BSG Blogging III: A Damn Fine Show
By Political relevance aside, the new BSG is just a damn fine show. The twenty-seventh hour screened last night, and, for my money, the twenty-seven hours thus far compare favorably with just about any comparable stretch of an hour long drama outside the Sopranos.
On the question of whether television has improved over the past ten years or so, you can put me squarely in the camp of Steven Johnson. Dana Stevens is right that comparing The Sopranos and Starsky and Hutch is inappropriate, but this doesn’t get us very far. There simply is no analogue for The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Buffy, or a handful of other late 1990s and early 2000s television programs in the 1960s and the 1970s. Even shows from the 1980s lack the sophistication and complexity that we have grown to expect from a given program today. Nor are the reasons for this improvement very hard to find. HBO alone has made a huge difference in allowing television writers and producers to explore new areas and more complex story lines. The huge number of channels available to a given viewer means that idiosyncratic programming doesn’t need to reach an audience as large as it did during the 1970s. In 1980, the very best programming of the last ten years could not have been made; Sopranos, Buffy, Six Feet Under et al never achieved an audience large enough to command a prime time network slot in the age of network dominance. The DVD has made it easier to construct season long themes and plots that won’t confuse an audience. Moreover, I’m convinced that the improvement isn’t just in the upper echelon of shows. Say what you want about ER, but it is much better acted, written, and produced than you would expect from a similar program twenty-five years ago. This isn’t to say that older television doesn’t have something to offer, but I do think that we’re still in the midst of a golden age of TV.
It’s good that series television is finally offering us its best, because the medium offers opportunities to writers and actors that film cannot provide. It is no longer plausible to suggest that the best actors and best writers work in film. Tony Soprano is, simply put, a character too complex and too interesting to be convincingly portrayed in a two hour period. The rewards of watching his character grow and display different aspects over the course of a season (or five) are immense. The same could be said of dozens of other characters in the best series we have today. Some of the opportunities implicit in the medium have been pursued by writers since the beginning of television, while some seem only to have been taken fullest advantage of in the past ten to fifteen years.
In any case, the improvement of BSG II over its predecessor is hardly accidental. It’s part of a trend in television that has been established over the past ten years. Ron Moore has done excellent work with the BSG raw material Moore established from the beginning that he was not squeamish about genocide. The Cylons, in their attack, use nukes rather than some sort of advanced weapon that would be more distant from us and, correspondingly, less frightening. Moore also manages to capture the desperation and the difficult decisions that face the survivors of the Cylon attack. Critically, none of this detracts from character development; Moore doesn’t let the science fiction aspects get in the way of giving the characters room for growth.
The acting has been good, if not outstanding. Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell turn in predictably excellent performances as Commander Adama and President Roslin. Katee Sackhoff is remarkable as Lt. Starbuck, and James Callis gives a marvelously creepy performance every week as Gaius Baltar. Michael Hogan is very playing a deeply flawed Colonel Tigh. The rest of the acting is at least adequate. It’s hard to say whether the problem with Jamie Bamber’s Captain Apollo is weak acting or weak writing. Same thing with Kate Vernon as Ellen Tigh. The supporting performances tend be very, very good. One notable example is that of Richard Hatch, who played Apollo in the first series. The less said of his acting in 1978 the better, but his performance in BSG II has been a pleasant surprise.
The show has not been without its missteps. The Caprica sequences in the first season weren’t well integrated into their respective episodes, and I have reservations about the entire storyline being pursued on Caprica. Episodes 1-6 and 1-9 from the first season are a bit weak. The second season has not been as strong as the first, although eps 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, and 2-10 are exceptional. Last night’s episode, the opener of the first half of season 2, was very, very good.
In any case, I heartily recommend the new Battlestar Galactica. Enjoy.