No spoilers.
Battlestar Galactica (2003) finished its sparse 6-year span this weekend with the episode "Daybreak, part 3". In our house it was not unlike watching SiL (Babylon 5's goodbye episode) some 10 years earlier. Tears streamed. But why?
Earlier in 2009 I called BSG a "train wreck", and meant it. The story had gone completely "woo-woo". Characters took on completely different motivations. Plot lines were silently abandoned. Contrast to B5 which stuck to and finished its story through its 4 network seasons.*
BSG's "jump the shark" moment for me was at the start of its Season 4 (2008) when it hyped then revealed the "final five Cylon models". (Recall there were 12 models made to look like humans. They were hidden, sleeper agents amongst the humans, multiple copies of each.) Even this turned out to be a bald-faced lie as they were neither "final" nor "models". And worse, Cylon bad guys parroted this "final five" marketing line in their dialog.
This and many more changes grew my anger and disbelief as season 4 wore on, yet I still watched, and at the end I still came to tears.
That good writers can cause such caring and emotional attachment is hardly new. Those of us who read books know this well. A planned story arc that executes to fulfillment is perhaps older than formal language itself. Indeed societies and cultures were built on the more epic of tales.
It should come as no surprise, then, that a when a good story is allowed to develop, people find meaning in it and emotionally attach to its characters. A significant human desire, if not need, is fulfilled.
American television, our modern storyteller of the greater world, fails to grasp this. Instead we get "pitched at". Endless short-sighted series emphasize action over meaning. Titillation and hype drive the soulless push for a nightly maximum of viewers.
And then most series are abandoned even before all completed episodes are shown. Characters and story suddenly vanish. Wiped out. The full tragedy of this is that the viewer gets punished for caring. No closure, grief unresolved, series after series, year after year.
American television needs to commit to showing complete stories. Short stories would work: 3 to 6 hours of a tale, any genre: beginning, middle, end. Perhaps that could serve as a pilot to gauge viewer interest? But also commit to shows with a longer story that fills out a season or seasons of a show. It can work with accomplished writers and good stories. It's been done before. It should be done again. (And often.)
So back to the Galactica finale, I cried because I'm sad. Well-rounded characters I came to know through a story are gone, and I will not see them again. I cried because I'm human, an emotional being. I grieve the loss, and I embrace it fully.
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* Yes, I know B5 had a 5th season on TNT, but it was like a "bonus" season or sequel, with new story, main characters and feel.
