IvanF's Uninformed Reviews of the Second Season of Battlestar Galactica (2005-2006)...

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The Second Season of Battlestar Galactica (2005 - 2006) -
(New Caprica is colonized, The Cylons take over that shit within a year, Commander Adama recovers from a bullet wound, Admiral Adama never recovers from being pussy whipped, Laura Roslin gets cured of cancer but not her bichiness, Gaius Baltar rises to power, Number Six rises in bed, Lee Adama becomes Commander of the Pegasus, Starbuck becomes CAG, Colonel Tigh becomes shit, Boomer pussy whips Helo into pregnancy, Dualla fucks her way to the top, and Ron Moore seriously fucks up with a fucking goddam reboot)

I guess it's kind of appropriate, that I'm writing this review of Battlestar Galactica (Season 2) just a couple of days before the fifth anniversary of 9/11...

Because that's basically how Battlestar started out, essentially. As Ron Moore's message of hope to everything that has happened around us since the world changed that fateful day...

In BSG, the nuclear holocaust of an attack on the 12 colonies by the Cylons was meant to be a metaphor for the shock and awe that took the world by storm beginning with the events of 9/11. Battlestar Galactica, especially in its first season, prided itself on being loosely based on real world events, showing us what it meant to our humanity to never know who to trust, to be paranoid of hell of your neighbours, and of treating and regarding your enemies as something less than human...

Now, I never really did enjoy the individual episodes of the first season of the series (with the exceptions of the Mini-Series and Hand of God, of course), but I still did appreciate the total story arc that evolved and developed over the course of the year. The first season started out with 33 as being all about survival, of picking up the remaining pieces of our lives and moving on with signs of hope, and the show eventually all cumulated in a big ass debate of what it means to be human, of whether or not we truly do deserve to survive. I may not have really enjoyed any of the single episodes themselves, but there was a hell of lot to enjoy that was spread out across the entire season as a whole...

What the fuck were the writers thinking when they wrote the second shit season of the show? WTF?...

Literally, I can count the episodes that I actually enjoyed from the second season on one hand, the captain's hand, or three fucking fingers really. Resistance, Home, and Pegasus were all great episodes with amazing controversial arcs in each and every single one of them. But soon it becomes apparent that all three of the aforementioned stories happened in the first half of the season, and we were reduced to drudge like Black Market in the latter half. And considering I really did expect the writers to keep up the great momentum after the first season finale of the show, I honestly did expect far more than just three fucking decent episodes in an entire goddam full season from their shit...

I think the writers themselves knew that they couldn't write a decent story arc anymore if their life depended on it. Sure, Ron Moore was a genius on Star Trek, but it's plain as day obvious why he was eventually ousted and kicked out. He may come up with great ideas, but he really has no idea how to sustain them. He had a great thing going with the idea of Cylons being subhuman terrorists in our eyes, and the episode of Resistance with its shitty ass drops of blood was amazing in that respect. Home will be remembered in my heart not just for the heart-wrenching moments of family, but also from the Stargate-like sense of awe and discovery at the map leading back to earth. And Pegasus truly was a work of film art, in bringing out absolutely the worst aspects of humanity in a cinematic way that I've never witnessed science fiction do before...

But after all that potential from the first half of the season, what the fuck happened?...

The second half was a completely fucked up mess, all beginning with Resurrection Ship where fucking Lee's suicidal teen angst was concentrated more than even the goddam threat of the Cylons. Granted, there were a few good episodes in the latter half of the season, but for the few of them that there were (the Captain's Hand being the best of them), they pretty much all felt like filler fluff that didn't really develop the central plot arcs of the series anymore than they already had been by Pegasus...

I mean sure, I admit that Ron Moore and the writers showed real guts in completely scrapping their series formula to create a sort of French Underground vibe in the season finale of Lay Down Your Burdens. But it also showed that the Powers That Be behind the curtains didn't have a goddam clue how to keep the ball rolling for all the story and character arcs that they had planned since day one of the series, resorting to the cheap goddam trick of the Star Trek reset button to essentially reboot the goddam series when push came to shove...

Battlestar Galactica has always been a character driven show, and I would've forgiven the second season for all its plot-wise faults if only the writers didn't massacre every single fucking character in the series to boot (especially with their reboot). Sure, the first season of the show had each and every character on the series get beaten down into the dredges of the trenches by the dogs of war, until they showed the absolute worst aspects of humanity in the end. But at least there was always hope at the end of the tunnel (which is what made Hand of God so great)...

But what the fuck kind of bone did the writers actually toss to the characters in the second season, besides all those fucking boners that Starbuck and Grace Park got to share (not that I'm really complaining about those, mind you)? Except for Flight of the Phoenix, which was quickly ignored for the rest of the series, there was no hope or light at all at the end of the tunnel for any of our so-called heroes. The writers just kept beating down every single personality that they had on the cast, to the point where not only did it feel redundantly and abysmally repetitive, but also goddam eye rolling boring until they had no choice but to goddam reset. WTF?...

Commander Adama ended off the first season of the show with a bang, quite literally with one of the best cliffhanger moments I've seen in years. The problem was, it all resulted in Edward James Olmos being absent from the show for the first six episodes of the new season, letting the lesser and younger actors run amok across the Galactica decks until the teen angst crap reached fucking vomit-inducing Smallville levels. Now sure, I was relieved as hell when the Commander returned in Resistance, his moments with his family and friends were goddam touching in Home, and he was once again the fucking man in Pegasus as he laid down the smackdown law. But the problem was, as soon as he become Admiral, it all went fucking downhill from there...

It's all Madame President's fault, really. Laura Roslin spent the first half of the season just being sick in a fucking bed, whining and bitching and complaining how she's some prophet with cancer or some shit like that. That was her message to the people, one of hope that she would lead them to the promised land, until that lameass episode where she was suddenly cured of the disease by fucking Cylons cells of all things. Ever since that moment, the poor bitch of a character has had absolutely nothing to do on the series except lose to fucking Baltar in the goddam presidential elections. And even before all that bullshit happened, her character had already been completely tarnished and marred by all the controversial decisions she had made in power, including her spontaneous demand to kill off Admiral Cain and to steal the Cylon miracle child from right under Helo and Boomer's care...

She was the one who gave Commander Adama his Admiral pipes, but she was also the one who took away his balls. As an Admiral, what the fuck did Adama really do? He made a bunch of lousy decisions in selecting commanders for the Pegasus, sucked up to his son by promoting him about three fucking times in two weeks, and then let his Battlestars go to the absolute shitters in Lay Down Your Burdens after just one measly year of a false sense of ceasefire? Is this really the Commander Adama who took shit from no-one last year and beat down Admiral Cain in Pegasus with a fucking Singapore cane? WTF?...

His son of Lee Adama came out even worse throughout the season. He started off alright I guess, with fucked up loyalties when it came to Colonel Tigh's regime. Problem was, his character became so damn inconsistent in the end that you really started to hate the guy for his complete lack of common sense. He started out the season preaching about the right thing to do, then seemed to side with his father the very first moment he could (no matter what his father believed in), and didn't seem to give a damn about his morals or principles anymore the very moment he became commander of the Pegasus. Was it all due to his nihilism, or just really bad writing thanks to shit like Black Market, I don't know. And why exactly did he even get that fucking promotion in the first place, when wasn't it obvious that the guy was a suicidal, depressed lunatic who couldn't even satisfy Kara Thrace of all whores in the sack? WTF?...

I really, really ridiculously have no clue what the writers were trying to get at with Starbuck in season two. At least it was clear as mud that Lee Adama would go through a moral and identity crisis (as boring and dumbass as that was), but what the fuck did they do to Thrace? First, she gets her fucking eggs cut out of her by Cylons after she fraks some loser Anders for God knows what reason. Then the rest of the season, she loses her cool by fucking pining over that lameass pyramid player back on Crapica, resulting in not only horribly mundane Viper fighter scenes with a complete lack of charisma (except for Pegasus and maybe Scar), but also absolutely no chemistry between her and the rest of the cast anymore, especially Lee Adama. After her experiences back on the 12 colonies, she lost that cockiness of an arrogant edge that made her the cigar-totting super bitch that we all loved from the first season. And then the writers butchered her character even more by getting her fucking married to Anders in the season finale...

In the first season, Gaius Baltar was a pure genius of a self-interested, despicable and amoral man, and I loved him for that. He had moments where he shined in season two as well I guess, mainly in Resistance and the first half of the season, but what the fuck did the writers do to him in the second? His rise to presidency was reduced to pretty much just a single episode, because the writers couldn't even muster a decent idea for a political based hour in 22 minutes that they hadn't already done in the first season...

Before all that, he spent all his time either being depressed as hell about that Cylon baby that should've been his, or he whined like a pussy whipped bitch when it came to that Number Six model sitting there all naked and exposed on Cloud 9. In the first season, with all the visions of the Cylon bitch in her head egging him on into positions of power, you really did believe that both the writers and the Cylons had a plan. But either that plan is just completely ridiculous and religiously obscure to our feeble little human minds, or it simply does not exist, as it's not like Number Six back on Caprica in Downloaded was faring any damn better than our new presidential elect...

Grace Park was an absolute beauty in the first season, and it's not like that changed in the second. Problem was, her role not only was completely reversed (due to her Galactica self getting killed off), but her screen time was severely diminished as well. It's not like I ever liked that Crapica shit she had with pussy whipped Helo back in season one, but at least we had the threat of the sleeper agent Boomer back on Galactica to keep us entertained. After that version of her was essentially killed off by Cally in Resistance, we were left with nothing more than just a Grace Park in sweats and chains, doing nothing but spout useless Shakespeare in love rhetoric with Helo while getting raped up the ass. Is this really the best way to use one of the most dynamic actresses and characters on the entire fucking show? WTF?...

And do I really need to go on? Do I really have to bother with Tigh, Tyrol, Gaeta, and that fucking useless twig of a bitch Dualla, when we all know what I'm going to say?...

I mean, is it just me, or did the writers try to make literally every single character on the show not just completely boring as fuck, but completely goddam unlikable in the end as well? Did they actually want us to hate every single actor and whiny bitchy actress on the show, and despise the series as a result as well? Is there any reason to side with our protagonists whatsoever? Is there any damn reason to give a shit about their plight or even their fucking flight of the Phoenix? WTF?...

Now, the first season may not have been the greatest work of science fiction that I had even seen in my life, but it did have potential. Each individual episode may have seemed barren and fragmented on its own, but together as a whole the season really did seem to deliver on a powerful message in a SciFi bottle. No matter how broken or beaten down humanity had become, we still fought our inner demons to the best of our ability, to give ourselves new hope for a better future and a better life. While the method and means may have been different than Gene Roddenberry ever originally envisioned and prescribed on Star Trek, Ron Moore here on BSG still made sure that the central message of faith in the heart was still goddam there...

Now, both the Cylons and the writers, aren't they supposed to have some sort of plan? Does it really consist of a fucking entire reset and reboot button to the series just two fucking seasons into the show? WTF?...

I mean, a lot of people have dubbed Battlestar Galactica to be the anti-Trek series. But in my honest opinion at least, when it comes to the first season, the truth of the matter was completely the opposite...

Afterall, Star Trek was all about the human condition and the meaning of life. I see no difference with the first season of Battlestar Galactica...

If Star Trek was a good series, and Battlestar Galactica 2.0 was pure unadulterated shit?...

Notable Episodes: Resistance, Home (Parts 1 & 2), Resurrection Ship (Parts 1 & 2), The Captain's Hand, Lay Down Your Burdens (Parts 1 & 2)
Best Episode of the Season: Pegasus

"I know I haven't been the biggest proponent of Battlestar Galactica over the past year or so...

It was like all the characters who made the first season of the show into something memorable, were cast aside in favour of all the secondary characters I've conditioned myself to goddam ignore... and for good reason...

Col. Tigh is just completely useless without a bottle in his hands. He's a stern upper lip guy, who we all obviously can tell doesn't want to be, and doesn't belong in command... This is the episode where he tells this truth, right to Adama's face (even if the old man can't hear it). This was the episode where Col. Tigh tells the entire CIC that the Battlestar Galactica will be Adama's ship until the day he dies. And both of these moments, were quite in line with what I've come to expect with the character... so they weren't that out of place...

But oh dear God, when it came to all the flashbacks? Talk about fucking campy out of the fucking ears... I can't honestly believe that James Olmos didn't crack up, wearing that wig and mustache on his face. And I can't believe how dumbass Captain Tigh looked like with hippie hair on top, as even the beer bottle in his hands couldn't save those scenes from mediocrity at best... If those flashback moments were taken with a grain of salt, and were supposed to provide comic relief, then maybe I'd approve. But since those scenes were rather meant to be fucking dramatic instead?... then, well... the episode did feel a bit lost in the end...

Adama really didn't do much. He just bled and bled in the present, and looked like he was going to ball out in laughter in all his flashback scenes... Madame President was simply there to look all concerned for Apollo, like a mother would for a son. And I was glad she kept her Kobol mouth shut for the most part... Of course, she ruined things when she stared praying with that wussy security guard outside of her cell. Her goddam speeches to the Gods are what ruined her character in the first season, and was ruining a perfectly decent space battle in Scattered...

Apollo wasn't bad this episode. It's just that, he didn't have much to do... The actor put a hell of a lot of emotion into the moment, where he was dragged apart from his dying father at the start. But after that, he just seemed hollow as Apollo, just drifting around in shock, yet not in shock at the same damn time?... Heh, he even seemed a little bored while fighting against the Cylons in the cockpit. Maybe his mind was preoccupied then? With Lee thinking of his father, and the actor thinking of his wife... If you didn't know, Jamie's wife played the medic in this episode. And she did a pretty decent job too, so I wouldn't mind her back... It just sucks for Apollo though, when his acting is fucking upstaged by a random medic character played by his wife...

Over on Kobol, I seriously couldn't stand anything going on over there... Chief Tyrol and Crashdown were both acting like babies, whining about who was in charge and who's fault every mistake was... Why is it that Tyrol is always right about everything, and Crashdown acts like he has down syndrome, or some shit like that? Crashdown was never really an idiot before he landed on Kobol, and I fail to see the point of making him into a complete dunce in command... Is it supposed to show his fallacies under pressure or something? Or is it just some sad soap opera tack-on, when it comes to Boomer sitting over there in sickbay... or she was, last time Tyrol checked at least...

I for one, was just glad that the Legalos-lookalike bit the dust from a fucking bullet... but maybe, that's just me...

Number Six was barely in the episode. Which absolutely sucked, since after so many months, I really needed a good fix of a hot blonde stripping... Gaius Baltar meanwhile offered absolutely nothing to this episode. I mean, the last thing I wanted to see from his character, was Dr. Baltar becoming all confused and "touched" and fucking humble on the small screen... This is not what I signed up to watch. I want the old cocky son of a bitch that became my hero, not the wussified Tin Man bitch with a human heart... All he did this episode, was hallucinate about making babies. I mean seriously, what is it with babies on Sci-Fi Friday this week?...

Helo played the pussy-whipped, Days of Our Cylon Lives guy again, protecting his supposed baby at all costs... Now, I would like to comment about Kara Thrace, considering the actress is one of the highlights of the entire series. But now that she's been relegated to B-story Caprica status, thanks to fucking Madame President? Well, Kara's barely worth my time anymore... She only had one goddam scene in the entire episode. And all she ended up doing, was having another mental breakdown with that pistol in her hands... She got to frak up the place with a bunch of soap operaish talk of evil bitches lying about pregnancy. But that's about it... Seriously, what else did she do? How many words did she even get to say? Did she even have one decent moment in Scattered?...

There were only two decent scenes in the entire episode, and they both belonged to the ever graceful, Grace Park... She barely said a word while Kara was swinging her gun in the Cylon's face. But quite frankly, I prefer Grace Park having no lines, considering she just looks so sweet with her babyface just sweating there, with no words coming out of her mouth to distract me... The other decent scene in the episode was obviously the interrogation one. It was short, but definitely made a point... Col. Tigh got to look tough with a few backhands he learned as a wife beater. And poor Boomer looked terrified at what she was, and was almost welcoming another bullet to the head... That was quality acting, if you ask me. But it was a short scene, and one scene alone is not enough to save a fucking, frakkin' whole episode...

Then again, the battle scene near the end was decent... Sure, it was ruined by our weekly scheduled, fucking prayer to the Gods with Ms. ID4-is-better-than-War-of-the-Worlds, but still... The Cylon transport ship was of a weird but decent design. And I loved how all the Cylon Raiders parked in the basestar, like punch-cards coming out of a wall... And the whole software firewall thing? Yeah, it was slightly dramatic... Sure, I still don't get why networking three damn computers with just cables (and not wireless) would allow hacking to take place. But I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the Cylons and futuristic technology, anyhew...

Now, as for Lt. Gaeta... Is it me, or is it becoming too damn obvious that he's a Cylon, almost as if he's now the red herring on the series or something?... He got the spotlight in Scattered over Dr. Baltar, and it painfully showed off just how goddam semi-evil he was...

First, he makes his partner in CIC leave, so that he could split the Battlestar Galactica from the rest of the fleet after the jump all by himself. Then, he comes up with the oh-so-convenient idea to network all the key computers on the Battlestar together, opening the mainframe up to Cylon virus attacks... While the mission's success supposedly was supposed to convince us that Gaeta ain't such a bad guy afterall, if you're quick enough, you would've noticed that right before he pulled out those network wires (and noticed he sort of took his time doing so...), the last firewall screen turned red... But it's just all too damn obvious for Lt. Gaeta. He can't be a Cylon then, if he walks and talks like a Cylon, now can he be?...

It was an average Battlestar Galactica episode... which automatically makes it the worst of Sci-Fi Friday...

But when it came to the actual character development, the one thing that Battlestar Galactica actually does better than all the rest?...

... with three running plot scenarios, and all the key characters out of commission?...

... the episode just felt more like a mid-season show, than it ever did a stellar season premiere...

... it was just all so scattered all over the place, for it's own frakkin' good..."

Now, I don't know what went wrong with Valley of Darkness, to be honest... on paper, it sounded to be a decent enough episode, with a ton of action that a nerd like me would supposedly care about...

But pretty much every decent action moment was ruined by the improper pacing of the whole episode, yet again... So far, the second season of Battlestar Galactica has pretty much been torn asunder, by the simple fact that there are three running plotlines in every single damn episode... three different settings, each completely removing the pacing and the atmosphere that the other scenes had...

I was literally bored to tears from the fucking tearful goodbye, when Tyrol euthanized that Galaxy Quest buddy of his. And I was annoyed by Cally the whole episode too, as she's too cute to be covered in that shitty kind of grime... Crashdown was a disappointment again, literally doing nothing but complaining to Dr. Baltar that he's being an idiot. And Dr. Gaius Baltar?... I hate to reduce my former hero of the show down to just one fucking sentence or two, but his fucking dream sequence was embarrassingly bad. Since it never showed the baby's face, as far as I was concerned, Dr. Baltar was concerned about drowning a fucking rock in a blanket in the river (and that's probably what the producers did too...)...

Back on Galactica, things were ridiculously stupid at times... A great Cylon computer virus seeped into the computer systems. And yet Lt. Gaeta was able to purge it from the systems in just a few hours? WTF?... unless that was part of his Cylon programming, I don't really see how or why the Galactica crew should ever fear little wimpy Cylon viruses again. Especially considering the 'bots must've saved the good stuff for the Daedalus back on Atlantis or whatever...

Valley of Darkness was once again an episode that highlighted the little people on the show... Naive Billy once again got to get the spotlight, both ruining and saving the day by shooting a loaded gun in the pants. I suppose it was meant to be a metaphor, since he was trying to win Dualla back over or something...

Dualla was a bit of a story though... How did she survive the Cylon attack anyhew? Why was she the only survivor in the room?... I wouldn't go so far as to say she's a Cylon or anything. But she certainly does seem horny, and especially willing to make babies with Billy, it seems... though I wouldn't start pointing fingers at the cute gal just quite yet, otherwise Galactica wouldn't have any hotties left...

If there's anybody that I pray is a fucking Cylon, it's the Madame President. And the near miss with the bullet holes in her shirt should pretty much prove it... She just has way too much luck when it comes to visions and Cylons or whatever, for it to all be just a coincidence. Either the gods really are helping her out, or the Cylons are. And I'm praying it's the latter... Either way, Roslin didn't do much in Valley of Darkness. I was thankful that she didn't pray or anything like she did in the season premiere. But I was also disappointed that none of her motherly instincts ever came back when it came to Billy or Dualla or Lee back from the cockpit...

Now, as for Captain Lee Apollo? He was absolutely useless... I mean, I never really thought a storyline of mass murder in the closed corridors of a ship could actually be boring and tedious. But somehow, Battlestar Galactica pulled it off...

I admit that I did jump at the sight of the first Cylon hack and slash attack. It was just so sudden, that it did catch me off guard...

Then the fucking shaky cam came fucking into full effect. And after enduring the kind of shit everywhere in The Island the other night, I was definitely not in the mood to bear with it here... And as for the rest of the action? God, all it consisted of was mindless shootings in alleyways and corridors. We never really see much of it, since our imaginations are supposed to soar thanks to all the screams in the shadows... But really, I expect a bit more from sci-fi, than just bad CG toasters pretending to be zombie horrorific shit in the background. I at least expected a bit more from that final fight scene, than just Lee shooting at a Cylon that was too damn dumb just to stand in one place and toss grenades...

Col. Tigh didn't have much to do. He got to mutter under his breath that he's thankful he never had kids. And he's probably thankful he didn't really need to command in this episode either, considering he did absolutely nothing but give a lesson on Cylon tactics 101... Commander Adama should've known the tactic of decompression was coming (before he was unconscious, at least). So why the hell didn't he constantly post guards at the Aft Damage Control place then, if it was always the most likely target of a fucking boarding party?... Instead, just like with Water last season, we got an episode where it shows just how dumbass every single commander and marine on the ship really is. I mean seriously, what do they honestly do with their time, if they don't actually constantly guard the key areas of the ship that need to be guarded?...

The Galactica story just felt like dribble for me, somehow... it was far too mundane and monotonously dark, for it to ever be exciting for some damn reason... and except for that random yellow shirt guy who learned how to shoot a gun, the A-plotline of Valley of Darkness was surprisingly lacking in both comic relief and character development. The two true staples of the BSG series as a whole, I mean...

Ironic then, really... that for one, just for once... I actually enjoyed the Caprican scenes more than anything else in the show...

Nothing really happened there. Yet we learned and listened to a lot of decent shit anyhew...

Helo was just a dunce. The poor boy can't act. I might as well start calling him Ben Affleck or something, since he proposed to a Cylon in just six fucking months...

But Kara? Yeah, I actually enjoyed the little romp back to her ol' stomping grounds... What can I say? I'm the no-name nostalgic. And I actually kinda smiled with her when she found that age old cigar with a lighter... I can't say I can honestly believe that Kara Thrace is a painter. But I can see that she's an instant noodle kind of gal (I refuse to call it "Ramen" though... only fucking idiots call it "Ramen"...), as the quick morning life definitely suits her sex buds...

I liked the music in that scene too. Can't say it was really Starbuck in feel, but it did remind me of all the great Edward James Olmos scenes we've been sadly and oh so sorely missing from the show... And the Hummer? Sure, I'm still pissed since last season that futuristic humans still use fucking Hummers that need gas. But hey, at least her car this episode is staying in line with what we knew of her before...

And that's about it really... I would like to write a bonafide, witty review of Valley of Darkness or something...

... but just like with the last BSG episode? I'm simply drawing a goddam dark blank here...

I was bored watching this episode... and coincidentally, I'm bored writing this review... go figure...

I just knew that nobody of real value was in peril... except for those two random Marine guys who just happened to be idiotic enough to take a stand and die, at least...

And without neither real comic relief or real character development anywhere within this episode?...

With three goddam running plotlines, all fucking each other up in terms of atmosphere, plotline and pacing?...

Finally, the writers figured out what was going wrong in the first two episodes of the season... Finally the writers limited the show to just two running plotlines at once, just like they had done throughout the whole of the first season...

Sure, I was disappointed that Starbuck was completely missing in action... Sure, it still sucked that Adama was reduced to being old, saggy eye candy for Mrs. Robinson's on that medical table of his... And yes, sure it absolutely sucked that we got Adama for sex appeal for the second straight episode in a row, instead of fucking Grace Park or Michelle Wie...

But finally, the show showed some of the real pacing and plotline and focus that the first season of the show had... With just two plotlines running parallel to each other, each of the stories was given enough time to truly develop into the kind of crap we've been waiting to see all summer long...

You see, the thing with Battlestar Galactica, is that it doesn't really feel like there's just 47K survivors of humanity out there. The way that the actors portray things, and the way the government is set up in the BSG universe, it sounds like earth wasn't destroyed (which it wasn't... the 12 colonies were... yeah...). But rather, there's just a war going on in the background, with the main focus being the internal squabbles of power while our soldiers are off in Iraq...

But finally, we got an episode where politics nor the war itself were key. But rather, fucking survival was the only thing on pretty much my mind the whole show... On Kobol, the only thing the survivors could think of, was how the hell to survive. Calley couldn't think of anything else but to stay put when ordered to play the cannon fodder guinea pig, and Crashdown just couldn't think, period...

And back on the Battlestar? We got a scene that should've rolled my eyes (and it did), as the fucking elected government officials actually begged to touch the hand of the president, believing her to be their prophet and saviour... But it all felt real in the end, you know? These are people who have barely any hope for survival, who's only real dreams come from the prophecies in their bible... Logic goes out the window in circumstances such as this. And the only logical thing to assume, is that faith is the thing people really need to survive... This was never really commented on before in the show. But I'm glad it finally came to light in Fragged... and so did something else...

Finally, the Battlestar Galactica declares a state of martial law. Most of us in the real fucking world are still wondering how the hell the commander didn't declare martial law months ago, when his 12 fucking planets were just fucking nuked into oblivion... Still, there was just something about the whole delivery of Tigh's speech that tied my stomach in knots. I was glad that he finally did declare martial law, and yet? I don't know, but it really somehow did feel like the wrong thing to do at the time... Part of it was obviously because Adama would probably never do such a thing, and Tigh just fracked things up more for his best friend. And part of it was perhaps the music, as finally BSG produced an ending note that truly felt epic just like Hand of God felt near the end...

And part of it was of course Colonel Tigh. As truth be told, I really do think that Fragged was his character's best episode yet... The XO is always best when he's drunk, and there was no exception here. It was completely ridiculous to see the commander of the only Battlestar left in the fleet, not even remembering simple details on the bridge of his ship. And he was like this all the way to the end of the episode, when he was still sucking down the booze after giving a huge speech to the press... He was a completely irresponsible commander. And yes, he definitely regressed from his strong command in the season opener, as he even listened to his Lady MacTigh once again for advice...

But regardless of whether he's an idiot or not, the booze is what makes Colonel Tigh into an interesting character. He doesn't belong in command, and he doesn't belong in the ship, and he knows it... but his people need him. And he doesn't want to let Commander Adama down, so he never gives up... he never surrenders... and fracks things up a million different ways along the way. Reminds me of my own fucking life, really...

And you know that Colonel Tigh is doing his job (and so are the BSG writers for a change), when finally we got some true comic relief back on the show... Gaeta and Dualla had just a couple of 'petty' moments on the screen (bad pun intended...). But they were memorable as hell... The moment the two possible Cylons shared, over Dualla's little drinking signal while talking to Tigh on the phone? That was the little kind of touch that makes a great episode what it is... And all the other precious moments, like Calley admitting that military service was just meant to pay for dentist school, are the kind of human touches that have always defined Battlestar Galactica as the series that it is...

Now, I don't know why the writers fracked up, and made Crashdown into such a one dimensional character in season two. Did he really have to mess up in three or four episodes straight, to the point where I would've shot him myself for just being annoying?... Did the writers just want to make Tyrol look like a hero? As yes, I did respect the man, for dressing down Baltar and giving true respect to the chain of command... But I didn't care one bit for that rescue. As the whole "pistol beats metal thing" has already been beaten to death by the dozens of times I've watched Tom Hanks do it better in Saving Private Ryan, thank you very much...

The key that the writers did strike a chord though with, is the fact that there was no real solution to the Reservoir Dogs scenario at the end...

Would Crashdown really pull the trigger out of panic and a nervous breakdown? Would Tyrol been able to pull the trigger, against his better nature of being an all-around, annoying good guy?... Was Baltar right, in saving a life by taking a life? And are the writers right, that hate and murder is truly the one defining thing that you can say about all of humanity?... pfft... stupid writers, tricks are for kids...

Now, Number Six has been annoying as hell all season long so far. I mean, in season one, at least we got fucking sex and campy sex talk to go along with all her fucking sermonizing. But what have we gotten in season two?... just a bunch of preacher shit from her, talking about the baby and how the evil in Cylons is all the parents' fault...

But finally, Dr. Baltar had a decent enough role to play... He was once again the complete moron of a coward, losing his binoculars yet claiming he saw the Cylon Centurions guard their post for five minutes straight. And he was once again caught in the crossfire, retreating back to his old home in his mind where life was simpler, thanks to sex with a Cylon and all... Finally, we got those aspects of Gaius' personality back. But we also got something that I really didn't expect...

Thanks to his complete lack of morality, we actually got to see the hero come out of the guy. He truly did become a man, as his overwhelming desire of self-preservation, saved Calley's life and saved the entire rescue mission in the end... He lucked out again. After fucking things up with his lies, he lucked out again, and got to look like a true war hero for the first time since Hand of God. And just like Hand of God, I loved the dramatic irony of it all... He still wasn't the Dr. Gaius Baltar we all know and love and hate. But he was at least worlds better than the shit we've gotten from the past two episodes of the season, so...

Hell, everything in Fragged was a hell of a lot better than the shit we've gotten from the second season of the series so far...

On Kobol, we got a tight resolution to a plot that seemed like it was going nowhere... We got a kickass threat from the missile regiment being set up for an ambush. We got some great character development for Calley, Tyrol, and especially Dr. Baltar in the end... We got Apollo looking like a tightass idiot in his Marine outfit. And we got a true sense of the battle for survival... kill or be killed... that's the kind of element that the series has been lacking for so long, if it ever had it before...

On the Galactica, finally we got the politics of the show moving in a direction that actually makes fucking sense... The survivors lose their fucking minds, and fall in line with a fucking dying prophet doped up on narcissistic drug shit. And Tigh loses his mind over another kind of addiction, even going so far as to call the Battlestar "my ship"... Add in a wonderful collection of a musical score, and a true feeling of dread in the atmosphere of the episode... and then what do you get?...

... well, perhaps not the episode of the week for me... it got fragged by something else...

Stargate Atlantis had probably what was the most entertaining episode of the week...

... and we all know by know just how much I could care less for individual Battlestar Galactica episodes...

But BSG gets the rare nod for IvanFian episode of the week, simply for one reason and one reason only...

Unlike the Stargate episodes on Friday? Battlestar Galactica, like always, makes me want to watch more and more...

That is the very definition of a space opera for you. A show that's completely built on continuity, and drives you to tune in and find out what happens next week with all the crazy shit and goddam melodramatic and sexcapades...

Resistance wasn't the greatest of single episodes. Hell, I'd say that pretty much the entire first half of the episode was a waste, and that the Caprican crap ruined what little greatness could be found in the latter half as well...

But the episode pulled me in nonetheless, and left me demanding to know what happens next... like so many BSG episodes have done in the past beforehand... regardless of whether I wanted to be suckered in or not...

... heh... sorry... just had to get that one off my chest, being a Trekkie and all...

The first half of Resistance was pretty slow, except for the Crapican shit... the problem was, does anyone really give a frack about what happens on Caprica anymore?

I feel sorry for Starbuck there. I really do... Going from the Battlestar to Caprica, has done to her acting career what Catwoman did to Halle Berry, and what Stealth might do to Jamie Foxx... I just don't give a damn about what happens to Kara Thrace anymore.

I mean seriously, could the sexcapades be anymore transparent? Not only were we stuck with Super Starbuck again, who could somehow play professional pyramid basketball as well as she can pilot, snipe, and interrogate... But we got forced into watching her play the action hero yet again with tiny little SMGs (Halo 2 dual wielding, might I add), and forced into watching her foreplay with the first fucking generic Lee clone she can find on the planet... Anders just seemed like such a fucking prop there, looking about the same build and the same character depth as a fucking Resident Evil personality...

And Helo? Hello to Helo, because all he really did was point a few guns, spout a few lines, and let the blonde on the team do all the talking... I might as well just call him whitewashed "Teal'c" then... indeed...

I'm hoping the Crapican shit ends soon. I mean, I suppose the firefight wasn't as bad as I'm making it out to be... but it just feels all so drawn out, with no real focus or drive or plan of action whatsoever... It provides the complete opposite of what I've come to expect from Battlestar Galactica. In which I really could care less what happens back on the planet the next episode around...

I didn't care much for the jail break plotline. I really didn't... I was thankful that the writers kept religion out of yet another episode. But the whole stupidity of the plot in Resistance was just something I couldn't help but get over...

Some out there on the net definitely agree that Saul Tigh is out of his freakin' mind. And if the people of the 12 planets were simply at war with the Cylons, I'd agree...

But there are only 47K survivors of a fucking nuclear holocaust. And yet the people on all the civilian ships still have the nerve to rebel against the one damn military ship left in existence, that has saved them from oblivion time and time again? Talk about fucking ungrateful...

Tigh has definitely made mistakes in command. But from a survivalist point of view, they weren't nearly as half bad as the show is definitely trying to make them out to be...

So what if he declared martial law? The timing of it was horrible, but it really wasn't his call in the end. Adama set that path back in season one. And the president had it coming after she broke her agreement of no military interference, and conned Starbuck back to Caprica... So what if he let the press see Roslin? Without knowing about her medication and the prophecies, it actually would've been smart to let the crowds see how fanatical and out of her mind the president really was. And hell, I still think she's out of her frakkin' mind...

And it wasn't that bad of a decision in Resistance to send troops to gather supplies from the civilian ships. It was dumbass to bring trigger happy marines with fucking assault rifles (no crowd control weapons left on the ship, I take it?). But it's not like sitting down and fucking talking about his feelings would've worked with those civilian sons of bitches anyways...

For every decision he made, Saul forgot about one detail - that the survivors in the civilian fleet are some of the stupidest, goddam, sorry sons of bitches that any human has ever witnessed... Tigh made decent military decisions, and I wish his crew could see that. But politics are definitely not his forte, as essentially the show is making him seem like he's dictating to fucking America, instead of just 47K desperate survivors...

So yeah, I think Roslin's choice to break out of jail was a dumb one. Especially since she should've known Adama would wake up soon to take back command... Why the fuck did she leave? Billy was right in wanting to stay (even though we all know the actor was going to leave the show, so they kept him on the Galactica to potentially kill him off if the actor decided to depart... nice...), in which a) he gets the frak Dualla up in a bunkbed, and b) splintering the fleet would lead to a fucking insurgency. And what the fuck is the point of an insurgency, when there are only 47K fucking survivors left of humanity?... The sheer stupidity of the president continues to astound me even to this day...

Now, I completely don't get why Lee Adama is such a frakkin' idiot all of the time. Has he ever thought once about the consequences of his actions?... He turns against his own father in Kobol's Last Gleaming, which did absolutely nothing in the end (as he pointed out a couple episodes ago). And now he does it again, fully knowing that it could potentially lead to civil war, and a civilian fleet without a protector? WTF?... Now, normally I would've found the Hand of God Celtic music during his farewell speech to his father, to be rather nostalgic and haunting. But doesn't Lee ever get a frakkin' clue?... The scene just felt so stupid, as he was now stabbing his father in the back, after the guy had already been shot twice in the gut. How fucking stupid can he be?...

I don't blame Dualla for helping the president out though. Although she is getting more suspicious by the moment, it seems... For one thing, she was staring at Lee's ass this episode. Afterall, if Starbuck can fucking flirt with Anders, then why can't Dualla start cheating on ol' Billy (if he was getting killed off, I mean...)?... And second, Dualla has certainly been stirring the pot when it comes to Tigh lately. Sure, that can simply be from the fact that she's a girl of principle, and Tigh was really fucking things up. But there's just something off about her this season, that makes you wonder if the name of "Dual-la" has some sort of greater meaning to it...

And as for Lt. "Gae-ta"?... well... I think we all have found the greater meaning in that name, me thinks... considering he keeps smirking and smiling at Baltar, it seems...

Honestly, he was like fucking Ben Mulroney this episode, all smarmy and squirmy when it came to his lurking about. He reminded me of me, the no-name stalker, really... Did he do the right thing with Dualla in the end, saving her ass when to came to Saul's questions? I don't know... But either way, he's still the 'obvious' choice for being the next of the Cylons aboard the ship...

... though some on the internet are starting to favour little miss Cally over there...

Because you see, this is why I enjoyed Battlestar Galactica as a whole during its first season... and despite all my misforgivings about the second season? I'm still enjoying it as a whole again...

Because just like soap operas make you question who's going to fuck who next, Battlestar Galactica does one better... and keeps enrapturing the mind with paranoid delusional questions like, who the fuck will be the next fucking Cylon?...

By now, it's no real secret that fucking Ron Moore designed the name of "toaster" to sound a hell of a lot like the word "terrorist"... but the thing is, with evil Cally showing up in this episode out of fucking nowhere, the toaster sweepstakes for the second season have just gotten their stakes anted up quite a bit...

Why the hell was the tiny little bitch so frantic in Resistance? We've seen hints for a long time that she's had a thing for the Chief, even when she was protecting his relationship with Boomer. But would Cally really take up a gun and just shoot Boomer for no apparent reason whatsoever, even after Dr. Baltar had cleared Tyrol's name?... It really made no logical sense whatsoever. And it was just weird, seeing Cally push aside stronger, larger men, simply because she felt that the world was fucking over her precious Chief Tyrol... It's easy to construe that the poor gal actually killed Boomer to shut her up before she said anything else about the Cylons' plans. It's possible that Cally was working under Cylon orders, and simply used her jealousy as a valid human excuse. Who knows, right?...

Either way, BSG is doing it's job that way. I would like to know what her real reason was. And the only way to find out is, to fucking sadly tune into the next shit episode next week...

I never cared about her relationship with Chief Tyrol. And I definitely couldn't care less about that blood dripping shit stuff that the director was trying to show off in Resistance, as it looked like it belonged in some bad artsy film more than a serious space opera, or some shit like that...

But what the two characters had in Resistance definitely was "real". As maybe it was just the music, but I felt bad for the poor Chief as he held the dying Cylon in his arms in the end... Before that, I was surprised at just how strong every moment with the two characters had been. Tyrol did a great job at looking like an innocent man, while being interrogating by Tigh hopped up on booze. And you almost felt bad for poor Sharon, as the love of her life threatened to kill her in the cell if she even came close to him... It kinda makes you wonder if Chief will ever admit that Sharon even kinda 'told' him she was a Cylon, long before anyone else ever knew about her. As yes, if I was Tigh, then assuming the Chief was a Cylon (since he covered for her so fucking much) wasn't such a dumb move in the end...

It sucks that Galactica Boomer was killed off of the show, as she will forever be one of the most interesting characters to ever grace the BSG small screen. Of course, Galactica Boomer will be back in another body sometime, but still... I think the actress really proved her stuff when it came to Dr. Baltar though, as the scene where she proved her love by randomly spouting the number "eight" out of her ass, was one of those few key moments that really did make Resistance to be the best episode of the week...

And Dr. Baltar was finally up to his old beguiling ways. I mean, was it just me, or did he suddenly become just a hell of a lot better once he got his suit and glasses back?... I loved his dual natured speech when it came to answering Cally and Number Six at the same time. And I loved how he wormed his way out of giving a wrong result for Sharon's test, as Tigh was barely even paying enough attention to notice when he was being fucking lied too... gotta love those booze...

And when it came to the interrogation of Sharon in the cell? It was weird really, since Baltar was both a wuss and a badass in that scene, and I loved it... He showed no real empathy for the human soul, by almost killing Tyrol then and there. I loved how he cared so little for Boomer as well, as she was covered in blood and tears over her lover's failing organs... And in the end, Baltar really did kick ass, as he both got a McCarthy-ed up number (is "8" a real number, or just one that Sharon made up?), and what he considered proof that a toaster can really love a human being... He was the man again in Resistance. And it was just great having him and Sharon there back again...

... of course, we all know the real reason why Resistance gets the nod as the best episode of the week...

The series just hasn't been the same, with the actor racking in the cash by just laying flat on his back with tubes shoved up his ass...

Edward James Olmos was only in a single real scene in Resistance. But damn, was his presence commanding on the Battlestar, even with just a few precious moments to shine...

... because I don't think I was alone in this, when deep down inside, I actually sighed a breath of relief when I first saw Adama standing there in Tigh's doorway...

I wasn't just relieved because Tigh was finally getting kicked out of command... I was relieved, because Commander Adama is the one character that truly makes Battlestar Galactica into a show worth watching. And deep down inside, I was subconsciously so frakkin' happy to see him back, that I could actually feel the sense of deathly relief deep down in my goddam gut...

I loved that scene he had with Tigh. It made the whole fucking show... You felt really bad for the guy. He was so supportive of his first officer, no matter how he frakked up his ship. And Adama make a lot of good points of why he was so supportive along the way (Tigh is inexperienced at command, and had no-one to turn to for support afterall)...

No matter what Lee did to him last season, all he still asked for was his son. And, umm... then Tigh sort of just froze there...

I mean, what can he really say? That he almost blew his son out of space and the skies?...

... now that's exactly why the series as a whole, gets this IvanFian frakkin' episode of the week...

... I mean, even if Resistance wasn't really the most entertaining episode of the week?...

... well... you'll still get no argument, and you'll still get no resistance from me...

I mean, since we're talking about farms here, I might as well tell the truth... that Battlestar Galactica's The Farm was like dogshit, chicken shit, horseshit, and the usual bullshit, all rolled up in one neat little package...

I had thought that I would be relieved as hell once the Crapica storyline was finally done and away with... and yet ironically enough, I'm now complaining that the writers wrapped up their shit there way too quickly, with a completely rushed ending in The Farm...

It was nice to see Caprican Boomer return. But really, was that really her, or just another copy? She did leave the band for a while, afterall... kinda lost track of whether she was replaced or some shit like that...

It's just that, too many things happened off camera in The Farm, something that BSG as a space opera rarely seems to ever do... Where were the scenes of Boomer hacking the Cylon intranet, or stealing that Raider transport? Instead, she just shows up out of nowhere, with basically some huge ass explanation for everything that's happened in the past year on Caprica...

It's not like Ron Moore to just spill the beans out like that, even if the answer had been obvious for the longest of times... My theories from last season were pretty much concluded: the Cylons wanted to make a baby through human reproductive means (for religious reasons), and used Helo and Boomer as their goddam guinea pigs in love... What I didn't suspect, was that the Cylons would go all the way to the rape rape date sim side of the force, and try to implant Cylon fetuses directly into human vaginas. But even that scene was just a castaway, throwaway moment in The Farm, as Kara just blew up a generator and was done with the goddam place in five seconds flat...

Helo was useless. He looked like such a fucking lost ball boy out there... And is his hairline receding or something? I know radiation is supposed to have fucked up effects on you, but really... Damn man, the guy is going bald...

Now, Anders was a complete waste of fucking time as well. Did he have any real purpose, except to be the only real generic, genetically perfect hero on the show so far?... Now, there's really no indication of this yet, but I'm praying that the motherfucker turns out to be a Cylon. It's just not like the BSG writers to write in some perfect, cliche of a character like he is... So I'm guessing, that either he turns out to be the thing that finally shuts Kara's mouth when it comes to Helo falling in love with a machine, or... he's simply there to sadly make Lee look good...

But really, how the fuck can Apollo ever look good? The guy's a complete, messed up moron... So while his father was still dying on a dinner table, he decides to stage a mutiny against everything the Commander believes in. And then when push came to shove, Lee was still too pussy just to put his name on a cassette tape? WTF?... Have some balls, man. He really is fucking clueless out there, not knowing what side he's on... Hasn't his father taught him anything about being in command yet? When you're at the top, you make your decisions and stand by them, no matter what the fuck you really think. But apparently, he's too dumbass to even remember his lessons from season one...

The president is just whacked out of her mind though, and I think the blessing scene on the Astral Queen proved it without a shadow of a doubt... She obviously still has her wits about her, despite being OD'ed on drugs (I Dare you to say that five times fast... wait, that's easy. Nevermind...), as she knew that blessing each and every person was wrong... she's still just a human being...

But really, who the fuck does she think she is? You proclaim yourself a prophet, or a hand of god to the desperate masses, and yet don't expect to be blessing the masses at mass like the Pope does every once in a while?... She wants to lead the survivors to earth. I don't mind that. But dragging every living soul to Kobol, without military protection, simply because she thinks that the gods will protect her? WTF?... If she doesn't turn out to be a Cylon, then the writers are truly just as whacked out as she is...

Hell, even Tom Zarek seems a lot smarter than the prez is turning out to be. He seems to be manipulating the president, while Ellen tears apart Tigh... consummating whatever power-monger deal the two of them made last year, during whatever goddam awful episode took place on Cloud 9... At least these two have a plan...

Tigh had nothing to do this episode. Things were back to normal I see, eh?... Some on the internet have criticized Commander Adama for letting Tigh back into the chain of command. But really... I guess all these Tigh-haters must be Bush-haters as well (not that Bush ain't an idiot, but still...). Because really, from a purely militaristic point of view? Tigh made decent decisions for the survival of the human race... Political wise, and face wise, he made a lot of frakkin' mistakes. But every decision he made, no matter how badly it turned out, was exactly from the same path of thinking that Adama had going at the end of the first season...

Yet Tigh gets booed off the stage, and we all clap and cheer for the return of Commander Adama?... which was literally Dr. Baltar's only moment in the entire episode, but that's a story for another day...

Now, I was hoping that The Farm would turn out to be an amazing episode, if only from the return of Edward James Olmos as the Commander. But really, his character had barely any of the epic lines he was given throughout the best of the first season episodes...

Sure, I liked how he broke down over the dead Boomer (was it wrong for me to be turned on in that scene?... umm... nevermind...). And sure, his speech to Tyrol was decent, telling him he'd see Boomer again (which won't take very long, as we all know)... I liked how Adama was talking about Sharon as if he loved her like a daughter, yet only sentenced Cally for "discharging a firearm". The contrast between his two warring feelings in that one scene alone, was definitely the pinnacle of the entire goddam, shitty ass episode...

But The Farm was still a shitty ass episode, because Adama was pretty much ignored on the bridge and in command, and given lines they could've given to goddam Teal'c (umm... I mean, Tigh... or did I?...). What was really the point of all those pointless scenes, of him slamming down papers in hope that the fleet really is dumb enough to follow the president?... Instead of actually focusing on the division of the fleet (although the preview for next week looks decent...), everything was centered around Kara on frakkin' Crapica instead...

From an acting standpoint, Kara Thrace wasn't so bad in The Farm. It's just that, the material she was given was beyond the bullshit she's normally given on any other Caprica shitfest...

Was there any real doubt that the doctor was a Cylon? This was the same actor who played an evil man on Star Trek Voyager, and again an evil Jaffa in Stargate SG-1... Hell, even Kara suspected right off them bat that this guy was a Cylon. Obviously, we were meant to know this guy was a psycho with a syringe... But listening to him pathetically try to convince Kara that he wasn't a Cylon, with about five or six bloody hell speeches throughout the damn show, was definitely not what the doctor ordered...

I liked some of Kara's scenes. You could really feel her helplessness, when she saw Simon outside, talking with Number Six about removing her ovaries, or some shit like that. And killing the evil Jaffa imposter, was definitely worthy of a few claps and cheers here and there... It's just that, pretty much the rest of the episode sucked goddam donkey balls. The farming and milking scene, with all the girls getting tentacle raped by cow tubes up their pussies, was just so short and pointless for anyone who isn't a fucking feminist or vegetarian... All the other scenes, of Kara just going to sleep because the doc kept feeding her drugs, has just got to be the lamest way of passing time and the shitty plot in a BSG episode ever... And hell, even the firefight at the end licked balls. It was just random shooting, with some random red shirt biting the dust, and fucking Anders there taking point...

... and then we got some fucking touchy feely shit between the two of them, as Anders showed off just how wet and sharp and large his goddam Arrow of Apollo was...

Now, the Farm wasn't the worst Battlestar Galactica episode ever made to date. Shitty ass shit, like Litmus and Flesh and Bone from last year, simply cannot be topped in terms of terrible turdness (heh... say that one five times fast...)...

But The Farm definitely was the weakest episode of Battlestar Galactica this season to date...

... and definitely was one of the key reasons, why this Sci-Fi Friday was the worst of the new seasons so far...

Hell, it was like Ron Moore hired a bunch of fucking hillbilly hicks from the south to write this episode...

... and with Boomer back, and Starbuck in fucking hospital clothes? He's milking the series and his bitches for all they're worth as well...

... but still, The Farm almost made me wish the show had fucking bit the farm...

"Battlestar Galactica's Home sounded like such a great episode on paper. And to some extent, it did show a lot of potential...

But 'potential' doesn't pry away the best IvanFian episode of the week award from the cold, dead fingers of my precious Stargate series...

... I was hoping that Home would feel a lot like... well?... home, actually... like Hand of God felt, when it came to family...

... or even how You Can't Go Home Again felt... as even though that episode was still pretty much shit on a stick, it still have a great sense of closeness and family...

I mean, the B-plot on Galactica was just plain a waste of time, and something that any viewer really could've done without... Why the fuck were we subjected to so many boring scenes, of that fucking new CAG pulling a Kelby, and trying to show that nobody's as good as Trip Tucker? How the fuck was he so stupid, to fucking let Hot Dog and Kat shoot at each other, thanks to a fucking radio miscommunication?... Really, I know the guy is green, but hasn't he been doing this kind of flying shit for years and years? Nobody should be that bad... but unibrow over there apparently was...

On the Battlestar itself, no character really felt like themselves... Tigh was barely doing anything at all, except for watching the old man as he jacked and cracked his own wallnuts (...)... And Dr. Baltar? WTF have the writers done with his character? All he does now, is stand in his doorway, spouting rhetoric about being afraid of Cylon faces and shit like that. Where's the cockiness, and arrogance, and general Baltarisms that I've come to Ori worship and love about the guy?... Sometimes I do wonder if he's ironically a Cylon, with Number Six giving him orders subconsciously or some shit like that. I mean, has he even tested himself?... But Cylon or not, I just want the old Baltar back. Bring him home to me, please... if that sounds good, I mean...

But if you want any bitch on the bridge to really be considered a Cylon? It's Dualla now, as her speech to Commander Adama was just too "anti-Cylon" for its own good... I guess her remarks shouldn't be that suspicious, that she would want to get the fleet back together, considering every random red shirt in the CIC seemed to smirk and cheer as well at the announcement. But still, her private scene with Adama just felt weird either way... Not just because he's so fucking old, and she's so fucking young, meanwhile as he was stroking his own stern mast in front of her with a lubricated brush (...)... But rather because, why was she there in the first place? Why trust her with his self-pity? WTF?... It just felt... off... somehow...

The thing is, with Home? Both the start of the episode, and the finish were great...

I loved the first five minutes of the show. When Apollo saw Sharon walking through that door, the raw passion and emotion in that scene I thought would define the whole two parter, as Helo even got a lovely welcome home as well... Everything just felt epic about that moment. Helo being called a "moron" for not knowing who Roslin was, or Starbuck's reactions to hearing that Sharon put two bullets into Adama's chest?... Captain Adama really did care about his father then and there. Enough to exact revenge on a person who technically speaking, was innocent of the crime... And WTF was up with Airlock Roslin this episode? If she turns out to be a Cylon, can we please push the bitch out of an airlock?...

But everything in between that one, masterful scene, and the end of the episode? Was there anything really of value sandwiched in there?...

Apollo and Starbuck got to grapple with the consequences of things. Hell, not only did Lee kiss her on the lips, but he even told her he loved her. And that got her attention, at least...

I can't say that the pyramid ball scene was that bad. I mean, watching Lee act like a smartass, stealing her ball and then letting her run home with it, did feel natural at least. Awkward, yes, but natural considering how the two were interacting with each at the end of the first season... And Starbuck the slut? She's good at everything apparently, including fucking over fucking generic guys on nuked planets. It'll be nice to see Apollo's reactions to what happened with Anders, as the pyramid ball scene between him and Thrace wasn't so bad...

... it's just that, pretty much everything else those two crazy kids did together, felt too menial, meaningless, and mediocre for their own good...

Poor Sharon locked in a cage again (sort of again for her, I mean...). She was far too cock-sucking and cocky acting, almost like a religious fanatic at times, so perhaps she is programmed to help the survivors find earth or something afterall?... Either way, first Apollo gets in her face with a gun in public, and then once again in the jail cell. Leading to a bitchy ass scene with Starbuck, which lead nowhere really in Home at least, as far as I was concerned... And then you had Helo, the balding hero, to the rescue. The poor bastard looked so pussy whipped that it's not even funny, holding her hand in the jail cell... And then when it came to the planet, you'd think he'd do something to help stop the goddam Cylons shooting at him or something. But instead, he just froze there like a deer in the headlights, when it came to Sharon taking Apollo by the balls and running home with it...

Roslin was a bitch as always. It's just that, finally we find that Zarek is a decent enough counterpart to the conniving bitch... The president doesn't seem to care about life anymore. She seems to care too much for the mission, as not once did she even think about the fleet or the people that she left behind (unlike Adama on the other end)... Zarek meanwhile, at least doesn't bullshit his way through 'caring for the people', as Roslin does, as Tom at least openly admits that he just wants to get into power. By becoming second in command to the one bitch who can rally them all... one fucking bitch to rule them all...

Nothing really happened with the two in Home though. The plot thickened definitely, as the both Zarek and the president had their little soliloquies with their close confidants and stuff... But for the most part? The middle of Home was just filled with fluff, and fucking floating debris from blown up asteroids. Nothing there really hit home with me...

Commander Adama has felt off for a very long time now. Ever since his return, he's been distant and distracted, and definitely suffering from post-traumatic shit or stuff... I mean seriously, talk about a goddam Greek tragedy. He almost loses his life after being betrayed by one of his best Raptor pilots. And then he gets stabbed in the fucking back, as he was dying and fucking lying on his fucking back, by his own fucking son. Not to mention the fact that Roslin decides to fuck him in the head rather than the mast, but I digress... Hell, he should've been shafting a Greek Trireme there in that fucking pretty, petty officer scene at the end. It would've fit the theme of the episode, let alone the series, a lot better than an old Galleon would...

But damn, did Edward James Olmos nail those final two scenes of his in the end...

He didn't even have to say anything. He just let his eyes, his throat, his expression, his compassion, and the music tell it all. And he pulled it off masterfully...

The conflict. The pain. The loathing. The self-pity. All of it, you could see in his eyes...

Now, it sucks that like any man to a fucking bitch, he's going to suck it up and basically come back crawling to fucking Roslin back home at Kobol. But what else is new for mankind, right?... Even though from a purely military point of view, it's wrong to put the whole fleet at jeopardy, by flying straight into Cylon territory? It just felt right in that moment, for the series at least, with the music and that sorrowful expression on his face, that it's time to bring the 'family' back together again...

This is a space opera, afterall. The relationship break-up had ended, and now it was time to fucking pull and sew together all the fallen Trinity pieces, and just get fucked by Cylons in the frakking process... which at least gives me a lot of hope, that the feeling of home will be coming home, in the next half of the Home two-parter at least...

Because I mean seriously, Home wasn't so bad... Commander Adama was finally back, nailing his scenes and the petty officers like only the actor can...

And thank the gods that finally Elosha fucking died. The fucking preacher bitch was fucking getting on my fucking nerves...

Because so far? The second season hasn't turned out nearly as great as the first...

... and I kinda despised the first, so that's really saying something, I suppose...

The thing is though, I was expecting huge things from the BSG Home two-parter. It just sounded so strong and powerful on paper, and it just couldn't have met my expectations for a series of this calibre, you know?...

... and yet, practically by default, Home (Part 2) still managed to win the IvanFian episode of the week award... because truth be told? All faults and great expectations aside, it was still probably the second best BSG episode in this mediocre second season so far...

To be honest, I'm both surprised and somewhat thankful that the Battlestar writers decided to wrap up the Arrow of Apollo storyline so quickly. After dragging out the Craprica and the first Kobol storylines for so damn long, it was just plain shocking that a mere two parter episode would handle everything the writers wanted to tell about the mythology of the show... And to be honest? While I would've hated another 10 episode stay on Kobol or some shit like that, Home (Part 2) definitely did feel a bit too rushed for its own good... I mean seriously, how the heck did the Atlantis team even make it out of the Tomb of Athena at the end?...

The thing is... Home (Part 2) sure felt a lot more like home than the first half of the two parter ever did...

I've always been a huge fan of mythology... Hell, I was even stupid and dumbass and naive enough back in Grade 13, to actually admit to my English teacher that I believed in the myth of Atlantis... Sure, I still do to some extent. But the kind of shitastic internet proof I tried to argue to him back then in my high school years, was just goddam embarrassing at best...

It seems that the Battlestar writers have decided to one-up Stargate Atlantis. Not that I can really blame them, or even hate them for it, mind you...

Judging by the constellations in the Tomb of Athena holodeck (which must've been a holodeck, from all the lights flashing and planetarium sound effects going on), the 12 Tribes of Kobol actually started out on earth. Why else would their original, ancestral flags all be representative of how the stars looked on earth something like 5000 years ago?...

I always thought that the writers would do something like this. In essence, they're following the same idea as the myth of Atlantis, that something happened on earth a long time ago (perhaps over 10000 years ago), and the people of Atlantis on earth had to leave... "All of this has happened before", seems to suggest that the people of earth, after facing armageddon, ended up settling on Kobol. Once they frakked things up there too, most left Kobol for the 12 colonies... and some returned to earth, perhaps about 3000 years ago... about when the Ancient Greeks claimed they were visited by the lost survivors of Atlantis, at least according to earth mythology...

... it would certainly explain the constellations... and certainly explain the religions of the 12 colonies as well...

This is the kind of mythology that I've always loved when I was a kid... this is the kind of mythology that I still can't get enough of now... While obviously, it just feels weird that Ron Moore is essentially copying some story ideas from the SciFi series that airs just one hour ahead of his, the fact still stands that this holodeck scene was perhaps the "Torment of Tantalus" and "Fifth Race" Stargate moment of the Battlestar Galactica series to date. The very moment, that defines the series for what it is... it's hopes and dreams...

Stargate Atlantis still hasn't had theirs... guess Ron Moore beat them to the punch there...

Now, mythology aside, I still have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed in Home (Part 2)... I can't say it wasn't unexpected though, as every single television show or movie that deals with a "journey" through the mountains or some shit like that, ends up being just goddam boring to me... I mean, tons of montages and goddam bad pacing here and there? They might as well have called Home (Part 2) as the Lord of the Hill: The Fellowship of the Battlestar Galactica... or some shit like that...

Grace Park definitely had her best episode in a long while as the Caprican Sharon Valeri. She had me guessing the entire episode long, just like she has all series long as well... Her reunion with Tyrol was just plain creepy. I loved the music and suspense in that scene, as the hug and kiss of death she gave him, was just so eerie that it even made poor Tyrol confused as hell... And I liked the fact that she kept referencing what happened to Galactica Sharon, as she really manipulated it to her advantage. Even by being completely ambiguously evil when it came to her "trust" speech to Helo, she still managed to pull off a huge dog and pony trick when it came to saving Adama's life and putting on an act for the rest of the team... Did she really care about Adama's life? Or was she just saving her own ass, to save her unborn child?...

To be honest, I believe her. I pretty much believe every word she says... And why? Because the Cylons believed they needed "love" to conceive a child. And you can't have love without trust, so why not create a Cylon who only tells the truth?... The thing is, this Sharon doesn't seem to tell the whole true. Number Six in Baltar's head seems to definitely suggest, that Sharon falling in love and eloping with Helo, was exactly what the Cylons had in mind. They want to replace the human race somehow, and Sharon is definitely fooling every damn idiot on the Galactica into somehow letting it happen... She has no built in protocols. She has no built in sleeper suggestions. The only question is, does she know she's duping the whole Galactica crew, pussy whipped Helo definitely included? Or is she just being duped as well?...

Now, I love Edward James Olmos in nearly every episode he's been in. And given his role in Home (Part 2), he nailed every moment he was in completely... The scene where he takes Boomer down (wouldn't we all?...), grabs her by the throat, and then just startlingly reacts to Boomer somehow knowing what he had told the dead model back on Galactica, was perhaps the best damn moment of the entire episode. And definitely one of the best moments of the second season by far, right up there the Galactica Boomer interrogation scenes, and Lee shoving a cock down Boomer's throat (a gun cock... of course...)...

The thing is though, even if Olmos is perhaps the greatest actor in SciFi ever since Patrick Stewart? It still doesn't change the fact that he changed too damn much for his own goddam good in Home (Part 2)...

I mean yes, sure I do understand that after nearly dying, it puts some things in perspective. And I understand that he would now find family and friendship perhaps more important than pride and duty, but still?...

C'mon really, did the writers really have to make Adama into that much of a pussy whipped motherfucker this episode? Not only did he hug his son, after he stabbed him in the back with his betrayal. Not only did he sex up his would-be daughter-in-law, even after she stole his Cylon ride... But then he repeatedly fucking apologizes to President Roslin, not only claiming that everything was now fine between the two of them, but that every fucking day has been a gift from her? WTF?...

Sure, I guess in retrospect, she was right. Without her advice back then, both Adamas would probably be dead. But seriously, WTF?... Every single day since that event, the president has been out of her fucking mind. Either just fuck her, Commander Adama, or really just goddam fuck her... at this point, I really don't care...

The thing is, Roslin was just a complete and utter bitch in Home (Part 2). Who did she think she was? Dr. Weir?... Adama was completely pussy-whipped, apologizing to her left and right, even after all the moronic things that she's done. Hell, we might as well rename the commander as "Helo" or some shit like that... And then what does Roslin do? But bitchslaps him back, claiming she never asked for his forgiveness? What the fuck is up with that?... Did she really have to make the guy grovel for her pussy that damn much? It was embarrassing, really... Yeah, I know. Sometimes a guy has to do what a guy has to do for a little bit of Bush (or President Roslin, in this sense). But if any person thinks that Roslin was in the right this episode, or even in the right frame of mind, than I just don't know what to think...

To be honest, at times I'd rather have Tom Zarek in charge than Roslin. At least he fucking knows what he's talking about. And to be honest? I kind of gained a bit of respect for his character in Home (Part 2)... Sure, he still wants power. And he thought he would do anything to get it... But just like in Bastille Day? Regardless of whether he wants to be or not, he's Hamlet. He just has too much of a conscience to really do anything but procrastinate... And while obviously, that would define him as a pansy in the Chief Tyrol book of topology, the thing is, that does make him a smarter and more wily character in the end. Hesitation and deliberation ain't such a bad thing, as Tom Zarek's little sidekick learned as he far too quickly pointed a gun to Apollo's head...

I was sort of hoping for more of a relationship between Apollo and his father this episode, besides just the hug they gave each other. I mean, sure Home (Part 2) covered all the basics in giving us want we wanted from a soap opera (the Commander back with Roslin, Adama reacting to Sharon, Sharon giving Tyrol a kiss with fucking pansy Helo in the background, etc...). But what we got in the end sort of seemed like rushed teases instead, and not the real goods itself... Still, Apollo certainly wasn't so bad in Home (Part 2). He got to flirt with Starbuck by the campfire. And if somebody out there didn't notice, his finger was literally the Arrow of Apollo in the holosuite, guiding the way to earth...

Starbuck herself was tolerable. It annoyed me to hell that she would bring up those goddam resistance fighters back on Caprica (now that I know the actress actually asked for Anders back, for some god-awful reason). But hey, she made up for it by not being a complete bitch to Apollo this episode... Her truly defining moment though, was the sheer expression on her face when she realized she was standing on earth, looking up at the sky from the Stonehenge sort of position... You could literally see in her eyes just how happy she was. She had truly found faith, as everything she had learned about the prophecies over the past few months and years, had just come true for her then and there. She was sort of like a Christian Reborn, so to speak... a really slutty one, who can't even keep her pants on even with a radioactive moron back on Crapica, but that's a story for another day...

Back on Galactica, Gaeta and Tigh weren't used very much. But for background characters, I just loved all the reactions on their faces... Notice that Gaeta only laughed at the Roslin vision comment, after Tigh had already started to snicker? Either the guy is a complete suck-up, or he never really found the comment funny in the first place... And in the slow ass clapping scene? Yes, that scene sucked, as Adama was once again sucking up and fucking up Roslin big time. But at least both Tom Zarek and Tigh reluctantly clapping in the background, helped give that scene some sort of meaning...

But if there was one real reason why Home (Part 2) was pushed above Stargate SG-1 as the episode of the week? It was definitely because Dr. Gaius Baltar finally got something to do again... and something that finally suited the goddam character that I fell in love with so long ago...

His introduction scene was simply stark naked perfect for his character. As really, who the fuck would ever listen to a bitch prattle on about a mythical baby, when she's fucking staring at you in the nude?... Number Six just loves to mess with his head. And the great part of the Baltar storyline this episode was, she fucked with our heads as well...

So we can now conclude that Number Six is not a computer chip in Baltar's head. While obviously, the Cylons can make organic CPUs that would be invisible to brain scans, there are now more likely explanations for Baltar's visions... Namely, he's probably a Cylon and doesn't even know it. Or perhaps, for all we know, Number Six in his head really isn't a Cylon at all... maybe something more?... The day she starts fingering up Boomer and Starbuck and Roslin at the same damn time through their panties, is the day I personally start loving her character, and realizing that maybe Number Six ain't just a figment of Baltar's imagination anyhew...

... and maybe I'd finally start listening to her too... or at least, the moans of the others...

Either way, all I do know for now, is that I was stark raving ecstatic with Baltar's performance in Home (Part 2)... I laughed so damn hard at his MRI brain scan scenes. As not only did he fuck things up by Number Six fucking with his dick, but Doc Cottle also said "fuck" instead of "frak" on television as well (and believe me, I watched the scene twice... he definitely said "fuck"... fucking hell, yeah...)... And when he realized that he wasn't crazy? When Baltar realized that a child would be born in the cell? Well, that just capped off an overall great episode to me...

This was definitely old skool Baltar we were seeing here and now. He starting off all cocky and arrogant and perhaps even rational, lighting up the screen with his performance like only a spontaneously combusting actor can... And then after the Doc lights up off screen from that one goddam hypochondriac on every damn ship, what does Baltar do? But resign himself to spying on the returning Boomer yet again, and realizing that there are just some things in the universe that even a self-serving moron like him can't explain...

Sure, Home (Part 2) had a bunch of shitty ass scenes. Watching the montage of climbing hills at the start, was only even remotely saved by the sheer comedy of Adama using military tools to chart the religious map to the Tomb of Athena. Though nothing could save all the boring ass Tom Zarek and sidekick moments, not even the surprise standoff at the end... And as for the slow ass clapping scene? WTF were the writers thinking? The episode felt so rushed without any real closure to the mythological aspect of it all... although at least the big gathering in the hanger, was a nice throwback to the Battlestar Galactica miniseries as whole...

But even with all my reservations, there was definitely enough in Home (Part 2) to guarantee that I will watch it a third time around, one of these days... From the ever so brilliant scene, of Commander Adama choking the life out of Grace Park (I know he expected to see her again... but this damn soon?... talk about eating your own words, or choking on them at least...). To the mythological aspect of it all, that always gets the inner child in me all riled up... To hell, even the return of goddam Billy. As President Adar really was a goddam moron...

And yeah, I definitely preferred Home (Part 2) to the rest of the SciFi episodes this week...

Because for this one episode alone?... perhaps, at least, at a few rare times...

"You know, saying that Final Cut was a steaming pile of dogshit, just doesn't seem to sum it up...

... and calling this episode an absolute abomination and travesty to humanity, just doesn't seem to fit the complete bill either..

I'd like to claim that Final Cut should be goddam cut from the BSG series as a whole... and that every frickin' moron behind the scenes should be cut as well for even thinking up a turd of an episode such as this...

Because truth of the matter is? I just can't seem to think of a single word or phrase, that will actually cover how I feel about the goddam bullshit that can only be known as Final Cut...

... the thing is, Final Cut at first glance seemed like it would be just another one of those goddam, overdone, military-feel-good kind of episodes...

Battlestar Galactica as a series had made the US military look pretty much as goddam incompetent as they really are. It's just that, like Apollo says in his interview, while servicemen may not deserve our pity, they definitely deserve our respect... And to be honest? I'm not really sure if Battlestar Galactica (with the exception of Commander Adama) has given us any sort of respect for any of the men and women in the armed forces...

Now, I knew Final Cut would have a rather cliche ending. Afterall, that's exactly what Stargate SG-1 did with its famed Heroes two-parter...

... but I called this episode a by-the-book, military "feel-good" episode for a reason...

This was apparently Hercules week on SciFi Friday it seemed. And I've always hated goddam Xena as a show... But against all my preset agendas and prejudged beliefs, I actually found myself enjoying Lucy Lawless on the show, in some capacity or form or whatever...

She looks much better as a blonde, I'll give her that. And actually, her backside didn't look so bad in that yellow jumpsuit of hers, at least compared to that god-awful breastplate she always used to wear... And acting wise, she pulled off a nosy reporter with a decent level of accuracy. She certainly knew how to brown-nose and manipulate her way through people to get a story, as the lovely drink before the Col. Tigh interview seemed to articulate...

It's not like she did a stellar job, or interstellar job, at her role of a journalist in Final Cut. She did a decent one though, as she never really seemed out of place or out of character... Sometimes, the contrast between her perky, Xena self and the hardcore melancholy of Commander Adama was a bit too much for me. It just felt weird, as if her bad overall acting was dragging him down with her... But besides that? She didn't do anything exceptional, but Lucy Lawless as a whole strangely enough seemed to fit within the Battlestar Galactica world. And perhaps that deserves some respect, or a pint of D'Anna beers itself...

Now, to be honest, I was kind of surprised at the ending... I mean, after pulling off that Simon stunt with the god-obvious Cylon doctor in The Farm, the last thing I'd ever expect would be the writers yet again, making the most obvious choice for a Cylon to turn out to be a goddam Cylon in the end... So surprisingly enough, I was actually surprised that Xena turned out to be a Warrior Cylon, if only because it was just too damn obvious from the start...

I did like the ending, in terms of the questions it raised... So now we have confirmation that the Cylon fleet can find and destroy the Galactica one at any point or time. It's just that, they don't... for a reason... probably for all those goddam earth plans that I've whined about long enough in my noname reviews...

But really, what I'd rather know at this point in time, is why the hell did Number Six there pretend like she didn't know that the child was alive, especially after all her prattling on and on about having a child?... Is it simply that the Number Six in Baltar's head is separate and different than the rest of the Cylon models? Or perhaps, is that thing in Baltar's head not even really a Cylon in the first place?... it's really starting to seem that way...

Baltar didn't have much to do this episode. Neither did Number Six, except for pushing the doctor into an interview, and giving the first and only real hint that Xena was a fucking Cylon... Still, Gaius complaining that the Vice President doesn't get any respect or loving, is still better than no Gaius on a weekend summer day. Because really... he's a the vice president, and yet nobody seems to care on the ship or fleet? I've noticed that... he's the fucking Al Gore of politics, it seems...

Grace Park didn't have much to do either, except pussy whip Helo into following her further, by having herself bleed from the fucking pussy (pregnant Cylon menstruation, perhaps? Or just really hardcore masturbation?...)... She didn't have much screen time, which is a goddam shame considering Grace Park probably looks fucking hot in hospital gowns... But it's interesting to note that her alternate self back on Caprica didn't seem to even know that the baby was still alive. Which brings back all the questions, of whether the Boomer now on Galactica is duping the ship, being duped herself by the Cylons, or if both sides are simply being duped by whatever is inside of Baltar's idea...

I was surprised at the comment by the reporter, that if news got out that Galactica was housing a Cylon, that the whole fleet would turn against the Commander... Why exactly would that be? Boomer is practically like a prisoner. Did fucking Roslin simply brainwash the entire fleet into believing that airlock Cylons are the best and only way to cook your meals?...

Roslin had absolutely nothing to fucking do, except be a complete and utter fucking bitch when it came to the introduction of the episode... Why is she just standing there, pretending like she had absolutely nothing to do with how fucked up the fleet got at the start of the season? Has she even apologized for breaking her word yet?... She's such an utter and fucking bitch, that I wouldn't be surprised if she started having motherfucking sex with Apollo and Starbuck at the same time in the crew quarters, just to get back at the Commander behind his damn back...

... actually... I'd kind of want to see that, to be honest... though that would be a bit out of context for the show...

Commander Adama was a bit out of his element in this episode. He just didn't seem to have any chemistry with Lucy Lawless, as their personalities were simply too contrasted (and perhaps a bit too orchestrated as well) to ever find a proper mix... I liked some of the Commander's finer moments though. Pumping his fist at the destruction of two measly Cylon raiders was a bit much, but saving those now precious and rare Caprican magazines at the start actually had a somewhat deeper meaning... The commander's best scenes probably all came around or about Col. Tigh though. Having to apologize for his XO's drunken behaviour was a decent moment. And overriding the Col's opinion on the Galactica presentation at the end was definitely another...

Final Cut was perhaps the first real, Saul Tigh episode since Commander Adama came back to the fleet. The thing is, except for perhaps Resistance, Final Cut was probably also Tigh's best performance of the entire season to date... Finally, we got some repercussions from the Gideon Massacre, as they're calling it. And to my surprise, despite his wife's manipulative interference? Saul stood up as the proud soldier and took the heat, as he should have...

He took the Commander's advice from Resistance, and lived with his mistakes. He knew that he had really fracked things up, as all the death threats definitely seemed to indicate in this episode... Yet when the gun was finally pointed at his head, he took it like a man. He put his forehead right to the blunt of the pistol and dared the lieutenant to shoot. And yeah, while Tigh may not get any pity from me, he definitely deserves some respect for taking responsibility for his actions... in his heart at least, even if he can't show it in actual public, in order to spare Galactica all the media frenzies and goddam Salem hangings...

Besides Tigh, Final Cut was meant to be an episode for all the lesser crew characters on the cast...

Tyrol got a few shots in of his ugly mug. He was bright enough to just know when a Viper didn't feel right, yet still got his face punched in from the riled up and high pressured crew on his deck... Lt. Gaeta provided ridiculously dumbass comic relief, as he showed the bad boy rocker side of himself and all. Still, as stupid as the cigarettes were, I somehow still laughed for the most part. As the name of "Felix" is just too goddam dumb to ignore... And Dualla was taken too seriously for the most part. I don't remember what exactly she has against her father. But this episode definitely fleshed things out for her a bit, and maybe will eventually lead to some clues, as to whether she is a Cylon bitch or not...

I didn't care much for the Kat subplot or anything. Sure, taking drugs is a real problem in tons of professions, and her speech at the end was a nice message to anybody out there under pressure from their job... Still, I never really cared for her character in the first place. And seeing her frack up yet another flight landing, was just not my cup of earl gray tea...

Starbuck had a couple of scenes, namely the punching bag one. I really didn't understand a word she said there though, as it's hard to give a damn what a girl is saying, when she's all sweaty and panting and shit like that... I wished that her return to Galactica had some finer meaning and moments to it, even though we did get a kiss from Apollo and a grazing of the hair from the Commander in previous episodes. She still felt a little too ignored in Final Cut for her own good... But at least we got some continuation of her rivalry with Tigh. Wanting to be at the top of the suspects list was definitely in the realm of her character... Starbuck loves being in the spotlight, afterall...

Now, I didn't care much for Apollo either in this episode, as fucking Final Cut just catered to all the women out there thanks to that tiny ass towel of his, and cutting away everything else from his body... But when it came to his more serious notes? If there was any one real reason why I define Final Cut as a military "feel-good" episode, it was because of his speech to the camera... Military men mess up, because they are real people. But in my own honest opinion, it just sucks that most of the time, people back here in their home countries who aren't in uniform, only judge what the military does wrong... and never care what the military does right...

... of course... the original BSG music blaring in the background of the Xena video, definitely was another reason why Final Cut was strangely enough, the "feel good" episode of Battlestar Galactica's second season so far or whatever...

It didn't really put a more human face on the cast of Battlestar Galactica... but perhaps, if only, it managed to remind the viewers at home, to put human faces on the men and women fighting for us in the real armed forces today...

Final Cut wasn't a great episode by any means. It was purely a bottle episode, meant to let the little supporting cast members on the show finally get a chance to shine... and also to get some of its military detractors off its back, such as myself, it seems...

... but calling it a flaming pile of steaming dog shit, that should've been cut from the reel and my fucking long term memory a long time ago, just doesn't seem to do the episode justice either somehow...

"Just by judging the name of "Flight of the Phoenix", any true SciFi fan instantly knew what the whole episode was about...

Because just like with any Trek or feel good SciFi series beforehand, the crew would rise from the depths of despair and ashes, and burn brightly as one as a reborn flame... yadda yadda yadda, or some crap like that...

... and it certainly didn't help things out, that BSG named this episode after a bloody hell, bad Dennis Quaid movie (they should've picked The goddam Parent Trap instead, goddammit)...

But the thing is, I have a real soft spot in my heart for series that can tell a heartbreaking story within the confines of a 1 hour standalone episode... I've always had a thing for the cliche but ever classic tale, of a crew working together and rising to the occasion, and all that other standard fare bullshit of course...

To be honest, I was really surprised at Flight of the Phoenix... Sure, it wasn't the greatest episode of BSG ever made. But it was surprisingly entertaining, especially compared to the depressive and monotonous drab we've been getting throughout the rest of the season (and yes, Final Cut and some other episodes I have given a decent pass to in the past, definitely have not held up as well as I thought they would...)...

If I had to pick and choose the best of the best?... Sure, it doesn't say much, considering Battlestar Galactica's second season has been shit on a stick, pretty much. But right now, I'd pretty much place the Flight of the Phoenix, on a path and a flightplan right behind Resistance and Home (Part 2) for the best of the season to date...

The key to Flight of the Phoenix, was that a truly great SciFi writer these days can take an old tried and true storyline, and mold it into something that feels reinvigorating and fresh... And the true key to Flight of the Phoenix, was that for the first time in the entire season, every single character was actually likable... the kind of way they were from time to time in the first season of the show...

Commander Adama didn't really have that many scenes to shine. But he sought the council of the President, and he did it in the kind hearted, polite, humble, and almost horny way, that he did throughout the best of the first season of the show. He showed good judgment this episode... He was wise, as he trusted the pregnant Sharon pretty much as far as he could throw her. And he definitely wanted to ring her little neck with his fist again (I would've just preferred to fist her, mind you)... But he did what was best for the crew. He wanted to give them hope and faith all over again. And he did it by just being there for them, letting them have the freedom to do their thing, and taking his chances on rolling a hard six... the kind of way he used to, before getting two bloody hell sixes to the gut, I mean...

Now, I've been President Roslin's biggest detractor since day one. But really, if only the writers would let me, I would and could fall in love with the actress who plays her... There were fleeting times last season, when Madame President was warm and fluttery and free spirited, in the way that the most kind-hearted of mothers act. And that's precisely, pretty much exactly how she acted in Flight of the Phoenix...

She didn't have many scenes. But she was just compassionate and genuine and caring in every single one of them, the way I wish she had been all season long... Thanks to her whole cancer thing, thank the gods that there was no mention of her goddam prophecy bullshit. Instead, what we got instead, was touching little reminders of the wonderful school teacher she used to be... From returning the book that Adama had given her last season, to holding back the tears of joy when she was shown her name on the Blackbird, she just had that kind of gentle grace to her that I wish the actress could always get the chance to goddam show on the goddam show...

Now, as soon as I heard that ol' Celtic lighter music show up, I simply thought to myself that the BSG people were really overusing it, and killing whatever atmosphere or mood that that tune was able to create back in the immortal Hand of God... But the ironic thing was, out of all times this season to use it? Flight of the Phoenix was just absolutely the perfect place... From Roslin's reaction to the Blackbird tribute, to even making me freak out from her smashing the champagne bottle on the carbon composite (which I probably would've done as well, just for shits and giggles), the Celtic music just fit in perfectly...

It was meant for the most emotional of family moments. And what really defined Flight of the Phoenix as one of the best episodes of the season so far, was that everyone on that hanger bay in that scene, really did seem like a family...

... hell, I even got a rise out of the champagne rising, when the president officially popped off the cork...

... guess I just love it, whenever a women seems so damn elated to pop her cork... but I digress...

Now, if there was any one complaint about Flight of the Phoenix, it was definitely the fact that the two parallel storylines of the episode just felt so distant and so disconnected from each other... Sure, both the Cylon virus and Blackbird hotrod threads carried the same kind of message and theme, that you can achieve anything when you have the will and the faith to survive... but I dunno. Except for maybe a few lights flickering here or there, it was like the two storylines were from two separate episodes or something. It just felt weird, you know?...

Chief Tyrol hasn't had much to do all season. And his best performance to date will stay safe with Resistance. But he still did a decent job in Flight of the Phoenix... It's not like he looked like a man possessed or anything, as he could barely even pull off being a desperate man for faith when pumping all that alcohol to barter with. But he definitely did look like a happier, and a much more likable man by the end of this episode...

He started it off with a hilariously bad choreographed duke out with Helo. And ended it with a champagne bottle in his hands, holding the booze and his chin up high. The stark contrast and change in his character over just the course of an hour, is exactly the kind of stuff that I love in my popcorn standalone episodes... I mean, sure season long story arcs are still a must these days. But I will forever have a place in my heart, for the kind of standalone episodes that old skool SciFi's like Star Trek and Stargate entertained me with throughout my youth...

If any character wasn't quite likable in Flight of the Phoenix, it was Colonel Tigh. He played far too much of a devil's advocate, always seeming like a complete moron by being constantly contradicted by the commander a second or two later... I don't mind him being the pessimist. It was just kind of odd how he didn't see the real point to "hope" being on the ship, until near the very end...

Still, he provided the best damn comic relief of the entire episode. I can't believe that I didn't remember that he was a drunk asshole, while he was catching Tyrol in the act of siphoning booze... And because of my utter dumbfoundedness? I laughed so damn ridiculously hard at Tigh just taking a bottle of the shit for himself, that it really was hilarious in the end...

Well, if there was any other character who really, really ridiculously sucked in Flight of the Phoenix, it was Helo... I mean, I know I said I like my tried and true, feel good, standalone episodes and all. But Helo's plot these episode was just way too ridiculously straight forward and cliche for its own good... He starts off as the guy everyone hates and ignores at the poker game (nice scene with the bent cards, by the way). And then by the end of the episode, he's getting the token handshakes from everyone who ignored him, for just having one decent line and idea in the episode to say? WTF?... I would stick kick his ass for being a pansy, mind you...

Kara was the only one who really stood up for the Cylon lover. I guess I can hope that either a) Helo is next on her fuck buddy list, or even better, b) she's had her eye on Boomer for a very long time (pregnant lesbian sex is supposedly great...)... Either way, I'm just happy that we got the old Kara Thrace back in Flight of the Phoenix. Because for the first time in a long while? She was actually likable... No more soap opera antics with fucking Anders. No more fucking traitorous, sniper bitching, or the stealing of military Raiders... Here, she was just the playful, cocky, arrogant, son of a bitch Starbuck that we've come to know and love from the first season of the show...

Even if she didn't have much to say, just smirking there (as she was flirting with Lee over the Blackbird and whether it was good to fly) was the kind of thing that I've missed from her character for a very long time... And even without any real action? Maybe it was just because of Lee's reactions or something, but I loved the Blackbird testing scene as well. She just seemed so fucking overjoyed by playing a few fucking pranks on her boytoy, that her laughter in the stealth ship cockpit was almost as goddam welcome and endearing... as seeing Jessica Biel's naked fucking ass in a fucking stealth cockpit as well, but I digress...

Now, for all the poor saps out there, the Laura flight deck scene will probably go down in history as the one key scene from Flight of the Phoenix. But I personally loved above all else, the "payback" scene where the Battlestar pilots finally got their dues with the drifting Cylon attack fleet... Everyone there, from Hot Dog, to Starbuck, to especially Lee, just fucking let 'er rip and let the Cylons have it. This was their own Flight of the Phoenix, their one true moment of ectasy and true release where they could just have fun, and find a little hope and faith...

All episode long, Lee had been the pessimist. But as soon as he saw hundreds of Cylon ships just go dark like the Cylons had done to the human fleet back in the miniseries?... His eyes just lit up, and so did his Viper guns. And I don't know... but it was just so goddam sweet, to see the CAG that damn happy...

Now, me being the ever conspiratist and pessimist that I am, I am convinced that the Cylon attack on the Galactica this episode was nothing but a ruse. I mean, just the other episode ago, the Cylons specifically said that they wanted to protect Sharon's baby at all costs. Yet even if their ultimate goal was to capture it, how the fuck would ripping apart Galactica to do so, really help the child in the long run?... If anything, whether she knew it or not (like Baltar did last season), the Cylons were helping Sharon on board (with a baby on board, of course...), to gain a measure of trust back from the crew or some shit like that...

Either way, no matter what really happened, I'm just fucking happy that we got fucking Grace Park in fucking hottie sweat clothes. And we got fucking scenes of her in fucking sweet tank tops. And of course, it actually did look cool to see her jam that fucking wire up her arteries... Sure, I would've preferred to jam a certain something else up her fucking ass. But hey, that's just me... She provided for us one of the most memorable space battle scenes in the show, without the Cylons even firing a shot. This was the first real episode, where Sharon actually felt a bit like the Sharon of old, before all this baby and Cylon space opera bullshit started...

As for the rest of the characters? Dr. Baltar was strangely enough mostly absent for the episode, with Number Six nowhere in sight. And even stranger, he was actually intelligent and useful, using the ol' Star Trek and Stargate (and fucking real life) trick to wipe out the virus with a fucking hard drive format... guess he's been following my Tweakui updates a bit too damn closely...

Lt. Gaeta finally got to show the hardcore cat, Felix side of his force, and blew up against Tigh right in the middle of command duty. I still think that the creepy little bastard in a Cylon, as he was the one who suggested the network that compromised the ship in the first place... But hey, if Baltar hadn't tested the guy yet, then the fucking BSG crew really is dumb enough to deserve to die...

And if getting Grace fucking Park into fucking hot clothes wasn't enough for one burning flame of a day at the Phoenix, then how about Petty Officer Dualla, showing off that she ain't so petty when it comes to looks and charms... Now, I didn't particularly like how her whole fling of a thing with Lee was still going on. And I kinda forgot that Billy even existed anymore until he showed up at the door... But hot damn, the girl has a nice waist. Why can't she always wear that kind of gymnastic fighting shit when on duty, I may never know...

All I do know, is that cliche or predictable or not? Flight of the Phoenix was just a greatly enjoyable, standalone episode for the series...

It was labeled by so many on the net as just a wasteful "filler" of an episode, long before it ever hit the air... as if the term "filler" automatically means an episode will be crap these days, even before she ever gets to fly...

Now, while obviously Battlestar Galactica's greatest strength is its space opera sort of series arc shit, Ron Moore behind the scenes has had a hell of a lot of prior experience with great standalone episodes in the past, way back on both Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine...

And if Flight of the Phoenix is any indication of the potential for the writing of this series in the long run?...

"Modern Science Fiction television, is all about taking old ideas, and making them feel new and relevant to the world today...

... and there's no greater example of this anywhere in the world right now, than goddam Battlestar Galactica...

... a goddam series that literally is taking stories and plotlines, straight from the old skool BSG series back in the 70's...

When I first read the synopsis about Pegasus? I was convinced that this episode would be nothing but pure bullshit in the end...

I mean seriously, how the fuck could finding the Battlestar Pegasus even remotely help the series, I thought? I was convinced that having two Battlestars would ruin the epic, adventurous feel the series had going for it, by having just the lone Battlestar Galactica up against insurmountable odds...

Now, I don't know if Pegasus is quite up there with the best of season one. I don't know if it'll ever be close to touching the immortal Hand of God, or even its lesser brethren of The Miniseries and goddam Kobol's Last Gleaming (Part 2)...

But cover to cover, from start to finish, Pegasus was absolutely the most stellar episode of Battlestar Galactica's second season to date. It easily beats out Home (Part 2) and Resistance as the fucking new Admiral in charge of the season... And without a shadow of a doubt, easily beats out both Stargate Atlantis episodes this week as the fucking best IvanFian episode of the goddam week...

... hell, it might even make a run for goddam best IvanFian episode of all goddam shows this season so far...

... and it's gonna be one hell of a long wait until January then, that's for sure...

I mean yeah, Pegasus basically just stole the same tried and true formula, of a fucking rogue military group taking the law into their own hands. And obviously showing off the worst faces of humanity as well in the process... Hell, didn't Ron Moore even write the same damn shit way back on Voyager, in that god-awful season cliffhanger known as Equinox?...

... and I can't fucking believe just how well the Pegasus executed this fucking blind jump of theirs, straight into both the Battlestar Galactica world and our own...

A lot of people on the net have already made their own conclusions, that Admiral Cain (as if that name was ever used for a good person before...) was Ron Moore's version of a goddam George Dubya Bush with balls... or without balls, actually...

But I myself? Well... I see a larger truth in Pegasus, than just goddam liberal-minded attacks against the American Republican government, as the internet just so loves to do...

I admit that I for one, have always been in favour of declaring martial law in the Battlestar Galactica world... I mean seriously, if the civilians would just shut up instead of rioting, what would really be the problem? There are only frakkin' 50000 humans left in the known universe, and they should be happy to be goddam protected, I thought to myself...

The thing is though, Admiral Cain and her crew showed exactly why we need a civilian government...

... martial law only makes sense in the context, that the power will be given back to the people at some time or another...

The thing is, if you think about it hard, each and every single one of Admiral Cain's decisions in this episode made pure technical, logical fucking sense...

If I had heard on the news, that two military soldiers in Iraq had assaulted and killed a superior officer, I would've demanded that they would be jailed by military court martial, without the judge of a goddam civilian jury (though I will always be against the death penalty, even for treason)...

And knowing full well that Kara Thrace has fucked up problems with the XO and fellow officers, and that Apollo mutinied against his own commander of a father not once but fucking twice, then why the fuck wouldn't it sound good on paper to move these two people the fuck away from their Galactica family?...

In the military, it's regular procedure that family should never be under the same damn chain of command...

But you know what our friends on the Serenity say about the chain of command, right?...

... it's the goddam 'chain that I wrap around my fist, and beat you to a living hell with until you understand who's in gorram command', a guy like Malcolm or Jayne would most likely say...

The thing is, logical speaking, Admiral Cain was in the right. There is simply no excuse for Starbuck getting away with everything she does on the ship, or for Apollo fucking pointing his gun at a superior officer on more than one fucking occasion...

But I dunno... there was still just something in my goddam gut, that told me that Admiral Cain was in the wrong...

... and that definitely puts a lot of things in perspective in the real world, as well...

Pegasus was essentially the complete opposite of Flight of the Phoenix... While the latter dealt with low moral at the start, and a rising from the ashes near the end? Pegasus was all about being welcomed "back to the Colonial Fleet" at the start, with fucking hugs and kisses to go around... and then ended with perhaps one of the most goddam tense cliffhangers I have experienced since... well?...

... Atlantis' The Siege... or Kobol's Last Gleaming, actually... which weren't that long ago, but that's besides the point...

The point is, Pegasus was just a fantastic episode from start to finish on all fucking, motherfrakkin' accounts...

Helo and Tyrol didn't have much to do except to both be Boomer's bitch. The thing is though, for once, I actually felt sorry for the fucking hottie Cylon in the cell, that's probably going to turn on us all...

I mean, this is rape we're talking about. This is the one thing in the world, that's universally accepted as evil... on officially stamped paper, at least...

... yet so many people out there don't give a damn when a pedophile in jail gets fucking raped back in the ass... yet guys like me can't get enough of seeing Japanese hentai girls get the fuck raped out of their bottoms...

Rape is perhaps the one thing that almost everyone on the planet can accept as a fate worse than death. And yet, I find myself struggling to find a real consensus on whether we all truly believe that or not from the show...

On the one hand, I didn't give a damn about Number Six in the holding cell, having been fucked up the ass a couple hundred times or so... I mean seriously, her fucking people wiped out billions of humans in a single night. And the fucking bitch in Baltar's head still has dreams of wiping out the remainder of the Colonial Fleet, if not every single human on earth as well... I mean, for Gods sakes, these are the same robots that are fucking raping all the female survivors back on the 12 colonies for their ovaries. Have we forgotten that?...

... Number Six there wasn't human to me... she was a machine... and nobody would really give a damn about raping the goddam ass of a toaster in their kitchen, or the goddam trunk of a car, now would they?...

... so why do I view the copy of Sharon on the Battlestar in a completely different fashion?...

I mean, did the Chief and Tyrol really do the right thing? They killed a human, to save a bitch that will most likely end up turning on the entire crew someday...

... either way though, I can't condone rape... it's the most animalistic and inhumane of all the tortures ever devised by humanity...

... yet it's also something that I can assure you, every single man on the planet has thought of seriously at one point or another... it is definitely a part of all of us, somewhere deep down and dark inside...

The difference is, the government and civilian morals that we cling to in this world, prevent us from ever even giving the thought of rape more than a fucking serious second in our fucking minds... It's the civilian morals that we have, that prevent us from ever seriously talking about rape in public, like the crew of the Pegasus were boasting about to Tyrol and Lt. Agathon...

... sure, I know that Sharon there is just a machine... and I wouldn't trust her for the world...

... and yes, to be honest, I would love to fuck the hell out of Grace fucking Park...

Hell, if you ask me? Just thinking about fucking her and making her feel so good, is rape...

... I mean, just seriously tell almost any husband or boyfriend that you're mind-raping their girl, and see how they take it...

But Ron Moore and the show have just done an amazing job, in separating the human view (Sharon) from the subhuman view (Number Six) in our minds... even if they are essentially both Cylon...

Every character executed their jobs perfectly in Pegasus, as it really was the most complete hour of television that I think I've watched since at least Hand of God...

Colonel Tigh only had a few scenes to himself. But I just love his humour whenever it comes to getting drunk and skipping a round or two. And the actor just has amazing chemistry with Edward James Olmos, when it came to his concerns about the Admiral and checking out her legs (umm... I meant, logs... yeah, that's what I meant...)...

Lt. Gaeta and Dualla were pretty much just offscreen fodder in Pegasus. But this was more than made up for, by revisiting minor characters like Cally again... I mean, she's the one that just suddenly killed the Galactica Boomer, even though they were close friends. And yet here she was, lurching and leering away from the thought of ever raping the same Cylon model?...

And I loved her and the Chief's reactions, to finding out that Admiral Cain had been drafting civilians into her force. Afterall, in a state of martial law, I'd have to agree that all people should be doing their jobs to help out and survive, even if it costs them their freedom... and yet just from Tyrol's reactions to hearing the aeronautic engineer's story? I can't help but think, that maybe the goddam president of the colonies had it right afterall...

President Roslin was once again the very damn same president we loved at the start of the first season, and finally starting seeing again in Flight of the Phoenix. She was warm, and caring, insightful, and supportive of the Commander. And thank God we didn't hear about her cancer or her goddam prophecy bullshit even once in Pegasus...

She wasn't featured in a lot of scenes, but the actress was definitely golden in them all. She really did look like Admiral Cain had "shot her dog", when the bitch shot down Adama's command... And I dunno, but you could really just tell so much from Roslin's facial expressions, of how much it meant for her to have the commander in charge instead, that you couldn't help but side with this one bitch over the other...

Even Baltar seemed to find his better half in Pegasus, despite his god-awful speech about giving a damn about the raped to hell Cylon bitch...

I mean sure, Number Six in his head was just overblown in her reaction to her copy's treatment. Because really, since when did she care about other Cylon models, or the fact that they're getting raped like every goddam human back on Caprica as well?...

And personally of course, I'd prefer getting the completely self-interested, sexophile, Baltar bastard we got in the first season. But either way, the actor still shines through...

Dr. Gaius Baltar really seemed to genuinely care in that scene. And I loved his earlier metaphor, of a "stick" versus a "carrot". It showed the true difference between a rabid dog, and treating an animal with respect. Even if it is still an animal... It's scary to think that he's starting to side more with the Cylons than he is with humanity. Yet I think if the Pegasus crew has taught him anything, it's that all the propaganda that Number Six in his head has been brainwashing him with, might just be true as well...

... the Cylons are starting to look more human to him... more human than we do, anyway...

And I felt bad for Apollo too, I guess... I mean, not only was he reduced to being the other CAG's utter bitch. But he had to fucking fly a fucking Raptor as well? That's just humiliating for a captain...

Now, I know that Lee has been a complete and utter idiot all season long. I think stabbing his father in the back while his dad was still lying there on his frakkin' back, was definitely a good indication of that... But still, he's our frickin' moron, you know? He's not a hard ass, and he definitely has good intentions. On any other day, I would welcome a court martial for him...

... but nobody likes a tighty-whitey, tight-ass like Captain Tractor Taylor, now do they? Suddenly, Lee doesn't look so bad...

I loved Starbuck's reaction to her transfer to the Pegasus. Unlike Apollo, she tried to fight it with everything she had. And you could tell that she almost got through to the commander... She spoke her mind, and she did it all with a cocky smile at the end. That's exactly what we've always loved about Starbuck...

Hell, it was like the writers purposely made every single damn, core character on the show as damn likable as they could, just to make the Pegasus crew seem that damn bad...

Commander Adama was absolutely the man in Pegasus. With every single look he gave, you could see the conflicted nature in his soul... How the fuck did Edward James Olmos not get nominated for an Emmy, again?...

On the one side, he had his sense of duty. He has followed orders all his life, he claimed... But after being in charge and command for so damn long? It's hard to give up the right to say what it is right...

Lee has mutinied against the chain of command twice already. Guess Adama now only needs one more notch on his belt to catch up...

The difference is, I didn't give a damn about Apollo fighting for civilian rights, because martial law during those times really didn't seem so bad. President Roslin was completely out of her mind, she conned Starbuck into stealing the Cylon Raider, and she did everything she possibly could to make the military look bad behind the Commander's back... And yet Lee would still side with a bitch like that?...

But now, things are different, as Adama said when referring to the witch trials last year... President Roslin has suddenly become a wonderful leader again (for now, at least). And everyone on the Battlestar Galactica has become a tightly knit crew with a sense of honour and hope, after finding the map to earth, at least...

Then Admiral Cain just steps onto the flight deck, and ruins the whole sense of family that Galactica has built over the past two or three episodes... It's no wonder then, that I find myself siding with Commander Adama completely...

Olmos gave what was perhaps the best damn performance of his life in Pegasus. He looked like his fucking dog has been shitted on when he began realizing he had to give up command. And his fury could barely be controlled by his sense of duty, when refusing Kara's request to speak freely about her transfer... He had real chemistry with Laura Roslin again. They seemed like they really trusted each other. And his scenes with Tigh were amazing as well, as the two joked about getting the ship logs ready for Admiral Cain to inspect...

... and just the amazing contrast, from his awestruck sense of a dream, at seeing the Battlestar Pegasus for the first time on the Dradis?... from his first moment of respect, as he saluted the Admiral setting foot on the Galactica?...

... to the stone cold face he held, when ordering a Marine strike team to get back his crew?... to the damn expression of both regret, and a complete lack of remorse at the same damn time, when it came to ordering the Admiral to listen to him for a change?...

It's weird seeing Ensign Ro from goddam The Next Generation again, playing a by-the-book military Admiral, when back on TNG she was fucking over Riker for fun and games...

Still, despite the fact she looks way too young to be an Admiral, I thought she did an amazing job of being a stone cold bitch...

Every statement and decision she made, she played it with the kind of conviction and the kind of force you'd expect from a person who really thinks they've become the finger of God in the goddam fleet... As far as the chain of command was concerned, she was the fucking chain you wrap around your fist, and fucking fist Cylons like Sharon right up the ass with, just for shits and giggles (and for probably more shit as well)...

On paper, Pegasus just looked like another old, worn and torn, Science Fiction staple recycled and reused...

... but then again, I never really put this episode into the proper context beforehand, now did I?...

Turns out, Pegasus in execution was by far the most deep, insightful, thought-provoking, and relevant episode I have seen from any series in years, science fiction or not...

... it spoke volumes more about the art of war and the acts of contrition, than pretty much any Battlestar Galactica episode before it...

If there was any one true fault of Pegasus, it was that there was no one true, definitive scene that I would watch over and over again...

But completely unlike any television show since the best of TNG? I actually liked the fucking moral of the story...

Regardless of who's side you take, whether it be Adama's or Cain's, Pegasus has taught me something that Stargate and the fucking morons in the Pegasus Galaxy, have yet to even begin to unravel...

In turn, the Battlestar Galactica completely dehumanized the Pegasus, going so far as to even killing a lieutenant while barely flinching an eye...

In the real world, while this may be a gross generalization, Republicans have dehumanized terrorists... and pretty much all those who even begin to agree with their ideals...

... and at the same time, liberals have dehumanized the US soldiers... and I'm sure, fucking wouldn't mind if the Bush Administration was raped right up the ass as well...

It doesn't matter who's side you take. There's really no right and wrong, regardless of what any of us want to believe...

"Part of me still wonders whether I would've enjoyed Resurrection Ship a lot more, if only I hadn't known that the second half of Pegasus had been split in the offseason into two separate episodes?... I was so looking forward to a real showdown between Adama and Admiral Cain, or at least a big honkin' space battle against the Resurrection Ship. Yet all we got was sort of a filler episode before the real deal instead...

Pegasus was a spectacular episode, simply because it featured the good guys completely versus the bad guys. The problem was though, in Resurrection Ship (Part 1)? That perhaps the distinction between good and evil had become too blurred like the rest of the series once more...

Adama was no longer the noble hero trying to rescue his men from savage execution. Now he was simply the executioner, listening to fucking Roslin the bitch, bitch about assassinating Cain before she even knows what hit her... Meanwhile, Cain didn't seem that damn bad on the other end any longer. She demoted her CAG, promoted Starbuck for having guts, and provided the first real compromise on Colonial One about the whole Pegasus vs Galactica situation. WTF?...

And once again, Madame President was left behind as the goddam bitch to take the blame, whatever the hell that means. Though to be honest, she benefited from the Lana Lang and Dr. Weir complex when it came to supreme and utter, open bitchiness...

She was actually kind of calming and considerate in this episode, the way that she had no real remorse when telling Adama that he had to off Cain for the sake of the fleet. She was sadly less of a bitch than she normally is that way, as she didn't really hide anything or lie between her teeth while lying in bed with Adama by her side... Hell, even her talk of wishing she was in the body of a blonde Cylon made her more bearable than she has been for ages. I liked how she was pretty honest and open in Resurrection Ship with all her evil bitchy slut shit, and somehow? In my honest opinion, that was a fucking huge step up for her...

But that Colonial One scene just seemed to drag on, as Admiral Cain just didn't provide the same strong suit of acting she gave us in Pegasus. And Adama was just sort of there, spaced out in a fucking Superman Returns, Kevin Spacey sort of shit way... That scene alone set the tone and conveyed the whole atmosphere for the entire damn episode. Simply put, the pacing of Resurrection Ship seemed way off base, or basestar or whatever, if only because it was never really intended to be a single damn episode in the first place...

I mean seriously, the two of them just bitched and whined and aired their dirty loins and laundry in the fucking Pegasus brig, like whiny little teenage bitches or some shit like that? WTF? Without detailed, naked pictures of Grace Park for me, then WTF was the point of it all?...

I dunno, but something just seemed off in Resurrection Ship, as if every character had their lines dubbed and doubled without any real reason to deserve that kind of screentime whatsoever...

I've already mentioned just how pointless the whole Tyrol and Helo exchanges about being in love with a Cylon are, but what about Grace Park herself? Sure, she looked fucking irresistible as hell in hospital clothing, but did she have any point besides looking fucking adorably rapeable in bed (no offence to all those offended by the term...)?... Judging from what we heard, if we had seen the whole rape scene in Pegasus, then we'd feel bad for the bruises on her wrists. But all that Ron Moore did show in the end was a slap on the wrist and a few screams and shouts, which fucking Boomer there has suffered through a hell of a lot worse before or whatever sort of crap... so really, what is there to really feel bad for?...

Starbuck had a few decent scenes here and there. The Blackbird reconnaissance mission was pretty suspenseful, as you'd think one of the damn Cylons would have infrared sensors to detect her or some shit like that in space. And I guess I did hold my breath along with her as she challenged Admiral Cain during her promotion, but that's about it I think for anything memorable...

I mean, something just felt off about the way she swung her head around in her helmet as she was telling the Viper fleet to be "friendly". And she just had no real chemistry with Apollo as he was complaining to her about being demoted as an officer to one of his former pilots... Judging by the end of the episode too, Starbuck just didn't seem to have her heart into the whole assassination business. I thought she was super-sniper-Starbuck though? What happened to her fucking amoral sense of goodwill and cheer?...

Apollo was useless. What did he really do? He got bitch-slapped around by both Starbuck and Admiral Cain, and barely said a word to his father... He even seemed whiny as he pretended to Stinger in the Raptor that he had nothing to do with the whole Blackbird situation. He really was pussy-whipped this episode, though at least he never once had a speech as goddam eye-rolling as Helo's was...

And what the fuck did Col. Tigh do? Tie the fucking guy to a goddam chair on a mountain in space and just leave him there, since that's all he's apparently good for... He seems to be gathering a rapport with the XO of the Pegasus, sure. Tigh got the information about the conscripts on the Pegasus and what the Admiral did with the families who resisted, true... But somehow, that scene was just boring to me, rather than surprising or suspenseful like the similar one was back in Pegasus. Simply put, we've had an entire summer of putting one and one together in our minds about who exactly Cain is and just what she stands for. So can I really be blamed for not giving a damn about a big revelation about old shit I had already figured out long ago?...

I've already spoken about how the Admiral was a letdown this episode. She seemed more bitchy than evil or commanding while on Colonial One, and she oddly enough reminded me of Starbuck as she was asking whether Thrace always gets what she wants.... Surprisingly, Cain felt like the good person here, even when she was filling in her XO on the details for taking out Adama at the end. While obviously I don't agree with her whole idea of a war against the Cylons over the survival of the fleet, I still couldn't help but cheer when she argued in favour of returning to Caprica and kicking some Cylon ass... Even if the humans all got their asses kicked and names taken back home that way, at least it'd make for one hell of an episode. So what's really to hate about the Admiral in Resurrection Ship?...

The president was nice and open about her bitchy feelings to Adama on Colonial One, and somehow I wasn't so surprised when she was the one who brought up the subject of the assassination... Now, Adama definitely had a presence in this episode. But was it just me, or did he seem just too reactive and lazy-ass compared to the hard-ass, Die Hard motherfucker I thought had returned in Pegasus?... I mean here, he was taking orders from a fucking school teacher on how to take out a dictator, rather than dictating the plans for Napoleon dynamite or poison himself. And then later on, he seemed so damn iffy on what to tell Starbuck about the whole assassination situation, as if I was watching a bad reenactment of goddam procrastinating Hamlet (as if Hamlet wasn't boring enough, I'm afraid...)...

Now true, there were definitely a few classic moments in Resurrection Ship, though nothing that I would watch time and time again. The dogfight without actual fighting at the start was interesting, if only because I was left in wonder at who would fire the first shot (and kind of relieved when nobody did). And while I don't think I've ever really admitted this before, I really do think that Number Six put in a spectacular performance in Resurrection Ship... if only for identifying the very snapshot photos that Baltar was holding in his hands...

So, the Resurrection Ship is the fucking ship where dead Cylon consciousness' get downloaded into new bodies? That alone was a pretty damn cool idea on the writers' behalf, but I was personally more impressed with how they handled that revelation in the first place... The Number Six on board the Pegasus wanted to die. She wanted to kill herself, and never be reborn. She actually wants to help Adama and co take out the fucking Resurrection Ship, just so that she knows she will be completely dead and never have to remember what the fuck happened to her on board the Pegasus... I definitely felt like her explanation of it all wasn't forced, as she really did seem desperate. I really did feel this was the best acting that Tricia as Number Six has ever damn done on the show. And I really did feel like it was the most fitting way for the BSG team to learn the truth about the ship in the first place...

But once again, we were left with a fucking cliffhanger. And this time, I was more goddam annoyed than I was left frothing in unbridled demand... Many have complained that Resurrection Ship was absolutely a filler episode, since it ended almost identically in both atmosphere and plot as Pegasus did way back in September. And at times, I doth believe that I'm quite inclined to agree... I mean, the only real differences between now and back then? Are that the stakes are now higher, with a fucking Resurrection Ship and a fucking assassination in the mix...

... though at least I don't have to fucking wait four fucking horsemen of months for the conclusion to finally air...

Still, I was hoping for a sort of renaissance for the series, considering BSG had just begun to redeem itself with several strong episodes after pure and utter complete crap at the start of the season. I was sort of expecting a resurrection of the classic Battlestar Galactica feel, and I don't feel we got that... considering Resurrection Ship was split and stretched from one single hour into two separate episodes, both of which may barely be able to stand on their own two feet...

But considering how great Pegasus was in the first place, and how amazing both Admiral Cain and Commander Adama were in that one episode alone? Then how can I really blame Ron Moore and maybe Ron Artest, for trying to give us more of what we wanted in the first place?...

... when the real Resurrection Ship, and the real resurrection of the show finally airs..."

"Resurrection Ship (Part 2) was built up in my eyes as the very episode that would rise Battlestar Galactica from its grave, and fucking seat it back up on its pedestal as absolutely the best damn space opera I've ever experienced in my life...

That's the way it left the throne last year, after such classics as Hand of God and Kobol's Last Gleaming (Part 2). But except for perhaps Pegasus, no episode this season has been able to even nearly match the quality and calibre of the latter half of season one...

I was hoping and praying to the frakkin' gods that Resurrection Ship (Part 2) would be that very goddam episode. Because after being so disappointed with the first half last week of what was once a single script split into two, how the hell could I not be rolling the dice and gambling all the marbles on this week's one frakkin' episode alone?...

Truth be told, Resurrection Ship (Part 2) was a damn good episode, but just not good enough. It may edge out Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG-1 and John Cena for episode of the week, but it just wasn't nearly as fulfilling to me as Pegasus was...

Simply put, Resurrection Ship (Part 2) just couldn't help but be remembered as nothing really more than a relative disappointment and a goddam lost opportunity in my eyes... no matter how good the actual episode may have been...

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before. Because just like with the Deep Space 9 series finale? The writers chose to concentrate more on the fucking character arcs and on the fucking budget, than of fucking giving us the space action drama that scifi addicts like me always crave...

Yes, I do understand why Ron Moore chose to focus on Apollo's shitty ass suicidal tendencies rather than the battle against the Basestars in the background, considering BSG is a space opera first and foremost. Some have even applauded his decision, as the mere shadows and echoes of the epic battle in the background have cast the show in a completely different light than its fellow SciFi, special-effects obsessed brethren... and perhaps purposely so...

Couldn't you have just concentrated on, you know... both aspects of the fucking episode?... like you did with Hand of God?...

The entire space attack consisted of the Battlestars just constantly pelting and lighting up the Basestars with really no challenge whatsoever, and of the Vipers treating the Resurrection Ship as if the Cylons had just dropped the fucking soap in the shower... Sure, the strafing run by the Vipers in space was an awesome effect and absolutely must be copied into a video game sometime. And sure, it was a nice effect to see not one but two fucking Basestars get blown to bits by the combined Battlestar forces, but still?... meh...

There was simply no tension or drama in those scenes. I suppose we were supposed to be concerned about Apollo, whether he was going to survive or not. But I didn't give two shits about a main character who I knew could only really die either if a) it's a season finale, or b) he's a fucking Cylon. And I unfortunately didn't give two shits about the battle in the background either thanks to absolutely no suspense whatever... The Basestars were fucking jokes, as they could barely even touch the Battlestars with their missile ordinance. And where were the fucking Raiders when the Vipers had absolute free reign over the Cylon floating bodies and asses?...

This battle had the potential for being absolutely the best damn space attack scenario since the fucking Hand of God, but there was absolutely no threat from the Cylons in that scene whatsoever. It felt like I was watching stock Doci footage again from the lame-ass, generic DS9 series finale or some shit like that...

And I dunno, but just like with the first half of Resurrection Ship? While I loved Pegasus in an almost Star Trek kind of way, considering how the Galactica crew rallied together against the inhumane Pegasus team, I felt like the series had reverted back to the shitty ass, melodramatic, whiny teen angst that has plagued the second season since day one...

Now, I do understand why Apollo wanted to die. Not only did he have absolutely no faith in Admiral Cain leading the fleet, but his faith in humanity was definitely shaken and stirred by the fact that even the president wanted to assassinate the Pegasus bitch. And of course, being demoted to a fucking errand boy didn't exactly take to the man either...

But did we really have to spend the entire fucking battle against the Resurrection Ship as just some lameass excuse to show off the actor's bare chest in the fucking Vancouver waters? Did Ron Moore really have to disappoint Trek junkies like me by making the Basestars in the background literally a mere afterglow of an afterthought?... Even worse than that, what the fuck did Lee do for the rest of the fucking episode? Just whined away in his bunk, weeping that not only did he almost die, but that he certainly ain't happy that he didn't die?... Didn't we get this kind of fucking sappy writing back when Xena was kicking ass and taking lesbian names on the show? Couldn't he have at least gotten handjobs from fucking Starbuck in his bunk? WTF?...

And oh, Chief Petty Officer Dualla. Poor, bittersweet, petty bitch Dualla... She was used as nothing more than a sweet ass prop in the background for Lee. It's obvious she has the hots for him... and it's sadly even more obvious that Ron Moore is going to concentrate on this soap opera crap more in the remainder of the season, than anything to do with the Cylons or shit like that...

Colonel Tigh in the meanwhile? Was it just me, or was he completely goddam clueless when it came to Col. Fisk and his marine detachment?... Tigh simply signed some papers and nodded his head in complete befuddlement at the fact that a fucking legion of armed men had just come to Galactica under the Admiral's direct order. What kind of a fucking dunce is he?... Now, I know there was nothing neither he or Adama could do about the reassigned Marines. But did Tigh really have to look like he was as naive as a five year old kid when it came to this shit? WTF?...

And God, was I ever disappointed in the shit that happened to Helo and Chief Tyrol. I mean, once the bondage started happening and the soap showed up, I was praying to the motherfucking gods that the two of them would get ass-raped then and there. It's not like I wanted to see that, but the two pansies still fucking deserved it for being such fucking pussies in love... Then Ron Moore somehow fucks that up as well, dropping the ball rather than the fucking soap, as it turns out the soap bar was just there for a fucking literal gut check. WTF?... What kind of fucked up writing is that, when there is absolutely no real fucking up of the ass? What kind of fucking shit is this, when the writers back off from the fucking chance to push the envelope just as much as Grace fucking Park did back in Pegasus?...

Still, as goddam petty Dualla as it makes me sound to say? Grace Park was once again trying to play off her attempted rape as if she was just gang-humped for the twelve days of Christmas straight... The thing is, the acting just doesn't work when sadly enough, I wanted to see her bare ass more than we got in those scenes, as we didn't even get a single goddam iota of her shit stained on some guy's cock...

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm quite a sick motherfucker, but I demand more when some random Pegasus guy is pushing the television envelope open with his cock... Grace Park's performance here in this episode with tears in her eyes, when she was basically telling Adama that perhaps humanity does not deserve to die, was therefore just so way over the top that I couldn't help but laugh... I mean seriously, if a little nudge on the ass by a stick and sick stranger is enough to make a Cylon think that the genocide of tens of billions is alright? Then no wonder we got our fucking asses nuked and handed to us, rather than just getting a fucking handjob...

But despite all my criticisms? Resurrection Ship (Part 2) was still the episode of the week, all thanks to some strong acting and characterizations, at least...

Kara Thrace was probably the star of the episode for once, if only thanks to how shaky and sweaty and fucking nervous she was when it came to Cain's "downfall". I don't think I'll ever forget how she was completely unlike the calm, cool-headed Starbuck we've always known her as, when the Admiral handed her the phone in CIC that is...

And probably the best scene in the entire damn episode belonged to Kara and the Admiral as well. In the previous episode, I had just assumed that Cain had made Thrace the new CAG out of respect for the Blackbird reconnaissance mission. But the private scene between the two of them here definitely proved without a shadow of a doubt, that Cain wanted to die just as much as fucking pansy Apollo ever did... It will forever be 100% impossible to ascertain whether the Admiral really did know that Thrace would be ordered by Adama to assassinate her or not. All we do know, is that the "flinch" speech sounded far too close for comfort, and that the Admiral was watching Starbuck's trigger finger like a horny fucking bitch when it came to that phone call from Commander Adama...

Sure, it was a bit of a cop-out in the end, how both the Admiral and Adama backed out of their assassination plans (even if it made for a decent scene in the end). It was sort of a Star Trek solution, where the good guys are all nice and dandy and cozy with their morals, while the Cylon supermodels all have mustaches that twirl... Except for maybe Lee's and Cain's suicidal tendencies, the humans weren't so damn bad in Resurrection Ship (Part 2). Hell, Ron Moore even made us almost like Admiral Cain before fucking Number Six popped her in the head...

Couldn't he at least have let them fucking pop each other first in the fucking cherries instead?...

... and added Starbuck and fucking Grace Park to the fucking cocktail party as well?...

Fuck you, asshole. Frak you and your fucking cock-tease, motherfucking disappointments...

During the actual Resurrection Ship space battle, the only real scene I concerned myself with came from Dr. Baltar and Number Six in the brig. Later in the episode, sure it was far too convenient for the Cylon to just waltz through the Pegasus undetected all the way to the Admiral's room, but that didn't change the fact that she and Baltar had an amazing scene earlier on... It was great poetic justice (quite literally poetic, really) how Baltar threw the whole pyramid sports bitch of a story right back into the virtual face of the Number Six next to him. Which begs the question, if the real Number Six model with him knew nothing about the other, who or what really is that Cylon swimming around in his head?...

Commander Adama was awesome as always. The real surprise was that President Roslin wasn't so bad herself... It helps that she was only in one fucking scene (with Billy in tow, as if to shout to the audience that yes, the actor is still alive...). And it helps that the bitch had a reason to be bitchy (dying from cancer and all)... But it was also kind of touching how the whole Admiral promotion ceremony came and rang, how she popped open the two command pipes for him as if she was popping the very question to the Commander himself...

... and he responded with a kiss... which, according to Ron Moore's online podcast, was complete improv on the actor's behalf...

But the scene definitely worked, which was probably why Ron Moore kept it in the episode I'm sure. The surprise and happiness on Laura's and Adama's faces was both heartfelt and genuine. And their naive giddiness was simply infectious, even to a fucking nerd like me...

Because with just one scene? He fucking resurrected the episode from the fucking fat grave of Ron fucking Mandy Moore, and gave new life to pretty much every single character arc that the show had running...

Now sure, Resurrection Ship (Part 2) had just so much potential... if only it had concentrated less on the whine and cheese, and more on the actual chess match going on in fucking space...

The writers ignored the space battle to concentrate on the whole fucking assassination plot, which I can still understand. But once the latter fizzled out far too quickly and far too pointlessly for its own good, then Ron Moore worked on fucking suicidal ape-shit cheese grating and a fucking laugh-out-loud "frak you" from the Admiral, as if we could ever take those two words seriously? WTF?...

Yeah, well... The episode may not have been the very resurrection of the series that I had hoped it would be...

But still, it was a damn good episode. And one that will forever stay close to my heart, if only out of sheer hope and promotion and potential...

... and for being much better than that shitty ass Deep Space 9 series finale, at least...

"You know, it just kinda dawned on me while I was watching this week's episode of Battlestar Galactica...

... that Battlestar Galactica has been really, really, ridiculously rushing their space opera storylines as of late...

Think about its first season. How many episodes was Helo stuck on Crapica? How many days really passed on Galactica as our own weeks flew right on by?...

Now compare that to the current second season, where the Pegasus shit was originally planned for just two episodes...

... and where now, Laura Roslin's cancer was treated in just five fucking minutes of the fucking show...

Now, I know, I know. This is really no different than a real soap opera in that aspect, in which Roslin would've came back with her brain transplanted in a super hot 17-year old bitch if this was Days of our Caprican Lives... I know, and yes, I know that the fallout about the whole prophecy bullshit from last season is what the writers really care about in the end. Now that Laura Roslin is alive and well (and all thanks to the Cylons to make it even worse), then how will the fleet react? How will the Galactica crew take it, when they learn that the woman they've been worshipping as their emissary from the gods may just be a common, goddam bitch in the end with fucked up blood?...

But it's not just the whole Laura Roslin thing that was the only part of the episode that the writers seemed to rush. Because was it just me, or did the Peace Movement with the Cylons sort of just pop out of nowhere, with absolutely no build-up during the first half of the season whatsoever?...

Now, judging from 9/11 and just how many damn Americans blame their country's foreign policies for "making" the terrorists in al Qaeda into the animals that they fucking are now (or how many goddam conspiracy theories there are about that shit...)? Then I guess it would be possible for such a fucking insane group to show up in the Galactica fleet as well, even after 12 fucking planets of fucking tens of billions of friends and family were just fucking nuked... But I don't know, the peace movement's desperation just all felt so rushed and forced anyhew, as there was absolutely no build-up to these people becoming traitors and fucking suicide bombers of their own. There's normally a longer transition period for dementia than just five fucking minutes, I'm sure the writers know...

And was it just me, or did Baltar or someone else mention that literally weeks have gone by since Resurrection Ship (Part 2)? Fuck, it was like the events of that episode didn't even happen... I mean, nobody gave a damn that the Cylons had finally gotten off their backs. No-one cared that they just got some hope that they could actually survive or win the war...

Instead, we got about ten seconds of Apollo pouting like a bitch again... Now, I'm sure the writers think his suicide death wish is interesting on paper, but having an actor sound deaftone and monotonous on camera is not what I'd consider as the best entertainment on television. And it certainly didn't help that the only thing he even got to show up for, was a damn PDA in some bitch's bag... Maybe there will be a decent pay-off in a future episode about Lee's depression, I don't know. All I do know, is that it's really no surprise that I'm completely not interested in a character who specifically has lost all interest in being on the show. Ironic, ain't it?...

And WTF did Starbuck do? She was simply muted there, as the only thing she got to contribute was a busted windshield after punching a goddam mountain in space... She barely even seemed concerned for Lee. WTF was up with that?... And was it me, or did neither Starbuck nor Lee have any interaction whatsoever with the president in her hospital bed (the very woman who has acted as a mother and mentor to the both of them)... or even with fucking Helo, as he was being pussy-whipped by fucking Grace Park...

And oh, by the way, just so I can get it off my fucking chest? Helo sucked his own balls... yet again...

It's not that the actor did a bad job at the material he was given. It's just that, I personally preferred him as a pussy whipped Replicator back in the sixth season of SG-1 (did he even have a line in that episode?), than the fucking pussy-whipped bastard who has simply no purpose but to give Grace Park and viewers a reason to bash their fucking heads over and over again on a goddam glass window...

Grace Park must've realized just how diminished her own role has become, and started suiciding herself to get some sort of attention on the goddam show... She's just become too passive over the past few months, being overly protective of the baby with really no purpose but to look hot during pregnant Munich sex. I don't honestly believe she's done a real thing in the series this season besides Flight of the Phoenix, when at least she looked cute as hell instead of just being goddam fat... Still, it did make sense how her child did provide the miracle cure for Roslin's cancer, even if the exact same solution has been used in fucking Star Trek: Voyager God knows how many times...

And if Battlestar Galactica ever officially becomes as bad as Star Trek: Voyager? I will personally fucking put a bullet between Ron Moore's eyes before doing the same to myself... or at least, I'd bash myself in the forehead with a goddam ugly stick, like I already do for fucking Smallville...

Even Doc Cottle was useless this episode. Where was his charisma, where was his sarcasm, where was his charm, and where the fuck were his smokes?... I know that the whole Laura Roslin thing set a mood where none of the above would've been appropriate. But I was bored out of mind in every single scene that dealt with the infirmary already, so why not lighten up the mood at least with a frakkin' light?... C'mon, I know the motherfrakker wanted to. What better way would there be to cure cancer and save a Cylon baby, then to puff on a couple of cigarettes as he's doping them with drugs?...

I don't think any character really did a decent job in Epiphanies. Pegasus was nowhere to be found, except as a slight backhanded mention somewhere down the line. And Col. Tigh looked utterly clueless as always, with no purpose to be on the show whatsoever as long as he doesn't have a drink in his hand...

... or should I call him Admiral Adama, even if he doesn't deserve the fucking rank the way he was pussy-whipped all episode long in Epiphanies?...

I don't know, but he just didn't have a commanding presence at all here. I mean, he had kept Boomer's child alive for all this time, yet just submits to Roslin's demands to off the fucking baby as soon as the order is even muttered by the bitch?... He was trying to be a hardass with the terrorist leader and all, claiming that he'd hunt each and every traitor like him down in the fleet. But what point was there to all that really, when the reborn Laura Roslin in the end just reneged on everything he had just achieved with her own fucking negotiations?...

Hell, Adama even tried to reason with fucking Helo of all pussy-whipped people, practically begging him to see the logic in their actions, when the Admiral really should've just beaten his officer senseless to the ground with his own fucking shoe instead... I would've cheered at that thrashing at least. I bet that fucking pussy was used to that kind of shit from his Asian girlfriend anyhew...

Dr. Baltar did have his moments. His moments were just kind of weirdly on and off, that's all... Sadly, the sole highlight of the episode was the return of the Number Six comedy in his head. Watching him just standing there in the corridor, holding his own tie in his hand like a moron, was perhaps the only damn time that this episode even got a positive reaction out of me...

But was it just me, or was Dr. Baltar both too smart and too damn dumb in Epiphanies at the very same time? He saved Roslin and the day with his whole bloodworks thing about Sharon's Cylon baby, as if he actually knew what he was talking about. Yet when it came to the vagina of Gina over on Cloud Nine, he sends over a fucking nuke because he's pissed that Roslin doesn't trust his ass? WTF?... I'm hoping that at least he was intelligent enough to disarm the nuke or some shit like that, as it just makes no fucking sense why he's willing to risk his own life amongst the rest of the fleet due the potential goddam ramifications of his own actions. How the fuck does giving a nuke to al Qaeda solve his problems. WTF?...

But Epiphanies was always meant to be a true revelation about Laura Roslin, even if we already knew that fucking bitch was sleeping with Grand Marshall Adar of Crematoria from all the fucking times she fluttered her eyes when mentioning the asshole president in the past...

First she fucks the president, then Admiral Adama... and now she's suddenly swapping fluids with fucking Grace Park?...

Just like any real bitch out there? As soon as she's got nothing to lose, Roslin goes on a real fucking killing spree. I mean seriously, one week she's all into pulling the trigger on Admiral assassinations, and now she's suddenly taking up the pro-Abortion stance as a hobby? WTF?...

I hated all her lost flashbacks from Caprica, or Tollana, or Vancouver, or wherever the fuck she was. I mean, they tried to make her MILF hot when it came to getting her feet wet in the fucking fountain, but then she fucks up the mood with some shitastic tale of teachers becoming terrorists?... What kind of lameass parallel was that? Sure, Roslin was a teacher before, but what fucking kind of planet was Caprica if the teachers were willing to go to arms against the military? WTF?...

Here in Ontario, the teacher's union may literally own the Canadian military with the fucking Maple Leafs and shit like that. But even they aren't dumbass enough to go to fucking war. What the fuck was wrong with Caprica?...

What a fucking bitch. She goes behind her married boyfriend's back to ruin his own negotiations, and then fucking bitches when she has her job taken from her? And all this on the very same day when her hair suddenly reverted and changed to sheer ugly stickness as she met with the doctor about her cancer? WTF is wrong with the bitch? Why won't she just fucking die already?... uggh...

... then again, I can't quite tolerate Lana fucking Lang over on Smallville, now can I?...

... that the series has fucking screwed itself with what can only be described as a big, fucking reset button...

Sure, there are fucking ramifications to all this miracle cure bullshit. The fleet will lose all hope in Roslin leading them to earth, Adama may back off from his horniness, now knowing that he actually has to wake up with the bitch rather than just fucking and leaving her for dead, and yadda yadda yadda...

Apollo was pissed off at life one year ago. He's fucking maniac depressive as hell once more...

Starbuck was Apollo's sidekick just a season ago. And now she's riding shotgun all over again...

One fucking year ago, Roslin was just fine and plain and dandy as a complete bitch and as the newly appointed president of the colonies...

And now, after a fucking lameass flashback show? She's back as the president, all fine and plain and dandy as a complete and utter bitch yet again...

... sigh... it's like running on a fucking treadmill... or like watching Smallville, really...

What the fuck kind of name is "Black Market" anyhew? If the writers wanted to be any more obvious with their title, why didn't they just call the episode, "Lee Apollo Adama Fucks Little Girls in a Supermarket"? Wouldn't that have been more clear?...

And what the fuck kind of name was "Prometheus" for a ship? Is this fucking reference-and-bash-other-shows week or some shit like that?... Stronghold over on Stargate SG-1 tried to outwhine Clark Kent with their own bitchy Kal-el (and failed miserably in that regard). And now we have Ron fucking Moore, trying to show how damn dirty and corrupt and fucking useless the spaceship Prometheus is in the end?...

Wouldn't it have been better then, to have shown this episode next week if you know what I mean?... but, umm... nevermind...

Let's face facts here. Black Market was shit in almost every aspect and retrospect...

... the only issue is, perhaps this episode still stands for the true spirit of Battlestar more than almost any other episode this season?...

Because just like with absolute crap episodes such as Litmus last season, BSG has always tried to be a serious soap opera set in space. And Black Market definitely didn't have that kind of poppy, feel-good nature of being Star Trek or Stargate. A dark, edgy feeling that the second season of BSG has thus far had too little of as of late (aside from Pegasus)... Black Market as a result was completely stripped down to the nitty and gritty, ugly facets of humanity with their pedophillic market, and with even Lee having a taste for a hooker as a replacement blonde...

... damn, that man sure is obsessed with his fucking, dumbass blondes... though sadly, I can relate...

Chevonne or Chevron 9 or whatever the fuck that hooker's name was? Well, she was ugly as fuck to me, and I wanted her fucking daughter to bite the fucking bullet (death wise at least... not the other kind of bullet that sick, perverted minds may have...)... I seriously didn't get why the fuck Apollo was now whining and griping about some pregnant bitch that he left to fend for herself back on Caprica. Why the fuck would he start caring now, about ditching the love of his life to go back and bitch to his father on Galactica?...

Or more to the Ron Moore point, why the fuck are we only learning about this fucking bitch now?...

This was a Lee Apollo Adama backstory all the way through, even going so far as to removing Starbuck, Grace Park, and Helo (thank the gods for that one) completely out of the episodic equation... Hell, while Kara had absolutely as many lines as Pete did back on Smallville's 100th Episode, we got Dualla slutting it up here with Apollo instead. How the fuck can she be that damn horny to go after Apollo why she's still fucking up Billy over on the other end? What the fuck?...

But if anyone was more of a bitch than double-lack-of-D, it was the Madame President. Not only did she completely piss over Baltar's face, essentially demanding his resignation, but she actually was upset with Lee over letting the black market continue? I know that she's supposed to be a utopian idealist at times or some shit like that, but has she really gone mad enough to massacre the entire Prometheus crew and let another Black Market rise up unknown on just another ship (say, the Daedalus)? WTF?...

Her trade policies would only work in an environment with an actual economy. She must've realized (just like everyone else) that gold becomes worthless when you don't have enough food, water, or one-eyed dolls. So why the fuck would her trade policies ever goddam work in a world where demand will always outstrip supply? WTF?...

Col. Tigh sadly lost a drinking partner, as the writers absolutely wasted no time in removing Col. Fisk from the show (though we got a decent Doc Cottle scene out of it for once). I wouldn't be surprised if the writers also somehow blew up Pegasus with the fucking nuke that Dr. Baltar gave away, considering I think it's become transparently apparent that Ron Moore wants the isolated feel of having just one Battlestar back in commission... Col. Tigh at least got a moment to shine during his own interrogation, as he admitted to trading away a few trinkets for fruit and of course booze. But that was essentially all he did in Black Market, and that's essentially all he has done in the second half of the second season so far as well...

Maybe he should trade himself on the Black Market to a real show, where he can get a real personality or some shit like that?...

Dr. Baltar at least had a decent moment himself, being interrogated in Col. Fisk's quarters (which I'm sure no Commander will ever want to step foot in again, out of fear of being the third to go in about as many episodes...). Of course, that interrogation went nowhere except to point out that Dr. Baltar still somehow has a steady supply of cigars, and that nobody on the cast and crew trusts the man as far as they can throw him...

Now, I've always loved the character for being all self-righteous and only self-interested. It's just that in the second season, Baltar's gone really bonkers with his ideas of what will save his life or give him power, as he seems to be siding with the Cylons either out of spite for the president, or out of genuine misguided belief that the Cylons would preserve and worship him... I don't think he's ever really been that damn deluded and dumb before, but I'll save my reservations for another day...

If any one sole character shined in the spotlight in the dismal Black Market, it was James Edward Olmos as Admiral Adama once again. He was subdued as hell and didn't really say a thing, but Olmos has never really needed a script to be the fucking man on the show... Take the final scene of the episode for instance. Just his little comment, that Lee should've told him about "the girl", sadly felt more intriguing and more deep to me than any of the forced and contrived shit that the writers had thrown at my television screen beforehand. Hell, that one line alone left me wanting more as the credits began to scroll, no matter how much the episode sucked ass even moments before...

But alas, no matter how the final seconds went, this episode was shit overall right from the get-go. Why else would Ron Moore waste the opening teaser yet again with another fucking flash-forward scene, to Lee aiming a gun at some no-name, black guy in a suit?... What the fuck is this anyhew? A bad clone of 24 (not that 24 wasn't shit in the first place, mind you?...

And goddammit, must the black guy always be the first to die?... Even if he actually dies 24 hours after everyone else?...

Lee was back to his Seppukku, suicidal ways again, although at least it had some meaning for once when he was begging the thug guy to just pull the fucking trigger on him. I also expected him to be at least decently badass with the shards of glass in the hooker lounge, yet Apollo got his ass kicked and name taken anyhew by just one measly piano cord. WTF?...

I really don't get why the writers decided to shove all this shit on us so damn suddenly, about his ex-girlfriend wanting a child with him or some shit like that. And I especially don't get why we got Dualla forced on us as well (well, I wouldn't mind if she forced herself on myself alone... just D and me...), rather than giving us a super-horny Starbuck in the end (when wasn't it her who got her ovaries removed by the Cylons)?...

I don't know, but somehow I could just really use a good black market or a decent SG-1 memoir device, to trade these shit memories of this episode away for something that's actually decently worth remembering...

And yet still? Black Market still felt more like a true, first season episode of BSG than almost everything else in the second season of the show so far...

"It's been one of those few amazing weeks in SciFi television, if you asked me at least. Stargate Atlantis, while not superb, was still solid as hell with its season finale of Allies. And Stargate SG-1 continued it hot streak of episode awards of the week, with one of the most memorable hours of the year in Ethon...

The real surprise of the week for me though, was that Battlestar Galactica came so damn close from stealing the weekly honours from the latter up above... Reading the quick synopsis of Scar, it sounded like it would simply be just a bad rip-off of the Lion King or some shit like that. Or at least, I was hoping for some sort of gangsta, Scarface moment... Hell, I was still hoping for some goddam Tommy Gun action when it was all said and done. Where the fuck is Ron Moore's Simba pride?...

While Scar can't quite match the brilliance that Pegasus or Kobol's Last Gleaming managed the first time around that I watched those episodes, I still have to admit that I was absolutely shell-shocked and floored at just how well structured of an episode that it all turned out to be in the end...

Scar was nothing flashy, and the concept of an enemy Red Baron has been done time and time again in SciFi shit. But it was just done all so well in the end, in a tighly knit single story, that I really do consider it to be perhaps the strongest and most solid standalone episode the series has ever done since The Hand of God...

Of course, it still can't hold a candle to The Hand of God, namely because of all the shitass flashbacks we got... but that's really besides the point...

I mean, Anders? Mr. fucking Anderson? Why the fuck would we care about his ass, let alone Kara caring about fucking his ass all over again?... Did we really need to be reminded of that forced, god-awful Pyramid match he had with Super Starbuck? Are we really supposed to give a damn that the guy could potentially be alive, when we all pretty much wished that he never existed in the first place? WTF?...

It's not like the guy can really die, right? He's a virus, who can stick his hand into people and turn them into clones of himself. Where the fuck is Neo when he's needed?... Or at least bring back Doral from SG-1 to show Anders what it means to be a real fucking Cylon...

But at least the bastard gave Thrace a real purpose to be on the show again. I didn't care for a single one of her flashbacks, but the actress still did such a wonderful joy in conveying the frustration she was having, with just the hope that Anders could still be alive...

It was scary actually, that I enjoyed Helo scenes for once. The guy was still so damn pussy-whipped afterall, as the asshole even tapped out to a Kara Thrace elbow drop in the end... But even so, we got to see Starbuck open up to Helo about her shitass Anders feelings, in a way that strangely enough didn't feel contrived or awkward. She was frustrated because for once, she actually had a reason to live (as Helo put it), instead of just being the cocky son of a bitch she's always been...

Damn though, I wish we did get that cocky son of a bitch back... the one that ripped apart Scar's brains last season and salted the wound by stealing his ride...

Rough day for the Raider?... hmm... Guess it wasn't so pleased about that in the end... would you be?...

I think The Hand of God proved without a shadow of a doubt (and maybe even Resurrection Ship, to a much lesser extent), that Battlestar Galactica is at its best when it's all about dogfights between Vipers and Cylon Raiders. Having Scar as a threat felt real, not just because he was picking on pilot n00bs, but because he wasn't really any generic Raider... He had a history with Kara. We can only assume what that was, but I think we can safely assume that there's only one damn Raider out there who would have a personal enough grudge to be hunting her ass every step of the way...

Grace Park finally had a purpose again, besides just looking fat and ugly as a pregnant whore. Her belly was never shown once, and I was thankful as hell for that shit... Instead, she was sort of like a ghost story teller. I mean, who else are you gonna call when there's an evil Cylon Raider in the neighbourhood?...

And she told the story extremely well, how Cylon Raiders just keep on getting better and better every single fucking time they get nixed by Starbuck or whoever else. Boomer built up just a lowly Raider into what felt like a real threat for an episode, if only because we had no real idea whether Kat would survive the next encounter or not...

I guess Kat was pushing it a bit, trying to hide her fears with all her show-boating and shit like that. Still, she made a wonderful reference to Tigh when it came to Starbuck sucking down the booze, and even I laughed at the oohs and awes that ensued... I've never really liked Kat as a character, considering she's been done so many times before in fighter jet movies like Top Gun. But she did start to open up a bit, thanks to all her lesbian looks of lust at Riley's really hot girlfriend in that picture. Because let's just say, that ex gave me a fucking Pikon where it counts...

But wait, what was Kat holding in her hand in the mess-hall?... I really did like the meaning behind that mug. Kara really put a lot of soul and heart into her speech at the end, of just simple callsigns of names that she claimed she couldn't remember just a few scenes before...

And really, how the fuck can you ever hate a show, that has the guts to paint straight on the screen the two words, "Top Gun"?...

I'm sure it did to fucking Lee and Kara too, as their fucking sex scene was absolutely directed to be as goddam awkward and Brokeback, broken back awful as possible... I know that the writers want to stay away from those two ever getting together (at least until the final season of the show), but they just seemed so damn bad for each other, that it looked too damn fake in the end. They were so damn cool with each other as they were spitting booze on one another, and yet Kara fracks up again by trying to posterize Anders' fucking face on Lee's damn body?...

Speaking of women with issues, the Madame President was actually respectable for once in an episode. Or at least, tolerable for the few scenes she was there... She didn't technically badmouth anyone or order another execution. She was simply the bearer of both good news and bad news, old news and new news, and I respected her neutrality on the combined military and civilian issues when it came to the mining operation... Of course, I know she'll be back to being a complete bitch next episode. But at least for one week, I haven't been further scarred...

Admiral Adama and Colonel Tigh just did a bunch of frakkin' around in CIC, but at least they looked like they were in charge for once. It's obvious that the writers feel so much more comfortable with just Galactica on the show (as Pegasus was shoved away out of sight with the fleet in Scar), and I personally thought the two commanders of the ship did a great job in letting the pilots learn to fight this threat themselves...

They were concerned for the pilots as any leader would be, as they were right there in the mess-hall during the combined celebration and memorable for those who were lost. And yet at the same time, they both kinda felt like fathers (or at least, Adama did as usual), letting Kara and Lee in the end learn what it means to be a true leader... or what it means to want to survive, simply for the sake of your people surviving...

Of course, I think we all know why I currently count Scar as the best damn standalone episode since The Hand of God (and it's not just because of the mere coincidence, that both episodes deal with mining operations and kickass special effects...)...

Scar was a nifty little opponent, and gave the special effect studios a perfect excuse for putting all their time and effort again into the aerial combats in space. The dogfights weren't just spectacular due to the creative use of sunlight glare and fucking asteroid debris confusion, but also from the fact that for the first time since Kobol's Last Gleaming, or even The Hand of God? The 'cinematography' in space (with all the zooms and focusing) was startlingly epic to say the least... or at least, noticable to my untrained eye...

In pretty much any other week of the year (or at least, those in which SG-1 does not air...), Scar would've been my episode of the week, hands down. Of course, it just happened to air during one of the best damn Fridays of SciFi in the entire bloody hell year so far, but I sure as hell ain't complaining...

It's been a really weird past few days really, with Cylon humanoids invading the SGC, fucking Cylon viruses making the Atlantis team look like complete morons, and fucking Mr. Anderson fucking with Starbuck's mind over on BSG...

And I really did expect to have been scarred for life, from yet another god-awful, atrocious Battlestar Galactica episode of the second season...

I mean, I didn't really like this episode. Hell, I was laughing out of my maniacal mind when Lee got shot, as the fucking pussy bastard deserved to get his ass kicked by the girl who truly wears the pants in the family... And God, I couldn't help but mock Colonel Reynolds cowering in the corner, obviously pissed off that he scrapped his secure job over on SG-1 just to become the equidistant of Jaffa cannon fodder over on BSG...

And yet Sacrifices still turned out to be my episode of the week?... It wasn't the episode I most enjoyed, but it was definitely still the most well written one of the three (not that Smallville ever has a chance in hell of winning, mind you)...

... and fuck, Mary Poppins wasn't even in the running... so really, Sacrifices wins by default?...

Last week's episode of Scar was much better than Sacrifices on a whole, but lost to SG-1's Ethon for episode of the week. So I suppose it's only fair then, that I take the bullet and the goddam frakkin' sacrifice, to give Battlestar Galactica its due props for two straight decent weeks...

And I gotta admit, I did laugh my fucking head off at Billy being the hero and getting himself killed...

... oh boo hoo, the poor fucking bastard was shot in the heart... how appropriately sad for the lovesick asshole, I guess?...

Seriously though, Billy hasn't really been in the series since the first season. He was meant to be killed off in Valley of Darkness long ago, and he's just been on borrowed time since... Sure, it must've broken his heart to know that Dualla was fucking cheating on his ass the whole damn time. But at least he got to go out as the hero, or trying to be the hero at least... What a fucking moron though. He was too damn clueless to know what kind of skank he was dating. And then he actually got himself killed, right before he would've been naturally saved of course...

And as for Dualla? The chief petty bitch of the whole goddam show these days?... What the fuck is wrong with her? Not only does she fuck over Billy's marriage proposal by dating Lee the very same night, but she fucking flirts with Lee in the hospital bed rather than ever giving one damn bit about Billy lying cold in the morgue on the other side of the room?... As soon as her boyfriend dies, she starts making new dating plans with the other man who fucking almost died for her as well, without even giving two damn shits about their two damn sacrifices? Talk about a man eater. WTF?...

God, I wished it was her who had died rather than fucking Billy in this episode...

... though I guess I should've seen this coming, considering she did get to learn from the actual bitch herself on Smallville last season...

And fuck... we didn't even get Chloe-form cleavage out of it all... What kind of fucking useless, episode of the week was that?...

Well, at least Starbuck looked decent. When her hair was down, she really glistened in her little R&R clothing... Of course, the episode just felt really out of it when it came to Kara the rest of the way through. She had no real introduction into the episode, as she just magically Mary popped her way into Cloud 9 right from the get go. And after she shot Lee? All she did was cower in the corner, obviously afraid that she'll be deported along with Colonel Reynolds to SG-1 for frakkin' things up (if she's lucky...)... I suppose shooting fucking Apollo would set things back a bit in their budding relationship of rough non-sex. But if there were any ramifications to her friendly fire incident? We sure didn't witness them here in Sacrifices...

Now, Lee Adama has officially become the fucking Tom Welling shit of the series, as he was completely whipped by Dualla over on Cloud 9. He did everything in his power to save her, and fucking got screwed in the chest by a bullet because of it. The writers are obviously trying to extend the life of the relationships in the series, but it just sucks that they're wasting all their time with it on Apollo of all people... The guy may be great in the cockpit, but he's just a goddam clutz when it comes to the cock. The writers absolutely ruined his character with those flashback scenes of his old girlfriend back on Caprica, and now they're making him into a callous bastard by just slutting it up with Dualla in his unborn child' name and memory...

There was no Baltar or Number Six or really any decent characters in Sacrifices... I mean, Saul and Ellen Tigh were there, frakkin' things up as usual. Well, Ellen did at least, as she seems to spy with her little eye and get people into trouble even more than I fucking do with the women at my work (but, umm... that's a story for another day...)... I didn't particularly like how Colonel Tigh was so one-dimensional in Sacrifices, simply being there as the voice of reason about Sharon still being a Cylon. She could be playing the Admiral and nobody would be the wiser, afterall. But still, hearing the Colonel reiterate the same damn Saul stance in all his fucking lines throughout the episode, wasn't exactly my cup of tea either...

Doesn't matter if they're right. You club them over the head with an ugly stick regardless...

Meanwhile, Admiral Adama was still the man as always, but he just wasn't as commanding as he normally turns out to be. He was soft on Sharon, real soft. He refused to kill her when the demands were made, and he seemed to even 'politely' slam the phone on Boomer when she refused to give away the names and faces of her fellow Cylons in the fleet... Still, while his plan to give the dead Sharon body to the terrorists was predictable, I did like how the man refused to give into the real demands whatsoever. He was gungho all the way and paid the price with two marines getting killed for nothing, but at least I got my quick fix for semi-automatic fire for the week...

And as for the president? Sure, the actress completely stole the scene as she couldn't contain her tears and guilt at the sight of Billy's dead body. But her character as a whole was just plain grating to me throughout the whole of the episode... Isn't she supposed to be a fucking school teacher? I understand that events have hardened her into a bitch in the clutch who always drives stick, but it just feels weird and wrong that she's consistently more gung-ho about killing everyone in sight than Adama and the military ever have been...

It should've been her and Dualla biting the fucking sacrifice in this episode rather than Billy...

I mean, I for one sure wouldn't have minded a scene of a dead naked Sharon, watching the dead naked Dualla on top of the dead naked president...

Though, wait... Necrophilliac Chloe-form cleavage?... umm... eww... That's just wrong, even by my standards...

... I guess, maybe the fucking god-awful Smallville episode of the week really got to me more than I thought?...

Because obviously Tomb over on Smallville sucked dick real hard as always. And Stargate SG-1, while entertaining as hell? Just didn't have the brains nor the real butter of brawn to really take home the prize this week...

Therefore, Sacrifices gets the nod by default... if only for the fact that I still can't stop fucking laughing at Billy's pathetic demise...

... and if only because the lead terrorist bitch was... well?... you know... kinda hot?...

Obviously, Sacrifices wasn't the greatest of BSG episodes. But last week kinda was...

"Last week, Battlestar Galactica won the episode of the week award, simply by default...

The same goes for this week, except for one slight difference... and that is?...

And you know what? While The Captain's Hand was nothing truly revolutionary, it was still a surprisingly solid episode, even if it was in a week where obviously it didn't have much competition for the IvanFian award...

Now, Battlestar Galactica went back to its Old School ways of bashing us over the head with an obvious ugly stick, when it came to its complete lack of subtlety over the abortion issue of today. I can understand why of course that this sensitive issue would become so damn major in the BSG world, but I just didn't like how Ron Moore handled it at all, that's all...

Hate me if you will, but I am anti-abortion. I believe in freedom of choice, but not at the cost of life obviously. The only issue has always been for us, what is the definition of life?... The thing is, despite my stance on the subject, Baltar was right in the end. Both Laura Roslin and Ron Moore treated the abortion issue like a machine... Laura wanted people to simply procreate for the simple fact that more human lives are needed, stripping us of our freedom of choice in the process. And Ron Moore on the other hand, pretty much turned the whole abortion debate into two clears sides of pure black and white, as if we were dealing with a goddam computer boolean programming problem here...

Why was it that Ron Moore made the Geminon people all seem like religious fanatics, demanding that the pregnant girl stay as the "property" of her parents? Why was it that both Laura Roslin and Baltar at least hated the idea of banning abortion, and that the only non-religious-extremist who sided with pro-life was the military man of Admiral Adama of all people?... It just seemed so fucking partisan, whatever the hell that means, you know? It just seemed that everyone logical or everyone with human feelings picked pro-abortion as their choice, while all the characters closest to the Cylons in terms of one-dimensional personalities picked the pro-life formula instead...

Now, don't get me wrong. I definitely did see both sides of the argument in The Captain's Hand. It's just that, when one side is dealing with the idea of "freedom" or fries or Freestars or whatever, and the other side is talking about the sheer number crunching of our species as a whole? I dunno, but... Couldn't Ron Moore have at least brought up the idea of the fetus being an actual living person at one point or anything? It was purely freedom versus the machines here instead. The argument he presented just didn't seem fair...

With that said, this was probably Laura Roslin's best episode in a while, though that's hardly saying anything. She was still a bitch obviously, scolding the Gemini representative without giving a damn about respecting her beliefs... But I do admit that the president had a tough decision to make in The Captain's Hand, both morally and politically. And while personally I think she made the wrong decision politically (and made her decision for the wrong moral reasons perhaps as well), I've still gotta admire the fire that the actress always presents every single time she stands behind that podium for a speech to the press...

Baltar was a sniveling weasel in The Captain's Hand, and that's exactly the way I prefer him to be. I have no clue whether Tom Zarek knew that Gaius had turned moronic with his support of the Cylon cause, but I still loved the smugness between of the two of them in that scene. Baltar craves power and recognition, and Zarek knew that (and perhaps was even manipulating that to his advantage somehow?)... I almost felt sorry for Roslin at times, even if she always has been a bitch, considering she never really saw Baltar's betrayal coming. One moment, he's advocating to her the harsh reality of the human numbers game (and therefore recommending pro-life), and then suddenly later using his recommendation against her right in the mug and the spotlight of the fucking press...

Speaking of sniveling weasels? Well, I'd normally call fucking petty bitch Dualla that, except she did look pretty smoking hot in the nude... Now, I absolutely can't stand the whole thing she has going with Lee. I mean, just one month ago, her boyfriend sacrifices himself to save her life, and now suddenly she forgets all about him while banging the guy she was cheating on him with? WTF?... Still, I can't deny that as long as I get more scenes of Dualla's naked backside (and hopefully front later on), I can't really complain...

It takes two to tango, and thus I've hated Lee Apollo for the past half season, simply for this shit Dualla crap and his sudden new love for the kamikaze run. But if anything has saved his character? It's definitely been the fact that at least his relationship with Kara is finally going somewhere, romantic or not... She was back to being her old cliche, flygirl self in The Captain's Hand, and that's not such a bad thing. Sure, I kind of found it odd how her friendly fire incident with Lee was barely mentioned whatsoever, but at least its one mention did provide the spark to a decent reconciliation scene between the two of them...

Were they really cool with each other at the end? I don't know. Apollo's whole speech about how Kara pisses him off, just felt juvenile in comparison to the rest of the writing on the show... But all I do know, is that whenever we get Kara Thrace laughing it up in her Viper cockpit as the fucking Battlestar before her gets nuked to hell? Then you just know that Ron Moore is going back to the Old School ways of what fucking works for the series, and that's normally a good thing...

If there's any other omen that the writers have done an episode justice? It's the fucking Celtic music crap that always plays between Admiral Adama and his son... Now, I personally feel that the music is way overused and hasn't felt appropriate outside of Home and The Hand of God. But there's also no denying, that every single episode where the music has played, has at least been decent or above average in the end... and The Captain's Hand was definitely no exception...

Admiral Adama was his usual self, being all calm and reserved while also being the most kickass leader known to SciFi. He presented his abortion opinion to the president in a way that was both tactful and very objective, even if there was some personal bias behind it. And even when he was not so diplomatic when it came to Doc Cottle? At least Adama never once lost that sense of commanderness that almost every single Pegasus CO seemed to lack since Admiral Cain bit the bucket...

Oh, Commander Gardner. Where do I start with thee? I was hoping for so much more from him. Afterall, both he and I are engineers or some shit like that...

The episode was trying to have a central theme here, with Baltar stealing the spotlight with his talk off the new abortion law stripping us closer to becoming machines, and Gardner here treating his crew as if they were nuts and bolts. I just wished at least, that Gardner wasn't so dumbass with his whole theory about rescuing his damn Raptors, even against the Admiral's orders... Sure, he attempted to redeem himself and my engineering kind by suiciding himself to save the ship. But really, considering how damn obvious the Cylon trap was? I could care less for the commander who embarrassed my kind and died alone in his home of engineering...

The command of a ship is more about the people than it is about the machines. Or at least, that's what Captain Adama made out to be the moral of the story...

No, wait... say again?... That's Colonel Adama for you? Or Commander Adama? WTF?...

William T. Riker must be pulling out the plugs of what remains of his hair. I mean seriously, how long did Ron Moore make that asshole wait patiently for Captain Picard just to roll over and die and yield for him a command? How many years did it take that first officer just to be promoted to captain? And yet Captain Lee Adama does it all here, getting his own damn Battlestar after just one fucking episode? WTF?...

Well, at least the ol' Star Trek: The Next Generation character can take some solace in the fact... that at least Commander Riker technically had the same exact rank as Apollo did by the end of this episode?...

Finally we had a proper Lee Adama episode to mull over, instead of all that self-destructive crap we got in bullshit like Black Market. Sure, some have complained that the guy froze over in the heat of the battle with the Cylons, but I just found that moment to be great acting on his behalf. Afterall, he was stunned for one second, and a true commander the next... And goddammit, that was a pretty decent fight we got there in The Captain's Hand as well. I mean, the Pegasus took like three or four nukes while still blasting away at a Basestar? Any time we get some decent battleship shit like that, an episode scores a hit and two thumbs up from me of course...

I personally thought that The Captain's Hand got a good look inside the commander's head, and tied up a lot of loose threads when it came to just how dumbass he's been all season long... Sure, in the end it may have turned out decent for the series when it came to his mutiny at the start of the season. But at least we got some recognition here, that perhaps turning his back on his dying father at the time may not have been the most savy or moral of moves... or at least, not in his own fucked up head any longer...

Apollo as a result had a couple of good scenes with Starbuck, as they put their past mistakes and goddam Smallville teen angst behind them. I particularly liked even the shortest of moments later on, when Apollo was open-minded enough to order Starbuck to the Viper hanger bays... And even though Dualla was still fucking up the series with all her captain handjobs? Hell, even Lee was able to salvage those wasted moments of the episode, with the fact that Dualla does have a pretty sweet body and ass (and luckily for us men, she also covered any part of Adama that we did not want to see...)...

Sure, The Captain's Hand doesn't quite rank up there with the best of Battlestar Galactica episodes. Commander Home Alone afterall was as dumbass as he was in the movies, leaving his son (and his crew here) behind. And the B-plot of the abortion shit wasn't handled nearly as tactfully or respectively as I would have expected from Ron Moore and such a controversial subject...

But still, even in a week where my hand was forced, and Battlestar Galactica would get the captain's chair by default as the episode of the week?... well still, nevertheless?...

I think I can still hear Tom Hanks' voice, badly dubbed in Chinese over fucking Commander Gardner's last gasps of breath?...

"To be honest, if I was running the show around here? Downloaded would get episode of the week... if only for how nicely ironic Ron Moore decided to design the episode of the title, just for people like me...

... people who, you know?... get their episodes through the mail, from their second cousin "Bit" in the Yukon... but I digress...

Because since I'm not running the show around here, while my evil brother Lore is? I can't help but think then, that Downloaded could've been so much more than it was... Though to anyone who says that Downloaded sucked ass as an episode (and you know who you are...), then I'd imagine that they just don't get what the real purpose of Battlestar Galactica really is as a show...

I admit that Downloaded sort of made the Cylons into absolute pussies. They were perhaps made a bit too compassionate and a bit too human in the end. As just a little contact with a human that she loved, seemed to actually make the Cylon model number six think twice about nuking 12 billion humans in a night... While that Diana Biers (Number 3) model seemed to absolutely have no conscience whatsoever, I never would've really expected Number Six to actually have one. And yet here, we had Tricia Helfair absolutely acting her supermodel socks off, if only because waking up naked in a giant vat of white goo is always a plus (or a placenta?) in my books...

So, there's a Dr. Baltar crawling around in Number Six's head, just like there is a Number Six in the real Dr. Baltar? Talk about a fucking ironic plot-twist, because this seriously throws almost every single theory we had between the two of them out of the window... Obviously, neither of them are computer chips. Could there actually be a psychic link between the two of them? Probably not, since neither even knows that the other was still alive... How the heck can both of their visions seemingly predict the future? Because unless both hallucinations are actually projected into their minds by the Cylons themselves, you start to wonder whether there really is a higher power at work here...

Either way, I laughed my ass off in Downloaded at just how bitchy Dr. Baltar was in Six's head. He was berating her at every turn, baiting on her guilt for potentially nuking the only man she's ever loved... It was a nice contrast, really. Baltar in Number Six's head was moving her towards peace, while the complete opposite was happening with Number Six in Baltar's mind back on Galactica. I am a fan of circular kinds of storylines afterall, with all loose threads eventually leading and converging in Rome...

Now, I don't really get why the hell Number Six would feel so guilty about the destruction of humanity or Baltar's presumed death right now, considering she barely seemed emotional at all about it back in the miniseries before she was blown away. But Tricia Helfair really did seem to act her clothes off in Downloaded, going absolutely crazy as soon as she came out in a vat of Baltar's goo, with nothing but the Arthur's Mantle clothes on her back...

If there was any other purpose to Downloaded, it was to finally see Grace Park actually do something meaningful on the show once more. And if only to see her naked in a vat of fucking sticky, white goo as well... Now sure, it was cringe-worthy embarrassing to see her try to act serious in the apartment with the whole picture-throwing thing. I mean, I guess she had to learn bad acting from the best, when she starred with Kristen Kreuk back on Edgemont... But even so? It was fun seeing the ol' Galactica Boomer once again, how attached she still was to Chief fucking Tyrol of all people, and how shocked she was that Dr. Baltar was the one who had betrayed the human race in the end...

Grace Park really did act as if she loved her 'family' back on Galactica. It really makes me wonder whether it would be wise for Ron Moore to send this Boomer and Baltar's Number Six over to the fleet one of these days, and see these two Cylon bitches fight it out over whether to turn Baltar in for treason or not... I hope some sort of oil and white goo would be involved if so...

There was definitely something meaningful that happened between the two of them in Downloaded. They both shared emotional bonds with humans that they loved, and they shared an even more lovely lesbian bond between the both of their arms at the episode end... Will the two of them actually start a revolution for the Cylons? I doubt it. But at least it'd be fun once in a while, to check back on Caprica without the crappy ass sense of having to see fucking Helo like in the first season, or fucking Anders again like we did over here...

Fucking Anders. What a fucking moron. He's still wearing Kara's dogtag? God, he's such a pussy whipped asshole... I guess we now know that he ain't a Cylon, otherwise the Diana model wouldn't have wanted to shoot him on the spot. Sucks to be a fan of the show then, really...

At least, I thought that Anders had a noble purpose on the show, besides forced romance with Thrace over a fucking pyramid game. I thought that his goal was to liberate all the remaining humans on earth or some worthless hero crap like that?... Instead here, we see he's become a lowly terrorist, simply there to inflict pain and torture on an opponent he knows it's fucking impossible to win against. Sound fucking familiar?...

... well, some assholes would compare him to President Bush then... but I rather just compare him to fucking Roslin instead...

Laura was a complete bitch in this episode. Really, when was the last episode where we actually got a touching, motherly scene between her and either Lee or Kara?... Here she was at her supreme overlord-bitchliness once again, ordering that the newborn child be adopted into the hands of Mya or whatever her name was...

Now, I wouldn't personally mind if my bits and pieces had been placed in Mya's hands instead, as long as a certain white good was involved. But really, surely the president knows that giving this kid up for adoption wouldn't actually work in the end?... What if it matures faster than a normal human? What if its Cylon tendencies begin to form, and we get a potential enemy from within the fleet that's almost impossible to track?... What if Hera ever wants to meet her mother? Or what if that fucking hot Mya girl was actually a Cylon, as migraine-inducing predictable that would be (besides the fact that she supposedly had a child before, at least)?...

And does Admiral Adama even know about this? Sure, it may be a wise decision for the president to keep the information private even from the military, considering Diana-model Cylons within Galactica could still be plotting to steal the miracle child of Dahak's... But really, must Roslin constantly keep going over Adama's head? He just seemed like such a slow-witted fool in Downloaded as a result, with his only purpose there being to nod his head in agreement with whatever the bitchy ass president said... though I think all men can definitely relate to him on that...

Helo certainly can at least. God, was he fucking useless in Downloaded or what? His only two scenes consisted of him either playing cutesy-pussy-whipped with his new daughter, or fucking acting stone cold clueless when it came to his child's ashes... At least Doc Cottle brought something to the episode with his dark sense of humour, and the fact that he got the life choked out of him. And at least Tyrol didn't have a fucking line in the entire episode to annoy us with... What's Helo's excuse then? Even the death of his baby wouldn't shut him the fuck up...

To be honest, I was disappointed with everything that happened on the Galactica ship itself. Almost to the point where I ironically had to start calling it Craplactica... Grace Park wasn't even darling in her role. I mean, besides getting her finger wrapped by some ET looking, penis-wrinkly hand, did she even have a part over in the fleet at all?... I expected more, much more, from an episode dealing with the core fundamental story arc that's been running since last fucking season. I may hate the whole religious aspect of the show, but I hate it even more than it's almost been completely forgotten in the goddam series...

Yet over on Caprica? Despite the presence of Anders, it was anything but Crapica for once... We got some valuable insight into the Cylon culture, we got to finally see Grace Park in the hottest fucking sense again as she did sweaty ass chin-ups over the thought of angry sex, and we even got some absolutely classic scenes of Dr. Baltar playing revenge on poor Number Six's fragile mind...

Now, don't get me wrong. I ain't gonna put this episode on a mantle or anything, as Downloaded in the end was essentially what amounts to a clip-show. An hour of television that will hopefully save money for the last two and a half episodes to close out the season, that is... Budget concerns are always there for any series, and we as an audience should never forget about that...

But still, true to the white goo?... and more than true for the aptly named, "Downloaded"?...

"Oh, Battlestar Galactica... You didn't just lay down your burdens. You laid down and took it in the ass, when it came to every single element of your series that I actually did goddam like...

First things first, is it just me, or did it seem goddam Michael ironic on this side of things? That a Battlestar Galactica episode with the actual words "Lay Down" in its title, somehow did not feature fucking sex in the goddam end?...

... and considering Grace Park was no longer with her foobar pregnancy?... somehow I do not approve of this sudden celibacy...

Speaking of celibacy, here we had Dean Stockwell Day as a Kobol priest. He's either the most obvious candidate in the known universe for being a Cylon, or he's actually the best damn priest that I've ever seen in a confession... If there's any real reason why Battlestar Galactica, in all its shitty asstasticness in this week, deserves the actual episode of the week award? It was because Dean Stockwell kicked ass in the teaser opener, mocking the gods and putting Tyrol the pussy into his fucking place...

And obviously, Scott Bakula = Dean Stockwell, while Michael Ironside = Tom Welling. And since Enterprise is WAY >>>>>> than Smallville? Then obviously, Battlestar Galactica would win the episode of the "weak" battle by default...

Some on the net have tried to claim that Lay Down Your Burdens was a decent episode, by claiming that Tyrol kept it all together in one great Vala, storytelling piece. But I'm sorry, but why is he all fracked up again?... First of all, why does he feel bad for slaughtering Cally? We all know that all of us either want to fuck her or frack the annoying bitch up, so why the long face at her bloody nose, Chief? You simply did what we all expected any good natured human to do...

Of course, he doesn't really think he's human anymore. But did we really need half of the fucking episode, if not more to find out that one dumbass revelation, for a character who obviously has had no confidence in himself since he first learned of Sharon's betrayal?... I hate dreams in television, you know? I mean, Tyrol has been having suicidal dreams for just two weeks, yet he's complaining? Meanwhile, I've been dreaming of staking myself in the heart for God knows how many decades by now, yet you don't see me with a fucking God-awful gruffy beard (mainly because as a hairless Chinese, I've never had to shave in my life... but that's a story for another day...)...

Was it just me, or did time flow by so frackin', fucked up fast and furious in Lay Down Your Burdens? Was it just me, or did the Galactica not only find a completely random planet (hopefully thanks to the Cylons as part of their plan), but also completely scouted its surface and discovered the most habitable regions, all in the span of about ten seconds flat? WTF?...

Isn't Battlestar Galactica normally the only show known to humanity, that actually moves slower in time than even fucking 24? WTF?...

Lay Down Your Burdens was just a fucked up episode, I'm sorry. As soon as the opening credits started to roll, it just didn't feel like that same ol' BSG that I've loathed and yet somehow loved for the past two seasons (or first season, really... second season has been mostly shit...)...

There were just too many running plotlines and threads to give a damn about... On one side, we had the fleet apparently scouting an entire planet and having a fucking presidential election, all within the span of half a fucking hour on the show. On the other ironside, we had a massive pointless trip back to Craprica, where Kara fucking goes back for the one man that we all wish she would just put a bullet in the frakkin' head of already... I mean, we all knew she was messed up in the head. But this frackin' fucked up? No fucking way...

And both of these plots probably took place over the course of weeks in the actual BSG universe... So, does that mean that Tyrol was fucking stuck in the same damn conversation with the Stock market priest, for God knows how many fucking weeks as well? God, what a fucking pussy...

And you gotta feel bad for Colonel Tigh as well. The guy only got ten seconds of actual footage on Galactica Actual, with not a single line uttered at all... God, you might as well start calling him fucking Lt. Gaeta or some shit like that...

At least Dualla and Lee didn't have a single fucking scene together (which was odd, as mentioned before with the episode title...). Instead, she was back at her post of being the Enterprise Hoshi of the series, and Lee simply had pretty much just one single scene of saying absolute shit to Kara...

I mean, good hunting? WTF? Is he trying to steal my God Speed, Good Luck, and Good Will Hunting, cliche line or some shit like that?...

I often forget he's the new commander of Pegasus, which is why his briefing scene with Kara was actually pretty decent. She obviously doesn't see him as the boss, and he doesn't see her as his subordinate. The two definitely have a good friendship together, even if it did seem odd to see them both together, talking about fucking useless Anders in the death-trap known as the commander's private room on Pegasus... Will the two ever get together in this space opera? I don't give a frack if they do. But the two actors obviously both know each other and play so damn well off each other's lines and looks, which is more than I can say for anything dealing with fucking Craprica...

You see, the opening teaser of Lay Down Your Burdens was decent, before the whole episode starting fucking up. Afterall, we got Tyrol beating Cally in the face and up the ass, we got Lee and Starbuck sharing some Smallville teen angst, and we got some decent scenes between Madame President and Admiral Adama as well...

The second season of the show has been pretty much a complete wash, considering Admiral Adama has been barely used to his full potential outside of Pegasus. And he was pretty much in only one decent scene in Lay Down Your Burdens as well, but at least he made the most of the moment... Edward James Olmos is a pimp, and he just seems to have such a natural feel with Laura Roslin. It was nice to finally get a reminder of his lawyer of a father, and I always seem to find the superstitions of the successful to be interesting at heart... The breaking of the pencils was decent, I suppose. But I guess he really must hate the bitch and wants her to lose, if he didn't pony up his goddam lighter...

How 'bout Torrie then? Can the cute, babyfaced brown run for the presidency as well? I'd vote for her short skirt anyday...

But meh, I guess at least Roslin was sort of back to being her old charismatic self, when it came to her practice speeches and giggles going into the debate room. But besides that, she was simply the cold hearted bitch that reminds me just why I hate politics in real life, let alone in a fucking show meant for my amusement... Sure, some may comment on the mud-slinging she and Baltar brought forth whenever they shook hands, as I suppose that did bring a touch of realism back to the series. But every time the bitch opened her mouth to make a return comment during the debates? God, her lines were written so damn woefully bad, that it was almost as if she was channeling George Dubya Bush doing improv or some shit like that...

Tom Zarek must be a moron. Why didn't he run for president, when apparently Baltar himself couldn't win alone? Couldn't Tom have just run away with shit like the abortion scheme and this newfound planet himself, and left fucking Baltar in the dust?... Either way, the only decent scenes we ever got out of Baltar were whenever Number Six in his head was sexing up Zarek's shoulders. The actor sure must be a lucky man, just to get that damn close to a fucking supermodel time and time again... But besides that, what else did Baltar do? He had a decent speech about the differences between hope and fear, but simply spent the rest of the episode being the moron who knew nothing without Zarek...

You gotta love the fact that BSG at least sexed her up again with the tight white tank top. You've gotta hate the fact though, that her excuse at being there gave Helo a fucking excuse as well to open his goddam mouth... We got one paltry real reference to Hera being dead or missing from last week's episode. Has that much time really passed in the Battlestar Galactica universe somehow? Helo meanwhile, didn't even seem to give a damn about the miracle Vala child he once had, but rather seemed relieved that he could finally get back into the Cylon's hottie pants all over again... Wouldn't you too, me thinks?...

God, Ron Moore couldn't even write a decent ending to this fucking first parter of the finale. Finally, after grating my eyes for God knows how long, at fucking Starbuck losing a Raptor to a mountain during an effort of saving Anders of all people? Finally, we got some action, with massive barrages hopefully tearing the fucking pyramid playing asshole to shrapnel... And then all of a sudden, just when the episode felt like it was finally actually starting, we got a fucking "To be continued" riff instead? WTF?...

Seriously though, is it just me, or does every season of Battlestar Galactica either end with a) a hospitable planet being found, b) Kara going back to Craprica, c) references to Helo being a fucking pansy gay ass... or obviously, d) all of the above?...

Ironic thing was though, that's exactly what we wanted... and that's exactly what we got...

No, wait... that's not what I wanted, at least... I wanted a real fucking episode, gods-frackin'-smack-dammit...

It was depressing really. Really depressing, that not only did SG-1 suck ass this week? But that Battlestar Galactica laid out nothing on the table but absolute shit for us to eat... Yet BSG still gets the slight nod for the week, if only for the twelve minute teaser opener that actually did make Lay Down Your Burdens (Part 1) seem like it wouldn't hurt my frakkin' brain as a whole...

Because after even just one episode like this one? Fucking goddammit, Ron Moore should just lay down and give up the goddam gig already...

Now, I'll still give him the benefit of the doubt, for his huge "risk" coming in next week's episode. But if that too turns out to be a complete asstastic calamity of suckitude, Voyager proportions?... then, well?...

Then I think it'll be about time... to put a fucking Cylon Jihad on his fucking ass...

"I'm getting a feeling of deja vu here... but have I ever really mentioned how much I hate goddam cliffhangers?...

We had been told by Ron Moore himself that he would be taking a major risk in Lay Down Your Burdens (Part 2). And considering this was coming from the guy who let Deep Space 9 get conquered by the Dominion in a fucking season finale, much to the uproar of fans? The sky was simply the limit for what the fuck would happen in the 1.5 hour, second season finale of BSG...

And um, considering just last week I commented, that Battlestar Galactica was the only show that moved slower in realtime than even fucking 24? Then I guess jumping one fucking year ahead in the series, after just one fucking space jump to New Caprica, definitely constitutes a fucking surprise in my eyes...

... and ironically enough?... it was all somehow also enough, to guaranteed for the series the best episode of the week award, really...

Now, I know what all the critics are saying. Basically, Ron Moore pushed the fucking reset button, as almost every single relationship between the characters has been completely changed... Like, for instance, obviously Starbuck ditched Lee because the asshole had become a fat bastard. And something tells me that wouldn't have happened if the series just hadn't jumped the shark along with the jump clock...

It's not just abrupt character changes that concern me, but it's also the fact that the series has on a whole, basically just reset in terms of plotline as well... Two seasons ago, the colonies had been conquered by the Cylons and the humans had to flee in ships. Now, two years later, the colonies get conquered yet again by the Cylons, and the humans have to flee in ships again. WTF?...

And Dr. Gaius Baltar led to the utter destruction of the human race... again?... Does this guy already have the fucking record for this toilet bowl shit or some sort of crap like that?...

I don't know whether it was all a coincidence, or whether the writers intended it to be this way so long ago. But it was Number Six in his head that convinced him to take the nuke from Galactica, and it was a combination of unlucky Sixes that conned him into giving that said nuke up... It was that very same fucking nuke that supposedly led the Cylons straight to New Caprica. And once again, we're stuck exactly where we started off in the first season of the show...

... although ironically, Helo wasn't down on the surface to annoy the frakkin' fuck out of us this time around...

It's been said that you either love the drastic change in the series, or you hate it. That there simply is no between... and I've got to agree with that...

It's just no fun to see characters change in a split second on the show, rather than giving them and the actors a chance to actually grow with the viewers. Take fucking Lt. Gaeta for example... I've just got to assume he's a fucking Cylon, considering he conveniently was the one who knew that the election had been rigged against his man-crush of Dr. Baltar. Then again, one year into the future, he was simply disillusioned with his former hero, as I'm sure every fucking horny Cylon would be with a man stealing two fucking hotties from him at once...

Kara Thrace is a moron. Hell, calling Anders a moron was the only intelligent thing she did all episode... I mean seriously, in the beginning, how the fuck could she not notice the odd stranger in the background, who was so fucking certain that the Cylons had left? And yet both she and Anders still looked fucking shocked as hell when Dean Stockwell admitted he was a Cylon? WTF?... And then on the planet, not only does she fuck up her hair, but she tries to prevent goddam Anders from dying of pneumonia? Frak, the viewers want him to die, and apparently so does Doc Cottle. Only fucking Col. Tigh seemed to frak things up for the fans...

I'm shocked as hell that Saul actually got some decent screen time. It just didn't make sense for him, you know? One moment, he's screwing over the election without any guilt or remorse whatsoever, and the next he's sucking up to Admiral Adama about never leaving Galactica?... And then on the planet, not only is he dumb enough to make amends with Starbuck, but he was enough of a moron to actually want to leave Galactica for that fucking ice rock of a planet? WTF?...

I stand corrected from earlier. Considering how cold the weather was there, and the fact that every bitch was complaining about it?...

Speaking of stupid, I was absolutely shocked that Helo actually was bearable this episode. Was it because he no longer was as pussy whipped when it came to his girl? Or was it simply because he didn't have anything but generic ensign lines to say on the Galactica bridge in the future?... I couldn't stand Grace Park though. I'm not quite sure if that was Galactica's former Sharon who showed up on New Caprica at the end (and if it was, guess she had become a lot more hardlined Cylon than she was before...), but what the fuck happened to the formerly pregnant Sharon? You know, the one that pussy whipped Helo into submission and surrender?...

Did they just let her rot away in the Galactica cell for over a fucking year? WTF?...

Please say that they at least let her pleasure herself with a little vibrating blood-stone. Now that would be my idea of a fucking Holy Grail...

Another character that I was absolutely shocked that I could tolerate? It was Madame President, or the former president of the colonies, really. I know it's all an act and a facade she's putting on, but she really did seem like the sweet children teacher she used to be all over again. I certainly didn't mind a reset button in that regard... Before then though, she was a bitch. She was Airlock Roslin all over again, both in terms of Cylons and Florida ballots. But she was a bitch with a conscience at least, considering she couldn't really go through with her rigging of the polls...

I've complained a lot about Lay Down Your Burdens (Part 2), but that doesn't change the fact that just a few amazing scenes managed to turn this into the episode of the week for me, and probably the third best BSG episode of this shitty ass, second season overall (behind Pegasus and Resistance, but probably ahead of Home and Captain's Hand)...

Edward James Olmos' wasn't the hardass commander that he used to be on the show. Hell, the reset button seemed to have the complete opposite effect on him, as apparently he was too fucking pussy over the course of the past year to actually stage a coup and do what's right for the fleet... He knew that Dr. Baltar would fuck over the colonies. He knew that staying in one place, without let's say the human defences of earth to shield them, would be complete suicide against any Cylon attack. Yet he just laid back and promoted fucking Helo of all people to CIC, to infect his mind with even more pussiness? WTF?...

And the pornstache? WTF?... It made him look more like, umm... Super Mario?... alas, not in a good way...

But even so, Admiral Adama had an absolutely touching scene with the president about her electoral actions. There was definitely a strong connection between the two, as you know a scene just works when for once, I didn't hate fucking Laura Roslin... In the Dean Stockwell scenes, while obviously a lot of the humour there between the two "brothers" was decent enough as it was (I mean, gotta love how quickly the guy gave up on insisting he was human, as soon as he saw his own face sitting there staring back at him...)? Even so, I think Adama interrogating the two of them in utter disbelief, simply pushed that scene over the top in quality...

Adama had a good heart to heart talk with Colonel Tigh as well. I thought the script writing in that scene was cliche, but the respect between the two of them did still feel genuine... And hell, even when the two Adamas were deliberating over whether to fucking jump ship (literally) once the Cylon fleet arrived? Hell, even then, the Admiral still looked like he could kick ass and take names with just his stone cold eyes themselves... Admiral Adama may be a pussy now. But he's still The Man...

Meanwhile, Lee didn't look like he could even kick Dualla's ass any longer in the fatty ass shape he was in. The only thing he'd "hit it" with I bet, would be a fucking goddam McDonald's Big Mac at the time... What a fucking candy ass he's become. He promoted Dualla to being a CAG or a XO or some shit like that, and then was completely too wussy to just tell Starbuck over the phone to "shut the fuck up, bitch, and let me work"? Grow some balls, dude...

I guess I did feel sorry for him at one point, as I think we men have all been in his situation before, of seeing the woman he loves in another man's arms (and to add insult to injury, in the arms of the fucking moron Anders to boot...). But is that any excuse to just waste away with prosthetics on your face, while Dualla over there still looks as fucking fine and bitchy as ever?... Wait, he lives with that fucking petty bitch? Now I really feel sorry for the guy...

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Dr. Baltar though? Because just like with a Full Circle, we come back to the very same asshole who fucked over the colony not just the first time, but the second. The same frakkin' son of a bitch lucky enough to not only fuck two stunning women right up the ass at once (they both looked hot in suits... and even hotter out of them as well...), but also gets to brag he was the lucky man who "fucked" over Cloud 9 (quite literally, actually)?... Was he really any worse of a president than Roslin was? He did what the people wanted, which is supposedly what any democratic country should do. What did he do really wrong then, besides surrender his sorry ass in ten seconds flat like the French?...

... as in the professional opinion of the scholarly Tom Hanks, would it be safe to say?... that the BSG fleet got... 'owned'?...

Ron Moore has already compared the third season of BSG to the occupation of France during WW2. But if you ask me, if the first two seasons of the show were 9/11 and the war on terror? Then wouldn't the occupation of New Crapica sort of make it... the occupation of Iraq?...

OH TEH NOES! Will the Cylons force democracy on us?... Why must the Capricans hate freedom? Freedom isn't free, you know...

Now, I don't exactly know if I truly do like this new dynamic of the show. Why bother with this underground resistance crap, when we already got a taste of it with Helo in season one and Anders in season two? And we now hate both of those two characters as a fucking result?...

You know who I want a taste of though? That fucking hot Mya babe with the baby...

She's from that annoying Canadian Post Office commercial, isn't she? The one that keeps playing with that same fucking song, every single fucking week here for the past year or so... And now she can be in frakkin' New Canada commercials as well in fucking BSG, apparently...

Uggh, despite the shitty ass commercial? Oh, if only she could be my Sangreal... then I would be on fucking Cloud 9 (well, hopefully not the nuked one, but that's besides the point)...

And if only to match just how epic Stargate SG-1 felt this week with Camelot? I think I did get some chills down my spine upon witnessing the massive fleet of Raiders soaring across the skies of the settlement. It was a jaw dropping exclamation point on the episode, the one and only that left me demanding more and more, which is exactly what any good cliffhanger should do...

... but umm, even so?... did I ever mention, that I fucking hate cliffhangers? I thought I might...

I don't know if I was or ever will be quite ready to leave the old BSG formula out in the dust. But I definitely am looking forward to the new season, just the same way I was left in awe at Commander Adama's assassination attempt last season...

I think I'm getting a major sense of deja vu here. But still, until October then?...