Sorting Through the “It’s Over” Posts, and Adjusting Our Expectations After the Announcement
Last Thursday’s announcement from producers David Eick and Ron Moore has inspired hundreds of news articles and blog posts, all discussing their confirmation that Season Four will be the last season of Battlestar Galactica. Some just gave the basics of the original announcement, some focused on the conference call on Friday and any clues it gave for season four, but only a few folks talked about how the announcement changes the expectations of the fans.
Sure, there were some good spoilers:
Lucy Lawless may be back as Number Three,
and hope remains for the BSG prequel Caprica to eventually see light of day.
A viewer’s relationship with a show changes when we know a season is the last. If we love a show, we just can’t watch it die. Personally, I could not even watch the last season of Buffy, and while my investment in BSG is much lower there is a natural need for viewers to distance ourselves from a show and its characters once we know the end is near.
Since I know that the end is coming no matter what, it makes my relationship with the show complicated and detached. It kind of feels like when you live with a girlfriend and you decide to break-up, but there’s still 6 weeks left on your lease, so you try to stick it out till then. Inevitably, you wind up having alcohol (or Flintstone vitamin) fueled sex and wake up the next morning feeling weirded out about the whole thing. At the same time you’re trying not to get too excited about it, you’re trying to enjoy it because you know that it’s going to go away soon.
That quote actually came from a review of Studio 60, but the sentiment definitely applies. Like Starbuck, our instinct is self-protection. How that instinct plays out with Season Four will be … interesting.
Battlestar Galactica, Studio 60, Lucy Lawless
June 4th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I agree. Watching next season will be a mixture of anticipation and disappointment. Like a child on Christmas morning, I will at once be both excited that the day has arrived and saddened by the same fact.
However, unlike Studio 60, BSG has given us enough to time to prepare and not play the “will it or won’t it” game.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:31 am
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything - and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”