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mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin

Bell_ posted:

This, but Season Two.

i think the real cutoff is when they leave the desert planet after the fantastic hotdrop scene. That's when the writers realize that, oh poo poo, we have to either figure out who the other cylons are, or declare the note about the number of cylons was wrong, or something, and can't keep kicking the can down the road

and they chose the worst possible answer to that. I really liked the ending, actually, since the story was about capital g God and angels from the beginning and nerds just insisted it wasn't happening, but the final five was absolutely wretched.

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thexerox123
Aug 17, 2007

mastershakeman posted:

I really liked the ending, actually, since the story was about capital g God and angels from the beginning and nerds just insisted it wasn't happening

:rolleyes:
There's a pretty big difference between the Cylons being driven by religious belief and angels flat-out existing.

Old Kentucky Shark
May 25, 2012

If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.


The real point at which BSG went to poo poo was in the season 4 midseason break, when they let Mr. Gaeta be gay but only in internet webisodes.

Qwertycoatl
Dec 31, 2008

The big problem is the storytelling style where they go "look at all these cool mysteries we've set up, the resolution will be amazing" except they haven't actually thought about what's going to happen so in the end it all comes crashing down

Vichan
Oct 1, 2014

I'LL PUNISH YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR CRIME
I loved the whole 'Inches away from extinction just barely scraping by' vibe of the first season or two. The deeper they delved into the Cylons the less I cared.

Xealot
Nov 25, 2002

Showdown in the Galaxy Era.

Vichan posted:

I loved the whole 'Inches away from extinction just barely scraping by' vibe of the first season or two. The deeper they delved into the Cylons the less I cared.

Yeah, there are a number of later plot arcs that still felt like the early seasons, and I remember liking them. But the more into Lost-esque mythology it got, the worse it got. The late S2-early S3 arc with the cylon occupation on New Caprica was fantastic, though. I also really liked the S4 mutiny arc where Gaeta and Tom Zarek take over the ship. But for every one of those, we got more mystery box poo poo about the Final Five, or lazy "God Did It" plot resolutions that were deeply unsatisfying.

Much like GoT, though, at least the music was good. Bear McCreary did some cool stuff for BSG, even at the end. At least he and Ramin Djawadi don't let people down.

An insane mind
Aug 11, 2018

I love that this is now the thread to talk about disappointing shows that we wish had better endings and we've left GoT forgotten by the wayside, as we should.

Happy Noodle Boy
Jul 3, 2002


Vichan posted:

I loved the whole 'Inches away from extinction just barely scraping by' vibe of the first season or two. The deeper they delved into the Cylons the less I cared.

The intro keeping a count of the amount of people left (that updated / slowly shrank as people died and ships were destroyed) really helped sell the hopelessness of the situation.

Captain Splendid
Jan 7, 2009

Qu'en pense Caffarelli?
I always assumed that the horny robots would just be their "agents" and that the ones in charge, pulling the strings would be a cold, faceless AI.

33 is a great episode in part because you never see the cylon perspective. It makes them feel more like one big killing machine.

But it was nothing but horny robots all along.

An insane mind
Aug 11, 2018

Horny robots? What? (Never watched BSG, if this is an in-joke, sorry)

zenguitarman
Apr 6, 2009

Come on, lemme see ya shake your tail feather


Yeah me either, I watched the first 3 or 4 episodes and it seemed interesting but the only reason I felt I needed to watch it was that portlandia episode

Old Kentucky Shark
May 25, 2012

If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.


There were horny robots literally from the first ten minutes of the pilot miniseries. The "Nu" in Nu-BSG was "This time the robots can look like people, and are super loving horny."

It was horny robots all the way down.

Pattonesque
Jul 15, 2004
johnny jesus and the infield fly rule
there was a lot wrong with BSG but the fact that they all just like ... split up into different parts of earth really rubbed me the wrong way

like hey, son, we made it! I'm going to Africa now, and no you can't come with me. goodbye forever!

Marmaduke!
May 19, 2009

Why would it do that!?
You'd think the glowing spines when they got their horn on would've given the game away a bit quicker too

WampaLord
Jan 14, 2010

All I remember about the ending of BSG is the montage at the end implying that real world humans are right now on the path to creating cylons because Japan built Wappy Dog.

Giodo!
Oct 29, 2003

Marmaduke! posted:

You'd think the glowing spines when they got their horn on would've given the game away a bit quicker too

The first rule of cylon infiltrator school is no doggie style.

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



Lid posted:

GOT is in a league of its own because theres no point you can point to and say stop there. You need to ride it out. And it sucks.

I agree that if you stop at season 6 then you have all the big plot elements moving towards each other for the final showdown (Jon KitN, Daenerys finally going to Westeros, Cersei blowing up the Sept), you get some pretty great character moments (Davos confronting Melisandre, Qyburn murking Pycelle, Jaime's disdain as Cersei is crowned) and whatever you imagine about what comes out of that will be 100x better than what we got.

I can't think of anything in S7 or S8 worth continuing for, not even the various action set pieces because they're all so convoluted and contrived to fill time or undermine character arcs.

FWIW I think LOST actually ended about as well as it could've and had by that point pulled itself out of the crater it got stuck in as a result of the various unresolved mystery boxes or executive meddling. That being said, I think the show is immensely archaic - TV writing, plotting, etc has changed so much in the intervening years (in part as a result of the influence of shows like LOST that went viral and were very concerned with near real-time audience reaction/commentary before those were really things) that it is awkward to watch now, bordering on painful. My wife somehow never got into the show at all while it aired so she gave it a try a few months back and couldn't even finish the first season. The seams in a lot of the plotting REALLY show when you can binge it all in a short period of time.

Horizon Burning
Oct 23, 2019
:discourse:
BSG was at its best when it was doing a sci-fi story about preserving humanity in the face of nuclear apocalypse.

It was at its worst whenever it decided it had to be topical about 9/11 and Iraq War stuff. The exception to this is the New Caprica arc. However, for the most part whenever they tried to draw a parallel between Cylons and Muslims, it led to the most hackneyed, offensive stuff written. The Cylons literally Direct Democracied the Colonies into nuclear hellscapes - that's not exactly what happened on 9/11! And how the people who were opposed to the Cylons buddying up with Galactica in the later seasons were all portrayed as weird racists.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




thexerox123 posted:

:rolleyes:
There's a pretty big difference between the Cylons being driven by religious belief and angels flat-out existing.

There literally was an episode called the Hand of God in the first season.

Angry Salami
Jul 27, 2013

Don't trust the skull.
When you think about it, aren't 9/11 and the extinction of humanity basically equivalent?

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Angry Salami posted:

When you think about it, aren't 9/11 and the extinction of humanity basically equivalent?

It's had a nasty backswing for the last 20 years but I'm not ready to say 9/11 has snowballed us into the apocalypse just yet

Pedro De Heredia
May 30, 2006

regulargonzalez posted:

I checked out of Lost after s1 but I haven't heard anything good about the ending.

The ending of Lost had a mixed response at the time; it certainly got a lot of good reviews and positive comments on this very website. It's only retroactively that the whinier elements of online discourse have insisted it's the worst thing ever.

I'd say it's similar with GoT in that a lot of over-the-top hatred for the ending itself is a delayed reaction to the weak quality of the last seasons. Lost has more or less single-season plotlines even though it's a serial, and the one for S6 just wasn't very good.

Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jun 16, 2020

Pedro De Heredia
May 30, 2006

Xealot posted:

I also really liked the S4 mutiny arc where Gaeta and Tom Zarek take over the ship.

Eh. For me one of the interesting things about BSG is that in the first season, Adama is not clearly heroic, there is a legitimate and interesting tension between all these different elements, civilians, military, people like Zarek. The fact that by the end, it's Adama is clearly the good guy; Zarek is just a murderous dipshit is a bit lame.

Pedro De Heredia
May 30, 2006

Item Getter posted:

GRRM kept saying that they have more backstory/higher purpose that will be revealed in the later books, but D&D kind of forgot about it so I guess we'll probably never find out.

Sky Shadowing posted:

I think it's more that HBO decided to move that storytelling over to the prequel series that was supposed to be about them

It's 2020, a year after the series ended and almost a decade since the last novel, and you've still got people fooling themselves into believing that there's some secret or unwritten plot element that's going to turn filler into gold.

If there's a lesson to learn from Lost, BSG, GoT, etc. is that the answer to mysteries hardly matters compared to storytelling. The Others have been a largely unseen threat for five novels and over two decades of writing; there is no possible backstory, plot twist, or 'higher purpose' that's going to justify this buildup.

Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Jun 16, 2020

Marmaduke!
May 19, 2009

Why would it do that!?

Pedro De Heredia posted:

Eh. For me one of the interesting things about BSG is that in the first season, Adama is not clearly heroic, there is a legitimate and interesting tension between all these different elements, civilians, military, people like Zarek. The fact that by the end, it's Adama is clearly the good guy; Zarek is just a murderous dipshit is a bit lame.

There's a Zarek in transformers who ended up being more nuanced than the event telly character who decided he might as well be an Austin Powers baddie in the end.

Algol Star
Sep 6, 2010

I hate the mystery box style of TV storytelling it's so cheap. The whole reason people get invested in a mystery is that you believe there's some cleverly hidden truth just under the surface that will explain everything but 99% of the time the writers don't even know and there's a 'worry about it next season just give them a hook to keep watching' philosophy. Unless you get really lucky there's no way they can come up with a satisfying explanation when nothing was planned, it's hard to write a mystery and tease the answers but it's easy to just put in a bunch of cool mysterious events with no rules and then bullshit out an explanation after the fact. Makes it so hard to get invested in any TV show when you know there's a good chance they're just pulling it out of their rear end.

Also BSG should have ended with them thinking they were following god's path but finding a burnt out earth, realising it was all bullshit and setting off to create their own society that sucked less. The only possible resolution to a theme about worrying that history is repeating itself in a loop is that you can't possibly know and you should stop tearing yourself apart trying to stop the future. Leaving all technology behind was idiotic.

oliwan
Jul 20, 2005

by Nyc_Tattoo
the ending of Lost was just absolutely painful, the fact that these hacks were allowed to write anything at all after that is a goddamn travesty

oliwan
Jul 20, 2005

by Nyc_Tattoo
i remember that abrams or lindelof replied to the criticism about how the mythical elements of the show were handled with something like "actually, it was always a love story about humans and the mythical world was just a backdrop and unimportant :smuggo:" which is the worst thing i have ever heard a screenwriter say.

Arrrthritis
May 31, 2007

I don't care if you're a star, the moon, or the whole damn sky, you need to come back down to earth and remember where you came from

oliwan posted:

the ending of Lost was just absolutely painful, the fact that these hacks were allowed to write anything at all after that is a goddamn travesty

I remember since like, season one, the skeletons in the cave were one of those reveals that would show us that the creators had a plan for everything all along!!!

Of course they ended up being characters that were introduced the episode that their identities were revealed.

BB2K
Oct 9, 2012
Lost rules and the ending of lost absolutely rules

Harold Stassen
Jan 24, 2016
In the Game of Thrones, we all Lost

Mulva
Sep 13, 2011
It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.

WampaLord posted:

All I remember about the ending of BSG is the montage at the end implying that real world humans are right now on the path to creating cylons because Japan built Wappy Dog.

Boston Dynamics is taking it's time, but by God I will live to see a racist bi-pedal machine be super racist in downtown Boston.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Mulva posted:

Boston Dynamics is taking it's time, but by God I will live to see a racist bi-pedal machine be super racist in downtown Boston.

What has Neil Blomkamp been up to lately?

ALFbrot
Apr 17, 2002

Mulva posted:

Boston Dynamics is taking it's time, but by God I will live to see a racist bi-pedal machine be super racist in downtown Boston.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schilcu01.shtml

Vichan
Oct 1, 2014

I'LL PUNISH YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR CRIME
BSG's last season had an early scene where Tigh seemingly shoots Adama out of nowhere only for it to turn out to be all in his head.

I was actually kind of disappointed that they didn't go through with it. It probably would have been the most 'holy poo poo' moment in TV history as far as I'm concerned.

Pattonesque
Jul 15, 2004
johnny jesus and the infield fly rule

lol remember when Adam Jones said people called him the n-word at Fenway and Schilling was like "WELL I NEVER HEARD IT SO ????"

Mulva
Sep 13, 2011
It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.

The defining achievement of modern robotics will be finding a way to program an algorithm even more racist than Curt Schilling.

Pattonesque
Jul 15, 2004
johnny jesus and the infield fly rule

Mulva posted:

The defining achievement of modern robotics will be finding a way to program an algorithm even more racist than Curt Schilling.

ketchup dispenser in the ankle, programmed to grift the state of Rhode Island for $70 million, pre-loaded with thousands of racist boomer memes that it posts to facebook every hour on the hour

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.

Mulva posted:

The defining achievement of modern robotics will be finding a way to program an algorithm even more racist than Curt Schilling.

Super Baseball 2020, but the Taiwan Megapowers keep screaming the n-word.

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Phenotype
Jul 24, 2007

You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.



Pedro De Heredia posted:

It's 2020, a year after the series ended and almost a decade since the last novel, and you've still got people fooling themselves into believing that there's some secret or unwritten plot element that's going to turn filler into gold.

If there's a lesson to learn from Lost, BSG, GoT, etc. is that the answer to mysteries hardly matters compared to storytelling. The Others have been a largely unseen threat for five novels and over two decades of writing; there is no possible backstory, plot twist, or 'higher purpose' that's going to justify this buildup.

It's not even that hard, man. Here's my two-minute spitball idea: The Others were secretive and religious, tentative friends with the First Men until the men committed some tragedy against them borne out of misunderstanding because the Others are so alien and weird -- maybe Others grow into trees when they die and the men burned their bodies in a funeral pyre, maybe when humans sow seeds in their land it cripples their magic and aborts their children, I dunno, give it a little bit of brainstorming and you can come up with something interesting. The Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and the Night King make a truce to avoid outright war (maybe they're loving like in that one horrible fanart), and the humans retreat beyond the wall vowing never to come back, until thousands of years later when they've forgotten and they push the wildlings north and the wildlings accidentally commit the same tragedy.

Then you've got a link between Jon and the Night King, tragic mysterious backstory, humans are at fault but they still don't want to be genocided, etc. It's not super original or subversive, but I'm sure you can punch it up quite a bit if you have people paying you millions of dollars to work on it fulltime, and there's a story you can put there. The Night King blames Jon for breaking the deal, maybe he doesn't exactly understand that Jon isn't the same Lord Commander because the Others are so weird and timeless, there's a lot of guilt there once you find out why the Others are attacking, the humans win by genociding the Others even though they're to blame for the war. It's a fuckton better than what we got and it took me all of five minutes to come up with.

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