My BSG Addiction: Intro

From January 29 to February 9, I watched "Battlestar Galactica" in its entirety on Netflix Instant. To be clear, that means a 3 hour mini series, a 90 minute mini-movie, and 74 episodes running about 45 minutes. During this time, I worked 10 hours per day, spent quality time with my girlfriend (where we also worked through all of "Pushing Daisies"), and, you know, slept. At first, I watched because I wanted to see what would happen next, but by the end, I was watching because I couldn't wait to be done watching. I can't imagine what it felt like to wait four years to see how it all ended.


During this time, I actually found myself wanting my girlfriend to have other plans, so I could watch. In the middle of the fourth season, it almost felt like a second job. Ugh, I have to watch more Battlestar. I think I may have skipped a meal or two, I honestly don't remember. Those 11 days are kind of a blur. I just wanted to talk to people about it, but there is so much to spoil, that I had to stop every conversation short. It didn't help that a co-worker who has more free time than I started later than I did but finished before me.

Even after I finished, I spent the next few days surfing the net for anything anyone had to say about it. I couldn't do this while I was watching. While I watched, I found myself wishing they made wikis with settings for how much you've watched. What I mean is that you can tell the web site you've only made it to the end of the second season; therefore, it won't let you read anything not revealed until season 3 and beyond. Get on that, internet. One night, we were watching "Pushing Daisies" when my girlfriend had to pull the laptop out of my hand. I was reading the BSG show bible. She was right, I did want to be watching "Pushing Daisies" and leave BSG behind. I just couldn't stop.

Here's the most fucked up part. I don't think the show was all that great. Don't get me wrong, it was very good. I would go as far as calling it the definitive sci-fi show of the last decade. In the same way "Star Trek" dealt with diversity in the '60s and "The X-Files" dealt with losing trust in the government in the '90s, BSG nails all the major themes of the post-9/11 age. Still, when it came time to rate the series, I rated it 3-stars before I thought about it some more and rated it 4.

The only way I can make how I feel about this clear is to finally have that conversation I've been craving. To get the ball rolling, I'm going to completely lay out how I feel about the show, topic-by-topic. While I'm going to try to lay out these topics in a logical order, they are completely scatter-shot.

Continue to Part 2