BSG Finale Live Blog (of a pre-recorded episode)

I decided to try my hand at this craze of live-blogging significant events. So I chose the series finale of Battle Star Galactica. The only problem is that I was at work during the finale and didn't get to see it. So now I'm going to live-blog a finale that happened 2 days ago. Please note that the time stamps of my blogging will coincide with the time in the show, but I am skipping commercials, so my times won't correspond with those of someone who watched it on network TV. (it was 2 hours long on TV, it's only 1:35 without commercials...yeah, we all got jypped 30 minutes of awesome). Here goes:

0:00.27 - Sweet, recaps...I love recaps. I get to see all the stuff I've already seen. I like Frisky Dingo's recaps, most of them either never happened or happened completely different than what the recap is showing.

0:00.58 - Oooh, it's the present day now...but it's all flashbacks. So it's not REALLY present day.

0:02.10 - Caprica looks like LA in Bladerunner, but strippers are the same in any universe.

0:07.50 - Mommie Darko is gonna get some "Hot For Teacher" action. Nice.

0:08.47 - Aww, poor Adama can't hold his liquor. Mmm...vomit.

0:10.02 - Is Gaius gonna be a big ole pussy and let everyone go off and kill themselves?

0:14.40 - Isn't that nice. Adama gave command of the fleet to some guy I only remember for being Gaeta's gay lover.

0:18.09 - I knew Gaius wouldn't let me down. He can't go out as a big wet wimpy gash of a man. And damn that's a lot of toasters.

0:19.30 - Museum Force Go!
0:20.40 - Bathtub Boy? Go!

0:25.00 - Poor Galactica, it's all busted now. :(

0:26.00 - At least they spray painted the good toasters so they'd know the difference when they turn against them.

0:28.47 - So is he sucking the gravy out of her, or harvesting ADAM?

0:31.25 - Very nice! They each have their very own Harvey inside them.

0:33.44 - Boomer down! Boomer down! You knew they had to kill her...

0:43.10 - Well it's nice for this scene that we've seen on and off for the last few seasons to finally make some sense.

0:51.44 - What happens in Bathtub Boy's water, stays in Bathtub Boy's water.

0:55.30 - Wonder what Jimi Hendrix (or Bob Dylan)would think about being the key to saving mankind?

1:01.13 - So we're at the 1-hour mark and I'm afraid the next 30 minutes are gonna be kinda preachy.

1:05.22 - "...he'll guide the entire fleet directly into the sun." Soo..no testing the waters, make sure it's all cool before you blow up the only way off the rock, huh?

1:21.55 - Uhh..ok. So...see ya later Starbuck. Have fun storming the castle.

1:26.50 - Well that's depressing.

1:35.00 - All part of God's plan, huh? And...credits.

And thus the end of a great, albeit, short era of sci-fi ends. Hell, even Sci-fi is ending, considering they plan on changing their name to Syfy (yeah, that'll lose that geek stigma). It's kinda sad, I felt the same way after Star Trek: The Next Generation, Babylon 5, and Farscape ended as well. Sure, there is the prequel series, Caprica, and even talks of a movie by Glen Larson which would actually be based on the original series, but for all intents and purposes, the throne is now empty and there aren't any suitors for the king of sci-fi.

There were some things about the finale that I felt were a bit odd or a bit off. One odd thing was that the special effects seemed to be a bit lower quality in this episode than in any of the previous ones I can remember. I wonder if it was the budget versus the running time. Throughout the series there has been the allusion to God's plan made by the Caprica 6 in Gaius' head, and to a slightly lesser degree by the other Cylons, like Cavil, but stating that Caprica 6 and Gaius' delusions were actually angels was a bit odd, and then the epilogue with the two angels walking through modern day New York talking again about God's plan was kind of cheesy.

For the most part, however, things were tied up nicely. There was the poignant ending of Laura and Adama, the divvying up of all the survivors to save humanity, and even a cute little family scene with Helo and Athena. There were two big questions I was left with by the end that weren't answered. The obvious one was what the hell was Starbuck? A ghost, an angel herself, the second coming of Jesus, the product of a ship-wide hallucination because of an overactive meth lab? That one is likely to never be answered. The other one, which seems less obvious to me, is how exactly was Hera the savior of humanity. It has ended up as BSG's "Save the cheerleader", which never really panned out in Heroes, at least not to my satisfaction. If it was because she lead Cavil to CIC, which lead to a cease fire, which lead the destruction of the colony that housed the remaining threatening Cylons, then yeah, I suppose. That's a bit tangential and kinda pushing it for me. All in all, I was glad the show was able to go out on a high note, unlike so many other initially great shows, and get a true ending that didn't seem rushed or forced. So say we all.