Admittedly, I generally don’t watch shows on TV, since I prefer to binge on entire seasons all at once on DVD or BitTorrent, but I was thinking which I liked better: Lost or Battlestar Galactica. And the winner for me would have to be BSG.
Lost is a very good show, but so far I’ve been disappointed in the fifth season, and am losing some confidence that the ending will be satisfying after season 6. What I liked most about lost in seasons 1 through 3, was the sheer confusion and multiple potential explanations. Using your imagination, you could try to fit things together, but the changing alliances and bits of information kept you on your toes. Now that they’ve started explaining more secrets of the show, it brings up more questions, but not good ones… These questions are more about the authenticity of the revelations, than curiosity about what will happen next (How does Ms. Hawkins know so much about how to get back to the island? So why does Jack need his fathers shoes? ) There needs to be some good pay-off in the next few episodes to get the show back on track.
Right now I’ve watched through the middle of the fourth and final season of BSG. The characters are much better developed than on Lost. There is intrigue throughout the show (who is a Ceylon, who isn’t, what about Earth, etc) but even when things are unclear, the show fits them together nicely, all while hitting on the shows main themes: family vs. obligations, faith vs. rationality, freedom vs. security, and what it means to be human. Some of the second season got bogged down with the religious stuff, but overall the show has been consistently awesome.
Lost also focuses on faith vs. rationality (primarily through Locke and Jack) but sometimes the conflict gets lost (no pun intended) in the convoluted story, shifting or unclear motivations, and over-the-top nature of the show.
sneaky
Yeah, it’s a tough call between lost and BSG. Though I would probably say BSG, but they are both great.
The last couple episodes of both shows have disappointed me, though. I’m not sure if you’ve seen up to the current BSG, so I’ll avoid spoilers, but I thought the episodes with the fifth of the final five showing up have been a pretty mixed bag. They have been heavy on exposition, but pretty low on drama.
The last couple lost episodes have felt very rushed…no savoring drama or suspense or mystery…just speedily moving the plot forward. Maybe some of the “bad questions” that have been raised will have good answers…or maybe they are cutting some corners now to move all the peices into the right place for awesomeness yet to come. Or maybe it will all seem awesome in retrospect.
For example, one episode of lost that drove me crazy was the one where hurley fixes the van. On one hand it was a cute, happy, fun episode…but the plot seemed to be literal spinning it’s wheels. So many of lost mysteries were waiting to be answered, and yet we had to watch hurley fuck around with the hippie van, wtf? Of course we learn later that the corpse in the car is ben’s murdered father, killed during the darma purge. And then hurley uses the van to pwn some others and save sayid, jin, and Bernard. The episode became much better in hindsight…so there is a chance the same could happen with some of the so-so stuff going on in season five.
I’m all caught up with BSG now. I liked the last episode with the final fifth giving all the exposition. I think she and sam did it in an interesting way, with some drama along the way. The AV Club had a good review of the episode that I though was right on.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/no-exit,23824/
Maybe Lost is setting up something interesting, but I’m not sure. The Hurley van thing isn’t really comparable, since that was a detail in a stand alone episode, that originally fulfilled the purpose of giving them something to work on on the island. and it was bonus when it got turned into a weapon lol.
To me there has never been a question, BSG has always been the better show. Its had better acting, better drama, better characters, better everything. BSG has captivated me more than any other show I have ever seen.
Lost isn’t a bad show, its enjoyable, but Ive never felt the entire show has been enjoyable as a whole, or as captivated me like BSG did. Instead its the little moments of, what the heck was that, that make lost good. Sadly I feel we go through more filler with Lost than substance sometimes. Lost feels like a show that seems to be made up each week where its going to go, rather than a planned show that they try to keep leading us to believe they are going. Im getting more convinced that many of the mysteries will just go unexplained, or will be major let downs. I continue to watch Lost as I want to know what will happen, but its never a quick must get it now show like BSG is to me.
BSG isn’t perfect, it has its flaws, and even some moments of unevenness. But its a show that gets it right more times than it fails. I still fear the show could drop the ball at the end, but considering how every season finale has gripped me at the edge of my seat, I have a good feeling that the series finale will do the same. The emotion I feel from the show is simply amazing. And particulary, I feel that BSG nails the topic of survival much better than Lost does.
No matter what, thinking there is only 5 hours left of BSG, makes me sad.