Digital Sextant

Oh Starbuck, why must you toy with men's hearts?

So I just finished disc 3 of Battlestar Galactica, Season 1.  I am loving this show.  Its writing is crisp and tight, its premise continues to work, its people are believable.  I know, I know. I’m kinda watching the show in slow motion, since I watch a disc every two or three months at most. It will take me a few years to get through the whole series. Here are a few thoughts, spoilers are white text:

• As much as I like her character, I’m getting a bit tired of the Lee Adama/ Starbuck smoldering romance angle. Not much more to say there.
• I think the terrorist leader guy’s arguments about jobs and money are well-founded. This would be an essential issue in the community of humankind in a post-world, stuck-on-a-ship situation. There’s something very Ted Kaczynski about his piercing blue eyes and weathered face. Like a menacing Chris Cooper (though to be fair, I think Chris Cooper could do menacing VERY well).
• The religious stuff that arises in this disc turns me off a bit, particularly the President’s quick conversion to True Believer. I would have liked to see a bit more soul searching before she succombed.
• One character I love to hate is the XO’s wife, whom Dr. Gaius brilliantly refused to identify as either cylon or human.
• Why hasn’t anyone realized that Gaius is crazy? Don’t they notice him talking to himself and staring off into space (no pun intended)?

Can you smell what Phil's cooking?

SPOILERS AHEAD
The Amazing Race 14 has started and the teams are an excellent mix this time around. The winners in spirit this time around were the “redneck” team, who used their crappy wooden backpack to slide three fifty pound rolls of cheese down the hill. Awesome. And they still almost got eliminated. Other thoughts:

• There’s no gay couple this time around, though there is a father/son team (the son is the screenwriter who wrote School of Rock) who are both gay. They have already had a couple of great lines, including this episode’s title: “Don’t let a cheese hit me.”
• The stereotypical “couple on the rocks” isn’t in this round. The dating couple seemed like they had the potential to be the couple on the rocks, but they got eliminated right off the bat.
• There are two “beauty queen” teams this time around — one team of two flight attendants and one team of former NFL cheerleaders. In their intro, one of the cheerleaders said something like “When men are aggressive, they are respected. When women are aggressive, they’re called bitches. Well, I don’t give a crap what other people think, they better get out of my way.” I don’t mean to belittle the real undercurrent this team is responding to, but I think that when men or women are aggressive and respectful, they’re admired. When men or women say things like “I don’t give a crap what other people think,” they’re jerks, regardless of their gender.
• One team has a deaf man who doesn’t read lips. So far they’ve done great and proven, as expected, that deaf people are fully capable.
• My favorite team is the pair of diminutive stunt men who double for children in films. These men, probably in their forties and really built, are cheerful and nice, and work well as a team.
• Phil was really rockin’ the eyebrow this episode.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, TAR is the best reality show on TV because it’s clearly a game first. There are no fake competitions because the whole thing is overtly a race/obstacle course. The drama is built in. Watch it.