Okay, so we finally rolled into BSG. We're, um, seven episodes in, plus the miniseries.

This is damned good stuff. A few weak spots but I've learned it's never safe to judge a series on its early shows - my gawd, if B5 had been held up for judgement around episode 5-6, it would have been buried at sea in cement barrels.

There are some things that are getting under my skin, though...

1) I understand the steamy sex scenes are a hallmark. *Sigh*. *Yawn*. Enough already!

2) OTOH, if the actor playing Gaius gets to roll around with the blonde in every ep for four years, my only question is... did they have to pay him anything?

3) I am deeply irritated at the opening-credits bit of showing us a good 30 seconds of clips from the episode about to be seen. As someone who diligently avoids "Next week on..." teasers and tries to get to each episode of episodic stuff on DVD without reading the synopsis shoved at you along with the PLAY button... I find this somewhere between appalling and obnoxious. I have no idea what the makers were thinking.

4) Starbuck. Couldn't be more of an asshole with two brass clangers.

5) Edward James Olmos. *Wow.*

6) Ugly, messy, indeterminate, bothersome human interaction with dismal consequences. *Outstanding.*

I never watched it on cable, but enough people recommended it (my dental hygienist, fer chrissake!) that I bought the miniseries on DVD. Well, now we've seen everything up through the first four episodes of Season 3 and own all the rest, with Season 4.5 on pre-order at Amazon (due out mid August).

I *like* the sex and wish the show had been on HBO instead of SFC. I'm very impressed with the quality of the acting from relative unknowns, and Tricia Helfer (the blonde 6) is especially impressive, given the fact that she could have easily continued trading on looks alone (she used to be a model). They give Dean Stockwell some terrific lines and he does a notably great job. (He shows up late in Season 2, if memory serves.)

As stunning as Helfer is, I think my favorite female is Grace Park. I don't remember ever having seen her in anything else (nor had I seen Tricial Helfer elsewhere), and I think she's wonderful on many levels.

My single favorite shot, though, is one they repeat in every intro: Tricia Helfer in Gaius' house on Caprica during the invasion, her back to the floor to ceiling windows with legs spread, pushing Gaius down to the floor in front of her as the blast wave from a nuclear bomb comes crashing through the windows. Gets me every time.

The plot is complex enough that I miss significant pieces of it and need to go to the Battlestar Wiki to get a clue. In the process I end up finding out early who some of the other Cylons are, but it's worth it to me to be able to keep up with what's going on. Too bad you can't set a flag for which episode you're on when you log into the Battlestar Wiki so they block anything that would be a spoiler for you. That would be cool.

Dan

We have a DVR. So far, it's been used exclusively for Mad Men, the first show in decades to catch my realtime interest.

BSG just seems determined to give everything away - I think somewhere in the chain is someone who thinks the viewer is really, really stupid. So on the DVDs you have the synopsis at the play button, the "previously on" segment which I'm okay with and which we usually watched, even when we watched back to back episodes. Then there's that bedamned preview material in the opening credits sequence, which just baffles me.

I dunno. The few movies I've watched absolutely cold, not knowing anything but the title, are some of the ones that are the most vibrant in my recollection. I can't quite get the compunction to know the whole thing before you see it.