Seriously, 2008? what the frak?

In that commonly obnoxious way people can be about this, I am quite pleased with myself for cutting my television consumption down to a very reasonable amount of appointment viewing and sporting events. Thanks go to my wife’s healthy hostility to the medium, and to the birth of a my absolute favorite time-sink of all time, Mila. But I’d been working on this even before, because unlike every thoughtful t.v. viewer I know, the whole genre of hour-long primetime dramas about cops, doctors, or lawyers all seemed like the same contrived rubbish to me. But somehow, to my surprise, I became pretty seriously into Battlestar Galactica last year. I heard enough smart people go on and on about the New Caprica insurrection episodes that I thought I’d check it out -- you know, as a student of history and cultural representations of collective trauma and guilt blah blah blah. And it got me. I have greatly enjoyed this season, and thought that was a fab season finale on Sunday. But seriously, we are now expected to wait until January 2008 for the next season? That ‘s rough, especially as it is so hard to find and keep as viewers snobs like me. I had originally been somewhat hostile to the “reimagined” show. It seemed to me that it was a little too cute to make the Cylons cyborgs, because as I remembered the original show, the Cylons were these clunky, malevolent robots that wanted to kill humans for some odd reason or other. I realize that sci-fi reflects the cultural worries of the moment – runaway technology, civilization ending holocausts, etc. – which are by their nature relative and mutable, but this seemed a bit much. And I will still insist the Cylons themselves in the new series are pretty weak – dressing like ABBA and roaming around their trippy-lit spaceships etc. The centurions are still pretty scary, but what’s scary about Tricia Helfer? I got over that though, and have spend many nights out walking Gryeka thinking about Cylons, and noting the preadolescent absurdity of spending so much time thinking about things called “Cylons.” But there is one things that consistently irks me about the show. If only about 41,000 humans survive the Cylon attack, how come so many of them are journalists? Every time Roslin gives a press conference there is a horde of reporters with their recorders out harping and yelping like a mob of angry dogs. And they are well-dressed, which suggests these are the Beltway, David Gregory-type reporters too. I find it hard to believe that the entire leadership was wiped out in the Cylon attack but the capital press corps survived intact – with their wardrobes to boot. Then again, I am coming to the show late and will have to work my up through the DVDs of the early seasons, in which I hope they explain this.