of television" post for every single episode no matter how universally acclaimed just makes me laugh -- but I'm also an SPN fan, and threads for the shows where Everyone Hates Character A are just misery on wheels.

Re: TWoP and other plagues

[12-12-12.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the only one! And the worst part is, as you say, the way the taste and memory of it *linger*, like finding a maggot in your apple. Ugh.

Re: TWoP and other plagues

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

If after four seasons they can't *spell the names of the characters properly*, they should be banned just on principle.

[luminosity]

Loved Ellen. Cavil must die. PC guy was a horrible bit of miscasting. However, don't you just *know* that the brain surgeon "killed" Sam deliberately. Did Doc Cottle knowingly lie to Starbuck? Yes.

I think that all of the Boomers should make a porno.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

don't you just *know* that the brain surgeon "killed" Sam deliberately

Oh, I think it was Nurse British Chick. She hates Cylons--we saw that before when Gaeta came into the medbay.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Did Doc Cottle knowingly lie to Starbuck? Yes.

Hm... I don't know. Doc Cottle has always been exactly what a doctor should be. You treat the patient in front of you. He has never had a problem, human or Cylon, doing what was necessary. I think the only time he lied was about Helo and Sharon's baby, and that was because he was ordered by the President to do so.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

One could presume that Roslin told Cottle she would put the baby out an airlock if he didn't go along, and he believed her. And went along, reasoning that while the parents would be miserable if they thought their child was dead, they'd be even more miserable if she actually was. Given that neither Helo nor Athena has killed him since Rapture, presumably he managed to convince them of that offscreen. Of course, all this stuff happening off screen is one of my pet peeves about Galactica as a show.

I mean, I get that they're just supporting characters, but if the show has enough time to spend an entire fucking episode in Season 3.5 on the Starbuck's Creek Quadrangle of Doom, they have enough time to put in a scene with Cottle either explaining himself or apologising to the patients he screwed over. But then, this is the show that filmed that fabulous Roslin/Six scene in the Starbuck's Creek episode (the scene that brilliantly presaged Crossroads, would've been brilliant anyway, and was hit out of the park by McDonnell and Helfer). Damnit, where was I? Oh yeah, if the show would actually film that scene and then cut it in favour of yet more Starbuck's Creek blithering, they're idiots, and I shouldn't expect them to do right by their supporting characters when they can't even do right by their headliners.

Sorry. I'm still kinda bitter about Season 3, as you might've gathered.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I'm still kinda bitter about Season 3, as you might've gathered.

Yah.

Sam the Exposition Cuisinart

[auroramama]

This is what I get for worrying after last ep that Sam would die without getting a single comprehensible line of dialogue, right? Or is this what happens when you stick a fork in a Toaster?

Katee totally sold me on Kara's focus on Sam here, though, and I was trembling in sympathy with her as she dithered. And I know they anvilled the Demetrius bit explicitly, but I still felt sorry for Kara having to go through now what Sam went through then.

She seems more centered than Sam was then, though. (So maybe no one will get shot.) He was still playing Secret Cylon then, and she's out to him now. When did she get a chance to talk to Sam about what she found on Earth? He knew what she was talking about when she wanted to know whether she was #7, and she knew what he was talking about through most of it, which is pretty impressive since I sure didn't and I'd seen the flashbacks, what there was of them.

Auroradad likes that Boomer is a wild card again. Talk about someone G-d isn't finished with yet.

Did anyone else wonder how it could be that of all the medical people we've seen, the one with the best bedside manner is Dr. Cottle? I guess they're in such high demand that the medic can get away with what must have been deliberate cruelty. Generally one introduces the topic of brain death with more circumspection.

Is this Ellen centered enough to remember that she made Cavil, Cavil screwed up Saul's memory, and Saul thought she was human and dead? I'll be kind of annoyed if she goes ballistic over the kid.

She was more beautiful, this episode, than Six. Every line on her face was subtle and numinous.

Re: Sam the Exposition Cuisinart

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

When did she get a chance to talk to Sam about what she found on
Earth? He knew what she was talking about when she wanted to know whether she was #7,

I don't think she has -- he wouldn't wonder at her asking if she was a Cylon, though, since she blowed up and then came back.

Generally one introduces the topic of brain death with more circumspection.

Ah, but remember British Med Person (Ashay?) *hates* Cylons, and hates people who love Cylons, and no one has any idea wtf Starbuck is anymore. Of course she'd be nasty -- in fact I think she deliberately put Sam into a vegetative state, seeing as how the two main doctors can't understand why he's not awake yet.

[devohoneybee.livejournal.com]

Daniel means "God is my judge" or "Judge of God" or something else involving "God" and "judge."

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

this time I'll be better prepared for John "Daily Show / I'm A PC" Hodgman flinging me right the fuck out of the storyline.

Okay, that actually was John Hodgman. I was like, "Why is the PC operating on Sam Anders?!?"

[amadyce.livejournal.com]

4)Strangely, I didn't have a problem with the exposition-dump, as everyone seems to be calling it. I know, I know, show don't tell, but I really think it worked this time. It's only two relatively short scenes and it was worked into the plot in a way that, IMO, wasn't awkward. I felt just like Tigh, Galen, and Tory must have during those scenes. Desperate for Sam to spill about all the questions I've had. Somehow, I don't think flashbacks would have been as effective. A lot of that stuff would have taken the action too much into the past to the point where it would be a different show. We've already seen the flashbacks of the cylon nuking on earth so I had those images in my head to build on. I think short of putting a whole extra episode of "Here's what happened a long time ago" having Sam remember was a better choice. For me the drama of him just starting to get it all back (what Cavil took) and then losing it all again was more poignant.

9) Yeah, I thought that too, but I think they probably felt it was worth it to film that scene in the quorum room so the audience would remember who they were talking about. They weren't exactly regular characters, so having Roslin and Lee in the room with the papers everywhere and the seats shot up brings it all home, while avoiding the grotesque by having the set dressers spray blood everywhere.