Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 76 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Zach & Gracie Make A Porno
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.10.2013
I remember the first time I referred to BSG as a "double-protagonist" show (referring to the burgeoning transcendence that came to define the show's story, which was still in its dog-whistle infancy at the time) was one of the first times the death threats really showed up at my door. I mean, the internet is a silly place full of silly people and it's hard to imagine how much, or how intensely, viewers were investing in the show. I didn't take it seriously in terms of my safety, because I'm not an idiot. But I took it very seriously in terms of the power of the story, in what a story could mean to people who were hurting.
The other times it got weird were Gossip Girl, Idol, and obviously post-Davies Who, but those were of even less consequence because those are shows that exist(ed) either to create or serve insane populations to begin with.
Not that this show has ever sold itself as being on a particular team -- the shippers and Peter- or Alicia-haters would disagree, but that's a self-selected way of invalidating your own opinion anyway -- but I still think about those days, whenever a show radically redefines itself, or when things like this happen, where the Good Guys and Bad Guys become other, more interesting, kinds of Guys.
You can see, in an episode like this (the first episode of the season, really, in terms of the show's conventions), why David Lee had to become a regular: It keeps the whole thing from spiraling off its axis into "everybody is horrible now." The tricky balance of providing multiple points of identification, of entry, rather than taking them all off the table for good: Rather than Alicia finally descending into the ratfuck stew she'd always feared, I feel like her maturation has elevated our perspective on the rats themselves.
F/A
Grace: "You look smart. Are you here because of the computers?"
Clarke Hayden (!): "No, I am here because of Cary Agos, my best friend."
Grace: "Isn't it cool how this tiny apartment is a frat house for a million lawyers?"
Clarke: "Very. But full disclosure, I have no idea what 'cool' means."
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