Good-frakkin-bye

I got great news this week. Stupendously great news. Life-changing, possibly. And yet, I’ve been preoccupied all week about how to properly send-off Battlestar Galactica in my own small way. Perhaps my priorities are out of order. That’s a main complaint or criticism towards geeks – they care too much about inconsequential things, that they become obsessed with fiction, and therefore suffer from a dearth of reality.

I can’t disprove that, in certain cases, the haters have it right. No life should be solely dedicated to a monastical study of redshirts or the deep philosophical ramifications of reversing the polarity. But that misses the point. Battlestar represents an example of my suspension of disbelief that television is something bad, that it can not strive for (but sometimes fail) to the dubious status of art, and is worth criticism in academe and in the culture papers as “a text”. I realized, half-way through the miniseries, that it was asking me to think and certainly not leading me in the direction of any answers. I don’t think any other piece of television has made me hold my breath that many times.

I thought about talking about Battlestar and how it matched up with a new stage of my life. I thought about talking about Donna Haraway’s essay on cyborgs and how Battlestar showed us an alternate, extreme version of the heavily technological society we live in. But none of it seemed complete, nothing seemed appropriate.

I will simply say that I will miss enjoying something so much I would watch it on Friday if I had to. I will the great acting, (usually great) writing, the score that made general TV watchers into soundtrack junkies. I will miss the sense of extreme vertigo from the plot kicking everyone squarely in the heads (YT link). I will miss the only show where I don’t want to know spoilers, Adama and Tigh’s epic bromance, Edward James Olmos destroying expensive props in the name of method acting, Laura Roslin leaning over a console and screaming “I AM COMING FOR YOU.” A show that emotionally drags you out and makes you angry at its main characters. I will miss Baltar, even.

This all makes very little sense for anyone who’s never watched the show – and come Saturday morning we can all rejoin you in “normal life” – but that’s the point: a TV show created a journey, literally and emotionally, for its viewers to follow along with. We’re all going to feel a sadness when that journey comes to an end.

So say we all. SO SAY WE ALL.