Battlestar Galactica: Someone to Watch Over Me… “Play it Again, Slut.“
About 35 minutes into Someone to Watch Over Me I was mentally preparing to write a lukewarm review of a wishy-washy formulaic soap opera. I was actually begrudgingly looking forward being able to blog this episode without acting like every other drooling Galactica fanboy talking about how great it was. Well, shit. After the first 45 minutes, all hell broke loose and brought my complacent ass to the edge of my chair almost screaming at my TV. Things just got real ugly, real damn fast.
Before we get to the stuff that will curl your hair, chill your soul, and make you go blind and grow furry palms, let’s talk about what the previews seemed to falsely represent as the main focus of this episode, the resolution of the Starbuck storyline. This, in fact, turns out to be a red herring and we still don’t know anything about what’s really going on with our slutty blonde pilot apart from the fact that she’s sad and misses her father.
I hope fans don’t deem it as an offense worthy of burning me at the stake for, but I’ve not really been a fan of the Starbuck character at any point during the series run. Katee Sackhoff is a fine actress and I believe she’s ringing true to the way the character is being written and developed, but I’ve found Kara Thrace to be an inconsistent drag over the years.
Quite frankly, the drama that is Starbuck’s life almost seems like it would be more at home in the whiney, self-absorbed world of the pity party program like Grey’s Anatomy. For those that have never seen it, it’s based around a group of mostly female doctors that sleep around with everyone in the hospital and spend the last 15 minutes of every episode crying and feeling sorry for themselves for the shitty life decisions they made that week.
In this vein, I got tired of Starbuck’s over-bearing bullshit really early in the first season. There’s nothing less interesting than a loud-mouthed slut with low self-esteem who makes inexplicably shitty decisions at every turn.
I will grant that Starbuck has had her moments over the years and I certainly don’t see the character as a fatal flaw with the show, but a little Kara Thrace goes a long way. With Starbuck’s discovery of her own burnt out corpse on the Earth to kick off the second half of this season, we were at least introduced to an intriguing angle to play this character into the final stretch of episodes. Sackhoff has given us a few fine moments over the course of the series, but for now, I’m pretty much done with her. Stringing this episode on into basically nothing for Starbuck or the mystery surrounding her death was one major unfinished hand-job for the audience. I found the entire concept of the visions of her father (who DIDN’T have that pegged half way through the episode?) was pretty much a yawner. Come on guys, we have three episodes left, the clock is ticking to bring this to some sort of resolution beyond “Starbuck is sad, confused and feels sorry for herself again.”
In the grand vision of the this space opera, though, what transpired with Boomer and Tyrol turned this episode into a full throttle shocker by the end and demonstrated that there are still some surprises left on that old bucket of bolts of a battlestar, Galactica.
Why was I so damned ready to believe that Boomer and Tyrol were instantaneously going to return to where they were back in the first season of the show? Everything about this felt wrong. Even when I bought into Boomer being the regular bi-polar or schizophrenic Cylon Model 8, I just simply took it as a given that the feelings were real between them. The possibility never even occurred to me that she was on a subversive espionage mission. I never gave Boomer that much credit, to be honest.
Of course, Tyrol was just plain wrong on all counts. Roslin was correct to sign the extradition of Boomer back the Cylons for the treason trial and if she had been found guilty she would have deserved whatever punishment they dished out even if her intentions truly had been noble in saving Ellen. Tyrol was beyond wrong in helping her escape, a piss-poor decision that should have him in the brig come next week.
But suddenly, the episode dropped into it’s unexpected stroke of brilliance with the quick exposure of what a horrendous traitorous bitch that Boomer really is. And so, after the series had spent so much time really kind of sitting on the entire Hera storyline, it suddenly comes to the forefront and she is obviously going to be pivot point on which the saga comes to it’s conclusion.
So, 60 minutes after the words “previously on Battlestar Galactica” blared from my speakers I found myself bored for the first 45 of those minutes and blown away by the last 15, bringing this episode skyrocketing up on my Galactica love list.
And so, because Bullet Point lists have proven to be more effective than homeopathy in the treatment of most serious physical maladies, here is this week’s State of Galactica Report.
• “The white car represents Crelm Toothpaste with the miracle ingredient frauduline!” The colonial fleet is getting desperate. Galactica is falling apart and they are DOWN TO THE LAST EXISTING TUBE OF TOOTHPASTE OF THE HUMAN RACE! What the hell? Does anyone find it odd that after the human holocaust and after four years of surviving in space that they have used up all know supplies of toothpaste, yet they are still overflowing with abundant supplies of cigarettes and liquor? Hell, I would have figured they would have run out of those in the first 6 months. These people need to get their priorities straight.
• Are you there, Lee? It’s us, your fans! Whatever happened to that character Lee Adama? Remember that viper pilot that was the voice of what’s right and moral that went on to command a Battlestar? Now it just seems like there’s this massive yawn-fest in a suit that shows up for a couple minutes every few episodes to lull us to sleep. Tonight, conspicuously absent again was Jamie Bamber. No Lee Adama, no reference to Lee Adama, and quite frankly, as much as the writers have shafted him this past year, it’s probably for the best. So long Lee, we hardly knew ya.
• “You are there to mend, my fluid friend; Thank you for it all dear booze.” - Brian Griffin Saul Tigh is back, my friends, right where he should be. He’s at the bar lifting a warm friendly shot glass of Caprican sour mash. We’ve been wondering when it would finally reach this point since they’ve been trying to make him out as a reformed man for the past several episodes. He’s living proof (100 proof) that you can take the alcohol out of an alcoholic, but you can’t take the 800 pound gorilla off his back. It took the death of his unborn son to do it, but welcome back to the club, Saul!
• Is it finally over? Is this how Laura Roslin bids farewell to the universe, lamenting over Hera? I’m not sure how I feel about this. Perhaps it’s more poetic this way. It was an episode that in no way focused on her character. She’s been back to her old self lately and Mary McDonnell has been knocking her performances out of the park all season. And now do we finally have a death scene slipped in between so much insanity that we barely have time to shed a tear? What will this do to the Admiral? I have a feeling the Bill and Saul are going to have one LONG night down at the bar.
• This week’s spin-off idea: Eight’s Anatomy. After settling on a habitable planet, all of the Eight Model Cylons played by Grace Park open up a medical facility where they begin to not only service their patients, but every male that happens to enter the building. They start by taking turns bedding Doc Cottle, who never realizes that he’s having an elicit affair with multiple women rather than just one. Cottle is an incredible lover, and one of the few men that doesn’t just need a cigarette after sex, but actually lights up before during AND after sex. In last 10 minutes of every episode, all the Eight’s get together, pour their hearts out to each other and cry their eyes out while feeling sorry for themselves in a massive display of self-pity.
And so my final word on Someone to Watch Over Me: The first 45 minutes 2.5 stars out of 5. The last 15 minutes: 5 stars out of 5. Bring on the final 3 episodes, please!
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One Response to “Battlestar Galactica: Someone to Watch Over Me… “Play it Again, Slut.“”
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March 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
I finally got around to watching this last night and I’m happy I was caffeinated. I just hate how drawn out the show can get with Kara Thrace and stupid Baltar. The Boomer thing, I thought was evident, but what caught me off gaurd was that I really thought Tyrol had “turned.” I thought he KNEW she took the kid but when it was apparent he didn’t know it’s quite clear there’s quite a conundrum.
One, on going thing, that I either really don’t like or keep missing is are there really NO planets with anything good? I remember early on they were harvesting sea weed or some bullshit but I can’t think of another instance where they are out scouting for something. Is this great fleet of vessels able to jump faster than light not able to find a planet to at least make some damn toothpaste?
REALLY interested to see what happens with Galactica itself especially in relation to the above. Are they “suddenly” going to find some place to port the ship and fix it or what. If they only have a couple jumps left do they try to make it back to one of the planets they’ve alrady been to?
Lots of really cool “space” stuff embedded into that soap opera =)