Friday, March 30, 2007

TV non-comments

Not especially keen ones, at least. I watched this the last night, and I felt like I should say something about it, but I'm having trouble gathering my thoughts into any coherence:

Battlestar Galactica, season 3 finale:

(Spoilers, of course).

Kinda like the end of season 2, we got a conclusion (of sorts) to the running plot, and then a setup and cliffhanger for the next season. I must say, I did like the courtroom stuff, especially Lee's monologue about justice. It was a good summary of the series, and kind of an acknowledgement of the problems with serial fiction; he pointed out all the huge plot points and conflicts from past seasons that have nearly been forgotten by now. Interesting, and pretty moving as well. And I do agree with the final verdict, although it was probably a given, since they're not going to have Baltar executed. He's too good a character. Roslin sure seemed bloodthirsty about it though. I guess she wanted revenge for the death squad incident. I guess it's good to not just have everybody be moved by Lee's speech and wrap it all up with hugs.

Okay, enough about that; then we get to the season 4 setup/cliffhanger. Four major characters revealed to be Cylons. Or is it a trick? Who knows. It works for most of them, but raises some questions with Tigh. The Cylons infiltrated the human society 40 years ago? That seems suspect. Or maybe they replaced him somewhere along the line. Huh, I guess questions like these might be answered sometime, but I suspect it's "make it up as you go along" syndrome. I did like the Bob Dylan stuff; that was pretty weird. And then we get the Starbuck scene; as I suspected, she's probably a Cylon. Unless she went through some sort of dimensional warp when we saw her explode. Maybe she has superpowers now or something. And she says she's been to Earth and will lead them there. Interesting. I'm glad to see some progress in the search for Earth, rather than just having it as some possible series-ending event in the undetermined future. And that final zoom was pretty cool. All in all, a pretty good season finale, and I'll be watching the next season whenever it shows up.

Afro Samurai:

Spike reran all five episodes of this series the other night, smashed together into a "movie". I had watched episodes 2-4, so I finally got to see the first one, then fast forward to the last one. It's a pretty fun little series, with tons of cool violence and wacky ideas. Turns out Afro's father used to be the owner of the Number One Headband, so most of his quest was about revenge. But another theme that emerged was his rejection of his adopted family (the master and students that took him in) in pursuit of his quest, and how that rejection caused them all to be killed. That aspect almost overshadowed the main quest. Lots of fun fight scenes, but I still think the freefall fight with Robo-Afro in episode 3 was the coolest. And Samuel L. Jackson's sidekick character turned out to be imaginary, as I suspected. The ending was pretty wild, with a villain who kept fighting after his arms and head had been chopped off, growing a third arm out of his back. Then he impaled Afro through his afro, before being chopped into tiny pieces. Fun! I dug it, but I'm glad I got to watch it on TV for free; I don't think it would be worth whatever the DVD will cost (although I suspect there was some editing for TV; the DVD probably contains nudity from the sex scene in episode 2). It's worth a rental, I guess. Check it out if my description interests you.
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I'm home sick today, so I might get a chance to do some comics reviews, if I feel up to it. Stay tuned.

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