With thanks to the people who e-mailed this to me (spoilers for Season Three therein):
So no, I don’t “mourn the loss” of the Cylons’ mystery and menace: that’s evolution. Heaven for everybody. I think any story that wants to responsibly talk about war and genocide had better get its shit together about this, and I think this show is clearly doing so. Frankly, jihad and terrorism could stand to lose a fuckload of mystery and menace, we could all stand to read up on the Quran, because that’s how you move forward. Other people don’t need your mystery and menace, they need your strength. How you draw the line between that and saying the show’s jumped the shark, or I’m a bad American or a shitty writer for loving the Cylons, is your business.
But really go read the whole page linked there.
Spoilers after the cut.
It’s so interesting to me, that distinction Jacob’s drawing, because I never felt the Cylons getting less scary or less threatening or less “enemy” somehow, the more the show tried to teach me what they’re about. If anything, the opposite, and maybe it’s to do with New Caprica and the whole Starbuck/Leoben dynamic and being a woman: There’s nothing so scary as somebody trying to subjugate you out of, because of, fucking with love. That life is the same for them as it is for us, that we all go around and around screwing things up the same way but in different outfits, that didn’t surprise me that much, that revelation. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. You hear it as hope and condemnation no matter what god you worship.
And suck it, Freepers, basically, and just because I threw my lot in with the humans on this show and I love them more than I care about Boomer or Gaius or Six doesn’t make me on your side. I don’t go anywhere near your side without garlic and a stake.
So. There’s this TV show.
Here’s what skeeved me out about the chemical fracking-over of Baltar. As they’re injecting him with this stuff, he’s yelling, “I have rights.” And that’s just a phrase we’re so conditioned to hear as a code: as a code for stop, for you can’t do this, for back off, for this has to end. As Americans, we expect that phrase to mean something to the people we say it to. We expect it to strike a chord.
And I don’t think I considered, ever, until about four years ago, what it means when people hear that and go, “So fucking what, huh?” I don’t think I considered, because I grew up white and middle class and fairly whatever-passes-for-normal, and apolitical, what it would mean if the phrase “I have rights” meant nothing.
It’s supposed to strike a chord, but what happens when all the keys are broken? What if the thing you’ve held onto as your “get out of jail free” card for your entire fucking human existence turned out to be a crumpled old coupon that expired? What then? Who are you then?
This is what happens. Because it’s Baltar saying that phrase now. It was the tribunals after the coffee riots, and it was the murders of the collaborators. It was the Circle; all of this has happened before. We can’t do this to each other no matter how much we want to and “I wanna” has got to stop being a reason. And as I’m watching Roslin in the room with Baltar, and I love Roslin like I love sunshine, I’m thinking, “This is why murder victims’ families don’t carry out sentence.” Not even because they wouldn’t be right. Because they can’t. All we’re doing is watching Roslin and Adama take more and more sickness on themselves, and Cottle, as always, is the voice of compassion for its own sake. I want a Cottle episode. I am going to stand outside Ronald Moore’s house and picket until I get a Cottle episode.
Would y’all still love me if I just WROTE a Cottle episode and posted it up here? I love him so much.
Speaking of lying and torturing, oh, dear God, I think I just kind of fell in love with Lee a little bit, in that you can’t be with somebody who loves you and hates you and loves you and hates you, that that drama might start out feeling like love but after your twenties it’s just exhausting and he was right with the dogfight analogy. Starbuck’s always gonna be in a dogfight, and you’ll never have more than that with her. She needs somebody who gets that and doesn’t care, not somebody who’s pissed about that and wants to change it. Sam’s good for her. I like him a whole lot.
And speaking of marriages and other states of union, erm, exactly what was with the Presidential/Admiralty Snuggling going on there at the end?
A.