Pulling the plug, at least for a little while.

I really need to go on a hiatus from Battlestar Galactica. I just finished episode 17 of season three. When I dropped Carrie off at the airport yesterday I was on episode seven. That is almost ten straight hours of TV watching.

As a note, I really hate the stigma that Science Fiction gets from people. My wife for example. When I try and explain to her how great the writing is on this show she just kind of shrugs and says "I don't like Sci-Fi." When I say what I am about to say, I think that I will probably get some heat for it, but I think that the Sci-Fi sitcom has put a lot of people off. Maybe I am just making this up. I was never a really big fan of Star Trek. Some of the episodes were really, really good, but it did not have an overall story arc that tied the entire thing together rather than just "These are the voyages of the star ship enterprise." Maybe I was missing something.

TV shows in general have a bit of a handicap in that they are designed as a medium for advertising. Granted that all most pop art is mostly a vehicle for making money, but behind a lot of it is an artistic desire. Take for example Lost. From everything that I have read, J.J. Abrams was a bit upset when they tried to stretch the show out after the writers strike, making one season into two. To me its almost as if someone, having written a short story, was told, yeah, we need to make this longer...rather than writing a novel, they end up making a long short story. It is in these instances that we get "filler episodes" such as the one on Lost with the two diamond theives or on Battlestar Galactica when all the Sagitarians get sick.

There is a valid arguement that can be made that these serve the purpose of identifying you with characters that otherwise are not as well developed which in general gives the entire series a more filled out feeling. But I think a lot of the time it is just to add another episode that people are going to watch for the networks that want all those loyal fans to see their advertising.

Anyhow, I need to get out of the apartment, get some real writing done and save the Battlestar for later in the evening when I am too tired to think.