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F R I D AY, O C TO B E R 2 7 , 2 0 0 6New Battlestar: Galactica Tonight; NYT Sort Of OnBoardThere's a new "Battlestar: Galactica" tonight. The New York Times triesto get on board but they blow it in eight different ways, unintentionallyproving they haven't been watching the show at all. First they blatheron about how the show can be seen as an allegory for Iraq and whycritics hate this. Then they make the bizarre claim that OTHER criticsdiscriminate against genre shows like sci-fi:"Ultimately, genre discrimination is not good for anyone. And ithas been particularly hard on science fiction like the newest“Battlestar,” which has been snubbed by some critics who fearits didacticism and (scarier still) the ardor of its fans."Actually, I'd hardly call "BG" snubbed by critics: it's regularly hailed bymost everyone as a terrific series. Only "The Wire" on HBO hasreceived more praise in the last few months and even that is a closecall. As for "genre discrimination," maybe the NYT doth protest toomuch because they were late to the game on "Buffy The VampireSlayer" and "The X Files" and "Gilmore Girls" (a chick show) and manyothers that didn't have the gravitas of "drama." Then they refer to thenew season premiere setting ratings records for SciFi, which ismisleading since the new season premiered at slightly lower numbersthan before. (I'm sure it set some "record" because networks can alwaysslice and dice numbers, but the new season of "BG" has notunfortunately continued to grow its audience. It's doing fine, however,so don't worry-- after all, they're facing new episodes of other shows inthe midst of the fall tv season instead of airing in January and thesummer during reruns. But that's a distinction too fine for the NYT.)Finally, just to prove they haven't a clue what's been going with theshow, they write this:A recent exchange between Laura and Gaius Baltar (JamesCallis), an oily human recruited by the Cylons to be their puppetdictator, was like a punch in the stomach. Audience sympathiesare generally with Laura, a middle-aged woman and a seemingsoftie who may be a stand-in for the new sci-fi viewers, who areincreasingly women; she’s human, for one, and she’s generallyliberal, sympathetic to underdogs, a former teacher. But talkingto Gaius, who is furious at the insurgents for their attack on theNext Blog»sal1mineo@hotmail.comSEARCH BLOG FLAG BLOGFOLLOW BLOGP O P S U R F I N G . C O MS U R F I N G T H E WAV E S O F P O P U L A R C U LT U R EB Y M I C H A E L G I LT Z & F R I E N D SPOPSURFING.COM: New Battlestar: Galactica Tonight; NYT ...http://popsurfing.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-battlestar-galactica...
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POPSURFING.COM: New Battlestar: Galactica Tonight; NYT ...http://popsurfing.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-battlestar-galactica...
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