It Will End as a Novel Ends

55  bar steep rise 0mph E dew-point 39  Beltane

           Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

Kate cleared a bunch of dogwood canes, pulled up weeds, pruned out a juniper (yesterday), deadheaded the daffodils and generally worked herself into a stupor. (In Norwegian, this is a good thing.)  She’s been on vacation this week and has enjoyed herself immensely planting, pruning, carrying.  (Again, in Norwegian, this constitutes a vacation.)  I admire and appreciate her doggedness, but it doesn’t count as a vacation attitude in my Celtic/Germanic perspective.   Whatever turns your crank.

Battlestar Galactica is the most nuanced and unpredictable show on television, bar none.  It is a good science fiction novel brought to the screen and that is so rare as to be a marvel, a marvel that continues week after week.  There no good guys and bad guys, no bad robots and good robots.  No, there are humans and robots who, in some situations, act for the common good and, in other situations, act out of selfish or malicious motives. 

The Science Fiction channel will finish the Battlestar Galactica series this season, but it will not tail off into the land of unfinished television shows. It will end as a novel ends, with an ending that ties together various plotlines and provides a final surprise and aha.  How do I know?  Because that’s how good writing works, and this is good writing.  I would like to see this as a precedent for TV shows where the story has a trajectory, a climax and a denouement, not the eternal extension of the storyline in a cynical attempt to exploit viewer interest for every last drop of advertiser revenue.  Viewers will return if the fiction has characters with complex lives, difficult hurdles to overcome and a convincing fate.

More work outside tomorrow.  This may be the last big push for a while since Kate goes back to work on Tuesday and I have MIA and a docent class luncheon on Monday with Woolly’s in the evening.