It seems like this TV season has a few new players vying to take Lost's place. Of these shows, V is the only one I've seen, and it makes its goals pretty clear. The opening shot is of Elizabeth Mitchell (late of Lost) lying in bed, and the camera zooms in on her face as her eye opens. Lost has started episodes this way no fewer than 18 times, enough so that it's clear the producers of V are making a winking reference to it.
But V isn't just trying to suck in the Lost audience - as a lot of people have noticed, the cast is overflowing with actors from other sci-fi shows with cult followings: Inara and Wash from Firefly, Tom from The 4400, Kara from Smallville, and Tory from Battlestar Galactica spring immediately to mind. Part of the fun, I'm sure, is trying to read the characters that these people are better known for against their V counterparts - Alan Tudyk's Dale is Wash, at least until they pull the rug out from underneath us by revealing he's a V sleeper agent; Rekha Sharma's Sarita Malik appears to be an FBI agent who's suspicious of the Vs, though her role on BSG makes us immediately suspicious of her.
That said, the first two episodes have been disappointing. We were promised a reveal on par with the original series' dislocated-jaw-hamster-swallowing, but it hasn't materialized - and we're already two episodes into only a four episode block before it disappears until the spring. (And given that nearly 1/3 of their audience disappeared in between the premiere and the second episode, we can't be sure that it'll ever return.)
Showing posts with label bsg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bsg. Show all posts
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Two more readings of BSG's finale: a recuperation and a rebuttal
1. I complained in my original response to BSG's finale that it seemed horribly irresponsible to advocate forgetting as a means of healing - that joining together as one big community, following decades of animosity and multiple attempts to commit genocide, fails to adequately address (and even avoids or brushes aside) the themes that the show has been trying to tackle and the actual conflict that had underpinned it.
That isn't to say that it's an incoherent conclusion, though. To quote Agamben, one could argue that the finale "affirms the site of bare life as the route through which, and by which, redemption occurs. It is an affirmation of the redemptive value of extreme degradation." Bare life, in this case, is the decision to not only forget but to cast the ships into the sun and start over with nothing. And in the face of such an overdetermined history and a conflict which offers no clear or easy solution, perhaps this is the only viable means of attaining redemption.
2. Of course, it's worth asking whether attaining redemption is actually a worthwhile, or ethical, aim. Redemption is rarely an unproblematic process - especially racial or national projects of redemption, which is what the humans' effort to affirm their existence most resembles - and they're often motivated by guilt and selfishness. Too often, redemption manages to situate the vicitimizer as the victimized: the humans enslaved the Cylons and must conveniently forget (or diminish the importance of the fact) that they supplied the Cylons with the means and motive to destroy them. Redemption can also deflect or displace guilt on to a sort of sacrificial lamb, a figure deemed abnormal who is ejected from the whole (again, forgetting that he or she was produced by and within that whole in the first place) so that the whole can be recuperated: Baltar is the ideal figure, here, but Cavil also becomes a scapegoat for the Cylons.
Aimé Césaire's notion of "bourgeois shock" brings this critique of redemption into conversation with Agamben's bare life in a really nice way, offering the term as a way of characterizing the realization by Western Europeans that the methods of dehumanization and violence which commonly employed in their colonies could be turned against them and deployed within Europe itself. (Nazism is the prototypical example of such strategies turned inward, though 9/11 is also an excellent one - and both are often applied allegorically to BSG.) The redemptive reading of BSG through Agamben, then, is undone if we can read it as an expression of reactionary "bourgeois shock" - as a moment in which the self-important subject of history and bearer of civilization is shaken from its complacency and its assuredness that it could never be made the object of its own violence.
That isn't to say that it's an incoherent conclusion, though. To quote Agamben, one could argue that the finale "affirms the site of bare life as the route through which, and by which, redemption occurs. It is an affirmation of the redemptive value of extreme degradation." Bare life, in this case, is the decision to not only forget but to cast the ships into the sun and start over with nothing. And in the face of such an overdetermined history and a conflict which offers no clear or easy solution, perhaps this is the only viable means of attaining redemption.
2. Of course, it's worth asking whether attaining redemption is actually a worthwhile, or ethical, aim. Redemption is rarely an unproblematic process - especially racial or national projects of redemption, which is what the humans' effort to affirm their existence most resembles - and they're often motivated by guilt and selfishness. Too often, redemption manages to situate the vicitimizer as the victimized: the humans enslaved the Cylons and must conveniently forget (or diminish the importance of the fact) that they supplied the Cylons with the means and motive to destroy them. Redemption can also deflect or displace guilt on to a sort of sacrificial lamb, a figure deemed abnormal who is ejected from the whole (again, forgetting that he or she was produced by and within that whole in the first place) so that the whole can be recuperated: Baltar is the ideal figure, here, but Cavil also becomes a scapegoat for the Cylons.
Aimé Césaire's notion of "bourgeois shock" brings this critique of redemption into conversation with Agamben's bare life in a really nice way, offering the term as a way of characterizing the realization by Western Europeans that the methods of dehumanization and violence which commonly employed in their colonies could be turned against them and deployed within Europe itself. (Nazism is the prototypical example of such strategies turned inward, though 9/11 is also an excellent one - and both are often applied allegorically to BSG.) The redemptive reading of BSG through Agamben, then, is undone if we can read it as an expression of reactionary "bourgeois shock" - as a moment in which the self-important subject of history and bearer of civilization is shaken from its complacency and its assuredness that it could never be made the object of its own violence.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The BSG finale
This show left me feeling confused. And not a good-confused.
I felt happy, i suppose, for the characters, but my actual emotional response to characters usually diminishes within minutes of a stories end and the narrative and thematic elements are the ones that ultimately resonate. And that being the case, it felt like a waste.
I mean, I liked the build to the final battle, I liked Baltar's decision to stay, and I was even a bit struck by the cuteness of this Earth being the real Earth and the other Earth not really being Earth - BSG has been filled with revelations that contradict previously accepted truths, so it didn't seem so unbelievable. I found Adama and Roslin, and Baltar and Caprica's, endings sweet and appropriate, even if I didn't really understand why Adama, the character, would resign himself to years of solitary life, and I didn't really buy Baltar and Caprica's reunion. (The latter, at least, had a certain logic to it within the larger format of the show. Which, it turns out, makes it pretty exceptional. Except that they should have been raising Hera, too.)
I disliked Kara's sudden disappearance and the show's refusal to explain just how she came back from the dead and just what she came back as. I also found it ridiculous that they could have so easily infiltrated the massive Cylon base, found Hera, and had so few casualties. Suicidal Final Battles need to show that the good guys have paid a price. This one didn't.
And I hated a bunch of things.
But my god - what we were left with? It boggles the mind.
I felt happy, i suppose, for the characters, but my actual emotional response to characters usually diminishes within minutes of a stories end and the narrative and thematic elements are the ones that ultimately resonate. And that being the case, it felt like a waste.
I mean, I liked the build to the final battle, I liked Baltar's decision to stay, and I was even a bit struck by the cuteness of this Earth being the real Earth and the other Earth not really being Earth - BSG has been filled with revelations that contradict previously accepted truths, so it didn't seem so unbelievable. I found Adama and Roslin, and Baltar and Caprica's, endings sweet and appropriate, even if I didn't really understand why Adama, the character, would resign himself to years of solitary life, and I didn't really buy Baltar and Caprica's reunion. (The latter, at least, had a certain logic to it within the larger format of the show. Which, it turns out, makes it pretty exceptional. Except that they should have been raising Hera, too.)
I disliked Kara's sudden disappearance and the show's refusal to explain just how she came back from the dead and just what she came back as. I also found it ridiculous that they could have so easily infiltrated the massive Cylon base, found Hera, and had so few casualties. Suicidal Final Battles need to show that the good guys have paid a price. This one didn't.
And I hated a bunch of things.
- What about the Cylon 'plan'? We were told from episode one that 'They Have A Plan', and then one was never actually revealed? Was it simply that they were torturing the 'final five'? Because that's as near as I can get to a 'plan'. And that sucks.
- Religion had always been used as way of critiquing societies for justifying their banal existence by way of laying claim to an exceptionalism that we should rightly be wary of. And how we're told that there is a god and the whole series has evolved according to his plan. ...say what?
- We also have Lee deciding, unilaterally, to break up human and Cylon civilization and banish them to the various corners of the world. His rationale is that if they start over with a blank slate, they won't make the same mistakes. Except that this contradicts every bit of accepted wisdom on remembrance, redemption, and humanity's ability to learn from the past and imprve themselves - actively forgetting the sins and ignoring the oppressions of the past is the surest way to ensure that they would fall into those patterns again. I mean, for fuck's sake, wasn't that why the 'final five' travelled to the 12 colonies in the first place? To warn them because they had forgotten and would commit the same error? I wrote in a previous post that BSG has a troubling aversion to communalism and collectivism, and it seems that it pertains, too, to a collective memory. But collective memories are the best weapons against exactly the sorts of abuses and oppressions that this show ostensibly opposes. So this is a terrible lesson.
- And what about that fucking awful ending? Here's a show that has tried (with varying levels of success) to push the human-Cylon conflict as a metaphor for WWII, for the War on Terror, for Israel-Palestine. And at the end, we find out that it was actually a metaphor for... well, actually, it wasn't a metaphor at all. It's message was the most literaly one possible - it was a warning about treating our robots well, because, you know, they might decide to turn against us and kil us. Are you fucking kidding me? Not only is it ham-fisted and absurdly preachy in its delivery, but it's also insultingly stupid. It is possibly the worst closing scene to a series that I have ever watched. Ever.
But my god - what we were left with? It boggles the mind.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
BSG: On symbolism, politics, and the triumph of individualism
There's a quite thorough political analysis of the allegorical message of Battlestar Galactica at this blog, though I would stop short of recommending that anyone bother to read the whole text. (It's long and rambling. But I suppose that I'm about to post a long and rambling response to it. Still, I don't think this is hypocritical - I'm trying to save you from having to read two long, rambling blogs.)
But there's also some very good, and very apt, points in there that are worth repeating. For instance:
But in defense of the narrative - I do think that Duncan is pouring it on too hard. If the historical resonances are multiple and contradictory, then in fairness you have to point out that it's even more varied and confused than this. Duncan admits this when he notes that the humans' internment on New Caprica reads instead like it is actually occurring in the Middle East, but this time with the Israeli/American role being played by the Cylons and the Palestinian/Iraqi spot by the humans. But the Cylon-human conflict, with the Cylons determining to wipe out their creators and former masters, doesn't fit terribly well into either any of these metaphors, nor does Cylon society (despite the fact that it is radical and monotheistic, sure) fit the usual associations of racial and religious Others with barbarism and incivility as would befit a 9/11 metaphor. So this stuff doesn't fit the above real-world references without ignoring huge and important parts of the story and so reducing them to absurdity.
If I were to try and pin down an over-arching political message, I would probably push BSG's contradictory messages about autocratic militarism and democratic process aside and focus on its affection for heroic liberal individualism of a hegemonically masculine sort. If anything is consistently villified, it's the sense of collectivism premised on altruism that ostensibly underlies Cylon culture (and is eventually revealed to be rotten at the core and under the fascistic rule of Cavill/John), that is implied by the consensus-based approach of the Quorum of Twelve (who are shown to be spineless and completely ineffective), and which is attempted by various insurgencies (the union under Tyrell, but more aptly the mutiny as it is engineered by the hypberbolically crippled Gaeta and self-appointed man-of-the-people Tom Zarek) that find the autocratic rule of Adama and Roslin untenable.
If it's not already clear from my bracketed commentary, collectivism is always a sham or ploy in the BSG universe. What's curious, of course, is that while autocrats like the Adamas and Roslin are privileged, those sham collectives are usually being manipulated by their own - albeit evil-as-all-hell - autocrats. So maybe the difference is a qualitative one - the autocrat that rules transparently and unapologetically as opposed to the autocrat that rules by sleight of hand and claims, disingenuously of course, to not want to be the dictator that he is. Admiral Cain confuses this distinction because she clearly falls into the former category, and so would require us to make an additional and totally arbitrary distinction between good and bad Caesars, as it were. But her singularity makes it easier to consider her the exception that proves the rule, I think. Salvation is can only be achieved under the leadership of the right ruler. The problem is, aside from their transparency I'm not sure what makes the Adamas and Roslin so self-evidently 'right' in the minds of the show's producers.
Of course, with only a few episodes left, there's still time to up-end the apple cart.
P.S. I should probably also note that, yes, there is a racial subtext to an individualism/collectivism oppositionality. However, given the muddled political analogies that already confuse the ostensible real-world race correlates, I think that adding this additional layer would just make things messier and, so, doesn't contribute a whole lot to the discussion. Unless, of course, I want to argue that this is where the 'real' race politics of the show emerge...
Two final notes:
1) Ronald D. Moore - BSG's head-honcho and also one of the guiding voices on Deep Space Nine - seems to like muddying the politics of his lead characters to the point of unreadability as a rule. Look, for instance, at how Sisko changes on DS9. At some points, he's the fundamentalist protector of democratic process opposed to those who would violate the Federation's principles in order to preserve them - "Paradise Lost", 4.12 - and at others a Machiavellian schemer not unlike the characters he had previously opposed - "In the Pale Moonlight", 6.19. They're unreconcilable positions within the narrative logic of the show, which posits Sisko as civilization's saviour.
2) DS9 also showed a healthy mistrust for collectivism (the Founders) and shadowy autocrats (the admiral that Sisko takes down in "Paradise Lost"). And this might, in fact, go some way to helping us make sense of Sisko - he can get away with being an assassin and schemer because he doesn't desire to cheat his way into more power and influence. Likewise, he turns against that same admiral despite the fact that it costs him power and influence. There's something to be said in the DS9 and BSG universes for getting ahead the right way. Of course, what's right according to Ronald Moore and what's right to some of us in the audience isn't necessarily one and the same.
But there's also some very good, and very apt, points in there that are worth repeating. For instance:
"it’s kinda dishonest when the great defining symbol of this culture-clash, the narrative linchpin of your ideological conflict, binds conceptually not to 9/11 but rather to the Holocaust."Whether or not the show's politics and message are reduced to incoherence, as Hal Duncan suggests, by this sloppy symbolism is almost beside the point. The show's juxtaposition of 9/11 and the Holocaust suggests that we're meant to understand the two as equivalent, and while this is hugely problematic, I think that what it says about American nationalism and identity is tremendously too interesting to dismiss because it makes for bad writing. We might even have to debate whether it necessarily leads to bad writing - while he and I might find the juxtaposition of these events distasteful and ludicrous, I think that the narrative manages to merge the two quite effectively for the purposes of storytelling. But regardles - even if it might be a narrative failure, that failure shouldn't preclude a discussion of it as a telling artifact of its time.
"that very act of symbolic hyperbole articulates, I think, something about 9/11, about how Americans in particular, but by no means only Americans, responded to it emotionally, ascribing it a grossly-exaggerated import. That narrative misstep of a dubious analogy is revealing of the degree of faith, the depth of the fall, the jawdropping level of… well… self-importance necessary to place an albeit horrendous act on that level."
But in defense of the narrative - I do think that Duncan is pouring it on too hard. If the historical resonances are multiple and contradictory, then in fairness you have to point out that it's even more varied and confused than this. Duncan admits this when he notes that the humans' internment on New Caprica reads instead like it is actually occurring in the Middle East, but this time with the Israeli/American role being played by the Cylons and the Palestinian/Iraqi spot by the humans. But the Cylon-human conflict, with the Cylons determining to wipe out their creators and former masters, doesn't fit terribly well into either any of these metaphors, nor does Cylon society (despite the fact that it is radical and monotheistic, sure) fit the usual associations of racial and religious Others with barbarism and incivility as would befit a 9/11 metaphor. So this stuff doesn't fit the above real-world references without ignoring huge and important parts of the story and so reducing them to absurdity.
"even the inherent tension in the basic dichotomy of militaristic autocracy versus democratic bureaucracy is dissipated quickly as Adama and Roslyn prove to be pretty much of a mind."Along the lines of 'thematic vagueness' - it seems clear to me that BSG is trying to do and say something about militarism and nationalism more generally (or, rather, within a plurality of specific references that is so varied that any attempt to limit the field just doesn't work), that it's trying to work additional metaphorical angles that resist placement among those major touchstones because they're not trying to speak to any event in particular over the course of the entire series. Whether this is a good or effective strategey is, of course, totally up for debate. And so while I agree that the show has reached a point where its thematics have become nonsensical - and I've admitted as much in past blogs - I think this has less to do with the ridiculousness or wrongheadedness of a hybrid 9/11-Holocaust metaphor and more to do with the too many references to too many sources that have accrued over four seasons.
"The result is a sort of thematic vagueness, where the show doesn’t really dramatise the ideological issues it’s pretending to deal with. It seems unwilling to really come down on one side or another and risk alienating viewers who might find such a stance challenging."
If I were to try and pin down an over-arching political message, I would probably push BSG's contradictory messages about autocratic militarism and democratic process aside and focus on its affection for heroic liberal individualism of a hegemonically masculine sort. If anything is consistently villified, it's the sense of collectivism premised on altruism that ostensibly underlies Cylon culture (and is eventually revealed to be rotten at the core and under the fascistic rule of Cavill/John), that is implied by the consensus-based approach of the Quorum of Twelve (who are shown to be spineless and completely ineffective), and which is attempted by various insurgencies (the union under Tyrell, but more aptly the mutiny as it is engineered by the hypberbolically crippled Gaeta and self-appointed man-of-the-people Tom Zarek) that find the autocratic rule of Adama and Roslin untenable.
If it's not already clear from my bracketed commentary, collectivism is always a sham or ploy in the BSG universe. What's curious, of course, is that while autocrats like the Adamas and Roslin are privileged, those sham collectives are usually being manipulated by their own - albeit evil-as-all-hell - autocrats. So maybe the difference is a qualitative one - the autocrat that rules transparently and unapologetically as opposed to the autocrat that rules by sleight of hand and claims, disingenuously of course, to not want to be the dictator that he is. Admiral Cain confuses this distinction because she clearly falls into the former category, and so would require us to make an additional and totally arbitrary distinction between good and bad Caesars, as it were. But her singularity makes it easier to consider her the exception that proves the rule, I think. Salvation is can only be achieved under the leadership of the right ruler. The problem is, aside from their transparency I'm not sure what makes the Adamas and Roslin so self-evidently 'right' in the minds of the show's producers.
Of course, with only a few episodes left, there's still time to up-end the apple cart.
P.S. I should probably also note that, yes, there is a racial subtext to an individualism/collectivism oppositionality. However, given the muddled political analogies that already confuse the ostensible real-world race correlates, I think that adding this additional layer would just make things messier and, so, doesn't contribute a whole lot to the discussion. Unless, of course, I want to argue that this is where the 'real' race politics of the show emerge...
Two final notes:
1) Ronald D. Moore - BSG's head-honcho and also one of the guiding voices on Deep Space Nine - seems to like muddying the politics of his lead characters to the point of unreadability as a rule. Look, for instance, at how Sisko changes on DS9. At some points, he's the fundamentalist protector of democratic process opposed to those who would violate the Federation's principles in order to preserve them - "Paradise Lost", 4.12 - and at others a Machiavellian schemer not unlike the characters he had previously opposed - "In the Pale Moonlight", 6.19. They're unreconcilable positions within the narrative logic of the show, which posits Sisko as civilization's saviour.
2) DS9 also showed a healthy mistrust for collectivism (the Founders) and shadowy autocrats (the admiral that Sisko takes down in "Paradise Lost"). And this might, in fact, go some way to helping us make sense of Sisko - he can get away with being an assassin and schemer because he doesn't desire to cheat his way into more power and influence. Likewise, he turns against that same admiral despite the fact that it costs him power and influence. There's something to be said in the DS9 and BSG universes for getting ahead the right way. Of course, what's right according to Ronald Moore and what's right to some of us in the audience isn't necessarily one and the same.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Catching up with TV: BSG and Lost
[Warning: spoilers abound for those who aren't up to speed on the only two TV shows I'm currently watching]
I have but love to share for the pacing and content of Battlestar Galactica's final half-season. With only 10 episodes to go, an entire mythology to unpack, and a home to finally discover, Ronald Moore and crew saw fit to spend the first four on a mutiny plot that, apparently, had absolutely nothing to do with the show's most pressing issues. And as if to add insult to injury, they followed four episodes that offered no new revelations with a single episode that overflowed with them, many of which were the product of memories triggered completely by accident.
In fact, it seems as if all of Season 4.5 to this point has been poking fun at the show's mythology: the much anticipated reveal of the 5th member of the "final five" cylons was so compoundingly disappointing that I can only suspect that, having realized that outing Adama or Roslin or some other important character would seem a) predictable, and b) nonsensical, the show's creators decided to instead undercut every expectation we may have in increasingly hilarious fashion:
I'm sure that all this has ruined the show for some people, but i like the move away from the mythology. Rather than acting out of, in varying proportions, a sense of guilt and/or destiny, the characters seem newly self-motivated to find a home and redefine themselves because they want to, not because they're supposed to. In the pilot, Adama asked whether humanity deserved to survive, a question that Athena shot back at him when she first landed on the ship. And if the mutiny hadn't have happened, if the fleet continued to press on only because they were supposed to, that question would still be hanging in the air.
(On a totally separate note - anyone have any good guesses as to who Daniel will turn out to be? The creator of the 12 Colonies' cylons, as revealed in the Caprica promo stuff, is named Daniel. And it's been pointed out that Starbuck's unnamed, unseen dad was an musician, which might be important given that Daniel is said to be artistic. I think it's important to point out, though, that the number of each Cylon model appears to indicate, roughly, their human age. Since Daniel is number 7 and is sandwiched between two women who appear to be in their late 20s or early 30s, wouldn't it make sense that he'd be the same age?)
On the flip-side, I think that Lost's fifth season is only now finding its feet. Among many others, I've complained that the structuring of the episodes has felt a bit off, that the absence of true flashbacks and flashforwards - which had always been tied to particular characters in each time-frame, if not particular themes as well - was making it difficult to enjoy the show. Not only were the events on and off the island totally separate and disconnected, (with certain, rare expections like Desmond and Daniel's meeting) but the fact that the groups had to share screentime meant that very little happened in each episode.
All of those problems seemed to be rectified in this latest episode, at least. It begins - and ends, though we don't know that initially - with the moment that Jack, Kate, and Hurley find themselves back on the island, implicitly promising us that while they begin the episode in LA with little hope of reconciliation or return, this is where they'll end up by the end of the hour. With the flashback/forward having been more or less abandoned this season, this was an unexpected surprise and it was nice to see it return - and for so much to happen in this one episode, too.
Which isn't to say that we're totally done with LA - given the mysterious and unexplained circumstances that led to Sayid, Kate, and Hurley ending up on the plane - and Ben's injury and visit to the marina, where we might guess Desmond and Penny are docked - we have plenty of interesting material for future flashbacks. But the creators have rightly guessed that we've seen enough of the real world for a while and that we'd much prefer to see everyone back on the island where they belong.
Added on Feb. 20: Come to think of it, this episode is how season 5 should have started - with Jack waking up, finding Kate and Hurley, then gradually finding everyone else and establishing the new status quo. How did they get there? Well, that's what the flashbacks would have shown us.
I have but love to share for the pacing and content of Battlestar Galactica's final half-season. With only 10 episodes to go, an entire mythology to unpack, and a home to finally discover, Ronald Moore and crew saw fit to spend the first four on a mutiny plot that, apparently, had absolutely nothing to do with the show's most pressing issues. And as if to add insult to injury, they followed four episodes that offered no new revelations with a single episode that overflowed with them, many of which were the product of memories triggered completely by accident.
In fact, it seems as if all of Season 4.5 to this point has been poking fun at the show's mythology: the much anticipated reveal of the 5th member of the "final five" cylons was so compoundingly disappointing that I can only suspect that, having realized that outing Adama or Roslin or some other important character would seem a) predictable, and b) nonsensical, the show's creators decided to instead undercut every expectation we may have in increasingly hilarious fashion:
- our final cylon, Ellen, is already dead and has been for some time, and so the anxiety about her identity was a total non-issue
- she was an incredibly marginal character anyway, and it's hard to imagine a character that we would have suspected less or a reveal that would have made even less of an impact
- the "final" five is revealed to be something of a misnomer, since they're actually the first humanoid models
- they're also 2000 years old and completely disconnected from the cylons who rebelled against humanity, which muddies the underlying conflict
- Ellen's not even the last mystery-cylon, as we've now learned about Daniel's existence
I'm sure that all this has ruined the show for some people, but i like the move away from the mythology. Rather than acting out of, in varying proportions, a sense of guilt and/or destiny, the characters seem newly self-motivated to find a home and redefine themselves because they want to, not because they're supposed to. In the pilot, Adama asked whether humanity deserved to survive, a question that Athena shot back at him when she first landed on the ship. And if the mutiny hadn't have happened, if the fleet continued to press on only because they were supposed to, that question would still be hanging in the air.
(On a totally separate note - anyone have any good guesses as to who Daniel will turn out to be? The creator of the 12 Colonies' cylons, as revealed in the Caprica promo stuff, is named Daniel. And it's been pointed out that Starbuck's unnamed, unseen dad was an musician, which might be important given that Daniel is said to be artistic. I think it's important to point out, though, that the number of each Cylon model appears to indicate, roughly, their human age. Since Daniel is number 7 and is sandwiched between two women who appear to be in their late 20s or early 30s, wouldn't it make sense that he'd be the same age?)
* * *
On the flip-side, I think that Lost's fifth season is only now finding its feet. Among many others, I've complained that the structuring of the episodes has felt a bit off, that the absence of true flashbacks and flashforwards - which had always been tied to particular characters in each time-frame, if not particular themes as well - was making it difficult to enjoy the show. Not only were the events on and off the island totally separate and disconnected, (with certain, rare expections like Desmond and Daniel's meeting) but the fact that the groups had to share screentime meant that very little happened in each episode.
All of those problems seemed to be rectified in this latest episode, at least. It begins - and ends, though we don't know that initially - with the moment that Jack, Kate, and Hurley find themselves back on the island, implicitly promising us that while they begin the episode in LA with little hope of reconciliation or return, this is where they'll end up by the end of the hour. With the flashback/forward having been more or less abandoned this season, this was an unexpected surprise and it was nice to see it return - and for so much to happen in this one episode, too.
Which isn't to say that we're totally done with LA - given the mysterious and unexplained circumstances that led to Sayid, Kate, and Hurley ending up on the plane - and Ben's injury and visit to the marina, where we might guess Desmond and Penny are docked - we have plenty of interesting material for future flashbacks. But the creators have rightly guessed that we've seen enough of the real world for a while and that we'd much prefer to see everyone back on the island where they belong.
Added on Feb. 20: Come to think of it, this episode is how season 5 should have started - with Jack waking up, finding Kate and Hurley, then gradually finding everyone else and establishing the new status quo. How did they get there? Well, that's what the flashbacks would have shown us.
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