pinata242

Wow, I don't know if I've ever seen the love for a show fall off so sharply than this. Episode is over and still no thread.

Well... another ho-hum. Some tangible things happened, but a WHOLE lot more intangible...

I know it's tired, but the preview did make it seem like next week is the (start of the?) big pay-off. We'll see.

Nice to see Ross and Rachel Laura and Adama finally take a step.

stingermck

At least I stayed awake this week, but only cause I had a friend over. Another ho-hum. I was hoping Baltar would die, so something would happen. Oh well.

Deftones

so my father-in-law swears they were going to reveal the last cylon. I told him it was a trick in the previews they employ quite frequently. was i right?

MBoyd

Yes you are right.

It was a big improvement from last week, I will say that. The battle just seemed to short and too easy to me.

Deftones

ok, good. something to gloat about tomorrow.

Cardiff Giant11

hmm so i got back from a night out and was debating about watching it tonight or just watching it tomorrow morning on the DVR. reading this thread made my mind up, till tomorrow it is.

al_bundy

watched it last night and it was OK, but the editing wasn't that good

i think when you watch them back to back it's a lot better than week by week

mugwump

I keep thinking that each week is the last week before the long break so I keep watching out of inertia but by golly does this show stink up the joint these days.

Deftones

Got to say this episode was infinitely better than the past few weeks.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I also think this season will play at least a bit better when it's on DVD and can be watched back-to-back.

This season reminds me of the seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where it was pretty obvious they'd worked out an ending to the show, and not much else. So everything was just sort of kept in a holding pattern until the final five episodes.

It also doesn't help BSG that this season's episodes seem to have a leap-frog pattern, where something is set up in episode A, then episode B goes off on a totally different plot, then episode C picks up from the cliffhanger in episode A, episode D picks up the threads from episode B, and so on. It's an odd rhythm for them to establish, and it think it probably sounded better on paper than it actually works in practice.

wergo

Well, yeah, considering a> this one was written by Jane Espenson and b> it takes place mostly concurrently with last week's episode. Would ye have them edit the two together to contrast what was happening on both ships at the same time?

Derrich

That statement is more confusing than the last 2 eps combined.


The show seems to have fallen for it's own hype. All of a sudden its way more talky and 'thought provoking' than it really should be. Cycons hate humans. Humans run away. Thats all I really need from BSG.

D

Patman

Don't get the hate for this episode, it was a much stronger effort than Espenson's last episode (about 3-4 episodes ago). Who knew how human the cylons would become and behave as such after their immortality was taken away from them?

tonymontana313

Yeah this episode was a lot better than the past few have been. Very interested to see how next week's episode shapes up after that amazing preview.

Patman

I will say that now that I watch the episodes on Saturday, after a night's rest, my attention span is much better and I'm enjoying BSG a little more (than when I was trying to stay awake to watch BSG on Friday night after a long week of work).

Shazam

This show used to be pitch-perfect. A great combination of action, plot and character development - and perfectly paced.

That pace has disappeared. You could take the episodes from this season (besides this episode), literally rip out half of the scenes, and still be left with the same plot, action and development.

Now we get to this episode. It was rushed. They crammed a zillion things into it. This is what poor pacing does. The writers suddenly realized that they had move the show forward after doing practically nothing for the past four episodes.

That's what is driving me crazy about this show. You know there's things they have to address in terms of plot, but they kept dodging those things, and instead we saw about a bojillion scenes of Starbuck yelling "WRONG WAY!".

What really irks me is that they wasted scene upon scene in past episodes on useless junk, and then finally, they decide "oh, let's have Baltar finally confess about his deed in the mini-series, in the fourth act, after he gets randomly sliced open by an explosion. Yup, that makes perfect sense!". That's the kind of lazy writing that just kills a show.

pinata242

I agree with you, but I think the writing might have been a victim of circumstance. They had a full order of 20 episodes when they starting writing Season 4. Then the WGA strike happened and they were already filming. They had no way to know that the contracts would be in place to finish the back half. They retooled the front 10 (or 11?) so that what should have been the mid-season break could act as a series finale, should that be the case. Turns out it wasn't.

So, what we're seeing here that we classify as lousy pacing is likely a result of a normal-paced 1/4 final season mixed with at fast-paced 3/4 of a final season. After all, they still had 75% of the season to cram into 25%.

I'm more worried about the rush put on by the strike will impact the "final 10" more than the front 10. I hope they didn't paint themselves into a corner and had to add filler or just drag out what little they have to tell over that long. Hopefully they had a plan B all along with the strike in mind.

Josh-da-man

I think that the problems with Buffy's final two seasons are generally blamed on Marti Noxon, though Espenson has never written anything I would consider a "classic." Her Buffy episodes were, at best okay ("After Life") or awful ("Double Meat Palace"). But she did write a lot of the lackluster episodes in season seven, so...

I didn't have a problem with the structure of "The Hub" as much as it's more or less been a pattern for the last several episodes. It would play fine on DVD, where you can watch the episodes back-to-back, but for a weekly series, it seems like it takes forever for them to resolve plotlines that should be resolved in the "next" episode. Wouldn't have bothered me as much if they hadn't already structured the Demetrius storyline in a similar fashion.

An4h0ny

saying that this was better than the last few episodes isn't exactly a compliment

this season just hasn't been nearly as exciting or interesting as the previous ones

not by a long shot

it's not a bad show, it's just a shadow of its former awesome self

Shazam

Good writers get past these hurdle (see: Lost). It also doesn't explain season 3.

Seems to me that Ron Moore just loves to blame everybody else but himself for the problems the show has.

wergo

I dunno. Those podcasts from the post-'Woman King' episodes were pretty honest about how bad the show CAN get when the ball is dropped by the showrunner.

I wasn't actually blaming Espenson. I liked the episode (but, hey, I like 'Doublemeat Palace', too, so my judgment may be considered suspect) and was just pointing out that there may be a valid reason why the style of 'The Hub' episode may seem familiar.

Shazam

Right, but that's hindsight. He needs to realize the situation as it happens, not a year down the road.

Cardiff Giant11

watched it sat morning, not bad but not great better than last week though

pinata242

Lost is comparable, but different. Even if they couldn't finish season 4 the way they wanted, they knew they'd have seasons 5 and 6 to use. Much easier to cram 2.5 seasons into 2 in the future than to cram .75 into .25 immediately.

I didn't have a problem with Season 3 of BSG. I always like seeing all aspects of fleet life. Hell, they've been running for like 4 years now and the Cylon visits are infrequent anyway. Shit's gotta be going on.

al_bundy

end of first part of season 3 we get an infantry battle on a planet and the chief afraid to blow up the temple. end of this season we get a halfway decent space battle and people are complaining. 40 years after the first war and they are still using bullets that can't penetrate cylon armor