The dog is Jake, from the webisodes and brief appearances in Exodus and Collaborators. He was someone’s pet in the city of New Caprica and Chief and Gaeta used his food dish as a way to pass messages from inside Baltar’s government to the resistance.[/QUOTE]
Thanks now I really feel dumb. I remember the dish and forgot the dog. By the way if he has a tail he is probably a Border Collie not a Aussie. :o
I’m with you there, D. You should see the kids I drive. It concerns me. The stuff we see and are powerless to affect no matter how much we care. I almost wish I had a harder candy shell- oops! I said candy…
IMO, I think it’s a little simplistic to blame puppets for childhood obesity. The fact that kids are sitting around watching TV all day probably has a lot more to do with it than what the characters on TV are eating. Besides, cookies are probably a lot healthier than most of the craaap that kids eat anyway. 
edit: Missed this.
Totally agreed.
Cheep food is often not healthy food. That is why often heavy but unhealthy kids have little family money. I have seen the news that children are not as heavy as they have been. So things are looking up.
I actually watch a few minutes of Sesame Street with my kindergarten class after lunch most days, and I think the above impression is totally off the mark. CTW is doing what they do best: educating children. No one is suggesting (well, I’m not anyway) that Cookie Monster is responsible for childhood obesity, but if a little person hears him say that cookies are good to have occasionally whereas fruit is an “anytime” food, and it makes an impact, so much the better. Sesame Street has always been about introducing important concepts to young minds in an entertaining way, thereby making the information more likely to stick.
CTW is doing what they do best: educating children. No one is suggesting (well, I’m not anyway) that Cookie Monster is responsible for childhood obesity, quote
I think not CTW but others are trying to find simple solutions for complex issues. My school has stopped vending sodas (I teach H.S.) and school lunches are healthier. Cookie Monster, schools and parents can work to help the little ones to do better.
Maybe we should take cookie ads off the TV like they did with cigarets. 
If you put it that way, I completely agree. I don’t see the causative effect of Cookie Monster’s usual diet on obesity, but I can see how the recent change could provide a positive example. More than anything, I think most of the uproar is about altering a beloved childhood icon, rather than doubting the message itself.
Sesame Street has always been about introducing important concepts to young minds in an entertaining way, thereby making the information more likely to stick.
I know it helped me come to terms with my Head Woolly Mammoth. :rolleyes:
and fast food, and sugary breakfast cereals, and chips, and soda, and erectile dysfunction pills…
whoops, mixed my rants
sorry :rolleyes:
Wow, I leave for a few days, and look at all the catching up I’ve got to do…
I agree on all counts. There are dozens and dozens of professional journalists, bloggers, fans, etc. who write reviews, and while I enjoy reading many of them, I really love how GWC attacks episodes from a different angle.
Yep, that pretty much sums up my feelings on the Romo-Lee arc as well. I understand the need to humanize Romo, but I think it could’ve been done while still maintaining the essence of what made his character so interesting before: he deals with problems by manipulating people into doing what he wants them to do and does it so deftly that the manipulated think the new course of action was their idea all along, not Romo’s. Zarek also deserved more of a chance to struggle for power, and it would’ve been great to see the two master manipulators face off. I can’t find the quote, but somebody suggested (Magnus? RonMooreHasPrettyHair?) that perhaps Romo was manipulating Lee in the gun scene. Now I need to rewatch–if Romo can be batshit crazy and manipulative at the same time, then that’s interesting, but I wish it were a bit clearer.
Here, here!
Wow, really? I thought it had been played subtly throughout the second half of S3 and then played pretty clearly in S4 so far. Aside from the flirting while stoned on New Caprica and a few smaller flirtations since that (and Adama’s textbook-definition-of-a-Freudian-slip “You’re always welcome in one of my beds”), they’ve been laying the groundwork with body language for a long time now. From a little after New Caprica onwards, Adama and Roslin go from maintaining the “friends” distance between each other during conversations to touching each other constantly; he’s always got a hand on her back, or she’s touching his shoulder or arm. Every culture has its own rules for personal space, but based on other characters’ interactions, the Colonial culture seems to have a rather American-like expectancy of a fairly wide personal space bubble. As for S4, between “You came into my thoughts. You filled them…” when Adama closes his book when Roslin falls asleep during her treatment and “You made me believe” (and he was smiling! That’s, like, the third time this man’s smiled. Ever. And the first two, he was really, really stoned)–that’s as close as Adama gets to “I love you” with anybody other than Tigh.
I’m sorry for your loss.
That. Is. Awesome.
Oops, one more:
Starbuck being the most cool, calm, and collected person after episodes of being batshit crazy, oddly enough, both makes sense to me and might be really interesting for two reasons. The first is a theory I have about how the vision-craziness connection. Originally, I thought only crazy, irrational people were getting visions (e.g., Leoben, D’Anna, Baltar, Starbuck, Roslin on meds, et. al.), but after “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner,” especially with the otherwise pretty even-keeled Athena shooting the Six because of her vision, I’m inclined to think it might be the other way around. Maybe something about the visions drives the visionaries crazy; not only are they seeing weird, unsettling things, but those visions come along with a compulsion to understand or fulfill the visions that drives the visionaries mad if they don’t complete them–think biblical descriptions of the compulsion the Old Testament prophets felt to proclaim prophecy. Starbuck figured out her vision by finding the basestar, so now she’s back to being (relatively) sane again; she’s no longer possessed by the visionary compulsion.
The other reason I find her brief interaction with Adama interesting is that it highlights the problems that come along with faith, which I really applaud BSG for delving in to. By “faith,” I mean not necessarily religious faith or faith in deities but also faith in other people, love and trust in someone else that’s so strong it compels a person do irrational things, even when he or she recognizes his or her own irrationality. Starbuck guardedly questions Adama ordering her pilots on what she and they see as a “suicide mission.” It’s not so much a suicide mission as a really, really dangerous wild goose chase, but the irony still applies because Starbuck asked Adama to trust her on a near-suicidal wild goose chase back in “Six of One” when she begged Adama to trust her visions of Earth based on his faith in her.
Starbuck has never been one to appreciate irony; despite her many kickass qualities, she’s not very good at empathy, and recognizing irony requires the ability to place yourself in somebody else’s shoes and note the similarities. Even if she doesn’t get it, we viewers do. The problem with faith, whether it’s in a god or a person, is not that its irrationality makes it any less valid to the believer–faith by definition is believing in something in spite of evidence to the contrary, whether that evidence is the wreckage of a basestar or the silence everyone else hears when you hear music or previous examples of another human being’s capacity to screw up or betray your trust. The problem is that it’s very difficult–as it should be–to convince others to do something based on one’s own personal faith or gut instincts. That’s why Adama comes to the solution that he does. He can’t ask anybody else to act on his own faith the way that characters like Starbuck, Roslin, and Leoben do, compelled to prove that they are right to everyone, and yet he can’t go back to being a total pragmatist, not now. He lets his faith in Laura dictate his fate but doesn’t expect the Fleet to follow his nearly hopeless hope.
Very good.
I’m not saying that there weren’t signs, but they were subtle, subtle enough that they could be dismissed if the relationship never developed. My complaint is that they progressed from playful flirting and sidelong glances to Adama risking the extinction of the entire human race because he couldn’t find his girlfriend. There had to be some intervening steps, and they glossed over all of them so that Romo could rant at a whiteboard… 
I’m kind of surprised by all the negativity on the boards this week. I’ll admit that it wasn’t the best BSG episode ever produced mostly because a lot of different plot points were touched on and it did seem a bit rushed. However, that is to be expected to some degree because the producers obviously have a place they would like to get to and only a limited number of episodes to get there. Granted this episode isn’t help by following one of the best episodes of the series to date which also managed to include a lot of plot, yet also presented a number of key subtle moments (i.e., Baltar briefly checking in on Gaeta) that added to the general richness show. Heck, they can’t be on their A-game all the time. That being said there was nothing in the episode that made me hate it at all, in contrast to what appears to be the general consensus. The first episode of BSG that I hate will be the last one I watch. [As an aside that’s precisely what happened to me with ST:Voyager at some point in season 3-4, but I won’t bother anyone with the details (which I don’t think I can remember now anyway).]
I guess I also have a different view of the direction they took Lamkin. A lot of people have argued that this episode ruined the character, but instead I see typical BSG at work in showing the flaws of each character in the show. It would, in fact, be quite unbelievable to have this supercool expert manipulator always a step ahead of every one else on the show and have him not have flaws. During Romo’s first appearance Chuck always asked asked where has this guy been in the fleet all this time and why isn’t he running things? Well the answer is because at times he’s frakking nuts! We already know he’s a kleptomaniac, so it doesn’t seem that far to believe he has other mental issues as well. If he didn’t he would have been chosen to be the prosecution right off the bat. Also he’d likely by now be one of the Quorum members if not a viable candidate for president, or even more likely running the black market. I suspect he is a manic-depressive, though brilliant, who transitions between periods of great charisma and competence with episodes of serious self destructive and delusional behavior. That I find to be quite interesting.
Lastly, I think it’s kind of disingenuous to suggest that Chuck, Sean and Audra are hiding their true opinions and failing validate others critiques of the show simply because they’re hoping to get more voicemail calls from BSG cast members. The podcast they produce appears to be hard work and strictly voluntary on their part. I don’t know, but they may actually like to watch and discuss one of the best shows on TV…
Oooh, really good analysis of Adama’s decision-making process, Kappa! I also thought that when he stopped reading and said (possibly quoting, possibly not), “You came into my thoughts… and you filled them,” that it was his admission of love. As much as Roslin has turned a blind eye to issues of nepotism, elitism, and autocracy in the fleet’s leadership, she and Bill have both expressed wariness about their feelings because of how wrong it would be for the civilian government and the military commander to be, literally, in bed with each other.
Kara’s collectedness still bothers me, but also good bits to chew over on that. Glad you’re back!
Thirded. However, I doubt that GR intended to impugn the honor of the Trinity.
Wow, Phil.
Thanks for crystallizing my thoughts…
I’m with you there!
Consider me fourthded!
Great idea. D’Anna comes back, at some point reveals all 5 and at the very moment the rest of the fleet finds out we go to a black screen with “continued April 2009” !
I can seriously see this happening. We know D’Anna will eventually start naming names, and we know we are dangerously close to the mid season break. Now I’m angry…I might have to go get a Java Chiller from Sonic to chill the hate.
Baltar teaches us that we are all Perfect. GR is Perfect. The Trinity is Prefect. We are all Purrrrfect cats.
Anyway, it was really cool hearing your voice on the podcast, Starbuccaneer.