Television That Doesn't Suck

Well, I'm now caught up on the episodes of Battlestar Galactica that I missed. And, I gotta say, if I'd seen the first regular episode first, there would never have been any doubt in my mind that this was a show I wanted to keep watching. That was some darned good television. I really am starting to get into this series. The problems faced by a ragged, unprepared group of interstellar displaced persons are interesting and, for the most part, are handled very realistically. And I'm coming to like these characters. Well, I liked Starbuck immediately, because she's just fun, but Adama and the President are starting to really grow on me. They're not larger-than-life action heroes, they're flawed adults trying to do their best in a desperate situation, and not always coming out of it certain they've made the right choices. I'm a sucker for that kind of characterization.

Alas, getting caught up on (and caught up by) Battlestar Galactica keeps distracting me from Babylon 5. I'm in the middle of season 4 now. Talk about mixed feelings... The year starts out incredibly strong, gets better and better over the course of five or six episodes, then fizzles out in a giant anticlimax and falls into a bit of a slump. Still, B5 at its weakest is still very much worth watching, and I'm looking forward to finishing out the season and going on to Year 5, which I mostly didn't see when it was originally on.

Meanwhile, WGN has decided to air Farscape in syndication, which is a very cool thing. Perhaps now some of you people who didn't watch it when it was on Sci-Fi can catch it without me giving you tapes.