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So, without giving away anything in case some of you out there want to someday watch it in its entirety, well, the ending sucked.

Ron Moore is obviously suffering from Gene Roddenberry-itis. Because hey, overcoming human nature isn’t a problem. All you have to do is write it, and it’s done.

While I was talking with my friend Kim from out of town, we realized that Moore really, really, REALLY believes in the concept of deus ex machina.

Dude. It was old when the Greeks used it.

And by the way, the unanswered questions weren’t solved by the deus ex machina ending.

Subsistence farming. Woo-hoo! Count me in for a life of poverty, starvation, and hardship! Yeah! All right!

Here there be spoilers. But I’ll put them in the comments.

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I’ve been reading my archives since last night (and staying up way too late, and spending way too much time on them, but hey, it’s a holiday weekend for me, and I’m home, and I can do this without consequences thanks to the extra day off from work), and look what I found:

And by the way, I just caught the first few minutes of the remake of Battlestar Galactica: It sucks. It really sucks. No wonder they’re showing it on a Saturday night.

Snort. But wait, there’s more from the comments:

Actually, I wound up watching a bit more of it, then taped the last half. I’ll watch it tomorrow and let you know.

I must admit, it did get better than it was in the first ten minutes, which were, frankly, several orders of suckitude.

Sabba Hillel didn’t like it, either. Great line from him in the comments:

The “Lords of Cobol”??? At least they could have used the “Lords of FORTRAN”.

I remember when I changed my mind. I borrowed the season one DVDs from Heidi’s husband. I no longer thought it sucked, but I wasn’t really fully into it. But I wanted to learn more, so I bought season two, intending to give it to G. He never wound up getting it. Season two did it for me. Now I go back and don’t remember exactly why I thought it sucked. But the miniseries did start rather slowly, so maybe that was it.

You know, the archives are a fascinating look at my life of several years back. They’re almost like a journal in some respects.

Wow.

That episode frakkin’ rocked.

So did last week’s.

The last ten episodes are looking to be the best ever in the entire series. Thank goodness, because the first ten sucked every time they went into Baltar’s religious spew.

This episode was chock-full of surprises. It had me talking to the TV set. “No—are you gonna—YES!”

I love it when they’re unpredictable, but follow the character’s logic.

No spoilers in the comments, please.

No spoilers, unless you haven’t seen the new season. In which case:

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Milo Ventimiglia, one of my favorites from Heroes, went on a USO tour and talked about the show a bit.

He met many soldiers who were familiar with his show, and had strong opinions about his character’s nemesis, Sylar (played diabolically by Zachary Quinto).

“When I was over in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of soldiers were like, ‘Dude, will you just kill Sylar already? Will you just get rid of him?’” Ventimiglia told The Associated Press during a telephone interview this week. “And I’m like, ‘Man, I don’t know if you’re gonna want that just yet. I think you’re going to be very surprised as to what happens.’”

Yeah, that’s what I say. No real spoilers in the article, but Milo brought up the possibility that his character may turn bad, and Sylar may turn good. Now that will be interesting.

I probably won’t be home in time to watch it live, or even almost-live via my new DVR and Comcast (it’s craptastic!), as I will be visiting Sarah and the G family’s synagogue tomorrow night for a service and a neat party. But I will be watching it when I get home.

And I have a new theory on who is the twelfth Cylon. I’m still holding out for Baltar, but there are two others.

My theory below the more prompt, and by the way, I’m always wrong about stuff like this, so take that into account. I’m superb at guessing real-life puzzles, and totally suck at games and TV shows. I get the ends of some books and movies, though. I never figured out anything about Babylon 5. Straczynski had me guessing until the very end.

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Just in time for me to catch up before Season Four begins, I treated myself and bought a big-screen TV and got HDTV and the Sci-Fi Channel.

Y’know, I didn’t care much for the remake when I saw the miniseries all those years ago. But I borrowed Season One from a friend, and it sort of grows on you. So I bought Season Two, and was utterly hooked. Been waiting for Three to get here for a while—it’s months later than it should have been, but at least they stopped doing that stupid “2.0″ and “2.5″ crap. Season Three is all in one package. I have that, and Razor (extended edition, of course, though I’m going to take a wild guess that some of the “SCENES WE COULDN’T SHOW ON TV!” are between Kain and Six. Yawn.), which I’ll get to after I get through all of Three.

I should also like to point out that the guys from Circuit City did a great job hooking up the new set. Delivered it first thing in the morning, hours earlier than I thought they would, and put all the wires and cables right, and got me started. Comcast totally screwed everything up, so I was on the phone for an hour last night unattaching and re-attaching cables, and we won’t talk about the two trips to the Comcast center to get a box that worked with my HDMI cable. Or the fact that the box I did get finally still had hours of the previous customer’s recordings on it, puzzling me to no end as to how Comcast knew I watched ABC soaps, and why they were pre-set to record for me. Especially as I’ve given them up again to regain a little more time in my life.

The thing I can’t figure out is how to program only the channels I want to run through. But that’s because I haven’t really sat down with the manual yet. I want to set all the HD stations that I will actually watch (forget about HD Travel Channel, who the hell cares?), and, oh, yeah—I have to get a new DVD player. Mine’s too old to show anything above 480i. I know this because the TV tells me so when I try to complain to it that my DVD output sucks. (The upgraded cables didn’t do it, Chris, it’s at least eight years old, and maybe ten, so it’s pre-HD.)

I think I’ll buy a DVD/VCR recorder if I can find a decent one that’s not too expensive.

I have to say, I am really happy with my new TV. When the Circuit City guys came to set it up, they were trying to figure out how to center it in the living room. “Oh, no,” I said. “See that chair?” [Points to The Chair That Swallows You Whole, the overstuffed leather chair on the other side of the room] “That’s where I watch TV. Center it on that.” They laughed, and did.

As for the rest of you, well, tough. It’s my living room, and my TV. Guests are just going to have to suffer on the sofa. Okay, maybe I’ll share the chair sometimes. If I really like you.

Next on my wishlist: My own living room, in my own condo or townhouse, to put it in. There’s another development going up about halfway between my and Sarah’s house, not too far away from where I am now, that I might be moving to by next year. It’s right near 288, so it doesn’t really extend my commute to northern VA on Mondays.

I’m still in shock. There’s no buyer’s remorse at all. Probably because this is the first big-ticket item I’ve bought since I bought my car, and that was back in 2000. I think I’m due.

It’s good to have a good job. And to have money again.

Many, many years ago, I was watching a show on TV that affected me so strongly, I never forgot it. It was about a man who wakes up in a cube-shaped room, where people come in and out of the panels, but he can’t leave. None of it makes much sense. It’s all theater of the absurd, and they’re trying to convince the guy he doesn’t really exist at some point. I never forgot the ending, either. The thing is, when you’re twelve years old, you tend not to notice the writers or producers of shows.

Well, another big cheer for the internet. I found “The Cube” on IMDB. Turns out Jim Henson(!) wrote and directed it. And better yet: It’s on Google. For free.

I’m going to grab an hour tomorrow and watch it. Wow. And to think, I got into arguments with people who insisted I made it up, or dreamed it. Nope. I was a kid, but I wasn’t wrong about this play.

Okay. I have watched the latest—and saddest—episode of Lost, and I have several questions and thoughts.

Why on earth would anyone—ANYONE—who has spent more than an hour in Ben Linus’ presence ever, ever trust a word he says? I mean, really. The only way this series ends happily for me is if Sayid or Jack or Sawyer or Kate or even Hurley walks up to Ben, say “By the way, I should have done this ages ago,” and shoots him dead. I don’t even want to hear an explanation. Don’t want to know why he did what he did. Because the man couldn’t tell the truth if it walked up to him, gave him a drink and said, “Dude, I’m the truth, and that’s the truth!”

And come to think of it, I think I’d like to see the main writers of Lost. Personally. And hit them on the heads, repeatedly, with, oh, not a baseball bat. Something light, but painful, that won’t leave lasting damage or scars. Like, a yardstick. Or a wooden paddle.

Really. If someone were to ask me to describe Lost in one word, I’d say: Mindfuck. It’s worse than the X-Files, because at least the X-Files had some non-storyline episodes where you could remember that you liked the show regardless of how stupid it got.

I hate that the acting is so good, and the storyline has managed to suck me in so much. Because it makes about as much sense as Alias, which was also J.J. Abrams, and which I watched because it was fun and silly and I never tried to make much sense of it.

I really don’t try to make much sense of Lost, either. Because when I do, my head hurts.

Remember the poison gas from the other season? The one where they did Ben’s history and showed that he was callous enough to let a whole bunch of people die? The fact that there were two rival groups of people on the island? That was never really explained. “Hey, we’re rival groups on this island where weird stuff happens. Let’s kill the other group!” Why? Never explained.

Remember how “The Others” had these, like, superhuman tracking abilities? And superhuman strength? And it turns out that they’re just human after all? Never explained.

The smoke monster? Never explained. The bears? Never explained. The fact that turning off the electromagnetic thingie would destroy the island? Never explained.

Will I watch the rest of the series? Yeah. Because it’s still good, no matter how stupid the things that don’t get explained become. Will I parse every single action and reaction? Nope. It’s J.J. Abrams. It’s stupid. It’s a step above Alias, which was a step above Felicity, but it’s still just plain dumb.