Storytelling is powerful. This has been stated and proven since the beginning of time.
Good storytelling transports us to other worlds, other realities, and at times it makes us forget our own reality. Good storytelling can make us use the mush we have inside our respective craniums for more than basic functions.
There’s also the emotional component of storytelling. It presents us with characters we love to hate, hate to love, or characters we simply love or hate; at times it presents us with stories we identify with because they seem so familiar, or stories so strange that completely fascinate us and make us crave for more.
Battlestar Galactica is a perfect example of good storytelling. It presented us with moral ambiguity; questions about religion, politics, and the inherent human qualities that are our drive to survive and our capacity to self destruct. It gave us big fights, big explosions, epic drama, cool spaceships, cool robots, and all sorts of geeky goodness. It made us cry, it made us cheer, at times it made us groan in protest when the stories dragged a bit.
Was the whole series perfect? No.
Was the final episode perfect? Not really. But that’s not the point.
In the end, BSG did what good storytelling does: It entertained us and it made us think.
It also gave us something else: An actual end.
During the past few weeks I’ve felt sad about BSG’s impending end. Not sad the way someone directly involved in the show would feel, but still sad. As I wrote on the very first post of The Neurotic Monologues, it took me a while to get into the story. But once I got into it, I was completely hooked, and I kind of began to rely on the fact that at least once a week I was guaranteed one hour of actual good television. This is important to me, even if many find it completely trivial. What can I say, I love TV.
There’s a recent trend of ending tv shows on an ambiguous note. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Some people are okay with ambiguous endings, some passionately hate them. In my case, I like an end to be an end.
But a good end doesn’t have to be completely expositional and concrete. It doesn’t even have to give all the answers. It also doesn’t have to be completely vague.
A good ending can imply truths, resolve questions, and leave questions unanswered, all at the same time. That’s what the final episode of Battlestar Galactica did.
I really thought I’d miss this wonderful show once it ended. I just watched its finally episode and I can honestly say that I won’t, but only because I was completely satisfied with the way all the storylines were wrapped up.
To all involved in Battlestar Galactica, in any capacity: THANK YOU. THAT WAS A HELL OF A RIDE.