Jumping the Shark

Two of my favorite shows have gone off the rails recently, and I am saddened by this. Unlike others, I am not quite ready to give up on Lost, though every episode of season 3.5 is going to be make or break for me. The island blowing up was pretty climactic, wouldn't you say? Perhaps the writers need to be pointed to a dictionary in which the word denouement is underlined. Enough with the pointless backstory, guys -- does it really help us establish Kate's character to know that she was married once? I don't think so. I've pretty much learned all I need to about Kate, except either how she's getting off the frakking island, or if she dies there. Please start resolving some shit, or I will have to relegate the show to the same drawer into which I once placed the X-files, after they, too, failed to register the importance of resolving some of their hundreds of loose plot threads while continuing to spin up new ones.

By contrast, I'm done with Battlestar Galactica. It's already a bad sign that I only watched last week's episode last night. And then, it had to go and suck as bad as it did. Now, I'm far from a writing expert, but two of the basic rules are it's all about the characters and show it, don't say it. Having characters baldly restate the obvious breaks both of these rules.

Someone: We could end the Cylon threat forever.
Helo: That's genocide. The destruction of an entire race. That will cost us a piece of our soul.

And so on. I recognize that this is a common device in television -- mediocre television -- but come on! Did we get a sudden influx of viewers from Deal or No Deal?

I was already feeling twitchy about the show after the resolution of the whole New Caprica thing. I hate it when a series sets up something that feels like a long-term problem and then magically resolves it in one episode. Let's call this the Independence Day Syndrome.

As a more personal reflection of this problem, I hate how quickly Lee lost the weight. I would have much rather seen him struggling with it all season. But I guess they cut that subplot because they felt it was something no one in America would be able to relate to.

This feels like a pervasive theme: the writers set up something interesting and then just crap all over it. I could see an entire series about Kara and that little girl. Six or seven plot threads like that, and hot damn! You have a season of tv. But no, BSG has the exact opposite problem of Lost: they're so keen to keep everything moving toward Earth, they've chucked their characters into space.

Some other things that bugged me:

• A magical virus that infects living organism and machines, with nary a hint of an explanation? Neal Stephenson at least took a reasonable whack at this fifteen years ago; if you weren't going to be creative you could have just stolen it with a nod and a wink. But no, it makes perfect sense that a race with the technology to create clone bodies and transfer their consciousness into them would overlook something as obvious as innoculating themselves against childhood diseases. Let's call this the George Pal's War of the Worlds Syndrome.
  
• "The virus would transfer when they resurrected" -- give me a frakking break.
  
• Lee giggling as he figures out how to annihilate the Cylon race. And then he doesn't say to Helo, "Don't ever let me do that again."
• Don't even get me started about Baltar. What the hell? Are they trying to depict him as insane? Suicidal? I mean, he's always been a little on the edge, but the interesting facet of that character was his uncanny knack for self-preservation. To out and out lie to his Cylon captors again and again for no good reason just leaves me scratching my head.
• The torture scene. Come on guys! I've seen scarier implements of torture on Grey's Anatomy! Surely the props department could have afforded something with a needle in it.
• And they missed one obvious opportunity for a great line:

Their version:
Helo: Doing this is would be a crime against humanity.
Apollo: They're not human. They're MACHINES.

My version:
Helo: Doing this is would be a crime against humanity.
Apollo: They're not human. They're MACHINES.
Helo: Not their humanity. Ours.

BSG has jumped the shark as far as I am concerned, and it's over for me. I can no longer sit and watch these characters I love mouth banalities just for the sake of getting to watch those pretty, pretty ships blow up. And when did it jump the shark, you ask? I suggest it was when Laura Roslin didn't die. The whole season I was on the edge of my seat going "Are they really going to do it? Are they really going to let a principal character die? Not, you know, because the actor's contract was up, but because it serves the story? Because that would be completely unprecedented." And of course, they wussed out.

If you haven't seen any of the new series, here's what I recommend you do. Watch the first two seasons, but then stop halfway through the last episode of season 2: they're on New Caprica, they're happy, they're starting a new life without the threat of the Cylons. Pretend that's how the series ended.

It's what I wish I had done.