#except they didn’t plant enough breadcrumbs so the audience wouldn’t feel like it was sprung on them

[loptrcoptr]

Yknow, season 3 of bsg was not as messy as I expected.

spoilers, etc.

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I super did not expect four episodes of love rectangle bullshit to be the alluded to big-cringe-point of the season, because what writers in their right minds would lean so hard into that??? damn, I almost quit after the eye of Jupiter two-parter, ugh. There is a reason television shows dangle romance in front of viewers like a cat toy and yank it away constantly. It’s because the promise of what could be is exciting, and making that exciting thing a part of every episode completely nullifies the excitement. That whole four episode shitshow was just miserable to watch, I’m not sure what part of the clusterfuck was supposed to be enjoyable to any viewer.

The character writing has been patchy since season two, so it’s not like that was new. I think it was just easier to focus in on in this season because they kept timing things so poorly too, revealing plot holes, which reveals weaknesses in the characters as people and firmly yeets them back into the “two dimensional” category. For instance, if they just hadn’t mentioned the love rectangle crap for four episodes after Unfinished Business, no one would’ve bailed on the show out of misery, I imagine. They dug in when they should’ve backed off. If they had sprinkled some more angst in after a sizeable break, the average viewer would have dealt with it much better. Also? Kara’s “death” and the subsequent lack of a grieving-themed episode, they totally showed their hand on that one. By rushing through it–no funeral, no one crying but Bill, just Lee looking sad and Sam being drunk– they made it painfully obvious that she wasn’t dead. If they had just “killed” her a few episodes earlier, dragged the viewer through a sad aftermath episode, and then moved forward, it would’ve stuck! They clearly either a) didn’t have any clue how they were gonna finish the season, or b) they did but couldn’t figure out how to get there until the last ten or so episodes, because they had a lot of chances for really solid foreshadowing that they absolutely ignored, or just didn’t know enough about at the time to be able to factor them in. (The final four out of five. They could’ve been setting up for that since new caprica, throwing in weird details, things they know, etc. but no! And why four at once, that’s so stupid, it should’ve been three so they still had two surprises left that they could work out later!! The only hints at those four were planned to be Cylons since the beginning of the season, that I can think of, are maybe that Tigh fought off Bulldog fairly easily, and Galen beat the shit out of Bill in the ring and also did better after the airlock disaster than Cally did. But they sure didn’t have the group planned out in season two, because in season two Anders was briefly dying of pneumonia, which is not very Strong Cylon Type of him.)

So it all felt half-baked, most of the time, which lets you, the audience, hone in on the things that don’t track. Like.... Seelix going from determined executioner to friendly local ray of sunshine. Bill thinking Lee would throw Saul under a bus just because Bill’s lawyer father was kind of an asshole and of Lee is interested in law, so now he must be a cunt too. Laura throwing dissenters in jail for protesting poor working conditions when she herself is as staunchly pro-union as they come. Bill threatening to have Cally murdered just because she helped Galen organize a strike. Lee ruining his relationship with Laura just because some lawyer he met is charismatic. The list goes on.

Case in point, I think, that proves how little consideration for each character’s motivations went into this season: Kara’s reason for promising to be with Lee and then asking Sam to marry her a few hours later is never given. The show spends a ridiculous amount of time focusing on this “plot twist”, but never, ever gives a reason for why it happened at all. How can they expect the audience to both engage with this storyline and ignore the fact that there’s no motivation for it? Why would they treat their audience like morons who haven’t been paying attention? This was the Big Drama for the whole first half of the season (ugh, gag me) and the powers that be don’t seem to have invested any time or effort into the whole debacle at all. Maybe they’ll come up with the rationale for Kara’s decision in the next season, but they sure don’t have it figured out as of the last ep of season three. (And, actually, it seems implied in the finale of season two [when Tigh tells Kara “that was a long time ago, people change”] that something else went down, I mean unless Lee or Kara told no one else in the fleet... but told Tigh?)

I mean I guess any season that begins with a fat suit, sham marriages, and a time jump was bound to be a little messy.