Okay, I’m sorry for the delay. It’s been a very long day. Here’s what I thought about BSG Razor….

[Spoiler Warning]

I basically liked watching it because I miss the show. But … I dunno:

What with all of the flashbacks within flashbacks of flashbacks; the totally gonzo insertion of the old school Cylons (which I did like); the out-of-nowhere revelation that Admiral Cain (Michelle Forbes) was the lesbian lover of the IT Consultant version of Number 6 (Tricia Helfer); the hammering of horror-of-war-makes-us-do-bad-things themes; the transparent effort to plug the new flashback BSG series following a young William Adama; the lame reach for relevance in having a Starbuck’s-a-threat-to-humanity warning at the end: the show ultimately had a bulletin board feel to it. It was like all of the writers brought in their best story ideas (and some of their worst) and had a big long bull session over beers where they ended thumbtacking all of the ideas to the board with the orders: Now write it.

In other words, it felt like a bit of a mess. Almost as messy as the above paragraph.

I liked getting the back story on Admiral Cain’s badassness, but the transition from best friends with the XO to shooting him dead over a reasonable concen seemed a bit forced. The artifice of having the new, sultry, XO go on the away mission seemed even more forced — indeed, almost Star Treky in its implausibility. Who are all of these people walking around the hallways if the second-in-command has to go on these trips?

Another forced bit — necessary for both spinoff purposes and moral-of-the-story wrap-up — was to have Edward Olmos tag along on the mission (This Time it’s Personal!). He told Apollo he wasn’t going to kibbitz but immediately did so, because he didn’t want to nuke Starbuck (as if Apollo would).

Who among us didn’t think, after looking at the brutalized Number 6 on the floor of that cell, that she was going to steal a page from Law and Order and ask “Is it because I’m a lesbian?”

As readers know, I very much like BSG’s effort to emphasize the crooked timber of humanity. Everyone’s a tragic figure, the good guys have evil impulses, the bad guys have good impulses. This is called realism and me likey. (But it became surrealism when they took this excellent principle and applied it to the Cylons too. Enough of that. If you soulless, reincarnatable machines murder 99.99% of humanity, I shall be reluctant to appreciate your nuance.)

Even so, the speech at the end of Razor annoyed me. Admiral Adama refrained from judging Cain and the XO even though they murdered innocents (representing sizable chunks of the remaining human population) and launched highly dubious and costly military adventures. I don’t know if readers are right that they were forcing a comparison of Cain and George W. Bush (they’re both incompetent “deciders” get it?). But whatever they were trying to do with Cain was too forced regardless. And Adama’s exoneration of Cain was interesting, but morally anticlimatic and unconvincing. Would Adama really have done things the same way if he’d been in her position? I’m skeptical.

Anyway, it was still fun and I have no doubt the “uncut” DVD version of Razor will explore the Cain’s relationship with Number 6 more fully. Why? Because she’s a lesbian.