BATTLESTAR GALACTICA - 4x21&22 “Daybreak” - Episode Review (Part 1)
Grab your gun and bring in the cat, ‘cause this one’s an opus.
I make no excuses and offer no apologies for my indulgences here; it is what it is, the final opportunity (barring THE PLAN) to discuss my favorite television series of the past twenty years or so, and to give every element -- good and bad -- its proper due.
Apparently LJ won't let me post an entry the entire length of the review as I wrote it, so I'm forced to break in up into a few parts. Think of it as a whole, just like the finale ...
2 0 0 4 -- 2 0 0 9
“Home is other people.”
-- Jacob, TWOP’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA recapper (Islanded In A Stream Of Stars)
“God Moves in a Mysterious Way”
-- William Cowper, Olney Hymns 1779.
"The end.”
Those are the two hardest words to write in the process of storytelling. Beginnings are easy, endings are hard --- take it from me, I’ve yet to complete half of my own unfinished business over the years. My Dad was away on business last week finishing a project he’s been working on for 20 years, so I guess I get that from him! It’s easy to come up with a great idea, but to finish it on the same level (hours, weeks, perhaps even years later), that’s the rub. Writing and reading / watching’s all about the journey sometimes, not the destination, and sometimes I think that people who can’t or won’t engage in creative endeavors, especially long term ones, of whatever type don’t fully understand the pain of the process, that the deliberate choice of what word to end on or with which brush stroke / spin of the clay wheel / chip of the marble / twist of the circuit to finish upon is often the hardest one of them all. Most of the time that decision comes down to gut instinct, to what feels right, and that’s the most human part of creating art. If it wasn’t, if it were all some magical equation that one could just push the correct sequence of buttons into, than anyone could do it. And in the end, it’s all a matter of subjectivity. The rest is entirely in the viewers’ minds. George Lucas once had a great quote, in which he stated that “films are never finished, they’re just abandoned.” Ah George, if only you could have listened to yourself.
Film, of course, is a completely different medium than television -- one subject to far more creative variables and economic constraints, than, say, a two-hour movie or a six part series created over thirty years. And when a fifty, or one hundred, or even two hundred-plus hour series finally comes to an end, whether by choice, cancellation or ennui, doubtless the ending wasn’t EXACTLY as the creators envisioned at the very beginning. They may have had an idea of where it would end, but the specifics of how they got there that were probably far, far removed or changed from the initial concepts. After all, storylines are redeveloped day to day, episode to episode and season to season (sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse), budgets are finite, key actors age / get fired / move on / perhaps even die, and networks / ratings demand more or less of the tale than was originally conceived. Not to mention the whole shebang usually needs to fit a into 42 or maybe even 80 minute time slot, depending upon how much advertisers are willing to pony up...
In the pantheon of narrative-based television series over the decades, there have been many examples of endings; some iconic, some downright embarrassing, and most falling somewhere in between. Kimble caught the one-armed man. The Korean War ended. WJM-TV got bought out. St. Elsewhere was a dream and so were Dick Loudon and Roseanne Connor. Alex P. Keaton took a job in the big city. Credits told us “Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.” Daniel Stern told us, “After all these years, I still look back … with wonder.” Jerry and the gang went on trial for nothing. Johnny sat on a stool and reminisced for an hour. Ross chose Rachel. Life on Mars was both a coma and a spaceship. Tony listened to Journey while Meadow parked her car. And so on and so forth… One thing is a certainty when it comes time to end a series - it’s best to go out ahead of time, rather than long past it. Can anyone say NIGHT COURT, MARRIED WITH CHILDREN or THE X-FILES?
Within the past twenty years, especially in the last ten, I’ve watched and fully invested in number of completed, multi-season. single narrative-based shows from beginning to end (this doesn’t count prematurely cancelled (and therefore, incomplete) ones such as CARNIVALE, WONDERFALLS, FIREFLY, THE NINE, PUSHING DAISIES, etc.). Most of them have had middling-to-good endings. Even the show I consider to have the best series finale “ever” was mostly just an average episode, up until the utterly devastating final six minutes. (Yes, I’m still intending to finish and post my analysis on it one day… See what I mean about endings?) I suppose it really is about how you choose to end your final moments. In all honesty, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS was simply the best and most satisfying end to a multi-year narrative I’ve yet encountered, but that’s because the only limitations imposed upon it was J.K. Rowling’s prodigious imagination - which is why a well-crafted book will trump a fixed movie / television show every time. But I digress…
Before we get to the main event, I think it’s important to touch upon three other television finales first. After all, Omnia illa et ante fiebant, right?
STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION (“All Good Things…”, aired May 23 1994), another show that was far, far better than its predecessor but at the same time never fully escaped from under its iconic shadow, went out on an intellectual high but not an emotional one, as Capt. Picard figured out how to think spatially in three time dimensions, and then sat down to play a round of poker with his crew. Of course, Bannon Braga and Ron Moore knew that this wasn’t the end, that there were further adventures already in development for the big screen, and that significantly lessened any real, and therefore, affecting finality to the “last” voyage of the NCC-1701D.
THE WEST WING (“Tomorrow”, May 14, 2006), television’s première political drama long past its Aaron Sorkin glory days, had nonetheless enjoyed a creative rebound in its final two seasons by focusing on the nuts-and-bolts details of the Presidential campaign between Matthew Santos (D.) and Arnold Vinick (R.), both of whom were fascinating and incredibly charismatic candidates. Vinick (a truly excellent Alan Alda), the stronger candidate, was a Republican I would have voted for, and apparently John Wells and his writing staff thought so too, because the plan hatched during the final season was to let Vinick take up residence in the Oval Office (I believe that would have been him getting out the limo at Barlett’s Presidential Library as established in the Season 7 premiere). The untimely death of actor John Spencer (Leo McGarry, the heart and soul of the show, and Santos’ running mate) changed everything, and thus, the WEST WING ‘verse elected its first Latino president in order to avoid a completely downbeat conclusion.
“Tomorrow” dealt with the day of Santos’ inauguration, and Bartlett’s last few hours in office, and while low key and dignified (as it should have been, after all this was “reel life” democracy and not a 24-esque coup), I can’t help but think of the added poignancy the show would have had had they stuck to their original game plan. I didn’t think much of “Tomorrow” when it originally aired, but its grown on me with time as a fitting farewell to all the characters we’d grown to love over the years (minus C.J.’s encounter outside the White House, which will always be clunky and forced nostalgia). What history may take away from this episode is that the Santos character was directly inspired by then-up-and-coming U.S. Senator Barack Obama, and that the show on many levels turned out to be a prescient reflection on the shape of things to come.
I hope I feel the same way about THE SHIELD (“Family Meeting”, Nov 25, 2008) in a few years, because right now, I’m still rather conflicted. Not in the actual plot of it all - that part was spot on and utterly appropriate, in that Vic “got away with it all”, but lost his family, friends, career, and what little reputation he had left in the process - but in the smaller details and in the “b” plots that just sort of fizzled out instead of exploding like they should have. THE SHIELD’s main thematic concern was always about moral permissiveness, and how far one could rationalize fighting brutality with brutality, as exemplified by The Strike Team. For years, I’d been saying that the show meta-arc was “all about” the downfall of this corrupt but highly effective cop, and the people he dragged down to his level, and to that end, “Family Meeting” achieved that goal. It was a lot “quieter” than one would have expected (a point which definitely described Shane’s inevitable murder/suicide), kind of like watching a broken down old scow finally sinking underwater with one long last gasp, and I felt that the show had reached its emotional peak in the previous episode (“Possible Kill Screen”) during that amazing interrogation room scene, where Vic confessed all his sins and sealed his and everyone else’s ultimate fate.
I just wish the show had better serviced Dutch and Claudette, that Aceveda faced his own moral reckoning, that we hadn’t wasted all that time and energy on the ridiculous Mexican cartel storyline. But not everything in art or life is supposed to be a big, dramatic ending. Cops and crimes and the Barn will go on long after Vic Mackey (much like NYPD BLUE’s low key ending, from what I heard), but his story is over and finished. When you look at it, the open ending wasn’t really one at all - if Vic Mackey ever got back in the saddle, we would have seen it. But he didn’t. Working in the Federal Building as Olivia’s slave was the final end of him as a Detective and as King Shit, and while he may have gotten some of that back beyond the show’s narrative, it wouldn’t have been even remotely the same. But true to form, he wasn’t going to just roll over and play cubicle drone either, and that’s why the show ends on a callback to the Season One finale - Vic sticking a gun in his back pocket, heading off into the night to do God knows what to God knows whom. He felt the weight of it all but really hadn’t learned his lesson and I guess that was the final point. Damn you Shawn Ryan!
All of this -- and “this,” and the rest of my review, is what I’ve been pondering over the last two weeks, and why it took me so long to write a long, reasoned, non-knee jerk response that the show asked for and deserved -- is preamble and a roundabout way of saying that I both absolutely loved and was unequivocally disappointed by the “Daybreak”, the epic series finale of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, the show I have invested the most into (emotionally and financially) during the past few years. In its own way, BSG can be seen as the bastard love child of the three series I mentioned above, and it was perhaps destiny that I felt the same way about its finale as I did its spiritual predecessors.
“Daybreak” was everything I hoped for and expected in regards to action, individual character beats and, of course Bear’s underscore.
“Daybreak” was everything I was afraid of in regards to providing conclusive “answers” for a fanbase that had built them up to unattainable expectations.
Reading over the many, many, MANY heated arguments that have arisen online since last Friday, I totally agree with many of the online responses that loved the finale, and I totally agree with many of the ones that really didn’t. But then again, I’ve always maintained that BATTLESTAR is, and now sadly was, not an easy show to love, that it had its share of gaping flaws but never took the easy or cheap way out nine times out of ten. “Daybreak” begged the question “What kind of show did you think you were watching, anyway?”, and those of you who answered “Cinéma vérite space-military drama” were wrong, wrong, wrong in the end. During “The Last Frakkin’ Special” that aired last week, we caught a glimpse of the series’ mission statement, which was headlined “Taking the Opera Out of Space Opera”. Funny enough, but that’s quite literally what they added back in at the very end, and then they went and topped it off with “God” and a bully pulpit.
So it seemed only fitting that I (and apparently everyone else) had a complex and extremely polarizing response to a like-minded show, and on that note alone, this three- hour wrap up couldn’t have been anything else than what Ron Moore had already presented to us for all four seasons. Was ending BATTLESTAR the way he envisioned it years ago -- Six in her red dress walking through our Times Square -- the right brush stroke to finally walk away from? Yes, because it was ultimately his show and his decision to reveal his own (and by extension “God” ’s) authorial hand in it all, that what started out as a faux-documentary reflection on America’s post 9/11 mindset turned in to a very personal statement on the nature of faith and the folly of developing technology beyond our control.
I know, I know, that’s a cop-out and pretentious answer, but, like the show, it’s the only “right” conclusion. How we respond to the facts on the ground is still in our minds alone. If you really look at it, Ron Moore was being true to his admiration of both SEINFELD and THE SOPRANOS and their own fan-polarizing endings. An inconclusive non-ending is an ending no matter how much one wants to deny it, and if nothing else, ensures passionate debate afterwards. It’s not hard to recognize that “All Good Things...”, “Tomorrow” and “Family Meeting” all have similar open-endings too. An abrupt cut away to a black screen may not be satisfying or even fair (I can imagine it would be downright fucking infuriating), but it’s also sheer, twisted genius and utterly ballsy storytelling. BATTLESTAR was rightfully renowned for having both those qualities in spades; and in a way, we got our own black screen when Kara The Green was there one second and gone the next. Would Tony being whacked in the last few moments be a satisfying resolution to every single fan? It would not have, and neither would have been Kara-as-Daniel’s-progeny. One might have said of either ending, “Ah, that was how I expected it to happen. Logical, but predictable.” Would a conclusive, happy (or unhappy) ending necessarily make it a better overall experience overall? I don’t know. Do you prefer paintings or sculptures? How do you know you like one better than the other? The answer is, you just do.
To the haters and nitpickers of this episode (and there are a great many of them out there, including myself to a degree), this may sound like I’m offering an apology, a severely-biased deference to sloppy, last-minute blanket plot resolutions and shoehorned theological, pro-Luddite arguments to the contrary. I am. After all, weren’t characters’ ultimately sympathetic reactions to Athena predicated on their memories of Boomer, despite the clear differences between the two? I think it’s also important to point out that such heated responses could only have arisen from the tremendous emotional investments we all poured into this show. Fans wouldn’t bitch so much if they didn’t care about it at all in the first place (Haters, fair weather fans and trolls don’t count because they’re just there to stir up shit for shit’s sake). So if it’s the journey you remember and not the end, then what does it matter? Life only ends one way, therefore why should storytelling?
But endings are begat by beginnings, and that’s why this show was structured as such, with such a heavy emphasis on emotion-centric character flashbacks (something LOST does brilliantly in its sleep by now). For months now RDM was promising this approach, and his official statements should have been should have been a red flag to anyone expecting otherwise, especially considering his “it’s the characters, stupid” remark.
By the midpoint of the season] we had revealed the origins of the final five, we had found the original Earth, we had dealt with all the backstories of people... there was a laundry list of things that were out of the way. Then it became about, what do we do in the finale and we started focusing on what is the story? What is the plot? It was clear it would be a rescue mission of Hera. Then we kind of got blacked out on the details of the assault, and what was the trick, and where were they going to jump in, and who was on what assault force - and this became very frustrating and annoying.
I went home and had an epiphany in the shower and said, "It's the characters, stupid!" And it really always has been, and I went back the next day and said, "Let's forget about the plot for a moment and just trust that it will work itself out, because it always does. What do we want the characters to deal with; let's talk about the individual stories and resolutions. I just had an image of someone in their house chasing a bird from the room, I didn't know what it meant but it's an image and let's put it on the board. I think it was [David] Weddle who said he was interested in seeing where the characters had come from before we got to the end, and then we kind of came up with this structure of flashbacks to show you where they end up after seeing where they came from and that formed the backbone of what the finale was going to be."
--- RDM, TV Guide interview, March 20, 2009
Watching “Daybreak” as a whole, 2 1/2 hour episode, as it was conceived and meant to air, hammered home that thesis, and is one of the things that multiple viewings rewarded. Case in point: each of the character flashbacks almost perfectly paralleled the ones at the end - the intro went Adama-Baltar-Roslin-Lee/Kara, whereas the endings went Adama-Lee/Kara-Roslin-Baltar, although technically Adama got the last scene before the coda, so you could work it that way too. To that end, I feel that character-centric structure is the best way to approach this episode, to see what really worked, what really didn’t, and who/what fell in-between.
Let’s go around the horn.
(Click here for Part II)