Stuff I Wish I'd Done | Catch the Frak Up - Battlestar Galactica: The Final Episodes

"Catch the Frak Up!" is a video recap of the last four seasons of Battlestar Galactica, and it's Something I Wish I'd Done, damnit.

First of all, get off your high horse--Galactica is excellent TV. It is easily the most sophisticated sci-fi series ever made, and like nothing that's been on television before, genre or otherwise. It's what you'd get if you let Joseph Conrad write Star Trek after getting high and watching soap operas with Philip K. Dick. There's no room for whimsy here--no lasers, no growling space bears and no velour onesies. People smoke and drink, lie and fight and play cards. Some dude screws the wrong girl and the world ends. And then things get really bad. It's frakkin' awesome.

Anyway, the folks at scifi.com put this thing together to help people get a handle on the story. The 13-minute film surveys the entire sixty-five-episode broadcast run, with all of its shifting alliances and snaking storylines. Faster-than-light editing shuffles us efficiently through the show's tangle of sweaty intimacy, putting weird names to pretty faces while showcasing its gunmetal palette and quaking cinéma-vérité style.

The narration (my chief creative woulda-coulda) is deadpan perfection--a caffeinated stream of minimalist snark that manages to evoke the clicking chatfests of the nerderatti with only a touch of technojargon and not one whiff of fanboy elitism.

The show's makers, mavens and marketers are shrewdly extending an olive branch to the uninitiated, leaving the screen door cracked for neophytes and stragglers who might have otherwise gone home. Diehard fans might slurp up every drop in one sitting, while new and lapsed viewers are free to linger, unfolding layers of subtlety and gathering precious tokens of geek-chic cred. "Catch the Frak Up!" works either way, bringing the new and confused down to Earth (hee...) for the big finale.

And I wish I'd done it.


The final episodes of Battlestar Galactica begin airing Friday, January 16, at 10 pm on SciFi.

by Jared Peterson
(originally published on proweirdo.blogspot.com)

Is it live...?

Once it was appointment television--now it's homework television. Here's what's piled up on our DVRs this week.

Kristen: writer, married, new mother
In Shape with Sharon Mann - 6 episodes, 5 of which are new
Gilad's Bodies in Motion - 3 episodes, all new
Friday Night Lights - 2 episodes
Ken Burns' Civil War - the first episode
Great Performances - 1 episode, the Broadway performance of "Cyrano" with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner
True Life - 4 episodes, 3 old, one half-watched
Top Gear - 11 episodes, 9 new. One of the old ones is the one where David Tennant was the celebrity in a mid-range car, so I will never delete it.
Intervention - 5 episodes, 4 new
Showbiz Moms and Dads - 6 episodes, none new
Pushing Daisies - 5 episodes
17 Kids and Counting - 2 episodes, none new
Life on Mars - 4 episodes, all new
The 2007 Doctor Who Christmas Special - not new
Weaponology - 12 episodes, 10 new
POV - 2 episodes, both new
All-Star Workouts - 2 episodes, both new
Cardio Blasts - 4 episodes, 3 new
Treasure Hunting in America - 35 seconds …only because this guy I know did this commercial for this weight-loss drug and I leapt up and recorded it and now I feel I can't ever get rid of it.
Made - 1 episode, not new

Jared: writer, bachelor, working on it
The 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards
Cowboy Bebop - 3 episodes
Scrubs - 3 episodes
Saturday Night Live - 2 episodes, both watched
Cool Japan - 3 episodes
NIHONGO Quick Lesson - 5 episodes. These are 10-minute Japanese lessons—actual homework TV.
ImagineNation - 2 episodes
Punk'd - 1 episode …because Kristen Bell was on it, and she is delightful.
The Soup – 1 episode. Indispensible--allows me to make fun of reality television without watching reality television.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – the most recent 4 episodes
ER - 1 episode, new
30 Rock - 1 episode, already watched ...but I will pore over it several more times to extract every morsel of comedy goodness.
The Office – 1 episode, a repeat
Loser
Manhattan
Spectacle - 3 episodes. Elvis Costello’s talk show on Sundance Channel.
The Big Bang Theory - 1 episode, a repeat
Pushing Daisies - 9 episodes. Clearly, the best show neither of us is watching.
The Sarah Silverman Program- 3 episodes
Gavin and Stacey - the last two episodes of the season
Mad Men - the last two episodes of last season
Lost - the last two episodes. I just don't want things toend.

Sorry, that just would have been too hard to Twitter.

Watch this space

Coming soon, a new way to look at television: our way.