TayVay Jumps The Shark

I don't believe in jumping the shark. That's not to say I don't think series decline - oh how they decline - but that there's not a single moment or episode where you can say "from here on out, suckage". Television doesn't go bad in the sense that, say, a ham would go bad. With TV, there's usually some change (lose a showrunner, a producer gets distracted, Ted McGinley gets hired) that causes things to go downhill. Ham don't work that way.

Alas, BSG has let me down. Despite its strong run as "the best show on television", Sunday's season finale was a clear message that it's all downhill from here. The acting will still be great, the actual dialogue will continue it's impressive run of awesome, but the story is going to wind down.

The revelation that "The Resistance" - the 3 people most responsible for antagonizing Cylons on New Caprica - were actually Cylons was so hackneyed, so poorly planned and executed, it's hard to see how they could go anywhere interesting with "The Plan". Just making someone a Cylon for shock value isn't witty, it's mean.

But what really grinds my gears is this interview with show creator Ron Moore after the finale. I really, truly held out hope that the 3 weren't actually cylons but had been manipulated somehow, like maybe Max Headroom was there all along. Anything but Cylons. But no, they're the real deal. Only they're not, because they're the part of the Final Five, so they "play by different rules". Ooooo, like what? No backsies? They've all had their cootie shots? Funk that.

They spend all this time creating a mythology, making you think there's something more than just than the old Humans v. Cylon paradigm (for instance, the temple of Jupiter that was built millennia before Cylons existed.) And then they screw it up by picking three random characters and turning them into the most powerful of all the Cylons.

And check the interview - this is something they "came up with" in the middle of the season. Look bub, the beginning of the show says in big white letters "They have a plan." That means you're supposed to have plan for their plan. You don't get to make it all up as you go along - that's like taking the mythology of the X-files and letting The Lone Gunmen run the show.

And yes, Starbuck is back. We don't yet know if she's a figment of Lee's imagination (think Six/Baltar), but odds are she isn't. God, if she's the final Cylon I'm going to crap myself. Can't you bring in someone? Or make it someone silly, like Lt. Gaeta (whom I've always suspected, btw). There needs to be some bind between the humans and Cylons other than "skinjobs" and betrayal and living amongst us, etc. For godssake, it's too much of a tease to construct all the amazing characters and have the series devolve into "well, they're cylons. How unexpected and deep."

Maybe I'll feel better when the show comes back in 2008, but I wouldn't count on it. BSG, congrats on actually jumping the shark. I didn't think it was possible.