***Warning: Contains Spoilers from this season’s “Battlestar Galatica”. ***
I have suddenly realized why I turn off the TV at 11:00 p.m EST every Friday night, perplexed, angry, crying and sad. Ronald Moore has taken my hand and together we lead a very slow funeral procession. I have experienced every single emotion while watching the show this season and as time has gone by and each episode ends, it has not gotten any easier to bare the weight of these feelings.
I can not fault the actors for their powerful performances. Especially Chief and Roslin. Leoben is also extremely believable and even though every part of my body wants to run, I can’t help but be drawn into his charismatic drive to believe in something greater than himself.
As I grow older, the beat of my own heart grows louder as I am faced with my own mortality. I used to laugh at 30-somethings who would converse about death and worry about the end of their existence. I was too busy living in the moment to even contemplate such wary and depressing things. Yet, I glance at my children and then to my father who has stared death in the face a few times in his short life and I start to grow paranoid of my own fragility.
Ronald Moore knows his audience.
Every Friday, he bombards us with questions of faith, sometimes harsh exploration of belief and it is all done very convincingly. This season has been extremely hard for me to watch, and not because I know the series ends after X episodes. It’s because when I look at Cheif Tyrol reacting to major life changing events, or Laura Roslin dealing with her crisis of faith in the face of death, or even Kara Thrace, so uncomfortable in what should be familiarity; there is resonance. There are moments when my heart beats so fiercely in my chest as I see myself wholeheartedly responding the same way, challenging the same things and facing the sometimes horrifying realizations in life and my eventual death.
I dread the last episode, I really do. Part of me wants the happy ending, but one of the reasons I fell in love with BSG was because of its true-to-life tangents. I could relate to these flawed humans and cylons alike.
If the humans do make it to Earth, (which apparently is already mixed with Cylons as we learned from tonight’s episode) I do not see a fairytale ending. Although, I will be thankful for a show that actually made me think about things and who’s writers weren’t afraid to journey across any sacred and politically correct border.
BSG works so well because it has complex, “real” characters having to confront true-to-life emotions and deal with difficult situations where it’s not always easy to know what the truth is and what is right.
Robert Heinlein once wrote “One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die…and accepts his sentence undismayed.” Life has a way of reminding you of the inevitability of death. I’ve had my best friend die in a car accident, watched my mom almost die from a stroke and from MRSA she picked up in the hospital, and gone to two funerals for babies in less than three months. But those reminders have also encouraged me to spend as much time as possible with family and friends, and not to apologize for indulging in those things in life that bring me joy, whether it’s writing, reading, promoting artists, goofing off at karaoke, or just taking in the beauty of where I live.
As long as we live
time passes by
and we don’t get it back when we die
When We Die
Bowling For Soup
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