Too Much Confusion?

I finally gave up trying to play Knights of the Old Republic 2 last night. It crashed my computer again, and I'm tired of replaying the same scenes when the save files get corrupted. But I had a good gaming experience last night at Tim's, playing more Fallout 3. It's been so long since I enjoyed a first person shooter, and the VATs system takes it to a whole new level--I was picking off mercenaries and robots twice my level by waiting around a corner, and when they'd blunder into view I'd active VATs and aim at their heads, arms, or legs. There were some interesting Robbie the Robot looking robots with human brains in the glass domes mounted on top of them--an exploitable weak point, to be sure.

I actually watched the series finale of Battlestar Galactica on television last night, seeing commercial blocks for the first time in at least four months, I think. And Sci-Fi Channel has always had an especially large quantity of commercials. I don't know if I could've gotten through it if it wasn't for the whiskey I was drinking. Though I thought it was kind of funny that there were several commercials for Hulu.

I liked the Battlestar Galactica finale. I didn't love it.

I often suspect I'm an asshole. I honestly wish I had as easy a time enjoying things as other people seem to, because I feel like I might be alienating a lot of people. But when watching Battlestar Galactica, I have to make some allowances--one is that it's not a remotely likely conception of extraterrestrial life, even extraterrestrial human life, and one assumes it wasn't meant to be. It's pretty much impossible to predict what a completely alien culture would be like. Most space operas, even knowing this, like to be creative with their aliens, but Battlestar Galactica decided to try going in the opposite direction, not only making the aliens look and act human, but giving them a lot of contemporary technology, clothing, hairstyles, and names. I have nothing against this--the world's gotten too small. You can't tell Gulliver's Travels nowadays about undiscovered human countries where most customs and manners aren't much different from our own in order to emphasis the one or two points that are different.

However, this also means when you tell me ways in which this alien culture might be directly related to our own, it feels like a waste of time. When you also tell me these people did things that don't make a lot of sense, like throwing all of their ships and most of their technology into the sun when there's as much of a chance of evil Cylons finding this new "Earth" as there was them finding New Caprica, it annoys me. Also, the odd suggestion that being a farmer is inherently more noble than being a scientist, or any vocation requiring one not to handicap oneself, isn't a message I'm particularly inclined to agree with or enjoy on any level, particularly coming from writers of a Science Fiction television series.

And another thing I have to adjust to when watching Battlestar Galactica is that it's a story of people in terribly desperate living situations written by people who don't seem to have a very clear idea of what that's like and yet seem to hold up such people as being fundamentally more noble. Lee's decision, apparently for the entire human race, not to "build cities" as Lampkin suggested, is a good example of this rather fuzzy grasp of how countries and societies come together and are built. I wanted Lampkin to respond, "Really? That's too bad, because those guys were set to build some condos, those folks wanted to make a laundromat, and this lady was thinking of opening a toy shop. But I'll tell them to scrap everything, which is probably a good idea because I was starting to get an inkling we'd have to build things also having to do with sanitation, healthcare, and shelter." Apparently Lampkin didn't mind abandoning ambitions as a celebrity lawyer any more than the representatives on the quorum minded abandoning their political careers.

So, yeah. I liked bits of character--I liked Boomer switching sides again and getting shot for it. I liked the action sequences and I guess I dug the multiple Star Wars references. Dean Stockwell was great. Baltar turning the tide by explaining God didn't particularly care about anyone made absolutely no sense. Hera being held by Baltar for a moment seemed a pretty dull payoff for Roslin and Athena's visions they've been having for a year and a half.

Starbuck's resolution was okay, though it would've been better if she'd actually been the harbinger of death people kept saying she was.

Caprica acting superior to Baltar was a bit grating--she's most directly responsible for most of the destruction on Caprica, she strangled a baby for kicks. What did Baltar do? Apparently he got really mad at his father when he stabbed his nurse. What a faux pas.

I loved Lampkin getting appointed president--Lee ought to've said, "You know, I really ought to have a vice president and probably at least a couple aids who'd be better suited for this, but the fact is, you're the last character in the fleet and for some reason we're not oh-so-subtly suggesting you're a coward for even thinking about not going on a suicide mission that promises to accomplish very little in the grand scheme of things. Congratulations."

Apparently "All Along the Watchtower" has been written and recorded before and will be written and recorded again.

But it was a nice show. Now I need to find something else to watch while eating dinner . . .