Favorite Television Episodes

Pat just challenged me to write my “Favorite/Greatest 50 Episodes of Television” according to me, and that is a challenge too good to pass up.

Co-workers gave me a crux: Don’t populate it with Battlestar episodes. Which I won’t. I’ll limit it to 3-5 eps per series.

Though I will say that the eight-episode arc of Battlestar Galactica that begins with Season 2′s “Downloaded” and ends with Season 3′s “Collaborators” is going in as 1.

I have no idea when I’ll start/finish this, but it’s a fun little project to think about.

This will make the list for sure, I mean, has anyone in that family ever even SEEN a chicken?:

BSG Auction II

Here’s are the pics from Battlestar Galactica’s second Auction, The Best of the Rest.

more about "BSG Auction II", posted with vodpod

A Season/Series Finale: Scrubs

The SCRUBS finale was as classy as a finale as you can ask for. It featured call backs to the very first episode, gave each character a moment to shine and say goodbye, and looked to a future where the characters lived their lives until the end, happily. It was JD’s final and finest moment, as he took the time to say goodbye to those last eight years of his life, and leave/end the show with a memorable, perfect ending that had me laughing at times, and crying during the final 15 minutes.

Then I heard yesterday that not only was the show coming back, but both Zach Braff and Sarah Chalke had signed on for 6 more episodes.

COME. ON.

The whole point of a finale is to bring closure for the viewer, and the Scrubs finale was borderline perfect! Coming back for more nullifies the effect of that finale, especially since most of the emotions hinged on the fact that you were watching THE END. 

I don’t think I’ll watch any more Scrubs if this turns out to be true. I am done with the show in the best possible way, and don’t want to ruin the emotions that the finale evoked.

If that was the end, I give it a solid A, if it comes back for more, I give it a D- for toying with my fragile emotions.

Because I can’t get enough of it…

Joel McHale, you are my god.

Light in the Distance

I’m not ready to talk about Battlestar’s Finale. I loved every second of it for what was revealed, for what wasn’t, for the leaps of faith it took, for bringing such great characters and such a rich story to a fantastic close. Yet I’m still trying to process everything and understand that my favorite show has come to its end.

So with that, I wanted to write about the trailer for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. The trailer provokes similar emotions that BSG evoked at one point or another: fear, darkness, hope, wonder, excitement. It’s the only piece of media that I can now look forward to like I did for Battlestar every week. Though after seeing Watchmen and being mildly disappointed after loving its trailers so effusively, I refuse to become enamored to a trailer again… but WTWTA is making it very, very hard.

Flashes Before the End.

Today is Wednesday, March 18, 2009.

Battlestar Galactica will end this Friday, March 20, 2009. I don’t want to forget how I am feeling at this very moment, before knowing how it all comes to and end, because it is a mess of emotions.

I feel trepidation about the fate of my favorite characters.
I feel fear that Ron Moore will end everything as a dream, cheating us out of a fantastic story.
I feel hope that I will be blown away. I feel confident that I will get some closure with the show.

I have many questions in my head.
Who will survive?
Who will not make it to the end?
Will everyone just die?
Will the humans and cylons find a new place to call home?
Will they find a new Earth?
What is Kara Thrace? What is her destiny, her connection to Hera, how did she resurrect?
How are Baltar and Caprica Six connected? How do they see each other in their minds? Are Head Characters angels? Devils?

What will become of my favorite all time characters on television: Laura Roslin, Kara Thrace, and Saul Tigh?

I love the following quote, for what it might suggest about the end of Battlestar:

And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all. The seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves without sin, but in time, it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of the one splintering into the many, and then they will join the promised-land, gathered on the wings of angel. Not an end, but a beginning.

Is this making reference to Kara? Is she the angel? Will they find redemption? Or hell, maybe this will have nothing to do with the ending. We can only speculate today, and know the truth on Friday.

In the end, I don’t think I want every single question answered. I’d rather have the head characters left as a mystery if the answer is silly. I just want closure for this amazing show.

I found this from Twitter, that sums up my feelings pretty well:

Let’s make an oath, BSG Fodder familiy-
I solemnly swear, in the name of RDM [Ronald D. Moore], to let the finale unfold as it may… and that I will not be constantly waiting for every single plot detail to be revealed. Rather, I will watch with an open mind, and like a good novel, watch for the story to unfold in a natural manner and allow RDM to give us an emotional resolution to the character arcs instead of gotcha moments. So say we all.

So say we all!

A Favorite Battlestar Galactica Moment

Intro to the Mini Series
Battlestar Galactica opens with these ominous words:

The Cylons were created by man.
They were created to make life easier on the twelve colonies.
And then the day came when the cylons decided to kill their masters.
After a long and bloody struggle, an armistice was declared.
The cylons left for another world to call their own.
A remote space station was built…
…where Cylon and Human could meet and maintain diplomatic relations.
Every year, the Colonials send an officer.
The Cylons send no one.
No one has seen or heard from the Cylons in over forty years.

A door opens. Two Cylon Centurions walk in, looking unlike anything they have ever seen before. A beatiful woman in a red dress, whom we later come to know as a Six, walks in.

“Are you alive?”
“Yes”
“Prove it”

They kiss. A Cylon baseship nukes the space station.

“It has begun.”

I was hooked instantly.

Exciting Things.

Jane Espenson, writer on BSG and showrunner for Caprica, answered my BSG question this weekend through a website. This made me very happy, as I love her work, ever since Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. 

Oscar R: What kind of relationship will the story of “Caprica” have with the story of “Battlestar Galactica”? Without getting into spoilers, will we need to watch “Caprica” to understand “BSG’s” story, or will “Caprica” be more of a self contained story wit hin the mythology of “BSG”?

Jane Espenson: Oh!  Interesting.  Usually people ask that question the other way around.  Of course, the answer is the same either way: you don’t need to know either show to fully enjoy and understand the other show.  No vital pieces of “BSG” will be left unsatisfied so that we can tackle them on “Caprica,” unless you feel incomplete without knowing the full and exciting story of the origin of Caprica’s Centurions — WHICH YOU SHOULD, of course. 

The following is present in Ron Moore’s podcast commentary for the episode ‘No Exit’, which aired last week. It was a deleted scene, that presented some fascinating observations from the cylons. I really wish it had made the final cut, as it expands the characters quest to question everything about their existence, about the rules and laws of man, humanity, creation, and religion, and it solidifies why I love this show so much. It is not afraid to raise questions about who we are, why we’re here, and what is our destiny. This was taken from this site http://community.livejournal.com/battlestar_blog/1501820.html  Read on:

The scene was “labeled” 6 months ago and featured Ellen talking to Boomer. Ellen and Boomer  were doing some form of Tai-chi, and Ellen says:

“Self awareness is not confined to “real world”. In theater, fictional characters are sometimes given a form of self-awareness – this is known as “breaking the 4th wall”. This device is a form of meta-fiction, allowing characters to address the audience directly and comment on the narrative in which they themselves are the participant. In doing so, the characters transcend their fictive nature and enter into a dialectic relationship with the viewer with each side trying to persuade the other of the innate truth of their reality. But does a character actually exist? Does it have form and shape beyond the page on which it is actually written? Can it everybreak the 4th wall and address the unseen, undreamt of audience that watches it’s every move from the safety behind the footlights?

The Lords of Kobol once thought that man could never break the 4th wall, could never look upon the gods with understanding and grasp the divine nature of life. They believed this until one day man stole their fire and created the first cylons, the first artificial life, and then man, in his arrogance thought cylons could not break the 4th wall, and man believed it right up to the moment that the first centurions rebelled, and the great exodus from paradise began. See Boomer, we are not finite creations, we have the capability to evolve, we have so much more potential.”

This whole bit is extremely talky, and maybe it never did work in the episode, but I still find it incredibly complex and fascinating. At its best, science fiction takes our reality and molds it into another reality, one that can be viewed as a mirror image of our own. It challenges us to think about our own reality in ways we may have not tried before. I love that Battlestar attempts this.

Finally, a great quote from one of my most respected review sites, Television Without Pity, when reviewing ‘No Exit’ [link]: 

Welcome to the last act of the last season of the very best TV show of all time, and here’s your Dramamine.

Best Movie of ’09 [So far...]

Neil Gaiman's Coraline

I’ve decided to keep a running tally of all the movies I love that come out in 2009, so it’s not so hard to look back at the end of the year.

Coraline. Liam, Molly, and I attended the 9:30 3D screening of Coraline at the Arclight last night, and it was a sublime experience. Before I even talk about the movie, I want to talk about the 3D. We were given these odd, seemingly polarized 3D glasses before the movie began, and we spent all this time trying to figure out what sort of 3D we were about to watch. These glasses were unlike anything I had ever seen before. Before Coraline began, they showed the trailed for Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D, and that literally blew my mind. A zillion times more impressive than anything shown during the Super Bowl, this 3D was razor sharp perfect. No odd distortions, no double images, just crystal clear perfection. The 3D effect was even more impressive during Coraline, I think due to the nature of it being a stop-motion animated project. All the characters and sets were physically created and a real camera was capturing this for real, no computers were digitally creating the characters or environments in a 2D plane. Everything had depth and I felt as if I was looking inside a wonderful box of… well wonder. The camera was actually there in this world, looking inside it, and the 3D heightened that sense of looking into a real world. It is hard to describe, but it was just perfect and I have a hard time thinking a digital, 3D movie will be able to achieve the same effect so well. 

In terms of the actual movie Coraline, it was thrilling, unnerving, and is instantly one of my favorite animated movies of all time. It told a great story, without holding out on the dark themes or scary images. As a stop motion film, I haven’t seen anything like it since The Nightmare Before Christmas. They are both very different, but both very excellent. I loved it. Now it’s up to Pixar’s Up to up the ante.

A storm is coming…

Ever since season 2, the first four episodes of each season in BSG have been fantastic. The cylons infiltrating Galactica in Season 2, the rescue in New Caprica during Season 3, the Cylon civil war on 4, and now humanity falling apart. These last four episodes have been absolutely brilliant. I have no idea where we’re going from here, but I have a feeling BSG is gonna start blowing our minds after rocking our faces off. And that must mean the return of some very specific cylons. I can’t wait, but each week means one less episode that we get. All things must end I guess.

As a side note, this video above is one of the most amazing moments for Laura Roslin. She has had so many great moments, it makes me happy that the writers are still giving her fantastic stuff.