Very late to the party, of course. I’m talking about the early 2000s series. I saw that it’s considered one of the better TV series to come along and found it on Amazon included in Prime. I’m about in the middle of the three-part mini-series intro, and like it a lot. I’m hoping that the succeeding seasons are also worth watching.
Opinions are mixed. I think just about any fan of the mini-series will like the first season. Many will enjoy the second season as well, though a few will fall away. Starting with the third season opinions start to diverge widely and the ending is near Lost level of polarizing.
It’s a good show, regardless. Whether it is great depends on how you react to the later seasons.
Flame war countdown in 3…2…
You will find opinions to be…divided on the series, and especially the ending. But enjoy the ride. It’s worth taking in any case.
That miniseries is amazing. Don’t expect it to maintain that level of momentum but I think it’s still a good series.
Personally I thought the show struggled early on with a lot of poorly written filler material and didn’t really get all that interesting again until the polarizing stuff Tamerlane mentioned starting in season 3, but I understand that puts me in the minority of fans.
I enjoyed the whole thing, beginning to end. It definitely couldn’t keep up the same level of quality or intensity over 4 seasons, but I found it always bounced back even after a string of mediocre episodes.
You may want to search for past threads as you watch - IIRC we had multi-page threads for every single episode. (what ever happened to Cervaise?)
So say we all!
I’ll stick with it as long as my attention doesn’t wander. I’m also thinking of trying The Shield again. My wife hated the first episode, so we didn’t pursue it, but my tolerance for people playing assholes is higher than hers.
I vaguely seem to recall he lost interest in message boards in general and message board drama in particular. At any rate he bowed out long ago. A pity IMHO. He’s missed, especially in this forum.
BSG was one of the shows that really proved TV Was Good Now in the early 00s. It was the first non-HBO series I really took notice of and fell in love with. It was a helluva ride at the time. I think the first two seasons are more-or-less masterpieces with only a few weak spots. I enjoyed the show right up to the end, but I think it’s a very easy argument that the third and fourth seasons were much rockier and harder to love.
BSG also now always makes me feel awkward / amused about the fact that Cally is one of the only “character crushes” I’ve had as an adult, and the actor’s apparent involvement with a sex cult is…strange.
I remember the first series in '78, which wasn’t bad, either. There was an article in the NYT yesterday about how both cable and network TV were influenced by The Sopranos, which showed that it was okay to root for an anti-hero, that being bad could be really good, and that it was okay to take a chance on something different. BSG was one of the network shows that was used as an example this.
Yeah, I was young and kinda obsessed with pop culture back then. The Sopranos was definitely a pioneer in the idea that TV could actually be as “good” or better than a movie in looks, acting, and writing. Before that, there’d been a few attempts (Twin Peaks being the main one that comes to mind) but they were still limited by the medium. HBO broke through those limits.
At the time, I thought HBO was the only channel that would be able to do it because broadcast TV was still totally beholden to existing formats and basic cable didn’t seem to have the budget or desire. BSG really surprised me, because every other SciFi original I’d seen had been much hokier or, at least, much cheaper-looking. It certainly still looked “cheaper” than a contemporary film, but it had enough style to the design that I think it looked good ENOUGH that the visuals weren’t distracting and the writing and acting really elevated it past its contemporaries.
I think DVD had a big influence on this, too, because it meant that shows could be written with a more serial plot without alienating as much of the audience. The original “binge watching” was when you borrowed your friend’s copies of BSG or The Wire or Deadwood so you could catch up before a new season…
The first couple of seasons were great. By the end of the series, the quality plummeted, and the ending was one of the most tired SF cliches outside of “it was all a dream.”
Was he the poster who was PISSED about the ending? As in, his posts made me imagine him red-faced and twitching and spitting mad?
I think the miniseries, while great, is the low point. I think it was the greatest show of all time and only improved over the course of its run. Well, it started with high quality and maintained it. There are a few dips in there, I guess.
I am a full-blown fanboy, here.
Best. Show. Ever. Period. Final. No question for me.
Best final episode of all time, best music of all time. The peak of all television.
I think so. He was going to melt down his DVD collection and pour it down Ron Moore’s nose, IIRC.
I watched the show back when it first aired and at the time I hated the ending for reasons I don’t want to relitigate in this thread but my Girlfriend and I were looking for a new show to watch and she never saw it so we started to watch again. The quality holds up but it was so heavy and dark that after about 8 episodes she wanted to take a break and switch to something else.
It’s a great show. I loved it all except for the final season or so. Even then it was better than average. The final episode, however, was a huuuuuge disappointment.
But the journey was worth it. There was so much exploration of the human experience throughout. It was a very honest show.
I’d love to read your ongoing thoughts as you watch this.
My only real complaint with the show, which FTR I loved overall, was that like all sci-fi/fantasy/apocalyptic shows, they always manage to somehow mitigate the big malevolent force, and the show devolves into one located somewhere along a soap opera to political thriller axis. BSG and the Walking Dead are the two best examples I can think of, although BSG kind of pulled back somewhat in the latter third of the show.
Completely agreed. I got the sense that, much like Lost, despite what the show creators would have had us believe, they did not, in fact, have a good idea ahead of time as to how to wrap up the story.
For instance, a major plot point (spoilered below):
One of the biggest questions was “who are the other five Cyclon models?” My recollection is that the writers did not know this ahead of time, and when they finally had to do the big reveal, they sat down in a room, and sorted through which characters clearly could not be a Cylon, in order to arrive at their final list of five.
Even though I often found the final season to be incomprehensible, it was still a great ride.
I’d say…watch through the first season. At that point, stop and just imagine that it stayed at that level.
It’s never cringeworthy or anything, past that point, but it gets pretty lost and bogged down in itself. Even if you’re a person who sort of enjoys mindless soap opera and wrought out drama for no reason, and so you might be one of the people who enjoys the later seasons, there are probably better shows for that sort of thing.
Not quite done with the miniseries? Oh, man, that means you haven’t seen 33, the first regular series episode, yet. It never reaches that level of awesome again, but holy hell, is 33 good.