If a guy in a bar asks for your digits… and you tell him your name… you just might be a cylon.
March 25th, 2007 by screenwriterguy
 Holy frack, what a great season finale!
Depending on how you count, there were no less than three BIG reveals and twists in tonight’s episode of Battlestar Galactica.
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I gotta say, I’m pretty willing to sign up for life as a cylon. I mean, you never die, the babes are TOTALLY hot, and you hear funky covers of Dylan music in your head. Not to mention, you get to create your own perception of reality anywhere you go.
Meanwhile, let me just point out that I wasn’t fooled by the whole Starbuck dying thing for a second! AND, you can see the proof, as I’m the first commenter to say so at TVsquad and Bootstrap Productions.
Kudos to the producers, btw, for saving Katee Sackhoff’s credit till the end. I hate when a show has a big surprise, but it is ruined by the opening credits. For example, Heroes recently did commercials about how we were finally going to meet Linderman, with a teaser image of a man turning around, and cut before you could see his face. But the opening credits included Malcolm McDowell’s name. How much of a surprise is left? The ultimate psych-out came from an episode of Buffy. After two seasons as a recurring character, Amber Benson’s name was finally in the opening credits. She was a full-on cast member! And then they killed her in that episode. Awesome.
I think the best television (and Buffy did it masterfully) involves situations in which ANY character could have anything happen to them. You don’t quite suspend disbelief if you know there are certain characters who just can’t die. And while BSG did a big just-kidding with Starbuck, they weren’t afraid to break some eggs by turning four characters, some of whom we’ve known forever, into cylons. Would you have guessed those people? If you say you would, I don’t believe you.
And let it not be lost on anyone that there are FIVE missing cylons, and we now know only four of them.
The scuttlebutt is that season four will have 22 episodes, instead of 13. That’s got to be the best Battlestar news since Tricia Helfer did Playboy.
It got me thinking about great cliffhanger season endings… I’m not going to investigate it the way I am for pilots, since cliffhangers is a problem I’ll have to face once I’m a staff writer, and not part of breaking-in research. But I would love to hear opinions on some of the greatest season endings you can remember. Personally, I can remember the end of season one of Lost being amazing, as Walt was captured. The last fully Sorkin season of The West Wing did an amazing season finale with the president’s daughter getting kidnapped. It featured this slow house music to create a creepy tone. Last season’s The Office had an ending that was unbelievable, written by Steve Carrell. The subtle dialogue in the sequence where Jim confessed his love for Pam raised my estimation of Steve Carrell tenfold. And perhaps the best I can remember was the third or fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. When Riker gave the order to fire on the borgified Picard, I shot from my seat, amazed by storytelling that left me actually pained to wait till the next fall.
What other greats are there?
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Posted in Television |
Mar 27th 2007 at 6:19 pm
I would have to say that Alias always did a pretty good job in end of season cliff hangers. I have to admit that I NEVER saw the first 3 seasons of Alias but of what I did, I was always left panting for more!
Mar 27th 2007 at 9:29 pm
Wow. If you are a fan of Alias, you owe it to yourself to catch the first couple of seasons. Those were their best stuff, in my opinion.