I was going to try and do this with as few spoilers as possible, I’ll still try to, but there will be spoilers.
I wrapped up seasons 3 last night and BSG is running as great as ever. In fact, the last third of the season may have been the best stretch of the show up to this point, let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. I really enjoyed the time jump on New Caprica, letting the characters change slightly to seem fresh. They have also done a great job of working those changes from New Caprica into the time on Galactica later in the season 3.
Pretty much every character got better at the start of season 3 outside of Gaeta. Former President Roslin is a school teacher which means we get less of her, AWESOME. Chief as a Union leader was great. The two best changes, however, came for the Adama boys. Firstly, and I know this was the case at the end of season 2, Adm. Adama is still rocking the hell out of a mustache for the 1st episode. And then there is Lee Adama. HOLY HELL. Did he actually put the weight on? Something about it looked really unnatural but yet, he had gotten so big I almost found it hard to believe he didn’t put on at least a portion. He really looked like Mac from Always Sunny In Philadelphia, he was just trying to put on mass. Seeing his neck rolls fighting his chins to see who could pop out of the collar was the most suspenseful part of the season. I’m also glad we didn’t hang around in New Caprica for an extended period of time. I’m a little upset they killed off Hera’s nanny since she was hot.
The other mini-story arc that happened before the final big stretch was finding the temple on the algae planet. This was a necessary transition and was done well, just not as good as the last third of the season. I think my main beef with it, and maybe BSG in general, is they spend a little to much time with the Cylons. It takes away from us furthering other characters. I would imagine a counterpoint would be that we need to see the Cylons “becoming human,” but can you imagine how awesome it would have been if we hadn’t seen Baltur for 8 episodes and then he comes back with the voice over at the algae planet? Other things of note from the stretch of episodes from about episodes 5/6-12 included the boxing episode was good, wish Kara Thrace got lit up that episode though, especially if had been Dualla. Also, I was relieved they killed off Kat, she was Kara Lite and served no purpose other than to Kara Kara. I liked that Adm. Adama didn’t know that President Roslin had faked Hera’s death.
The good run of episodes really starts as soon as they get off the algae planet. First was my hatred for President Roslin returned in a huge way. They started throwing Race Track into random scenes, and lets be honest, the show couldn’t have enough Race Track (Lt. Margaret Edmondson). Also in episode 12 we had Baltur trying to commit suicide which was an awesome scene and some building up of the potential hugeness of Baltur’s impending trial. Finally, something I have enjoyed was the companionship of Adm. Adama and the President. That is to say, I’m glad they haven’t shoved a romance between the two down our throats, even though they obviously like each other.
And then came my favorite episode of the season, Helo going CSI on the civilian doctor. I loved that Helo had been moved up to the EXO, and was pissed they moved him down after Col. Tigh came back. For those that don’t know, Helo is my favorite character on the show and this episode featured him exclusively. We also had at least two Race Track scenes, one more than we’re used to. Didn’t like Athena in this episode, needlessly confrontational. The comedy from came when they had the girls playing the “throw the ball in the hole” game and their throwing mechanics were HORRIFIC. The other high comedy came when Helo snuck into the Doctor’s office and we had a really intense investigating montage. They also had a threat of potentially killing off Dualla, thereby completing my character triumvirate, and getting me even more emotionally invested in the episode.
After that we had a couple of episodes featuring the Chief, first his adventure of getting shot out of the ship with his wife being intertwined with Adm. Adama’s anniversary. The secondary story line wasn’t really necessary but oh well. The other episode was Chief coming back into his Union leader roots. Here is why I don’t like President Roslin and Admiral Adama, they are both unnecessarily insensitive towards the plight of the fuel ship. Not only that, but when the Chief comes back telling them how unsafe the conditions are, they do it again, and then when the kids arm gets fracked up, they do it AGAIN. FINALLY, at the end of the episode Roslin has a sit down with the Chief, when all of the insensitivity could have been avoided if they had done that in the first place. Unfortunately, for all of us they needed to fill an hour long show, not a ten minute one.
After that we get into our final stretch run of 4 episodes. The first immediately starts off as a Starbuck episode which always pisses me off. However, it had the moment of the season when they “killed” her off at the end of the episode. It was painfully obvious that she wouldn’t be dead, but at least it gave us a brief respite from all of her shit. Then we go full on into Balturs Trial. The lawyer they bring in is good. At first I thought they were going to make him blind since he was rocking the shades and had the cat. Much like all of BSG, the trial is obvious but still interesting. Again, we see why I hate President Roslin and Adm Adama. 1st we have Adama calling out Lee and questing his man hood so he quits the service, then we have Roslin pleading with Lee to not out here with the hallucinogens. Then when its happening we have Adama trying to put a stop to it all.
The moment that completely stole the season (in a good way) was Lee Adama’s big monologue, very well done. I had completely hated on Lee’s acting abilities and called for them to cut down on his screen time. In fact, I would say the worst episode to date would be the Lee-centric one where he is hooking up with that prostitute on the black market. That being said, he killed that monologue, and it was LONG. Well done Jamie Bamber, you started the season off in a hilarious clown costume fat suit and ended it with a stirring speech. We then had that great moment where Lee and the lawyer distance themselves from Gaius as fast as possible. Can’t wait to see how Gaius’s story arc goes in the 4th season.
I haven’t even started talking about the new Cylons yet. I’ll draw the spoilers line here. I think all of the new Cylons kind of make sense and I look forward to see how they continue to deal with their Cylon awakening. Obviously there is still a 5th Cylon out there and it must not be someone on the ship with all signs pointing to Starbuck. That would make me want to kill myself.
JimmyTV tuning out of the post and tuning into season 4.
