Just finished Battlestar Gallactica (Spoilers)

It was pretty solid up until the fourth season. They tried to build it up into something grand, and in the end it was a wet fart. And the once big bad mysterious cylons becoming friendly? Ehhh...

Anyway, what's next? I've got Netflix and too much time on my hands. I've already finished Caprica.

The League.

You first have to admit that BSG's ending was perfect for the show and in general, in every possible way. Only then will you be allowed to watch any more TV.

For the ending to be perfect, we would have to still care by the tome viewer momentum finally got is there.

And if we are decent people, we do.

BSG was a decent enough show that eventually got weighed down by its own gravitas and publicity.

I concur with Faceman. You should watch The League. Also, Louis.

And, if you haven't seen it already, you must watch Breaking Bad. Without a doubt the finest drama ever aired on television.

They certainly wrote themselves into a corner in several different ways. I thought that the final few episodes were so well executed that it almost made you forget how silly they were getting. But looking back, the "God did it" plot point, the explanation for the final five and the resurrection plot involving Starbuck made no sense at all.

EDIT: As I understand it, in "The Plan" special, they attempt to fill in some of the plotholes. But I've never seen it.

Funny you should say that. I started to get bored in the third season and never bothered going back.

Anyhow, House of Cards if you've not yet watched.

Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, The Newsroom, American Horror Story, Bates Motel, Political Animals, and Orange is the New Black are all in the bag already.

I'm not really into comedies.

Any idea where I can watch this? Netflix doesn't stream it. Neither does Youtube.

I have to admit, the final scene with Adama and Laura made me cry. Yeah, I cried. Frack off!!!

I lost interest 5 minutes into the original two hour movie.

Surprised you didn't watch it just for the space battles.

The Wire. Though it might be worth waiting for HBO's digitally remastered version.

Band of Brothers if you haven't seen it and want to see the best WWII miniseries of all time.

Archer is pretty damn funny.

I personally didn't think The Plan revealed much of anything new, IIRC. By that time I was pretty disgusted by how much they screwed up the series.

Blood and Chrome was fun and worth a look.

Spartacus is a guilty pleasure - blood, sex and political machination, Roman style. The real story of Spartacus is more interesting than I remembered - including the fact they never found his body. The Spartacus/Crassus/Ceasar connection is fascinating. Oh, and yes he did rappel down with a small group of men the side of Mount Vesuvius to break a siege and route a Roman army.

Another good one is the first few seasons of Justified.

He did go on a holy crusade to try to hurt the show by annoying a handful of people on the internet (he admitted this).

I lost interest after Adama's coup and the way everything went back to status quo afterwards. There were some high points, Like Pegasus showing up, but I didn't care for it as much. I dropped off after the New Caprica stuff.

Is the TV series the "real story", give or take?

The Wire! That's been recommended before!

I too found the two-hour BSG pilot to be tedious. It took three tries to get past it and into the show.

Season 3 with New Caprica is where the show started to really slow down.


Sent from my iPhone while driving

No, I can't say it's even remotely that. That being said, it uses the characters, places, and the plot points generally are correct. Though a few of the character's background were changed. But we have very little information on Spartacus' upbringing, his time in the house of Batiatus (where the first two seasons occur), or even the specific reason for his uprising. So huge tracts of it are speculative. I also haven't finished the last season myself so can't comment on that. However, the broad strokes are all true, including the initial amazing successes of the gladiator revolt which led to the Third Serville War.

What I found interesting is that when I did some brief reading of the time period, several of the things I had assumed were added on were reported on by Plutarch, such as the battle at Mount Vesuvius. Whether it was a tall tale that was included in the histories or what actually happened I can't say, but it is in the histories of the period. And Spartacus reported death (acording to Plutarch and Appian) came when he was personally fighting his way through Crassus' personal guard to kill Crassus and turn the tide of the battle. Appian reports that his body was never found - which seems unlikely if he died in that scenario, doesn't it?

Crassus himself was an incredibly important man - the richest man in Roman history by all accounts, general, killer of Spartacus (by reputation), and one of the Triumvirate along with Pompey and Caesar. He was Caesar's mentor, and when he died it broke the triumvirate and led to the conflict between Pompey and Caesar, thus leading directly to the crossing of the Rubicon and the end of the Republic.

Anyway, the writing isn't as good as the Game of Thrones, but its very similar, and the writing is solid with lots of character turning points, constant intrigues, impressive gladiator batttles and later larger battles, and quite a few orgies. Unike GoT in many cases the sex scenese are explicit to the point of the plot, and the source of some of the most intense intrigues.

Not high art but very fun, and the historical tie in IMO is pretty cool.

The West Wing. One of the consistently best TV dramas made.

Yeah, West Wing and Shelock are both brilliant.

Another vote for The West Wing here.

I didn't like how the battles were filmed and the archaic technology.

And the backstory changes. And the character changes.

If you like the West Wing, give the Newsroom on HBO a watch. It's the best thing Sorkin has ever dome, IMO.

I've watched all existing The Newsroom and enjoyed it. But isn't The West Wing even more of a left-wing circle jerk?

Yeah, I'm up to date on Newsroom. I like it, but I don't think its quite in the same class as WW - at least not the first few seasons of WW.

Basically, "The West Wing" is the liberal fantasy of "what if Bill Clinton didn't have an obsession with fat chicks, was older, and was not from Arkansas"

Agreed.

BTW, there was a Newsroom thread late last year that you might've missed.

http://www.wordforge.net/index.php?threads/the-newsroom.102287/

The first four seasons of the West Wing are great. The last three are a completely different show.

I thought NuBSG was some of the finest TV and sci-fi ever produced until the final season. The final season felt rushed and I always had the feeling that Ron Moore was tired of dealing with the Sci-Fi Channel's bullshit and just wanted to end it.