BSG: Thoughts on Someone to Watch Over Me
Mar. 2nd, 2009 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grey_swhmm, I thought this episode was much, much better than the last two... great stuff, right up there with the best of this series!
First of all, the music in this one was amazing. Just astounding. You rarely ever see this level of integration of music and plot in television, and I think it worked brilliantly; it ties in so well with the "unstruck music", with Kara's personal history, and with the emotions running through both parts of the episode. The big song reveal is one of the few moments in Season 4 that I can entirely believe was planned from Season 1 onward, even though we all know it sure as frak wasn't! What a tour-de-force for the writers and for Bear.
Starbuck's plot was a little too dense and deus-ex-machinish for my taste, and it's possible that they might be (yet again!) unintentionally implying a connection they may not have meant with #7/Daniel. I'm also annoyed that they're still dragging out the mystery with Starbuck and the head!characters -- seems like the writers really are going to run the show out to the last two seconds before revealing the answers to all these lingering questions. Even so, I enjoyed it very much. It's been a long, long time since we had a decent Starbuck-centric episode, and even longer since they had her in-character and in introspective mode.
I'm still not sure if I like what they're doing with the Chief. He wibbles his way through the entire season, and then when he finally does make up his mind, it's sort of stupid -- he let Boomer wander around the ship? Huh? Did he forget about what happened the last time? Or the time before that? The writers are yanking his character all over the place this season.
That said, at least this time the mistake he makes is one I can actually imagine him making. Poor ol' Chief.
Boomer's plot was a thing of frakkin' beauty. I was really hoping she was working for Cavil when she and Ellen left the Basestar, and she was! One point to the scheming killer robots! I love where they went with this, also. Cavil needs the Five to ensure the long-term survival of his way of life, and the fleet has them; the fleet needs Hera to ensure the long-term survival of their way of life, and now Cavil has her. The Ellen/Hera swap was a very clever gambit on Cavil's part, and it's also a great way to ramp up the tension and give both sides a roughly equal hand going into the end of the series. Plus, maybe now we'll get an answer for the Opera House visions.
As for what Boomer does to everyone in this episode, I loved that, too! This is her payback episode: the Chief betrayed her trust in Season One, despite loving her deeply, all for the sake of his people. Now, Boomer has done the same to him, for precisely the same reason, with precisely the same ruthless suppression of love and regret. And every single thing Boomer did to Athena in this episode, right down to stealing the magical baby and impersonating her in order to frak Helo, was already done to Boomer by Athena in Season 2. These parallels are no accident -- in a lot of ways, Boomer's journey is the same as Athena's. The only difference is that they're moving in opposite directions on the human/machine coordinate line.
I just hope the writers have the guts to keep that dichotomy somewhat morally ambiguous going into the finale.
Also, can we please get to hear Boomer talk a little about her motivations next episode? We know what Cavil's in this for (OMNOM SUPERNOVAS), but it would be nice to find out why Boomer's on board with him, especially since she was willing to betray the Chief for the cause.
Speaking of "running the show out to the last two seconds", I can't believe that there are just three episodes to go, and we still have no clue what form the final conflict will take! I hope next episode will be the beginning of the end, so to speak, because it's about time to start spinning up the FTL drive...
First of all, the music in this one was amazing. Just astounding. You rarely ever see this level of integration of music and plot in television, and I think it worked brilliantly; it ties in so well with the "unstruck music", with Kara's personal history, and with the emotions running through both parts of the episode. The big song reveal is one of the few moments in Season 4 that I can entirely believe was planned from Season 1 onward, even though we all know it sure as frak wasn't! What a tour-de-force for the writers and for Bear.
Starbuck's plot was a little too dense and deus-ex-machinish for my taste, and it's possible that they might be (yet again!) unintentionally implying a connection they may not have meant with #7/Daniel. I'm also annoyed that they're still dragging out the mystery with Starbuck and the head!characters -- seems like the writers really are going to run the show out to the last two seconds before revealing the answers to all these lingering questions. Even so, I enjoyed it very much. It's been a long, long time since we had a decent Starbuck-centric episode, and even longer since they had her in-character and in introspective mode.
I'm still not sure if I like what they're doing with the Chief. He wibbles his way through the entire season, and then when he finally does make up his mind, it's sort of stupid -- he let Boomer wander around the ship? Huh? Did he forget about what happened the last time? Or the time before that? The writers are yanking his character all over the place this season.
That said, at least this time the mistake he makes is one I can actually imagine him making. Poor ol' Chief.
Boomer's plot was a thing of frakkin' beauty. I was really hoping she was working for Cavil when she and Ellen left the Basestar, and she was! One point to the scheming killer robots! I love where they went with this, also. Cavil needs the Five to ensure the long-term survival of his way of life, and the fleet has them; the fleet needs Hera to ensure the long-term survival of their way of life, and now Cavil has her. The Ellen/Hera swap was a very clever gambit on Cavil's part, and it's also a great way to ramp up the tension and give both sides a roughly equal hand going into the end of the series. Plus, maybe now we'll get an answer for the Opera House visions.
As for what Boomer does to everyone in this episode, I loved that, too! This is her payback episode: the Chief betrayed her trust in Season One, despite loving her deeply, all for the sake of his people. Now, Boomer has done the same to him, for precisely the same reason, with precisely the same ruthless suppression of love and regret. And every single thing Boomer did to Athena in this episode, right down to stealing the magical baby and impersonating her in order to frak Helo, was already done to Boomer by Athena in Season 2. These parallels are no accident -- in a lot of ways, Boomer's journey is the same as Athena's. The only difference is that they're moving in opposite directions on the human/machine coordinate line.
I just hope the writers have the guts to keep that dichotomy somewhat morally ambiguous going into the finale.
Also, can we please get to hear Boomer talk a little about her motivations next episode? We know what Cavil's in this for (OMNOM SUPERNOVAS), but it would be nice to find out why Boomer's on board with him, especially since she was willing to betray the Chief for the cause.
Speaking of "running the show out to the last two seconds", I can't believe that there are just three episodes to go, and we still have no clue what form the final conflict will take! I hope next episode will be the beginning of the end, so to speak, because it's about time to start spinning up the FTL drive...
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 03:59 am (UTC)I'm not quite sure what they're doing with Cavil's faction, at this point. Up until now, they've kept them at least somewhat morally ambiguous, but they've also been walking a fine line between ambiguity and RAR VILLAINS, so I think it's likely they'll go with the latter. Too bad, because I think a lot of Cavil's points are valid, and I doubt they'll get a fair deal from the writers. And frankly, ending BSG on any sort of "hurrah for humans and down with Cylons" note is rather pathetic, given that they spent three entire seasons showing us exactly why that doesn't fly.
Gee, it turns out the answer to "what is it that makes humans worthy of survival?" was nothing more than "killing all the frowny-face meany-mean bad guys" and/or "forcing the frowny-face meany-mean bad guys to be just like us"! Who'd have guessed? *rolls eyes*
no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 11:08 pm (UTC)Given the revelation about Starbuck, it puts into question if Cavil is the villain Ellen tried to paint him as (and explaining Boomer's loyalty to him). If Daniel was alive, maybe Daniel himself was responsible for destroying the batch because he disagreed with the concept of multiple copies based on himself? If he was a tortured artist, he may not have wanted doppelgangers to suffer like he did. If Cavil was not responsible but blamed, wouldn't he react in the name of self-preservation?
Worthy of survival? Roslin and Adama are pretty much dictators at this point, something the show never seems to mention. Their rebels allies wanted to kill Boomer because she didn't vote with her line. And Roslin's cold reception to Tyrol, who helped them all when the mutiny happened, doesn't paint them in the best light. I didn't dig Roslin's "Personal feelings are what Sharon Valerii preys upon. You know that. Better than any of us. You need to clear your head. She is a danger in the brig, out of the brig. Danger to us, danger to our Cylon allies." I've seen all the episodes, and I have no idea why she'd say this except to lump Boomer as some black hat villain. I'm also curious why nobody bothered to wonder if Cavil didn't know where the fleet is during this ep (and given the revelation about Boomer, it seems he does).