Writer: Ronald D. Moore
Grade: B
I have avoided re-watching the series finale and writing this blog post about it for a ridiculously long time. In fact, my extreme disappointment with this finale is part of why I ended up not posting anything for over a month. A lot of the finale’s bigger flaws are covered quite succinctly here, which saves me a lot of time bitching, so thanks TWoP (although I think they missed the meta joke that Ron Moore is God in the BSG-verse). I’ll try not to retread the items on their list if at all possible, though I’m sure some of those things will still work their way in.
The Big Picture
As I said in my blog for “Daybreak, Part 1,” emotional investment was never the problem with this episode. I love these characters, this universe, this ship, and I care what happens.
The problem is that Moore wrote the episode with the intention of stabbing viewers in the gut and making them cry. The story about how Moore agonized over how to tie up the show and came to the conclusion that, “It’s about the characters, stupid” is probably notorious by now, but it’s a copout. He had no idea what to do with the mythology he and his fellow writers had created, so he masked it with a two-plus hour sob fest with a lot of gratuitous space porn tossed in. And it really shows on repeat viewings. The most glaring flaw for me is that, with the exception of Ellen and Saul, every single one of the characters that I loved most either died or ended up alone, and the characters I was least invested in got to pair up and presumably have pretty nice Earthly lives. I doubt I was the only one who felt this way, and it doesn’t really create a lot of excitement over the prospect of re-watching the series from the beginning (not a smart move if you’d like to sell many of those BSG box sets).
As the link above points out, Moore and co. completely dropped the ball when it came to tying up the loose ends of the mythology they’d created. A great many of those “Let’s see where this idea takes us” storylines that seemed interesting ended up going nowhere plot-wise, even if they led our characters through some interesting contortions. Hell, I watch television for character over plot, but the imbalance here was simply poor writing and follow-through.
Also, the science aspects of this episode make little sense, or more precisely, the show basically turns “science” into “divine intervention.” These angels (and presumably God) not only guide life down the same paths on every planet, but are so meddlesome that they made sure we reinvented everything from cigarettes to cars to telephones to “All Along the Watchtower”? It’s ridiculous, as is Hera as “Mitochondrial Eve” and the little meta joke that God=Ron Moore.
The Specifics
I found the flashbacks in Part 2 much less compelling than those in Part 1. Roslin bangs a former student, which leads her to some kind of life-altering epiphany. Bill gets wasted and barfs in an alley so realistically that it almost makes me barf. Not terribly compelling.
The best flashback moment was finding out that Lee and Kara almost had drunken sex the first night they met. It doesn’t paint them into a pretty picture, but it makes perfect sense with what we already know of their history and reinforces their “perpetual case of bad timing” relationship. I found it poignant (in a bittersweet sort of way) that they were drawn to one another from the start, and were further tied together by the fact that they revealed their dark underbellies to one another that night. Somehow I don’t think Kara ever showed Zack that dark, destructive, self-loathing side of herself. Zack got the bubbly, charmingly reckless façade, but with Lee, Kara was able to reveal what was beneath that façade that first night. Was it angsty and a little overwrought? Sure, but I still think it worked and served as a lovely bookend for their relationship.
The significance of Bill handing over the Admiral position to Hoshi is somewhat undermined by the fact that Hoshi hands it right back an hour later in viewer time, and even if he hadn’t, we see the entire fleet piloted into the sun less than two hours later! The passing of the batons to Hoshi and Romo Lampkin was a nice gesture and not completely irrelevant within the BSG-verse, but it was ultimately wasted space in an already bloated finale.
The ‘round the horn segment was melodramatic but still effective at creating a sense of gravitas for the old girl’s final mission and hammering home that not all of these people would make to the end of the episode. I’d admit to getting a little weepy.
So Athena kills Boomer, and then we get a flashback of Bill giving Boomer some tough love back in her early days on Galatica. Boomer tells Bill, “I’ll pay you back one day, sir. When it really means something.” I’m not sure why that was necessary, other than as a reminder that Boomer was once part of the Galactica crew. It would have played better if the flashback had been inserted into a previous episode and viewers were left to make the connection on their own here. As it was, it felt heavy-handed and shoe-horned in.
Tori has been pretty much a useless non-entity in the second half of Season 4, so aside from the fact that her death was woven into the finale plot, there’s no good reason why Galen couldn’t have found out sooner and rid viewers of a pointless and underused character. (Not that I wish Rekha Sharma any ill will--it’s not her fault that the writers primarily ignored Tori unless they needed a whipping girl.)
The scene where Galactica jumped, almost broke in half, and lost about a third of her hull plating got a few sobs out of me. Again, emotional investment was never the problem, and I have an odd love of spaceships in general and The Bucket in particular, so I was horrified.
Starbuck’s goodbye to Sam was equally agonizing, but both actors were wonderful. Starbuck’s devastation that Sam couldn’t even say goodbye to her or return her kiss was sad enough, but then Trucco had to hit it out of the park by perfectly conveying Sam’s inner struggle to find a piece of his former self in that broken mind of his and bring it to the surface. His character is a perfect example of yet another painfully unhappy ending, though. I hope they were going for “tragic irony” with the rehash of Sam’s speech juxtaposed with him rotting in a tank on the CIC as he pilots the fleet into the sun. Because that was far from any kind of “perfection,” and far from a deserved ending for a beloved character.
I never thought Starbuck would make it the end of the series, in part because she’s the kind of person who could never be happy, so I wasn’t surprised that Moore went with the angel scenario (though those red herrings about Daniel being her father still make me want to give Ron Moore the finger…). Still, it was pretty agonizing to see Lee lose the three people he loved—Adama, Kara, and Roslin—within minutes of one another. Why in the holy fucking hell did Bill Adama want to go off and die alone, after all the work he and Lee put into repairing their damaged relationship, and after all the loyalty he showed to Saul Tigh? Separating the Adamas from one another, and Bill from Saul, just seemed like needless angst.
In the same vein, Galen wants to be dumped alone into what will become Ireland or the Orkney Isles or some such place. How uplifting!
Roslin’s sick bay excursion may not have been terribly interesting, but Moore wrote a good death scene for her. When her hand fell as she died and Bill kept talking to her, I thought he knew she was gone and was being stoic about it, and I was okay—sad, but not bawling. Then he looked at her and I realized that he didn’t know, that he was just realizing she was dead and was anything but stoic, and I lost it completely (my roommate said she could hear me sobbing through the ceiling…). I didn’t always like Laura Roslin, but I loved her, and I’m glad she got to see our gorgeous planet Earth and die peacefully with the man she loved.
Little Stuff
-I love that Starbuck was in the Raptor with Athena and Helo when they were gearing for the fight—that’s exactly where I’d expect her to be.
-The culmination of the Opera House visions? Bleh, what uninspired BS. Really, this is it? This is all it meant? Lame.
-The Twins saying goodbye to Adama and Roslin was lovely and perfect (aside from the fact that it should have been a temporary goodbye for Bill and Lee).
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