We are comforted by the prospect of Gaius Baltar being eaten by a diatryma.

[mrissa]

And other thoughts on recently watched DVDs.

1. Parallel structure is a privilege, not a right. No, but I mean it: if you try to start out, bam, with parallel structure, and you haven't earned your reader/viewer's investment in the characters or the plot or something, it is a cheap parlor trick. I'm looking at you, The Closer and The Shield. If you want your parallels to work, there has to be some chance that they will not run parallel. In fact, it's best if they don't in every single particular. Go watch The Wire again if you want to see how to do this. By the time you say, "Hey, self! This character's arc is really paralleling this other character's arc!" you have already invested in the whole thing, and it's an enhancement of a story you're already interested in hearing told. It has to be the enhancement. It can't be the only thing.

2. Brenda Lee Johnson (of The Closer) annoys the living daylights out of me, and Jennifer Jarreau (of Criminal Minds) is my sole identification character in all the shows I've watched recently. (Or...possibly ever. Hmm. We will have to think on this.) And yet they are both women who are frequently underestimated by the people around them. I think the major difference for me is that J. J. does not play dumb to lead people on. She sometimes uses their stupid assumptions against them, but if they don't come in with stupid assumptions, she doesn't supply them. Also, when J.J.'s in a relationship, she and the fella don't have to supply the same stuff, but she pulls her own weight. I have very little patience for the Ditzy Southern Belle routine.

3. When I try a bunch of new things to see if they'll do for workout fodder DVDs, I end up remembering that I don't like TV categorically, the way I like SF novels. I like some TV shows, and I don't dislike TV categorically. But with Criminal Minds and Numb3rs and Bones and Eureka on my list of current shows, I can mistake myself for liking TV. Not really.

4. Through the entire run of Battlestar Galactica, one of the things that drove me most nuts was the complete lack of respect for other people's skills. And the ending is just the culmination of that: of course Athena and Helo will teach Hera to plant and to hunt! Where did they learn to plant and to hunt? Of course farming and hunting are not skills to be learned, not like flying spaceships! Any fule kno how to do them! And midwifery and herbalism and weaving and tanning and everything, everything: it's all "creature comforts," or else it's all to be taken for granted. People on this show wore glasses--how many of you can accuately measure a change in eyeglass prescription necessary--using only flint knives and bearskins--and then grind a lens to meet that prescription--and then construct frames to hold those lenses? People on this show smoked like proverbial chimneys. Even if it we take the "it only looks and acts like tobacco, it's not tobacco really, and it's not physically addictive" position--which would have to be pulled out of a convenient orifice--how much fun do you expect it will be when people who have lost their entire civilization also lose all of the social habits they've had to get through it? But we are giving up on cities, because the best way to make sure we grow a new culture without the mistakes of the old culture is to completely obliterate any notion of what those mistakes were. Trainwreck start to finish, uff da. Well, that's why we watched it.

Comments

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

The part where they all die of starvation and exposure from total lack of survival skills is forthcoming in BSG: Roanoke.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I was so irritated by the cheap cliché factor of the BSG ending that I didn't even think think about the improbability, but you're so right.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Of course farming and hunting are not skills to be learned, not like flying spaceships!

It doesn't go against your entire point, but I was extremely touched by Baltar's tacit acknowledgment of his farmer father as the source of his farming knowledge, and his emotional reaction to same.

I think I've said this to you before, but my reading of BSG is that it is supposed to be a trainwreck. On the large scale, its universe is built upon the serial, putatively inevitable annihilation of intelligent lifeforms. On the small scale, it's about the neverending capability of intelligent individuals to do really dumb things.

Which doesn't necessarily make it less aggravating, but I think it may be a different category of shortcoming.

[hypatia-j.livejournal.com]

Where did they learn to plant and hunt?

Hunt at least, probably occupied Caprica? Fleet survival training? They spent almost as much time planetside as in space and were clearly comfortable with tracking/hiking/camping.

I can't speak for Cylon training (programming?), but to assume that the humans only have skills they learned while in the fleet is also to ignore their youth and civilian lives.

I definitely grant the point that most of them are doomed, but some of the survivors must have had useful hobbies.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Must've, but they didn't do anything even remotely organized about it--any more than they did anything organized about useful hobbies they might have had in space. People were getting thrown out airlocks based on their crimes, and never once did anybody say, "Hey, wait, does anybody but Bob know how to make barrels and wheels? Perhaps we shouldn't throw all of human knowledge in that field out the airlock?" And they were not settling at the end with the ship databanks to consult, nor were they dividing into groups each of which had at least one experienced hunter/field dresser/butcher, at least one person who knew how to build an oven, etc.--they were wandering off with backpacks and hoping for the best. Fail.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, I think it's supposed to be a trainwreck, too--I just don't think they've acknowledged exactly how much of a trainwreck it's going to be.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Our biggest fear was not realized: no character named Eva was introduced to live with Lee on the surface of the planet so they could be Adama and Eva.

Otherwise it was that fear. Just not with the names. Whew.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Whew, indeed.

BSG

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was bugged by this. I've planted and harvested, and done herbalism, and helped build log cabins and made roof shingles for them. These things are hard, and not something you can do right off the bat. At least not well...and "not well" in a survival situation increases your odds of not surviving.

Though I did think afterward, "It's no wonder South America and Australia didn't have any settlement until tens of thousands of years after Galactica arrived...because none of the Fleet people who settled there survived. Because THEY DIDN'T KNOW HOW."

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched any of the series in question, but it occurs to me that they're going to screw up archaeology. Adds a flying suitcase to the trainwreck at least.

[anne-mommy.livejournal.com]

I actually like Brenda Lee. I think she's smart, capable, and wildly underrated because of her overt femininity. I also enjoy the fact that while she's so good at her job, she has so much to learn in her personal life.

As for BSG, I think you make a good point. But at the same time, are there people still left among the population who do have those skills? Or are they contained in computers, or in cylon databases? It's a suspension of disbelief, I guess. With all of the other wonderful questions and issues BSG brought up, I'm willing to let it go.

[laurel]

I like Brenda Lee Johnson and think that they do a better job with her as the series go on, it's not just "she likes candy" and "she says 'thank yew'" and on and on.

She's good at her job and tough when it comes to her job. I have no idea why Fitz would want to be in a relationship with her given the way she treats him, but I guess that's his problem.

I also vastly preferred the show once they got past the part where she's proving herself to the people in her squad; I like it a lot more once the characters know each other better and get along better. Not that everyone gets along swimmingly, of course, but it's better.

As for BSG . . . yeah. It was idiotic. And I don't buy for a second that everyone would've gotten on board with the plan so quickly given how they argued over every little thing up 'til then. I feel like they needed another hour or two of show to cover what happened there at hte end. Or more.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear they don't backslide after the last episode. The parallel structure was extremely heavy-handed, but at least it paved the way for team interactions other than "Pope is a spineless weasel and nobody backs Brenda except one or two people about whom we will act surprised."