Dexter Morgan is Hannibal Lecter if Hannibal Lecter was a vegan puppy dog. Ostensibly asking questions about morality and justice, the second season of Dexter, which finished in the UK last night, began weak, got stronger as it went along, and ended up throwing away a lot of the progress it had made in a meldoramatic blaze. If you've not yet seen the second season finale, read no further. If you've not yet seen any of it, skip it altogether, and instead watch Pushing Daisies (for something that gets the stylisation/tone equation correct), The Shield (for a truly brain-shaking and thrilling exploration of the effects of corruption and moral confusion on the justice system) and Manhunter (for Will Graham cursing his quarry out, and for Brian Cox being amoral and weird and wonderful).
Funny I should mention spoilers. When The British Invasion aired in the US last year, I mistakenly heard that Dexter killed Doakes, and so watching the lead-up to the finale was seen through that lens. It meant that, for the first time since the show started, we began rooting for Doakes, and were pleased to see Erik King move on from his reliance on Blue Steel (jumping past Le Tigre and going straight for Magnum). It also made us restless to get to that moment, even if we had begun to dread it, as Dexter explored his options through his preferred medium of pretentious voiceover, which sucked all suspense out of the No Way Out style plot. I'm not going to criticise the show for not ratcheting the tension up more, because I wonder if that was even the intention of the showrunners, but it suffered by comparison with the third season of, yes, The Shield, which we were watching at the same time we were watching the second season of Dexter. As Vic Mackey and the Strike Team dodged their colleagues for fifteen stunning and nerve-wracking episodes, all while exploring the consequences of their corruption, Dexter could only look anaemic in comparison (pun sort of intended).
What's worse, while the Strike Team suffer terrible emotional consequences for their actions, Dexter dodges a bullet in an unfortunately silly fashion. The fiery death of Doakes inspired many conflicting emotions in us (possibly a first for the show, which usually just irritates us): relief, as having Doakes killed by Dexter would push our anti-hero over a moral line we could never forgive; frustration, as being killed by Dexter would have been the boldest thing done on the show yet and would have shown some real courage on the part of the showrunners; slack-jawed astonishment, as even though Lila's mental process had been set up with great care throughout the season, it was still an outrageous cheat to take Doakes' ultimate fate from Dexter and place it in her hands. To follow that up with a series of coincidences leading up to a melodramatic kidnap plot, not to mention the godawful and ill-judged in-show recreation of the wonderful title sequence, and the unintentionally silly Satanic Baptism/Rebirth visual of a newly re-purposed Dexter bursting through a conveniently flimsy wall, was utterly exasperating.
That's before we get to the plot stasis of the show which is a regrettable side-effect of the success of the show. While it would be nice to see the show end on a properly bleak note for a show out someone who, despite his cuddliness, is a fucking serial killer for crying out loud, we're always going to see Dexter fudge his moral challenges and do the "right" thing. Killing the people who understand him best (his brother and Lila) might seem like a big deal on a surface level, but it's always done in such a way as to present no challenge to his morals, with the extra consequence of making him seem like a martyr by sacrificing his own peace of mind through the act of murdering the "right" person instead of keeping these monsters around for company. That said, kudos for allowing Dexter to see that the one person he thought understood him, his adoptive father, was actually disgusted by him. Having him face the fact that he really is a monster with a nice line in self-serving justification was one of the things this season did really well.
By this point in the show it's become apparent that the show can be seen two different ways. If you're willing to forgive Dexter his murderous ways, the show is all about following him on a journey of self-discovery, trying to fit in and learn how to feel like he belongs, all while he struggles with his impulses, trying to transform them into a productive act, even when faced with complications. This new Dexter might have finally understood what it is to feel, instead of being a blank slate, which is the first real character progression the show has had. However, if you don't buy into it, it's a bunch of pointless plate spinning. Dexter might make speeches about how he's not operating by the Code of Harry by the time the season finishes, and the next season might mark a notable departure from his past, but to be uncharitable for a moment, though his modus operandi seemed to be slightly different while killing Lila, he's still punishing a murderer, thus keeping the show running for a while linger. This season hinted at pushing Dexter into breaking the code, but at the last second he was saved by a British deus ex machina with a annoying way of talking.
That he killed her and then seemed to embrace family life is only an incremental change from what he was like before, i.e. someone who would have killed her and then tried to fake having a happy family life. Again, I'm curious to see how it plays out, but this new Dexter is only known to us so far through portentous narration. A finale like this needed to see a more visual, dramatic expression of his new nature for us to feel any sense of narrative movement. As it was, the final scenes fell flat, with only his voiceover to tell us things had changed, and no amount of shots of Jaime Murray standing around in Paris was going to stand in for that need (and I'm not going to go on about how Dexter found her, but seriously, when did he become Jason Bourne?).
What's worse, having Lila take Doakes off Dexter's hands was seemingly done because the other options would paint the show into a francise-wrecking corner. Killing Doakes, while an interesting narrative choice, would push Dexter too far over the audience-sympathy line (same with his sister in season one, which is a shame as we were really hoping he would do it and get that potty-mouthed Gupta the hell off our screens). On the other hand, framing Doakes would mean the next season would constantly be derailed with the side sory of Doakes trying to prove his innocence and Dexter's guilt. We've already had a season of that, and it needed to move on. Therefore, Lila conveniently deals with Dexter's problem. That means the drama up to that point mainly serves to show how Dexter would deal with the Doakes problem, and he does it just the way you would expect, by trying to frame him. We learn nothing new about him, no matter how many tedious monologues we hear, and in the end the only dramatic point of it all is that we see Dexter's actions through someone else's eyes, when Doakes is trapped in a cage while his captor hacks a drug-dealer up.
An aside: while I've been ragging on this show a lot, I still watch it in the hopes of some improvement or impressive story-telling, and this season managed it once. The scene with Doakes begging for this man's life, where we see Dexter for the monster he really is, was easily the best thing about the whole season. Kudos to King and Hall, both of whom really stepped up to the plate. So I guess the Dexter/Doakes plot was justified in that we got to have that great scene, but otherwise, it was a waste of time. The drama, which had the potential to completely change the direction of the show and really challenge our assumptions and empathic allegiance (something The Shield does constantly), ended up becoming little more than Dexter mulling over his options without ever having to act on them thanks to the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl Serial Killer Groupie. Yawn!
The end result of all this is a confused me. Do I watch the next season, which might feature a new brand of Dexter? Or do I cut my losses now, fully expecting that the reset button will be hit at the end of the year? The potential for interesting storytelling is still there, so maybe I should stick with it, but I also have to take into account how much the execution irks me, which is a whole hell of a lot. In the end it could all come down to time. Why watch something that annoys and frustrates me when I could be reading the new Neal Stephenson novel? Put like that, the choice is very easy. I need this show to shock the shit out of me, or it's dropped. Dexter, consider yourself on probation.
At the risk of sounding like a misery guts, the last two weeks have been dominated by a distracting real life situation that has made it hard for me to concentrate on blogging, an activity that usually demands a stillness of the mind that can only be taught by some red-robed monk hidden from the world in the mountains of Tibet. Right now, I couldn't feel less tranquil, and so I've felt like slacking off. However, my blogger licence will be revoked if I don't post something every so often, even if it's low on content. So, here are extraneous awards for excellence (or not-excellence) over the past year of TV.
Best New Characters Of The Year
5. Dermott Fictel - The Venture Brothers
Seemingly the long-lost son of Brock Samson (and a mother whose face is being kept from us for now), Dermott Fictel is belligerent, ignorant, overly confident, and generally the brattiest person on TV all year. So why like him so much? For pushing Brock's buttons, and for being one of the most perfectly realised teenagers ever created. I have known so many arrogant dicks like Dermott, who profess to know all about martial arts and army training, and not just during childhood. Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer kinda tortured me by creating this character, who so resembles some of my least favourite people, but they got him so right I couldn't help but delight in seeing that personality type shown up so totally. And then, just to really make me happy, had him get beaten up by weedy Dean Venture, of all people. Just beautiful.
4. Miles Straum - Lost
He's a jerk who is rude to everyone, and he talks to ghosts. What's not to love? Ken Leung is already known to all Sopranos fans, but as we've yet to see it, the only thing I knew him from was X-Men: The Last Stand, where he played Porcupine Man or something. No matter. Straum turned up and was immediately rude to everyone, and then, not long after, talked to a ghost. It was love at first sight. That his character is so enjoyable on a surface level is one thing, but the hints that he knows more about the island show promise much revelation and bitchery to come. Of course, the writers' strike robbed us of a season four Miles flashback, but even though I'm desperate to know more about him, it has added to his mystique.
3. Livia Beale- Journeyman
When we first see the supposedly dead Livia, she is surprisingly confident, intelligent, attractive but not overly sexualised, and emotionally compex. I say surprisingly, because all too often female characters on TV are underwritten compared to their male counterparts. Things have obviously improved (I can think of numerous examples now, whereas a few years ago I would have had trouble), but Journeyman was still in the minority. Moon Bloodgood, who before this had had an uninspiring IMDb resume that includes the character designations Maid, Stripper, and Gorgeous Woman, hinting that she was only being cast for her looks and not her talent, excelled herself as the mysterious Livia, who, it turns out, is not just a strong female character, but is a strong female character who actually exists in the 20s, which adds even more heft to her unshowy feminism. Her inspirational, no-nonsense wisdom and strength will be sorely missed now that the show is over.
2. Emerson Cod - Pushing Daisies
Though I would argue that the conceit of Pushing Daisies is dark enough that the tone of the show needs to be brighter than bright to offset it, it also needs a counter-corrective to make those sunshiney visuals and optimistically romantic plot tolerable. Luckily, Bryan Fuller struck gold by casting Chi McBride as ascerbic PI Emerson Cod, whose cynicism stands in stark contrast to the cutesy antics of Chuck and Ned. Though Cod's character is over-designed (knitting? Really?), McBride makes it all work beautifully. Taking into account his work on House and the adorable Roll Bounce, he's rapidly becoming one of my favourite actors.
1. Dr. Amber Volakis - House M.D.
The writers' strike made a mess of a lot of shows plans, saving some from imminent irrelevance (Heroes), and wrecking the momentum of others (Ugly Betty). Amber "Cutthroat Bitch" Volakis looked to have the most interesting arc of any of the characters on House, but losing a few episodes meant her transformation from calculating semi-mechanoid horrorshow to tragic saint almost didn't work the way it should, but the amazing Anne Dudek (and Robert Sean Leonard and Hugh Laurie as the men in her life) sold it with utter conviction. To start the season as a potential Gupta and end as our favourite character on the show is a notable achievement. We're still secretly depressed at how it all turned out. We miss you, Amber!
Guptas Of The Year
5. PC Andy - Torchwood
Bit of a fudge, this one. He was first seen in the Torchwood pilot and then vanished for a while before returning to crop up once or twice, hanging around Gwen like a bad Welsh smell. The fact that he has little to do other than bug Gwen about Torchwood, as well as the irksome unfinished name, are enough to get on this list. A character as glib and underwritten as this probably has legions of squeeing fans ("OMG PC Andy was so great when he said very little tonight I HEART HIM!"), as that is what fandom does (such as the mystifying cult that sprung up around Deputy Sacks from Veronica Mars). That kind of thinking is not alien to me, I guess. I remember thinking Miles O'Brien was the nuts on Star Trek: The Next Generation when he had very little to do other than energize. That PC Andy's role is being expanded does not bode well. Even now, he sure isn't a Miles O'Brien (who became the best non-Sisko thing about DS9). Still, maybe he'll get a surname now.
4. West - Heroes
What can I say about West? Seriously, what can I say? I totally tuned out while he was onscreen. How about this. West! Your power is boring and you are no kind of romantic hero. Plus, that flying-your-girlfriend-around trick has been done before. Consider how classy Claire Bennett is that she didn't come up with a crappy poem about reading minds while you did it. She's too good for you. Beside, you have the same power her dad Nathan Petrelli does, so you trying to get into Claire's pants is, on some level, almost incestuous. That she would fall for someone who is like her dad is one thing, in an Elektra complex kinda way, but you're no Adrian Pasdar. Plus, you are named after a direction. Fly away, sad little meta-emo!
3. Juliet Darling - Dirty Sexy Money
Creating a character who is just like Paris Hilton, except openly bitchy and shouty, has to be the dumbest move the Dirty Sexy Money showrunners made. Who, other than that unpleasant fame-ho Perez Hilton, actually likes Paris Hilton enough to see a fictionalised version of her, and, even worse, on a show featuring venerable actors Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh? I guess Samaire Armstrong managed to capture Paris' persona well enough, but accuracy does not change the fact that having to endure this shallow jerk week after week was an unendurable trial. Real life events meant she's not on the show anymore, but it's not like it's in tip top health without her. Natalie Zea, Seth Gabel, and Glenn Fitzgerald are still on it, after all.
2. Lila Tournay/West - Dexter
Ah Lila, the deep and mysterious artist who is impulsive! And is deep! And unafraid of exhibiting her boobs because she is such a free spirit! And is a bit mysterious! And will teach life lessons to our anti-hero using her deep deepness, boobs, and impulsive nature! How life-affirming. And supremely annoying. Manic Pixie Dream Girls are intrinsically awful anyway, but Jaime Murray brings a bag of distracting acting tics and bizarre facial expressions to the plate just to make the character even more unlikeable. That she fits right in on this most frustrating of shows is not a compliment. Just like everyone else, she makes us shout "Oh shut up!" at the screen, except with more vehemence.
1. Morgan Grimes - Chuck
A lot of generic network shows tend to lead with a static and semi-boring main character, in order to maintain a format; too much change or unpredictability in that character would make the show and whatever gimmick/hook the show has unworkable from week to week. As a result it's the supporting cast that has the most colour and potential for drastic change. That's not a criticism, of course. That's just the way it works. I doubt many people would say Buffy was their favourite character on Buffy. For example, though I liked Buffy, I was always more invested in Willow and Giles.
However, if the supporting cast sucks, you're in trouble. While Buffy had a great sidekick in Willow, and Angel had Wesley (and Kirk had Spock, and Ryan had Seth, Gil Grissom has Catherine Willows, etc.), Chuck has Morgan, a comedy relief character whose shtick is, "I'm so pathetic yet so inordinately confident." That he is a stock character plunked into the sidekick slot without any effort expended to flesh him out at all is bad enough, and a perfect display of the formulaic and unimaginative nature of the show. What makes him the worst new character on TV is that Joshua Gomez' performance is a grab-bag of nerd tics borrowed from many other actors, none of which make him at all charming or likeable. His reflexively sarcastic line readings are like animal shrieking forced into my ears, and the beard, THE BEARD! OH GOD! It is making my TV screen cry and my eyes vomit!!! How bad is Morgan? Even his best friend, Chuck, seems utterly bored by him. Whether that's a deliberate choice or Zach Levy thinking "Shut up, loser!" all the time is unknown. There was a lot to hate about Chuck, but it was Gomez that made me stop watching. He was definitely the Gupta of the entire TV season. And now that I've ranted about it, I feel terrible. Sorry, Gomez!
Most Lovable Ensemble Cast of the Year:
Reaper
The list of best new characters is sadly incomplete, as it is lacking some Sock. In my defence, though he is easily my favourite character on that show, and I'm fully on the He-Is-A-Genius side of the Tyler Labine debate, choosing Sock would mean snubbing Bret Harrison as lovable lead character Sam (a perfect example of the less interesting lead and crazy "second-in-command" format I mentioned earlier), Rick Gonzalez as hapless but lovable Ben, Ken Marino and Michael Ian Black as lovable demons Tony and Steve, Christine Willes as duplicitous but lovable Gladys, Donavon Stinson as the horrible but lovable Ted, and Ray Wise as the best (and most lovable) Devil ever. The only weak characters in the cast are, sadly, the ladies, but I'll include Valarie Rae Miller due to my former crush on her in Dark Angel (even though she had the even more thankless role as Underwritten Token African-American Lesbian in that pile of cyber-doodie), and Missy Peregrym was finally given stuff to do by the end of the season, so she gets in too. It's possibly the most good-natured show on TV, even though it revolves around Satan, and it's all down to the astute casting decisions. I love all of them, and even when the writing is off, the actors make it all work.
Least Lovable Ensemble Cast of the Year:
Dexter
I've already dissed the entire bunch of grating chumps in another post, so I feel bad for repeating myself, but I could not care less about any of these jerkoffs, and they're not helped by performances that range from bland to bafflingly terrible. Only by the end of the season does Erik King as Doakes live up to his billing as nemesis of Dexter, and by then it's too late. I liked Julie Benz prior to Dexter, but here she is given so little to work with (this week: weak. Next week: strong. Rinse, repeat) that it's hard to watch her at times, especially when remembering how great she was during her final episodes on Angel. Jennifer Morrison and her Potty-Mouth of Grittiness (which has almost convinced us to turn the show off for good) is as one-note as Masuka's sexism, or Batista's feebleness, and LaGuerta is either a Macchiavellian genius or an idiot, depending on what direction the plot is heading that week. The whole lot could be dispatched by Dexter at any moment and I would rejoice. Shurely shome mishtake on the part of the showrunners.
Best Worst Character of the Year:
Peter Campbell - Mad Men
So weaselly he makes Vincent Kartheiser's previous role (Angel's weaselly son Connor) look like Conan of Cimmeria, Pete Campbell is a sheer delight. In every scene he makes some tetchy comment, cringe-inducing faux-pas, or unfunny quip, triggering embarrassment in all around. Since the end of the first season he has been dropped as Office Nemesis of Don Draper (and replaced by Duck Phillips), but that has meant he has become far more interesting and pitiful. Just like Ayn Rand's Peter Keating, the man has no idea who he is or what he wants to be, though he's perfectly willing to lie to himself and pretend to be what he thinks is a successful man. He's not yet figured out what Don has; that success on the terms of The Man do not automatically lead to happiness. He has also yet to grow up, retreating back to his childish ways as soon as his father dies. He's also far too eager to impress, unthinkingly callous, unfunny, and creepy. Watching him continually get things wrong and alienate those around him amuses us greatly. He's like Michael Scott, but a Michael Scott you couldn't care about even if you tried.
Most Wasted Character of the Year:
Monica Dawson - Heroes
Of all the new characters on Heroes, the one I felt most shortchanged by was Monica, played by Dana Davis. Her power (adoptive muscle memory) is unflashy but cool, and a staple of superhero comics (Taskmaster and Echo both have it too), and Monica herself was brave and likeable. After a long build-up and origin story, tapping into memories of the New Orleans Katrina disaster (which, if you were feeling uncharitable, might say did little to illuminate that tragedy and just seemed to add it to the show as a bit of topical flavour), we got to see Monica finally use her powers to help another and to further the plot in the penultimate episode. What happens? She gets caught like a punk, beaten up, trapped in a burning building, and then saved by Niki or Jessica or whoever she was at the time. Monica is being written out in the next season, so all of that was for nothing. Super-utter-lame. If I were Dana Davis, I'd be so pissed.
Most Wasted Actor Of The Year:
Keith Carradine - Dexter
Other than Michael C. Hall (and the odd appearance by the great James Remar), there is no performer on Dexter that doesn't set our teeth on edge, which is one of the reasons we've had so much trouble getting through it. Early in the second season, the introduction of Keith Carradine as serial killer hunter Frank Lundy gave me great hope of a transformation in the direction of the show, but for the most part he has been used as a device to fix Debra, still suffering from the psychic trauma inflicted by the Ice Truck Killer. Whenever he is onscreen, his calm and authoritative presence has been a great relief from the usual amateurish flappity-rargh performances, but he's not around long enough to make a real difference. As a result, Michael C. Hall is left to carry the show. Still, there are two good side-effects of Carradine's appearance. It inspired me to buy the recently re-released DVD of Alan Rudolph's glorious genre-hopping curio Trouble In Mind (featuring Carradine with a superb 'do), and his role as Dexter-antagonist is far more effective than the one-note bluster of Doakes, whose mode of expression can be described in two words: Blue Steel.
Best Couple of the Year:
Bill Adama and Laura Roslin - Battlestar Galactica
I was torn as to whether to choose Coach and Tami Taylor from Friday Night Lights (which is the obvious choice), or Marc and Cliff from Ugly Betty (though they have been sorely underused after their memorable first meeting), but instead I'm settling on the OAPs mature couple from Battlestar Galactica, not just because they're my two favourite characters on the show, and being together leads to an exponential increase in their awesomeness, but because they're not just cute together, but also horribly tragic. Coach and Tami are realistic, Marc and Cliff are adorable, but Bill and Laura are doomed, due to her cancer and Earth turning out to be a big bust after all of that fuss and palaver. With that horrible fate hanging over them, they need the support.
Best Guest Appearance of the Year:
Edie Falco - 30 Rock
Playing a wet liberal stereotype / Capulet to Alec Baldwin's aggressive conservative / Montague, Falco made a convincing case for a career in comedy, creating one of the most memorable and endearing additions to the supporting cast on 30 Rock, already the most impressive gallery of grotesques since Arrested Development. Don't believe me? The runner-up is David Schwimmer as Greenzo.
Worst Guest Appearance of the Year:
Eliza Dushku - Ugly Betty
Misunderstanding the tone of the show, as well as ignoring the dictum "Less is more", Dushku barreled through the dire episode Giving Up The Ghost as if possessed by Zero Mostel on amphetamines. Mercifully stopping short of winking at the camera, Dushku totally killed every feeble joke and situation deader than they already were, to the extent that I'm fairly certain her role in the show, as spoof celebrity Cameron Ashlock, was cut short when it was apparent Dushku has absolutely zero capacity for comedy (see also: Katey Sagal, who was dire on CSI this season). Let's hope Whedon gives the funny lines to the other Dolls in his forthcoming Dollhouse.
Runner Up:
Lucy Davis - Reaper
I feel terrible picking on Davis for this guest appearance (as semi-regular character Sara), but it was deeply depressing to see the formerly terrific actress get it so wrong in this. I don't blame her; it must have been toxic to have spent so long in the presence of Aaron Sorkin on Studio 60, and I'm sure his arrogance curdled the talent of everyone around him (we'll see what Sarah Paulson is like in the remake of Cupid soon enough). Another factor is the desperately awful character (English Green Card fraud leeching of the adorable Ben), but even so, her incoherent line readings and reflexively clenched jaw made her nigh-unwatchable. Can normal service be restored ASAP, please?
Best Bruce Lee Impression of the Year:
Mark Dacascos - The Middleman
Mark Dacascos' appearance as Sensei Ping (pron: Piiiiiiiiing) has amused me greatly this past week. It's the kind of silly joke that sticks in the head and brightens your day whenever you recall it. However, it's also a great impression of Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon, whose onscreen persona has already been satirised relentlessly since his first appearance. Usually something like that would seem lazy but in The Middleman Dacascos is silly enough to make it work. The best touches are his abuse of Wendy whenever she does something wrong (his slaps are straight out of the opening scene of Dragon), and the kick attacks at the 0:56 mark of this fight scene...
...deliberately echo Lee's moves at the 7:30 mark of this clip.
Attention to detail like that is very welcome, as were the Man With Two Brains references littered throughout. (((((The Middleman)))))
Best Fight Scene of the Year:
Sayid vs. Keamy - Lost
Here's the whole scene including the unfortunate death of Omar, but the highlight comes at 3:49. Last year it was The Ankles Of Death, this year it's The Uppercut Of Awesome.
Uppercut that motherfucker, Sayid!
Badass of the Year:
SAYID!!! - Lost (aka The Sayid Jarrah Powah Howah)
Haven't you been paying attention? What's best is he'll kill with utmost dispassion, unless it's a woman he has fallen in love with, in which case he'll cry. Badassery at its most sentimental and awesome. Runner-Up: Stanley Hudson from The Office. Would you mess with him? Me either.
Most Peculiar Fight Equation Of The Year:
Sayid Jarrah = X Ben Linus = Y Keamy The Sailorman = Z
Z > X Y > Z ∴ Y > X
Ben could beat Sayid in a fight? Well, okay, Keamy had been stabbed and was taken by surprise, but still, we now know that if it came down to a fight between Ben and Sayid, Sayid would be toast. The mind boggles.
Most Missed Show of the Year:
Journeyman
I'm never getting over that cancellation. And neither is Moon Bloodgood.
Least Missed Show of the Year:
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
A happy year has been spent without Aarogant Sorkin's finger being wagged in my face, telling me I'm an idiot for watching TV and blogging about it (well, not me personally, but a lot of people in general). Come on in, united bloggers of the world, the schadenfreude is fine! Of course, his forthcoming movie about Facebook will almost certainly be filled with speeches about how isolated we have all become, so it's no clear sailing yet, but for a few months there, the only contact we had with him was Charlie Wilson's War, which was lots of fun, even though at one point Charlie Wilson was featured STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN, which could have derailed everything.
Best Show We Didn't Watch:
The Shield
We've not yet seen the most recently aired season of The Shield, having only watched the pilot a couple of months ago (I'd seen it years ago and loved it, but Canyon had yet to experience it). In the time since, we've raced through the first four seasons, and yesterday we started the fifth, featuring the arrival of Lt. Jon Kavanaugh with all of his unnerving Forest-Whitakerian tics. We're already expecting to do nothing but focus on this for the rest of the week. The sixth season didn't even really figure in the timeframe for this round of Caruso Awards, but even so, we've fallen so completely under its spell that I have to mention it somehow. Again and again we're told that this show doesn't hold a candle to The Wire (which we plan to watch eventually), but if The Wire really is exponentially greater than The Shield as we have been told over and over again, it will probably fry our synapses, boil our blood, and vaporise our house. The Shield is already absolutely amazing, easily one of the best shows of the new TV Golden Age, up there with Deadwood, Lost, and Buffy. It also shows up Dexter (a show with which it shares the same fascination with morality and justice) for the poorly-written, shallow failure that it really is. Team Mackey (and Team Wyms) all the way.
Worst Prediction By Me:
CSI has been the classic example of how one-off procedural shows can still exist and work brilliantly in a long-form world that has seen many story-of-the-week shows deemed obsolete. Every week a new case is introduced, and at the end the case is solved (most of the time). Last season, however, saw the show bring in the excellent Miniature Killer arc, which popped in and out of the procedural, often to devastating effect (as I've said before, Monster in the Box might be the single best episode of CSI ever). This season, the producers have hinted that there would be something similar introduced, but if this episode is anything to go by, it won't be a single criminal, but an ongoing case against a water-processing plant. I hope other fans are as excited about that as I am. It would be Erin Brockovich with less biker beards!
Yes, CBS are really going to anger Corporate America by daring to suggest there is endemic corruption in the system. I couldn't have been more off the mark if I said the series would end with the improbable craziness of Warrick getting shot by the corrupt and possibly demented Undersheriff McKeen. Ha! Ha! Ohhhhhh...
Favourite Screencap of the Year:
Now that's some empathic pain right there. Captain Jack needs a hug, people. The queue to give him some comfort forms on the left (me first!!!).
Best Line of the Year:
"So?" - Ben Linus, upon hearing that killing the man who killed his daughter has doomed the crew of the Kahana.
Runner-Up: "I gotta go pray." Lila Garrity after drunkenly kissing both of her ex-boyfriends.
Visual of the Year:
It's amazing how much I am cheered up just by the thought of Ray Wise, let alone by seeing that infinitely charming grin. Long may he rule in Hell.
Okay, I'm done, I think. Time to look forward to the new season, which features such wonders as John Noble as the awesome Dr. Walter Bishop in Fringe, Whedon's return to TV with Dollhouse, a guaranteed thirteen episode season of Friday Night Lights, Morpheus solving crimes in CSI, the long-delayed return of Big Love, and more questions posed on Lost. I'm vibrating with excitement already.
First I hit you all up with the shiny side of my two-headed coin, compelling me to give up much love to those shows that made my heart soar this last year, but now that coin has landed on its nasty scarred side, and I am forced by my innate sense of cosmic balance to point my finger at those hours of TV that offended unto my very core. That pain, so crippling to me, must be expunged somehow, and this list is my preferred method of self-exorcism. Please indulge me while I carp.
10. Lost - Ji Yeon
It gives me zero pleasure to put an episode of Lost on this list, especially one that featured a wonderful and emotionally exhausting performance from Yunjin Kim, but there is no getting past the fact that the entire episode is based around a silly narrative trick employed merely to distract the audience enough to bring out a big shock at the end. Being well made and well acted is not enough, as rewatching this episode has shown how empty that flashback/forward trick is. While Lost has certainly messed around with the audience before, using our expectation against us as a judo wrestler uses the weight of the opponent against him/her, this episode was blatantly a big nothing wrapped in a trick bow. To add insult to injury, the other big shock of the episode was the reveal of Michael as the Kahana crewmember doing Ben's bidding. As Harold Perrineau's name had been in the credits all season without him appearing once, no one could possibly have been fooled.
9. Dexter - See-Through
There are many things that mystify us, but the critical and popular success of Dexter is high up on the list of most baffling events ever. Watching the second season has taken us almost a year, with each new episode annoying us so much we decide against watching any further and yet are forced to struggle on just to clear space on the Sky+ box. Sometimes all it takes to piss us off is the first couple of lines of each episode's voiceover, which removes all subtlety from the show and in its place gives us some cringeworthy psychological drivel that could only come from the mind of someone who has done nothing but read bad crime novels their whole life. No other "quality" cable show on TV has so little respect for the audience, drowning out all thought or interpretation with a barrage of exposition, moralising, and primary-school level philosophical meanderings. Dexter is perhaps the least mysterious and most predictable character on TV, which makes following his adventures utterly tiresome.
To make things worse, though we suspect that removing that redundant voiceover would significantly improve the show, even then it would still have some of the most unappealing characters on TV. Grumpy Doakes the Grumpy Grumpy Cop, the vile worm Masuka (whose dialogue is a series of variations on, "I'd buy that for a dollar!!!"), Dexter's relentlessly aggressive sister Debra, the hapless Secret-loving Angel, duplicious Rosie-Perez-voice-clone LaGuerta, Rita the constantly peeved girlfriend; I appreciate that there is much to be made of including unlikeable characters in a show (some of our favourites are littered with unpleasant people), but these aren't interesting character studies. They're just a bunch of annoying jerks, all of whom are as boring as sand. So why choose this episode? Because it introduced another show Gupta (Rita's horrible mom, a caricature of a meddling mother), and cemented our dislike of Dexter's Narcotics Anonymous sponsor Lila, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl with a criminal mind and an over-enunciation habit. I'll get to her soon, time permitting.
8. Heroes - Cautionary Tales
In other internet venues, SoC contributor Masticator has plowed a lonely furrow, arguing that the second season of Heroes, which had attracted so much vitriol, was about the same as the first season, quality-wise, if a little worse for not having a stand-out episode like Company Man, which featured highly in last year's Caruso Awards. While I've already railed against the show for having a very disappointing sophomore season, I'm not sure I articulated it fully. It can be summed up like this; all of the suspicions I had that the boldness of the storytelling masked a deeply stupid, derivative concept and some equally shaky execution were confirmed in the second season, which not only failed to deliver on the promise of the first season, but damaged it terribly by shooting off in different directions, none of which were particularly interesting, all the while doing very little to entertain (for a show about superheroes, no one did anything superheroic except for DL). The occasionally histrionic performances ran riot, characters died like punks for no apparent narrative or logical reason (RIP DL, the true hero!!!), allegiances changed over and over again (what the hell is Suresh thinking from scene to scene, let alone episode to episode?), and so much endless, formless, pointless dialogue poured from our TV that by the midpoint of the strike-truncated season I had completely lost the thread of what was going on.
I'm no dummy, but I honestly had no clue what was happening by the final few episodes. Motives were explained so sketchily that I felt like giving up on the whole thing numerous times. All of this is before we get to the other, well-trodden complaints about the season; Hiro's ridiculous Japanese adventures, the wasted new characters, the similarities between the big arcs of this season and last season, the Hoirish Ghangsturrs frrrrrom Cork don't yer know begorrah, and the inability of the showrunners to capitalise on the strengths of the cast (especially Adrian Pasdar, whose saltiness was a refreshing change from all of the portentous performances from everyone else). The badness was spread so thinly across the whole season that picking the worst episode is hard, so I've plumped for this one, partially because it was so memorably over the top (that over-director Greg Yaitanes again), but mostly because the gulf between the epic ambitions of the showrunners and the silly, undramatic, kinda ridiculous end product is made glaringly apparent here. It was a fun episode to watch, but it broke the show for us. Masticator may be right. The second season might not be that much worse than the first season. The problem is, as I said at the time, the first season hinted that, once it had found its footing, the show might have been brain-fodder as well as nerd-fodder. After this episode aired, I gave up that dream and figured it would be CSI: Miami with metahumans. Which is fun in its own right, but still a disappointment.
7. Doctor Who - Voyage Of The Damned
Thus far every season of the New Who has had a stinker at some point, an episode of depressing stupidity that taints the whole run. The latest season, number four, was mediocre at worst, with the Sontaran two-parter representing the season's nadir (unless you are Masticator and have an aversion to adorable little creatures made of fat). That was merely boring, a crime that is forgivable when Who usually has so much enjoyable energy to spare. However, Who season four merely dodged a bullet; there was a truly dreadful episode aired prior to that season, and it was watched by a huge portion of the British viewing public. Russell T Davies' Christmas special was an indulgent abomination, with the stunt-casting of the mysteriously popular Kylie, who killed every single one of her lines, being only one of a number of egregious failings. If the repeated angelic and messianic metaphors weren't enough to wreck the show, the hammy performances were. Guest actor Clive Swift got lucky, though. His teeth-grating and florid line-readings would have been the worst thing about the entire regrettable endeavour if RTD hadn't thought it a wizard idea to have the Queen running around Buckingham Palace in robe and slippers. It almost made me a Monarchist out of sympathy. The disastrous exercise in condescension was almost Torchwoodian in its dedication to barrel-scraping.
6. Chuck - Chuck Versus the Truth
The titling conceit on Chuck is that each week, faux-nerd Chuck is put in opposition to something. It's a semi-comedic method of naming the episode, as mannered as Seinfeld's simple The [Something] titles, or Friends' The One With [The Something]. This episode, which I again had stern words about earlier, was the only time in the first season Chuck went up against a concept, though sadly it wasn't the right one. Perhaps Chuck Vs. The Patience of the Audience would have been more accurate. Riddled with the usual uncertain performances, re-re-rehashed plots, poorly filmed action, and flat dialogue, this installment compounded those Chuckian standards with some egregious plot errors so glaring that the entire crew must have been asleep while filming to have not noticed it. If NBC's cancellation of Journeyman wasn't already galling enough, the renewal of this vapid atonal tripe is salt in the wound. Perhaps this is more entertaining than a broken TV, but surely only because Adam Baldwin is in it. Even with his talent involved, Chuck is an insult to pop culture itself.
5. Dirty Sexy Money - The Italian Banker
An expensive, major network show with a starry cast, lots of promotion, and a writing staff that included writers from Six Feet Under, Lost, and Veronica Mars, this should have been a home run, but alarms were ringing after the pilot ran on the spot for 42 minutes with no character, line of dialogue, or event generating enough energy to imprint itself on my memory. It didn't get any better. As my previous comments have shown, the writing was pitched at a mid-afternoon soap level, with only the production values and relentless winking of the actors to differentiate it from The Bold and the Beautiful. While Ugly Betty (when operating at full power) perfectly understands how to satirise trashy soap stylings while revelling in their excesses, Dirty Sexy Money didn't seem to have a handle on how to maintain a consistent tone. Switching from fluffy to dramatic with a grinding of narrative gears is bad enough, but there was nothing else going on to distract the viewer from this clumsiness. This episode was only marginally worse than all of the others, thanks to some startlingly bad dialogue, worn out plot threads from numerous other shows and films, and obsequious product placement for Bulgari, but the entire show was flawed from conception.
4. Ugly Betty - Giving Up The Ghost
Debate has raged between the contributors to this blog as to which Ugly Betty episode was the weakest. Masticator and Canyon have maintained that the Wicked advert called Something Wicked This Way Comes was the worst, and given that that despicable nonsense insulted Ray Bradbury with its name, I very seriously considered adding it to the list. However, the painful memories of Giving Up The Ghost are still raw, so I'll have to plump for it. Featuring the same kinds of broad caricature, feeble dialogue, scenery-chewing performances, cliche-strewn plots, and misunderstanding of tone as your average episode of Dirty Sexy Money (a crime considering Ugly Betty usually gets the tone spot-on), it also included a career-worst guest appearance by Eliza Dushku, and brought about the necessary but frustrating separation of Wilhelmina from the Mode offices. That, in turn, split Marc from Amanda, which meant the show suddenly felt like The Venture Brothers without Brock Samson, or 30 Rock without Jack Donaghy. In one fell swoop the episode killed the funny for weeks to come, crippling the show during the latter half of the season. All of these events were overturned eventually, but the ratio of good to bad episodes was in the negative from then on.
3. Bionic Woman - Sisterhood
Oh God, where to begin? I've bitched about many shows here that are often good but had a bad week, or shows that might have seemed promising upon conception but never really gelled once shooting began, or shows that couldn't back up their lofty ambitions, but Bionical Woman represents that rarity in the new Golden Age of TV; an out and out disaster from conception onwards. Nothing, and I mean nothing, about this show worked. The concept, hinting at modern self-awareness and littered with unconvincing tech-speak about such bleeding edge concepts as nanotechnology (ooooOOOOoooohhhh! So futuristical!), was still ridiculous in the way that only 70s sci fi TV can be, and all attempts to update the original show regularly misfired. With the sci fi hook malfunctioning, there was no hope for it anyway, but the poorly sketched mythology, miscasting, lacklustre action, and aversion to originality rendered it particularly dreadful. At its best the show was utterly boring. At its worst, however, it was an unmitigated and hilarious failure. This episode, featuring a regrettable guest appearance by Isaiah Washington, Katee Sackhoff chomping on drywall and furniture in a vague approximation of a tortured soul, and poor Michelle Ryan having to say, "Bring it on, bitch," was the worst example of the whole debacle, and a comedic masterpiece to boot. Highly recommended.
2. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Two and a Half Deaths
As a successful show progresses, it will either stagnate or become scared of stagnation. CSI, a show that could potentially run forever with careful changes of cast, has dabbled with gimmickry to keep fresh something that doesn't need to be fiddled with. Though some of those tricks have worked well (the Miniature Killer arc, William Friedkin directing an episode, Liev Schreiber's guest appearance), swapping writing teams with the Two and a Half Men showrunners (Lee Aronsohn and Chuck Lorre) is a contender for the worst decision ever made in TV history. What is usually a pretty slick and intelligent piece of TV was instantly transformed into a score-settling grab-bag of cliches, weak jokes, eye-rolling performances, and petty attacks on the writers' former employers on Roseanne and Grace Under Fire. To willfully allow your show, a successful, well-loved work that relies on atmosphere and character acting for its impact, to be hijacked by a couple of giggling twerps with chips on their shoulders and only a vague understanding of what makes CSI work better than any other procedural on TV, is an almost suicidal gesture, and a shocking fuck you aimed at the fanbase. My previous praise for the show still stands, but if anything is going to kill the show, it will be failure of nerve. Stay the course, CSI showrunners.
1. Torchwood - Something Borrowed
Regular readers will not be surprised by the presence of the ever-dire Torchwood, but as with Lost, I had a tough time deciding which episode should represent the show at the top of this list. Contenders included the season opener, with James Marsters failing to make the show's trademark shitty dialogue work, as well as the garbled and shouty finale, and of course Meat, the hilariously misguided animal rights allegory that featured such delights as Ianto's demented taser rampage, Owen's "MERCY KILLING!", and Captain Jack's unforgettable face of empathic pain.
In the end, the right choice had to be Something Borrowed, not just because it represented sci fi at its most fat-headed and amateurish, but because it aired straight after the only episodes in the history of the show that didn't totally suck space ass. Reset was a fun episode that showed a spark of life, and the two subsequent episodes, while not anywhere near perfect, exhibited a willingness to tinker with the format. Regrettably, in a flurry of poorly choreographed gunplay, misjudged humour, and rampant ineptitude, all of that effort was erased, and Something Borrowed returned the show to its default position of Stupidest Thing on TV Not Involving Fearne Cotton, Jimmy Carr, or Simon Cowell. Meat might have been unintentionally funnier, but this made me laugh and depressed me simultaneously. Quite a trick. It's the sort of TV that poisons the soul, dulls the mind, and craps on the heart, and yet it is enormously, unfeasibly successful and adored. Go figger.
I think I might be able to milk this award-giving shtick out a bit further. Hey, it's easier than thinking!
Is it fair to say that sci fi fans are split into two factions over the best genre shows on TV right now? In my time reading talkbacks and comment sections online, Lost talkbacks are often invaded by hardcore Battlestar Galactica fans dissing the island-based dissertation on free will for "making it up as it goes along", and Battlestar Galactica talkbacks feature, well, less attacks, but perhaps that's because Lost fans are more polite. Yes, I am firmly in the former category, and so my perception is distorted by that fandom. Lost pushes all of my buttons, whereas BSG makes me angry almost as often as it makes me happy. This picture expresses the chasm between the two fanbases (at least as far as I see it).
It was not always this way. The opening mini and the first season were as good as TV gets. It was relevant, it was exciting, it was cleverly referential with regards to the original series, and it featured the most incredible effects yet shown on TV. It's shallow of me to love the show for that, but Zoic's effects work was simply staggering. That was merely the cherry on top of a lot of really terrific drama. I was absolutely thrilled that SciFi was making something so challenging and clever.
Over time, my opinion changed. By the end of season two we had had way too many placeholder episodes, which meant the finale crammed in several episodes' worth of drama into an hour of TV. It was good drama, but rushed through in an unsatisfying blur of action and revelation and unconvincing fatsuits. The other sin of that season (and the subsequent season) was the amount of time spent focusing on possibly the least interesting couple on TV at the expense of a lot of other exciting avenues. Yes, no Apobuck 'shipper am I. Or Starders, or Apoulla, or any combination.
Apollo and Starbuck bore me to tears, and we have spent way too much time watching them come up with reasons not to just start spacehumping. My least favourite Apobuck moment came when Starbuck used religion as a reason to not just bang Apollo's grumpy brains out. We have no idea what the provisions of her religion are, as none of these details have been explained convincingly (more on that bugbear later), so this just smacked of contrivance. The main reason for their inability to just get it on (other than that they are boring, badly written teenagers who love the drama of their relationship) is that Starbuck was involved with the now "dead" Zack Adama, Lee's brother, who looms over them and Apollo's dad, the flat-out AWESOME Bill Adama, from "beyond the grave".
The amount of time spent agonising over a character who is not actually on the show is dead air, and as such seems odd. Unless, of course, Zack is the final Cylon. The fact that the prequel series Caprica seems to revolve around the Adama family's connections with the scientist who created the Cylons suggest it might be. The arrival of Zack will justify all of the attention on two boring-ass flyers at the expense of so many other more interesting relationships. How the son of a human could be a Cylon has yet to be explained, but we're convinced it will be him (kudos to the AV Club commenter, whose name escapes me, who suggested it a few months ago). If not, why the hell are we devoting this much time to these guys? Now that they've reached earth together will they become Adam and Eve? Surely a show as smart as this one won't be so stupid as to do that.
If I had problems with season two, season three tested our patience to the limit. After a very very strong opening featuring some of the most astonishing drama on any show last year, the show got into a funk, with Baltar doing something something on the Cylon Basestar, Tyrol staring at a carving for two episodes, Apollo and Starbuck getting pissed at each other, and lots of other truly dreary nonsense that I'm blotting out because those empty scenes are taking up space in my head I could use to get excited about the Watchmen trailer (shut up over-sensitive fanboys, it looks great). By then, even some top quality space explosions couldn't keep me interested. An attempt to watch the Razor TV movie faltered in the middle of a huge battle sequence due to lack of interest (and I've yet to finish it). How is this possible? Usually I live for this stuff.
I thought it would take a miracle to make me give a damn about Battlestar Galactica again, but in the end something less dramatic but equally as wonderful happened; Jane Espenson wrote two episodes of the show and introduced some quality writing, something the show was sorely in need of. That's not to say that the fourth season of BSG was instantly made flawless, because there were plenty of annoyances, longueurs, and poor performances. That's also not to say the rest of the BSG writing team are uniformly dreadful; Ronald D. Moore, Bradley Thomson and David Weddle (and Mark Verheiden, occasionally) still do sterling work, but we still get some horrendous dialogue, cringe-making dramatic devices, and confusing expansion of the BSG mythos. If you don't believe me about the terrible devices, consider Gaeta and his lost leg. A strangely dramatic plot-thread for a minor character, but made almost unwatchable by the conceit that, in his post-op delirium, he keeps warbling tuneless, pretentious songs reflecting that episode's moral dilemmas. Even more improbably, anyone walking into the recovery room was obligated to comment on how lovely it was. Gah! I know you've been living without music for a while, but it didn't used to sound like that. Oh well, at least it wasn't a Dylan song.
However, even at its best (and its best is very very good), the show has lacked a spark in its writing, possibly due to budget and network pressures, or, as I sometimes suspect, the mythology of the show has been insufficiently worked out in advance. I once started a huge post about my frustration with the show, and perhaps I'll get back to that soon. Right now, I want to go apeshit over Espenson's expanded role on the show, which saw her get solo credit on two episodes, a step up from co-writing a season three episode with former 24 producer Anne Cofell Saunders (who has left BSG to work on Chuck). Her first episode was dismissed by some talkbackers as a placeholder, and though it didn't feature space battles or mythos-defining weirdness, it did have words coming out of people's mouths that didn't sound like they were written by a robot. Or an infinite number of Grace Parks working away on an infinite number of archaic typewriters.
If I never warmed to BSG the way I warmed to Lost or Deadwood or Friday Night Lights or anything from the Mutant Enemy Factory of Awesomeness, it's because the dialogue never came alive. Even when I was really enthusiastic about it (from the opening mini-series to about the halfway mark in season two), I wished the dialogue had some sass, or spunk, or surprise. When spoken by the show's best actors (I'm thinking Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonell, James Callis, or Tricia Helfer) that dialogue sounded just fine, but then talented performers can transcend something flat. However, when handled by some of the less polished performers (it gives me no pleasure to aim my stinkeye at Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff, Michael Trucco, and some of the other random actors playing minor characters littering the screen), the shortcomings of the writing becomes all too apparent.
With Espenson on board, even that placeholder episode felt fresh and entertaining and relevant. Even better, her second episode, the penultimate one of this mini-season, had all of the visual wow and big drama that the talkbackers thought was lacking before, and even though she was lumbered with the kind of poorly explained dream sequence stuff that so often irks me on this show (by which I mean Laura Roslin's visions of her death), she imbued them with humour and humanity, and avoided the purple melodrama that can often seep into these moments. I just wanted to ambush the rest of the writers with a screening of it, all the while yelling, "This is how you do it!"
Even better, the finale, written by Weddle and Thompson, was infinitely better than the dire season three finale, and though it flirted with the same Dylan nonsense that blighted that previous episode, mainly it was concerned with getting on with telling the story and blowing our minds. Which it did, with five minutes of exultation, heightened emotion, and finally a total loss of hope. As shocked as I was by the final shot of Jeremy Bentham in Lost, BSG's bravura pan across the leaders of the human/Cylon coalition and the desolate surface of a ruined earth might have been even more astonishing. In that moment I was relieved that I had stuck with the show even when the third season had annoyed me so much.
Of course, the ten episode mini-season wasn't exclusively Espenson-level writing and mind-blowing reveals. The quality level still rose and fell rapidly, often within the same episode. Though I was grateful that the focus on Apollo/Starbuck, the plot that had derailed the previous season, had been dialled back, we still had her and Anders acting out their risible and dreary psycho-drama. Even knowing that she is unwittingly the number one Cylon pin-up (with both Leoben and Anders obsessed with getting into her unflattering space-pants) didn't make it any more interesting. Having the two of them stuck on a garbage scow with the cream of the fleet (a plot device that made absolutely zero sense) was televisual torture, made worse by the histrionic performances from the entire crew.
Back with the fleet, things were sporadically interesting with patches of blurg. The Tyrol/Cally plot was resolved with Cally getting blasted out of an airlock, a turn of events that pleased us greatly. Aaron Douglas and Nicki Clyne had been lumbered with the worst kind of kitchen-sink drama, with Tyrol hiding from his shrill wife and horrible kid, a domestic situation complicated further with the revelation that he was a Cylon and their child was a human/Cylon hybrid. That fact alone created immensely important drama that changed the whole direction of the show, and...
Oh, that's right. Their hybrid baby is seemingly nowhere near as important as Athena and Helo's kid. Ron Moore pretty much admitted that at last year's Comic-Con, but has yet to explain why one is important and the other is not. You'd think that the decision to make Tyrol a Cylon was a spur of the moment thing, but BSG would never just make it up as they go along, would they? That's Lost I'm thinking of. [/bitter] That said, Tyrol's reaction to Cally's death was terrific, and brilliantly written by Espenson. His breakdown in the Galactica bar was a season highlight. As Tyrol was also well-served by Espenson (and Cofell Saunders) last season, it's fair to say I only like him when she writes him. Fingers crossed we get more of that in the last ten episodes.
Baltar's transformation into opportunistic messiah was also welcome, after he was reduced to a wibbling loser last season. Seeing him stumbling into his destiny as ineffectual self-help guru with his customary mixture of bluster and self-loathing was great fun, as was his growing influence within the fleet, as his monotheistic religion becomes more appealing to the increasingly desperate refugees. One of the aspects of BSG that has interested me the least is the slowly building focus on religion. The show has always had a religious aspect, but I tended not to pay much attention to the details of the conflicting religions of the humans and Cylons, thinking them little more than signifiers of the shows comment on contemporary tensions, but as the fourth season wore on I had the horrible feeling that I should have been paying attention all along, and we were going to get to the final stretch of the show without a proper working knowledge of the significance of all of that guff about the twelve Gods and what have you. Was I going to have to go back and rewatch the whole show to catch all of this stuff?
By the time the finale had rolled around, I felt almost certain that the Cylons and the humans are all worshipping the wrong thing, that there is a force shaping their destinies but it is not the God we think of, but some force of physics or space/time or multi-dimensional space (Roslin's visions during FTL jumps makes me wonder about that) that is beyond comprehension, and certainly beyond the superstitious teachings of the twelve tribes and the Cylons. At least, I hope so. I find the religious plotline far more interesting as a tool to dramatise tensions between the characters than as a complex but ultimately uninteresting mythology running through the show. That way lies The Sacred Scrolls of Borzon and The Temple of Astroculite and much other silliness that doesn't fit into this plot, though regrettably it has wandered in that direction from time to time. Thankfully the show appears to be using God as a source of conflict, which is believable and way more interesting.
Plus, as an added bonus, James Callis has been fantastic as a reluctant messiah winging it in front of an adoring following and coming up with a philosophy even more vapid than Oprah's latest pet belief system The Secret, if that's possible. At the end of last season he was walking around in robes looking like Future Space Jesus, which was amusing but sledgehammer subtle. At least now he just looks like a cult leader, which is pretty much what he is.
I've been bitching about a large proportion of the plotlines, but there were stories within the mini-season that I really liked. While I was irked by Ron Moore's admission that Roslin's cancer remission was another spur of the moment writing choice (a choice that AICN BSG talkbackers were in denial over, having spent three years making snotty cracks about Lost being made up on the fly), it's given Mary McDonnell yet more chances to show off her considerable acting skills. Confession time: before BSG I couldn't stand McDonnell at all, finding her rictus grin performances in Donnie Darko and Grand Canyon unwatchable. I could just about get over my antipathy in Sneakers, but that's because Sneakers is the awesomest. Setec Astronomy! Yeah, that's right, bitches.
In BSG, however, she has been uniformly magnificent. This season has provided her with some of her best acting opportunities, as Roslin's humanity and morality get tested by the ever-worsening situation within the fleet, the continuing fallout from the occupation on New Caprica, the urge to overrule the council as they vacillate and bicker, and her wavering faith, which has caused her to misinterpret signs and omens, as well as damage her empathic connection with those around her. Best of all, she almost killed Baltar after he finally confessed to accidentally betraying humanity, before a vision of her own death showed her the error of her ways. It was an acting tour de force that made the regular PointyShouty moments look even more feeble by comparison.
If that scene amazed me, a few minutes later I blubbed like a perspective-free fanboy as Roslin was reunited with Bill Adama, and finally told him she loved him. His response, "About time", is only beaten by Ben Linus' emotionless, "So?" from the Lost finale. Edward James Olmos has been my favourite actor on BSG from very early on, and his stoic decision to wait for Roslin in a Raptor with only her favourite book for company was a season highlight. Of course, in the finale the breakdown he has probably been fending of for years finally happened upon finding out that his best friend, Saul Tigh, was (improbably) a Cylon all along. Olmos performed the shit out of the moment, meaning poor Jamie Bamber was forced to brace himself against the acting maelstrom next to him.
The Cylons finally achieved their full potential, having previously been mysterious monoliths of force with only hints at their inner turmoil. Slowly we've seen cracks emerge; Leoben's obsession with Starbuck, D'Anna's breakdown, the rebellions of the Six's and Athena's. Sadly those moments were often sidelined in order to return to yet more Apollo/Starbuck angstifying, a narrative choice that drove me to distraction. This season flirted with the same lack of focus, as a Cylon civil war broke out for thirty seconds in the middle of an episode and then went unmentioned for a couple of weeks while we got to watch Tigh hallucinate at a Six instead. It was a tad frustrating.
The other thing that has bothered me over the last couple of seasons is how the show spends less time focusing on the mechanics of the fleet, how the humans are attempting to retain their connection to their history by creating a system of government and law, and how that system is unable to cope with the demands of life on the run. As we approach the finale we're dealing more with more "sci fi" elements, such as time looping and the possible intervention of a god-like force. Last year I was bummed out by the increased focus on prophecy (a bit of a bug-bear of mine, as it can lead to some lazy plotting in all kinds of fiction), but this season has been promising, especially as potential messiah Baltar is still pretty much the same horndog as ever, except now he has new ways to justify his sleazy behaviour.
Prophecy, when used to do little more than foreshadow future events, is a crutch for lazy writers. This half-season has hinted that there is more to the religious plot than we thought. Prophecy is still a key factor, but that wonderful final shot hints that the rails that our protagonists are running on might not be heading in the direction they expected. That's what I've been waiting for since the mini-series "prequel", so many of the reservations I've had over these ten episodes faded. I will still hold onto my coveted memory of the less glamorous aspects of the show, the politicking, the debates, the worrying about water or food or power. I loved that stuff almost as much as the explosions.
Funnily enough, it was that stuff that made Lost a trial to watch sometimes. I didn't mind it all in the first season, but Robinson Crusoe-esque food gathering and water collection drama has been done before, and for the first season there was a lot of that. It was perhaps a lighter and more fun show as a result, but I only really started loving it once Desmond appeared with tales of the Dharma Initiative. BSG, on the other hand, has followed a similar arc, but my interest has dwindled the further we've moved from the nuts-and-bolts tales. I guess it's because it's more interesting to me to see how the human race would struggle to survive following mass extinction and exile on spluttering spaceships than it is to see people chasing boars through a jungle.
That increasingly dense mythology isn't the only similarity BSG shares with Lost. We also have the exploration of the concept of fate via the sci fi trope of distorted time (if the "This has happened before, and will happen again," line is as important as it seems), reluctant leadership (Jack and Apollo), suspicion, and, most importantly, a refusal to reduce conflict to a Manichean battle, preferring instead to show good and bad and all the infinite gradations between through a distorted lens. By now we have multiple factions within both human and Cylon camps, and now both races are having to join forces, just as the Losties and the Others are moving closer together. Of course, they're not the only shows to explore what it's like to live on the hazy line between right and wrong. The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, Mad Men, and Dexter all do it too to varying degrees of success, but it's good to see genre TV do it while remaining genuine sci fi and not some watered down amalgam of genres or another bratty child of the late-70s space opera movies that fathered the original version of this show. Plus, we get all of that moral ambiguity and ethical curiosity while retaining the large explosions. When has Dexter ever offered a spectacle as exciting as this? When has Mad Men? And no, I'm not talking about the insanity taking hold of Don Draper's brain.
The long and short of it is, the fourth season of BSG featured many of the annoying things that have made the trip so far such a slog, but the new focus that has come with the definite end-date has re-ignited my interest in it. When I'm feeling uncharitable, I'll bitch about it even now. Most of the sub-plots still hold no interest for me. Anders, Gaeta, at least one version of Boomer, Starbuck, Helo and Dualla could be written out (Dualla pretty much has) and I wouldn't even notice, unless it meant more screentime for the sorely under-used Doc Cottle or the magnificently oily Zarek, in which case I would rejoice. It can often look so dark as to be almost impossible to comprehend, though I will grant that sometimes that choice pays off. The peculiar pixellated imagery on the Cylon Rebel Baseship was a lovely touch. (This picture also features Tricia Helfer being awesome, as usual.)
The biggest variable on the show is Michael Hogan. Will he be amazing this week? Or will he make my head hurt with the growly line-readings and scenery-chomping? I think his acting ability is determined by some astrological event or something. In this season he let his inner crazy out a bit too often; the scenes featuring him and the Six he keeps hallucinating at were simultaneously creepy, incomprehensible, and moving. Still, he gets a Shades of Caruso Free Pass for his superb work during Tigh's Al-Zawahiri period. I'll just choose to forget subtlety-free moments like the one below in honour of those fine performances in the past.
All of that remains, and yet my interest in the show has been totally reawakened. I'm even considering rewatching it from the start in prep for the finale. That's a lot of watching to pack in on top of The Shield and Wonderfalls and maybe Buffy and all of the other shows we were going to watch during Summer hiatus that we didn't get around to. Not that I consider it a hardship. Roll on the final ten episodes, the spin-off show, and the follow-up movie, which is written by Jane Espenson and therefore will be awesome. You have my word on that.
