Weeds and BSG: The Satire and the Tragedy
Jun. 14th, 2008 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatOn the television front...finished watching the fourth season of BSG (the second half is going to be shown next year apparently). And, The third Season of Weeds - courtesy of netflix, on DVD. Both series are in a way allegories for what is happening now. One is a satire about our consumptive and somewhat self-asborped society, the other a tragic morality play about war and the consequences of an on-going war between two righteous factions, hell-bent on destroying each other in order to survive.
Both series got better as they went along in these seasons, which as I explained to Wales tonight, tends to be the case with most serialized televisions shows. They start out sort of weak, gradually build, and are pretty good towards the end. Or they do the opposite start out strong, then peeter out. Weeds and BSG started weak and got stronger.
Weeds for those who've never seen it, is a wicked satire about a wealthy upper-middle class surburbian family in Southern California. It centers around an anti-hero, named Nancy Botwan who basically deals weed or pot to provide for her family after her husband dies. The fact she does not choose another more honorable and far less dangerous route is part of the point of the series. It's about how people sell their souls in order to have the pretty house, the pretty tv, the great yard, in an enclave with houses that all look exactly alike.
The theme song by Pete Seeger, entitled Little Houses and song by various artists throughout the series - says it all. "Little Houses, little houses on the hillside, made of ticky tacky, that all look just the same, and the people in the houses, grow up and go to University and come out all just the same, made of ticky tacky, and become doctors and lawyers and business executives and they all look just the same..." (lyrics aren't exact because I suck at remembering lyrics and am too damn lazy to google them at the moment.)
If you like satire, which I do, it's quite clever in places. It did go a bit over the top in the third season. I think the writers got bored of the surburban theme, which may explain why they ditch it for the fourth season. [The fourth season, I'm told, takes place in Tijuana and deals with the Mexican drug trafficking.)
BattleStar Galatica - as I sort of stated above- the last four episodes were a heck of a lot better than the first five. It is a bleak series though, not a lot of humor in it unless you count Baltar. If you haven't been watching it, it is a series about a band of humans fleeing cylons (advanced robots that were created by humans ages ago and revolted). It's a more advanced and far cleverer version of Terminator, where the bad guys are a little more complicated and not quite as one-dimensional. In fact in BSG, you're not quite sure who the good guys and bad guys are half of the time.
Unlike Weeds, BSG is a bleak story, about the demise of the human race or how we are doomed to destroy ourselves and do it over and over again. It's an anti-war tale, with glimmers of hope that are quickly dashed. I think that this is the story Ron Moore wanted to tell in DS9 but couldn't because Gene Roddenberry wanted Star Trek to be a positive utopian sci-fi, different than all the others out there. Babylon 5 got to get much darker than Ds9 did. (I did not see all of the DS9 episodes, so it is possible I missed the dark period. Wasn't a huge fan of DS9, the characters never grabbed me as much as the ones on B5 for some reason, I don't know why. Speaking of Ds9, the actress who played the number two role on Ds9, Kira, was a guest star on BSG this season, she plays a woman dying of cancer. Took me the longest time to place her, but finally did.) Most sci-fi tends to be on the bleak side. Doctor Who and Star Trek are the exceptions. And even Doctor Who gets pretty bleak at times. Sci-Fi television writers may be a lot of things but optimists aren't among them.
Overall, I enjoyed this season. The final episode was quite brilliant in my opinion. Edge of my seat the whole way and a whopper of an ending. It reminded me a little of the twist at the very end of Planet of the Apes. So much so, that I half expected to see the remains of the Statue of Liberty.
Unlike the episodes leading up to it, the finale was tight, every character was used, the characters relationships made sense, and they all served the plot in a logical and satisfying fashion. I was quite impressed. Haven't seen an episode that good in quite some time. For the first time in weeks, Kara, Baltar, and Lee did not set my teeth on edge. Also, their arcs finally began to make sense.
Kara's long-running relationship with Lee Adama made it possible for her to stop Lee from spacing Col. Tigh or the other cylons. To convince him that Tigh, Anders, and the Chief had helped her find earth by noticing that something had changed regarding her viper. It now contained the quardrants for earth.
If they did not have that type of trust built up, she'd have never been able to stop him. Of everyone on that ship, Kara was the only one who could. Adama would have been suspect, since he loved both Tigh and Laura, and killing Tigh could well mean Laura's death as well.
Laura's abduction along with Gaius aboard the cylon base ship and their dance with death, also works - it completes their arc. Gaius finally confessed to Laura what she has long suspected, that he was responsible for the deaths of millions of humans, not deliberately, inadvertently and recklessly with his involvement with Caprica Six. Laura sinks backwards and considers letting him bleed to death, not just considers it, actually unwraps his bandage with the hope of making it happen. Then, after another jump flashforward, has a change of heart, realizes how precious life is and the dividing line between herself and Giaus is not as wide as she thinks. It is in fact brutally thin. And love, as fragile as it seems, is in the whole vast scheme of things that only thing worth living for. She must allow herself to love someone. And mustn't kill one human, when so few are left. Catching herself, she races to save him, tearfully, fearfully, she does. It may be Mary McConnell's best performance on the show to date. If not that, certainly the most moving. And in an odd way, it is reminiscient of Gaius' decision to save Laura with Hera's blood.
Because of this interaction - Gaius and Laura are able to work together to convince De'anna to trust the humans and back down. Gaius manages to tell De'Anna that killing everyone cannot work. It is time they tried another method. After all, killing the humans on Caprica did not work. And enslaving them on New Caprica did not work either.
War, both sides realize, is not working. They fight. They run. Until they've both literally run out of places to run to. As Lee puts it, we might as well fly to earth, there is no other option. And we might as well take the cylons with us, go together, in peace, because they'll inevitably follow us anyhow. This way, at least, we won't be attacked like we were on New Caprica. If we've learned anything it is that. IF we want to survive, it is time that we broke our pattern, at least for now.
So off to earth they go...and they do find it. But what is it they find? An utopia of peace?
A beautiful paradise? A lovely homeland? The world we all know and love? Ah, if you thought any of the above, you have not been paying attention...the twist always lay there, in the dark after-beat of the music playing in the cylons ears. The earth they find is a war ravaged planet, in ruines, with bended metal and bleak landscapes. It appears the 13th tribe was no better at keeping the peace than the one's they left behind. War...the series hums appears to be our final destination, regardless of how far we run. Let's face it we are a violent and aggressive species, who will kill over a piece of land, a piece of bread, or a religious artifact and then asks God for water to wash away the blood upon our hands.
The series isn't over yet. But I do not believe it will end well. It's no accident that the lightest and most optimistic season was the first. Each season is darker and more violent than the one that came before it. And each demonstrates how little difference there is between the two sides of this conflict, the cylons and their human forebears/creators. One begins to wonder if they are in fact each other's ancestors. Who created whom? Or which came first, the cylon or the human? The fifth cylon could well be anyone at this point - but I'm no longer certain it matters. They are all doomed much like the players in a Shakespearen tragedy. Much like Shakespear's anti-war plays before it, BSG has always been a tragedy, in four acts. That's why the comedy comes from the fool, Baltar, who sits at the center of the piece, much like Falstaff in King Henry the V, with hints of Lady Macbeth. In a sense, Baltar is the central character of this piece - the foil, the moral center, the chorus, he is the best and worste of all present. His relationship with Caprica Six is in some ways a metaphor for the human race's precarious relationship with the machinery that eventually became the cylons while at the same time it acts as metaphor for the cylon's uneasy relationship with their god - their internal war with each other regarding science over religion, just as early Gaius argues with Six. He is the scientist who scoffs at the idea of anything greater than himself or his own knowledge, and the religious convert who clings to the realization that there is something greater in the universe besides himself, who will forgive him, even those things, he cannot. Through Baltar, we see each character's dual struggle, and what dooms us also inadvertently saves us, motivates us, and enables us as a species to survive. It is Baltar's aggressive and persistent desire to survive that permeates his character, motivates him above all else, yet we wonder at times why he persists.
What makes BSG great is that it shows the contradictions. That our plight is not as black and white or as simple as we would like it to be. The Galaticans and the Cylons are in the end not that different from each other, and both have valid reasons for wanting the other dead and gone. They survive at each other's will. And act as mirrors to each other. Until it no longer becomes possible to distinguish them. Tigh the cylon hater, becomes the lover and a cylon himself. And Adama seeing this happen, can no longer tell which side is up, he's fallen into the looking glass world and is almost demolished by the realization.
Watching the show, makes me think of our own eternal wars and skirmishes. The never-ending battle in the middle east between two rival factions who hate one another for reasons that are only clear to themselves and those close to them. From a distance they look alike. Much as the cylons and humans do. What will their never-ending war accomplish, except the eventual demise of us all, if we continue to tolerate it or worse still participate? This it seems is the message of BSG. Can we continue to afford to tolerate these battles? Can our planet?
Both series got better as they went along in these seasons, which as I explained to Wales tonight, tends to be the case with most serialized televisions shows. They start out sort of weak, gradually build, and are pretty good towards the end. Or they do the opposite start out strong, then peeter out. Weeds and BSG started weak and got stronger.
Weeds for those who've never seen it, is a wicked satire about a wealthy upper-middle class surburbian family in Southern California. It centers around an anti-hero, named Nancy Botwan who basically deals weed or pot to provide for her family after her husband dies. The fact she does not choose another more honorable and far less dangerous route is part of the point of the series. It's about how people sell their souls in order to have the pretty house, the pretty tv, the great yard, in an enclave with houses that all look exactly alike.
The theme song by Pete Seeger, entitled Little Houses and song by various artists throughout the series - says it all. "Little Houses, little houses on the hillside, made of ticky tacky, that all look just the same, and the people in the houses, grow up and go to University and come out all just the same, made of ticky tacky, and become doctors and lawyers and business executives and they all look just the same..." (lyrics aren't exact because I suck at remembering lyrics and am too damn lazy to google them at the moment.)
If you like satire, which I do, it's quite clever in places. It did go a bit over the top in the third season. I think the writers got bored of the surburban theme, which may explain why they ditch it for the fourth season. [The fourth season, I'm told, takes place in Tijuana and deals with the Mexican drug trafficking.)
BattleStar Galatica - as I sort of stated above- the last four episodes were a heck of a lot better than the first five. It is a bleak series though, not a lot of humor in it unless you count Baltar. If you haven't been watching it, it is a series about a band of humans fleeing cylons (advanced robots that were created by humans ages ago and revolted). It's a more advanced and far cleverer version of Terminator, where the bad guys are a little more complicated and not quite as one-dimensional. In fact in BSG, you're not quite sure who the good guys and bad guys are half of the time.
Unlike Weeds, BSG is a bleak story, about the demise of the human race or how we are doomed to destroy ourselves and do it over and over again. It's an anti-war tale, with glimmers of hope that are quickly dashed. I think that this is the story Ron Moore wanted to tell in DS9 but couldn't because Gene Roddenberry wanted Star Trek to be a positive utopian sci-fi, different than all the others out there. Babylon 5 got to get much darker than Ds9 did. (I did not see all of the DS9 episodes, so it is possible I missed the dark period. Wasn't a huge fan of DS9, the characters never grabbed me as much as the ones on B5 for some reason, I don't know why. Speaking of Ds9, the actress who played the number two role on Ds9, Kira, was a guest star on BSG this season, she plays a woman dying of cancer. Took me the longest time to place her, but finally did.) Most sci-fi tends to be on the bleak side. Doctor Who and Star Trek are the exceptions. And even Doctor Who gets pretty bleak at times. Sci-Fi television writers may be a lot of things but optimists aren't among them.
Overall, I enjoyed this season. The final episode was quite brilliant in my opinion. Edge of my seat the whole way and a whopper of an ending. It reminded me a little of the twist at the very end of Planet of the Apes. So much so, that I half expected to see the remains of the Statue of Liberty.
Unlike the episodes leading up to it, the finale was tight, every character was used, the characters relationships made sense, and they all served the plot in a logical and satisfying fashion. I was quite impressed. Haven't seen an episode that good in quite some time. For the first time in weeks, Kara, Baltar, and Lee did not set my teeth on edge. Also, their arcs finally began to make sense.
Kara's long-running relationship with Lee Adama made it possible for her to stop Lee from spacing Col. Tigh or the other cylons. To convince him that Tigh, Anders, and the Chief had helped her find earth by noticing that something had changed regarding her viper. It now contained the quardrants for earth.
If they did not have that type of trust built up, she'd have never been able to stop him. Of everyone on that ship, Kara was the only one who could. Adama would have been suspect, since he loved both Tigh and Laura, and killing Tigh could well mean Laura's death as well.
Laura's abduction along with Gaius aboard the cylon base ship and their dance with death, also works - it completes their arc. Gaius finally confessed to Laura what she has long suspected, that he was responsible for the deaths of millions of humans, not deliberately, inadvertently and recklessly with his involvement with Caprica Six. Laura sinks backwards and considers letting him bleed to death, not just considers it, actually unwraps his bandage with the hope of making it happen. Then, after another jump flashforward, has a change of heart, realizes how precious life is and the dividing line between herself and Giaus is not as wide as she thinks. It is in fact brutally thin. And love, as fragile as it seems, is in the whole vast scheme of things that only thing worth living for. She must allow herself to love someone. And mustn't kill one human, when so few are left. Catching herself, she races to save him, tearfully, fearfully, she does. It may be Mary McConnell's best performance on the show to date. If not that, certainly the most moving. And in an odd way, it is reminiscient of Gaius' decision to save Laura with Hera's blood.
Because of this interaction - Gaius and Laura are able to work together to convince De'anna to trust the humans and back down. Gaius manages to tell De'Anna that killing everyone cannot work. It is time they tried another method. After all, killing the humans on Caprica did not work. And enslaving them on New Caprica did not work either.
War, both sides realize, is not working. They fight. They run. Until they've both literally run out of places to run to. As Lee puts it, we might as well fly to earth, there is no other option. And we might as well take the cylons with us, go together, in peace, because they'll inevitably follow us anyhow. This way, at least, we won't be attacked like we were on New Caprica. If we've learned anything it is that. IF we want to survive, it is time that we broke our pattern, at least for now.
So off to earth they go...and they do find it. But what is it they find? An utopia of peace?
A beautiful paradise? A lovely homeland? The world we all know and love? Ah, if you thought any of the above, you have not been paying attention...the twist always lay there, in the dark after-beat of the music playing in the cylons ears. The earth they find is a war ravaged planet, in ruines, with bended metal and bleak landscapes. It appears the 13th tribe was no better at keeping the peace than the one's they left behind. War...the series hums appears to be our final destination, regardless of how far we run. Let's face it we are a violent and aggressive species, who will kill over a piece of land, a piece of bread, or a religious artifact and then asks God for water to wash away the blood upon our hands.
The series isn't over yet. But I do not believe it will end well. It's no accident that the lightest and most optimistic season was the first. Each season is darker and more violent than the one that came before it. And each demonstrates how little difference there is between the two sides of this conflict, the cylons and their human forebears/creators. One begins to wonder if they are in fact each other's ancestors. Who created whom? Or which came first, the cylon or the human? The fifth cylon could well be anyone at this point - but I'm no longer certain it matters. They are all doomed much like the players in a Shakespearen tragedy. Much like Shakespear's anti-war plays before it, BSG has always been a tragedy, in four acts. That's why the comedy comes from the fool, Baltar, who sits at the center of the piece, much like Falstaff in King Henry the V, with hints of Lady Macbeth. In a sense, Baltar is the central character of this piece - the foil, the moral center, the chorus, he is the best and worste of all present. His relationship with Caprica Six is in some ways a metaphor for the human race's precarious relationship with the machinery that eventually became the cylons while at the same time it acts as metaphor for the cylon's uneasy relationship with their god - their internal war with each other regarding science over religion, just as early Gaius argues with Six. He is the scientist who scoffs at the idea of anything greater than himself or his own knowledge, and the religious convert who clings to the realization that there is something greater in the universe besides himself, who will forgive him, even those things, he cannot. Through Baltar, we see each character's dual struggle, and what dooms us also inadvertently saves us, motivates us, and enables us as a species to survive. It is Baltar's aggressive and persistent desire to survive that permeates his character, motivates him above all else, yet we wonder at times why he persists.
What makes BSG great is that it shows the contradictions. That our plight is not as black and white or as simple as we would like it to be. The Galaticans and the Cylons are in the end not that different from each other, and both have valid reasons for wanting the other dead and gone. They survive at each other's will. And act as mirrors to each other. Until it no longer becomes possible to distinguish them. Tigh the cylon hater, becomes the lover and a cylon himself. And Adama seeing this happen, can no longer tell which side is up, he's fallen into the looking glass world and is almost demolished by the realization.
Watching the show, makes me think of our own eternal wars and skirmishes. The never-ending battle in the middle east between two rival factions who hate one another for reasons that are only clear to themselves and those close to them. From a distance they look alike. Much as the cylons and humans do. What will their never-ending war accomplish, except the eventual demise of us all, if we continue to tolerate it or worse still participate? This it seems is the message of BSG. Can we continue to afford to tolerate these battles? Can our planet?
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 06:33 am (UTC)" Until it no longer becomes possible to distinguish them."
I actually loved that we weren't told who the 5th was, it could be so many people.... but, as you said, it doesn't matter, because the whole point (as far as I can see) is that there is no difference.... not any more. Maybe there was never any difference.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 01:40 pm (UTC)I know they are going to tell us who the fifth is, from the trailer. But I'm not sure I want them to...because I think point is that the humans and cylons are now the same race, there is no difference between them anymore. Both are mortal.
What the Hybrid said
Date: 2008-06-16 12:46 pm (UTC)The hybrid seems to say that the seven shouldn't have been throwing stones and that though bleak the end of the story really is a beginning.
Rufus