Letters to the Editor
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Buffalonian, "Grey's" deserves all its insults.
I am forced to watch that series on a regular basis. It bears most of the flaws of contemporary prime time soap opera. Perhaps most annoying is the voiceover narrator that tells us what's happening and sums up the moral at the end for us poor stupid Americans who can't distill the Great Message of the show.
"Grey's" does that, with its title character who doesn't understand any of the Great Message during the show, or remember any of that wisdom for the next show. "Desperate Housewives" does it with its dead narrator delivering the Great Message from an anteroom in Hell where she's waiting for the rest of the cast to arrive. Even "Heroes," the only competent adventure show in prime time, does it with its own dead narrator philosophising about evolution and humanity, as if he were Carl Sagan instead of a disgraced and ignored scientist.
I already went through the "Grey's" agony with "Saint Elsewhere," with the same kind of awful doctors bumbling through failed relationships and emotional agonies. I kept hoping that Stephen Furst would go up to a clerk, say "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?", scatter them all over the floor and watch the rest of the stupid cast trip and break their necks. No such luck. All we learned was that, in the final episode, the whole show was a daydream of a retarded kid staring into a snow globe. We viewers were even more brain-damaged; we actually thought the kid had something to say and paid attention. Now the short bus has dropped that kid off at ABC to produce a similar series, but he's old enough to have hormones, and he's throwing a lot of gratuitous sex into the mix.
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My GOD, can we talk about SOMETHING, ANYTHING else on TV?
I clicked onto BSG one night while channel-surfing. I didn't know what it was, but whatever it was, it was bad. The acting was incredibly bad. I watched, kind of amused, for about seven or eight minutes before it began to dawn on me that this was the much-heralded Battlestar Galactica that the Salon tv critics had been wanking about over and over and over again. I checked the tv guide, and sure enough, that was it. I was astonished - cheap sets, bad acting...
But most of all, I just really want Salon to start reviewing something, anything, other than the handful of shows that reviewers go back to over and over. (A search for the title turns up 57 hits on Salon, of which at least 20 are feature articles on the show itself, or significant chunks of "I Like to Watch"). There have been *four* articles on BSG since Being a critic doesn't mean you get to write about your personal favourites every week. It means you review things other people enjoy watching, too.
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It's obviously too challenging for some readers
It's unfortunate that some of our readers are evidently too challenged by this show. This is the best show on television and almost a complete departure from anything before it. I enjoy many of the various iterations of Star Trek, but this show is the anti-Star Trek, and I love it. It's relentlessly grim, but at times, almost uplifting in its realism and courage to make statements nothing else on television has been able to make. I'm just surprised that it has lasted as long as it has.
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How many times?
All right already! Battlestar Galactica may very well be as good as the author and those in agreement maintain. Unfortunately, residing in that app. 1/3 of American househods who do not have cable, I can't really say.
But what I do know is that there have been about a half dozen articles on Salon attempting to push this show. With all the other TV shows that are out there, isn't devoting so much computer "ink" to this one show a little excessive?
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Edward James Olmos
Has perfected acting without moving his mouth. He also seems to need antidepressants. BSG is the perfect humorless self serious 'issues' show for people who are angry that no one feels as badly for them as they do.
If it's trenchant you want, watch Adult Swim.
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The original was better
And by the original I of course mean ST: DS9.
A Dark Dystopian world of the future? The ambiguity of terrorism? The difficulties of occupiers? The problems of fascists and religious zealots? The complex relationship between peacemakers and warmakers, especially when they are one in the same? It's all been done to death.
Rub your eyes sleepy heads, BG is not Tolstoy, it is not Orwell, and it is not even Bradbury. Is it an exemplary piece of shoot `em up sci fi, sure why not, but keep it in context.
For science's sake, all of you, get out of your mothers basements! It's just a T.V. Show!
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Shatner's Second Coming
is actually more of a dick than the real Bill Shatner.
George Takai
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I know nothing about Cylon Sharon or BG
But if they're robots, nothing but robots, then why is it difficult to maintain the position that they're just "homocidal toasters"? A robot is not a human being, and will never be. Just like little David in the movie A.I. was just a robot. Or Ash in the movie Alien.
Who cares? Burn them, torture them, blow them up, whatever. They're machines. If they become a problem, turn them off.
Ehhh..I'd still rather watch South Park and the Sopranos.
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Just a thought
I don't know about the rest of you (both fans and critics alike) but to me, if you step back for a moment you will see a show about humanity.
Trying to label the Cylons as Americans or the Humans and Arabs (or however else you'd personally like to make the show more black and white than it is) misses the point entirely. All of the characters represent the wide diversity of people on this planet. And it also shows the wide variety of situations different people are thrust into. And it does so on all sides of the battle. All Americans are not good people nor are they all evil. All Arabs are not terrorists nor are they all peaceful folk. If you can not agree with that than you have some serious issues that need to be resolved...quickly. And no one here or on a TV show is going to be able to help you with that.
It is very appropriate to draw comparisons to specific situations as they may appear on the show. Or even comparisons between particular characters and people in real life. But when you attempt to create sweeping generalizations about the show, you will fail completely. Just as completely as you will fail in real life. Buy a new TV, that old black and white one isn't showing you the whole picture...