I <3 Eddie J

Tomorrow it will have been one week since the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.

I think I'm finally able to talk about it.

Seriously, it's been kind of a rough week. It feels like my older, hotter girlfriend broke up with me because she graduated and left for college while I'm still a sophomore. I knew it was coming, and it had to end when it did, but it's still sad.

BSG has been the best thing I've ever seen on television, hands down. I don't think it was followed by many people in my social circle, but I hope to be able to convert a few people on that front with liberal loaning of DVD collections. I believe the thing that held the show back (at least from my non-watching friends) was a certain perceived geekiness threshold. Hear me well: this notion you have of Star Trek-level sci-fi -- glossy heroes in spiffy future-wear working together to come up with complex scientific solutions to alien puzzles, then explaining said solutions by way of a simple analogy ("Like putting too much air into a balloon!") -- is false. The reimagined BSG was a dark and frequently tragic telling of an epic story, utterly lacking in camp and robotic dogs. The heroes are anti-heroes half the time, and most are deeply flawed yet undeniably sympathetic characters.

The cast as an ensemble is second-to-none. Edward James Olmos' Admiral Adama literally brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion with a speech. I'll be the first to admit that I can be moved to tears by big movie moments (perhaps because I am stoically unmoved by events in real life), but this man could do it to me on a practically weekly basis. James Callis' Dr. Gaius Baltar is one of the most surprising and entertaining characters of all time. Katee Sackhoff's Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is portrayed with such consistent hard-edged bravado that when you finally catch a glimpse of her genuinely smiling, it's breathtaking.

I could go on. I will, as a matter of fact, in my next post, which will be about the BSG board game.

So if you haven't seen any of it, rent and watch the pilot, really. It's an investment of a couple hours and you'll know at that point if it's for you. There are only four seasons of the show so there's no need to worry about getting endlessly caught up in yet another TV series. If it grabs you the way it grabbed us you'll tear through the whole story in a few weekends.