It would appear from this week's Lost that the show is about to offer its answer to the Grandfather Paradox. If Sayid's relationship with Ben resulted in Sayid being sent back in time, but then he shoots Ben dead whilst the latter is still a boy, what happens?
From what we've already seen it appears the answer is that present-day Ben falls into a coma, which makes precisely zero sense, but then this is time-travel and none of it makes any sense anyway. (Update: plus, Gooder reminds me in comments that it was a bad case of being hit with an oar that felled Ben, though of course there may be more going on there).
It did though remind me of a conversation I once had with a former girlfriend. Her theory, assuming time travel is possible, is that the Grandfather Paradox was actually irrelevant, because it would be impossible to cause sufficient change to the universe to obliterate oneself. Since you already exist, you can't have succeeded in destroying yourself. Something must have happened to prevent it. (Update: the ever-knowledgeable Pause tells me in comments that this is known as the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle; I can't remember if Rockgirl told me that at the time or not).
Because I'm a mathematician and I love having arguments, I started trying to work out the specifics of her theory. I asked whether it would be possible to find a time machine at location A at time B to go back in time, and send a letter to yourself telling you not go to location A at time B. Or, more plausibly, ask them to go to location C at time B instead. Possibly, in my case, by suggesting location C is a strip-bar with a sale on.
Her response was that the letter would be intercepted. I asked what would happen if I sent two letters, the first one and a second one, that either did suggest location A at time B, or was just totally irrelevant to anything. How would this "interception" work? How would it know which letter to block? It would be like playing Russian roulette with the laws of causality.
This was the point at which she got annoyed. Or at least, the point at which I noticed she was annoyed, which experience has taught me isn't often the same thing.
Once you get to this point, though, you're stuffed. You can't make any action that will potentially prevent you from going back in time, no matter how oblique the connection is. Absent the concept of God, then you also can't make any action that under other circumstances would potentially prevent you from going back in time. That means that either a) the universe is conscious in some sense, and prevents too much interference, or b) the universe would block any attempt at time travel whatsoever.
The latter option, of course, seems more likely. There's the other theory that each trip through time would create its own reality, which of course solves some questions and raises others, but I'm sticking with b) for now.
Anyway, that concludes this somewhat rambling post. Any other time-travel theories people want to share? Logical corollaries to my witterings? The phone lines are open...
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Monday, 30 March 2009
Violent Femme-Fatales
It's increasingly important these days to find time to relax. By "these days", of course, I mean "during the desperate struggle to finish my thesis and not have it totally blow".
Currently, much of my relaxation time is spent hacking people to death with a quadruple-bladed lightsaber. Sorry, "beam katana".
I speak, naturally, of No More Heroes.
People much smarter than me have already put forward the theory that we are rapidly reaching the point where video games are liable to be constrained not by technology, but by imagination. Even comparatively early into its life, the Playstation 3 has delivered visuals so jaw-dropping it makes an old-timer like me weep in awe and confusion.
What this means is "realism" (and I've pointed out before what a strange obsession the entertainment industry has with the term) is more or less within our grasp. Again, I can claim no originality in pointing out that "real" then becomes an aesthetic choice for a game's designers, rather than a desperate hope.
(This is a bit of an aside, but I don't like realism in video games. Real life can fuck off, quite frankly. I want escapism. I don't want to play a game and think "Wow, that must be what fighting a war/piloting a fighter plane/driving in a rally is really like." I would much rather think "Wow, I can't believe I took out an insect-piloted hovertank with just a twin-barrelled rocket-launcher and judicious use of my jump-pack." It's a personal choice. More to the point, it's a personal choice about the kind of fiction one chooses to engage in).
One of the aspects of video gaming I appreciate most is the deliberate attempt to make a game according to a coherent artistic vision (Christ, I feel like such a prick typing that). Games like XIII, for example, which set out to create a video game comic (there was a Megadrive game that did something quite similar, but I can't remember it's name; any suggestions welcome). With No More Heroes, the artistic vision is "retro gaming", although the coherence is somewhat missing. Or maybe it's coherently incoherent, which now makes me feel like a prick and an oxymoronic into the bargain, but you get used to it.
The basic plot is fairly simple, you play Travis Touchdown, the 11th ranked assassin in the United States, who wants to be number 1, a desire which necessitates the brutal murder of the ten people above you. Since all ten are members of an assassins union (or maybe it's more like a club; work less, make more), you have to pay to arrange title fights. In-between, you have to raise the necessary dough in a succession of mindlessly repetitive subgames (nothing says retro like mindlessly repetitive subgames), which become increasingly bizarre (capturing kittens in the streets of Santa Destroy being a particular highlight). The nostalgic feeling of joystick-waggling (surely what the Wiimote was designed for) is accentuated by the various tinny musical stings, which sound like they could be coming out of an Eighties arcade. It's glorious.
This mining of the Eighties continues into the "plot". Travis is the ultimate extension of the desperate loser who wants to be a hero, the reductio ad absurdum of Travis Bickle or . This is a man who dreams of being a samurai, though given the skewed logic of the game said dreams manifest themselves as a vertical-scrolling which you naturally get to play [1]. When he's not firing out ludicrous macho dialogue (his first word in the game is "Fuckhead", which he shouts seemingly at random after dispatching a hapless goon), he's desperately trying to screw his handler, a willowy French girl named, what else, Sylvia Christel (at this point, two-thirds of the way through the game, it looks like she's going to put out, but we'll have to see), who spends most of her time in various states of undress for no good reason. Again, this is all very 1984 (the year, not the dystopian vision of a totalitarian future); if there isn't a scene set in a strip club by the end of the game, I'll be pretty surprised.
(That's the most clothes she ever wears, by the way.)
We need more games like this. Games that aren't just a chase for the best graphics (which the Wii is never going to be a contender for in any case), but are based around a definable concept.
Plus, on a personal level, a little bit more of this degree of total insanity would be a good thing for gaming in general. I had to apologise for being late to Blacklung's flat yesterday afternoon on the grounds that it had taken longer than expected to massacre a psychotic Polish magician, and that's the sort of excuse that should be heard more often.
[1] Once again, this revels in the idiocy of Eighties gaming titles, your samurai starts off fighting target boards, but pretty quickly they start shooting back, and then spaceships suddenly arrive and it makes no sense.
Currently, much of my relaxation time is spent hacking people to death with a quadruple-bladed lightsaber. Sorry, "beam katana".
I speak, naturally, of No More Heroes.
People much smarter than me have already put forward the theory that we are rapidly reaching the point where video games are liable to be constrained not by technology, but by imagination. Even comparatively early into its life, the Playstation 3 has delivered visuals so jaw-dropping it makes an old-timer like me weep in awe and confusion.
What this means is "realism" (and I've pointed out before what a strange obsession the entertainment industry has with the term) is more or less within our grasp. Again, I can claim no originality in pointing out that "real" then becomes an aesthetic choice for a game's designers, rather than a desperate hope.
(This is a bit of an aside, but I don't like realism in video games. Real life can fuck off, quite frankly. I want escapism. I don't want to play a game and think "Wow, that must be what fighting a war/piloting a fighter plane/driving in a rally is really like." I would much rather think "Wow, I can't believe I took out an insect-piloted hovertank with just a twin-barrelled rocket-launcher and judicious use of my jump-pack." It's a personal choice. More to the point, it's a personal choice about the kind of fiction one chooses to engage in).
One of the aspects of video gaming I appreciate most is the deliberate attempt to make a game according to a coherent artistic vision (Christ, I feel like such a prick typing that). Games like XIII, for example, which set out to create a video game comic (there was a Megadrive game that did something quite similar, but I can't remember it's name; any suggestions welcome). With No More Heroes, the artistic vision is "retro gaming", although the coherence is somewhat missing. Or maybe it's coherently incoherent, which now makes me feel like a prick and an oxymoronic into the bargain, but you get used to it.
The basic plot is fairly simple, you play Travis Touchdown, the 11th ranked assassin in the United States, who wants to be number 1, a desire which necessitates the brutal murder of the ten people above you. Since all ten are members of an assassins union (or maybe it's more like a club; work less, make more), you have to pay to arrange title fights. In-between, you have to raise the necessary dough in a succession of mindlessly repetitive subgames (nothing says retro like mindlessly repetitive subgames), which become increasingly bizarre (capturing kittens in the streets of Santa Destroy being a particular highlight). The nostalgic feeling of joystick-waggling (surely what the Wiimote was designed for) is accentuated by the various tinny musical stings, which sound like they could be coming out of an Eighties arcade. It's glorious.
This mining of the Eighties continues into the "plot". Travis is the ultimate extension of the desperate loser who wants to be a hero, the reductio ad absurdum of Travis Bickle or . This is a man who dreams of being a samurai, though given the skewed logic of the game said dreams manifest themselves as a vertical-scrolling which you naturally get to play [1]. When he's not firing out ludicrous macho dialogue (his first word in the game is "Fuckhead", which he shouts seemingly at random after dispatching a hapless goon), he's desperately trying to screw his handler, a willowy French girl named, what else, Sylvia Christel (at this point, two-thirds of the way through the game, it looks like she's going to put out, but we'll have to see), who spends most of her time in various states of undress for no good reason. Again, this is all very 1984 (the year, not the dystopian vision of a totalitarian future); if there isn't a scene set in a strip club by the end of the game, I'll be pretty surprised.
(That's the most clothes she ever wears, by the way.)
We need more games like this. Games that aren't just a chase for the best graphics (which the Wii is never going to be a contender for in any case), but are based around a definable concept.
Plus, on a personal level, a little bit more of this degree of total insanity would be a good thing for gaming in general. I had to apologise for being late to Blacklung's flat yesterday afternoon on the grounds that it had taken longer than expected to massacre a psychotic Polish magician, and that's the sort of excuse that should be heard more often.
[1] Once again, this revels in the idiocy of Eighties gaming titles, your samurai starts off fighting target boards, but pretty quickly they start shooting back, and then spaceships suddenly arrive and it makes no sense.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
The Non-Cancellation Blues
Hooray! Supernatural is back on form!
Well, for one episode, at least. Thursday night's tale of fallen angels and corrupted souls was the best the show has offered up since the third episode of this year, taking the show out of a slump which has pretty much lasted more than a third of the season. It's interesting to note that both "In The Beginning" and "Heaven And Hell" are both very heavy on the show's internal mythology, and the advancement of its story.
The last time I mentioned the show, I was only a third of the way through the first season, and I made some comparisons between it and The X-Files. Since I had only seen eight episodes or so at the time, I was mainly noting the differences in tone and approach for the two shows. Now that I'm three and a half years in, the differences between their development is becoming more and more obvious. In fact, there's a more general phenomenon to be considered here: the non-cancellation blues, otherwise known as "What the fuck are we going to do this year?"
It is, of course, entirely obvious that a TV show can have only one of two destinies. It can get shit, either in relative (The West Wing) or absolute (24) terms, or it can be cancelled before it has time to get shit. Those are the only options. The absolute best thing that can happen to a show is that it gets to exist long enough to explore its concept and characters thoroughly, and then get axed before it has time to begin the sucking.
Not everybody seems to get this. I don't know if this is the truth or just the bias of greater exposure, but it seems sci-fi fans get it least of all. For them it seems that the axing of any show that they have not yet learned to despise is an affront to all decency.
This is why so much of the whining about Angel getting the chop pissed me off. Every time someone used the phrases "Cut down in its prime" or "Hadn't reached the end of its life-span" my eyeballs started rolling so hard you could have used them as G-force simulators for insect astronauts. The damn show lasted five years, all of which were very entertaining (though there are significant parts of the show's fan base who hated at least one of the last three seasons), and then got knocked on the head before it had time to shake itself apart.
Given that, once you get to a certain point (in my case, after three years), then unless a show is attempting to tell a single, long-running story (of which more later), the news of its renewal becomes somewhat bittersweet. More time to tell good stories, yes, but also more opportunities to a) lose the plot and b) piss all over everything that has come before. And nine times out of ten, at least, they seem to take one or both of the latter options.
The question that occurs at this point is why do so many shows into the dumps after their first two or three seasons? I've always assumed it's because sooner or later show-runners have to make a choice as to whether they're going to shake the format up, or keep it the same. The former might mean losing whatever X-factor you originally had going for you, and the latter runs the risk of your programme going stale. It's a dilemma every show that survives long enough has to face.
Back in the day, it was almost always the policy to freeze your programme in amber. There's a reason the phrase "reset switch" came about. By ensuring nothing ever really changed from year to year, you made sure the baby couldn't go out with the bathwater (to be fair, this was also done so that the show could be broadcast in any order by idiot schedulers without it mattering). Since the early nineties, though (and that's a starting time that can be argued with), it's become increasingly common to either fashion a long-running plot throughout the show, allowing progression in that way, or to revamp the show with every passing year.
X-Files tried the former. So did Babylon 5, though the comparison is hardly fair since Straczynski knew where he was going but tied himself in knots trying to get there, whereas Chris Carter just made shit up and hoped no-one would notice. The problems with this approach are obvious. Despite Straczynski apparently mapping everything out in advance and writing in "trap-doors" that could allow an actor or actress to leave the show and it not destroy the storyline, B5 as a whole is generally considered an ambitious failure, in that Season 4 failed to live up to the standard of earlier episodes, and then dashed to the finish line, leaving Season 5 something of a directionless mess (though, in retrospect, I think an under-appreciated one). There was just too far to go, and too many things that could go wrong, a lot of which did.
Carter had the opposite problem. If you just make it up as you go along, sooner or later you'll have painted yourself into a corner. Radioactive mind-controlling oil and killer bees and cloned workforces and lies that were true and then were lies again and flying saucers that were helicopters or were they kept being mixed into a plot that eventually collapsed entirely under the weight of its own bullshit. Years later, and we're still running into the same problem (I'm looking at you, Ronald D. Moore).
My point is that a single, long-running story isn't necessarily going to stop the law of diminishing returns from kicking in, and it can provide a lot of headaches into the bargain, not the least of which is finding yourself unable to actually finish said tale, a la Carnivale.
Much as I loved the first three seasons of Babylon 5 (and thought the fourth was pretty good, too), and thoroughly enjoyed the X-Files until I realised the writers were basically just bashing random keys on particularly sinister typewriters, then, it's probably for the best that the current vogue is for year-long storylines. One shake-up may or may not work (I still maintain Season 5 of Buffy was a total fucking disgrace, even though most fans seem to think it was the best season after the main characters graduated high school), but there's always the chance next year's arc will be more interesting.
That's how we get back to Supernatural. One of the show's true strengths is the quality of it's season storylines, and how well they manage to build upon them each year without falling prey to the problems experienced by B5, or The X-Files. Or even Battlestar Galactica, for that matter, which amongst its many other faults following the exodus from New Caprica suffered from piling up too many mysteries which it was ultimately unable to satisfactorily explain.
In contrast, Supernatural's formula is so simple it's brilliant. Each season's story combines a major supernatural crisis with a deeply personal component for one or both Winchester. In the first season the disappearance of their father and the murder of Sam's girlfriend was combined with the mystery of the identity of the yellow-eyed demon who murdered their mother, and its connection to the burgeoning psychic powers of various youths including Sam. In Season 2, the demon both murdered their father and attempted to open the gates of Hell, and got Sam killed in the process. This set the stage for the third year, in which the Winchester brothers hunted those demons that escaped while the gates were briefly opened (Yellow-Eyes having had only a few moments to gloat before he was done in by a magic bullet), whilst simultaneously trying to get Dean out of the Faustian deal he had signed with the demon Lilith, in order to bring Sam back to life (this was a wonderful inversion of survivor's guilt, with the brother who had died feeling guilty about the brother who hadn't). Ultimately they failed in the latter goal, and Dean was dragged into Hell.
This season, Lilith is trying to break the seals that imprison Lucifer himself, which leads to the angel Castiel releasing Dean from Hell so that he can help in the coming war. On one level you have the possibility of the upcoming apocalypse, and on the other you have Dean's memories of Hell, in which he was first tortured for thirty years (Hell apparently being not dissimilar from Narnia time-dilation wise), and then spent another ten actually torturing others, in exchange for a respite from his own suffering. There's also the slight matter of the angels not being a fan of Sam's psychic abilities, and the possibility that Azazel, the yellow-eyed demon, might have had a more developed game plan than anyone realised.
I'm really enjoying this 66 seal storyline, certainly it's more involving than the demon-chasing of last season. It also features a horribly powerful and vicious demon apparently played by Rutger Hauer possessed by Marlon Brando, and also Castiel and Uriel, two of fiction's most awesome angels. There should be a spin-off featuring those two. "He's an angel possessing the body of an uptight white guy. He's an angel possessing the body of a wise-cracking black guy. Together: they ignore crime, because it isn't worthy of their lofty attention." I'd call it Churlish Angels, but then naming things isn't really my strong suit.
Anyway, the point is that if I wasn't enjoying the show this year, I'd know something else will show up in Season 5, something that will presumably be informed by what has gone before, but not be totally reliant on it.
I reckon that this is the best answer to the non-cancellation blues. Certainly whenever Supernatural strays off its main storyline and tries a self-contained episode; things start to go wrong. Either the story is overly reminiscent of an earlier episode, it's trying so hard to not be derivative it doesn't actually manage to be any good, or it's one of the "comedy" episodes that the show does so well (you haven't lived until you've seen a giant animated bi-polar teddy bear trying to kill itself with a shotgun), but on which it's becoming overly reliant. In that sense, at least, it's drifting into the same trap as the X-Files, though at least the funny episodes aren't all Supernatural has going for it, and said episodes manage to be funny without having to parody the wretched mess of the show's own bloated, walking corpse.
I guess there are two factors at work here. How do you keep a show heading in an interesting direction, and how do you keep the rest stops along the way refreshing. Supernatural has a convincing answer to the first problem, but so far not the second, which is something of a concern (the fact that their network is reducing the budget every year isn't helping either, there are stories of the cast having to wear their own clothes and the crew having to bring packed lunches). Still, as long as I don't have to watch another episode featuring a ghostly racist truck (I am not making this up), we should probably just count our blessings.
Friday, 27 March 2009
A Non-Problem
There's a chance that the counter for the site will stop when it hits 500. If anyone notices that this is the case, let me know in comments, and I'll try and work out what I need to do to get it running again (the rather likely answer is: pay, which would be unfortunate, though it's kind of nice to have run into this problem after less than 16 days).
Update: Apparently not. Let's see what happens when we get to 1000...
Update: Apparently not. Let's see what happens when we get to 1000...
Friday Comedy: Dylan Moran
Have now sent off the money necessary to un-bollix my camera, so hopefully in a few weeks I can go back to pointing it randomly at miniatures whilst blindfolded and drunk.
Before that, though, a brief treatise on rap by one of our foremost drunken philosophers.
Before that, though, a brief treatise on rap by one of our foremost drunken philosophers.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Scum
I think I've mentioned Squid's First Law before, which states the universe will not only fail to deliver on anything you ever want, but it will make it look like you are going to get it until the last possible moment, because reality is a cock.
Speaking of looking like you'll get what you want, I was really happy that the Vermont state legislature was going to comfortably pass legislation to protect same-sex marriage rights. We were due a victory after the Proposition 8 cluster-fuck.
Speaking of cocks, though, Governor Douglas is going to veto the bill, even though he knows there's a super-majority in favour, meaning said veto will be overridden.
I'll put aside the obvious fact that I'm very much in favour of gay marriage, and I've yet to come across any argument against it that wasn't heartless at best, and far more often vicious and cruel and flat-out evil. I'm also aware that vetoing a bill that you know will pass anyway isn't necessarily a ridiculous idea. Sometimes a symbolic gesture is worthwhile.
Of course, such a gesture costs is cost time, which means it costs taxpayers' money, and stops the legislature from considering other issues while they vote to override the veto.
Governor Douglas: a dick on three different levels. Refusing to accept any definition of important but your own, objecting to time-wasting by wasting time, and, of course, deliberately disenfranchising people in your own state and not even explaining that it's because your a flaming homophobe who just can't deal with the ickiness that results.
Speaking of looking like you'll get what you want, I was really happy that the Vermont state legislature was going to comfortably pass legislation to protect same-sex marriage rights. We were due a victory after the Proposition 8 cluster-fuck.
Speaking of cocks, though, Governor Douglas is going to veto the bill, even though he knows there's a super-majority in favour, meaning said veto will be overridden.
I'll put aside the obvious fact that I'm very much in favour of gay marriage, and I've yet to come across any argument against it that wasn't heartless at best, and far more often vicious and cruel and flat-out evil. I'm also aware that vetoing a bill that you know will pass anyway isn't necessarily a ridiculous idea. Sometimes a symbolic gesture is worthwhile.
Of course, such a gesture costs is cost time, which means it costs taxpayers' money, and stops the legislature from considering other issues while they vote to override the veto.
So Douglas must be making a case as to why he's wasting the legislative branch's time, right? The urgency of our state's economic and budgetary challenges demands the full focus of every member and every committee of this Legislature.In other words, Douglas has decided that the Vermont government should only focus on the economy, and nothing else. Should anyone try to introduce any other topic, he will deal with this flagrant waste of time by flagrantly wasting time.
Governor Douglas: a dick on three different levels. Refusing to accept any definition of important but your own, objecting to time-wasting by wasting time, and, of course, deliberately disenfranchising people in your own state and not even explaining that it's because your a flaming homophobe who just can't deal with the ickiness that results.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
The End Of The End Of The Beginning
First up, I would like to announce that I have, at long last, been judged employable, and can expect to spend the next nine months considering the inner mysteries of oil wells. This makes no difference to some of you, probably, except to say that normal service will be resumed (i.e. my rants will become longer and more X-Men based) sometime in the middle of April.
Having said I never wanted to discuss that show ever again, I find that I can't stop thinking about last night's finale. I'm suffering from a degree of confused disbelief so intense that my mind keeps absently wandering back to it, the way your tongue seems to keep heading for the gap caused by a missing tooth.
What was the point of all those flashbacks? I mean, Anders' made thematic sense (although since I'm not in the most generous of moods, by "thematic sense" I mean "A cynical ploy to make firing him into the goddamn sun seem like a reasonable fate"), and there was a nice moment with the Tighs. But Adama? Roslin? What the hell was that all about? Baltar's flashbacks seemed entirely there to remind us he comes from a family of farmers, which I guess led to a nice payoff at the end, but there was far more shown than you needed for that.
As for Lee and Kara, I'll grant that showing they were attracted to each other from the start is nice and all (though not necessarily something one need see in the final episode), but the pigeon chasing? I mocked this yesterday, but to be more clear, if your metaphors are coming from a Nelly Furtado song, you're in trouble. Such things do not belong in one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.
I will say one last thing about the ending, and then I swear I'm done. Turning a series that has lasted half a decade and impressed hundreds of thousands of people with its maturity and complexity into an extended public service announcement on the dangers of science is just, well, fucking stupid. Justifying it by having two of the most ambiguous and intriguing characters from the show explain it to you while walking down the street is an extra level of dumb. We're simultaneously getting a banal lecture on the human condition (with a point Lee had already made, and far more artfully, earlier in the episode), and then you're scrawling "THEY WERE ANGELS ALL ALONG, WOOOOOOOO!!!" on top of it. This is to say nothing of the rug pull of "All this will happen before, and will happen again," we had to endure. "DO YOU GET IT, PEOPLE!?! WE ARE THE NEXT STAGE IN THE CYCLE, WOOOOOOOO!!!" I'd spent the whole of the show thinking we would turn out to have been the first stage of the cycle. You know why? Because THAT MAKES FUCKING SENSE. Baltar even went so far last night to point out the astronomical odds of finding another race of humans that had evolved independently. I took that as proof that we were going to find out something more was going on. But what was going on was apparently "GOD TOTALLY DID THIS YOU GUYS, WOOOOOO!!!!" It's a non-explanation. Every time the show has previously talked about massively unlikely coincidences (The Hand Of God, Rapture), we now know it's because God was pissing around. Not by helping out, or anything, just by orchestrating events in a really weird way. It's pretty clear that I don't believe in an interventionist God (to paraphrase Nick Cave), but even if I did, I think it would be fair to say that I wouldn't believe in one that intervenes in ways that maximise dramatic tension.
.
I'm not even going to talk about Starbuck; I'm still too angry.
On the other hand, the idea of Capricans using "horns" as grave markers? Genius. In fact, there was a massive amount I liked about the finale, but 90% of it was in the first half. The second just collapsed under the weight of its own pretentious nothingness.
Update: Oh, and one more thing. I have earned my displeasure at the finale. I would just like to warn people ahead of time that anyone dissing Daybreak who has previously run screaming across the intertubes wearing "Nu Who Is Awesome And Doesn't Need To Make Sense!!" I will punch them right in the crotch.
Having said I never wanted to discuss that show ever again, I find that I can't stop thinking about last night's finale. I'm suffering from a degree of confused disbelief so intense that my mind keeps absently wandering back to it, the way your tongue seems to keep heading for the gap caused by a missing tooth.
What was the point of all those flashbacks? I mean, Anders' made thematic sense (although since I'm not in the most generous of moods, by "thematic sense" I mean "A cynical ploy to make firing him into the goddamn sun seem like a reasonable fate"), and there was a nice moment with the Tighs. But Adama? Roslin? What the hell was that all about? Baltar's flashbacks seemed entirely there to remind us he comes from a family of farmers, which I guess led to a nice payoff at the end, but there was far more shown than you needed for that.
As for Lee and Kara, I'll grant that showing they were attracted to each other from the start is nice and all (though not necessarily something one need see in the final episode), but the pigeon chasing? I mocked this yesterday, but to be more clear, if your metaphors are coming from a Nelly Furtado song, you're in trouble. Such things do not belong in one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.
I will say one last thing about the ending, and then I swear I'm done. Turning a series that has lasted half a decade and impressed hundreds of thousands of people with its maturity and complexity into an extended public service announcement on the dangers of science is just, well, fucking stupid. Justifying it by having two of the most ambiguous and intriguing characters from the show explain it to you while walking down the street is an extra level of dumb. We're simultaneously getting a banal lecture on the human condition (with a point Lee had already made, and far more artfully, earlier in the episode), and then you're scrawling "THEY WERE ANGELS ALL ALONG, WOOOOOOOO!!!" on top of it. This is to say nothing of the rug pull of "All this will happen before, and will happen again," we had to endure. "DO YOU GET IT, PEOPLE!?! WE ARE THE NEXT STAGE IN THE CYCLE, WOOOOOOOO!!!" I'd spent the whole of the show thinking we would turn out to have been the first stage of the cycle. You know why? Because THAT MAKES FUCKING SENSE. Baltar even went so far last night to point out the astronomical odds of finding another race of humans that had evolved independently. I took that as proof that we were going to find out something more was going on. But what was going on was apparently "GOD TOTALLY DID THIS YOU GUYS, WOOOOOO!!!!" It's a non-explanation. Every time the show has previously talked about massively unlikely coincidences (The Hand Of God, Rapture), we now know it's because God was pissing around. Not by helping out, or anything, just by orchestrating events in a really weird way. It's pretty clear that I don't believe in an interventionist God (to paraphrase Nick Cave), but even if I did, I think it would be fair to say that I wouldn't believe in one that intervenes in ways that maximise dramatic tension.
.
I'm not even going to talk about Starbuck; I'm still too angry.
On the other hand, the idea of Capricans using "horns" as grave markers? Genius. In fact, there was a massive amount I liked about the finale, but 90% of it was in the first half. The second just collapsed under the weight of its own pretentious nothingness.
Update: Oh, and one more thing. I have earned my displeasure at the finale. I would just like to warn people ahead of time that anyone dissing Daybreak who has previously run screaming across the intertubes wearing "Nu Who Is Awesome And Doesn't Need To Make Sense!!" I will punch them right in the crotch.
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