Dabbling with a BSG Season 2 Review
Mar. 12th, 2006 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[As an aside, had a very funny moment glancing at flist - two completely opposite commentaries on the English vs. French rugby match were, due to the oddness of lj, posted one above the other. Sort of point/counter-point without the two people ever meeting or an annoying journalist commenting in between. Also Proof positive that no matter where you live in this world, people are nutty about sporting events. Made me giggle uncontrollably for five minutes.]
To post or not to post about Season 2 BSG which just ended on Friday? Should be doing other things, frankly. Plus many people have posted on this -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeeandink has gathered a list of the postings on the finale, which has mixed reviews. One of the best is this one, http://coalescent.livejournal.com/310498.html, which explains clearly and conscisely why the finale did not work for me. Go read it.
Here's what I wrote before reading it...which isn't as conscise, but what the hey.
I felt the second season did not live up to the first season's potential. Granted the first season was shorter and in some respects easier to put together - people on the run. It had also gotten amazing reviews - which did put a lot of pressure on the writers to hammer together the next season. But, I've read that the writers more or less hammered out where this was all going before the first episode of Season 1 was written. Which means, S2 should have been tighter.
On the other hand as anyone who has ever worked in television or investigated the possibility of working in television understands - tight, well-plotted, clearly delineated, high quality are all laughable goals in a profession that bows to advertising and marketing gods. And is forced to churn out scripts and fully produced/acted/directed episodes at the speed of light. Anyone who has attempted to write a screenplay or teleplay in three days or less may be able to understand how difficult it is to write one in one or two days, get it chopped to pieces, rework it and have it ready to produce in less than a day after you handed it in.tightropegirl explains what it is like to write for a tv show. Many online critics have a tendency to evaluate tv shows in the same way they'd evaluate a film (which has a lot longer), a play (even longer still) or a novel (the longest yet) - three mediums which allow the artist a lot of time to work out the kinks. With TV we get the first or second draft. It doesn't look finished to you? Well that's because it isn't - they didn't have time to make it finished. If you listen to commentaries for TV shows - the director/creator/producer will often quip that it is miraculous the episode came out as well as it did due to the fact that he felt it was more or less his first or second draft - he didn't have time to fine tune it.
That does not mean that we shouldn't critically evaluate the Television show. Nor that I'm not going to, of course I am, I adore critiquing tv shows. Just that it is a caveat worth keeping in mind.
My difficulty with this season of BSG was that I started to lose the characters, with the possible exception of Giaus Baltar whose thread stayed consistently true to his character throughout. At times, I got the impression that the writers were the most interested with Gaius, could be wrong there. The other characters did not feel off so much as just seemed to get increasingly darker as the season passed, which normally I don't mind - if you've been reading my journal, you know by now, that I like dark characters and dark plot-lines, the darker the better...so why did it bug me here? Good question.
It wasn't the grimness of the show nor the acting. It was how the female characters were increasingly portrayed within the fabric of the storyline and the universe as a whole. Not only the female, but the male in their relationships with the female characters. It felt, and again this is odd for me to say, since I tend to not always notice this stuff, decidedly misogynistic. I am not sure if this was deliberate - an attempt by the writers to show that the humans more or less deserved what they got at the hands of the cylons (a misanthropic theme as opposed to a misgoynistic one, perhaps?) or if it was unconscious. I'm hoping the former, but am uncertain.
Each female character without exception is abused or saved in some way by a man. When the men commit horrible crimes they do it against women. The most sadistic characters - the head of Pegasus and Six are both women and it is interesting that they take out each other - Helen Cain has Gina (Six) raped and tortured, while Gina (Six) kills Helen Cain and explodes a nuclear device. Then we have the Starbuck/Apollo relationship which does not bring out the best in Apollo - who becomes increasingly chauvinistic, authoritarian and misogynistic in his treatment of Starbuck and the women around him, to the point that I did not like him much at all by the end of the season - this was a character I actually used to like. Other female characters that are oddly used are Rosylyn who becomes more and more like Helen Cain - attempting to fix the election, her decision to take Sharon (8's) baby from her, making the woman think she's dead, and well her request that Adama have Starbuck assaignate Helen Cain. Adama remains the nice guy, Roslyn the not so nice one. Normally I wouldn't mind the flipping of gender roles here, but it was right after Helen Cain came on the scene. Too much. And of course Sharon, who is raped (or they attempt rape), abused, beaten, and treated like an object. Note the cylon women are treated like objects and they are the ones we see the most. The cylon men die quickly once they are discovered and rarely seen again. A trend I ignored at first, but is impossible to ignore this year. Finally the Cheif and his women, sigh, did we have to have him beat the girl who adores him? How much violence against women and abuse of women do we need to see? Baltar treats them like whores. Apollo - does the same, Adea (who had a lovely romance with Billy in Season 1, now is relegated to Apollo's sex toy?) It's clear in the finale he doesn't feel much more for her than that. What happened to Billy? (I missed two episodes in there due to my cable going out on me - so Scar and Sacrifice were missed. I'm guessing he was killed in a shoot-out?).
The finale...has a few things that intrigued me, the circle effect - that Baltare has once again, inadvertently, betrayed the human race because he wanted Six. The human race has once again stupidly stepped into the trap, because they don't want to run or fight any more. And the cylons are stepping in and saying, hey, we'll take care of you, govern you, control you much as you governed and controlled us. You are the children and we are the gods.
But, it didn't flow. I felt jarred by the storyline. There were too many gaps here and there. I did not get the falling out between Starbuck and Apollo - after all Apollo was with Adea? He may have feelings for Starbuck, but they've been hidden most of the time so why the falling out? It felt off somehow. Things happened too quickly in some places and too slowly in others - far too much time was spent with Baltar and his ladies, with his sex scenes. I also didn't get where the character of Cheif was going, I'd see him, he'd go, did he resolve his issues, didn't he? The last episode was almost too busy for its own good, they wanted to do too much in a short space of time. Felt thrown-together to me.
Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy aspects of it. And I do not regret spending the time watching it. I will watch next season. But it didn't sit right with me either. Seemed off. The characters, the story, the metaphors, it felt like the writers were more interested in stating a point or theme than telling their story. In being I don't know, showy? Cool? (Which also happened in The MAtrix sequels - the writers were more interested in showmanship than story.) Stephen King, love him or hate him, says it best in his Memoire - On Writing, STORY SHOULD COME FIRST AND FOREMOST! I agree. If it takes away from the story, don't do it. Here the writers seemed to want to make an anti-bush statement or talk politics, they wanted to get to a specific place and I think they could have gotten there too, if they focused more on story and less on being cool. I saw the same thing in Frank Miller's Sin City...a focus on cool over story.
Mixed feelings about the finale episode. The season as a whole? Uneven. Some bits good, some bits not so good.
Overall rating? B-. Which is a step down from Season 1's A.
To post or not to post about Season 2 BSG which just ended on Friday? Should be doing other things, frankly. Plus many people have posted on this -
coffeeandink has gathered a list of the postings on the finale, which has mixed reviews. One of the best is this one, http://coalescent.livejournal.com/310498.html, which explains clearly and conscisely why the finale did not work for me. Go read it. Here's what I wrote before reading it...which isn't as conscise, but what the hey.
I felt the second season did not live up to the first season's potential. Granted the first season was shorter and in some respects easier to put together - people on the run. It had also gotten amazing reviews - which did put a lot of pressure on the writers to hammer together the next season. But, I've read that the writers more or less hammered out where this was all going before the first episode of Season 1 was written. Which means, S2 should have been tighter.
On the other hand as anyone who has ever worked in television or investigated the possibility of working in television understands - tight, well-plotted, clearly delineated, high quality are all laughable goals in a profession that bows to advertising and marketing gods. And is forced to churn out scripts and fully produced/acted/directed episodes at the speed of light. Anyone who has attempted to write a screenplay or teleplay in three days or less may be able to understand how difficult it is to write one in one or two days, get it chopped to pieces, rework it and have it ready to produce in less than a day after you handed it in.
tightropegirl explains what it is like to write for a tv show. Many online critics have a tendency to evaluate tv shows in the same way they'd evaluate a film (which has a lot longer), a play (even longer still) or a novel (the longest yet) - three mediums which allow the artist a lot of time to work out the kinks. With TV we get the first or second draft. It doesn't look finished to you? Well that's because it isn't - they didn't have time to make it finished. If you listen to commentaries for TV shows - the director/creator/producer will often quip that it is miraculous the episode came out as well as it did due to the fact that he felt it was more or less his first or second draft - he didn't have time to fine tune it.That does not mean that we shouldn't critically evaluate the Television show. Nor that I'm not going to, of course I am, I adore critiquing tv shows. Just that it is a caveat worth keeping in mind.
My difficulty with this season of BSG was that I started to lose the characters, with the possible exception of Giaus Baltar whose thread stayed consistently true to his character throughout. At times, I got the impression that the writers were the most interested with Gaius, could be wrong there. The other characters did not feel off so much as just seemed to get increasingly darker as the season passed, which normally I don't mind - if you've been reading my journal, you know by now, that I like dark characters and dark plot-lines, the darker the better...so why did it bug me here? Good question.
It wasn't the grimness of the show nor the acting. It was how the female characters were increasingly portrayed within the fabric of the storyline and the universe as a whole. Not only the female, but the male in their relationships with the female characters. It felt, and again this is odd for me to say, since I tend to not always notice this stuff, decidedly misogynistic. I am not sure if this was deliberate - an attempt by the writers to show that the humans more or less deserved what they got at the hands of the cylons (a misanthropic theme as opposed to a misgoynistic one, perhaps?) or if it was unconscious. I'm hoping the former, but am uncertain.
Each female character without exception is abused or saved in some way by a man. When the men commit horrible crimes they do it against women. The most sadistic characters - the head of Pegasus and Six are both women and it is interesting that they take out each other - Helen Cain has Gina (Six) raped and tortured, while Gina (Six) kills Helen Cain and explodes a nuclear device. Then we have the Starbuck/Apollo relationship which does not bring out the best in Apollo - who becomes increasingly chauvinistic, authoritarian and misogynistic in his treatment of Starbuck and the women around him, to the point that I did not like him much at all by the end of the season - this was a character I actually used to like. Other female characters that are oddly used are Rosylyn who becomes more and more like Helen Cain - attempting to fix the election, her decision to take Sharon (8's) baby from her, making the woman think she's dead, and well her request that Adama have Starbuck assaignate Helen Cain. Adama remains the nice guy, Roslyn the not so nice one. Normally I wouldn't mind the flipping of gender roles here, but it was right after Helen Cain came on the scene. Too much. And of course Sharon, who is raped (or they attempt rape), abused, beaten, and treated like an object. Note the cylon women are treated like objects and they are the ones we see the most. The cylon men die quickly once they are discovered and rarely seen again. A trend I ignored at first, but is impossible to ignore this year. Finally the Cheif and his women, sigh, did we have to have him beat the girl who adores him? How much violence against women and abuse of women do we need to see? Baltar treats them like whores. Apollo - does the same, Adea (who had a lovely romance with Billy in Season 1, now is relegated to Apollo's sex toy?) It's clear in the finale he doesn't feel much more for her than that. What happened to Billy? (I missed two episodes in there due to my cable going out on me - so Scar and Sacrifice were missed. I'm guessing he was killed in a shoot-out?).
The finale...has a few things that intrigued me, the circle effect - that Baltare has once again, inadvertently, betrayed the human race because he wanted Six. The human race has once again stupidly stepped into the trap, because they don't want to run or fight any more. And the cylons are stepping in and saying, hey, we'll take care of you, govern you, control you much as you governed and controlled us. You are the children and we are the gods.
But, it didn't flow. I felt jarred by the storyline. There were too many gaps here and there. I did not get the falling out between Starbuck and Apollo - after all Apollo was with Adea? He may have feelings for Starbuck, but they've been hidden most of the time so why the falling out? It felt off somehow. Things happened too quickly in some places and too slowly in others - far too much time was spent with Baltar and his ladies, with his sex scenes. I also didn't get where the character of Cheif was going, I'd see him, he'd go, did he resolve his issues, didn't he? The last episode was almost too busy for its own good, they wanted to do too much in a short space of time. Felt thrown-together to me.
Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy aspects of it. And I do not regret spending the time watching it. I will watch next season. But it didn't sit right with me either. Seemed off. The characters, the story, the metaphors, it felt like the writers were more interested in stating a point or theme than telling their story. In being I don't know, showy? Cool? (Which also happened in The MAtrix sequels - the writers were more interested in showmanship than story.) Stephen King, love him or hate him, says it best in his Memoire - On Writing, STORY SHOULD COME FIRST AND FOREMOST! I agree. If it takes away from the story, don't do it. Here the writers seemed to want to make an anti-bush statement or talk politics, they wanted to get to a specific place and I think they could have gotten there too, if they focused more on story and less on being cool. I saw the same thing in Frank Miller's Sin City...a focus on cool over story.
Mixed feelings about the finale episode. The season as a whole? Uneven. Some bits good, some bits not so good.
Overall rating? B-. Which is a step down from Season 1's A.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 03:53 pm (UTC)That said, I'd agree that I much more enjoyed S1. The S2 middle felt very much like everyone was hanging out until we could get to the main plot at the end of the season. From the two parter season opener until Download, I felt the same disconnect. I think you're on to something with the misanthropy. For whatever reason, I felt like the hope had been beaten out of the show in S2, in a way that I didn't get from the wholesale destruction of S1.
I suppose I wanted more ragtag fleet and a little less becoming the monster through staring in the abyss.
Well, at least I've been enjoying JLU.
And since I didn't get a chance before, happy birthday.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 07:33 pm (UTC)Haven't been able to catch any JLU and envy you the TIVO. Not sure my system could handle it - barely handles the cable/dvd and the VCR no longer works at all. (Yes, I know, have to get a new tv eventually...)
Agree...it felt as if the characters were becoming almost too grim, too nasty. Lee Adama went from starry-eyed rebellious son, to somewhat misogynistic, authoritarian, military boy. Also felt as if the writers got a little lost along the way...or were filling in episodes until they could do the big reboot.
Unfortunately I missed one of the better episodes - "Scar" - that aired during my weekend from hell (of which I am deleting from my memory banks). Most of the episodes felt like monster staring into the abyss, which again is not so bad, but you need relief from it - stories that have done the same thing, BTVS, ATS, Farscape - have interspersed lighter episodes, not had it be so grim all the time. And BSG did the same in the first season and the first part of the second...
Anywho...just rambling now I'm afraid. Thanks again!