°Gaping wounds
Yes, spoilers - if you’ve not watched ‘The Hub’, rewind. Or throw caution to the wind. **[Spoilers for episodes 9 and 10, season 4]**
Christianity as a way to narrativise war as catastrophe and, not simply erase guilt, but “reward” mass murder. I particularly enjoyed the remarks about The Flood, whose references are, surely, both war in its quasi-declared and naturalised disaster (New Orleans) senses. And the lighting of slave-morality ressentiment - “Well, not slaves, exactly” - that will undoubtedly unravel, as all these gaping aporias will hopefully do.
Baltar/Roslin and Roslin/Adama - what to make of the differences here? Nietszche or Scheler? Which is to say, in a way, does the Roslin/Adama’s invocation of love get folded back into the Christian “slot-machine” variant of Baltar/Roslin or - given Elosha’s comments suggesting they have nothing to do with eachother - do they pull against eachother? I’m still, then, wondering about the difference between the anticipation of reward and exchange (Baltar/Roslin) and the clearly temporalised sense of Adama’s reply to Roslin (”It’s about time”). Or is it more about the King’s ‘two bodies’?
I really enjoyed this episode (written by Jane Espenson, hence the comical interactions with the hybrid), and the one before. But both will require repeated watchings. Is study, no?
Guess home isn’t what it used to be.
s0metim3s [June 15, 2008 @ 12:01 am]
i figured you’d like that…
dionysusstoned [June 15, 2008 @ 11:28 am]
I’m that predictable, as was this. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it.
The sentimentality of the entire episode (with the standout exception of Lucy’s surliness) was just a set-up for the final sequence (and I did like that Adama Snr dribbled on Adama Jnr’s hand - such intimacy). But as anticipated as this was (a play on the same final, slow pan in Planet of the Apes), having referred to the canon, I fully expect some craziness henceforth.
s0metim3s [June 15, 2008 @ 1:07 pm]
yes, certainly predictable…but still, at the better end of what might have been predicted. At any rate, i suspect you are correct, and this last was just the stage arrangement for the play still to come - and what better set for it than an image of the world irreparably, once, no longer.
—I did like that Adama Snr dribbled on Adama Jnr’s hand—
yes, breathtaking…closing off the circle opened in the last…for a man. And wonders whether that wasn’t a glint of pride mixed in there with tigh’s remaining eye when he receives lee delivery of, ‘he is where you put him’ (or something like that).
—I’m that predictable, as was this—
to be sure, i recently found cause to describe you as the apostle of the apocalypse…whose announcement is ‘there is no earth’ [thought you might like that]. So as much as i knew you’d like this, i also figured you were hoping for more
dionysusstoned [June 15, 2008 @ 3:22 pm]
The extended sentiment of the discovery of earth through the sustained montage-moments was, perhaps, nicely poisoned by the absences. Particulary caprica six’s, who, until that final slow pan, seemed to have been left pregnant and incarcerated, forgotten from Lee’s deus-ex-machina amnesty.
And the ongoing, almost running joke, play on the subjective, affective ground of prophecy, when Kara calls the final few nuts, was a nice touch.
I was wondering though… now that we’re on break… given Ron’s professed love for the ending of the sopranos, such that he wished he thought of it first, is it possible to reveal the final cylon without tying up too many of the threads that have sustained the series? Would it be possible to end the series, as much as these franchises ever end, without this revelation.
Or has this closure already been undone by cylon fertility and the age of Tigh? Such that the fifth could be Carolanne Adama or anybody’s parent.
influxus [June 15, 2008 @ 3:44 pm]
-And wonders whether that wasn’t a glint of pride mixed in there with tigh’s remaining eye when he receives lee delivery of, ‘he is where you put him’ (or something like that).-
Yes, but then the swagger in all of Tigh’s self-sacrifice was almost Seth Bullock worthy.
influxus [June 15, 2008 @ 4:04 pm]
d - I am genuinely flattered, and just to sharpen the (my own) enjoyment in the revelation that ‘there is no home’, and before I start thinking of series ‘endings’ …
Unlike the final sequence in Planet of the Apes, this one is all about the burnt, not so much an excursus on [the statue of] liberty as one about bridges. You can almost smell the ashes, right from that first handful Adama takes in his hand.
One could, if one wanted to - and clearly I do - read the sentiment of that ‘happy peace finding earth’ sequence (amnesty, armistice, unity, etc) in quite other - as in, really creepy - terms. To refer back to previous conversations, this one about the pogroms: that only in ashes can everyone be reduced to the same.
Not only is there ‘no earth’, but the desire for there to be an earth (foundation) means heading toward the crematoria.
Which is also to say, there are still gaping wounds … There might be revelation of the Fifth, but I doubt there will be healing. We have already been told the revelation will be traumatic. That’s been our only clue, as far as I can tell.
I - … Seth Bullock worthy. Yes, that chin!
s0metim3s [June 15, 2008 @ 4:27 pm]