There's too much frakking going on


by Paul William Tenny

The Battlestar season four premier was pretty good. In case you missed it, Scifi finally discovered this new thing called full-episode streaming (for which writers get no payment for the first 17 days) and is delay-airing BSG this season on their website. I really enjoyed the week-long marathon Scifi did and in fact, looking back, it should have been a flat out requirement for any fans who were looking to get back into the show, but they felt as fuzzy as I did as to just where things left off and where we were going.

Unfortunately that marathon also reminded me in crystal clarity of all the things I didn't like about the show.
After seeing a large chunk of the show (as much as they could fit in a week) in a way that would leave off at the third season finale, there is really only one glaring flaw in it all. It slowly, sadly, turned into a bad soap opera. Did you see the commercials for the 8-minute special "What the frak is going on with BSG?" They should have called it "Who the frak is fraking who?", because that was my problem in a nutshell.

Look at all the fraking going on:

Starbuck fraked: Apollo, Sam Anders
Apollo fraked: Starbuck, Dualla, and some random hooker (plus he was married, right?)
Dualla fraked: Apollo, Billy?
Sharon fraked: Chief Tyrol, Helo
Chief Tyrol fraked: Sharon, Cally
Baltar fraked: Six, Deanna

Screw asking who the 12th and final Cylon is, how about who hasn't been frakked yet?

It's one thing to have these characters drifting around finding new loves and fighting with old ones as the years pass, but as we got towards the "Eye of Jupiter" in the third season, my brain started swelling at trying to remember who the hell was fraking who. I didn't want to care, and I didn't care, but if you don't care, you'll miss something. You've got to understand the character relationships more so on this show than just about any other, otherwise you won't understand why people react the way they do to each other.

I couldn't figure that out during this hiatus but it couldn't have been any more clear watching the marathon where everything is right there for you to analyze. And truthfully everything else worked great, and I'm happy about that because I've suddenly been able to throw off this general fog that's been hanging over the show for the past few years. If I had any suggestions for Ron Moore, it'd be lay off the fraking for a while because it's getting rather ridiculous.

On another note, is it just me, or was there a significant and noticeable step up in the special effects since the third season finale? I haven't seen anything look as good on BSG as this premier did.
in Television

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