Anyway, Mr. Bergren and his private jet were unfortunately held up (no doubt because of the obscene amounts of cocaine, hookers, and white collar crime they had to do), and were left without enough time to see everything in the area. So something had to be cut, and that something (surprise!) was us.
What surprised me the most about the whole thing was that I actually felt let down. Somehow, I'd let myself become emotionally invested in the visit, and when it didn't happen, I felt like I'd been robbed of an important life experience. I'm not sure what I expected to happen, was he going to put his arm around me and say "You've got talent kid, you're gonna go places..." before ? Or perhaps treat me like one of Michael Bay's countless unpaid interns on the set of Transformers, and verbally berate me before swallowing me whole? Or...quiz me on the FOUR MOMENTS OF CUSTOMER TRUTH?
Oh well, didn't happen. But you know what DID? THE SEASON PREMIERE OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!
Man. It's been too long. A year is a very long time. A lot can happen in a year.
I'd blogged previously on my reactions from the season finale, and there were a lot of things I loved, but also quite a few things I was very wary of. Specifically the revelation of the four Bob Dylan cylons. It wasn't the song that annoyed me, it was a more basic complaint about what they'd done with the characters. I believe my exact words were:
How can they be Cylons? I've read on boards that "we need to redefine what what we think a Cylon is...", but even with a LOT of redefining, we still have to redefine who we think Tyrol is, or who we think Tigh is, or who we think Anders is. I mean, it's obvious that the writers didn't know this from the beginning of the show, and it was put in here to keep with their tradition of earth-shattering season finales. To use comic book terminology, they've retconned their backstories--masters of revisionist history that they are, they've changed what we thought we knew about our favorite characters, and to me, it all feels fake. It's fake, and it's a lie to the audience, because they didn't write them knowing this, and they don't have a believable rationalization for it. At least not where I'm standing. To me, it just seems terribly convenient that "a switch went off, just like that", and they're Cylons now. That way, we don't have to worry about things like continuity and character arcs.
Ouch. I was pretty harsh.
Tigh specifically was who I had a problem with. Over the course of three seasons (but especially the third) he had become my favorite character by far, and a lot of that was due to the very dark times he'd been through, and his very true, natural human reaction to them. From his alcoholism, to his missteps while in control of the fleet, to his quasi-retirement on New Caprica, the resistance, and of course, poisoning his wife and the huge guilt that reverberated from that act, his arc was so tragic, so dark, that I felt that in many ways, he captured in miniature what the show was really all about.
And then he's suddenly a Cylon. Wait, really? I had my doubts. Huge ones.
Luckily, after giving me a year to let those doubts fester, Mr. Moore and Company gave me this scene:
Wow. Just...wow. Give Michael Hogan a motherfrakking Emmy now. Please.
Thank you Ron. I for one am glad as hell to have you guys back.
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