My Burdens Have Been Laid

Humanity has surrendered. The war is finally over. We must now fulfill our true destiny...So we will love them, and take care of them. Show them the glory of peace. And, like God, our infinite mercy will be matched only by our power.

And complete control.

Good gods.

I thought the "Battlestar Galactica" finale was one of the best season finales I've ever seen, anywhere. It goes up there with "Lost"'s pilot episode as an example of almost perfect genre entertainment--be it TV OR movies.

I say almost perfect. I fear the audacious decision to skip ahead one year will only lead to way too many episodes next season that will begin with the titles "10 Months Ago" or "6 Months Ago," and those kinds of episodes always bug me. But I suppose they're better than episodes that begin with an explosion and then a title that says "48 Hours Ago." There were way too many of those this season. This season also gave us some truly awful episodes. (I speak of the first one with Lucy Lawless, which was cringe-inducing until the final moments and its big reveal, and "Blackmarket," the one about Apollo and his whore. Although I found it amusing how often it seemed like Apollo was going to die this season and didn't, like the writers were purposely fracking with Chuck.)

I'm a little annoyed by some things that seemed to be left out of the finale. Why didn't Starbuck's boy-toy tell her about being rescued by Sharon and Six on Caprica? And if he did, why not show the audience that exchange? The gullibility of the humans kind of bugged, too. Did they just take Dean Stockwell's word that the whole annihilation was just a big "My bad!" on the Cylons' part? Or were they just so tired of running and fighting that they all just buried their doubts in exchange for hope? What did they end up doing to the Dean Stockwells? And why would Cylons build a model that looked like someone pushing his 70s? What human is gonna want to sleep with that and get preggers with a hybrid baby?

From what I've read, some people seem to think that Gina's detonation of the bomb was nothing but a suicide. But I fall in with the belief that she did it as part of a bigger plan to send a signal to the Cylons, revealing the humans' whereabouts.

The arrival of Sharon, Six, and Kevin Spacey at the end was a little confusing, too. At the end of "Downloaded" it felt like Six and Sharon had nothing but love for the humans, but that love seems to have turned into, "Yeah, we love you. As long as you obey us." But I suppose that kind of stuff will be addressed in the third season.

Which begins in OCTOBER.

Frack!