» New BG vs Old BG and Other Comparisons Options

[SpeedyTheRat]

Well, yeah, but isn't that thing like six years old now? I thought everyone had seen it. Unless I'm missing something?

Anyway, Dirk Benedict is a joke. That article mentions he's a Rush Limbaugh listener and that pretty much calls the jury in on that guy.

[stillshimpy]

A few weeks back the LA Times pulled that old Dirk Benedict rant out of storage, dusted off the cobwebs and put it back into circulation, presumably because of the end of the show being in the offing. It seems to amount to someone who is getting a bit older, thrashing around, having a tantrum about how he feels he played an Iconic role that should not be altered in any way for a world continuing to progress in how gender is viewed. His entire argument is based on how it was a grand old world when men were men, and women had to shut up and take any form of sexual harassment the good ol' boys felt like throwing our way.

Benedict's personal yuckiness notwithstanding, the original Starbuck was a cute enough role. A swaggering, joking, taking the apocalypse with a smile hero-type without any emotional complexity in his character design because the original show was not about delving the depths of the human psyche. It was about the good guys trying to outrun the bad guys, while everyone wears really amusing outfits, and makes jokes about women drivers that were even kind of offensive for the times. The original show had it as a foregone conclusion that the people of the fleet were the plucky underdogs, and the evil robot nation was headed up by a pinhead robot named Lucifer, just in case anyone was in any doubt about who was good and who was bad. It had a completely different point, and that's fine. It was a root-for-the-heroes vehicle, a Star Wars knockoff for TV. Really cheesy, but then cheese has its merits. Every now and then I watch something super cheesy because having an uncomplicated reason to feel good through escapism doesn't suck.

If Benedict wasn't being so backwards, and gleefully talking about back in the day, when he was able to grab any female ass he liked without fear of repercussion and how he yearns for those days, I might be able to feel sorry for him. As it is, it just sounds like a particularly mean-spirited version of the "When I was a boy, we walked uphill, both ways, to an unheated schoolroom, and we were grateful!" type of older man, missing the days when he felt virile and relevant. Only with the added gross factor of "And while we were there we treated the schoolmarm like the inferior, skirt wearing, lower-being we believed her to be, and she was grateful too!" Whatever, dude's a dinosaur.

This post has been edited by stillshimpy: Mar 3, 2009 @ 10:08 am.

[YeNguyen]

This rant's actually a new one judging by the date of the article, but also that there seems to be all new rant-material of Benedict's too. Guy came off even grosser than before, but whatever. At least we got Richard Hatch!

[stillshimpy]

It links to his old rant Starbuck: Lost in Castration but you're absolutely right, YeNguyen, that interview appears to be new.

His sharply worded remarks reveal how seriously he takes traditional masculinity — and what’s become of it today. Benedict says his third book is going to be about raising his two sons in a cultural climate where men aren’t really allowed to be men.

And yet still somehow manages to be the same old, stale stuff.

[cwaldo]

My sister-in-law and I were talking about Dirk Benedict the other day for some reason, and she told me that she wrote a scathing paper about one of his books in college about 15 years ago. I don't even know what compelled my sister-in-law to read it, but it had him dealing with him surviving cancer. Apparently, he was a sexist pig back then as well.

[andi pandi]

Wow, I never knew what a jerk he was. Puts his fun flirty characters in a different light, it looks like he pushed for his characters to have his own persona.

[space cadet]

I've moved my post here from the "Someone to Watch Over Me" thread; it's probably more appropriate here.

I may be a little late to this party, but there's something film-school-classic tragedy about Boomer and Chief that I wanted to share. While rewatching this episode, I was struck by the resemblance to Casablanca. Spoilers for Casablanca ahead, but the movie's just this side of seventy.

In the film, classic lovers Rick and Ilsa don't end up together; she boards a plane and disappears, presumably forever, leaving Rick standing on the airstrip. And it's not because there's a war going on; it's not because the Nazis are encroaching; it's not because they both have greater responsibilities--even though all those things are true. They don't end up together simply because some people just don't get to be happy. It's ugly, but true. It reminds me of the episode in which Sam is endlessly flipping a coin in a scene evocative of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The idea is that characters within a work of fiction have no real control over their destiny. In the context of our show, this can be interpreted in many ways: a reflection on the inescapable nature of destiny within the BSG universe, a meta textual commentary on the way the characters are currently behaving (i.e., rushing towards an [hopefully] epic [hopefully] conclusion with careless disregard for prior characterization, which, while not my position, is evident upon the 'nets), or a lazy writing tactic.

[kieran555]

From the Media thread:

I have been thinking for a while a lot about the whole Wire versus Battlestar question, having sounded off for a year to anyone who would listen that the Wire was the best television ever made and then telling people with a bit of doubt that Galactica is better. But now I am 100 per cent that for me that if I had to choose to have only seen one of them I would choose Battlestar every single time. The Wire is an extraordinary testament to a particular time and place and the kind of lives that are lived in Baltimore and cities like it. Battlestar is an even more extraordinary meditation on the human condition that to me stands up there with some of the great mythological stories about that. It also gives an emotional way for us to think about it for own lives in the way the Wire can't unless one is living a life like those in Baltimore. I learned a lot from watching the Wire and I thought about things I hadn't thought about before. But it didn't get into my soul. Battlestar has and it will stay there.

I really adore this from Effra, because is almost perfectly encapsulates my own view of the two shows.

The Wire was superior in many ways to BSG, the way the plot was paced, the consistency of quality and the way multiple threads were handled and connected, but for all of that it does not hold a candle to BSG in my eyes for sheer entertainment and emotion. The stories of The Wire were emotional don't get me wrong, heartrendingly so a lot of the time, and its detail and vision of its setting was extraordinary. I loved it. But the thing BSG has that ups that IMO is a really good story on a grand scale in addition to the qualities they share.

RDM apparently posted a notice in the writers room when they were planning the finale saying 'It's about the characters stupid' (or something like that), and this is true, I would not care nearly so much if I did not love the characters as if they were totally real and the tale is about them in this setting, but I do feel that the grand mythological nature of the plot, the elements of the supernatural and the waxing philosophical, while they can go overboard, grant the show that little something extra. I feel better able to think about the concepts the show provokes in this fantastical setting. There is a lot of gritty and urgent political stuff with the institutional problems and racism, and I love that, but that it takes place in such an epic way resonates with me more on a personal level as odd as that sounds. I feel like I am watching the events of a mythological saga, with all the heroic glory and mystery and wonder, but as they actually occurred with all the realism that demands.

I don't like to navel gaze but BSG makes it fun and makes it seem relevant, but without the occasional whizz bang shooty fun, and other elements perhaps less 'real' I would not enjoy it as much and if I don't enjoy it as much it will not impact me as it could. The Wire oftentimes felt like a documentary and so while it succeeded in making me think and wowed me with how it was presented, it isn't the kind of show I want to watch over and over again continuously and moreover made me think about specific issues more than BSG as opposed to just general pondering, even though BSG tackled certain issues directly as well.

Funnily enough, and despite its dark subject matter, BSG actually manages to be less depressing to me than The Wire, where the difficulty of ever making an impact and changing things for the better because the people are just cogs fighting the machine and can make only slight beneficial changes because of the nature of the system. BSG also has the characters at the whims of things greater than any one person, but I find the continual hope and efforts of the characters to be uplifting, the way they can rise above things and try for a Cylon Alliance where in reality maybe the mutiny would have succeeded.

I have gotten away from the main thrust of what I intended, but in brief, the magnificent presentation of an epic story littered with mystery and real people who must continuously face problems structural and personal, all the while under the most tremendous burdens and consumed with morality and other philosophical concerns, combined with great action sequences, all add up to a show that is more exciting, at least if not more emotionally connecting, broader in appeal, and I think more entertaining than The Wire, all of which excuses the occasional dropped thread or shoehorned development, or even a real stinker of an episode every now and again.

They are different types of show of course, with different ideas of focus, Lost being a better direct comparison, but with The Wire so often called the best show on television it seems apt to compare them. If one is more irked by navel gazing than even I am, or is just averse to fantastical settings (even one as real seeming as BSG's), then The Wire would be better.

I will really miss this show. It can't really be over can it?

Sorry that was so unpolished, I am rushed for time.

This post has been edited by kieran555: Mar 19, 2009 @ 8:44 am.

[stillshimpy]

It's always so difficult to qualify what might be better about one show versus another. In the end it comes down to a very personalized appeal. It's not about taste, or superiority, it's about preference when you get to this level, I think. If you're trying to compare something like Charmed to The Wire, boy is that an easy task. The differences in quality are so glaring as to almost be blinding.

When trying to compare well done dramas it really does seem to come down to personal preference or similarity in premise. What The Wire mostly has in common with BSG is that they are both well written, hard hitting, well acted dramas that haven't received the awards recognition they deserve. I think that leads to comparisons that wouldn't otherwise occur. One is telling a very specific story, and the other is telling a story about something that is so huge it pries the doors off emotional understanding. It's just that vast. How to convey the feelings, struggles and sense of loss of a civilization that has lost not only twenty billion people but every accessory that we all have in our lives? How to do that well and believably? BSG has succeeded more than it failed. Season three was something of an emotional quagmire with people struggling to redefine their lives, it wasn't actually bad, in my opinion. The fleet coming to the acceptance that they weren't going to get to recreate the lives they had lost. There would never be any similarity to their lives now, and then. What did that do to the previously understood factors of life, and how did they begin to restructure? They been fundamentally changed.

I think The Wire has a few more things to fall back on to help flesh in a story. If a character faces a challenging situation, there's an entire civilization to act as the backdrop for that. If a character on that show needs to express dissatisfaction, anger, etc. the writers get to hang that in frame that can evoke empathy, understanding, and recognition to an extent. In The Wire it's a case of visiting characters within a world the viewer doesn't know much about, but against a backdrop of a world that the viewer understands a lot about. That's not to say they have an easier job over there, they absolutely do not and it takes a ton of talent and skill on all fronts to tell that story. I'm just saying that if they want to write a character walking through the door of his/her apartment, grabbing a beer from the fridge, and flopping down on a couch in despair to turn on the cable TV, that option is available. The framework of drama and the backdrop is bigger. The story told has many of the same points.

It's a difference that makes it difficult to compare them. BSG had this sweeping tale about the essential nature of humanity to tell, but it also had a rather limiting backdrop, and that backdrop had to directly influence characters. There have been flashbacks used, and the occasional change of location, but for the most part the story is told on Galactica and that's the entire world of the characters. It's this huge thing, with this tiny stage upon which to play out. Season One was arguably the best season of BSG and one of the influences in the story was the number of places they were able to go. The story on Caprica, stories on Colonial One, flashbacks, Cloud Nine, etc. Season two primarily took away Caprica, added in Kobol, brought in the Pegasus, and it goes on. Season three starts out on New Caprica and then does something really daring, it eliminates, purposefully almost every other setting beyond Galactica and introduces the most challenging setting of them all, the visually dull baseship. The thing I never get over about season three is that the show made telling the tale harder, on purpose. They took a limiting backdrop and made it smaller, and smaller. As a viewer it was starting to get to me, I was starting to feel like I was living in a flying tin can when watching this. They sucked me into their world, and part of why season three is one of my least favorite seasons is that I felt so claustrophobic. I remember feeling constricted when watching some scenes. Add in the deeply personal nature of the stories, and it started to feel almost surgical in the invasive quality of the story.

Lost recently tried to make me squirm, but it was so overt that I muttered a "Screw this." and hit the FF on the DVR because I wasn't going to sit there and watch John Locke scream at his disgustingly broken leg, or climb the walls when there was a scene of him having it badly set. Those scenes existed solely to raise my squirm factor, cause me to become anxious, and send my blood pressure soaring. I chose not to play because it was so unnecessary to the story. BSG got me to play for all of season three, although I kvetched my head off throughout the season, but really, the truth about season three for me? So much of it made me so damned uncomfortable. Characters were making me say, "Ew." a lot.

I find this show more easily compared to Lost because it had a similarly small and unvarying backdrop. However, it stepped away from that every single week since the very beginning and took trips into wildly varying landscapes in order to tell their tale.

I think it's fair to compare shows for overall dramatic quality and impact. I know people that absolutely adore The Wire and even people that love both shows. When I start comparing the challenges faced in trying to bring about the story, I think BSG faced more, and then brought about even more challenges for themselves on purpose. I think there's an argument to be made that The Wire has been more consistent in overall quality, but I also think that they've thrown fewer wrenches into their own narrative.

As for Lost, hey, I like the show again but I don't think it's really doing anything with quite as many challenges, and I don't think it is doing anything quite as well as either The Wire or BSG. Plus, Lost has a parachute that BSG essentially does not. Whenever Lost wants to it can, and has, done almost purely comedic storylines to vary the tale, to engage the audience, to entertain at a more escapist level. It's a fun show, it can be moving, they juggle about ninety storylines at once, it often seems but I also think they have a few more cheat codes written into their premise than BSG ever could.

When I get right down to it I think the reason I prefer BSG to anything else is because of how few cheat codes they have used in their story. Don't get me wrong, No Exit? Pretty much a cheat code, or so it appears right now. I'll just always be impressed by how much harder the show consistently made their own job of telling the story, stripping away more and more. Plus, and this still matters to me, BSG is still trying to overcome TOS associations. Just this week I was mentioning BSG going to the UN and a friend was teasing, "Lorne Greene went to the UN? I thought he was dead." I've never been able to talk her into watching BSG and I gave up a long time ago. No matter how many times I told her that this show isn't anything like the old one, she can't shake the association. BSG went in with some limitations, and I'm always impressed by how many they imposed upon themselves too.

This post has been edited by stillshimpy: Mar 19, 2009 @ 10:41 am.

[Bagginses]

I'm currently waiting for BSG to end before I pick up The Wire, but I've only ever heard good things about it (with maybe the exception of the last season). So I can't really compare them right now.

Lost, on the other hand, I do watch. And I do enjoy it immensely but on a totally lower level from BSG. I approach Lost like I do a Sudoku, or a crossword puzzle. It's something to stimulate my brain and more importantly, it's escapist. I can watch it and just totally jump into that world without a care in the world. Which is all well and good, but I jump back out of it just as easily. It doesn't permeate my free thoughts, it doesn't have anything to say to me on a grander level.

BSG on the other hand is just on a different scale. It exhausts me. But in the way that a long run does. You finish it and you're drained, but you have that runner's high that draws you back to it. It challenges what I hold to be true and it gets me to think about things in a way I hadn't considered previously. I enjoyed the UN panel because they weren't trying to make an outrageous claim that the world has a lot to learn from BSG. They accurately stated that it puts people outside of their comfort zone, on purpose, and tries to get their viewers to consider the situation from that angle.

That's why I watch BSG. Lost is a quality show, and I find it to be a relaxing show, but I don't take anything away from the show when I'm done watching it except for an hour away from my problems. BSG creates problems for me. It's uncomfortable to watch, at times, and it can even stress me out. But that's precisely why I love it.

[Ankai]

I find it a little amusing that it was The Guardian that did this, since I have gotten the impression that they have been touting The Wire as the best thing ever for the past several years, so this article would be merely calling into question a preconceived idea that they themselves have promoted to a most likely annoying degree. Then again, I may be misguided because most of my knowledge of The Guardian comes from links to articles on The Wire.

One is telling a very specific story, and the other is telling a story about something that is so huge it pries the doors off emotional understanding.

I admit that I am not sure what you mean here. One could say that Battlestar Galactica is mainly about a ragtag group of military people and a few civilians guiding several thousand people through the vastness of space and dealing with the tense relationship with the Cylons...or something like that. The Wire, on the other hand, could be seen as the story of the modern American City, and maybe even cities of other modern countries.

Battlestar Galactica takes place primarily on a military ship and focuses on the military personnel. There have been a few ventures elsewhere, and there are a few main characters who are civilians, but not to such a large extent. The Wire dealt directly with the police force, criminal drug gangs, a segment of the working class, local politics, the school system, and the media. It could have tackled more arenas if the people on the creative team had felt up to it, but other things were addressed indirectly. In Battlestar Galactica, it is the military first. There is no police that we see and crime is dealt with in one episode. The working class got maybe eighty minutes. Despite it being a "political show", how many politicians do we actually see on a regular basis and how many times are they actually discussing politics? Despite the president formerly being in charge of matters of education, we know almost nothing about the school system. And the media are basically a horde of shouters and a Cylon.

RDM apparently posted a notice in the writers room when they were planning the finale saying 'It's about the characters stupid'

This is probably one of the major differences between the two shows. While The Wire may have had great and memorable characters who are fully fleshed out, they were secondary to the story that creator David Simon was trying to tell. This allowed one of the main characters of the show to become relegated to near bit character in one of the seasons. This also allowed major characters to die. Their deaths were not meant to be shocking or even redemptive. Sometimes, they were unexpected, but most were telegraphed several episodes before, so that the show did not have to give characters a swan song like Battlestar Galactica did way too many times.

Though it may not be perfect, Battlestar Galactica is probably quite a bit better in respects to sex and gender than The Wire does. While I think that the reasons that Ron Moore gave for introducing female characters into the updated show were pretty stupid and a little disturbing in respects to homosexuality, it was more positive overall in terms of execution. David Simon admitted that he had trouble writing women and all of the ones that he did create ended up being "men with tits"; it was up to the women playing those roles to move beyond that. Why there was not a greater female presence in the creative team is a matter to be debated elsewhere. In any case, the majority of the women on The Wire were characters who had some sort of romantic or sexual relationship with a main male character or were lesbians. I can think of two exceptions, though there may have been a third. Maybe it was part of the show's conceit to show what it meant to be a man in modern America. What it meant to be Black in modern America.

Battlestar Galactica seemed to try to show a different world where issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality were not quite the same as they were in The Wire. It may have tried to transcend them with varying degrees of success, whereas The Wire was happy to dwell on them, subtly and not so subtly. Things like racism, intolerance, miscommunication, culture clashes, and terrorism were dealt with very differently on both shows. The Wire did not have Cylons to serve as stand-ins for anything. All it had were composite characters whom viewers could possibly use as stand-ins for people in their own lives if they employed a little lateral thinking.

Perhaps another difference is the idea of destiny. There seems to be many approaches to destiny in Battlestar Galactica. Characters differ in terms of what their destinies are, what the destiny of humanity is, what to do about one's destiny, and whether destiny even exists. Destiny, if it exists, is full of struggle and suffering, and may not lead to good things. In The Wire, destiny either ignores people or beats them down, and it is up to individuals to decide whether to accept their impending doom or to fight with honor and impotence.

Then there is also responsibility and the institutions. In The Wire, the institutions are failing, but not falling. They will protect themselves even if it means purging their ranks of good people. They will ignore problems, create problems, and deny responsibilities. They are the Gods and the people are left behind. In Battlestar Galactica, the institutions have been nearly completely destroyed by mass nuclear death. It is up to the few survivors to salvage what still exists and create something new with what they can. The responsibility is in their hands and their hands alone. They are not left behind; they are the only ones left.

[stillshimpy]

I admit that I am not sure what you mean here. One could say that Battlestar Galactica is mainly about a ragtag group of military people and a few civilians guiding several thousand people through the vastness of space and dealing with the tense relationship with the Cylons...or something like that. The Wire, on the other hand, could be seen as the story of the modern American City, and maybe even cities of other modern countries.

Sorry about that, Ankai, I didn't mean to be vague there. What I mean is that The Wire is telling a story that has a frame reference for the average viewer. It's something closer to being within the experience, and understanding of a particular viewer, experience with modern cities, and the problems of modern day societies. Baltimore exists, basically.

Battlestar Galactica is based on something beyond the realm of current human experience. We have never experienced the aftermath of an apocalyptic event that wiped out more that 99.99% of the all people, along with everything from houses, to parks, to every known thing. In trying to figure out how people might cope with that? The most the writers have to go on is what happened in the aftermath of relatively similar things but on a tiny scale comparatively. Basically BSG has less source material for a viewer to draw upon. What the heck does it really feel like, loss at that level? I don't know but it pretty much blows doors off of my brain in trying to conjure an empathetic approximation, or emotional understanding. That's just one aspect of BSG that is based on something with a bigger scope than anything we have in our world.

It's mostly in trying to convey the enormity of something that (thankfully) is beyond our current experience that I end up just boggling at the scope of what they are trying to convey.

I'm not saying The Wire has an easier job, at all. Or that BSG is better because of the challenges of the premise. It's just a difference that makes it difficult for me to compare the two shows fairly.

I live in modern, metropolitan city, I have easier access to a frame of reference to place the characters of The Wire within. That's what I meant.

This post has been edited by stillshimpy: Mar 19, 2009 @ 1:05 pm.

[Ankai]

I see. I am not sure whether it is necessarily a question of easier or harder. The Wire does have a lot more source material, but the creators did what they could to be true to as much of that source material as possible while still adhering to dramatic fiction. They could have gone the easy way and cut corners as many shows have done, but they chose to do the research and make the effort to make it as believable as possible to people such as yourself. They wanted viewers who were closest not to laugh with disbelief, but with recognition...if they laugh at all. For the most part, the show seems to have passed quite well.

In the case of Battlestar Galactica, it is making a plausible story out of the aftermath of the unthinkable. There is not a whole lot to work with in terms of real-life equivalents, but that just means that there is much more room for the imagination to take over. It poses a different set of problems, but also provides a different set of opportunities.

[Effra]

Lots of great stuff from people here.

Season two primarily took away Caprica, added in Kobol, brought in the Pegasus, and it goes on. Season three starts out on New Caprica and then does something really daring, it eliminates, purposefully almost every other setting beyond Galactica and introduces the most challenging setting of them all, the visually dull baseship. The thing I never get over about season three is that the show made telling the tale harder, on purpose. They took a limiting backdrop and made it smaller, and smaller. As a viewer it was starting to get to me, I was starting to feel like I was living in a flying tin can when watching this. They sucked me into their world, and part of why season three is one of my least favorite seasons is that I felt so claustrophobic. I remember feeling constricted when watching some scenes. Add in the deeply personal nature of the stories, and it started to feel almost surgical in the invasive quality of the story.

I really agree stillshimpy with what you say about the claustrophobia of watching at times. But that is also one of the things I really like. I was very conscious of that at the beginning of Daybreak. Seeing blue sky again, it just felt like a sense of relief but then I had to remind myself almost that that world has now become just a mythical place, a place to which the characters we love can go back in their memories, but that reality is now elsewhere, and even the place that feels darkest and most claustrophobic we have been the most, Galactica, is about to become a lost place too, not just to the characters but in some way to us too because the story is ending and we will never be able to go their for a first experience of a story again. There are times when I feel in watching it we are making a metaphorical journey too and we have had to live in that dark, claustrophobic place that was Galactica to do so.

Agree about the gender issues about Galactica versus the Wire. I can see why the Wire was the way it was in that respect but it does limit it in some respect. It means there are stories that it chose not to tell even within its own setting. By contrast, I think that the two primary female characters in Galactica have been wonderful, especially Laura. They have gone into so many different places with who she is and they have written a female character that makes wonderful sense to me from the woman who walked into that fountain, to the woman who first had to learn how to do power and then found that her clear-sightedness meant that she could do it too easily, to the woman who finally figured out how to let herself love Adama and be loved by him.

On one thing I think the Wire does score and that is there aren't any poor episodes. I don't think that the same can be said for Galactica. I can just about do Black Market although I really don't like it but I think that The Woman King is plain awful. I'm still not sure how a drama that has delved into hugely significant ethical questions in such a complex way could come up with the moral simplicities at the centre of that story, and given what the programme is about, the story should never ever come up with the plain-minded virtue of Helo as the moral centre of a story. I don't think that there is a lapse like that anywhere in the Wire.

I think that the two programmes also engender different feelings about the characters. I felt sympathy for lots of characters om the Wire - and I was in pain when Bodie and Poots shot Wallace - and even liked and felt for murderers like Omar and Stringer. But in responding to Omar and Stringer we were going somewhere that because it was hard had in part to be checked. There was always the question - what is going on when I am feeling like this about Stringer. With Battlestar I just embrace the fact that I love some of the characters. Of course that is not because they have been made flawless, quite the contrary. But when they are struggling with the dark stuff, when they are getting tangled up about who they are and what rules apply and hurting each other, they are still being offered to us to love, and to become a bit more expansive in ourselves by doing so. I had two striking revelations to myself about my response to the characters this week. First, I realised that I really did want Baltar to cross the line and redeem himself. After all this time I found that I could love Baltar. Second, I realised that part of me doesn't actually care any longer how Starbuck came back from the dead. Of course I do for the plot's sake. But when Adama said it didn't matter she was his daughter and then she stood there and supported the woman he loves because this is her family, part of me didn't care either how it happened. She is Starbuck and we've been on this journey with her. (Since I am frequently screaming about quasi-resurrection Christian endings on stories - the end of Harry Potter, Last of the TIme Lords in Doctor Who, not caring about this is a pretty seismic shift for me and it was only in Islanded that I was wondering out loud where the hell they were going with this). I love that a story can do this kind of thing to me. That is Galactica's gift: it can turn something about you 180 degrees around. Brilliant as the Wire is that is not a place it tried to go in its ambition.

[stillshimpy]

I am not sure whether it is necessarily a question of easier or harder.

Absolutely, Ankai, and that's exactly what I'm saying. It isn't a question of one being easier, or more difficult. However, for me, and I'm not saying it is this way for everyone, it's one of the things that makes it difficult to compare side by side. What I can honestly say, and I'm more familiar with everything BSG, but I have had exposure to The Wire is that the both tell their tales extraordinarily well, but the tales they are telling have such a different focus that comparing them pretty eludes me when it comes to figuring out which would be deemed better.

They both do a fantastic job in their chosen story. The stories themselves are different enough that, to me, it's more like they both land in the slot of excellent but in a way that is specific to their different stories. If I were to try and compare Gilligan's Island to Lost it would take about a half a second to figure out which one was better, and in some ways. Even though they were incredibly different shows, there was a similarity in premise. Clearly, one was a comedy and the other is a drama (and that's just for starters).

I think The Wire and BSG both try to tell stories about humanity, what it means to be human, and trying to exist in a challenging world. The worlds are so different though, that I can't really say which show does a better job of telling its particular story. They both do an incredible job.

ETA:

That is Galactica's gift: it can turn something about you 180 degrees around. Brilliant as the Wire is that is not a place it tried to go in its ambition.

Thank you, Effra, that's a really good way of putting it, and I was really struggling with how to get that into words.

This post has been edited by stillshimpy: Mar 19, 2009 @ 1:29 pm.