all_unnecessary (
all_unnecessary) wrote2009-02-21 02:15 am
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YAH SORRY PART 2: IT’S ALREADY HAPPENED, HASN’T IT.
BEST LAUGH: Tigh
BEST EVERYTHING: Tigh (“Great grandpa was a power sander!”)
SECOND BEST ONE LINER: Hotdog, for “How many dead chicks are out there?”
BEST RETURN: Head!Six
WAIT, WHAT: Is that Sol they're still orbiting??
BEST META: Gaius uttering “icy pragmatism”: his outwardly-seeming Same-Old-Same-Old somehow motivated by what looks like altruism! Did I mention irony? Also: Militarized harem.
MOST PAINFUL META: OW stop hitting me with the loaves and fishes!
ROSLIN IN HER LAME ASPECT: “All children are important, yes, indeed.”
IMPORTANT OVERLOOKED FACT: Gaius has offspring in the fleet.
ALSO OVERLOOKED: Kat’s ex is doing well for himself.
MOST EXCITEMENT: Sammy going into R.E.M. sleep. Sammy! *sigh*
MOST RANDOM: drunk people breathe funny.
I LOVE CAPRICA SIX: I LOVE CAPRICA SIX
MOST WTF: Kara Thrace, “Hey, when did you get a piano?” “...watching my parents make out” and the bullet. ??
BILL MAKES A POOP JOKE: “A little project I’ve been working on.”
Baby plans upset is what I thought at the beginning of the ep. That sweet little fluttery look Caprica gives Saul, too sweet to live (A REDSHIRT, that look). And then the visual echo of Ellen’s legs, from her first appearance. I guess that’s what fell flat for me most last week, that Ellen was sweet, bigger than that, generous: totally counterintuitive. Well. That’s changed! Up down and back around, it was the perfect Ellen rollercoaster, What a cunt, I thought to myself frequently.
LOCK UP THE BOOZE. (Six has tea.) Her backpedaling, well, my neck is a little sore from the volleys. The Mother of All the Cylons is as human as you can get: a bar-mom. “Such bad timing,” WTF. The Tighs fighting: awesome. And she ends up being the TIGH-BREAKER (the puns, all the way through). (Did I mention that Caprica Six is awesome?)
The real spark of this episode is what Ellen's actions produce: some mighty fine acting on the part of Michael Hogan (about which more below), the elimination of the Cylons’ justification to jump away (and frak what misery she wrought there - one thinks now that Cavil had some slender margin of legitimate complaint, cos that shure looks like telekinetic abortion she’s wielding there), the recognition on the part of Bill/Laura that the Cylons have begun to experience loss in the very same way as the Humans. That last scene, the Six touching the wall of the dead. It’s already happened, hasn’t it. It took me several minutes to stop crying – shit. The other side of Bill on post-Cylon-goup-Galactica: “She won’t know what she is anymore.”

It’s been remarked, recently (
danschank?), that the show interestingly uses the viewer’s awareness of “privileged knowledge,” of her/his own P.O.V. as viewer, of the larger arc of the story, the more important bits of meta (what happened on Earth, the interior lives of the final five, etc.). I want to know more about why that information still remains outside the diegetic space, I’m intrigued in a slightly less comfortable way that I think I should be. Do I complain to the writers? Only four more episodes, people! Do Adama/Roslin really fail so enormously as to never do an infomercial??* Or should I withhold judgment, and find it more largely significant, that what we’re watching is a very slow trainwreck of WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE.
If it’s the latter, my tears are justified, and it’s genuinely painful to me: because I’m the kind of viewer that says, No don’t do that, wait, don’t open that door.** I hate tragedies, especially everyday tragedies. This is why Sentimental Education was so wrenching: not only was it Flaubert’s damage, it was all of ours, and we know it. What if you could go back to 1848 (or around that time, all over Europe)? What if Marx was born ten years earlier? What would our daily lives look like? That sounds melodramatic, but frak you, it's my journal.
I think knowing what Bill knows is the core of that longing: he loves his ship, he sends Boomer to the brig rather than shooting her on sight (you can see so much in his chin), he cries with Tigh, the shaking of his hand in the final shot.
The real ethical moment of this episode is the turn he makes when talking about the Cylon goup and Galactica (the bolded text):
That little moment of compassion for the ship, that's the turn. I love how much he loves his ship. His actual physical ship. Which is also the metaphorical ship. The show literalizes the product of human labor in that ship: it’s the past, present, and future of people. All kinds of people now, Cylon people. Saul Tigh, for example.
Which brings me to SAUL MOTHERFRAKKING TIGH: “I feel it less with words. Just let me godsdamn feel it and I'll fill the frakkin room.”

(Yah, I'm heaving a big fond sigh.)
-----------------------------------
*The story of Earth – has that EVER been released to the fleet?? Can the people not handle insanely ironic information?
**Ask me about this when I am less overwrought.
EDIT: JANE FUCKING ESPENSON. The fans, they don't like her eps. But I do, very much. Also director Michael Young has had a good track record of showing what everyday life in the fleet is like (I loved Final Cut, and not just because of the warrior princess).
FURTHER EDIT: Just found this, confirming teh awesome of Jane Espenson, from Chief Tyrol himself: http://community.livejournal.com/aarondouglas/150842.html?thread=972858#t972858
Direct to
wolodymyr: have I asked you this before? what are your feelings about Jane Espenson? I trust your judgment, esp after our conversations about Firefly.
BEST EVERYTHING: Tigh (“Great grandpa was a power sander!”)
SECOND BEST ONE LINER: Hotdog, for “How many dead chicks are out there?”
BEST RETURN: Head!Six
WAIT, WHAT: Is that Sol they're still orbiting??
BEST META: Gaius uttering “icy pragmatism”: his outwardly-seeming Same-Old-Same-Old somehow motivated by what looks like altruism! Did I mention irony? Also: Militarized harem.
MOST PAINFUL META: OW stop hitting me with the loaves and fishes!
ROSLIN IN HER LAME ASPECT: “All children are important, yes, indeed.”
IMPORTANT OVERLOOKED FACT: Gaius has offspring in the fleet.
ALSO OVERLOOKED: Kat’s ex is doing well for himself.
MOST EXCITEMENT: Sammy going into R.E.M. sleep. Sammy! *sigh*
MOST RANDOM: drunk people breathe funny.
I LOVE CAPRICA SIX: I LOVE CAPRICA SIX
MOST WTF: Kara Thrace, “Hey, when did you get a piano?” “...watching my parents make out” and the bullet. ??
BILL MAKES A POOP JOKE: “A little project I’ve been working on.”
Baby plans upset is what I thought at the beginning of the ep. That sweet little fluttery look Caprica gives Saul, too sweet to live (A REDSHIRT, that look). And then the visual echo of Ellen’s legs, from her first appearance. I guess that’s what fell flat for me most last week, that Ellen was sweet, bigger than that, generous: totally counterintuitive. Well. That’s changed! Up down and back around, it was the perfect Ellen rollercoaster, What a cunt, I thought to myself frequently.
“All that messy biological trial-and-error. Oh dear. I’m totally throwing you, aren’t I? I’m still Ellen, you know.”
LOCK UP THE BOOZE. (Six has tea.) Her backpedaling, well, my neck is a little sore from the volleys. The Mother of All the Cylons is as human as you can get: a bar-mom. “Such bad timing,” WTF. The Tighs fighting: awesome. And she ends up being the TIGH-BREAKER (the puns, all the way through). (Did I mention that Caprica Six is awesome?)
The real spark of this episode is what Ellen's actions produce: some mighty fine acting on the part of Michael Hogan (about which more below), the elimination of the Cylons’ justification to jump away (and frak what misery she wrought there - one thinks now that Cavil had some slender margin of legitimate complaint, cos that shure looks like telekinetic abortion she’s wielding there), the recognition on the part of Bill/Laura that the Cylons have begun to experience loss in the very same way as the Humans. That last scene, the Six touching the wall of the dead. It’s already happened, hasn’t it. It took me several minutes to stop crying – shit. The other side of Bill on post-Cylon-goup-Galactica: “She won’t know what she is anymore.”

It’s been remarked, recently (
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If it’s the latter, my tears are justified, and it’s genuinely painful to me: because I’m the kind of viewer that says, No don’t do that, wait, don’t open that door.** I hate tragedies, especially everyday tragedies. This is why Sentimental Education was so wrenching: not only was it Flaubert’s damage, it was all of ours, and we know it. What if you could go back to 1848 (or around that time, all over Europe)? What if Marx was born ten years earlier? What would our daily lives look like? That sounds melodramatic, but frak you, it's my journal.
I think knowing what Bill knows is the core of that longing: he loves his ship, he sends Boomer to the brig rather than shooting her on sight (you can see so much in his chin), he cries with Tigh, the shaking of his hand in the final shot.
The real ethical moment of this episode is the turn he makes when talking about the Cylon goup and Galactica (the bolded text):
If it works, she’ll still be the Galactica on the outside, but. [CHIN JUTT. CUT TO TIGH, PARSING] She won’t know what she is anymore. [CUT BACK TO TIGH, WHO THINKS HE HAS PERHAPS PARSED WRONGLY] It’ll save her. That along with Cylons flying CAP. [CUT BACK TO TIGH, THEN BACK TO BILL, SEVERAL TIMES] We need their help, need *your* help. Laura, Lee know it. They don’t think I see it. But I do. I see it. [TIGH DOES THE MATH]
That little moment of compassion for the ship, that's the turn. I love how much he loves his ship. His actual physical ship. Which is also the metaphorical ship. The show literalizes the product of human labor in that ship: it’s the past, present, and future of people. All kinds of people now, Cylon people. Saul Tigh, for example.
Which brings me to SAUL MOTHERFRAKKING TIGH: “I feel it less with words. Just let me godsdamn feel it and I'll fill the frakkin room.”

(Yah, I'm heaving a big fond sigh.)
-----------------------------------
*The story of Earth – has that EVER been released to the fleet?? Can the people not handle insanely ironic information?
**Ask me about this when I am less overwrought.
EDIT: JANE FUCKING ESPENSON. The fans, they don't like her eps. But I do, very much. Also director Michael Young has had a good track record of showing what everyday life in the fleet is like (I loved Final Cut, and not just because of the warrior princess).
FURTHER EDIT: Just found this, confirming teh awesome of Jane Espenson, from Chief Tyrol himself: http://community.livejournal.com/aarondouglas/150842.html?thread=972858#t972858
Direct to
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