Brother-in-law-to-the-blog commenter Whiskey asks what I thought of the BSG series finale. It's a fair question, BSG is probably one of the more discussed shows here on the Snarking Post. Well ... I still think Battlestar Galactica represents one of the best 1.5 seasons of television out there. Unfortunately they followed that with another 2.5 seasons of crap. The series finale did nothing to change that opinion and in fact reinforces it. I thought the finale was jumbled, unsatisfying, and they clearly punted on a lot of key issues. We've spent an entire "season" (spread across two full years) on what the hell is going on with Starbuck and the final answer is just "she's an angel. POOF! Wait! Look over here! Dancing robots!" They find Earth. Again. But this Earth isn't all frakked up! Wait what again? It's OUR Earth! They destroy all their technology! They are the ancestors of modern humanity! I guess they destroyed all their oral history as well! That way we can not learn anything! Just why do the Cylons keep insisting this has happened before and will happen again. Clearly it didn't, not in this way with a Cylon/human war and genocide and "angels" and whatnot. Was there any point to Baltar's religious conversion? Any point to the conflict between the human polytheism and the Cylon monotheism? WHY DOES NOTHING HAVE SQUARE CORNERS? In short, the finale made no fucking sense. Not only that it failed to close out many of the series' long-running questions. At the end of the day it turns out that BSG was a big shaggy dog story. Swell. Can I have the last "four seasons" of television watching back now? I don't have any plans to watch Caprica anytime soon, I'll tell you that much.

So Battlestar Galactica returns for season four tonight. Now, I think BSG jumped the shark towards the end of season two, and that the season two finale was a travesty. As evidence I'll offer that they spent most of season three meticulously undoing everything that had happened in the finale, and the rest of the time was spent on new stupid stuff. At any rate, the last season starts tonight and heck, what else am I gonna watch? Lost is on hiatus anyway. Here's a fantastic 8:18 recap video if you need some refreshing on what the frak is going on. Has anybody seen anything official on the speculation that this season will be split into two halves due to the writers strike? And when do we get to call bullshit on that? If 10 episodes air in 2008 and 10 more air in 2009, that's two 10 episode seasons damnit. A four-six week "hiatus" I'll accept. If it's longer than that then it's two seasons.